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How you can help depends a lot on what skills you have. I can Record Video Recording "Let's Play" videos or simple walkthroughs of existing missions and posting them to Youtube is great exposure for the mod (see example .) Be sure to let us know so we can link to them. If you have some editing ability, Video tutorials, where you explain how the mod works, or how to use specific tools, would also be great. Video trailers, showcasing interesting places and features, are also great for publicity. An example is . I can Write Writing reviews for missions are always nice, especially if they include good screenshots. Not only does it give us something to post on other forums, but it makes mappers feel good when their mission gets attention (especially if it's positive). We have a collective thread to post reviews in: http://forums.thedar...s-walkthroughs/ Writing reviews of the mod as a whole, targetted an an audience that doesn't know much about TDM, is also very useful. You could also try offering your services to mappers to create interesting readables, or to proofread for their mission. I can Act and Record Audio We are always on the lookout for good quality audio recordings for vocal sets. If interested, you can pick a few different lines from this script: http://wiki.thedarkm...t:_Average_Jack and send the recordings to Springheel, who then writes a script based on the type of voice you have. I can Translate We could always use translations of our menu/hud into more languages. Also, only a few FMs are aavailable in more than one language, so there is a lot of work there, see the I18N Translator's Guide in the Wiki. I can Model Great! Take a look at the model request thread:http://forums.thedar...-requests-here/ and pick something that interests you. Or just post a, "Hey, anybody want a model?" thread in this forum and I'm sure mappers will get back to you. I can Animate Fantastic. We can always use more good animations. Our current character rigs use a Maya skeleton. PM Springheel for more info. I know C++ Have a look at our coding section in the wiki, pick an issue or feature from the bugtracker of the mod or the leveleditor, download the recent sourcecode release (or better ask for an SVN checkout) and get cracking. Make sure nobody is already working on that specific issue and feel free to ask questions. I can Edit Images We can always use completely new textures and/or improved versions of older textures. How to get started and how to import them into the mod. I can Take Photos Good quality photos of useful textures (medieval-ish building facades, dirt, rocks, wood, etc) are always welcome. The fewer directional shadows and higher resolution, the better. I don't have any skills Even if you can't do any of the above, you can still help out. Talk about TDM in other forums; share your (preferably positive) experiences with other gamers you know. Last, but not least, compliment people when you like their work. Saying "thanks", to a developer or, "I really enjoyed your mission" to a mapper will make their day. -------------------- I'll update this further as more things occur to me.

Darkmod underutilizes, in my opinion, capabilities for procedural animation. We already do some, like the random head and torso turns that are added on top of existing animations. There's also possibility for separate animation for top and bottom of the character as well as head. There's a missing opportunity for varied facial expressions. I talked about animation blending in this thread. Here's something that for example Thief: Deadly Shadows did. It's swaying side to side while turning. I used Gemini to add code to the tdm_ai_base.script. I don't know if this is the most efficient way of doing it, probably not. Here are the parts added: Gemini came up with the term "banking" which is used in car racing. I don't know if that's what it's called in animation or games. There's a lot of variables that can be tweaked. You can rotate this way any bone you wish. I use 'Origin', 'Spine_Dummy' and 'Neck' bones: You can tweak amount of rotation for each bone. setJointAngle(m_bankingJointHandle, 1, jointRotation * 1); setJointAngle(m_bankingJointHandle1, 1, jointRotation * 0.6); setJointAngle(m_bankingJointHandle2, 1, jointRotation * -1.5); There's also global intensity: (targetBanking = deltaYaw * 1.4;) and attenuation: m_bankingCurrentValue = (m_bankingCurrentValue * 0.95) + (targetBanking * 0.05); modifiers. Gemini also proposed to add an LOD system, which I thought was a great idea. So currently at a distance of 1500 from player the swaying will be disabled. Here are examples, each with slightly different values: And here's comically exaggerated one:

ThiefGuild has some tags: https://www.thiefguild.com/fanmissions/?advanced_search=&series=&collection=&table=&page=&works=&work_lists=&sort_by=newest&search=&games=5&released_from=all&released_to=all&genre=all&original_games=fms Not sure how complete or accurate those are, after all either the author or users add the tags to the missions.

For the people eager to play with the latest state of development, two things are provided: regular dev builds source code SVN repository Development builds are created once per a few weeks from the current trunk. They can be obtained via tdm_installer. Just run the installer, check "Get Custom Version" on the first page, then select proper version in "dev" folder on the second page. Name of any dev version looks like devXXXXX-YYYY, where XXXXX and YYYY are SVN revision numbers from which the build was created. The topmost version in the list is usually the most recent one. Note: unless otherwise specified, savegames are incompatible between any two versions of TDM! Programmers can obtain source code from SVN repository. Trunk can be checked out from here: https://svn.thedarkmod.com/publicsvn/darkmod_src/trunk/ SVN root is: https://svn.thedarkmod.com/publicsvn/darkmod_src Build instructions are provided inside repository. Note that while you can build executable from the SVN repository, TDM installation of compatible version is required to run it. Official TDM releases are compatible with source code archives provided on the website, and also with corresponding release tags in SVN. A dev build is compatible with SVN trunk of revision YYYY, where YYYY is the second number in its version (as described above). If you only want to experiment with the latest trunk, using the latest dev build gives you the maximum chance of success. P.S. Needless to say, all of this comes with no support. Although we would be glad if you catch and report bugs before the next beta phase starts

I don't know who has what skillset, as I am still pretty green on the forums. However, I do know that shader development does require some voodoo black magic! I understand the fundamentals of shaders, but understanding the basic how and why is very, very different from creating them.

Nice work! Is there a build/code that other users can download and try? Please merge back the code with TDM VR, see topic: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20468-the-dark-mod-vr-210-alpha-is-now-available/ === Reddit topic: link Video of JAKE's work:

For more info, read this topic: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/23261-i-made-full-vr-support-for-the-dark-mod-new-bow-climbing-mechanics-and-more/ He based his code of TDM VR, so I referred him to this topic.

I didn't know her well, although I have played her missions which I enjoyed for the originality, may she rest in peace. In all my years in social networks I have learned that users, far from hiding their true character behind a nickname, many times on the contrary, they really show who they are with activities in front of others that they never dared face to face. Mobbing and insulting behavior towards others on social networks only shows a bad character and cowardice in anonymity. A behavior I have never understood. Precisely online, respect is vital.

https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153454&p=2543356&viewfull=1#post2543356 Great reaction from heywood.

by the great cthulhu christians have invaded the blood of the dawnwalker forums moaning about them being put in a bad light by a game... looking back chritianity was one of the most bloody in human history and they bitch about the game allowing for people to fight back i mean wtf... yes lets have the dark ages back as if we truely need more to bog us down. i think its time we neutered they're access to the internet .

Okay, I've coded a solution that lets you update a readable with up to three substitution strings. I'll list the limitations up front, just so you don't get too excited: 1) It supports at most three substitution strings (although this is easy to change). Scripting doesn't support arrays, so I had to pick a fixed number. 2) As @kingsal mentioned, scripting has a problem with strings longer than 127 characters. So this doesn't work well with readables with long strings (see below). To use: Create your readable as you normally do. Presumably you'll edit it using the Readable Editor. In the text, use "%1" (no quotes) to indicate a string that you want to substitute (%2 for a second string, and %3 for a third). So for example, you might have a sheet that his a title of "Hey %1" and a body of "The new combo is %2. Regards, %3" From a script, you make a call like this: adjustReadable($testsheet, "Chris", "375", "Jeff"); Where "$testsheet" is the name of the readable entity. The next three strings are the substitutions for %1, %2, and %3. If you only have one or two substitution strings, just pass "" for the remaining args. In game, the sheet looks like this: Like I said, it's SMOP (simple matter of programming) to support more than 3 substitution strings. But the 127 character limitation is much more difficult. It's a problem/feature with the scripting code: strings are limited to 127 characters in length. The adjustReadable() call will truncate readable strings to 127 characters, so if you have a long page in a book with a substitution string, the page will be truncated. The code is smart enough to limit the damage - if a readable string doesn't have the substitution characters (i.e., "%1") then I won't process it at all, and the text isn't truncated. So with some planning you can get this to work - just make sure all of the pages that have substitutions are short (For example, page 1 is a wall of text, 100s of characters with no substitutions. Page 2 is brief, "And that's why I changed the combination to %1".). Dynamically creating readables with strings longer than 127 characters is possible, but ugly. That's another whole topic, I will discuss separately. Here's the code. Drop it into your <fm>.script file, and call it as in the example above. Suggestions for improvement are welcomed. string substitute(string str, string sub1, string sub2, string sub3) { if (sub1 != "") str = sys.strReplace(str, "%1", sub1); if (sub2 != "") str = sys.strReplace(str, "%2", sub2); if (sub3 != "") str = sys.strReplace(str, "%3", sub3); return str; } // Adjusts all of the contents of the specified readable. In any xdata content for this readable, this method will replace "%1", "%2", and "%3" // with sub1, sub2, sub3, respectively. void adjustReadable(entity readable, string sub1, string sub2, string sub3) { string xd = readable.getKey("xdata_contents"); readable.loadExternalData(xd, "xdx_"); string key = ""; while ((key = readable.getNextKey("xdx_", key)) != "") { string xdName = sys.strSkip(key, 4); string xdValue = readable.getKey(key); if (sys.strFind(xdName, "page", 1, 0, 4) == 0) { if (sys.strFind(xdValue, "%1", 0, 0, -1) >= 0 || sys.strFind(xdValue, "%2", 0, 0, -1) >= 0 || sys.strFind(xdValue, "%3", 0, 0, -1) >= 0) { string newXdValue = substitute(xdValue, sub1, sub2, sub3); readable.setKey(xdName, newXdValue); } } } }

I have committed my changes to SVN, now SVN works on the UTF-8 system. It reads all language strings from all.utf8lang file, and only reads old-style {language}.lang files for missions if the equivalent new-style files are not available. The core .lang / .map files are present yet, but will hopefully be deleted. In the end, I had to manually add some characters to utf8map to suppress warnings. They were not handled by the old engine: I simply remapped them all to the question mark. It seems that the majority of them come from language names, and I don't care if they look broken or have question marks. I have already stated my position about language names. At the current moment, .utf8lang uses the same format as .lang, but this is temporary. As I said before, this must be changed in order to not lock us into compatibility trap. The format should be a sequence of "commands", each command starting with a keyword saying which command it is. And global state should be kept to minimum (e.g. current language seems acceptable). In addition to the current "#str_{name}" placeholders, I'd like to add two more types of replacements for missions. 1) Plain-text replacements, i.e. replace "Not enough drive space to save the game." with "Não há espaço para salvar o jogo.", as I suggested before. This approach provides zero inconvenience for the mapper, but it rather unreliable. It becomes especially bad for short strings. This kind of replacements is not cheap to perform, but I think I know how to do it efficiently. The first version will do it with bruteforce algorithm, we don't have any plain-text replacements yet anyway. 2) Full-text + ID replacements, i.e. replace "Not enough drive space to save the game.#id_nospacesave#" with "Não há espaço para salvar o jogo.#id_nospacesave#". The #id_...# placeholders are stripped from the text by the engine even if translation does not exist. If translation exists, then the engine verifies the context around the placeholder and does not apply it in case of mismatch. This approach gives mild inconvenience to the mapper, since he can clearly see the original text but has to tolerance this annoying tag at the end. The mapper can even edit the text without touching the placeholder: the obsolete translations will stop working automatically. I have a feeling that plain-text replacements won't be enough for the missions, and hope that such extra "tags" can be used here and there to make it more reliable.

Hi team, I've come back to the FreeBSD native port that I was working on and have some patches that I would like to upstream. What is the best way to submit patches for consideration? Is there a public tracker/email list, or is it best to post patches somewhere here on the forums? Thanks!

Hello and thanks for checking out this post. I'm delighted to announce that version 1.1 of my fan mission "Cole Hurst 1: Eaton" is now available to download and play. This post is spoiler free, so please don't avoid digging into the details below if you are interested. I'm just using the spoiler tags to organize this post a bit. Let me start by saying "thank you" to anyone who has either previously played - or is considering playing this mission. It really means a lot to me. I have been away for a while, but following a round of beta testing that took place some time last year, I've only just recently managed to finish this update. I'm slightly embarrassed by how long it has taken me to complete, but I wanted to make sure that the valuable feedback I received was all properly addressed. Mission description "Tonight, Eaton's wealthiest citizens will gather at Lord Mayor Zelmer's estate to celebrate the city's founding. Nobles, dignitaries, a famed musician, and even the Queen will pass through its gates. While the guests celebrate Eaton's future, Cole Hurst is looking for a way out." For those new to and/or curious about this mission: I guess I would describe it as a traditional heist-style mission - although with a couple of major plot twist along the way. It's a very large map and I think it should take most players at least a few hours to complete. Screenshots Changes in version 1.1 Countless additions and a large amount of smaller tweaks and changes have all made it into this release. I may have already forgot a few things, but here are what I consider to be the main highlights: * New secrets & optional side quests * Story tweaks and reworked readables * Subtitles * Difficulty tweaks and related changes * Stability fixes * Various cosmetic changes * Audio tweaks * TDM version 2.13 now required Contributions and acknowledgments A special thanks to all of those listed below. I'm sincerely grateful for all your contributions! Mission testers and technical support @nbohr1more, @stgatilov, @duzenko, @Acolytesix, @Dragofer, @JackFarmer, @Shadow, @Cambridge Spy, @wesp5, @madtaffer, @prjames, @suzy8track, @datiswous, @boissiere and @Bergante Story Kelly Hrupa Voice actors twhalen2600 (AKA @Benny_the_guard) and Kelly Hrupa

============== -= IRIS =- ============== WELLINGTONCRAB TDM v 2.11 REQ Ver. 1.3 *For Maureen* -=- "Carry the light of the Builder, Brother. Unto its end." -Valediction of the Devoted "What year is this? Am I dreaming?" -Plea of the Thief Dear Iris, I am old and broken. When we were young it felt like the words came easily. Now I find the ink has long dried on the pen and I'm as wanting for words as coin in my purse. I can tell we are nearing the end of the tale; time enough for one more job before the curtain call... ============== -Installation- Requires minimum version of TDM 2.11 **Dev build dev17056-10800 (2.13) fixes several visual effects which have been broken in the mission since the release of 2.11. For that reason playing with that version or later is currently recommended** -Iris does not support mods or the Unofficial Patch- Download and place the following .pk4 into you FMs directory: Iris Download ============== Beta Russian Language Translations by @kalinovka Mirror #1: yandex.ru Mirror #2: Google Drive ============== *Thank you for playing. Iris is a large mission which can either take as quickly or as long as you are compelled to play. I hope someone out there enjoys it and this initial release is not completely busted - I tried the best I could!* *Iris both is and isn't what it seems. If commenting please use spoiler tags where appropriate. If you are not certain if it would be appropriate a good assumption would be to use a spoiler tag* *Support TDM by rating missions on Thief Guild: https://www.thiefguild.com/* ============== WITH LASTING GRATITUDE: OBSTORTTE - Whose gameplay scripts from his thread laid the foundation which made the mission seem like something I could even pull off at all. Also fantastic tutorial videos! DRAGOFER - Who built upon that foundation and made it shine even brighter! And whom also provided immeasurable quantities of help and encouragement the past couple years on the TDM discord. ORBWEAVER & GIGAGOOGA - For generously offering their ambient music up for use. EPIFIRE - Who lent me his fine trash and trash receptacle models. AMADEUS - Who was the first person who wasn't me to play the damn thing and provided his excellent editorial services to improving the readers experience playing TESTERS AND TROUBLESHOOTERS: AMADEUS * DATISWOUS * SPOOKS * ALUMINUMHASTE * JAXA * JACKFARMER * WESP5 * ATE0ATE * MADTAFFER * STGATILOV * DRAGOFER * KINGSAL * KLATREMUS - What can I possibly say? Playing this thing over and over again could not have been easy. Deepest thanks and all apologies. -=THANKS TO ALL ON THE TDM DISCORD AND FORUM=- ==SEE README.TXT FOR ADDITIONAL ATTRIBUTIONS & INFORMATION== HONORABLE MENTION: GOLDWELL - If I hadn't by chance stumbled into Northdale back in 2018/2019 I would probably still be trying to get this thing to work in TDS, which means it probably would not exist - though more details on that in readme. ============== Boring Technical Information: *Iris is a performance intensive mission and I recommend a GTX 1060 or equivalent. I find the performance similar to other demanding TDM missions on my machine, but mileage may vary and my apologies if this prevents anyone from enjoying the mission.* *Iris heavily modifies the behavior of AI in the game, how they relate/respond to each other and the player. So they may act even stranger than they do typically in TDM. Feedback on this is useful - as it can potentially be improved and expanded upon in future patches.* -=- This is my first release and it has been a long time coming! If I forgot anything please let me know! God Speed. 2.10 Features Used:

Yes, the "ease out" looks good, but if the character always stops two feet too far than it's supposed to, it will cause issues. That's Youtube's automatic translation, lol.

I think the character shouldn't stop so abrupt. That is normaly not possible. It looks best on the second video (inactive mengen = 18).

This idea is slowly falling apart. When idle blending is set to some number, blending begins when idle animation kicks in. Which means that NPC runs, reaches its goal and only when idle animation starts playing, the running animation begins to fade. Problem is, origin movement is baked into the running animation. So the moving origin joint is blending with stationary origin from the idle animation. Result is a character is stopping further then it should. When blending is at the start of the running animation then that doesn't seem to cause problems. Even the current value of 4 seems to affect how far the NPC travels. When blending is set to zero: Blending animations on the torso channel shouldn't cause those problems, since it won't affect the origin's location.

okay 1 testbed is done , time to post to ttlg , here is the link : https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153456&page=2&p=2542791&viewfull=1#post2542791 originally windows 7 isnt recommended but i decided to go down the path i have no dx9 gpu left ( and the hwtl document itself doesnt recommend dx9 era gpu) The remaining test results from other PCs and laptops will follow

seems there is a new version of newdark out https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153456 version 1.29 the hwtl version supports shadowmaps postprocessing effects (bloom etc) and other nifty stuff. this one done by le corbeau himself. the hwtl version gets rather spooky with dynamic shadowmaps on . EDIT: ah just noticed it was posted earlier lol.

Looks like at least some other Frenchies have access to it: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152974

I have stated my position about language names as well, and littering them with question marks ain't it. But as an alternative to the current mechanism, why don't we just make the settings/video/languages into a fixed image rectangle with all the proper language strings burned in? So no need for special character-set gymnastics (and Russian always shown in Cyrillic).

Here's a .blend file with a Darkmod NPC rig: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-odjc8A54ED5qgO7pA01Nr59U2_2jFmL/view?usp=sharing set up to be used with this motion capture animation pack https://www.rokoko.com/mocap/free-mocap-assets It's a stripped down version of this Blender rig. Exporting works the same way. For retargeting you'll need to install this addon: https://github.com/Mwni/blender-animation-retargeting It works in Blender 3.6 as well as 4.5. Animation playback of longer files is waaay faster in 4.5 but the drawback is that md5 file exporter won't work with anything newer than 3.6. This pack contains different skeleton standards. This setup was made for Mixamo which seems to be majority of files. Import .fbx file with scale 48, manual orientation: x forward to match the Darkmod skeleton. When selected, keyframes of the imported animation will be displayed. Select armature_control. In the retargeting addon tab (in right panel), in 'Source' box choose the imported skeleton name. Load config file: Darkmod_male_NPC_mocap_Mixamo.blend-retarget This should pair up both skeletons. First frame in animations is a t-pose. Proper animation starts at frame 2. Typically animations start offset from the center. You can move the character to the center at the start of the animation simply by dragging armature_control object. Similarly, character model may be slightly below ground level. Move armature_control up to adjust. Origin bone in tdm_ai_proguard has constraints to follow the pelvis. Otherwise it would stay in center. Here's what happens when origin bone stays in the same place. This is idle animation playing: And here's what happens when origin bone follows the character: I found that in order to match imported skeletons I had to bend darkmod skeleton forward a little bit. That pose is saved as "tpose_mixamo" single frame animation. I don't guarantee that this is the best way you can do it. Perhaps skeletons could be matched in a more ideal way. Remember that there are bones for clothing in Darkmod, that aren't in the motion capture files and need to be animated by hand :)

I just added this to the browser-css for https://forums.thedarkmod.com (locally) .ipsDataItem_lastPoster, .ipsDataItem_stats, .ipsCommentCount, .ipsType_light.ipsType_small.ipsType_blendLinks, span.ipsFlex-inline, .ipsDataItem_category {display: none;} /* Less number stats distractions */ Giving a less distracting result: