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============== -= 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 ============== *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:

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 :)

Hidden Hands: Blood & Metal Available via TDM Mission Downloader ============================================================== Title: Hidden Hands: Blood & Metal Filename : hhbam.pk4 Author: Jack Farmer Date of release: 01.09.2024 (Version 1) - 14.09.2024 (Version 2) - 28.09.2024 (Version 3) - 28.11.2024 (Version 4) - 25.07.2025 (Version 5) EFX: Yes Subtitles: Yes ============================================================== Hidden Hands series: I - Initiation II - Vitalic Fever III - The Lost Citadel IV - The Anomaly V - Blood & Metal ============================================================== Jack Farmer: mapping & drafts, briefing videos Amadeus: revision/editing of all texts for readables, narration and dialogues Joebarnin: custom scripts & prefabs and trouble shooting Datiswous: subtitles for all conversations, broadcasts, recordings and thief comments Dragofer: consultation for scripts, models and trouble shooting =============================================================== Beta testers: Cambridge Spy Mat99 Bergante Joebarnin wesp5 grodenglaive TheUnbeholden Acolytesix CrisiusXIII Release testers: Mat99 AluminumHaste =============================================================== Voice actors: AndrosTheOxen (all missions) Bikerdude (mission 1 and 2) Boylag (mission 1) Goldchocobo (mission 2, 3 and 5) Malasdair (all missions) Mary-Anne Stanke (mission 4) Narrator (mission 1 and 4) Purgator (mission 1 and 3) scodysk (mission 4) the double dutch king (mission 3 and 5) Xander Grant (mission 4) Yandros (mission 2 and 4) ================================================================ Pilfered items: - roulette wheel and alien model with thanks to Goldwell (taken from "AC II: New in Town") - pagan woman character and a select building facade with thanks to Fidcal (taken from "Heart of Lone Salvation") - skybox in mission 4 taken from Sotha's "TP: The Transaction" - mission 3 ("Down we go.") previously known as "The Cloister" - taken from the abandoned "Crucible of Omens" campaign, mainly created by the Dudes (JDude and BikerDude) and some other legacy missions makers ================================================================ New assets: - radio model and skin by Epifire, prefab produced by Bikerdude - several technical drawings provided by wellingtoncrab - keypad designed & coded by MirceaKitsune - flying bats designed & coded by STRUNK ================================================================ New sound fx / music: - factory and machine noises by inspectorj - machine sounds by lupalenzuela - rocks_falling_in_cave by unidentified contributor from freesound.org - vinyl_record_pop by joedeshon - ambient_battle_noise by pfranzen - distorted-wolf-howl by hail_pinson - roaring_sea by allthingssound - slideshow_projector by andreaskg - whistling-in-cave by retroguy23 - scary-ghost-wolf-howling by brainclaim - "Rivercare" by Adrian Wilaert - "Leave Her Johnny" by Roger McGuinn used under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/ All other new ambient tracks & sound fx created by Jack Farmer, occ. with gigagooga sound samples ================================================================ Special thanks go to: @joebarnin, who completely altruistically analyzed many game bugs, provided several clever scripts and even played through the initially very buggy game twice. It was an ordeal not even described in the first Builders book! Jeff, thank you very much! @datiswous, who, despite the enormous scope of the game, did not let himself be deterred from creating suitable subtitles for all dialog, comments, briefings and recordings. A truly monumental task! @Mat99 & @Bergante, who tried out things I would never have thought of and showed me once again that I absolutely have to take part in the next brain function enhancement surgery! ...and finally our friend, the incredible @AluminumHaste, who dared to do another detailed run-through at the end of the beta testing, which allowed for several more improvements and polishings. ================================================================ Thank you everyone at Fractured Glass for consultation and help in general! ================================================================

Couple of years ago I started making a character with Darkmod in mind. Then I abandoned it, then returned to it last year. Link to low poly version on Sketchfab Since it has the right proportions for Darkmod rig I might as well port it into the game. I already did the "skinning" part: There are couple of kinks that need to be worked out. First of all at the moment the mesh is in one piece. However, the main rig has only the "head" bone, no bones for the eyes and mouth. For the most part heads in Dark Mod are separate and have a separate rig with eyes and mouth bones. Zombies don't use the head rig, and so it seems they don't have facial animation. If both rigs were connected in some well defined way one could attach the head precisely. But from what I see, in the game the head rig's origin is in arbitrary places:

Lips they flap, but the dubbed voices go their own way. YouTube doesn't have access to the underlying character 3D model, so can't easily adjust lips to match dubs. Tho some artificial intelligence systems for movie dubbing do that now, so I guess it's a matter of time for YouTube too.

We shouldn't turn off animation blending. Without it there's annoying jump from one animation to another. We need more blending, not less. Let's do a different hack. The problem is that origin bone rotation is driven by code and it finishes rotation in 1/3 of a second. We can't make it significantly slower without messing up AI. My first hack was to simply make character move slower than origin. So the origin would finish rotation, stop and then the character would continue moving for the rest of the animation. But we can animate the origin bone too. Since we want the origin rotation to be longer, we can counter-animate it. So while the game code rotates it 90 degrees one way, we can apply rotation in the animation file the other way to counter it. So we end up with 90-60=30 degrees movement for 1/3 of the animation. Then when the code stops moving the origin, the animation file can continue rotating it for the remaining 60 degress. We end up with this stupid looking animation: In the game however origin now rotates for the whole duration of the animation (1 second). This is what it looks like with blending set to "0" in float delta = getTurnDelta(); if ( delta > 10 && hasAnim(ANIMCHANNEL_LEGS, "turn_left")) { animState( ANIMCHANNEL_LEGS, "Legs_TurnLeft", 0 ); } if ( delta < -10 && hasAnim(ANIMCHANNEL_LEGS, "turn_right")) { animState( ANIMCHANNEL_LEGS, "Legs_TurnRight", 0 ); } Here's with blending set to "4" (current Dark Mod default). There's some jerkiness. I applied some more tweaking in Blender to mitigate some of that: With blending set to "6": Those values in: animState( ANIMCHANNEL_LEGS, "Legs_TurnLeft",4 etc., they seem to drive only the "ease in"? I'm a little confused about how they work.

Hello! Tracking down information on software and plug-ins that work with D3 / TDM can be a tough. So I have created a thread here where people can post what software/ plug-ins/ tutorials or other references they've had success or failure with in TDM. 3DS MAX 2013 64bit .ase - Default .ASE model exporter works. However you have to open the .ase file in text edit and manual change the *BITMAP line on each material to read something like: "//base/textures/common/collision" which allows the engine to read the correct material path. md5.mesh / animation - Beserker's md5 exporter/importers for 3dsmax. http://www.katsbits.com/tools, Importing and exporting works. The model must be textured, UV'd, with a skin modifier attached to the bones to export. PM me (Kingsal) for help with this. Imported models using the script will not be weighted appropriately, so this is not recommended if you are simply trying to edit existing tdm content. (Use blender instead) MAYA 2011 32bit md5.mesh - So far I've not had any luck with Maya 2011. I am using Greebo's MayaImportx86 for Maya 2011. I've got the importer working however I get a "Unexpected Internal Failure(kFailure)" and the import fails. This could be due to something finicky in Maya that I am not doing correctly. Will keep trying.. Blender 2.7 about - Blender is commonly used and pretty well supported on the forums/ wiki. Various versions may work as well - https://www.blender.org/download/ md5.mesh / animation Blender MD5 importer/exporter (io_scene_md5.zip): https://sourceforge.net/projects/blenderbitsbobs/files/ Sotha's guide Blender Male/ Female rigs by Arcturus - Here Edit by Dragofer: more links found in this post.

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 am pleased to announce the release of our new fan mission, The Hare in the Snare: Part 1 Mission type: City Missions + Inn/Tavern Description: People are being abducted off the streets and a Watch Captain requires the services of a thief to help him find out why. Download link (version 4): https://drive.proton.me/urls/ME63JDKPJ8#cz8NexM0DR75 Credits: Mapping and original characters: @Frost_Salamander Story, readables, custom models, voices and cinematics: @Kerry000 Menu title track produced and mixed by @JackFarmer with selected gigagooga sound samples Beta testers: @Cambridge Spy @Zerg Rush @Amadeus @Acolytesix @Lzocast @wesp5 @nbohr1more @Kerry000 @ate0ate @Wellingtoncrab @prjames Additional thanks: @Dragofer, @nbohr1moreand @peter_spyfor technical help @Springheel for the modules and tutorials @kingsalfor allowing @Kerry000to abuse his manbeast everyone else on Discord and the TDM forums who offered assistance Requirements and notes: This mission requires TDM 2.09. Earlier versions will probably work but you might see one or two missing models. You may experience some FPS drops in some areas with lower-end hardware. Mid-range and above should be fine. If you have issues, I highly recommend you use shadow maps instead of stencil (settings -> advanced -> shadows implementation). It makes a big difference. Screenshots:

testLora Released (Aug 30 version - run4) testLora.pk4 This shows an experimental FM, run 4 of testLora. It's certainly not the final product. The idea is to generate the Cyrillic characters for /russian/mason/ from a TTF font that has them (unlike MasonAlternate, the traditional TDM "mason" font), but is not too unlike MasonAlternate in style. And has a license we can live with. During generation, scaling was done (by using ExportUnicdoeToDoom3 with 45pt as a stand-in for "48pt"). As the screenshot shows, this makes the Lora lower case characters the same height as MasonAlternate lower case. However, the Lora upper-case characters, unlike MasonAlternate are not yet scaled up by 120% nor top-aligned. (Nor will they be at this point in the experiments.) The final product will likely have complex 3-way character sourcing, from MasonAlternative ASCII, some MasonAlternative Cyrillic, some Lora Cyrillic. Restating the briefing: Here's a mockup TDM character set, within-world, for a mixture of Mason and Lora fonts for Russian characters. This version of the FM has - - at codepoints 0x00-0x7f, the TDM 2.13 Mason ENGLISH characters. Most of these are crisp due to enlarged bitmaps. - at codepoints0x80-0xff, there's freshly generated Lora 45pt (passing as Mason 48pt) for Russian character set. Make sure TDM's language is set to Russian. On a room's floor, all cp1251-defined (and thus DAT-defined) printable glyphs are laid out, to quickly reveal missing & bad characters. They are shown twice, to evaluate 'stray marks' (due to bounding box overlap of neighbor glyphs) & vertical/horizontal 'spacing' [shown in screenshot]. View it all from the ledge (or noclip), or walk the floor for close inspection. No special top-alignment or per-character scaling yet. If used in an FM (as here), this font will not include 'glow' enhancements.

Reading in the dark is virtually impossible. In this game, however- no problem. Your readable GUI is always illuminated. But suppose the 2D readout was only as bright as the local light level. If a mission had the oversight of requiring the player to read an unmovable readable in the dark without any provided light sources, it could be impossible to complete without a walkthrough if there's a critical hint in that readable. On the other hand, it would add a nice extra purpose to the mechanics of relighting candles and moving them as desired, and it also just feels fun to me to light my lantern before reading anything, for instance. There is a somewhat ambiguous line that has to be drawn though if it was decided to make this affect mission objectives that depend on acquiring information. That would be: How bright is considered bright enough that the player character counts as being able to read that information? It would have to be an estimated in-game equivalent to a few candelas per square meter.

Announcing the Release of 'Requiem' for The Dark Mod! Download Download the latest version of the Dark Mod here: http://www.thedarkmo...wnload-the-mod/ Download the mission here: Mediafire: http://www.mediafire...u89/requiem.pk4 Southquarter: http://www.southquar...ons/requiem.pk4 Fidcal.com: http://www.fidcal.co...ons/requiem.pk4 Create a folder in your Dark Mod install with the path "darkmod/fms/requiem" and place the downloaded .pk4 file inside. When you load up The Dark Mod, the mission will appear on the "New Mission" page. Requiem can also be found directly using the in-game loader. Gameplay Notes While this mission is playable in TDM 1.8, for an optimal experience please download and play in TDM 2.0 (or higher). Most inventory items in the game can be dropped, so no need to carry them around after they are no longer of any use. Note that If you use noclip or other console commands while playing, there is a good chance that you will break the intended flow of gameplay. Credits Mapping and Readables: Gelo R. Fleisher Voice Acting: Goldwell Additional scripting: Obsttorte Additional textures and assets: Flanders, Sotha, Grayman, Springheel, Bikerdude, Obsttorte Additional map optimizations: Bikerdude Testers: Bikerdude, Obsttorte, Gnartsch, AluminumHaste, Baal, nbohr1more, PPoe Custom Soundtrack: Leonardo Badinella - http://leonardobadinella.com/ Additional Music: Lee Rosevere - http://freemusicarch...c/Lee_Rosevere/ Marianne Lihannah - http://www.funeralsinger.net/ Vox Vulgaris - http://www.last.fm/music/Vox+Vulgaris/ A note from the author Hi all. While I've been involved in indie game development for a while now, I'm first and foremost a writer. My most recent project has been a novella that tries to capture the visual feel and tone of the Thief series (you can find the link below). As I was writing, I found myself playing a lot of Thief and Dark Mod fan missions, and got to thinking that maybe I wanted to make one myself, as a companion piece to the book. When I finished up writing, I had a bit of down time and decided to take the plunge. Having never done any serious mapping before, my plan was to make a small mission that I could bang out in a month or two and call it a day. Well, as sometimes happens, the project got a little bit bigger than I had planned. Ten months, and lots of elbow grease later, Requiem is finally ready for you to play. I'd like to thank everyone who helped pitch in to help make Requiem come alive, from those who took the time to answer my many questions on the forums to those who actively contributed to the FM. I especially want to thank Bikerdude who served as my mapping mentor, and Obsttorte whose clever scripts really turned what was in my head into the game that you are playing. Above all, I want to thank you for downloading and playing Requiem; I hope you enjoy it. Links of Interest Author's Blog: http://gfleisher.blogspot.com/ Companion Novella (Amazon): http://www.amazon.co...k/dp/B00BYEW02M Companion Novella (Smashwords): http://www.smashword...oks/view/298956

I uploaded "walk.md5anim" animation with fixed elbow issue mentioned here. I managed to completely fix chain clipping on priest's model: This character's coat is still slightly clipped. "walk1" for comparison: There are 8 joints in the skeleton for animation of coats.

I never said "shame on anyone", but, yes, we all merely saw the cover yet. A 30 second teaser is a 30 second teaser. We all know that the gameplay will stay unchanged, that's not the topic. People are VERY finicky about how stuff looks these days, that's for sure. I only see minor differences in the character models. There are differences, of course, redoing very low polygon models can't be done without altering them. I do understand the criticism about the exaggerated reflections though. A problem which many games have these days. People like it shiny and exaggerated.

I added forceoverlays keyword to hair material which fixed it. I noticed that a lot of clothes on NPCs do not spawn blood decals. I uploaded the old guy to repository. I created new .def and .mtr files. It can be moved if needed. I copied nobleman's definition. Some idle animations don't fit the character, like adjusting belt or eating peanuts so that needs sorting out. I uploaded 2048x2048 texture, figured it will be enough. I can upload 4096x4096 if needed.

Absolutely. In my opinion, Arkane Studios really just figured out balancing in Dishonored 1. Dark Messiah of Might & Magic also has its balancing flaws... play the game on anything but "Normal", and you know what I mean. Anyway, I didn't want to demotivate you. Just saying that there potentially could be difficulty issues later in the game. I think a melee character with some magical affinity would work well. But, yeah, usually, I also tend to a stealthy ranged character. In Skyrim or Fallout, I play that way. In Gothic, ranged characters are completely useless too.

Right, so some somewhat more comfortable variables for me have turned out to be: pm_walkbob 0.185 pm_crouchbob 0.14 pm_runbob 0.43 Can't guarantee they will feel right to anyone else. They don't entirely feel right to me either but we're getting into the ballpark. While we're at it, let's discuss some more controversial territory. Player speed, which has gameplay implications. It wouldn't be very nice to force anyone to make their guards run faster, for instance, but to me, the player speeds feel neither particularly stealthy nor particularly hurried when you want to be in a hurry. I have pm_walkspeed at 75. Feels like you mean business when you walk to things, like its important that you get to that thing today. pm_runmod is 2.25, which is much less sluggish than the current player character, but also careful enough that he conceivably could be making sure to step carefully down staircases. It doesn't really feel like the player is truly hurrying until up at around 2.5 or so, though. pm_creepmod is 0.65, which has our character in somewhat more of a hurry while sneaking, while still being audibly careful. pm_crouchmod is also at 0.65, making crouched walking somewhat more athletic than the default, while crouch-creeping is still painstakingly stealthy although the character sounds like they are skilled enough to still do it faster than a beginner. In my subjective opinion, it sounds more natural with these values, from the perspective of a player just using their imagination. Which is the perspective that mostly matters in a game. Not to knock anyone with professional experience who's here to tell me there's no way this could be stealthy. The other thing is, I don't think any of these updated values seem casual or blend in like someone who's "supposed to be walking around here". But unless you're on a guard's route, you'll sound out of place at any speed anyway. Its certainly better to minimize contact rather than try to blend in. And with limited windows to move, I think players might prefer a more hurried pace from the player character like this. The lower bob values for walking and crouching, and higher values for running help to make it sound more natural, speed mods or not. Better not to let the tail wag the dog on this one.

The Problem Readables are available in a wide range of TDM bitmap fonts. Unfortunately, the majority of these fonts lack non-ASCII glyphs for European languages, and it would be a prohibitively lengthy task to craft them. This is one of several translation hurdles. (Another is soliciting, organizing, and distributing the work of human translators; see “AI for Translations: An Exploration” for work on an alternative. This also promotes the use of meaningful alphanumeric #str_ IDs - possibly automatically generated – instead of traditional numeric.) A Proposed Solution Suppose that when a particular page of readable is shown, it is shown first is English, with the mapper-specified font (e.g., Camberic), and then, after a number of seconds, shown in the current user-selected language, with a different font (e.g., Stone), one that offers the needed diacritics? And with the translated font size scaled down to accommodate potentially more-lengthy translated strings? Both the English and translated text can be viewed in sequence. That opens the door to “quick and dirty” default translations, e.g., machine translation. In particular, the reader may sometimes be able to work-around any layout problems and sub-optimal translation by consulting the English text. (Nevertheless, default translations may sometimes miss subtle nuanced hints, so the ability to improve them with tweaked text is a necessity.) The Proposed Mechanics Recall that the game engine currently passes these values to a readable’s gui: gui::title gui::body With a multipage readables, the content of these parameters changes as pages are flipped. For clarity, it is proposed to replace them with: gui::titleEnglish gui::bodyEnglish gui::titleTranslated gui::bodyTranslated The latter 2 would be just like gui::title and gui::body, except that they would serve empty strings when the current language is English or there is no translation available in the current language (and so be used for gui code program logic, to suppress a transition). Observe that this behavior does not substitute an English string for a missing non-English string. Skip the remainder of this section if details are not of interest. Each stock readable .gui would need a one-time conversion to use them. Instead of the traditional 2 winDef overlays for text, there would be 4, corresponding to the 4 text-passing parameters just mentioned. This allows the translated text to fade in while the English text fades out, when an onTime event starts the transition (at 2 seconds in this example). Here is the fragment of .gui code that has been altered: Aspects of this Design – Transition from English The transition is timed, so no extra “Translate” button is shown, nor a hard-to-come-by hot key required. If you want to see the English again, you would briefly navigate away from the page to another, then return; or, if a single-page, close and re-open it. A simple implementation (as the code above and example below) uses a fixed, hard-coded time. Alternative Mechanism. At some cost to code clarity, it is probably possible to get by with just the 2 normal text-passing parameters (gui::title and gui::body) and their traditional 2 overlays, though additional variable(s) would be needed for tight time-synchronization between engine and gui; and overlapping fade-in/fade-out between English and translation would not be possible. Advanced Version. In the longer term, timing could be made more flexible, by passing it as parameter from the engine, e.g.: “gui::transitionTime” Where does this value come from? While it could somehow encoded into the .xd file by the mapper, I prefer a different approach. Have the engine calculate it from character or word count of the body, with user-specified globals for reading rate and min and max bounds, e.g.: sys_readablesWordsPerSecTransTime sys_readablesMinTransTime sys_readablesMaxTransTime A drawback of a timed transition is that additional reading time is needed to get to the translations, which may, with immobile readables, increase risk of discovery by guards. So having these additional user controls would let a user get to the translations faster, even skip the English entirely by setting bounds to zero. A Simulated Example – FM “readableTranslationFadeIn” In the absence of engine support for the 4 text-passing parameters, it is still possible to make an approximately-functional mockup using some hard coding. However, this prototype DOES NOT suppress the transition when the current language is English. That is, it shows (rather than prevents) an English-to-English transition with change of font & font-scale. TDM with the languages set to “Francais” (French). The first screen shot shows page 1 of a 3-page scroll, momentarily displayed in English with Camberic title and body. After a few seconds, it transitions to the second screen shot, in French in Stone font. With accents. While shown here as a scroll, this approach should be easily adaptable to books and sheets. About the Example’s Implementation The screen shots are from a prototype FM: readableTranslationFadeIn Notable files are: guis/readables/scrolls/scroll_calig_camberic.gui, a custom override of the standard Camberic scroll readable, with the translation transition mechanism from above, plus additional simulation fakery described below. strings/all.lang, a UTF-8 file containing 6 #str_ (2 per scroll page – title & body) in each language section. Only the [English] and [French] sections were implemented. The English example content was loosely derived from the St. Lucia FM. The English text (without #str_ structuring) was manually converted to UTF-8 French using Google Translate (website, not API). strings/english.lang & french.lang. These were generated from all.lang using my gen_lang_plus program to create the 8-bit “ANSI” versions as required, e.g., ISO-8859-15 encoding for French. xdata/readableTranslationFadeIn.xd, that contains the #str_IDs for the 3 scroll pages. Within scroll_calig_camberic, this simulation had this fakery: “gui::title” and “gui::body” were stand-ins for hypothetical parameters “gui::titleTranslated” and “gui::bodyTranslated”; The English text was hard-coded, and the appropriate content selected by actual parameter “gui::curPage”, to make up for missing hypothetical parameters “gui::titleEnglish” and “gui::bodyEnglish”. The READABLE_FADE_TIME is currently set to 2 seconds for testing. Probably 5-6 seconds would be better during game play. Aspects of the Design – Font Scaling As mentioned earlier, the translated font is scaled to make the text smaller than the original, to accommodate languages that need more room. A simple implementation (like in the example code) uses fixed values with “textscale”. So the textscale for the two Translated winDef overlays is smaller than for the 2 English winDef overlays. Specifically, in the example GUI code, the text scaling factors from the original Camberic readable were retained: textscale 0.4 // titleEnglish textscale 0.31 // bodyEnglish and supplemented by (with a different font, namely Stone): textscale 0.33 // titleTranslated textscale 0.24 // bodyTranslated The goal is to keep the rendered text smaller than the original English rendering for languages with more characters per sentence. These values, while hard-coded, will differ across readables (due to different starting fonts), and would need to be experimentally determined. But this treatment, with just a fixed scaling value that is independent of both text content and current language, is unlikely to be very satisfactory. Better ideas, needing additional engine modifications, will be considered in a follow-on post. Additional Considerations When Authoring the XD File. Recall that TDM is relatively inflexible when using #str_ within an .xd file. So this form will not work: "page1_body" : { "" "" "#str_fm_scroll_camberic_pg1_body_parish_inspection_excerpts" } Instead use "page1_body" : "#str_fm_scroll_camberic_pg1_body_parish_inspection_excerpts" With the 2 leading linebreaks moved into the #str content as leading \n\n. When Testing. If there is a mismatch between the TDM Language setting and the PC’s language setting (e.g., under Windows), then some characters may turn out wrong or indicated as missing (e.g., as boxes). The degree will vary by language, and is unlikely to be seen in the initial English render (because that’s almost all in ASCII, common to all the ISO encodings.) Even with such mismatches, the translation can be reviewed as to overall length and where linebreaks occur. Be aware that direct editing of *.lang files is not recommended, and could risk converting from a particular “ANSI” raw 8-bit encoding into “UTF-8”. Applying this Technique More Broadly. A few fonts have oddball glyphs for certain characters, e.g., a skull and crossbones in Treasure Map. This would require special handling during translation. For Briefings, Objectives, and Messages, similar approaches can be conceived. However, for each of these (and different from readables), only one particular font is routinely offered. And there are alternative designs to be considered. For instance, the English and Translated text could be shown simultaneously side-by-side in various ways, instead of sequentially. The Objectives have the additional complication that the font size is already user-adjustable.

Hey @thebigh this is awesome! Would you mind reporting this over in the ghost report thread here: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150710 This is one of those missions we currently don't have a ghost report for, as some reports from the old Square Enix forum got lost. You could simply write in the stats and add a brief description of the main challenging areas like you did above, and I can add it to the archive. Thanks!

I definitely think some of the spells are pretty powerful, almost essential later in the game. Whether or not you can also beat the game with a stealthy ranged character, I don't know. I only can say that I had issues later in the game, but, maybe I'm just too bad at playing it, or distributed my skill points unwisely. I'd just go on and see how you do with your character. Frankly, casting the spells is a bit fiddly in the game anyway, so, maybe you will want to avoid that completely. Some more food for thought: Sounds exactly like the problems I ran into, haha.

Wonderful game (Arx Fatalis), even though it has slight balancing issues, and punishes you when you're not playing as a character excercising magic, IMO. At some point, I had to quit my playthrough, because some enemies became too much for my sneaky ranged attack character. Cralon looks interesting (I've watched it for some time now, although I have some concerns about the overall quality, because it's a 2 person project, with a lot of licensed assets, and some things the developers made themselves, but they're rather semi-pro at it (like the soundtrack). We will see.

This guy.

I moved the entire upper part of the torso down a bit. This way his shoulders won't be as broad any more. As a result this character will be a little shorter than other NPCs. Still a lot taller than the player though.

I recall Every time you go near the gargoyle statues, an evil sounding monologue will appear Feels like the main character is being haunted by something

I will probably need to add some sort of scarf to hide the neck seam. There is one fat "inventor". A smaller character would probably need additional work like setting up AF.