Jump to content
The Dark Mod Forums

Petike the Taffer

  • Content Count

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won


Petike the Taffer last won the day on September 17

Petike the Taffer had the most liked content!

Community Reputation

319 Legendary

About Petike the Taffer

  • Rank
  • Birthday November 17

Contact Methods

  • Website URL

Profile Information

  • Gender
  • Location
    Gothic clockpunk shire of Zemplín
  • Interests
    Tiff-taffin' around...

Recent Profile Visitors

1581 profile views
  1. Why I have been so quiet for the last several months ? I am slowly developing my series of missions again. I will prefer the individual release model, I might release at least one mission before the year is out. A smaller affair, but with some added verticality.

  2. I've read the whole thing, thank you for providing the link. If even half of this is true, this lady was bullied, guilt-tripped and abused, when she was at a clearly vulnerable position in her life and career. Even if we account for the possibility she might be exaggerating some things, I am inclined to believe her on the majority of her complaints. It seems Soule played her and several other people like a fiddle and did cause them harm. All the more damning that he initially approached the lady from the position of an encouraging mentor, only to use her (and not only physically). Plenty of ample e-mail evidence too, especially if it's still in her inbox and a potential investigation could look at it. Again, I'd prefer if both extremes didn't go into overdrive and there was a level-headed investigation instead. Better safe than sorry.
  3. Well, it would be a pity if the investigation of these allegations proved them true. I'd certainly expect better from a talented person like Soule. I'd expect him to be more than your typical, garden-variety "I'm a man, I can't help it, I don't mind treating women like trash" type fool. Even accounting for the proverbial "death of the author", it would be uncomfortable knowing he mistreated someone in the past. Though these things are often harder to investigate, given the time elapsed, I definitely think they should be investigated and justice should be served, if there are any doubts. I sincerely don't think dismissals of people coming forth and talking about this ("All of them are lying about this, they just want attention...") or witch hunts throughout social media and elsewhere on the Internet ("Such and such is a rapist, take my word for it...") are helpful at all. If anything, they only serve to amplify bad arguments that gloss over the wider topic. As the other Pete here in the discussion noted, one needs to be a bit cautious about these things. From everything I've read from psych-research and watched/heard of people's testimonies on cases like this, I know for a fact that most women (or men) who have been physically abused do not lie about that awful experience, and the trauma it virtually always leaves behind. This also strikes somewhat of a personal chord, as a female friend of mine was abused on one occassion and is still trying to cope with the scars of that (I don't know the specifics and they don't interest me, but it's clear it was traumatic for her and she's trying to live with it and overcome it - part of why I've been very supportive of her, and not only in that regard). Personally, I have always loved women, I'd like to hope I've been brought up in a manner that is always respectful towards them, and I absolutely cannot understand how certain men could be willing to "think with their dick" first, rather than their mind and heart. Regardless of any attraction, women are human beings and individuals like any other, first and foremost, and should be treated accordingly. The same goes for men towards women and women towards men - if you don't respect the dignity of the other person, just because of their sex or your own horniness, you're only fooling yourself and spreading pain where there shouldn't be any. People being people, you are bound to get some assholes among both men and women who purposefully lie even on topics this serious, for whatever self-serving reason, but I am not convinced it's the majority of such people. Definitely not. All the more when we have decades of data and testimonies the world over that getting raped or otherwise physically abused does lead to genuine personal trauma that you can't just shrug off, like so. If we're not going to call people traumatised by bullying liars and cheats, we should be a bit cautious about claiming the same about people who come forth with allegations of getting raped by someone. That said, allegations such as these are very serious, and everyone who uses them frivolously to try and discredit others or harm them belongs behind bars. It's precisely because these allegations are so serious that no one should ever use them against another person unless they really were abused and are 100 % sincere about it, Bottom line, if there is enough suspicion Soule might have abused the lady in question, forced her into something against her will, etc., or even did it to several women, an investigation should be carried out. If there's not enough convincing evidence or convincing testimonies and the whole thing smells like a potential media circus, some caution should be exercised too. This isn't exactly an easy topic, and it's all the more important to not get carried away in either direction.
  4. As the Mission list is currently inactive, I'd like to suggest we leave a little notice on that page. Something along the lines of "We're currently providing our website and servers with some maintenance, the mission list and DL links will be back soon. Thank you for your patience.". Currently, there's nothing to indicate its maintenance. To the eye of a newcomer unfamiliar with TDM, it almost seems like we're promising the world on the site, but no missions have been released. Imagine if someone comes to the site after getting hyped for TDM, only to find nothing in the missions list. They'll think we're pulling their leg. Bad word of mouth for TDM, regardless of how minor, can put off a lot of people. Especially the fickle types that like to interpret everything in the worst possible hues. Better not give those types ammo, if any of them would run into the site while taaaki is making the necessary hardware and software maintenance.
  5. Best wishes for the replacement, taaaki. Having read this post and your other announcement on the forums, it seems you've gone about the backups methodically. I'd rather wait than have maintenance jump the gun on necessary replacements, so good luck with all the work this evening ! Hopefully we'll be back soon enough, once you finish all the necessary maintenance.
  6. I've liked First Aid Kit for years now. They're in a league of their own.
  7. GoT recently ended and this will probably be the only video related to it I'll ever share on this site. Not going to lie, a lot of the above had me in stitches.
  8. I am of two minds about this thing: - Yes, strictly speaking, it is not all that historically accurate. Most of the lamps used would be "candle-powered", so to speak, such as wooden chandeliers, candlesticks, lanterns and so on (incidentally, we have all of those). Oil lamps of various types would also be used indoors. Torches are, in essence, something of a later popcultural misunderstanding on how medieval buildings were lit. - For the sake of gameplay, I think torches are a "necessary weasel", that is, a necessary cliché. It's not just about TDM following in the footsteps of the Thief design legacy, though that plays a part. It's also about using something that is quickly familiar to a lot of people - torches giving out lots of open fire - and is therefore ripe for an intuitive understanding on how to use water arrows. Quite honestly, for a fantasy stealth game, I'd say the current TDM already has enough of a whiff of historical accuracy about it than most other games of this sort would have. TDM's world is actually rather more grounded and further down-to-earth than that of Thief. You might have noticed the existing robots in the setting are a lot less stylised than those from The Metal Age, most of the trick arrows are non-magical, and our thief characters use a spyglass (itself an early modern invention, not medieval) instead of a mechanical eye. Seems like a "nolanification" of Thief to me. If you want absolute historical accuracy, you'll have to ditch all the fantastical elements, and those are one of the main appeals of TDM, in addition to sneaking around. The best thing to do is a reasonable compromise in approaching level design. If a map author wants torches to be used in interiors, let them. However, one can always give reasonable recommendations, such as, "use torches for lighting in more barren hallways and passageways and lanterns and candles and lamps in living spaces". That adds to both common sense design and an element of historical accuracy, while still keeping gameplay dynamic and varied. Even some of the earliest released missions - e.g. Saint Lucia - used this rationale. Most of the habitable interiors, public rooms or studies in St. Lucia are lit with historically accurate (or more precisely, historically plausible) lighting sources. Torches are outside or in storage areas, and there are also early electric lamps in a few places. Long story short, I don't mind torches. I know very well about reality vs. fantasy, but in a game like TDM, torches honestly don't bother me. If you'd want hyper-realism in everything, we'd have to throw away most of the more fanciful steampunk elements, all of the fantasy elements, and finally, possibly even stop being a stealth game. Do you really think someone can lurk and move in the shadows as easily as Thief or The Dark Mod portray ? I don't deem it impossible, but I have my doubts about its plausibility. We therefore need a happy medium between fantasy and historically plausible stuff. ---- One of the officially approved missions is set entirely aboard a medieval steampunk airship. How do you "plausibilise" that ? Airships would need a lot of technologies pre-invented first in order to be built in a setting more similar to our real world some 400-500 years ago, rather than 100-200 years ago. TDM's setting presupposes an earlier (if slow-burning) industrial revolution, with steam and clockwork mechanisms and so on several centuries earlier, in a fictional late-medieval style society. But beyond that, the mere fact there are airships in the TDM universe raises all sorts of questions - if you want to analyse it deeply, a fantasy society with flight provided by airships would eventually see changes to how trade or warfare are conducted. Will we now over-analyse the presence of that airship in the mission and strike it down, because it could propel the setting too far into the future in terms of how progress impacts daily living and politics in the setting ? And on a similar note, wouldn't steam engines and primitive robots and electric lighting cause similar repercussions, even moreso than it's already portrayed within the game ? My advice is: It's a fantasy game. We're not striving for super-plausibility, just a broad plausibility. And above that, above all, we're striving for the game being fun, engaging, all that good stuff. Torches don't make or break TDM.
  9. Congratulations to the release. This year's spring seems really fertile for new releases.
  10. I missed one FM after all ! Thank you for reminding me of that and feel free to send over a lootlist for your own FM. Trivia should be mainly behind the scenes stuff. As for the wiki account, just PM Springheel and he'll prepare it. Since P&S is your own FM, I'd like to ask whether Chronicles of Skullduggery will become a series ? Thanks.
  11. I have completed the wiki documentation for the individual missions. Going through the list, it seems I've covered everything made to date and approved as official content. Each article includes the relevant images and video links, but I've had issues with finding any promotional screenshots from the three official missions of the base pack (training, A New Job, The Tears of St. Lucia). I'd appreciate if someone could point me to those, at least I'd feel the work is really complete.
  12. I've tried to hunt it down on the forums, but no luck to date. Maybe some of the main devs might remember.
  13. Congratulations to the new release. The Thomas Porter series is getting some serious competition in terms of the number of installments.
  14. Very cool. I quite enjoyed the first two Death to Spies games, but never bought them. Love the fact that the third one is getting FMs.
  • Create New...