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Showing content with the highest reputation on 09/29/19 in all areas

  1. Yes originally the NC part got tacked on because some massive repository required (under the SA part) that we keep it, and we don't have a paper trail. I doubt that the NC part of our license is the bottle neck that's limiting our exposure and promotion at this point. I haven't studied it, so you might have a point. I don't want to be completely dismissive of the idea that gaming media may be looking over us because of our license. Although if that's really the case, then that's unfortunate that something like two letters in a license will lead a gaming outlet to reject attention to a game that won PC Gaming's mod of the year just for that, and I want to think so much the worse for them. Edit: I'm kind of sour on the whole economics of gaming promotion to begin with; it's one of the things TDM has been refreshingly clear of and even part of our ethos (if corporate gaming won't do it, fans will do it themselves). But before I even get to that stage, my first intuition is that it would be a massive, potentially impossible, task tantamount to kicking a pack of rabid sleeping dogs for marginal results, a few people here and there even if it works. And to add another category of cases I don't think mentioned yet, everybody that created and submitted assets to the project (possibly including every FM; I'd have to look at that again), did so under that license. So technically you'd have to get all of their consent to relicense their contributions, and some of them haven't posted or responded to messages in years. And for that matter some contributors, like me, don't actually want to relicense and would refuse because, at least in my case, I've seen first hand that commercialization-talk leads to actual dysfunction in the management of the mod. That's not to say that dropping the NC part will necessarily open us up to that by itself. It's more like, sometimes we get people coming in making waves with commercialization talk, and the easiest most convenient way we can shut it down--without having to have a 6 hour lecture on organization theory & small team interpersonal dynamics--is just point to that part of our license and be done with it. Those two letters have done more good than harm for us at least in that respect. I'm ok with more promotion and exposure, but we hit some limits before (like trying to get on digital platforms) that still make us hesitate for things calling for massive structural changes to the mod. We were lucky we got it standalone and it'd have to be something pretty amazing to go through something like that again, which this really isn't. Next month will mark our 10th year of release without any issues with our assets or licensing (beyond the heroic efforts to get 2.0 out), and we've had one of the coolest communities making some of the coolest stuff in gaming out there. Why would we kick a bunch of rabid sleeping dogs now?
    4 points
  2. So where do you get these games from, Steam? Because there are thousands of bad games that are probably player more than TDM, because they are casual games! TDM is a rather niche game for stealth...
    1 point
  3. Yes it wasn't designed with the story in mind - I've made a keep and swamp first, then started thinking what could be happening and what could be achieved by the player. I had vague horror clichés in mind as I wanted to make "just a Halloween mission", so story (based on the Peruvian folktale "snake lover") is cramped between existing architecture and objectives mechanics, more as an afterthought than starting point. With many things already in place I was thinking about restricting player's movement and push him through a rat maze, or aim for mood of foggy desert and risk to make it boring. After all it gave me an idea for making few gameplay styles on the same map by incorporating difficulty levels in different way. Every level would be a story of e.g. different character: one is a thief, one is an assassin, and yet another is a detective. All would take place on the same map with most of elements shared, but objectives would draw the story from different perspectives. I'm thinking about using self drawing map for detective's blackboard with trees of clues, suspects, evidences appearing as the player finds muddy footprints, wax stains, ink imprints, etc. I'm thinking here about flash games like The Scene Of Crime or Rizzoli and Isles - Thief is about looking for small objects, and I want to give some twist to it.
    1 point
  4. This thread should cover most of where we gathered textures: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/1755-texture-resources/ We also got a substantial number of textures from one of the "Blade of Darkness" developers: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/10003-so-what-are-you-working-on-right-now/page/21/&tab=comments#comment-217681
    1 point
  5. 1 point
  6. To re-license the game we would need to replace thousands of texture assets that we gathered for free from promotional offers from commercial asset repositories. Unless you have an army of texture artists, modelers, and lawyers ready to create replacement textures, test the replacements in over 100 missions, and legally defend their similarity to the originals... this is an impossible task.
    1 point
  7. Not a bad FM in the end, overall I liked it. The environment was its strongest point in my book: I don't think any other FM so far managed to capture a desolate and downright creepy place so well. Some of the areas managed to tickle my phobia of large enclosed spaces (not sure if there's even a term for that). My biggest issue was that like many FM's, it has a very large map and there's no clear indication of where to go. I think I spent 8 hours in total wandering through the gigantic map, and had to come back to the first post 4 times to see where I needed to go. It became very straining toward the end and I was glad once it was over.
    1 point
  8. Link to animated material I made.
    1 point
  9. I just can't do stepwise refinement. I know it is the standard way to go among the pros, but the only way I really enjoy the process is by going scene by scene (while iterating a lot). Anyway; some of the best advice I have read about designing spaces (real or virtual, public or private) comes from Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language: Towns, Building, Construction, a great 1977 book on urban and housing design. Alexander was (is) an opponent of technocratic modernism and a proponent of human-scaled, organic architecture. In his book, he gives a great understanding of how architecture works by breaking it down into core elements ("patterns") which form nested hierarchies, and which can combine to create good or bad architecture. Coincidentally, a lot of what Alexander considers good architecture - varied, slightly irregular, full of nooks and crannies and suprising little spaces - also makes for good Thief architecture. It is a thick book, full of illustrated examples and discussion, and you don't have to be an architect or town planner to understand it. Here are a few patterns: Positive Outdoor Space; Activity Pockets; Small Public Squares; Roof Garden.
    1 point
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