Mortem Desino

If it's almost a "squealing" sound, it may be that the bearings are starting to go on a fan. I had an ancient compaq laptop that I rescued from a dumpster -- took it apart and got the fan to stop squealing with a tiny spray of lithium grease (from a car mechanic shop). If something mechanical is going wrong with the disk, you'd probably notice your computer acting wonky.

You lucky, lucky, Europeans, you. For me to see any architecture older than the 1800s, I have to go to the U.S. east coast. 1700s-and-older era buildings are extremely scarce here in colony-ville.

Reminds me of back when I was in a drum corps. I can appreciate it a lot, but that kind of precision movement really doesn't seem unique to me anymore.

Precisely this. It illuminates the exact same radius that you see in DR, but normals and shadows are cast from light_center instead of from the origin.

Yep, that's a good example. I was thinking of a more practical place. Supposing a torch hides in a recessed area of a wall. If you don't move the light center out of that hollow, you'll get some just-plain-bad-looking shadows.

The light center essentially only moves where the shadows (and normals, etc.) come from. Most other entity properties deal with the origin (like particle effects, when to cull the entity behind a visportal, etc).

Just so I'm sure I understand, this separate pk4 would include "replacement" files e.g. xdata and gui?

Not a bad place to start, actually. It was my putzing around in the Morrowind editor that motivated me to actually start working in Half-Life 1's HAMMER editor (i.e. a more professional editor).

I might get the Vertex 4, too, sometime soon. One of my drives is actually an 8-year-old IDE HD that holds a bunch of non-program data (e.g. Music, videos, etc.). I'm certain it's going to be dying soon, so I'd best get cracking on protecting my information.

The way I came to the TDM community & TTLG community is in no way addressed by jtr7's fair, but rather salty post. I was a kid (read: Stephen Russel's voice), interested in mods (having been an administrator of various source engine mod servers). I Googled "Thief mod", after my very favorite game, and first discovered the Dark Mod website for the first time. "Well this is damn cool, but there are only videos, no demos or downloads," I said, slightly disappointed. I secondly lurked on TTLG and simultaneously discovered Thief FMs for the first time. "Well, this, too, is damn cool," I quipped. There was one thread dedicated to the Dark Mod, and two or three veteren members of TTLG were posting childish, narrow-minded, entitled critiques of the most trivial things concerning TDM. "What petty behavior!" I spat. One month later, Thief's Den demo came out. I fell in love with TDM. It emulated the thiefy gameplay I grew attached to. Thief started to look & feel clunky, while still pleasantly nostalgic. I registered on the TDM forums to express said love. I was welcomed with open arms, and within a few months, given an invitation to be a contributor. You see, neither side to me was "an established and known and comfortable system." I met two cute girls and fell in love with one of them, if you excuse the metaphor. The Dark Mod is "home sweet home" and marvelous, and close to my heart, with the precious few drops of sweat I contributed. Don't think that I am neglectful of Thief, though. I am not so callous that I haven't played Rose Cottage or T2X. But it feeds a less and less hungry void.

Does anyone have any opinions on hard drive imaging software? I've been using Macrium Reflect with some success, but I'm not entirely happy with recovery.

I've updated "The Creeps" to version 1.01. I'm taking care of this now, long before Halloween, so I can focus on other projects. I haven't added enough to make it worth another playthrough. I just applied a coat of polish -- prettying up brushwork, and adding a bit more atmosphere.

Thank you very much, Springheel! I'm delighted to have a sure updated master to work with.

...Yet another reason why I very, very rarely work with worldspawn brushes on grid sizes lower than 2 units. When I work consistently with a slightly larger grid size, I can feel reassured that I won't get any microscopic holes in my map.

EAX 4.0 as far as I can tell has got excellent capability to cover the most important factors in reverb and acoustics. Environment size & damping, early reflection & reflection speed, decay length, EQ of decay (e.g. carpet sucks up high frequencies, while smooth marble excentuates it), room EQ (e.g. are there a lot of corners where low frequencies like to hide), echo (...echo...echo...) speed and depth, modulation, air absorption (e.g. humid air reverberates longer and appears louder than dry air) But here's the problem: Ask anyone in the audio business -- instant no-latency reverb has historically sounded bad. It's getting much better with digital tools like Convolution, but even in 2004 -- it was baaaad.

I think almost all of Yahtzee Crowshaw's games are winners. He's a very good storyteller with a cynical sense of humor. I liked all his point-and-click adventures (I.E. "X days a Y" series). Too bad it seems the old fullyramblomatic is down.

Actually, I think that's a perfect before-and-after example of doing a "detail pass" on your map after doing basic brushwork.

I've also been discovering T-Bone Walker's blues stuff (There aren't a lot of good T-Bone Shuffles on youtube) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-nVl1RyFuA I'm fond of the early jazz-blues movement, so I've gotta have the Duke. I suppose this piece is more of a swing than a blues, though. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHRbEhLj540

Yeah, I'm not liking the "invincible player" demonstration. I would have been more impressed if, at the end rampage, a burly guard knocked him to the floor and tied a burlap sack over his head -- GAME OVER. I was disappointed @ 22:27 when the play demonstrator I know it was supposed to be a pretty, pretty demo, but...really? Then again, my preferred playthrough would be one in which I am seen/heard by no one.

Very good explanation! Thank you very much, Komag! This is something very difficult to explain without a visual aid, so this will definitely help new mappers. (You are correct in demonstrating those octagon-shaped portals. The portal face is still a convex shape, so it is a valid visportal. Theoretically, one octagon portal could also be two four-sided portals and still work the same.)

Oh, right. That's because they're all hiding in tdm_gui01.pk4.

You'll find all the HUD icons in darkmod\dds\guis\assets\hud.

I started cracking up at 6:44 "Holy ass crackers, ya'll almost blew my head off!" This is so delightfully terrible. It reminds me of the parody film of 50's scifi -- "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra".

I saw it over the weekend, save your money and go see Avengers or Snow White. It was a really fun ride, but the story (in relation to the other Alien movies) was disappointing.