demagogue

I prefer adventures, actually, which is why I mentioned it. They haven't really been a big genre since the old Sierra games like 15 years ago, unfortunately.

You are basically right (maybe one little footnote I put below). It's just the way LW counts polys for statistics purposes, what's visible as a poly, and I was just writing that number down because it was right at hand. ....................................... I'm learning this as I go. Here's how I understand it so far. I'll try to explain it to see if I have it right (this is more for my own sake; no questions here so no need to read it if you don't want to). The way LW works, "polygon" is more of a labeling convention than anything about the geometry per se. You could distinguish planes (of multiple polys), planar-polys, and non-planar-polys. A "poly" itself, the thing LW is counting when you hit statistics, seems to be just an internal or nomenclature thing special to how the program builds the geometry (not specifically what it results in). You build surfaces by linking a set of points (*any* set of points) together, and it draws a surface and then it calls that surface one "poly" ... doesn't matter if it's not planar, if it's contorted into some ungodly shape, a "poly" can be a single line, it can even be a single point I've discovered (although these latter two polys won't render, you can give them properties to do other things, and rendering a non-planar poly, it tries to make it look like a plane, but rotating it around you quickly notice it's just not right). The only thing that matters is that you highlight some points and press "make polygon" (or however else you make them), and it calls whatever surface results a polygon, and counts it towards the statistic-count. So at least the way LW counts for statistics purposes, when you divide one square into two triangles, it counts it as "1 poly" changing into "2 polys". That's what I meant in saying that my triangulation doubled my poly count. That's just how the program counts what it labels "polys" for its own internal purposes, even though the geometry itself isn't changing. It's just its own labeling convention. Ostensibly, it had been that doubled number all the while. What doesn't change (usually, anyway) is the plane. This is what I'm catching on to. All triangles are planar, by definition (3 points=plane). But it is possible to make surfaces in LW that it calls "polys" with 4+ points, some will be on the same plane, but others don't have to be. So when you triangulate them, the planar polys turn into triangles that are on the same plane as before, but the non-planar polys turn into triangles that are now on different planes. This is the one little footnote to what you said, because that might be more like making new polys because they're on new planes. What ultimately matters, I'm discovering, are the verticies, the points that define the plane the poly is on. This explains a confusion I had above. I naively thought that turning all those squares on the back of my lute was going to give me more polys to work with to make a smoother surface, just under the bad analogy that if you could get closer to a curve with more lines, you could get closer to a sphere with more surfaces. But actually, after I triangulated all those squares, it's just visually obvious that, even with LW telling me I have 2x the number of polys, the verticies defining the planes are exactly the same, and so I really don't have any more surfaces to work with. Bad logic. The most I could do is rearrange the space I have with those triangles to be more even, but I can't get closer to the curve than I already am. Anyway, the point is I know what you're talking about now.

That's a funny coincidence. I didn't even bother reading those Paprika reviews before I posted. I didn't even know the same guy made Millennium Actress. I just posted it as an honest recommendation after having seen it recently.

@Macsen, in a nutshell, Deep Cover is about a 1960s Cold War era tuxedo spy, and yes the emphasis was going to be on Thief style sneaking in a modern setting ... Bay of Pigs, downtown Havana, Castro's villa, a dinner meeting, escaping the Gulag, a Russian ship, and a few others. @Nyarlathotep, honestly the idea just occurred to me. I love watching those traceur videos on YouTube, and all the time it occurs to me that that would be an fun way to play Thief. I esp like that, if you read the stuff when the serious traceurs talk about it, it has an ethos to it ... efficiency, balance, being very much in touch with the environment around you. It sort of fits the Thief world (and my own personal ethos). ................................... Ok, complete OT tangent: As far as an actual playing style ... first, I don't think there's been an effort at developing a new playing style since like 2000, so it's sort of fun to even have the audacity to claim to be developing one. I suppose the most important thing would be to distinguish it from just a mere speed run. The thing I notice about parkour is that it's as much an art as a science. Ghosting is like a science. There are very clear rules you know when you've broken them. Parkour is about being creative and quick on your feet about negotiating whatever the situation is ... so too many rules sort of defeat the purpose. What separates it from a mere speed run, I'd think ... Speed runs to me, while they are "fast", look clumsy. You are running diagonally and hopping and have advance knowledge. And it's about honing the same carefully pre-planned moves after dozens of trials where you're doing the same thing mechanically over and over. With parkour, you should be thinking on your feet, you should stay in motion and not be stopping for too long, you should still be trying to "properly" sneak, and not be seen if you can, but quickly, efficiently. With a speed run, you run by the guards it doesn't matter. With parkour style, you should stick to the shadows and not be seen unless it wastes a lot of time, but even if you go in a way you'll be seen, you should be doing it efficiently, in a way that best covers yourself. I'd think it's okay if a guard sees you, it should not be a break like ghosting. But you should run around them so they don't see you if you can. Or you need to efficiently evade them if you are caught until they are definitively no longer on your tail, so in that sense it's not like a speed run where the objectives are all that matters. I'd think it should be Ironman in that you shouldn't reload either; quickly resolve the mistakes you make. Maybe, to try to crystallize the idea, and to keep its rule-less ethos, it's close to a speed run, but you get points for style. If it's clumsy or mechanical looking, or you are deliberately ignoring the guards in the interest of pure speed, it doesn't count (for much). When another person watches it, they should see it. You can have guards on alert and running after you, but they can never catch you or lay a weapon on you. But you should not put a guard on alert if it's at all possible to efficiently pass him. Now I'm going to try all of these ideas out in some OMs & FMs and try to work out how the style works. Then I'll boldly post on ThiefGen that I've developed the first new playing style in seven years and be showered with accolades as it sweeps the Thief-fan world by storm. Well, maybe not that last part... I think, to the extent this style might be fun, it would be to fraps your run and post it on YouTube, and then ask people to rate you on your style and efficiency in doing the run.

Games still on my list to get / play ... Anachronix, Stalker, Oblivion, Call of Cthulhu, Arx Fatalis, Blade Runner, Darwinia, one of the Need for Speed's. I still have yet to play DX2 and Thief 3 ... I'll get to them someday for the record, but don't feel any rush. Upcoming ... Bioshock, Assassin's Creed, Mozart, The Crossing, GTA IV (for New York), maybe Spore (depending on how bling-y it turns out looking; too much and it's no sale, or at least a begrudging discount-price only sale). ............ When I was younger there were some games that the previews would make me honestly riveted. I recall that happening for some C64 games, esp "cinematic" ones, Project Firestart ... some RPGs like Ultima and Bard's Tale 2 ... some interactive fiction ... The Pawn, Guild of Thieves. I haven't felt that way in forever. One thing I remember about the old games I liked, very often they'd come with these 200+ page manuals (!) or novellas to give the game a back-story, and little nick-nacks in the box that were part of the game's world, and they'd build these stories around the game that was more than the game itself. I loved that. Today's games are just too much bling in too tight and clean a package, too much of a blockbuster mindset ... or they're indie and deliberately low-key. It seems gone are the days when games really tried to sell you the story behind the game as part of it, still very ambitious but not nearly as "clean", more messy and alive. Today, it's either ambitious but too clean, or more alive but too unambitious. BTW, by "clean" / "messy" I'm not talking about the look, e.g., how bloody or grungy or realistic it is. I mean, too self- consciously presentable to the audience as a packaged product or commodity bought to be consumed. I hate anything smacking of "bling" or a wink at the audience, or a world too self-contained like a product you buy to use up and throw out, just to get the next product. To take an upcoming game at its best ... Irrational was claiming that Bioshock was going to be a world that didn't care about the player. Looking at the videos ... I mean, I can see it's making an effort, but the vibe I'm getting is still rubbing me the wrong way on the whole ... the neon colors, even in its freedom the sandbox is still a little too orchestrated-looking. Maybe I'll feel different playing it.

You have to give yourself your own discipline to play it with a challenge ... like ghosting or, my growing appreciation, parkour style where you're really running through it as fast and efficiently as possible, with more emphasis on speed sneaking, or if you get guards running after you, fast evasion.

If we're giving anime recommendations, I rented Millennium Actress recently and thought it was really good. The basic idea is that a reporter comes to interview a very old famous actress, and from there it follows her life through 1000 years of history through the movie roles she plays, but the movie stories mix in with her real life story through the war and then post-war Japan, and her encounters with and search for a mysterious man that helped her when she was young. Visually stunning. And they executed the story pretty well, too, esp considering the challenge.

You got it. I've been having the same fun the last 2 days just loading in different images for the different maps and seeing what I can cook up. For the bump map, I've been using a gray-scale height map (white is high, black is low, shades of gray are gradients in between) and that seems to work so I can see it in action and align things (which is important for me). I don't think specularity is good for the wood I'm using though, just the metal frets. edit: Triangulating just popped up my poly number from 480 to 940. Looks like I have some work to do. I can already see places to cut 100s at a time. Edit2, much work later: Ok, back down to 422. Don't ask me how!

We can probably get away with using them for T2 mods. I think that was the general expectation when MD gave them to Digi, and why Digi waited to see what happened to the T2G stuff after it was released. It's better karma because at least with T2 there is a license to use LGS stuff, and dromed is its home engine, and it can still honor the spirit of LGS, which is really why this stuff got out. It wouldn't be good karma to use them on another, unrelated engine. What I mean is that these kinds of happenings are in the realm of good faith and karma ... they do us a gratuitous favor that's not entirely proper but they'll go out on a limb for us because we're "good people" and they trust us, so we match that by staying in good faith in using them, and part of that is knowing the line between meeting expectations vs flaunting their going out on a limb for us ... using it in dromed is expected, using it elsewhere would be disrespecting the spirit of what they did. Honestly speaking, though, if you look into it, most all of the objects and textures are actually a mix of Thief 2 and SS2 objects as placeholders, or low-quality, thrown-together or obvious-derivative stand-ins, and the architecture is just dromed brushwork. So there's really nothing that's actually new or good here worth using. When I mentioned a mod project above, I was thinking about finishing the maps of the actual original game as it might have developed (minus the professional part) in T2dromed, similarly to the T2G project. That's the kind of thing I'm thinking was the primary expectation they had in getting this stuff released. It's not really good for much anything else, unless you want a bad palm tree or boxy car model.

Technically speaking, Digi said it's not the same MysteryDev that released some of the other stuff we've seen ... so MysteryDev #2, but all the same cool news. Maybe this is a mod project I'd like to work on.

Actually triangles, but double-sided polys sounds even better. I'm liking the alpha trick the more I think about it, too. I got it. Actually, you said what I meant. I didn't mean to say that merely turning the squares into triangles will make it smoother, since the squares are already planar. I just meant it will give me the opportunity to turn the triangles to follow the curve better, since triangulating them will give me twice the polys to work with in matching the curve. Actually, that raises a question I had. Does the engine care just about how many polys you have per se, or how much is planar? Because I could turn that front surface into a bunch of triangles, or the squares on the back, but it's still all on the same plane. Does it even matter that it's planar though? One reason I ask is, e.g., if I'm going to have to add a bunch of triangles anyway, should I take advantage of that and make the back smoother by tilting them, or is it still better to keep the present configuration with the bigger planar surfaces and leave the triangles as they would be after I trianglate all those squares?

Gotcha. The front surface of my lute is actually one very big 37-sided polygon! (Or was until I added that hole.) I already read about triangulating the 4+ ones, so it's no problem. And as the back is all squares, turning all that into triangles will at least give it a smoother contour. It should add about 100 polys, but hopefully I'm still under 600. Well, I finally got the outside border drawn in. Need to clean it up a bit, then I can just cut it out with the lasso for that alpha channel trick. For some reason, it took me for freaking ever to get that border lined up properly -- it does not look nearly as impressive as the effort I put into it! But it looks nice, I think; anyway, it looks bad without it. Tomorrow I'll clean it up, add a bump map for it, and then do the hole, and it will also take a while, but at least it's smaller. Then I have a surprise I want to try out.

I think I see what you're saying. Right now I'm using five surfaces/textures, light_wood front, dark_wood back, smooth_black fretboard (also for the tuning keys, pins), silver frets, and blonde strings. So this is just talking about the front surface. Is the "alpha" square sitting on the same plane as the rest of that surface, or like hovering just above it? Since this is border work that encircles the entire front surface, such a square would seem to have to cover the whole surface, well, it would have to be bigger than one square then. (Really, it looks naked without a border for the whole outside edge and hole). It sounds like I would just make a copy of the entire current front surface so it doubles up (or hovers?), and then just put two different surfaces on them (the way LW handles textures), one with the plain wood texture, the other with the border design texture on an alpha channel surrounded by a transparent field, right? And the design will "overwrite" the wood, but leave the rest of it the wood surrounding the design that's in the transparent field. Is that the idea? Also, by "2 polys", you mean the square is made of two triangle polys. Should all the polys be triangles (another question I had)? ... because right now a lot are 4+, although it's kept me at 400 polys.

I'm thinking a lot of the authors did their own artwork, so they're not trained artists. They probably wouldn't trust an outsider artist to get the symbology right, and that's the most important part for them. I love alchemy stuff, so it's fun to look through this.

@Baddcog - I got 1024 from the DMwiki, but I guess that's just for architecture textures that will be tiled all over the place, not objects. It'll be good if I can use 512 for most of it, although I'm thinking for the front surface I still want it pretty high-quality because I want to use some intricate arabesque designs on it, and it will get more scrutiny, although like you say it's still pretty small. I'll try both and see if it makes a difference. @ Max - TGA is a Targa file, an image file without the compression of a jpeg, so it's higher quality. Again, I got this from the DMwiki for what image files to use for textures. Since it's not compressed, it doesn't have compression distortion like a jpeg can have, although it's a bigger size. If your source file is already a jpeg, just use that ... no sense in changing it. But if you are taking a photo or making something from scratch in Photoshop, then originally save it as a TGA and use that so it's a higher quality image. But maybe, like the point that Badcog just made with the size, for smaller objects it probably doesn't matter as much and a jpeg will be fine. Re: "why the step of pasting to a wireframe", I'm talking about Photoshop here. I should have said it depends on the kind of texture you're using. If it's just a stock material that just covers the whole thing, then you just scale it in LW, as you say, no problem. You don't need to bring a wireframe into Photoshop for that. But if it's a custom design, like the border-work on my lute, then you have to actually draw the thing in Photoshop (or in my case, a mix of drawing and pasting), and for that you import the wireframe into Photoshop and use it as a stencil on which you draw the texture. That's what I meant by pasting onto the wireframe, sorry to be confusing.

I found a way to get better looking, tiling wood textures, the color that I want: http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Multime...d_Workshop.html Edit: I better wait until I have something to show, or at least work some more, before I ask a question. Because the question I just asked and edited out I don't think even makes sense. I'm working on a custom texture for the front surface of my lute, like a border and some other detail work, and figuring things out as I go. I know you guys want it at 1024x1024, so I'm working at that scale. I figured out the basic way to add custom textures in LW. So basic, but took me a little while to get it. Max may already know this, but I'll explain it for my own sake to make sure I really get it, and to encourage both of us to get away from LW's stock stuff. In Layout, the first thing you do is open Image Editor (F6). Click "load", and you can load anything you've made or found off the web. I've been making my own texture in Paint Shop building off of public-domain stuff I found online, saving it as a TGA. Then using that. Then open the surface editor (F5), select the surface you want to work with, and then next to each category (Color, Luminosity, diffuse, specularity, etc), there is a box "T" that you click on. So for "color", which is the basic surface, you'd click "T", then "Layer: image map", Projection: however you want the texture to project on to your object ("planar" is a direct projection on to the surface by the plane, good for simple geometry. You just paint/paste stuff against a transparent wireframe in Photoshop and it's already properly scaled and ready to go), and under "image" you just select the image you already loaded in. Then you have to scale it, position it, and rotate it, to get it on properly. Then you can do the same thing for a diffuse, bump, and specular map, using the "T". Now I just need to be sure that everything set up properly in LW will still be set up for D3. Probably doesn't matter for generic textures, but with this custom border work, it has to be positioned and scaled just right to fit exactly in place on the surface.

Yeah, the LW tex for wood sucks. I still haven't figured out how to import textures on a planar map in layout yet, still reading, but I can't imagine it not being able to. We need to figure it out, not only because we need better textures, but it's no good using propriety texs for an external use. Anyway, it's D3's ability to get the tex on that counts. I just want to be sure it does it so it looks good.

Here's the latest on my lute. I've got grooves in the head-stock and strings going to the tuning keys, and I cut out a center hole, looking into the inner surface of the back (basically the back copy/pasted into a new layer and then the normals flipped). http://i9.tinypic.com/6c6ukck.jpg I want to put some detail work on the front and the head, which I guess is a combination of texturing and bump mapping.

Actually, that was just a place holder, well, in retrospect anyway. I've already made those pentagrams skinny to be the axles and am just about to put flat end pieces on them, like normal tuning keys. I've also made some strings, a fret board, frets (I even looked up the proper spacing in mm's so it's fretted exactly like a real lute), tapered the bridge on the ends ... the more I get into it, the more I find little things to make it look more realistic. I should ask Badcog, for the f-holes you *only* used bump-mapping? I haven't figured out yet how to easily do subtractive-geometry, for the center-hole and for the little grooves into which the strings wrap into the tuning keys (right now they just lay against the headboard, stopping at the appropriate place). But if I can just use bump mapping to make it look like a hole is there, maybe it works out(?). Edit: getting better - http://i14.tinypic.com/4ujj3a0.jpg This is 700 polys. I think I would save a lot if I just painted on the frets, the hole, and the strings on the head, and changed the pentagram axles into triangles, that would be 50-100 saved right there.

Thanks. Well, I didn't start with something very simple like I probably should have. I'll try to remake a low-poly version after I make this (turning out to be high poly) one just to know what I'm doing. I'll definitely have to do it over, but now that I've gotten as far with this one, I want to at least texture it, and then I can go back and remake it with fewer sides and no smoothing. Well, here is the untextured model. It's a lute, as you can see: http://i14.tinypic.com/4vfmjcg.jpg Now that I am on to texturing, I am realizing I should not have made this all one piece, but should have made a separate layer for each texture-set, each with its own surface (right?). Basically, I was going to use various shades of wood for the front, fretboard, back and neck-back, head, and tuning keys, with a few custom designs thrown in (a hole pattern on the front, strings and the stuff that supports it, frets, and stuff on the head. I found a tutorial that shows me how to import a specific texture to use on a surface. I don't have a particular problem with making each texture in photoshop to apply to a surface, since it's just adding a few simple designs to a generic wood texture, but I'm not sure I can make a single texture cover the entire object as one surface. So I guess I would have to break the parts down into layers at least for 1. the back, 2. the front surface, 3. the neck front surface (fretboard), 4. the stem back, 5. the head, 6. the tuning keys? (should these stay part of the head, or each be an individual layer?). I think that's right. Now I'm wondering if there's an easy way to push a sub-part into its own layer (the head, for example), or if I have to remake all the parts again as new layers. I guess I could cut and paste them. Edit: Yes, that does the trick very easily. Ok, separate layer and now surface for each part I want to separately texture. Onwards. edit2, low-poly version (6 sides, pentagons for tuning keys, 270 polys), with separate layers: http://i15.tinypic.com/53t6dli.jpg

It shouldn't be that hard to have a naming convention, though. You could just prefix (or suffix) all TDM assets with tdm_[...] (or tdmo_), and have a rule that no custom material can start with that prefix. It won't be likely that a person would randomly start with that prefix, anyway, so it's sort of self-enforcing. If you don't know it, you won't do it anyway.

... to say the least. Edit: Well, anyway, I'll keep my questions here until I have something to show. Newbie question. How do I select and move individual shapes, say a cylinder that I want to stick out of a rectangle? I want to just move the cylinder around without it deforming. It seems like that should be so simple. I did it with one cylinder just fine using the drag net. But with another cylinder, so far I'm moving either individual points, a collection of points not necessarily the whole cylinder, or every object (cylinder and rectangle) en masse. Maybe I need to go through a few more tutorials. I know what you mean by being stumped on the most simple seeming stuff, Max. edit2: ok, now drag net is letting me move a single object again. But I still should know why it sometimes does that, and other times just moves a collection of points, deforming the thing. edit3: Ok, my first original object more or less done, at least a rough draft version. Now I need to figure out how to texture it.

I just wanted to announce my hat is officially in the ring (at least while I have some time for a while). I made my first LW object today, following a tutorial, for a so-so looking glass bowl; I mean I followed the directions exactly so it's not exactly original. It's "only" ~6000 polys, but not bad for my first object ever; it was just a learning experience not to be used or anything. I'm going to try to make a few simple things on my own first, like a glass and a candle, again as a learning experience, and move on from there. I'm wondering whether I should start my own thread when I make some of my own objects, or whether I should just keep them here in Max's thread? The advantage of the former is I don't crowd his thread; the advantage of the latter is that we can concentrate Darkmod specific object-making advice to a single thread, which might be good all around. Either way is fine with me.

Does that mean, while Darkmod doesn't have a loader, it does have a medieval-looking Doom front-loader? Is that's what you mean by "own menus", or are you just talking about like in-game GUI after you've already started an FM or Darkmod or whatever it is you start? It just doesn't seem as fun to have to load DM FMs through the Doom startup page if there's another way ... sort of dampens the atmosphere. Also, it'd be nice if the same program that frontloaded an FM also organized them together, etc. Anyway, I'm sure you guys have already discussed these sorts of things ad nauseum, and maybe you're not really to that stage anyway, so I can trust you'll figure something out that works and looks nice.

Gez, this thread is looking like one of those CIA documents that they clear for public release, only to black out 99% of it with only the words duck, microfilm, and Boise appearing somewhere in the middle. Edit: ... and apparently someone hitting the punchline before me. oops.