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A Few Unrelated Questions


thestemmer

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Let me start by telling you that The Dark Mod is the most impressive mod project I've ever seen for a game. And I'm not just saying that because I'm a huge Thief fan who's eager to relive the good old days (even though I am)--it's the artwork and models that I'm talking about. They're good, I mean jaw-droppingly, shit-your-pants, bang-your-head-against-the-side-of-the-wall good. You better watch out that Eidos doesn't try to sue for copyright infringement and snatch them away from you so they can make their own game. And for the people doing the maps, sounds, animations, etc., obviously can't see your work yet, but I expect it will be equally amazing. It really looks like you folks are keeping true to the spirit of the series while innovating where it matters.

 

Now that I've gotten that out of my system...

 

A few questions for all of you:

1. I was never impressed with the Dark or Unreal engine's ability to render "organic" environments such as caverns, forests, countryside, etc. I think that map-makers have tried their best, but the engines never seemed ready to handle it. Do you think that the D3 engine will be better for making more natural environments? And if so, do you plan to include any of these in your campaign?

2. Another thing that disappointed me about the Thief games were the Pagans. Maybe I'm taking issue with the series here, but in the levels themselves they always came across as silly instead of threatening to me. That's unfortunate, because I think they're one of the series' most interesting factions--the flavor text about them was always interesting, and the Pagan cutscene in T3 was downright chilling! Anyway, how do you think the Pagans will be handled in The Dark Mod? It's kind of a broad question, I know, but I haven't seen any models of them yet and I can't have any idea what they'll sound like.

3. Are you looking at implementing an "interactive" environment? That is, will you be able to do things like pulling down curtains, barricading doors with heavy objects, locking guards in rooms, taking torches off walls, etc.?

4. Guards climbing ladders?

5. Have any idea about the system requirements?

 

Thanks for enduring such a long post, and keep at it! We're cheering for you!

Edited by thestemmer
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1.  I was never impressed with the Dark or Unreal engine's ability to render "organic" environments such as caverns, forests, countryside, etc.  I think that map-makers have tried their best, but the engines never seemed ready to handle it.  Do you think that the D3 engine will be better for making more natural environments?  And if so, do you plan to include any of these in your campaign?

 

There are some impressive demonstrations of what the Doom3 engine is capable of over at Doom3world.org. I think the engine is going to be more than capable of handling some lush outdoor environments by the time our campaign is underway.

 

2.  Another thing that disappointed me about the Thief games were the Pagans.  Maybe I'm taking issue with the series here, but in the levels themselves they always came across as silly instead of threatening to me.  That's unfortunate, because I think they're one of the series' most interesting factions--the flavor text about them was always interesting, and the Pagan cutscene in T3 was downright chilling!  Anyway, how do you think the Pagans will be handled in The Dark Mod?  It's kind of a broad question, I know, but I haven't seen any models of them yet and I can't have any idea what they'll sound like.

 

We're taking a slightly different approach for our campaigns Paganesque faction. I can't really go into it indepth this early in the developement cycle, but there will hopefully be a more humanistic approach to them. We don't want them to appear silly.

 

3.  Are you looking at implementing an "interactive" environment?  That is, will you be able to do things like pulling down curtains, barricading doors with heavy objects, locking guards in rooms, taking torches off walls, etc.?

 

Yes, on many counts. :) Can't get into details yet, as I don't know what is possible but many of your suggestions should certainly be attainable with such a fine engine.

 

4.  Guards climbing ladders?

 

We've weighed the gameplay pros and cons of trying to implement this. Currently the answer is no but who knows what the future may hold?

 

5.  Have any idea about the system requirements?

Nothing specific yet but by the time our campaign is released, I would wager that the system requirements won't be too much of a hassle.

 

Thanks for enduring such a long post, and keep at it!  We're cheering for you!

 

No problem. Thanks for your interest. :)

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Hey, thanks for responding so quick, NewHorizon! I think some governments could use public relations people like you.

 

Hey, if you REALLY want to make me happy, maybe you could release a screenie of a Pagan model? If you have any done, that is. Pweez? Pretty pweez?

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Sorry, no pagan models done yet. You can expect most of them to look fairly celtic though.

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You can already block doors with heavy objects.

 

Taking torches from walls is currently being discussed - for game play reasons, not if its possible or not.

 

Don't know what you meant by pulling down curtains. Not many games go to the effort of cloth simulation because it isn't worth it for the resources it uses up and little it gives in return for game play. Some games have a scripted "locked in" material cutting sequence that happens when you attack a tent wall or whatever.

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Let me start by telling you that The Dark Mod is the most impressive mod project I've ever seen for a game.

 

Cheers! Salud! Sláinte! Skål! Prost! Guid forder! Saúde! Iechyd da! Na zdrowie! Proost! And every other way you can say it. A picture's worth a thousand words, though:

 

cheers.jpg

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OK, while this thread is still active, let me pose one more question. How is this mod going to handle pickpocketing and lockpicking? Unless it's a secret. ;)

 

Domarius--honestly I have no programming experience, so don't pretend like I have any what I'm talking about. I was just trying to throw out some examples of what I meant by "interaction with the environment." When I said curtains, I didn't mean to suggest actual cloth simulation, but maybe a something the player could open or close using a short animation. But I'm being stupid, you could probably do that in Dromed if you felt like it. So feel free to ignore me please.

 

Edit: Ooh, I just read that the D3 engine doesn't support lip-synching. Do I have that right? Not a serious drawback I guess, but it's still a shame. Still, less work for the animators, I suppose!

Edited by thestemmer
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Well then I guess you mean something like what was in T2, where you chopped it and it did a pre-animated thing. Sure we'll do stuff like that :)

 

It's true it doesn't support lip-synching directly. I think, no big deal since in this kind of game you don't spend much time standing in front of people as they talk :)

It is a shame though. Probably something in the future can be done about it, via an add on. Indeed id Software are contsantly releasing updates, the recent one they added support for vehicles! So its not out of the question.

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We will have a basic level of jaw movement using a facial bone rig though. THe more realistic characters are the moe ridiculous it looks if their mouths din't move.

 

Also. for a lot of things, we'll be implmeneting one 'traditional' type thing for the toolswet, and another more inovastive option for our campaign.

For example, the lockpicking - for our campaign we're looking to implement the most realistic lockingpicking system ever seen in a game.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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lockpicking - for our campaign we're looking to implement the most realistic lockingpicking system ever seen in a game.

Yes, we've modeled it very closely to some nose-picking videos we found on the web. This served as a very good reference for us.

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Just while thinking about the lip-syncing, I remembered a small gripe I had with TDS. It was very difficult to actually tell who was talking. In real life, people tend to move their heads quite quickly whilst talking.. Would this actually be possible to implement? It was nice in TMA to have the AI gesture, but this still didn't give as good an indication as in real life...

Perhaps this isn't possible in game terms, or perhaps I'm just barking. Whatever - it'd be nice to see.

 

Oo, I'd be interested in whether there's a more complex pickpocketing system...

--

Somethin' fishy's goin' on here... Come on out, you taffer!

 

~The Fishy Taffer

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It's actually much easier to have body language animations to indicate who's talking then doing lip sync. Look at Gothic for example. It ge's the message across just as well, and has been said the goal in this game is generally to stay away from the AI, so complex lip sync would be wasted anyway.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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2. Another thing that disappointed me about the Thief games were the Pagans.

As a celt who regularly attends modern day pagan festivals I have an interest in making them as interesting as possible. They're not going to be like Thief pagans (some kind of tree hugging Gollums), but more (aho pun!) down to earth. So far I'm very happy with the concept art that has been done for them. There is a level in the campaign that involves pagans, and at the moment it looks like being one of the best.

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I agree that the TDS movie for the pagans was absolutely fantastic, bone-chilling, in fact. Quite unlike the rest of the pagans, which just sounded rather silly... More on the rituals, less on the weirdo speaking!

--

Somethin' fishy's goin' on here... Come on out, you taffer!

 

~The Fishy Taffer

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They'll sound celtic. Here's an amusing story about a cat stealing a steak so you know what I mean.

Er...well, that's all well and good, I'm sure the speech will be very authentic, but...hopefully...they'll speak English? Just making sure...

 

On a related note, you said that you don't want them to be like "tree hugging gollums," but are you planning on keeping any aspects of the Pagan dialect as seen in the flavor texts, like their loose sentence contruction, mixing of pronouns (eg., "a house of they rotting skins," "saw we them man o' moon faces), adding "s" to the end of certain verbs, and altering others (not every word, mind you, like they did in the voice acting), things like that? As somebody who's interested in language, I appreciated some of these little linguistic variations, as long as they weren't over-done. I'd hate to see them totally disposed of.

 

Edit: How do you get the damn italics to work correctly?

Edited by thestemmer
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As somebody who's interested in language, I appreciated some of these little linguistic variations, as long as they weren't over-done.  I'd hate to see them totally disposed of.

The idea (so far) is that they'll speak normal english with celtic accents. We're* not fans of the cartoony jar jar speech.

 

There might be smething Dylan Thomas about the way they speak, in the ebb and flow of the words:

 

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.

Tis is just in the writing, though. I have no idea what New Horizon's voice team will come up with. :ph34r:

 

*The Royal 'we'.

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Don't get me wrong, I hated the way the Pagans sounded in-game. But I thought that some of the Pagan snippets of poety in-beween levels were quite beautiful sounding. Consider the following from TMA:

 

Sings we a dances of wolfs,

who smells fear and slays the coward.

Sings we a dances of mans,

who smells gold and slays his brother.

 

I don't think that sounds "cartoony" at all. You have some sentence inversion there, some of that arbitrary pluralization of words, but to me it feels perfectly natural instead of forced and awkward like in the voice acting.

 

But hey, I don't mean to complain, it's you're project, and whatever decision you make will turn out great, I'm sure. Just offering my 2 cents.

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Yes, that's fine. My criticism is mostly directed towards the TDS voice acting. The problem is that it sounds better written down than it does spoken. It'd be rather selfish of me as the writer to create pagan speech that looks lovely on the page but is an absolutely nightmare for the voice actors to get their heads around, and for the player to understand.

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That's very true. Come to think of it, it probably isn't going to be easy to teach all of the voice actors to speak in Celtic accents, either. That's quite a sticky problem in itself.

New Horizon is working with a very talented team of voice actors. If they can't do it I have access to a few sound studios, a well known music producer, and the celtic population of Wales, Soctland, Brittany, and the Cornish foot of England.

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