Domarius
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Posts posted by Domarius
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Gaaahh! I'm not arguing to try and convince the team to put gloves in, I was simply stating the possible merits of the gloves. Yes, there is some other climbing method and as it's not rope arrows there must be something else.
And WE'RE telling you that there IS another way to climb walls being talked about, and yes it ISN'T the rope arrow. The rope arrow doesn't make it redunant. It's wall climbing. It's just not with "climbing gloves". The gloves are aesthetic. They're not dependant on the actual function. The function of "wall climbing" is being talked about. It's just not going to look like gloves. And it won't work EXACTLY the same as T3, which is a bit too much of an advantage for the player. There are more limitations imposed to balance the game better.
But like I said, it's being discussed. It's not concrete, but it's being discussed.
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Well when you're playing the game, it'll be obvious that you're putting it away, but just looking at it now, it's hard to tell that's what's happening.
Just an observation about the anim - like I said, in the game, it would be fine.
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You're probably right. It would be pretty easy to make a little script that said if you've got this particular object in your inventory, then guards act like they do when you're all outside. Actually stealing peoples clothes in any game would be a lot more work, and not much benifit over that other way I just described.
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HEY GUYS
Cloak has been discussed and decided. If you want to rebuke the desicion, read here first.
http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...indpost&p=14844
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I think we might be making a mistake in actually showing the arrow and the bow on screen in the players hands. It creates more business than is necessary in my opinion.
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This is something I think we can consider before the initial release.
The bow is a weapon, just like the blackjack, just like the sword. In Doom 3, you can see what weapon you're using at the bottom of the screen. You don't need an icon because you can SEE it. If a player doesn't like this, they can turn View Weapons off. And they will see NO weapons. I don't see why we need to make a special exception for the Bow, just because T2 did. It's inconsistant and doesn't lend itself well to customising your HUD.
While it's natural in RL to take stuff out and hold it in each of your hands, then decide whether to throw it or not, setting up a control scheme to do all that in game might lead to a complicated control scheme which is not at all natural.But as always, we shouldn't be talking about things SOLEY in terms of realism - rather, Gameplay first, realisim second. In this case, we're talking about interface optimisations.
This is something I don't think we can consider before the initial release, but I'm mentioning it anyway.
You can make it so that everything is selected the same way. Deux Ex did it. Deus Ex was made by Looking Glass after T2, and I think the interface is a general improvement over T2's.
In Deus Ex, you have less keys to fiddle with, because there is no distinction between "items" and "weapons", and you have a "HUD Item Belt".
You have way less keys to worry about, because you simply select an item with item up, item down, then you see it, and you press fire to use it. It could be a MedPack, or a gun. Makes no difference.
The use key is reserved for interacting with fixed game world objects, like switches. No need to put your current item away.
To manage all your items, you have an item belt, which is always on screen, has 10 slots each with a corresponding number key, and you can put anything in any slot via the inventory screen. Item up and item down only moves through these 10 items.
This is better than T2 because;
- All the items I can cycle through are all on screen, so I know how many clicks I'm going to have to go through to get what I want
- I know exactly which number key to press to get what I want instantly.
- I dont have to cycle through stuff I'm not currently interested in, including certain weapons.
And in our mod, a hard core user could turn off the belt display, already knowing what they've got in each slot.
I only think there is a distinction in T2 between weapons and items because they don't have an interface like Deus Ex does.
Obviously making a Deus Ex type interface is more work, but it proportionately more useful to the player, I think.
Eg. in the (heavily GIF compressed) top screen shot, I dragged the medpack into slot 6. In the bottom screen shot, I pressed 6 on the keyboard, or scrolled the mousewheel over to slot six, and he's holding it out in front of him, ready to drop it or use it.
- All the items I can cycle through are all on screen, so I know how many clicks I'm going to have to go through to get what I want
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I just finished playing Myst IV and I thought it was awesome what they did with the books. You could actually grab the edges of the pages and flip them back and forth just like real pages in a book. None of this, click on the page and it just turns in the next page. You guys got any thoughts to making the books look and act more real?
I've always appreciated detail when put into things like books (both the look and the content). It was pretty sad that you could tell in TDS that the text wasn't even part of the page but was poorly overlayed on top.
Actually, we do have something interesting planned for making books more real. It's for after the first release though. And I don't think I'm allowed to say anything about it.
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Despite Thief 1 and 2's greatness, I always found myself wishing the player could switch his sword for a guard's sword or other weapon (club, mace, whip - whatever). Any chance we may be able to switch weapons with those of knocked out/dead/sleeping guards? Maybe switch clothing a la hitman as well? I know it's asking a lot, but I wouldn't be dissapointed if it weren't implemented anyhow.
Yeah, hitman blew me away with it's "Thief" type stuff. SO much work went into that side of it. And then it pissed me off when I realised all their work was wasted because the easiest option by far, is to just go in guns blazing...
They didn't make "sneaking" worthwhile.But using other weapons might be outside of the scope of the game. You really have to be trained in a weapon to do anything useful with it. Garrett has always trained to be nimble and flexible whereas a guard generally would always train in strength over these things. And Garrett and guards have different weapons to reflect that. Garret picking up a mace would be pointless - he'd lose all his advantages, and he'd just be slower and do less damage than a guard with the same weapon. Even when Garret uses his sword, he's not as fast and doesn't do as much damage, because guards train primarily with those kinds of weapons.
"Disgusing yourself", well, could be one for the "suggestion box" for after the initial release. Since we're sticking to first person, it'd just probably be a matter of clicking on clothing and the game says "You now look like a monk", and then the guards would treat you the same way they do as if they see you on the street. IE. you'd have to be seen doing something bad for them to get angry at you.
Anyway I'm just thinking out aloud. Don't take my words as an official response.
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Oh ok I thought steampunk might be some software plugin or something.
That's one for the quote scroll indeed
:) You should do a search on the net for "steam punk" or "steampunk"
If you've seen "Wild Wild West" with Will Smith in it, that is steam punk. Steam engine technology taken to ridiculous extremes - eg. huge steam powered cities, with monorail type transportation, steam powered robots, etc.
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*opens up the Ab Abber box and just finds a black marker...
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oDDity, looks fine to me except the hands look like they belong to the necromancer off Hexen. Slightly dead, and somewhat evil looking.
String silencer sounds interesting.
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FINALLY! Something Sparhawk ADMITS he is not good at or doesn't understand!
Heh heh.
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I think this will do anway, we only need the rope to fall down convincingly, and then we're not able to interact with after that anyway.
You got it
Spar, please read the executive summary I posted. I am dynamically stretching the rope mesh. I'm not cutting anything. I know they stretch the mesh in T2 because the joints seem closer together the shorter it is. For a rope with a maximum length, this will do just fine. We only have to give it enough joints to look right at the maximum length.
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The face has shown significant improvement DeepOmega
It makes sense for oDDity to make THE thief model since he's obviously the most experienced at humans.
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I'll just buy it for the fact that it's doing what I've wanted a graphics engine to do since forever - it draws practically all the way into the distance, just getting ridiculously simpler and simpler to compensate - so that mountain range you can see in the distance in that picture up there? You can actually walk there, if you wanted...
And they are doing forests that actually look like real dense forests.
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"How does he type with those gloves?"
"Oh, now there's a question I've never been asked before, I wonder how I should respond to that- *DELETED*!! HA HA haaa!"
www.homestarrunner.com (sbemails, "Spring cleaning")
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Climbing gloves. I know rope arrows are always talked about but I would like both. You could have some great acrobatics action going on with both.
You WILL get your wall-climing jollies, so don't worry. It's just that it won't be in the form of "climbing gloves" exactly.
I see you didn't ask for stamina again after they told you we decided not to have it.
Saves me some time explaining why. For now, just take solice in the fact that I personally was on the side of HAVING stamina for a large part of the discussion, and even I was swayed over to the side of NOT having it.
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Just throw in however many joints you think looks right.
The model will stretch and shrink in-game, and we can decide how many joints we need for the maximum length to look right. For now, anything will do. Make it 5 or something.
Here, please have a read of this
http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=1052&hl=
It describes what the rope will be, in detail.
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Sorry I was just getting worried.
A simple rope with joints would be really good. Aside from what it might take for you to work out how to get all the naming joints thing working properly, the effort for actually modelling shouldn't be much (just a straight pole divided up into segments so it bends at the joints), with some flat brown texture so I can see it. It would be REALLY helpful. Spar says the rope arrow is the priority, so I hope someone can do a rope. Just a cylinder with joints (named properly though).
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But each arrow type needs it's own file anyway doesn't it? It's the one that takes over when the arrow in the bow animation dissappears with its new skin.
Not nessecarily - you tell each weapon what models, animations, skins and materials it's using in the .def file for that weapon.
But if making all seperate models is easier and simpler, which I daresay it is, go for it. We can optimise out any redundant models and textures after everything is working. The point being, to save RAM for people running the game.
Yes, all weapons have their own def files, as I mentioned. Only the def files are relevent to the visual side of things. (Except for the timing for the animations in the script). I'll take care of those things, unless you are comfortable with filling out the file paths for models and skins etc. in a def file, which would save me a bit of time. Otherwise you have to be very clear about what file does what.
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Wouldn't it be quite an overkill to model the chainmail?
I sure don't know what it would do to the framerate. 
I think they were talking about for the normal maps. You model all the wrinkles, buttons, etc in 3D so that you have a good normal map for the low poly version, which doesn't have those kind of polygonal details on it.
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See that nice soft glow? We can keep that, because we are going with bitmaps
There is no way it would look that good as a real time game model. -
Sorry I've been away so long oDDity.
You are correct, the weapons you see in first person view are NOT the same models or animations you see when the weapon is lying around. It is a whole new model.
Every weapon, including the hands holding it, is a new md5mesh, with individual md5anim files that go with it.
Even though we think the arrow is the weapon, the bow is part of the weapon too. The bow only exists in the animation, as an aesthetic thing. You dont' have a "bow" weapon with different "firearrow" "waterarrow" ammo - you have whole new weapons - a "waterarrow" weapon, a "firearrow" weapon, etc.
Although since the only thing that might chance between arrow weapons is the colour of the head, you could probably pass new materials to the same mesh and anims in the def file for each arrow weapon - they are doing something SORT OF like this with the existing weapons - different materials can make parts of the mesh disappear, but I think you just discovered that out for yourself.
Otherwise, the entire bow, arrow, and hands, are all one mesh, and there is a totaly new one of these meshes for each arrow weapon. But even in this case, since all the arrow weapon models have the same number of joints, the animation files can be re-used.
BTW, excuse my suggestion for "weapon animations" in my new "rope" thread in the 3D modeling board. I didn't see this thread until now.
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Let's stick to the T2 method for the initial release, hey?
No extra animations, and people will just be happy to see it back the way it was.
This is certainly one object which I think the functional side of it can't really be discussed to any useful point, other than to just say "it's magic" and leave it at that. At least for the initial release.
Besides, I haven't seen any work from the modelers that involve ingame animation and rigging up the ragdoll physics, which I think we really need to have soon.
What I REALLY REALLY want right now, is a simple rope, with the joints rigged up correctly to env_rope.af (the articulated figure file, that makes it flop around realistically, like a ragdoll.)
See the details in the thread I posted in the 3D modelling board.
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For now I'm going to spawn the hanging light for the rope, but its going to get in the way, with the huge light fixture at the bottom.
It would be really good to have a working rope mesh to work with.
We have a lot of aesthetic models, but nothing functional. No weapons or anything. Does anyone else think that the modelling really has to start to focus on the things us programmers are going to have to test with?
Modelers will need to go here
http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...indpost&p=14120
to see my post on how to find the good tutorials, and learn how to name joints ready for rigging in the game to rag-doll physics, which is what I need for the rope arrow.
Well the direct link to the tutorials is here
http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic...3017&highlight=
Just remember to follow my tip (in that post I linked to) about scrolling down PAST the video tutorials till you get to the text tutorials.
Then scroll down to the modelling section, it has the info you guys should need. (If you see "modelling the plasma tick" then you're in the right section)
(Also there is how to get animated models in the game, which you guys will need to know to make the weapons)
Well the most pertinent link I could find quickly is this
http://www.planetdoom.com/leveled/videotut...ain/index.shtml
Which actually has tutorials on animating and rigging. However, they're all video tutes. They are all about 20mb, but you should only need the one that has rigging in it (down the bottom).
I'm sure if you search, you'll find some text based tutorials.
I found built in stuff for a ROPE in Doom 3 - yes a rope, that has physics applied to it and everything - however you can't climb it, it's just another form of rag doll. What it does mean is that probably the hardest part of the "visual" part of the rope has been done already, but the game is missing a rope mesh. Looks like they half implemented it and didn't make the mesh.
So all you guys really need to do is model a rope mesh with the appropriate number of joints, and name them correctly.
But I'm going to tell you guys how to look into the parts that links your model to the physics in game. At the very least, you can see where your joint names need to match up with what's listed in the .af (articulated figure) files. Either you'll have to make your own .af files, or at least give us programmers a list of joint names in your model.
So here's how to get your hands dirty by looking at .def files. There's no programming in there, its just a bunch of file name associations and settings for individual objects. It's where meshes and animations are linked to the in-game objects.
In pak000.pk4, there is a folder called "def". That is where all the def files are. The one with the rope in it is called "env.def". Open it and search for rope. Here you can see it is pointing to mesh files at
models/md5/environments/ropemesh.md5mesh
and
models/md5/environments/ropeanim.md5anim
But if you go to the "models" folder (in one of the other pak files, I can't remember which one), you'll see that neither of those files exist.
You'll see a line that says
"articulatedFigure" "env_rope.af"
To get to the env_rope.af file, no need to delve through pak files - in the Doom 3 editor, type "editAFs" in the console tab. It brings up a window where you edit "articulated figure" properties. Choose "env_rope". Now you can see a bunch of settings, but really, I think I will take care of the details there. But you guys should know about it because I THINK that's where you start telling the game what you named your joints when you were modelling.
That's pretty much all I can tell you for now. The rest should be found by searching www.doom3world.org or the rest of the web. The link I put up there is still a good place to start.
Texture Sizes
in Art Assets
Posted
I noticed that the Broadhead I've been given (I think it's DeepOmega's) uses a 512x512 texture.
Isn't this a huge waste of texture memory for such a small object?
You really have to have the thing stuck right in your face to see the detail that's been put into the feathers. The arrow is such a mundane, small object, surely it can do with a 128x128 texture, or even 64x64? The more ram we chew up, the sooner peoples computers are going to start doing hard disk memory swapping.
It's probably a work in progress and the texture size is going to be shrunk later. I just wanted to say this just in case.