Domarius

Oh yeah - it's only good for moutains, water, and sky at the moment. Other rendering programs can render sky-boxes. And there must be plug-ins for ones that don't do it straight out of the box. So many professional games have sky boxes. The software for it must be readily available.

My limitation was objects. I needed so many bloody torches to light up my palace, that there weren't enough objects left to make the rest of the city, forest, etc. Another thing is, the main reason I felt I needed so many torches is because you couldn't carry them around with you like you could in real life back in those times. Cellars etc. would have removable torches in the doorway (in the same way we have our light switches at the doorways of a room) so that you could light the torch (if nessecary) and carry it down with you, and put it back on your way out. Another limitation was that all guards would hate you. For that, I had to make up some crummy curfew into the storyline (like so many other fan missions have done). Unless they had the frontgateguard property on. But even then, if anything got them mad (eg. zombie), they would hate you when they next saw you, wether or not you were the cause of the problem. I tried to explain it by adding a "you're the stranger and if anything goes wrong, you'll be the first suspect" thing into the plot, but it was even more crummier than the curfew idea, so I went with the curfew idea... Also, I wanted to have text come up instead of recordings, when someone spoke, because of the fact that I couldn't find any decent voice actors, and it's a lot of trouble. I'd just like to release it with text-only dialogue, and then put voices in when I can find the time. You could do this in DromEd, but it was really fiddly. I'd like it to be easier.

This happens in T3 - sparhawk, don't you remember? I had a guard say "Hey, we've got a Thief on the stairs!" when I was running down the stairs, and in another instance "What's that? Better go and check the door..." when I was seen in a doorway. It can be done, just have to provide a way of letting the mission author create zones that have one of a finite list of "places" associated with it. Eg. stairs, street, garden, etc. Then the AI can play one of the appropriate recordings if the player is seen in that zone. It's possible, just a lot of work.

I can't wait

It would be a very good re-playability feature. It's not something you tend to see a lot of nowadays, games being made as a kind of interactive movie. Instead of like the original Worms game for the PC, which had a lot of work put into it's random level generator. I've often wanted the very feature just described by SneaksieDave, in many newer games, for replayability. It wouldn't be more technically complex than having several player spawn points in a Doom 2 map.

Mood art is good for our 3D artists, texture artists, and mappers to be constantly reffering to. Now that I'm playing Thief 3, I'm constantly getting certain views and thinking "GEEZ!!! These guys just took the concept art and made it 3D!!!" It does so much for the mood of the game.

Only stick to simple animations. Eg. a bottle can be picked up from any direction. A picture can be looked at from practically any direction (the AI will have to be on the correct side of the wall to see it anyway). But a book will need the AI to be exactly in front of it, to turn the pages. And this would require the book to have page turning animations or something. The data needed for each object could be implemented easily - making the AI's react to it, and making the appropriate animations, could always be done after the first version of the mod has been done, right? This is an aesthetic feature, not too critical. Yet IMO it would help dramatically to make this mod feel even more immersive than other versions of Thief.

The interface is very simple. It shouldn't be hard to give it a chance

And also, I was figuring that it was making up the most of your poly count. And also requires a lot of cool lighting to look good. Since it's always going to look pretty much the same, it should be saved as an image with the perfect lighting on it that looks good, and not continually bothering the computer by doing all that cool lighting in real-time. I noticed the light passing through the gem is coloured, and falling onto the compass, changing the colour of the metal. Surely you could still get this effect some other way when converting the gem into an image?

Well, I was just thinking, to keep the polycount down, the gem part could be an image (that animates, the way the old one does - different frames for different brightnesses), and the actual compass pointers are the only things in 3D.

This workflow I highly recommend, not because the 3 programs suggested here are FREE, but because they are the best at what they do, IMO. I love these 3 programs. You will LOVE wings3d for modelling, if you are like me and HATE Blender's nerdy complex interface. (this is from http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/vie...ic.php?p=21397) Where to get these programs: www.wings3d.com (for modelling) CharacterFX www.insanesoftware.de (for animating) Lithunwrap (for texturing) is discontinued and available free at arras's site http://members.lycos.co.uk/arras1/ Also check out arras's site to see what he has been making with this workflow. Bloody awesome game objects. They are all very low poly though, for older systems. Look at the gallery forums at the www.wings3d.com forums to see the high-poly stuff people are making with wings3d. It's just as well suited for low poly as high poly - it has always used the "box modelling" interface, which only the latest versions of big name 3D apps have just made it the new pseudo standard for modelling. The reason this workflow is so good is because each of these programs has a specific purpose (modeling, texturing, and animating) and they are all VERY GOOD and VERY SIMPLE TO USE at what they are for. Ever hard of the term "jack of all trades, master of none"? That doesn't apply to this workflow

Terragen I must have seen so many games that use terragen generated images for their skyboxes And it's no wonder, the program rocks (and will have rocks in the next version, btw). Yes, the skybox screenshot is very promising. This project is always going uphill.

In the worst case, only the faces are symmetrical, right? The rest of the body isn't, and that's not so bad. I think I know why they did it. If you've ever zoomed into a Doom 3 monster body, the face is the MOST detailed part. Try the handgun guy with the glowing eyes. He has the most minute (normal mapped) wrinkles all over his face, and his teeth practically look real. His skin really looks dead. And you can really see the difference in detail with the rest of his body - the textures on his body look blurry in comparison. I think they wanted the faces to be detailed, for the cutsceans. And they probably decided it was worth cutting them in half for the extra detail.

Hey I know where you can get that DDS photoshop plugin!! From nVidia's website, but since I can't be bothered to dig out the link, I uploaded the file to the FTP! ftp://208.49.149.126/TheDarkMod/Files/NVI...6.0827.1800.exe

Have you been through Doom3 yet?? The spider bit is FULL of spider webs! Would just be a matter of opening up the level editor and viewing the first spider mission, wouldn't it? (Which I won't be doing just yet because I haven't yet finished the game)

Mabey, but I just saw it as a thin woman. That's why I suggested fat women as well.

Well I wouldn't say that... Re-drawing them can give us our own style. And avoid some person playing, going "hey, they ripped off that image from blah", and ruin immersion for them. I remember someone complaining about how the Finnish military (lion) logo appeared in Thief 3. It makes you think these people are just searching the net and using any image that looks "cool". Because that's what it is. It ruins the atmosphere, you stop beleiving as much. It's not super-important, but I wouldn't say there's "no point" in re-drawing them...

It all adds up, Sparhawk. You save where you can. This goes for all the other furniture, etc. and other objects that will make up a final room. When you shave a small percentage of polys off of all those objects, you're talking about saving a lot of polys, and frames.

Another 3D modeller who can do good humans

Darkness has well and truley proved his artistic ability there. I also agree on using real historical ones as a reference. I hope you don't mind drawing some new ones based on them, even though your original designs look good! Can't fault the actual artwork style at the moment though. (edit)Although... Darkness' ones have a more fanciful look about them - the world of Thief is very fantastic (fantasy-like), and it could suit. Maybe a blend of both Darkness' first ones, and the realistic ones?

Maybe, but we're not making your dream girl. Hehe. Personally, I find more realistic more attractive. Look, how about a game where the females are realistically proportioned for once? We're really going to break some new ground with this Mod. Thief 3 had fat and thin male guards. Lets consider having fat and thin females too! Even if we only implement female nobles, and not female guards. Fat or thin, they still have to have realistic proportions. None of this Tomb Raider "anorexic girl with beach balls in her tank top" crap.

I'm in favour of KEEPING DeepOmega's original low poly design. I can see how some im-perfectly stacked coins would look nice though - perhaps DeepOmega could make a version of a stack of coins (maybe a pile) that is for use in decorative situations where a high poly count is okay; places where a lot of action might not happen.

On the subject of females, are we going to have female guards again? I miss them from the old game, but it would double the amount of media required for guards (textures, meshes, animations, and voices).

My vote is for making the loot aesthetically distinguishable from junk somehow, wether it be with a more ornate texture, or a shiny surface like Darkness_falls was talking about. But I'm more in favor of the texture. I would think that as your scanning around, you notice a plate with fancy decorations on it, and realise it is loot because of this, because you can tell it apart from the dull metal plate - even though they both use the same mesh.

No, I actually do like it that much All the previous ones are just plain ugly compared to it. I like the clean metal look of the points, and the beautiful translucent effect of the gem itself. And to think it will be in real time 3D. I can't wait to see it in action. It's a perfect combination of functionality and aesthetics.