Domarius

Awesome. Glad to hear you have reached that stage of your artistic development. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

I love it. It has my vote for being used. By DeepOmega, of course, as we all know, is our only modeller at the moment.

Well I have just been listening to the MP3's, and Darkness Falls has my vote to keep working on the ambience tracks for our mod That kind of thing sounds like it could be developed into the style from Thief we all know and love. I tried uploading them to the DarkMod FTP, but I had problems, I posted in the FTP thread. (I have cable access here at Uni)

It does seem a bit long, doesn't it. Are you using drawing lessons as guides DeepOmega? I find that helps a lot, with proportions.

I say go for it and send us some stuff to show us what you can do I like the idea of "colliding with a tree object and playing a leaf rustling sound effect". Makes you beleive the environment is more real. I know 'cause this same thing happens in Ghost Recon. Good thinking.

I reckon with Fingernail's target platform suggestion, and Kappow's "low end" system, we (well, you guys, cause I don't have D3 just yet) could use the equivelant of the "show stats" feature and come up with some guidline figures to keep the complexity at, for people who are level editing. Good point Renzatic, if Doom 3 plays like Doom 2, with its hundreds of monsters at one time stuff, we should be able to make things look prettier than the original Doom3 levels in our Thief version.

We need a target platform. It is really handy in DromEd to have the showstats feature, and the recommendation in the Manual that "300 polys is okay for high detail areas, but try to keep areas that may have action in them down to 200 polys". Of course, nowadays we up that, for our target audience. I generally try to keep to 300, and only go higher for "pretty" areas. I hope there is a similar "showstats" feature in Doom 3, 'cause then we can pick a statistic(s), like polys, brushes, or something, and set guideline limits that are appropriate for our target platform. Eg. 300 polys, 1000 portals.

Yeah I mentioned that - its a feature like any other. Has to be used appropriately. It would go really well in a church hall (that has been designed at a low poly count) with big windows. The church hall is really simple, and only has the windows on one wall (the others are fake, or non-existant maybe). Since the room is so simple, you can afford to be inside, looking out onto part of the street outside, or on the street outside, looking in.

Yeah, that's what I was talking about. I have the utmost confidence in the Doom3 engine.

I'm like "Why wasnt the mask in the original game??" That's how much I support it. Look at what Ninja wear. Only just the eyes are visible. Cause white skin really glows in the dark. I've always wondered why Garrett never bothered with a face mask. And then of course, it's easier to implement... When something has this many good reasons, it's a sign.

I'm just wondering how it's over all "colour" will blend in with the existing textures. It's what I was blabbering on about in the other threads. This image looks fairly washed out, like it was taken in midday on an overcast day. Nothing that photoshop can't fix I bet. If you compare it to the similar textures (there are ones that look like this - white stone around curved windows) the colours are fairly high contrast. The only way I can think to help them all look consistant (aside from trying to make them close to the same colour pallette) is to actually make a building out of all the textures, and see if it looks right.

But they key word is "pretty" isn't it? They still weren't TOTALLY opaque - what was on the other side - light, shapes, etc. would affect what the window looked like, and you could tell there was a whole 'nother world on the other side, and not just a solid wall with a texture on it and a light object in front (a la T2). Windows that are translucent would look WAY more atmospheric than the original "fake" windows, or perfectly transparent windows. I would think with more fiddling with the alpha transparency and the 'wobbly' effect of Fingernail's windows, you could get a 'translucent' effect. Imagine; it's not transparent enough for you to see properly through it, but it's not actually a solid wall either (the way it is in T2). You can make out forms and light on the other side, and it would change as you move. This would look very cool and atmospheric, since the environment on the other side would affect what the window looks like, which is the kind of thing we've been trying to fake with textures and light objects in the previous games. My only concern is how showing the extra geometry would affect frame rate. I guess you would only put translucent windows where you could afford the polycount.

I think it's important that the texture artists try to work with a certain colour palette - it seems they already have the warm fire feel for the indoors lit with torches. Now out doors should be decided on soon, like strong blues and purples or greens maybe (and yellows, for the lights), or something, like the Thief 3 concept artwork. All good artists know that less is more. By that I mean, if the scene is filled with all sorts of colours, it loses its identity, but if there is a specific theme going on, it shows and it really has its own character. People were saying "This is what Thief 3 SHOULD have looked like!" about Renzatic's screen shots, and I beleive the colour palette is why. We (well, the artists) should strive for a unique, and unified feel for this Thief world. You can see good examples of this in a lot of 2D games. I think 3D games are only just catching up there, as the tools let artists express themselves more easily - a lot of older 3D game all sort of look alike, but now, with some of the nicer looking games, you can take a screen shot of it, and it is so easy to tell straight away that it is from that game, and not another game of that type. I think a good example is Need For Speed Underground. All the neon colours glowing in the dark, and the motion blurring. It's not the most realistic racing game out there (check out some of those new rally games), but it is certainly one of the prettiest, and best looking racing games out there. (If I have people disagree with me about NFSU, then maybe I chose a bad example, but I hope my point gets across all the same)

I know what you mean. I mean, I have never played Thief 3 YET (still trying to get my upgrade) but from the screen shots, it doesn't look like the original games the way Renzatic's and BlackThief's work (in Renzatic's screenshots) look. I'm still trying to work out why this is. One thing that popped into my head is that it actually looks more angular than Thief 3, so it looks a bit older, like the old Thief 2 and 1? But looking at some of the indoors screenshots, Renzatic's room is just lacking the other details and bump/specular mapping that make the room feel more "rounded". I think it's the colour palette. Renzatic's screenshots feel very warm, very fiery and orange. The Thief 3 screenshots, while still cool and thiefy, seem more "over-cast grey", even indoors where the torches are. I'm sure these texture artists know this kind of thing already, but I'm going to make a texture palette mention in the "Targets" thread.

I don't have Doom3 yet, so I'll have to be content with looking at screenshots.

Every Project needs a good Project Manager. We can debate everything as a team, but one person needs to keep the focus of the project. Make sure we don't suffer from "scope creep", one of the biggest project killers.

Well no one said the gem had to be rectangular... I was imagining the light gem as a circular gem in the center of the compass. That way, they could be the same object; the whole compass can rotate freely as a single object, with no impact on how you view the light gem.

Sparhawk suggested that having the letters NSWE scroll by, as they do in ThieveryUT, means if you want to travel North, you have to look at it, see that it says W, think about where N is, or rotate around till your facing N, and get your bearings that way. Whereas with a competely visible compas, the W point may be pointing up, but you can instantly see where N is at any time.

I just want to say that you guys rock, especially Renzatic and BlackThief. This all looks so good. The individual textures in the other threads look awesome too.

Well I think we should avoid meshing 2 seperate features together in that fashion. It looks cool, but the issues you mentioned have cropped up needlessly in the process. So what about a gem that sits in the middle of the compass? The compass does not change brightness (and why should it), and the gem in the center shows your brightness.

Just checking I can't tell where the official list of "who's in" is here. This is a really cool forum backend btw.

Yeah, I want to help. Programming, Art.