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Dram
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Posts posted by Dram
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Hello everyone!Almost a decade has passed since I last worked on the Dark Mod and trying it out again, man am I blown away. The AI, the FMs, the feel. I love it and have sorely missed it.A company project has kept me busy for the past 5 years, however with its culmination and me stepping away from leading projects, I finally have free time again, but I guess this is more of a conversation to be had with a round of beers, possibly something stronger.In any case, I spoke with Bikerdude about Blackheart Manor, mapping and scripting. I would love to lend a helping hand if there is still space for me here. In the interim I've been getting into Dark Radiant and the scripting API.As Blackheart Manor really needs an overhaul of the starting forest section, I started with that first. I have a workflow going for importing models from Maya -> Milkshape 3D -> Lightwave 9 -> TDM. Absurd I know but from messing around with several different programs, Milkshape has the best exporter to .lwo from .fbx, where it does not mess up any details in the models. I imported a bunch of tree and rock assets I had lying around that I had purchased some time back for a different project but had not yet used. I believe they could be put to good use in the forest section.Anyway, here are a few shots of experimentation in about 2 hours messing with them. I was hoping to get some preliminary feedback.
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I already did this (added TDM as a non Steam game, but... none of my friends there really seemed to take that as a motivation to give it a try.
Frankly, I don't think stealth games are very popular in general these days. Too slow. People prefer quick and easy games.Sadly this is indeed true. I have tried to get several of my colleagues at work into the game but alas to no avail.
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Just thought to chime in, thank you for working on this, I have a rift my end too and look forward to giving this a whirl!
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Hello KingSal, I'm a bit late to the party but this mission is absolutely top-notch work. Played it a few days ago, took my time. I LOVE the atmosphere, I LOVE the architecture and I LOVE the story. Started Volta II but right at the beginning, and already it is a step up in quality versus this. Top job good Sir!
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Hey Dram, good to see you and your avatar again.
Hey Dark! Indeed it is great to see you too
It has truly been too long. Great to see you are still around. -
Your welcome stranger :-)
Seriously, great job with Blackheart Manor as well (now Blackstone Manor), it is looking really good. It has changed much since I last worked on it.
Good to see you again, Martin!You too Tels! It has been too long.
Hi, i see you're affiliated with Bohemian Interactive, great. Some of my favourite games come from Bohemia. Hidden & Dangerous comes to mind, Mafia and Operation Flashpoint. Nice to see you're also a fan of this mod.Yes I was working on the Dark Mod until I got hired at Bohemia Interactive, after which I lacked free time and thus had to stop working on the Dark Mod. A pity really, but the team here is one of the best mod teams I have seen and have done a great job thus far. My own personal skillset evolved much thanks to the Dark Mod, and I am sure certain original members will recall my joining the Dark Mod team, where I was, very much so, a newbie to level editing and such. Looking back and recalling that my position at Bohemia Interactive is in large part due to learning skills while working on the Dark Mod is very humbling, and for that I am forever greatful to the mod and the members whom I had the great pleasure of working with
Dram's not just a fan, he was a member of the development team in the early days. Good to see you again, Dram.Great to see you too Spring, it has indeed been a long time. The evolution of the mod has been apleasure to watch, a testament to the team behind it
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Hello everyone, seems a millenium has passed since I last visited the forums. I still follow TDM from a distance, catching the odd release, so to that end I wanted to pass along my sincere congratulations for the relatively recent release of TDM 2.02!
Especially Springheel, who has also been here since the beginning and still keeps at it, though equal congratulations and thanks go to the whole team for keeping this project alive. Kudos to you all, and I look forward to finally getting the time again to trying out the numerous, fabulous missions created by the very talented fan mission creators.Kind and most sincere regards,
Martin Melicharek (Dram)
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Alas no multiplayer. Would be nice but it would be a large undertaking.
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The solution to these problems is to get a console and get all the games second hand. Then the developers get nothing; no control over you, no compensation, no ability to harvest your personal data for marketing, etc.
The irony in that statement is that even from a new console game, developers get only a small portion, and it's the developers who want to bring a good game, the publishers are the ones who wish to give you the oh-so-wanted "extras" (meant purely ironically). Alas, that is the state of the game industry today.
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Just a little update - new gameplay trailer:
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Good luck Mr Lemony Fresh, I know myself that the AU game industry is dwindling quite seriously. I hope things take an upward spiral for you, take care.
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No, but I'm a big Orbiter junkie so I thought it might just be about the same thing just less realistic... I mean that's a good thing for a game, but I only have so much time to play games and I've already got over the insane learning curve for Orbiter, so I'm happy sticking with it. I might try KSP some day though.
Yeah Orbiter is epic. I actually started making this game back in 2004 on D3, around the time when Opportunity drove by Victoria Crater. Never got time to really do much with it, so getting to do it now is a great opportunity. At that time I wanted to make it specifically because Orbiter was not really made for surface driving, prior to the orulex terrain addon.
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I would comment, but seeing as I cannot say much positive in light of what I saw of the gameplay, I think I will refrain. I sincerely hope they reconsider the direction they are taking, though from experience a "pre-alpha" that takes on such a close-to-finished state is in reality closer to a beta. Hence, the Thief 1/2 style gameplay that I know and love is officially dead, yet continues unofficially in the Dark Mod.
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Regarding the delay: It would just have been an interesting feature. I guess most people wouldn't use it anyways. (I'm not sure but I think the delay is several minutes, so not very entertaining
).I guess you can take this as a compliment
What did they say?Another question: Will there be any need for an online account or similar, or can it just be installed as in the good old days? (I guess devs don't like this question, but ... well).
They liked how we kept as close to reality as possible with regards to the vehicles and the terrain, even the sky crane sequence (apparently I got it right, which is nice to know
).You'll need steam, but that's about it.
Looks cool! From the site it says "..-unlocking the secrets of Mars' distant past", is that from a scientific point of view, or is this like a "Myst" themed game? And is the landscape based on the real Mars surface (If there is such a thing yet from satellites)?
More of a scientific point of view, it does not involve sci-fi elements. Yes, the landscape (3 locations, each 4x4km) are based on real satellite data. They include Victoria Crater, Gale Crater and Kaiser Crater. The satellite data is actually ridiculously detailed (most of the time it is 0.5m per pixel).
Had a feeling this was going to have something to do with BIS from the topic title, and I was right! You work at BIS now? Congrats dude! Ever talked to Dean Hall?
I've actually been working at BIS for about 4 or 5 years now
Yeah, Dean is a colleague, he was at E3 with us as well. -
Thanks guys.
One question, though: Is this a simulator? If so, do the player control the rover *directly* or in a way that emulates controlling it from earth (so with some time delay, etc...).
It is a simulator in most factors (gravity, atmospheric density, pressure, temperatures, etc) but controlling rovers diverges somewhat.
At present you control the rovers directly. The one way light time delay was planned but we decided not to do it due to time restrictions (it is a 10 euro title, so quite small) - it would involve writing a whole sequencer etc, which would take up at least a month or two, and seeing as I wrote most of the functionality, we could not afford the delay. Had we done it it would have been optional.
I actually had a couple of NASA engineers stop by at E3, so their feedback has also been very interesting.
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Hello everyone,
I've been away for quite some time, specifically completing Carrier command Gaea Mission, after that I started a mars rover mod for it, which has since become a game - Take On Mars. Since I am the project lead for it, I don't want to state how good it is as I would be biased, thus, I would let everyone make their own opinion, and will happily answer any questions regarding it.
Here is its website:
http://takeonthegame.com/take-on-mars
Here is a short trailer composed of ingame footage:
Take care guys, and sorry for randomly popping in like this. I've been extremely busy with work, thus no time for anything else.
Martin
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Well this issue occurs, evidently, in specific systems (card I would assume). My card in particular is a mobile 6990M, where trying to start Doom 3 caused the display driver to crash. I did'nt even get into the menu nor into the loading screen.
I'm on win 7 with Catalyst 11.10. As I mentioned, it does not happen for everybody, just for a few unfortunate. So to save them the time of searching for several hours, as I did
, I've posted it here.As for which versions are affected, apparently it's anything above 11.9 I believe. But only worry about trying this if you have problems, otherwise if it runs fine then it's a better idea to leave it be.
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I've recently been trying to get the Dark Mod up and running on my new laptop, which features an ATI card, and I was unable to start Doom 3, nor Dark Mod for that matter. I have windows 7 on the system, so I was concerned about compatibility, however a thorough, 6 hour search revealed the culprit - the ATI Catalyst drivers featuring the fix for Rage. This issue can be overcome, however, by placing atioglxx.dll from the Catalyst 11.9 drivers into the game's main directory.
Original post located on Doom3World.org:
http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?p=234276&sid=16d835657e785970574c9ae64a39733f#p234276
It's just the rage/bf3 driver. it fucked up almost all my other OpenGL games (brink, doom3, quake live, eduke32, other q3-engine games etc.).solution is to copy the "atioglxx.dll" from stable catalyst 11.9 to the affected games directory ("where the exe of the game is")
The download for the 11.9 atioglxx.dll is here:
Posting this in case anyone else runs into the same issue. I've not had time to play Dark Mod for about a year and a half now due to work, so now that things are finally starting to calm down, I'm looking forward to trying out a few missions that FM authors have made.
Hope this helps.
http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?p=234276&sid=16d835657e785970574c9ae64a39733f#p234276
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Whoa, it seems my airships have started to worry a few people, which I can perfectly understand. The idea of introducing airships was mostly to see if TDM could do it, just like with the expansiveness of BHM, which was a test of what TDM could do (different environments etc), though the problem with BHM was that I took way too long to do it, and it's still not out yet, which is entirely my fault. Just to clarify though, the airships are NOT meant to be used in BHM, just in case anyone was afraid.
In reality I intend to use the airships in a real-time mini-world campaign where you play as the captain of an airship and can fight for one of two sides, denoted by their coloring of blue and yellow. Or for pirates, which have black ships. This was something I was doing in my spare time, and I intend to have day/night cycles etc, so it is not really a true TDM mission, but more of a tech demo for TDM. I can understand the conservative approach to avoid TDM spanning into a weird fantasy game, but at the same time, a little harmless side-tracking remains just that, harmless. Just like with the crazy T1/2 FMs that are made, this should be considered as such, and does not represent what the core experience is.
Apart from the airship, I planned to span it into a sea-faring galleon, with sails etc, which is something that is probably more practical for TDM, but still slightly off from the core experience. In any case, at least there will be the addition of a large galleon model and galleon airship model, if nothing else.
Truth be told, I had been considering whether it was a good idea to create such a project within TDM, to avoid unnecessarily scaring members that TDM is taking a dive off the deep end, but in the end, it is something that does not harm TDM, or at least I believe so. I fully respect the approach of not wanting it in the core mod however, so if people are against it being there, then I've no problem with removing it, and would create my own separate mini-mod for it, to avoid the confusion of it being a "core" experience.
Lastly, it was mostly because I just missed playing Air Buccaneers for UT2003, which was missing a few aspects I'd hoped would be improved upon (larger ships and areas, and deeper battles). That was an awesome mod, and I wanted to take a shot at creating that gameplay myself.
With regards to the health shields, that's something a little different, and more controversial, hence no mention of it anywhere. I made a small mini-addon which introduces the classic T1/2 HUD, as can be seen from the shields (and also a breath bar a la T1/2), and also adjusts climbing speeds, walking speeds, etc to what I find closer to the originals. Though since that is only my opinion I do not want that AT ALL considered an "official" approach.
As for updated BM briefing etc, that was only because I had been updating my website, www.dramthethief.com with content which I had created and so on, and needed the newest version of the briefing up (which differed in one or two places).
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Leaving the choice to the player is nice, but IMO leaving the choice to the mapper would make more sense without filling the menus with UI tweaks. Is it possible?
Well if the mapper adds this into the FM's PK4 package then the bow would be there by default. However I do not recommend this, as it forces those who prefer the angled, no aimer bow to use the upright with aimer.
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Yeah, I think players would enjoy playing with the classic version, so I see no harm making it an option in the menu, but I don't think we'll add the sight to our angled version.
Well it is compatible either way, so two simple choices in the menu can combine it in the way players could want. For example a T3 fan may want the aimer on the angled bow. Just a matter of setup really.
One thing I seem to be noticing though is that the arrows final destination appears to be just slightly to the right of where I aimed using the bow sight. I might be wrong about that, but when I had the dead center of a beam lined up in the bow site, the arrow hit slightly to the right of where I intended it to go.
Yeah, it is slightly offset to the right, but that is due to the arrow offset in viewmodel -> world. So the arrow goes slightly to the right. I suppose it is something I could take a look at if it could be improved.
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any news on your Blackheart Manor mission ? people waiting for it since first preview
Ah, yes. Well all that can be said at this point is that it is being worked on, I must admit that I delayed it for quite a long time due to work picking up as well as other RL issues, but now it is en route once again. I do sincerely apologize for the delay.
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It does a bit more than just add the bow sight though, it straightens the bow. Standard / Classic would probably be more fitting.
Well the animations can actually work independent of the model, so applying the upright anims to the old bow works fine as well. So in theory there could be two options - Upright/Angled and No Sight/With Sight. Adding this as 2 menu options would be quite simple really, just a matter of whether it is desirable. If so, it wouldn't take more then an hour to integrate, in theory. But is it something so important that it needs adding to the menu?
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Where actually is the centre of the aiming sight? Is it the middle of the top bar then allow for droppage within the rectangle?
Should have mentioned that too, yes it is the middle of the top bar, just like in T1/2
So, what are you working on right now?
in TDM Editors Guild
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Cheers!
Ack, this is a good point. Here they are brightened.