Chi Haotian

Thief 1&2 fans & Thief 3 fans, you mean.

Could you develop on this thought?

Also, is no different than saying, because other games had it (which was essentially my original comment)... You ought to be thinking whether this will be good for original Thief or not, not just whether other games have implemented this or not. Mindless immitation and groupthink are deadly to creativity. The introduction of shadowcasting dynamic lighting would seriously reveal the "wallpaper" nature of simple textures, so it would definitely need some bumpmapping to go along with it. You mentioned oldschool bumpmapping LGS was planning to implement. What sort of bumpmapping was it? Is it what MoroseTroll is talking about? Maybe that's what Dark Engine will need (and all it will need) in this department?

My whole idea of bumpmaping was shaken. For a moment I thought that, if LGS was going to put bumpmaps into Thief, then, either what I saw and thought was bumpmapping wasn't, or that there's a way to put it into Thief and yet avoid those unnatural bulging-out bricks and overdone cavities, like those in TDS. Indeed. Same applies to all sorts of enhanced objects packs: from them I only pick out objects that fix a defect in the original models, but the rest I delete, because they're over-detailed and they force themselves upon you, leaving no room for imagination. See, it appears that the spirit of the original Thief is pinpointable and quantifiable after all.

You're peculiar. But I had no idea that LGS was about to implement bumpmapping. That's interesting. I wonder how it would have turned out. See, that's what you should have started with - with stuff that matters. Personally, I don't like bumpmapping. It always made surfaces look exaggeratedly uneven, almost cartoonish. (Although that may have been a design choice and not part of the feature itself.)

Who said you even need this feature? It's somewhat overrated and quite overused. Just because Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 had it, doesn't mean that now it's a must for Thief. A lot of these resource-hungry features seem to add as much surrealism as realism, and end up being zero-sum. You can have the entire game glitter and reflect in a thousand hues and still miss it in terms of proper feel for the genre.

Not unless the modifications are frivolous and arbitrary, and don't proceed naturally from the design of the Dark Engine. The original fans aren't some hard-to-please fanatics, they just think that if thou wilt harken to the designs the Builder hath made, and keep his statutes, thou wilt share in his triumphs and make a good engine better.

The heck with objects and textures. I'd like to see the world limits raised so I could build greater spaces and more detailed buildings without being hit with the "scene complexity too high" and similar errors. Then, player mobility could be improved (climbing and whatnot). Not to mention, improving the AI capabilities, which is pretty much the core of the gaming experience. Stealth genre doesn't really call for all those insane graphics capabilities of the latest engines.

No similarity here whatsoever. Problem-solving is the real deal, the White man's passion.

Not before they make it un-flawed. And not the least part of the fun is finding a way to do it, not just the result.

*Sg3c1906.wav*

There must be. I've always understood TDM as something done in the absence of the Dark Engine source code for the original games, as in, "Eidos won't release the source code, so we took Doom 3's engine and made a total conversion mod." Now the starting premise has changed. These aren't the projects that exclude each other (as the real Dark Engine does OPDE), but they should enrich each other, if only conceptually. Although, you're right, we're yet to see them take it off the ground. I wonder how they'll do without several header files missing. (I hope they include that OPDE guy in the works, as by now he should have developed the clairvoyant skill of seeing the unseen.)

It is also quite resource-heavy, especially compared to T1/2. It's a great idea to have the two projects cross-pollinate each other; this way the other programmers will see how closely they're related, and when Dark Engine improvement hits a plateau, they'll pay more heed to the Dark Mod. Switching gears back and forth this way is also a great way of idea-generation.

Well, Dark Engine is the vanilla Thief, and people feel more loyalty to it, hence more people were moved to help with it. The Dark Mod will always remain number 2 in people's minds, being a mod and having this TDS-ish feel about it.

Or, perhaps, the reverse is possible - TDM's developers can help in improving Dark Engine. Surely, Dark Engine could use much of what has been come up with for the Dark Mod.

It's not stolen. And there won't be a problem if TDM borrows concepts from DarkEngine code. Concepts in the field of AI, perhaps?

Looks great. Still needs a little tweaking, though: the furthest guy just left the cards hand hanging in the air and then sent them flying when he got up. And the way the human models spin around like humming-tops doesn't look right either. PS: the voicing done by the guy with the British accent is the bomb. Have him do more of it, a greater variety of dialogue and AI lines. His style completely fits the feel of a medieval guard.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to re-create the entire set of official Thief 1 and Thief 2 missions in Dark Mod, with complete fidelity to dimensions, texture, ambience, objects, NPCs etc. In this case it would be possible to really compare the two and to see if the feel of the original games translates into Dark Mod.

True.

Flashbombs can be used as a last resort, when you're out of holy water. And they were much less effective, iirc -- to destroy a zombie, you had to throw three or four of them right at his feet. Perhaps, as a balance, they can be made even less effective on the undead in TDM, but effective still, combined with some degree of the standard blinding effect. (Such a thing does exist in classic horror fiction that increasing the amount of even artificial light repels or thwarts undead and whatnot. E.g. in 'Dracula.')

Awaking the ko'd body would more likely be a punishment for leaving it in the open, for not hiding it properly. If it's tucked away, then nobody will revive it. As for the mines, i would think the guard would take it away and also raise the alarm because somebody is running around setting up deadly traps for people. And that would also apply only to mines that have been set in well-lit places where they're obvious. It always seemed odd how a guard would not notice a bulky metal thing lying right in the middle of a bright hallway. Both of these situations could also be made very rare by assigning such abilities to special AIs, as i said, so it would not be an annoyance but would only on occasion add a surprise element.

It would be great to have special abilities for AIs. For instance, if some (or all) AIs could revive the knocked-out bodies when they found them. Or if they could notice and disarm mines if they lie in a very visible spot. This can be difficulty-dependent (only happens on Hard, Expert) or AI character-dependent (medic, engineer, advanced soldier/guard, etc).

Not to mention this adds functionality to a tool (flashbomb). Some later tools (such as a scouting orb, a flare) would seem practically useless as they could only be used in a narrow scope of circumstances. Having a tool do several useful things is good gameplay-wise.

I haven't tried the Mod yet. Only saw combat demonstration vids (and they must be outdated). Great to hear you've implemented that.

And it would be best if those things moved and fought very differently from regular sword guards. They should not be just another brand of AI merely skinned as a haunt or other undead.