jdude

I've been looking forward to this one for a really long time. Some other cool stuff about it, is that the maps will be randomly generated like in diablo 2 !

I just realized it may be some sort of problem arising from me installing 9.0 over the 8.1 build. Perhaps that is the source of the problem.

I agree, I know for myself I am a type 2 gamer I've always loved levels in games which bring me something new to aww over. For example Doom 3's hell map I thought was terrific! I remember loving the lost city in thief one, however after re-installing T1 and trying it, it's nothing like I remember I'm trying to preserve that memory of it so I can bring a similarly pleasing experience to TDM. I also remember playing halflife 1 and thinking it was possible to get into the background image, which I thought was really cool at the time, however I was really disappointed to find out it was just an image .

I agree with most of what you said. There are areas of my map which are completely different from what you would expect. The environment changed drastically, which makes it funner to explore. However there are three different types of players: 1) The player who be happy to go straight for the objective. 2) The player who will be happy finding different and creative environments. 3) The meticulous player who will be happy exploring everything to get a perfect score. The buildings cater to the 3rd player mostly, and a bit to the 2nd player. It would be unreasonable to put traps or magic type things in every building. However within each building I have placed notes to help draw the player into the game, and in a couple buildings are hidden areas. I hope by doing this the player will learn about the plot/sub plot of the mission and be encouraged to explore more. The buildings aren't vast and I'm sure that you will enjoy exploring them, the problem with a game like Thief is that once you've seen the same textures and loot and props a million times before, it takes away from the game. The first player will end up having to explore anyways, but I am making sure that the mission isn't to short for that type of player. Hopefully it will take that kind of player 2-4 hours to finish the level completely, depending on their intelligence The second player will probably like the level the best, as I am planning an extremely vast array of environments and creations. Even though the mission takes place in a city, half of that city is 'plagued' by a strange force It's sure to make for some memorable environments! I completely understand what you mean by un-fun just running in and getting loot. However enterable buildings play a small role in the level, they probably consist of... 15% of the content I hope to include. Remember this map will be huge It's already nearing 10,000 brushes alone and I hope to make it 5x bigger.

I outlined the two textures, this is what it does.

Well I agree that being able to not get into anywhere is boring, being able to get into everywhere is also boring I think players would get annoyed if they could enter every single building and have to search all over the place for a insignificant amount of loot, but at the same time, I think they want to feel like they can explore the inners of these buildings even for the small amount of loot. I think there is a balance which the mapper must understand. In the picture posted, there are three enterable buildings, one is just a room, the other 2 feature about 4-6 rooms each. I never copy and paste a room from one building to the next because I know people hate feeling like all the buildings are the same. Within the city right now there are about 8 enterable buildings each [except that one] consisting of several rooms and each having it's own unique feeling. Because of performance limitations I cannot make specific buildings enterable, but I don't think the player will care much at all, as the city is already vast, and you only have to enter 2 of the 8 buildings, so 6 are available and optional for the player to explore. I must remind you aswell that the map itself is still a work in progress, and I hope to have 10 enter able buildings in each city area, which will mean that there will be roughly 20 enterable buildings and only 3-5 of which you need to enter. However I don't want to give out TOO much information because that would ruin it for the first time you play it There is also several optional paths you may take, such as underground [which leads off into almost a map of it's own] or on ledges and roof tops. I think what made thief cool when I first played it was the idea of finding hidden paths or ledges to get around AI which didn't seem like you should be able to go on. I want the player to realize that there is ALWAYS an option on how to get somewhere. There is only one part in the level where you don't have more than one alternate route. At the moment, if I was to give a rough percentage of how much of the city is explorable, and how much has to be explored, I'd say to finish the main objective you have to explore about 20% of the level, and that means that 80% is available for the player to explore. This doesn't mean that it will be like oblivion where you can get past really fast if you do the main objective, because you will likely still have to find your way around and end up exploring

lol, that's not quite what I meant I meant before games like Counter-strike had implemented their voice chatter. I'd much rather read what someone has to say rather than listen to a jumbled message on my speakers.

Sorry about the delayed response. Sometimes when I'm working on a map I find a wall that has a -1 horiz or vertic value. I don't remember when I applied this value to the wall but by doing so I have accidentally made the texture inverted. When I look in the text tool, the texture appears to be the correct size but doesn't line up properly, that is why having color coded sides would be helpful. I seem to remember having to use -1 to align textures before we had the text tool. But upon trying to go back and find a situation where I had to, I haven't been able to find one where the text-tool cannot simply fix it... Also I don't know if this is Darkmod or just Doom3 related, but after compiling a map I sometimes get this weird block on the bottom half of my screen. It consists of blocks and shows the sky. When you move around and look around the blocks disappear / re-arrange / re-appear ect ect. I made this image to show you what it looks like: It can be fixed by restarting the game. Edit: Also @ greebo. No I don't have a map that does this specifically, it seems to do it randomly. Is there any debug or something I could do when this occurs and send you the information?

I miss the good old days of MP games when there was only typing. I hate all this voice over internet stuff. I also generally hate mp games, but what can ya do

Wow those are really great pics I love the ones you have done with layers.

The texture tool is great, but it can still be hard to use sometimes. Do you think that it would be possible to have the top of the texture box red, the bottom blue, and the left and right sides different colors? That would make it much MUCH easier to find out which way you have to rotate textures to get them to match up correctly.

As far as i know there are three fans, one on the graphics card built in, a giant one on the cpu and one blowing air out the back in the power supply. Should I get another? I found them for cheap only 10 - 20 dollars Although I have never installed one before which is somewhat concerning to me.

heh, well this one is an Acer. It's been pretty good since that occurred, I've been playing hl2 with extremely high settings no problem. It may just be a glitch with the drivers that they don't know about yet with AOE3. I also blew on it and a little bit of dust came out, I doubt that was the problem though, I will keep a very close eye on it the next few days.

It should still be returnable.. I hope I will phone up future shop and see what they have to say about it.

I'm using copy shader and paste shader I have them binded to I and O

The card is brand new, and futureshop installed it them self, I personally don't want to have to be cleaning it out every couple of months with the possibility of wrecking it, as it's worth 300 dollars. @ Crispy, if this continues that is exactly what I will do. @ Greebo: I have this model: http://www.thetechlounge.com/view+image/ca...ro_features.jpg . the box says PCI express: 256 MBIMo GDDR3. @ Komag: I just opened up the side panel, the fan is spinning. There is almost no dust in the computer, just small specs of it around the bottom. @ Sparhawk: That's what I'm afraid of! It scares me to think it could break. Upon starting it up today in my relatively cool house as compared to yesterday it is idling around 41 degrees. This is what I've had it idle at before when not having problems. After using my computer for a bit it's heated up to 54 degrees, but this isn't doing anything that requires 3d rendering, just switching between firefox windows ect ect. I don't think that is too bad though.. is it? As you can see my card is STILL on-sale http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/class.asp...&catid=1087 I don't have much other good choices to pick from if I were to request an exchange.

Today I started up my computer as usual in the morning, it sat there for a couple hours doing nothing and then just now I was trying to play Age of Empires three. Suddenly everything looked all wierd, polygons were stretching flashing, things were green ect ect. I quit and immediately went to the ATI display panel and checked the temperature of my graphics card. It was at 94 degrees C. I read online that it shouldn't even be hitting the low 80s. I've played AOE 3 plenty of times in the past and never had this problem. The outside temperature got up to 30 degrees C today, so it's fairly hot in the room where my computer is. Could this be a factor? I'm worried because I don't want to damage my computer, the only thing I've done to it since getting it is upgrading the ram from 1 gb to 3 gbs could this also be a factor? I know I have a sufficient power-supply for my graphics card, we had it installed at the store and everything. The cpu looks like it's cooled very well, it has giant heat sinks and a large fan on it, but the card is just a card. If I was going to buy additional heatsinks of a fan for the graphics card how would I place them in my computer so they are used properly? I can take photos of the inside of my computer if necessary. My specs are: 300 gb hard drive 3gb ram Pentium core 2 duo 1.87ghz ATI X1950 pro 256 With the latest 7.4 drivers Right now it's idling at 65 degrees C. I think I read it should idle at 40 :/ I also haven't overclocked it or anything ever, the same goes for all other components in my computer.

o hehe I've taken a some new ones I will post on the ttlg forums

It already looks better, I should probably take some screens of it for public release, as I don't think the team will be any time soon. That pic wasn't supposed to make it out here though keep that in mind.

I don't think it is reliably reproducible, it seems to happen randomly. The copy and paste texture problem isn't because of something in the way, it pastes the texture, but not the attributes.

arg! I;ve had DR lock up three times in the last two days while viewing models and once when I reshaped a brush so that it disappeared. The model viewer lock ups occur either while browsing models, or right when the viewer opens. Also sometimes when you use the copy texture you and paste texture, you have to copy it and paste it twice in order to paste the x,y,z,scale attributes.

Well just because you despise GTA and wow doesn't mean that they were developed with the sole purpose of making money. Even though that is likely the case, you don't know that for sure and the quality of the GTA series is constantly improving. And wow has lots of players, even though I've never tried the game it seems like they put a lot of effort into making a game which would be really fun to a specific audience. I think is sound more like your angry at the videogame industry for not making games which appeal to you. Other than thief, what game do you like? Also I know Penumbra isn't a corporate game, but it's still a part of the video game industry.

I really really like the door, the foliage, and the cobble stone

I love these, they should be put in the city reference part of the betamapper forum

I wouldn't say that's true, what about big companies like Rockstar or Blizzard who keep pushing out games that are great. Example of a fun non-trendy game: Penumbra