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I thought it might be called somewhere from the code or something...

well, if you play regularly on some Go servers with people who have official rank, you'll get ranked as well. it is just being verified after some number of games with people already ranked. It just depends how deep you want to go into that, but it's good to know your skill, cause then you can play with proper handicap and both sides may have satisfaction from game.

It's not a priority but did anybody think or maybe even made already some icon to replace that pentagram on the desktop? There's no reason for being still reminded, what game we're modifying... I wish we could change even the name of the exe file to something like thedarkmod.exe but that's impossible, I suppose...

What's GnuGo? Is that the same as Atari GO? - simplified version, focused mainly on catching opponent's stones? Ranking system is similar to eastern fighting styles, so you have kyu and dans. They say that somebody who knows the rules has 30 kyu. But if you played some matches and know a bit more than just going through the handbook, you probably have few less. The better you are the less kyu you have. When you advance from 1 kyu you get 1 dan - first master's rank. Nobody ever got more than 8 or 9 dans - it's really hard to advance when you have more than 2 or 3 dans. My rank was about 20 kyu, when I stopped regular playing about 5 years ago in my local club, which wasn't anything special. Now I play occasionally with people on the net, so it's hard to say what rank I am now. I really have to find out if there's any Go club in Dublin...

they call Go "the art of diplomacy" - that's more or less what you described - it's al about finding that balance between taking and giving, attacking and defending. Another thing I like in Go is that it's more visual game than chess. As all stones on board are the same type of stones, it's the configuration of stones that matters - the shapes they make. Very often you can see the best place to put next stone just after quick glance at the board. Of course, if you want to be a master, you have to go much deeper and just thinking ahead as many moves as you can. BTW:what was your rank, Demagogue?

The first thing I see in textures are colours. This one suits our reddish furniture, which is a good thing!

....and a pirate characters... btw: anyone willing to make a nice waving animation for it?

I was trying to change the angle of the camera and did some screenshots with thief facing front, but it didn't look good either. Camera is very limited with movement and focused only on the player, so it's hard to get good composition. The only way to do it would be to place an AI there and make a screenshot in noclip mode, but then he could be facing not the direction we want... I've seen your model. If the mesh is complete, than all needs to be done is UV layout and texturing, which shouldn't be too hard, as I've done a set of ship textures. Two ship models are better than one, I think...

OK, I will. Actually skin replacing rope with nodraw should do. Weapons folder is the right one to upload them, isn't it?

I used to play plenty of board games in my childhood, including chess, strategy games and monopoly-like. But really the only one I admire is GO. That's the oldest board game known (about 4000 years), its rules are very simple, but number of strategies and possible scenarios is literally infinite. There's no computer program, which could win with any more advanced player. It's more known in China, Japan and Korea, where people study Go on universities and live from teaching it, writing books and playing in tournaments. And Go has an advantage over chess - it has a handicap system, which allows two people with diffrent skills play and have relatively equal chances to win. This game is oriented more on self-development, so the winner usually is the one who makes faster progress, than the one who has higher skill already.

Well, personally I wouldn't worry about that. They are more model showcase screenshots rather than gameplay screenies. And player model at the top shows that climbing up there is possible. But it's up to you - you're the PR man here.

I just a made a cannon for the ship. I'll make one or two more versions just with variously draped rope.

On a side note - I think they look very good with a character on them, don't they? Thanks greebo for that idea . You can play with angle and range to get the character from diffrent angle (f.e. facing towards camera) and diffrent distance. Also pm_thirdpersonclip might be useful - it ignores geometry between camera and character. (f.e. rigging - it doesn't really obscures the view). But I found turning the camera in up and down direction sometimes limited, especially the higher range is.

Maybe I just misunderstood your idea of dummy joint model. I thought you meant one universal invisible model with two bound bones. And then mapper can use it as a base for attaching a lamp to a chain or chandelier to a rope or hanged person to a rope etc. etc... without need of messing with MD5.

Was it grammar mistake or just too brief to be clear? Anyway - I suppose that bones would have the same size always (you wouldn't change MD5 each time), so you could bind only same sized models.

wouldn't it be fixed at size? ---- Springheel - I made few screenshots with galleon casting shadow. Should be OK for website, I think. (BTW: greebo - how do make those little thumbnails? Is it a forum feature or your webhost does it for you?)

Suffix for bumpmap is _local. That's just convention but it's good to keep it consistent with the rest of the mod. so, name the texture pavement02_local. I don't know if you know it already or not - whenever you change mtr file (or any text file) reload it using console command reloaddecls. For changed textures use reloadimage. That will save you from launching Doom3 again only to reload the resources.

greebo - that scenery looks great! (i recognize graveyard map... ) Thanks for that! Yes, something like that can go to the website. That screenshot with thief in the crow's nest looks just like taken from Assassin's Creed. Colours are also so blueish. But for the website screenshot, I would turn the ship's shadows on - deck looks plain without them, I think. Oh, and I think those poles along the port platform (well, I don't know how to call it) are too big. But that's just minor nitpicking - you don't notice that at the first glance. I just noticed that you uploaded a map to SVN - if you don't mind I'll make the above changes, to not distract you from your more important, coding tasks.

Thanks Springheel! I was thinking about making some video when I have everything made - I mean interior and exterior (some small city part). This would be more interesting and also an example of combining brushwork with models (interior of ship is made with brushes). But I don't know when it will be ready. I gave myself a deadline for the end of this year and I think I prefer to focus on the city part first. But if you think that it's interesting enough even without props than it's OK. As for the water shader - I want reflections to be waved, but if I add heathaze, than everything is affected except for the reflections... Anyone knows how to do this?

I can see only a lectern and standing oil lamp... (any picture missing?) EDIT: oh, I got them now! I don't have to make scribe's desk for my future map anymore!

Isn't it easier to tweak it per material rather than per model? You would have to set up the same shaderparms for every instance of the same model in every map you use it. The strength of frob highlight depends on the brightness of diffuse texture - the darker the less noticeable frob highlight is. All we have to do is to change that 0.40 after rgb to something else. This might be another issue, something with frob peers or something like that - somebody else will explain it better. (and maybe fix it even )

or maybe it's the lamp connected to the chain?

OK, thanks - I'll take a look at that. do a noclip, or... shoot a rope arrow at the hull at the beginnig of the map. Well, it's not meant to be fully playable yet... oh, f**k! this one is tricky! 6 months of work on this f*** galleon and the bucket is still sunk into floor.... *** looking for suicide websites *** seriously - I slapped in couple props to give a size idea of the ship. I promise to move it up a little bit. I'm glad you like it.

Thanks! @Dram - that window is on my todo list. Missing door - it will be there for sure I think there's at least one more part floating anyway... I'm going to upload 2 versions of hull - one with holes and no doors - that's for allowing to go inside and one without holes, just door models - that's only if mappers want the outside of the ship. Performance is bad, cause you have there moon light and reflections. Beside that the collision model is too complex, as you said. I'm sure I can do quite a lot with that - all ropes, details in hull might be excluded from collision model. @Crispy - do you want to turn the steering wheel? Or you mean more moveable props on the deck? I don't know about the wheel, but adding moveable props is no problem. This was just to show the ship model. And that rigging - I know, I could add some polygons at the sides. I didn't want to do it cause it's quite complex already and I'm not sure the visual result but I can try it once I'm done with other major things.

I'm sending to SVN a test map with a galleon model. (maps/test/galleon.map). It's not finished yet (it starts to turn into neverending story.... ) but you'll get the idea. I mean - the outside of the model is done - it needs some minor tweaks (few textures need normal maps and specular, some UV corrections etc.). But the inside is not ready - I'm working on another map building inside with brushes. It looks like lower decks are too low (only slightly higher than player) so I have to change it again, and it means a bit more work than I expected... And beside that, I've no inside props done yet, so for the final result you have to wait another while... But anyway - if you want to try it, there's a map - only ship and a piece of land - nothing more. You can climb up to the very top. Getting into crow's nest might be awkward a bit, but just use mantle and it should work. Oh, and the water is crappy - just plain reflections. That's all I can do for now... Any feedback highly appreciated!