DopeFishhh

Well i made that guess based on that it's nice and simple and with a little physics knowledge it would provide you with a method of determining how much light would be reaching an object. The line of sight test to check if the light can shine on you and a distance check to determine the brightness of the light at the distance it is away from you. Of course you'd probably have to do this multiple times for different sections of the body so the head can get a seperate lumination result from the foot. Also you'd need to factor in ambient lighting too. It seems that it is how it's done in your simple yet innacurate version, so i'm partially right, perhaps if multiple measurements were taken you could improve it's accuracy and reduce load. T1/T2 never had dynamic shadowing, there pretty much isn't any other way to determine how lit up something is in those engines. Also TDS had horrible framerates, using dynamic shadowing would fuck em over even more, though i guess it may be possible that they used the TDM accurate method (which could be why the framerates suck ass). I hope you noted that i asked sparhawk to provide more info dave, I was never sure about any of that nor did I say I was, so go read non existant meanings into someone elses post please.

Dave the gameplay code would not be THAT processor intensive that it reduces frame rates a significant amount. dyanmic shadowing would be considered graphics code and not gameplay code, and the testing for how illuminated the player is in the world would simply be a line of sight and distance test just like in T1/T2. I'm assuming that this is also how it's done in tdm (paging dr sparhawk for more information)

Well, those one shot missions tend to be based on the thief world playing as garret (and even if they aren't it's hard to dispell that notion). So in that respect looting makes sense and you could also implement rpg/skill rules in a big and popular setting (ie the main campaign). Where by people will pretty much do the same as with the thief one shot missions and base it on the most official and biggest world. But that said, you are a thief, and the game is entirely engineered around that, so any rpg/skill system would be oriented around that, and where rpgs tend to provide a variety of playstyles you would be limiting the player to a specific play style which would have the result of players choosing the thief stats. I'm an avid rpger, i'm currently in a d&d campaign that has 9 people including the dm (an adventurer army). But i don't like dnd rules system, sure it's the most developed but it is the least thought out and can be quite tricky. The latest editions are better, but it seems the whole system is oriented around getting people to buy books (which we don't really do ). The problem i have with fps games and sword/archery combat where your chances of hitting are determined by random chance is the whole visual aspect. you face the target and swing, the weapon looks completely like it's hitting, but then you hear some dodgy 'your weapon missed' noise. that said there are plenty of areas other than aiming where you can implement rpg style rules, like damage and different attack types. If I were to put rpg style things into TDM i would do it through items. You'd have daggers that would hit for more damage, or bows with a greater draw strength on them allowing more damage and range, or specially made boots that are quieter on hard surfaces like marble. Then offer them in the usual buy your items before mission style format (and if in a campaign make them permanent acquisitions). ohh yeah why don't we have any friggin crossbows?

They do that, thats what pci-e slots greater than 1x are, multiple pci-e links working together to transfer from one point to another. serial is using the minimal number of wires to transfer data. the way the pci-e standard works is that it's a point to point system, data travels along it much like data travels in packets over the internet. Using this system they've been able to solve the co-ordination problem. There's some more problems with parralell that i forgot about. parralell is half duplex, meaning you can only transfer in one direction at a time. this is because you have too many wires to get full duplex transfers going. if you wanted to have a full duplex parralell bus you'd have to double the number of wires. if you already had a 16 bit bus that would mean you'd have to have 32 wires, it just gets too big. But with serial you only need 2 wires for half duplex and 4 for fully duplex. not only that, because you couldn't possibly have enough wiring space to connect each individual regular pci slot up you need to make them share the bus and the bandwidth. pci-e divides up the bandwidth between the slots in fixed amounts, so a 1x couldn't hog the whole system it could use 1x max, 16x could use 16x max. i can't remember the speeds exactly you'd have to look them up but i believe that even a 1x slot has double the bandwidth of a regular pci slot and a 8x has double that of an agp 8x.

there's alot of reasons to go to pci-express. agp is a parralell bus, there are several problems with parralell busses that require extensive amounts of engineering to solve. for instance you need to make sure each trace is exactly the same length or some signals will reach the target faster than others skewing the whole transfer, and this is exaserbated when you up the transfer speed of the bus. also you introduce noise suceptability with parralell traces meaning your speed is further limited. serial has the minimal amount of traces, look at sata vs pata cables now. and because the chip techonology has caught up we can run them at massive frequencies and completely eliminate the problem of only having 4 wires to transfer on. pci express groups it's system into a node based point to point system, so you can split the channels up to provide all sorts of slot speed combinations. and now that there's less traces, motherboard manufacturers can more easily map out the traces between components, this equates to either cheaper boards or more components being placed on board. as for why agp should be ditched? well if we decide to stay with old technology just because it might inconvienience a few people then we would still be AT cases, Parralell IDE, PCI graphics. AGP itself was just a modified PCI slot and there is alot of justification in ditching the standard in favour of PCI-Express.

Seriously a general purpose 'pick object currently highlighted up' button would be best. It could solve a few other things, like how do you drag heavy objects (ie furniture) as opposed to needing to push them all the time. There are already 3 buttons to deal with objects in your inventory, use it, drop it, put it away. Adding pick it up to the list would be far more effective than putting a delay or specific targeting. I don't think it would be any harder than coding a delay timing system, it wouldn't need any tweaking to get the right amount of delay. And if an issue like this in the future arises you've already solved the picking an object up side of it. delay selection on other objects may not be feasible. The only question i would have is, what happens when the only action is to pick it up, can you still use the use object button to pick it up or do you have to use the pick it up button from now on?

Hammer where do we get these vr goggles and gloves? I very much doubt they would be inexpensive While we are comparing penis size computer specs, Dual opteron 252, 4GB ram, 6800GT, on a Tyan K8WE. Why you may ask? the Opteron 940 socket is on it's way out so i can stand to pickup some cheap 265's when they aren't so popular anymore. Also 4gb of ram is absolutely amazing, i can turn off swaping in windows, you wouldn't believe how often windows will hold you up to do some housekeeping. Furthermore even though most applications aren't multi threaded, windows is so you can still reap the multi cpu/core benefit with single threaded applications. To enable 64bit mode on some programs can be as simple as a recompile with certain settings, though games will require a bit more effort on the programmers part to get 64 bit going. I'd say the start of 2007 is where you might see 64bit exclusive games coming out. and farcry had more than some extra content in 64bit mode, they completely removed the fog that hides the backplane culling and extended it out to cover the entire map (you can see further for those who didn't understand that). And has anyone seen that new shakycam farcry tech demo video? pretty cool shit. I'll see if i can find a link.

I remember a similar problem in the hitman games, where objects can have multiple actions to them, they had a little list of actions that would pop up on the screen when you got to an object like that. Usually a door, you had options like open, close, lock, unlock etc... The problem with it was that sometimes it was a little awkward. Another method is that you could have an alternate actions key or button or something like that, perhaps a dedicated button for picking objects up and only picking objects up. Or when you hold down a button like tab it switches from the default action to the alternative action. However this would only solve the problem for objects with 2 or less actions. Could go even further and make loot and other objects require that players do the pick object up button first and then the put object away button. And maybe a dedicated throw object button, outta ammo? got plenty of heavy objects in your backpack? throw em! I've always seen thief as part Tomb Raider so having alot of do-this-action buttons i think would work well. To put out a flame you have to cut off the oxygen, the water doesn't cool a flame down it stops the oxygen getting to it. The thief could easy have a cup like object to put over the torch.

The reasons why i was suggesting that a noise arrow will leave a guard unawares that it was a distraction, is that there's either a magical property to the arrow that has that effect, or some sort of chemical that the guard picks up on and just blindly goes to the source. could also make noise maker arrows make a hell of alot more noise, you shoot it and upon hitting it makes a god awful screeching racket that should get the attention of alot of guards, if you or a guard is close enough, an effect not unlike battlefield 2 where when an explosion happens near by you loose your hearing for a small period of time. Everything would be muffled quite a bit and a high pitched whine over the speakers. Which could be a different arrow all together that works just like i said above, the arrow hits and any guard within a certain radius has an inexplicable attraction to the impact site, and does their best to get to it as quickly as they can. Ombrenuit, its about variety, and they are being designed to add to the game. Not everyone wants to play it like how you do, not everyone can play it that way. I can't play through thief on anything higher than easy, but i don't really want to, I like a challenge but i don't like a rediculous challenge. This is the problem facing game developers now, the 'hardcore' lot want harder and more skill intensive games, ie stuff that rewards them as people who put a huge amount of time into their gaming. But that will scare away the majority of gamers who only play casually, for fun and not for the challenge. The fun comes from using these various arrows, and discovering all sorts of new things in the game world, IMO the thief game was as much about discovering things as it was about sneaking about. Either way the stuff we come up with don't necessarily have to be used, but ideas spawn other ideas and something said here might inspire the team members into coming up with something new.

Do you mean no multiplayer in the missions you will be releasing or no multiplayer supported by the base mod, like for the lightgem or something

What i would have loved to have seen in T3 is the body screaming when it doubles over in the way bodies aren't meant to double over.

In doom 3 and even more disapointingly in quake 4 the bodies disapear in a flash of fire or some green shit once they've been killed. I'm assuming you can stop this from happening, but in doing that will it kick up the rendering requirements?

Well the arrow would be either magical or have some chemical which gives it those properties. I believe the normal settings that were going to be in TDM were if a guard was alerted by a player they would remain alerted, the difference between the rock and the arrow is the arrow will reset their alertness but the rock will just set them off and not give them any closure on the matter. They won't even find the arrow or the rock. Which could be a whole new arrow in itself, the peacemaker, hitting a guard with one will basically render them unawares that you are something to kill, they still know you are there but they won't do anything about you. Until you do something to them and then they retaliate.

My favourite setting would have to be The City, the twisting of the streets and the general crowdedness and make shift nature of it all appeals to me. Breaking into mansions or museums or banks is cool n all but they tend to be the same, the street can have alot of surprises. My favourite setting would be something thats Grand Theft Auto like, the free roaming nature of those games, thats why i liked T3 in some ways. Obviously that would become difficult to do in the doom 3 engine. There used to be a trend to upping the polygons in a scene, surface mapping wasn't used. But this has changed due to animations and the shear effort of having to translate the polygons in real time. There have been several systems for optimising on animations but along with optimisations you have problems. Ragdoll bodies can't really be optimised much. Surface mapping techniques can optimise alot on rendering highly detailed models. dynamic shadowing also takes a performance hit from abundant polygons and the majority of situations detail is just wasted over surface mapping. Considering that the silouette of the shape is what needs to be found and not everything inbetween then when you go to render if the object has alot of polygon detail that can be replaced by surface mapping then the time spent processing those polgons to determine the shadow will be wasted. I believe in Quake 4 they added in lightmaps (or i guess re-added). It's almost the same engine too...

Don't know if you thought of this but alot of people like to leave out modeling or texturing area's the player will never get to, i mean it's plainly obvious how fucking lazy the guys were in thief 3. But it isn't hard to figure out a system that limits the use of a rat camera, how about these: Can only control and recieve uh... telemetry from it if you can see it. While controlling the rat you can't see or hear from your own body only the rats. While normal rats are agile and hard to hit the player is controlling this rat, it wouldn't be a stretch to say the reactions aren't as quick as a normal rat. All a guard need to do is step on it, cats and dogs in those days would earn their food by catching it (so they are good at it). You wouldn't need to bother with a light gem for the rat, make it squeak periodically and just make it easily detected if it gets too close to an npc. Trained rats are expensive, if you loose one you may not be able to replace it. To control the rat you need to 'posess' (for lack of a better word) it, meaning that you can't go back to your normal body unless it comes back to you. If you got a good hidy hole for your real body it isn't an issue, but you won't always get that, also if the rat gets killed you both die. You could use any combination of these to make rat cam's useful but not too useful as to unbalance the whole game. Also oddity, not everyone wants a game that is insanely challenging. Me personally theres only so many reloads i'll tolerate before i'll just either give up or cheat to get past that point. So dismissing any gameplay ideas based on how easy it will make it for the player doesn't seem right at all to me. And the other thing to remember is all new ideas and innovations will unbalance a system, a bad developer won't bring the balance back into check, a good developer will incorporate the idea and keep things balanced.

The time spent on making very fancy and realistic objects IMO would be best spent on stuff the player interacts with, like giving the player a pair of pliers or cutters that he can use on objects, like a rope holding up a chandelier. But the realism doesn't have to end there, with things like doors you could make them so that the player can force the locks but making an awful racket in the process.

I'm not sure how the doom 3 engine works, but i'm wondering about how other mission makers will go about adding in their own weapons. If the system is too awkward for the end user then people will certainly be avoiding mods that try to add their own creativity to the system. Don't know what you are doing about it but i've got ideas if you want to hear them. It would be cool to see simple rocks you can throw, obviously with the intention of getting the attention of guards. obviously this would make the noise arrow pointless, but if you made it so that the rocks aren't a sure thing and they are more likely to remain on alert after that (ie they know you threw a rock to distract them). And make the arrows guaranteed to attract a guards attention and once they can't find what they are looking for they go back to their posts like nothing happened. Obviously you can't pick a noise arrow up again but you have an unlimited number of small rocks. The idea being that throwing a rock could fuck you over, but you may not have much option if a guard is bearing down on you. And how about just for some atmosphere in the world someone sells fake magical arrows (ie fire arrows that aren't really fire arrows) the player goes to use them but they behave like normal arrows. Obviously the player could go back and confront or just steal his money back or something. Traps, and tricks on the player or the player on the guards would also be nice, the mines count as a trap, but there should be a bit more variety.

The biggest problem I've had with implementations of physics or object movement in games is that everything seems WAY too light (ie not enough inertia and friction). They can be moved about way too easily. In deus ex you could push couches about very easily and in invisible war barrels could move like hockey pucks. I don't know if this was a problem with the physics engine or the data it was working with but I felt it detracted from the mood and feel of the game. One of those immersion breakers that i hate so much. I guess it's a different situation with the dark mod because it's a toolset, and because it can be easily updated with better physics.

From what i remembered this was both a project to create a toolset and a set of missions, are you refering to both parts, or just one of them? Also if you guys think that progress is impaired by either a lack of programmers or having to sit there and debug a lot of shit, perhaps it's a good idea to come up with a prototype that everyone can download (even if it only does a few minor things) along with code so people can help bugtest and fix. Getting out a prototype early so that people can poke holes through stuff early is a good way of keeping on track, but you don't necessarily have to disclose the full source code or disclose any changes as a result of the prototype until the next prototype. So in effect it has the benefits of open source and of keeping tight control of the code.

why do we have to climb vertically? and why can't we swing? i would love to see i'd like to see things like flying foxes, or ropes that are at an angle and fixed at both ends so the thief has to crawl across it. and what about grapling hooks the thief can throw? *Dopefishhh runs back to the shadows after sneak attacking with a few ideas

yeah i supose, i was just thinking of the fact that it being so dark alot of the time you wouldn't get it's benefits as often. though i suppose for such a game the effect would be nothing short of spectacular. what worries me is that i read somewhere that you could not get any sort of anti aliasing on a frame if you use HDR rendering. though i'm probably wrong there. does anyone know about a HDR conversion project for doom 3? i spose the engine would need to become open source before that happens. if one springs up it might be beneficial for the team to offer up their support for it early.

I'd agree with the making it your own game as something unique from thief. IMO thief did well on the first impression but then failed after that, and it was mostly the little things that triped it up, like the lack of interaction, stupid limitations (like exploration restrictions), graphically poor (painted on windows and doors anyone?), or generally silly things. and to be critical of looking glass/ion storm, they never really put the polish on their games, it looked acceptable for marketing/screenshots but after that you didn't have much to apreciate in it. i guess that was eidos's doing now when it comes down to magic i think it could be done REALLY well in thief. magic could be outlawed in the world, with the occasional trial for practicing magic, however only the stupid ones or the weak ones are put on trial for practicing magic because anyone who has real talent belongs to some mages guild or is too friggin dangerous to try to prosecute, but they can of course be killed. thus magic would be rare obviously, but you could get away with it in places like mage towers, underground caves, dungeons, crypts etc... where no one from the general populace can see and report it. furthermore, magic would try to be subtle, doing it's best to avoid the attention of someone (though obviously some examples will break with this theme, ie faery fire). so for a magical ever burning torch the flame might look exactly like a normal flame, however it never stops burning, if you try to put it out, it sputters a bit and then flares up again to the surprise of the player. when you get to situations like a tomb and the fires are still burning, they have an eerie colour to them making it all the more spooky. on the matter of the crystal arrows, they are definately magical, if you have problems with other magical items then the arrows will fall into the same category. i think the key is to not avoid magic altogether as an excuse but to spend alot of time defining it in the world, in a thief world magic would be obscure, known only by a few and subject to alot of rumour, stories, lies and is viewed as criminal by some. if you went to define a system that both restricted it's use but justified it's existance then when someone sees a torch burning despite the conditions they will oh and ah at it rather than say "well thats a cop out isn't it". BTW i ran a DnD campaign based on the thief world, i kinda stuffed it up by not planning it properly. But basically i used the DnD rules and said that the highest level character around is about level 10 (the trickster or victoria probably) and everyone averages a level of 2. The world doesn't have many magical items due to the distinct lack of high level mages or clerics (i made clerics and paladins hammerites, the druids and rangers were the pagans). The system worked for the most part, but yeah being the first time I DM'ed a game I didn't prepare properly and it fell apart :S

well assuming that you could figure out code to check silouettes you could use a line of sight check to optimise it's usage. but there's another problem of that once you go the silouette route the light gem doesn't represent enough information. because you might be in darkness but when contrasted you can be seen easily. but the contrast will depend on a guards perspective, so how do you represent perspective based contrast? could modify the brightness of the gem as to indicate that you are contrasting, the more you contrast and the more directions you contrast in the brighter it gets. or you could simply ignore it and require the player remember the bright spots around him and avoid contrasting. oo, nightmare mode: no light gem

I did a search for it and it would seem that it hasn't been discussed! Anyway does anyone know if anyone has HDR going on the doom 3 engine? And if they did is it too much trouble to get it implemented in the dark mod? I like it's look, but i don't think it would be used heavily in a dark game like doom/thief. for those who don't know what HDR is, it's my understanding that it emulates a persons vision more by adjusting lighting of objects by the lighting of other objects. if the camera has a bright light in view and an object that is in shade, the shaded object seems much darker because of the pupils shrinking to stop so much light coming in and thus the dark objects darken. if the camera moves to a dimmer area it will adjust slowly and everything becomes more visible, again like pupils. This would come into effect in area's with bright lights, the sun (which i guess is also a bright light) and when ever the player forgets to look away from a flashbomb.

I'm assuming that you are taking the thief route of visibility where, contrast is ignored and current player illumination is the deciding factor.