Melan

Thanks for your comments, Ishtvan! Neither of those; I am sure someone will guess the mission reference after a while.

There is a player shadow! Very interesting. I am not done yet; couldn't get into every place and way way way too low on loot. Tomorrow, perhaps. Helluva impressive effort for five weeks. WRT hardware, if we are talking in analogies, I suppose someone could build Calendra's Cistern without a huge hardware hit (except a long load time), but not Calendra's Legacy; lots of detail work and eye candy as long as areas stay separated through some method. If that makes sense. My FPS was awesome in this map, but then I had a decent one in my own. The only thing that bothers me is some green artifacts showing up on brush faces and (likely) visportals); this is not a mission-specific bug though since I also get it elsewhere.

A new FM! Congrats! I think I will just set my current tasks aside for a bit, grab a cup of oolong and get taffing.

And the label "Team Member" has mysteriously appeared under J.C. Denton's name. Great!

While we are on the topic of Pepys, I might as well throw in the English Broadside Ballad Archive here. I discovered it while searching for images I may later turn into decal posters in some later mission. Enjoy.

Actually: Creating Large Areas

It is not just right, but very welcome! That's a great book, and I almost want to turn this topic into an object request thread. Just take a look at these beauties: Window-catch, Brockhall, Northants Gothic Chimney, Somerset And who wouldn't be inspired by the George Inn, Oxon: ...or the town hall of Shrewsbury: Helluva recommendation!

Midnight: I will recommend a very recent post in this topic. The first book _Atti_ links to is not just chock full of great imagery, but contains some inspiring reading material as well.

Springheel - no objections.

I usually follow these very rough naming conventions: 1) Common folks, especially lowlifes and thieves: 19th century British, sometimes from Dickens of all places; usually short and undistinguished (e.g. "Binnes", "Sykes", "Dogsley", "Latram", "Leadenhall", "Tarquis") 2) Nobility: Norman nobility, occasionally Latin, with some Arabic and Near Eastern influence in the older families - hint of Crusades or the equivalent? (e.g. "Quintus", "Beaurigard", "Eventroit", "Alraune") 3) Wealthy merchants: common names, but often with slight changes or embellishment to suggest connections to nobility or descent from old money (e.g. "Iacobus Willen", "Messer Johannes") 4) Builders: trade names, common Italian and French influence, occasionally Latin or latinised ("Cartwright", "Marcel" ["Marcellus"], "Casagave", "Guillave", "Tellis", "Ignatius") 5) Magi: Near Eastern and Persian, a suggestion of exoticism ("Scarmengades") Of course, this is a personal vision and shouldn't be taken for holy writ. The sources are problematic; I always have trouble coming up with names that sound "right". I tend to succeed in the end, but it's hard work.

bambini: 1) turn your brush or brush combo into func_static 2) select it 3) bring up the Create entity dialogue while the func_static is selected 4) find the class you are looking for 5) your brush will now belong to the selected entity class (however, this means you won't be able to resize it without reverting back to worldspawn)

Baddcog, have you made further progress with this map?

That is utterly beautiful! There seem to be some slight graphical glitches on Shot062 and Shot064 - the metal bits on the two towers look off. Otherwise, these are some exciting possibilities for TDM players. [edit]Would I be able to enjoy this if I installed it on my doom3 install and loaded TDM?

Do I understand correctly that SSBump can be used to make good normalmaps relatively easily and without too much hassle? I toyed around with making new normals for my textures in GIMP, and it was very time-consuming to do it semi-manually (with hand-drawn "masks" to create the main heights).

Crispy: many of the blanket paragraphs publishers put into their EULAs would be absolutely unenforceable in a serious court. Coincidentally, this is one of the main reasons publishers usually don't try to enforce them. (The other is that in almost all cases, doing it would be a serious waste of lawyer time and money, which doesn't come cheap.)

stumpy: No, that's very unlikely. Just consider, if I, as a mapper, used textures from Return to Castle Wolfenstein in T2, that wouldn't make Eidos own them even if RtCW's copyright holders allowed the use of their assets outside their game (which they almost certainly don't, mind you).

Yes, we are talking shop about a revision already. It looks like there are some changes that may produce better framerate with some work. Obviously, it will take some time to get everything in place, but hopefully the final experience will be smoother. Goldchocobo: oh. My screen can't even do 1680x1050; the best I can get to is 1280x1024. Tuning down to 1680x1050? I have no idea about the crashes, though. There were some that came up during beta, and that was solved by removing two visportals and fine-tuning a few others.

Goldchocobo: hm, here is an idea... How much RAM and what kind of graphic card do you have? I get unbearable chop on my laptop, and that's mainly due to the lack of memory, I think.

hykao: (Az ékezeteket valószínűleg meg lehet oldani valahogy; a Doom3 aránylag könnyen módosítható, és innen letölthető egy fordítás ékezetekkel. A fordításban viszont sajnos munka mellett nem tudok segíteni, valaki másnak kell rá vállalkoznia.)

Now that I was freeof my own FM, I replayed this one, and I must say, it is even better than the first time. I finally found some of the clever loot caches I missed the first time. Impressive,

You definitely should vote, according to what the mission is now. An update may happen, but to be fair, only after the contest.

I think this is an important lesson for TDM editors, and Carnage shouldn't take the blame for it. The problem, as I see it, goes back to two issues: 1) A detailed TDM environment will by default be more visually rich than a TDP/TMA one. In Thief, when you parse the environment, a similar puzzle would be That is already harder, but you can add the additional visual complexity (fine details, normalmaps, whatever), and you may miss the clue in the rich background. 2) Objects in Thief were often distinct and iconic. Objects in TDM are more realistic, meaning they typically also stand out less. This is especially true for keys - bright, large objects in Thief; dull, small objects in The Dark Mod. I think, for the time being, the implications are: 1) Secrets should be use much more carefully, probably with more visual clues to draw the player's attention (e.g. muddy footprints, dust, a lost object or a "scratch" decal at the base of a secret door to simulate grooves, like in JOtto's recent mission for the Vertical Contest). 2) An "auto search bodies" should be implemented for a future build of TDM. (Sorry for the feature request, I am sure you get enough of those. )

I have fixed the Builders issue for now and updated the first two links. Please propagate these changes into the others if you can. Someone else will have to help me with the visportals; they have already been heavily revised several times, and the alternatives either a) were worse (with minute-long freezing on some occasions), would have needed a thorough rebuild, c) obstructed rooftop views in a displeasing way. I can give access to the testing forum at Shalebridge if there are takers. For the time being and the contest, I will live with the poor performance and accept its effect on the scores.

New Horizon: all right, I will get to work on it. I may get it done today, but I can't make promises. Sneaky Jack: damn!

Tels, I do recall a mention of "Hammers" elsewhere in some other mission, but I can change the references tomorrow if you wish (it will take some time to make sure the readables don't get messed up). I thought that, like "the Lord Builder" and such, was an acceptable colloquialism.