Schatten

I like the design, and the stone/metal combo too. The reason it looks a bit strange at the moment is probably because the gear is seamlessly merged with the hammer, so it looks like two different models stuck into each other. It should look better if you make indications of holes where the gear enters the hammer, so you get a feeling that the gear is actually worked into the stone.

We released some examples a while ago. You can grab them here if you're interested. (26Mb)

To get a bit back on topic, I'd rule out ramped difficulty for a stealth game. I have two apps in which it works quite well. The first is a vertical shooter in which the enemies get progressivly bigger and tougher. The second is a beat 'em up in which the CPU gets faster and more aggressive. Translated to a stealth game it would mean that the AI would get more sensitive to acoustic or visual clues as the player progresses, and maybe tougher to neutralize as well. However, how would the program know that an adequate difficulty has been found for a player? Only when the player fails. In the two above examples, it doesn't bother you because that brand of games doesn't need a conclusion. You happily accept that the space invaders drop down forever and the ghosts will chase you eternaly through that damned maze. As soon as story is involved, things change. To find the point in which difficulty is engaging and failure is something to edge you on instead of frustrating is hard - a ramped difficulty would likely cross the line, because to keep the challenge it gets harder and only stops on failure of the player. I really have no idea what a good dynamic difficulty system for a story driven game would be, except a human mediator - and even a good GM often fails to engage all of his/her players equally.

2b||!2b? Dooby Dooby Doo! -Sinatra

Oh shi, busted! It's a filtered bell sound, but you're right, it sounds suspiciously like ding.wav!

Thanks Sax, but as I said, I know the loop is seamless. The pop isn't in the actual waveform - it's created either by the encoding or decoding to IMA ADPCM. Maybe I just need better codecs. 15 tracks, wow... I maybe used 5 or so. Good ol' reversed echo. Your whispers are better filtered though, I need to work on that. Ok, here's a new one that might be a bit too melodious for an ambient, but maybe it's usable for a cutscene or so: http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/audio/amb...mb_nocturne.ogg Disclaimer: I am not Chopin :/ Edit: Made a Musicbox version http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/audio/amb...ne_musicbox.ogg

Unfortunately, it's not that easy. (This is for the Thief2 FM versions of these ambients, btw). For one, I don't have an editor that can edit IMA ADPCM waves directly, so I edit the waveform in PCM. Second, if I had an editor and would view the waveform in the editor, the pop would not be visible - never mind that though, because I know it occurs when the wave loops. The loop is seamless, I checked the hexadecimal values for the compressed file. My guess is that the pop is a problem with the decoder, similar to how DivX only can encode videos of certain screen formats. When the file is not with in a certain byte resolution, it happens. However, I didn't find anything to justify that theory yet.

Glad you like it, guys! A mapper inspired by an ambient I made is always the best compliment for me.

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/audio/amb...mb_whispers.ogg 'nother one. If you think looping PCM wavs is hard try looping IMA ADPCM wavs without pop. It's a fucking nightmare, that's what it is. I figured out it depends on the file size somehow, I even tried to hexedit the bastard to get that MOTHERFUCKING POP OUT!! Gah! Sorry, needed to vent..

Boy, I didn't know how right I was there!

There was one day here when a lot of baby spiders grabbed a length of spider silk and sailed away to new lands - I was taking a walk and there were so many spiders in the air that it felt like walking through one giant spider web.

Don't know about the Aussie brand of hornets, but the ones we've got here are very peacefull sports. And they eat away the wasps, too. Actually, pretty much all buzzing black-yellow things here are rather timid. We've got a wasp hive the size of a football right infront of our bathroom window, they don't even mind when we sprinkle the garden - and wasps have usually the shortest temper of the stingy insects around here. Thankfully we don't have yellow-jackets.

Are you planning on finaly creating the Alarus Extention, complete with bow-upgrade?

Ah, I see. I wasn't aware of that thread, hence my confusion about 'ProjectX'. I thought Springheel was about to release winged monkeys or something.

True, but this would only apply if Knecht would stand alone. It's an old word for a hired hand, usually used for servants that lived with and worked for a family, mostly for the length of the harvest season. So "farm labourer" is kinda the default meaning, but you can put a profession to it (like "weaver" or "smith"). You're right though that both names are close in that regard. Thanks. English is such a specific language... you have so many words for different types of the same kind of something.

I didn't use that smilie!!! ...and I'm totaly not getting what you are trying to say, ascottk. Sorry, it's late, I'm a bit tipsy and my brain has switched to lurk mode in which it denies to compute anything more sublime than a brick into the face.

Hehe, the german nickname for Opiliones is "Weberknecht", (roughly) meaning "weaver-menial", which is quite confusing, seeing as they don't have any silk glands. I can't imagine how they earned the "Harvestmen" nickname in english though. Edit: also, when do you use "cobweb" instead of "spiderweb"?

Thanks guys. I'm trying my best to woo Vigil and Morrgan into joining up, and it seems I may succeed, too.

Yeah. I'm pretty sure she came with the plant, never seen one here either. We have a lot of Cross Spiders and the odd Wasp Spider as far as orbies go. Unskilledlaborer: That is one beautiful picture!

Eek! A.. fractal... blob..... .... I guess o_O

Nice! Did you need special camera objectives for those? A friend discovered an orb weaver I want to ID in a flower pot, and I would like to take some pictures. Very small (3-4mm), white brown, abdomen with two humps and keeps her legs in pairs of two, I guess it might be a Gea, but I'm not sure. One pair of legs has strange upper segments, very distinctive looking.

I've actually wondered about that a while: OrbWeaver's avatar spider looks more like a tegenaria... which is a funnel web spider.

Morrgan asked me for some ambients for her new mission. Here are the high quality versions of the two I made so far: http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/audio/amb...mb_spectral.ogg http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/audio/amb...mb_sleeping.ogg Again, if anybody thinks they shouldn't be used for the mod because they were released earlier in low quality, say so. I'll ask Morrgan to include a link to the DarkMod website in the FM readme, so people will know where to expect more of those ambients. Dram: I'll see if I can make it loop.

Schadenfreude is the noun, schadenfroh the adjective. Schatten is simply "shadow" in german. I go under Schattentänzer on TTLG (shadow-dancer), which was too long for IRC so I trimmed it down. The pseudonym I use as a musician (Voidshaper) is meant to capture the act of creativeness of any kind, ie morphing neural activity into something tangible in form of art.

With access to the source, you could write your own AI if you don't like the default one. That is, if you can. Ok, seriously now: What you'll able to tweak easily are constants that determine characteristicts of the AI, such as health, walking speed, maybe search acuracy, alertness and so on. I'm not really the right person to ask, because all I'm doing is making pretty ambients and obnoxious comments in the Team forums.