thestemmer

One shooter I really did like was Aliens vs. Predator 2--more atmospheric than most shooters, and it did manage to keep half a brain in its head (half a brain). There were some spectacularly tense action sequences that I haven't seen replicated in a game since, and the designers really managed to do the most with the engine they had.

Alright, sorry for starting a new thread, but the old one was getting kind of clogged and off-topic. I have a different question now, this time about movement options. I'm going call into attention the game Metal Gear Solid 2 (blaphsemy!) for a moment. Now, I didn't love the Metal Gear games--in fact, I never finished them--but one of the they had a few neat bells and whistles that I enjoyed a lot. For one, you could crawl, enabling the player to hide in small spaces, like under tables or other low objects. I also liked the fact that you could "tap" on a wall to get a guard's attention, although they did tend to forget about you rather quickly after that. The ability to hang over ledges was kind of neat, too, if not particularly realistic. So, are you considering implementing any of these features into your finished product? Or, maybe a better question, might any of these even be possible using the D3 engine? I hope you guys (that is, "the team") doesn't mind that I'm pumping you for information--I'm just really excited about this mod and eager to see how it turns out.

Hey! You hided the files in a forum I can't see. Meanies. Everything has to be a secret, doesn't it?

Yeah, and another problem is that a big part of pickpocketing is misdirection, which doesn't translate well into a Thief-style game where your biggest priority is not being seen. Honestly I wouldn't think it an important enough part of the game experience to warrant a huge overhaul.

Doesn't look like oDDity is biting...

It sounds like you guys have all your bases covered. Somebody said not to get Oddity started on pickpocketing, though. So hey, Oddity, what do you think about pickpocketing? Maybe I can squeeze one more bit of information out of the team before you get tired of me... :lol:

That's very true. Come to think of it, it probably isn't going to be easy to teach all of the voice actors to speak in Celtic accents, either. That's quite a sticky problem in itself.

Don't get me wrong, I hated the way the Pagans sounded in-game. But I thought that some of the Pagan snippets of poety in-beween levels were quite beautiful sounding. Consider the following from TMA: Sings we a dances of wolfs, who smells fear and slays the coward. Sings we a dances of mans, who smells gold and slays his brother. I don't think that sounds "cartoony" at all. You have some sentence inversion there, some of that arbitrary pluralization of words, but to me it feels perfectly natural instead of forced and awkward like in the voice acting. But hey, I don't mean to complain, it's you're project, and whatever decision you make will turn out great, I'm sure. Just offering my 2 cents.

Er...well, that's all well and good, I'm sure the speech will be very authentic, but...hopefully...they'll speak English? Just making sure... On a related note, you said that you don't want them to be like "tree hugging gollums," but are you planning on keeping any aspects of the Pagan dialect as seen in the flavor texts, like their loose sentence contruction, mixing of pronouns (eg., "a house of they rotting skins," "saw we them man o' moon faces), adding "s" to the end of certain verbs, and altering others (not every word, mind you, like they did in the voice acting), things like that? As somebody who's interested in language, I appreciated some of these little linguistic variations, as long as they weren't over-done. I'd hate to see them totally disposed of. Edit: How do you get the damn italics to work correctly?

OK, while this thread is still active, let me pose one more question. How is this mod going to handle pickpocketing and lockpicking? Unless it's a secret. Domarius--honestly I have no programming experience, so don't pretend like I have any what I'm talking about. I was just trying to throw out some examples of what I meant by "interaction with the environment." When I said curtains, I didn't mean to suggest actual cloth simulation, but maybe a something the player could open or close using a short animation. But I'm being stupid, you could probably do that in Dromed if you felt like it. So feel free to ignore me please. Edit: Ooh, I just read that the D3 engine doesn't support lip-synching. Do I have that right? Not a serious drawback I guess, but it's still a shame. Still, less work for the animators, I suppose!

You know, for a pun, that was actually very funny (That doesn't mean puns are OK, though).

Gnarly.

Hey, thanks for responding so quick, NewHorizon! I think some governments could use public relations people like you. Hey, if you REALLY want to make me happy, maybe you could release a screenie of a Pagan model? If you have any done, that is. Pweez? Pretty pweez?

Let me start by telling you that The Dark Mod is the most impressive mod project I've ever seen for a game. And I'm not just saying that because I'm a huge Thief fan who's eager to relive the good old days (even though I am)--it's the artwork and models that I'm talking about. They're good, I mean jaw-droppingly, shit-your-pants, bang-your-head-against-the-side-of-the-wall good. You better watch out that Eidos doesn't try to sue for copyright infringement and snatch them away from you so they can make their own game. And for the people doing the maps, sounds, animations, etc., obviously can't see your work yet, but I expect it will be equally amazing. It really looks like you folks are keeping true to the spirit of the series while innovating where it matters. Now that I've gotten that out of my system... A few questions for all of you: 1. I was never impressed with the Dark or Unreal engine's ability to render "organic" environments such as caverns, forests, countryside, etc. I think that map-makers have tried their best, but the engines never seemed ready to handle it. Do you think that the D3 engine will be better for making more natural environments? And if so, do you plan to include any of these in your campaign? 2. Another thing that disappointed me about the Thief games were the Pagans. Maybe I'm taking issue with the series here, but in the levels themselves they always came across as silly instead of threatening to me. That's unfortunate, because I think they're one of the series' most interesting factions--the flavor text about them was always interesting, and the Pagan cutscene in T3 was downright chilling! Anyway, how do you think the Pagans will be handled in The Dark Mod? It's kind of a broad question, I know, but I haven't seen any models of them yet and I can't have any idea what they'll sound like. 3. Are you looking at implementing an "interactive" environment? That is, will you be able to do things like pulling down curtains, barricading doors with heavy objects, locking guards in rooms, taking torches off walls, etc.? 4. Guards climbing ladders? 5. Have any idea about the system requirements? Thanks for enduring such a long post, and keep at it! We're cheering for you!