Gildoran

If I were to implement it, I'd just add a cheat cvar to disable it. Players who don't like it could easily disable it, but it would send a clear message that turning off save restrictions is not the standard way to play the game.

I still don't think that's a sufficient argument against save-restricted systems, since a good system would probably be able to take that into account and design around it...

I've seen models for at least one pagan, but I don't know if she's rigged or animated. There's a good chance the first release will only have a minimal set of necessary characters (some guards, citywatch, nobles and servants), as we don't have enough artists in the area of character modelers/animators. Of course, future versions of TDM can add in any characters that are missing in the first release. I have no idea... the standard line is "in a couple of years" or "it's done when it's done". There's a lot of work going on behind the scenes and TDM is steadily progressing, but there's still much to be finished, and it's hard to predict when we'll have it done by. Yes, we're still accepting beta-mappers, and I doubt we'll stop accepting them anytime soon. Anybody should feel free to apply to become a beta-mapper.

Yeah... I don't know how to use modeling software, so all of the textures I've done were made in gimp with the normalmap plugin.

I think the wikipedia page about externalities explains it better than I can... an externality is a consequence of a decision which isn't fully applied to the decision-maker. Classic examples are pollution or public services. To use the example of pollution, it has both benefits and costs... the benefit is that it allows you to produce more goods per resources consumed, and the cost is to the health of society and the environment. However - and this is the important point - when a business pollutes, it doesn't bear the full costs of the pollution... the costs are spread out amongst everybody in society. This makes the cost of pollution appear artificially low to the business, so they'll pollute far more than what's optimal. If you can make sure that the full costs of pollution are also imposed on the decision-makers (eg by a pollution tax), then they can correctly decide how much to invest in pollution-reduction technology. Public services are sort of the reverse - they benefit everybody, but it's hard to limit their benefit to those who pay for them, so people will tend to choose to be free-riders (gaining the benefits but not paying the costs)... because the benefits appears artificially low to decision makers, public services will be under-produced in a free market, so you need some intervention to get them produced at the optimal level. I've heard this argument numerous times from people I know, though I don't much buy it, because:Reason (a) wasn't always the case - Walmart became the only store left because people stopped shopping at local stores without considering the consequences. If reason ( is true, what were people doing before Walmart came to town? I'd be tempted to have a more direct democracy instead of involuntary representation. (though individuals could choose to have their votes default to those of any representative they choose) When only a few individuals have enormous decision making power as in congress, it's easy to corrupt them... It's more tricky to corrupt an entire society. Then again, if you could corrupt the voting system for a direct democracy...

I was trying to make a fireplace but I couldn't find a set of irregular stones and bricks that went together, so I've added a set of textures... stone/floor/masonry_001, stone/floor/masonry_001_brick, and stone/floor/masonry_001_pillar. They all were created using the same method and source images, so their styles should be similar. The first is a bunch of irregular stones, the next is a brick texture, and the last is used for wrapping around blocks, so you can seamlessly texture the sides of arches and such. PS, perlin noise is great for generating normalmaps for rough stones!

That's great! Are they aware that once TDM is released, anybody will be allowed to use our assets (including their footstep sounds) as long as their project is completely open-source and they share their assets?

It depends on how well you can ensure the short-term happiness of an individual works in favor of the community... if things like externalities exist to a large extent, then they can prevent that from working. If you can successfully mitigate externalities, then the easiest way for an individual to maximize their happiness becomes helping out the community. However, it's also important for people to carefully choose where they buy things from... With a democracy, if you have apathetic/lazy citizens who don't vote or don't carefully look at candidates or are easily swayed by advertising, you lose whatever chance you (might have) had for the democracy to work to the benefit of its citizens. Likewise, with a capitalist economy, if you have apathetic/lazy citizens who don't carefully look at the companies they buy from or are easily swayed by advertising, you lose whatever chance you (might have) had for the economy to work to the benefit of its citizens. But I think a properly functioning democracy is worth striving for, and so is a properly functioning capitalist economy. In any case, the USA's economy isn't capitalist, because it has too many restrictions that inhibit competition, making it easy for companies to gain monopolies and exploit markets. And yet it it isn't socialist, because it has too few restrictions to effectively help and protect people. I think it has the disadvantages of both capitalism and socialism, without being able to obtain much of the benefits of either.

Yeah that critique is well known and was also mentioned in the courses I took... Even economists from the turn of the century were aware of it... For example, Thorstein Veblen (who coined the phrase "conspicuous consumption") created models for certain kinds of behavior outside of what appears to be rational. (eg, Veblen goods are ones that people only want if they cost a lot - Guchi handbags are an example) I would agree with that. Externalities can skew markets towards sub-optimal solutions, and need to be fixed if you want businesses to behave properly. In other words, businesses are much more likely to behave in the interests of the community if you can ensure that their monetary costs match their social ones. A significant tax on pollution would be an example of this. Usually economists try to translate non-monetary benefits/costs into monetary benefits/costs because it's far easier to compare numbers than vague concepts. Of course, coming up with a dollar amount for how aesthetically pleasing a building is, or how much suffering somebody went through is very subjective.

My preference is for the Rat Pro arrow... twice the rats for the same price!

If you think economics is only about monetary costs, I suspect you haven't ever taken an economics course... It's no coincidence that John Stuart Mill (an economist) came up with the "greatest happiness for the greatest number of people" principle of utilitarianism. In any case, economic theory suggests that monopolies are sub-optimal. But people in power tend to engage in corporate/industry protectionism instead of listening to economists on policy matters other than things like interest rates. Heh, nobody I know here (in America) likes or trusts corporations or government, though news agencies suggest that the general public trusts the government.

If it keeps on happening all the time, why do people keep on falling for it? I have problems with communities who give unfair advantages (such as tax breaks) to large businesses to encourage them to move in. But aside from that I think consumers are partly to blame when businesses are able to squash competition... if you mindlessly seek out the lowest prices, without regard to the nature of the business you're buying from, you allow yourself and others to be enslaved. If people act like mindless sheep, is it so surprising that businesses treat them as such? Don't get me wrong... I don't like businesses such as Walmart... I'm just saying lack of diligence on the part of the average citizen plays a role too. Anybody who expects CEOs to pay employees a living wage out of altruism knows nothing of human nature.

If you still shop there after seeing that, then you're part of the problem. If businesses that pulled that kind of shit quickly lost all their customers, they'd be forced to learn or go bankrupt.

Wow... looks creepy. Kind of reminds me of valonia or ventricaria algae, if they were to have roots. It also reminds me of the Thief cutscene with the wine that sprouted tendrils.

This probably isn't relevant towards most types of sounds, but there is a distinction between the two formats... According to the id sdk site, ogg files shouldn't be used to shake the screen.

I haven't done any testing to confirm this, but a quick glance at the menu suggests the following: The named event "PlayIntro" is called if the intro movie should be played. (eg, the menu is loaded from a normal game) The named event "NoIntro" is called if the intro movie should not be played. (eg, the menu is loaded from the editor) The gui parameter "gui::inGame" is non-zero if and only if a level is loaded.

Would you like me to try to figure out how they tell whether the menu is being loaded from within the game?

I was thinking that modeling and animating a skeletal corpse infested with worms sounds like a difficult project. If you design the model with the same set of animations as another AI (such as a revenant), I think you could just swap out the model/sounds. Being able to move underground and implementing smothering things with worms would require coding that I think would be non-trivial.

Sounds difficult... It's not possible to embed models in a texture, unless the texture is a camera or gui, in which case it won't interact with lighting. However, I highly recommend playing D3 for inspiration... they had some great squirming bloody cancer-tentacles, with slowly scrolling textures that really brought them alive. You'd probably want to combine something like that with an alpha-test mask shaped like a mass of worms. Perhaps it'd look even better if you could have the alpha-test scroll at a slightly different speed from the diffusemap. (but I'm not 100% sure if that last idea is possible)

Yeah, I'm talking about all models that have a specific direction: statues, cabinets, bookshelves, etc. Doom 3 assumes that models face east (0 degrees) by default, so if modelers could make such models face east, it would be more convenient for mappers who like to use the 8 directional buttons. For example, try putting models/darkmod/props/furniture/commode.lwo into a map as a func_static. If you press the 270 (south) button, it instead faces west. In order to get it to face the direction you want, you either have to spend some time thinking about which button to press, or try them all. It's inconvenient. It would be easier for mappers if they could just press the south button and the model would face south.

Whenever I'm using models in a map, it drives me nuts when I use the entity direction buttons to have a model face south, and it instead faces west, and I end up having to try out a few buttons to figure out how to get the model to face the direction I want. (assuming I don't want to use free rotation) It'd be nice if the entity direction buttons worked correctly for our models. Is there any chance of making a rule that says all new models need to face east, so the direction buttons work correctly?

Judging from the website, it looks as though the author is doing closed beta testing, and didn't intend for the URL to be leaked...

I think it's so that it looks as though the AI has a consistent aiming direction like a human would. (e.g. if you were to hold down the trigger of a machine gun, the bullets wouldn't just fly in random directions - they'd form a continuous arc as you correct your aim)

I've just added a weathered variation of beam_002, and endcaps for both the new and weathered versions.

Alley Concept added.