OrbWeaver

Because we don't have access to the renderer until Doom 3 is open-sourced, which will be a couple of years at least. What you are describing is basically streaming LOD (Level of Detail) which would require a major rewrite of the scene processing code.

It wouldn't be illegal to create an FM that just used the names, as long as you didn't try to cross-import any Thief series assets into the mission. Mere names are not substantial enough to be protected by copyright, they have to be trademarked which requires registration and a fee - something Eidos almost certainly haven't done with "Keeper" or "Garrett".

It is true in some places - one of the things I often hear from people who have visited "poor" countries is how friendly and relaxed the people are, compared to western countries where they are stressed out trying to hold down their jobs and "get ahead". Fortunately in the EU there is an absolute maximum of 48 hours per week set out by law, unless you "opt out". If anybody asked me to work 60 hours a week (or even an extra hour for free) I would just laugh in their face.

Of course it has. Even a professional musician has good days and bad days, and with a number of skilled musicians involved, having a bad day while your opponent has a good day could make the difference between winning or losing.

The only difference between Constantine's sword and the regular sword was that Constantine's did not have a visibility penalty when it was drawn. Much as I would have loved a zombie-killer, it had no extra killing powers whatsoever.

Not only that, but 1) You can't just walk out and change jobs because you don't really like what you are doing, if you have bills to pay and you don't know how easy it will be to find another job (which might end up being just as bad if not worse). 2) Most people can't do the things they enjoy doing professionally, due to lack of demand or just lack of skill. I would enjoy doing level design all day but there aren't enough jobs that require this, too many people who want to do it and most of them are better than me. 3) Many of the enjoyable things that CAN be done professionally either don't pay very much or are unstable and have no job security or guaranteed income (such as being a musician).

If I were a multimillionaire I would do just that. Unfortunately most of us are not multimillionaires, and have to indulge in the aformentioned drudgework in order to feed and clothe ourselves.

I never found looking at other people's maps to be particularly instructive, as it usually involves being faced with a totally incomprehensible mishmash of brushes and objects with no easy way of discovering how each part was built. I find it easier to work up from the basics by following a tutorial and experimenting. What I have found useful is using the r_showSurfaceInfo cvar while playtesting, which allows you to point at something an immediately see what model it is and what texture is applied. You can then look up the model in a 3D app if desired, examine the individual textures or whatever.

Society should concentrate on improving the quality of the years we have, not trying to endlessly extend them. When you spend 5 days out of 7 in an office just to make enough money to stay alive, what the hell do you have to gain from a longer life?

No thanks. Isn't 80 years of pointless daily routine and endless busywork enough for these people?

Don't worry about it. You will never have to concern yourself with matrix transformations when using Radiant for ordinary editing.

That's not an issue with style, it's an issue with quality. It goes without saying that several mappers working on a project must all have a similar level of competence at mapping otherwise the end result will be very patchy.

Who said it's not possible? It IS possible as far as I know, you just have to edit three values rather than 1 (to scale in X, Y and Z respectively).

I don't think you SHOULD be able to do this - I always found it ridiculous in Thief when you were in a completely dark room but could pick up and read a book just fine.

It's certainly no worse in D3 than in T3Ed, it's just that rescaling in the 3D app is generally the better solution in any case. Nevertheless, there ARE things that are better in T3Ed, such as the entity browser/menu (which is absolute crap in DoomEdit and top of my priority list of enhancements for DarkRadiant).

I think somebody did manage to do this on D3World by using the rotation matrix to perform a scaling operation. I don't know how well it worked though, normally I would recommend getting the size correct during the modelling stage.

The FPS is low, this is mainly due to the total lack of visportalling and the fact that the entire map is illuminated by a giant shadowcasting light. I believe the physics for the water is done via a volume brush, the surface is in fact two flat patches - one to do the reflection and one to do the distortion. This is no longer necessary now somebody (I think pbmax) wrote a combined shader that does both.

Search for After The War on D3World.

I believe that in TDS everything (including material exports) is done through the closed-source Max 5.1 plugin, meaning that for Max 5.1 users it is exceedingly easy, while for everyone else it is impossible. Moving to Doom 3 with its open formats may seem like a hassle if you are used to having everything done automatically, but the openness and flexibility is much more important. In particular there is nothing stopping someone from creating an all-integrated export plugin for their 3D app of choice.

Any new process will seem complicated when you are not used to it. Once you have imported a few dozen objects into D3 it will seem very easy and natural. Which tutorials you want depends on what 3D application you are using to create your objects.

Load zones are supported by the base D3 engine, so it will be up to FM authors whether to use them or not. As the others have said, they are not necessary for ordinary (T1/T2) sized levels.

So is the idea that the game will continue in realtime while a player is reading a text? This is obviously more realistic but will be a bit of a shock for the Thief players.

It is, but like I said you can "inline" static meshes so that they don't take up an entity slot. This would not be used for moveables or small objects, but stuff like windows would be fine.

We don't actually know that it can be increased - although it is available in the code and could be adjusted, the long-term implications are not known, for instance the rendering code could break in some subtle way or performance could deteriorate due to the changed setting. 1. Turn off VPU recover. 2. Make sure your drivers are the latest version. 3. Consider using the Omega drivers for ATI, I use these and a number of crashes have now stopped happening (in particular the use of r_showTris in fullscreen mode used to crash the system, now it doesn't).

The loading time is probably because D3 creates compressed DDS version of textures while loading the level. You can save time by creating a pre-compressed DDS file externally.