eigenface

With the biased language spinning in the opposite direction, this becomes: Why does it have to be clumsy, when in can be precise and fun? Most of the community prefers functional game design over simplistic ideas about realism. Using a bow properly takes a completely different skill than using a bow in a game, and crosshairs make this more accurate and interesting over a variety of ranges. Not sure how crosshairs, present in virtually every PC FPS, became a console-like feature (trying to channel a little Thief 3 hate?) Of course, I've used the bow range in the training mission, extensively, and still hold this opinion, believe it or not. And of course, my opinion is that crosshairs should be optional (and disabled by default to boot), so you please everybody. Sure, couldn't hurt to let one more flower bloom. Thank you very much. I don't want to go give you the impression that I'm demanding features, though, as if I had the right. I'm just explaining why I think this feature would be a good one. It's kind of amazing how polarizing this issue is. (Edited to be less so, I hope.)

None of those use cases concern me - the ones that do are arrow-shooting and object-throwing. A crosshair would help a lot in these situation, for exactly the same reasons the bow sight helps in thief. It allows you to say, "If I charge my shot/throw all the way, and my target is about this far away, and I line him up with this point on the sight/crosshairs, I'll hit him." In dark mod, you can do that now using the point at the tip of the arrow, and estimating how far it has to be above your target in the plane of the screen. However, it helps to have a larger, regular shape to use as a reference, rather than just the tip of the arrow. That way, instead of saying, "If I aim the arrow tip approximately 1/16 the height of the screen above my target..." you can instead say, "If I line up the point 1/4 of the height of the bow sight/crosshairs with my target..." It's easier to estimate a distance on a small object close to you than on your entire field of view, hence the bow sight in thief. To provide the same advantages, the crosshairs in dark mod would have to be more than the typical dot or plus-sign; it could be a plus-sign with an elongated vertical line, with small horizontal hash marks along it to help you judge height, or it could be a vertical rectangle, the same size and shape as the bow sight from thief. Ideally, it could be selectable from any of these options via the menu, like many games with crosshairs. I realize this takes a lot of work, and I'm not berating anyone for not implementing it yet. I'm just making the point that crosshairs would in fact be useful for many people, and could easily be disabled for those who don't find it so.

Put up or shut up, huh? Okay, if I can find time to work on dark mod, I'll come back and reclaim my opinion.

1) The problem is, if you're in the shop menu, and you quickload a game where you're half-way through the level, you'll then be able to press escape and access the shop menu, half way through the level. This seems completely illogical and broken, and the priority should be preventing that situation. Hopefully, there's a way to reset the menu state, so once the menu state is reset, you'll go to the main menu screen when you press escape. Perhaps the menu state should be reset when you load a game (this would solve the problem.) Or perhaps the menu state should be reset whenever you press escape, effectively becoming a stateless menu which always begins on the main menu screen (this actually makes more sense to me, is simpler, and is how menus work in thief and the majority of other games.) 2) Added the bug. 3) Having trouble reproducing this now, so I'll wait. Maybe I was just doing something wrong. 4) Okay, on closer examination here's what's happening: 'prev weapon' works pretty well, meaning it skips over empty slots and allows you to cycle through all your weapons from last slot to first slot. However, if you're on slot 1 and you hit 'prev weapon' you switch to no weapon selected, and cannot leave that state. It would be better if 'prev weapon' wrapped around after slot 1 and selected slot 0. The 'next weapon' key appears to be completely broken; no matter what slot I start on or what weapon I have, 'next weapon' simply switches to no weapon selected, and cannot leave that state. I'm guessing 5 and 6 are mapping errors, and apparently 7, 8, and 9 are already known. Thanks for addressing each of these issues. I thought of another one, which I didn't find in the bugtracker: 10) Setting antialiasing or anisotropy to higher than 8x makes the menus all blurry and odd-looking. When I restart TDM after changing the settings, antialiasing has been set to OFF. I'm guessing 16x is not actually supported. If the same thing happens for everyone, you should probably just not have the option of selecting 16x.

It seems like a no-brainer to me - add the crosshair as an option you can enable and disable in the options menu. This would help the people who want it, and not hurt the people who don't. I can't understand how someone can reasonably object to having the option. You could even make disabled the default. I think the people who want the crosshairs won't be offended by having to turn it on - I'd like to think the people who don't want the crosshairs wouldn't be offended by having to turn it off, but I'm less confident of that. Is there any good reason not to have it as an option (disabled by default)? And by "good" I mean logical and concrete. "It's not in the spirit of dark mod/thief" doesn't count, because what constitutes the spirit of dark mod/thief is a subjective thing, and with the option, people could enable or disable the crosshairs as per their individual conceptions of the spirit.

I disagree with the sentiment that a crosshair would be against the spirit of the dark mod or thief. Should items not highlight when you can frob them, either? Anway, thief effectively does have a crosshair, it's just built into the bow model. I second the motion to have some kind of reference to aid in aiming, either a crosshair in the HUD or one built into the bow model.

Sorry, I don't understand. Doom 3 is already installed on my SSD. I believe the following are true (please correct me if I'm wrong): 1) you drag and drop fan missions to the "fan mission folder", which is doom3/darkmod/fms 2) you install fan missions by running the game and selecting 'install mission', which copies a bunch of files from the "fan mission folder" to the doom3 folder (actually to a subfolder of doom3, named for the mission.) 3) you load the fan mission by running the game and selecting 'play mission' (then the load bar starts filling up.) I don't want to change 2 or 3. I only want to change 1. That is, I want to change the "fan mission folder" from doom3/darkmod/fms to a different folder of my choosing on my HDD. Is there a way to do that? I'm thinking then I can store all my not-installed missions on the HDD (big), install them from the HDD to the SSD (slower process, but that's okay), and load them from the doom 3 installation on my SSD (still fast.)

Here's a list of UI problems I noticed in the dark mod. I suspect most of these are already known. I don't know where exactly to draw the line between bug and less-than-ideal feature, so I'll just list everything that jumped out at me. I may add to the list later, in reply posts. 1) If you're in the shop, and you quickload, the next time you hit escape to bring up the menu, you'll see the shop. 2) The last time you click in the menu, it can count as a click in the game also. For example, if you enter the menu with your blackjack selected and then click 'resume game', when you resume you'll immediately swing your blackjack. 3) Leaning doesn't appear to affect arrow origin. When I leaned around a corner in Thief, I could fire an arrow around the corner. In dark mod, when I lean around a corner and fire and arrow, it hits the wall as if it came from my location prior to leaning. 4) You can't go from no weapon selected to having a weapon selected by using the 'next weapon' key. The same thing seems to work fine with the 'next item' key, however; if you have no item selected and hit 'next item', you get an item selected. But if you have no weapon selected, the 'next weapon' key does nothing, even if you do have some weapons in inventory. To make matters worse, the 'next weapon' key switches you to no weapon selected if you don't have the weapon in the next weapon slot. In other words, if you have the sword selected (slot 2) but you don't have any broadheads (slot 3), the 'next weapon' key switches you to no weapon selected, and then the 'next weapon' key becomes useless - the only way to get a weapon selected again is to hit the number key for its slot. This makes the whole 'next weapon/prev weapon' interface almost useless unless you have all the slots filled, because empty slots block you from selecting the weapons beyond them. 5) You can't frob and put out lights unless you can pick them up. There are candles you can't pick up, and therefore cannot put out by frobbing. You should be able to put out all candles by frobbing. 6) Some candles cannot be pushed by running into them, although other candles can. I suspect this is a level design issue (a flag was not set on some candles), but it may be an editor issue also - the default should be all small objects are pushable. 7) The mission stats screen displays zero bodies found, after I watched an AI find a body and comment on it. This was playing No Honor Among Thieves 1/3. 8) The mission stats screen displays zero stealth score. Maybe I suck just that much, or maybe it's a bug. This was playing No Honor Among Thieves 1/3. 9) The mission stats screen displays no difficulty level, just a blank space after 'difficulty level:' This was playing No Honor Among Thieves 1/3.

Right now, I keep my fms in doom3/darkmod/fms. Is there a way to change this directory? Doom 3 is installed on my SSD, and I want to load dark mod maps from my SSD for speed, but I want to keep the missions in a folder on my HDD, because it's bigger (not that there are a lot of bytes of fan missions for dark mod... yet.) This means fms will take longer to install than on my SSD, but that's okay. Is there somewhere I can change the path to the fms folder?

Thanks, that actually works perfectly. I can still see the sky, and it doesn't spin. It looks like a plain texture, although a pretty attractive one. I'm guessing this mtr reverts the skybox to some kind of basic texture skybox... ? Edit: Replied at the same time as your last reply. Yes, I get the problem in the trainer and in No Honor Among Thieves part 1 Politics, haven't tried Chalice yet but I will at some point.

I'm looking for a way to either fix or disable the skybox. I've searched for this topic, and it looks like some ATI cards have the same problem as mine - skybox spins wildly when I pan - and there's really no good way to fix it that always works. So unless that's wrong, I really just want to disable it. I read to disable it you have to rename a folder or comment out a line in an mtr file. I found the folder (by looking in dozens of pk4s - the wiki didn't say which pk4 to look for the folder in), and renamed it, but that had no effect on the skybox. I haven't edited the mtr file because I cannot find it among the dozens of pk4s. Any help is much appreciated - the game is basically unplayable in outdoor areas with the very distracting skybox bug. I've heard disabling catalyst AI is supposed to help, but I don't even have it installed. Here's the wiki page I'm referring to: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=FAQ#The_sky_is_corrupted I could not get this to work, because renaming the folder made no difference, and I cannot find the mtr file. Of course, it could be I was supposed to rename a different folder of the same name in a different pk4. Could someone explain to me what to do to disable (or fix, ideally) the skybox, in a relatively idiot-resistant manner? In other words, tell me the exact path to the pk4 I'm supposed to be looking in, starting in the DOOM 3 DIRECTORY, and the exact path to the folder I'm supposed to rename inside the pk4 (and similar instructions for the mtr file.) All noob-bashing and snide remarks about my intelligence and/or forum-searching skill are welcome, as long as they also contain a potential solution to the problem.

Yes, I do. ATI Radeon X850. I tried the game again and it locked up and went to a black screen again after about the same period of time as before, but this time I didn't get control back. I had to shut off my computer. This time, I was not moving around when it crashed, I just walked forward and started reading the book, and it crashed while I was sitting there reading - it's as if it happens after a set period of time, not when I trigger something. I guess I should try some of those performance tweaking suggestions (or all of them). Any suggestions for ATI cards specifically?

I tried it with spaces (C:\Program Files\Doom 3\darkmod), and I had a problem, but I'm not sure if the problem is related to the spaces. The training mission took about 10 min to load - the loading progress bar actually filled up in less than 30 sec, but the message that appeared after that ("mission is preparing to start" or something) was there for 10 min; it would be nice if there was a progress bar for that also, so I know it hasn't locked up. Once the mission started, it seemed to work okay for a minute or 2. I walked around a bit, then suddenly the game locked up. Then a few moments later the picture disappeared but my controls start working again. I could hear my footsteps as I continued to walk around, and I could hit escape and open the menu screen and hear the sound of my mouse rolling over the options, but the screen always remained black so I couldn't actually play. I have 2 questions. 1) Does this sound like a problem caused by spaces in the install path, and if not, do you have any idea what would cause this problem and how I can fix it? 2) Can I simply move the contents of the "Doom 3" folder to a new directory with no spaces, or do I have to uninstall and reinstall doom 3 to get rid of the spaces?

I remember the St. Lucia demo version of the dark mod required that the install path for doom 3 and the dark mod have no spaces in it. Is this still the case for the current 1.0 version of the dark mod? Can I install it in my "Program Files" folder or does it need a special directory with no spaces? I did search for this question, but did not find the answer.

Going back to the mantling, I noticed something else looked strange about it, in addition to the fact you always lean in the same direction, but earlier I couldn't put my finger on exactly what else was strange. Now I have it. I appears that once the mantle action is triggered, the camera always starts at the same height relative to the surface you're mantling onto. This makes sense when you're mantling onto a surface higher than the current height of the camera. But it looks strange when you're mantling onto a surface lower than the current height of the camera. Many times I mantled onto a table or low wall, and it looked like I got down on my hands and knees before climbing up onto the table. It looked especially strange when the mantle action got triggered by a very low surface like a step on a staircase, and I got down on my stomach before climbing up onto the step. Maybe the camera should only go up while mantling, and never go down first. That way, it would look like you're stepping or hopping up onto tables and low walls, instead of first crouching down and then climbing up.

The difference is that tapping a button takes negligible time, during which the game world doesn't change. Holding down a button to charge up takes some nontrivial amount of time, during which the game world is changing. Do you see what I mean? When you tap a button, you look at the state of the game world, decide the correct input, and input it. When you have to hold a button, you look at the state of the game world, start inputting, and continue to look at the game world to decide how to modify your input as you're inputting it. When the time you have to hold the button is short, the difference between this and just tapping it is small and perhaps not important, but there is a difference. What do you think about the lock-picking minigame? I just realized I described it wrong; there is not some minimum amount of time to open the lock which depends on the number of pins. There is some average amount of time to open the lock which depends on the numbers of pins (which you'd approach if you were to pick the same lock many times), but on any given attempt, luck plays a role in how fast your trial and error goes.

I do realize that with fractional force, you can put the object places you can't put it with full force. I think the situations where this is useful are few and far between. In thief, how many times did you find yourself in a blind-lob situation analogous to the one you mentioned? Also, it takes time to calculate the force you need to get an object to go a certain distance. When you're throwing a flashbomb, or even a guard-distracting candle, time is of the essence. Better to know the distance right away because force is constant. Also, I don't think it's a good idea to make the player input the force by holding down a key for a specific period of time. During this period of time while they're inputting the force, the guard is walking, and the distance and therefore the force they need to be inputting is changing. Imagine a guard walking toward you. You hold down the throw button, but the guard moves closer, and now not only is he closer, but you've been holding down the throw button all this time, so now you have to throw the flashbomb farther when you let go. As you hold the button down, you have to imagine the point where the flashbomb will hit the floor getting farther away, at the same time the point where the guard is walking gets closer, and then time your release so that these two points coincide. Whereas if the force is constant, you already know the point where the flashbomb will hit the floor because it remains constant, so you only have to think about where the guard is. In most first-person shooters I've played, you don't get to change the force with which you throw a grenade, probably for just this reason. In a frantic action game, it's even more important to be able to quickly judge where the grenade will go off. If you feel fractional force is essential, maybe it would be better to hold the throw button, and then spin the mouse wheel to adjust a force meter, or even better, spin the mouse wheel to adjust a dotted-line showing the future path of the object, like in Splinter Cell 2.

I haven't played Oblivion. Is the lock picking exactly the same? One more suggestion for Saint Lucia: you shouldn't be able to block doors with candles. I don't know if this is due to the "unpushable" setting or not, but the door should have enough force to knock away small physics objects. It might make sense to have doors push away all physics objects you can pick up, and only get blocked by the ones you have to push. Also, to clarify, I like having to draw the bowstring back for cosmetic reasons, and for gameplay balance - the bow is a powerful weapon capable of one-shot kills, so it should take some time to prepare for a shot. But I think it would make sense to simplify throwing physics objects (such as flashbombs) by using a constant force. Cosmetically, there's no bowstring to pull, and gameplay-wise, throwing small objects should be quick and simple. You want to be able to use a flashbomb at a moment's notice to escape an alerted guard, without having to "charge up your throw" and put a lot of thought into where the flashbomb is going to land.

I'm not sure how much you know (or care to know) about lock picking, but if you consider a stylized version of the process in which 3 assumptions always hold (in general, they only hold sometimes) 1) pins bind in a random order 2) pins lifted out of order false bind 3) a false bind requires you to completely release the torque then you end up with something like the game Simon, except you have to figure out the sequence by trial and error. Reload the following page to get a different, random number of pins between 3 and 7. The fewer pins, the faster and easier the lock is to pick (and the easier to figure out how this minigame works - hopefully, if you start with few enough pins, it will be self-explanatory). 3 pins is trivial, and 7 pins takes a fair amount of time. http://www.zshare.net/flash/508240693455b3c6/ The torque wrench is omitted for clarity. It would probably fit better into a 3D version. In the dark mod, I'm imagining you'll frob a lock to get the lock-picking minigame. The lock cut-away would fade and blur when you turn away from the door (to watch your back), and then fade back in and sharpen when you turn back to your work. If you move away from the door, the lock minigame ends, and the pins are reset by the time you go back and try again. This way, you could partially pick a lock, run and hide from a patrolling guard, then return to the lock and have to remember the order of the pins you'd figured out on your first try, and then figure out the rest. I wanted this to be more interesting than lock-picking in T1/2, but not have every single lock reduce to a trivial 1-second non-element once you get good at it, like in T3. In my version, being smart and systematic helps you open locks faster, but locks with more pins still take you longer than locks with fewer pins. It's a pretty simple task, but regardless of how good you are, there's some minimum amount of time it will take you which depends on the number of pins.

I did try that, and it's a definite improvement over T2. Gradual mouse-wheel opening would be an even bigger improvement, but to me the most important thing is how the enemies react to seeing a door open. Even if they don't see you at all, but they see a door opening or closing and don't see a guard doing it, they should be suspicious. When playing T2 FMs, situations come up frequently where I open a door, see a guard walking directly toward me (but he doesn't see me because I'm in shadow), so then I close the door, and the guard doesn't think there's anything unusual about this. Wow, cool, I didn't realize. I figured I could pick up the controls from the settings screen. I still think auto-search would be useful. You don't need to pick someone up, turn them over, and look at the other side in order to determine if they're carry anything there - you can just reach around and pat them down. Auto-search isn't necessary, but it would be more convenient than fumbling around with rag dolls, especially in confined spaces. That's good, I didn't realize that either. However, that brings to mind another classic-thief gameplay element I think could be streamlined. How many times do you fire an arrow without pulling the bowstring all the way back? I can probably count the times I've done this on my hands, and the successful outcomes on one hand. By pulling the bowstring some fraction of the way back, you can put the arrow places you can't put it with a full pull, but the situations where this is useful are few and far between. I tend to pull the string all the way back, and then vary the angle in order to aim my shot. This is because it's hard enough to get the angle right on a full pull, let alone to understand where the arrow is going to go at any angle at any fractional pull. Learning to aim is much easier if you only vary one factor (angle), instead of two (angle and force). I ended up holding the force constant to simplify things. Should get other opinions on this. I bring this up because the problem is the same for throwing objects (like flashbombs) in the dark mod. It might be easier to learn how to throw objects accurately if force is constant, that is, no matter how long you hold down the throw button, you always throw the object with the same force. When throwing objects in Saint Lucia, I found myself always holding the throw button for a sufficiently long period to ensure maximum force, and then varying the angle in order to aim my throw. Using the period of time you hold the button to input the force (instead of say, mouse-wheeling a needle up and down a force meter) is also problematic, because then you have to coordinate the time you're holding the button with the events going on in the game in order to decide when you want to release the throw. You have to think, "Where will that enemy have walked to after the period of time I'm going to have to hold down this button in order to make the flashbomb go far enough to get there?" As fan of stealth games over shooters, I'm all about more complex gameplay and mastery of subtle skills. But there's no point having complexity in the dark mod that the players will just work around and ignore anyway. Maybe you should always throw things with the same force. Then you only have to think, "Where is that enemy now, and will the flashbomb go that far?"

First off, this is fantastic work. Beautifully crafted, atmospheric, interesting gameplay. I feel redundant saying that, because so many others have already said it more eloquently. Perhaps some of my suggestions will be redundant also, but I wouldn't feel I had done the right thing unless I brought them up. As a long-time thief fan, the dark mod is very exciting and important to me, and I want it to be the best it can be. So here are the things I noticed could use improvement. 1) You can't knock over candles by running into them. You can pick one up and toss it, and knock over another one with it, but they might as well be brick walls when you run into them. I think small physics objects should be knocked around when you collide with them. This would add to the realism factor, and it would also add to the gameplay, because you'd have to be careful not to bump into things and knock them over, making noise. Remember the cool (but kinda cheap) moment in the T2 FM Ominous Bequest, when you're sneaking up behind someone dozing on a couch on the second floor, and suddenly the floor creaks and they wake up? Instead of scripting the floor creak, put a physics goblet on floor for the player to kick, and now the moment is both cooler and less cheap (because it's avoidable), and also more integrated into the overall game mechanics (there are lots of kick-able physics objects instead of one unique scripted floor creak). 2) You should be able to put out candles by hand, without a water arrow. This is a great addition to T3 (and some T2 FMs). Maybe have the flame of the candle frobbable as a separate object, which puts it out instead of picking it up. 3) Picking up physics objects sometimes moves them, or at least it appears so. When you grab something, sometimes it immediately hits the surface it was previously sitting on and makes noise. As a thief, it's important to have a "light touch" and not have to worry about a candle immediately making noise as soon as you touch it. 4) You can crawl on ladders. Meaning, if you're crouching and start climbing a ladder, you'll climb slower, whereas if you're standing and start climbing a ladder, you'll climb faster. You should climb the ladder at the same rate regardless of whether or not you were crouched when you started. This is a small thing, but I found it pretty annoying when I got stuck in "slow ladder mode". 5) You can run while swimming. Sure, a person can swim at different speeds, but as a gameplay element, this seems pointless. You don't make any less noise swimming at a slower speed (contrary to walking at a slower speed), and I didn't notice any lack of control with the faster speed. Why would you ever not want to swim at the faster speed? People will just end up habitually holding down the run button while swimming, so why not do it for them? 6) You have to hold down the run button and the walk button at the same time in order to run. I much preferred the classic thief control scheme of 2 separate buttons, one to walk and one to run, plus a creep button you can hold down at the same time in order to slow down further. I can sort of understand the logic of making walk the default speed in a stealth game, and making you also hold down another button to go faster. But let's face it, even in a stealth game, and especially in thief-style levels in particular, a lot of people are going to spend a lot of time searching through large areas full of already-knocked-out enemies for whatever McGuffin they've missed. True, the stealth part is what the game's all about, but in reality people spend just as much if not more time running around looking for things. They'll just end up habitually holding down the run and walk buttons at the same time, so why not give them an independent run button? 7) Guards don't drop their weapons when they're killed or knocked out. This was a nice touch of realism in T3. It's jarring when the hammer remains glued to the model's hand and sticks up at a funny angle. 8a) Door opening is not realistic. This has always been a problem in the thief games, and most people have probably gotten used to it, but why not take this opportunity to improve things? When you open a door into an unknown room, what you'd want to do in reality is first peer through the keyhole if possible, or open the door only a little and peer through the crack. What you currently do in thief is stand out of the path of the door and open it, then lean around the edge, and guards on the other side don't bat an eye when a door opens to reveal no one there. They also don't seem to care if they come across an open door, and then it closes without any visible cause (because you're hiding). Here's what I think should happen. If a guard sees a door begin opening or begin closing and doesn't see the person who made this happen within some short period of time, the guard should go and investigate (but not for as long as if he'd actually seen you). Also, if you open the door part way, the guard should be less likely to notice. Keyhole-peeping would be a cool addition also! 8b) The current method of interacting with doors, while more precise than the classic thief way, is still clumsy and not terribly realistic. The ideal thing would be to do it like Penumbra, where the door is a physics object on a hinge, and you can grab it at any point and drag that point to move the door at any speed you want. This might be more trouble than it's worth to implement with doom 3 physics. A good compromise might be to do it like Rainbow Six 3, where you frob a door and go into "door mode", and you can then use the mouse wheel to gradually swing the door open or closed. This would parallel how picking up objects already works in the dark mod, where you frob an object and go into "pick up mode", and you can then use the mouse wheel to gradually move the object closer or further away. 9) In some way, the dark mod should address the chronic thief ladder problem, that is, the fact that you can climb ladders but enemies can't. This has always been such a popular, obvious, effective way to escape from enemies, and at the same time it's laughably unrealistic. I can see how it might be a difficult problem to implement enemies climbing ladders in an intelligent manner, incorporating this into their path-finding and making them go about it in a smart enough way so as not to make themselves easy targets for your attacks in the process. I don't have a solution, except to encourage a mission-design philosophy that prefers stairs instead of ladders, and only uses ladders in situations where you won't have enemies on your tail. 10) You can't change your weapon while climbing a ladder. I understand why you can't use your weapon on a ladder, but you should at least be able to change the icon at the bottom left that indicates which weapon you'll start using once you get off the ladder. 11) Physics objects and water don't mix. After picking up an apple core, I was able to move it underwater using the mouse wheel, but as soon as I turned with free look and the core touched the water even the slightest bit, it went flying out of my hand and splashing off through the water. 12) You can grab stuff through walls. Get in the fireplace in the kitchen and try grabbing things on the counter. 13) The water splash effect is blinding, and should be toned down a bit. When I fell in the water, the whole world looked white-tinted and washed-out with odd edges highlighted - should get multiple opinions on this, it may just be my graphics card (ATI Radeon X850). 14) The game does not have focus when it starts, by which I mean on the start screen I don't get any sound and the mouse cursor doesn't move until I click. This may be something particular to my installation. 15) There are AI path-finding problems, which you may already know about. The guard in the tunnel that leads to the front of the cathedral kept rising several feet off the ground while he search around for me, as if he thought he was standing on a surface at a higher elevation. Maybe he somehow got up on the edge of something sticking out of the wall? Later, the same guard came into the vestibule, and got stuck on the front, right corner of the altar (facing inward from the church front doors). He spun around and around on the same spot at the corner of the altar, until I alerted him. 16) The enemy door-opening animations are a cool addition, but sometimes the enemy's hand stops a few feet away from the door knob. 17) Body dragging is clumsy. Cosmetically, the model twitches too much, and control-wise, it's too difficult to make the body go where you want without losing hold of it. It would be nice to be able to pick up bodies like in T3 (but with a more liberal rule for determining where you can drop them - I always felt like I should have been able to drop the body when T3 told me I couldn't). 18) There should be an option to auto-search bodies like in T2. In the dark mod, it can be especially hard to get the key off the back belt-position of a knocked-out guard laying on his back, and you can't turn him over. 19) Drawing and sheathing your sword is a slow and cumbersome process compared to T2. It's a small detail, but it's constantly in your face. 20) You always lean in the same direction when you climb. Another small detail, but such a ubiquitous part of the experience, I can't help but notice. It shouldn't be difficult to make the player randomly lean one way or the other. 21) There's an inventory item stacking problem. When I used up my last flashbomb, the flashbomb icon was still in my inventory. When I cycled to my next inventory item and tried to cycle back, then the flashbomb icon was gone. 22) Flashbombs drop straight down, instead of being thrown forward in a small arc. This greatly limits the situations in which you can use them. Many times, I found myself wanting to fling a flashbomb into the path of a guard, but was only able to drop it at my own feet. You already have the perfect system in place for using flashbombs, that is, the same system you use for manipulating and throwing physics objects you pick up or items you decide to discard from inventory. Unfortunately, when you try to throw a flashbomb this way, it becomes inert and does not go off when it hits something. Then you can find it and pick it up again, but I can't think of a situation where you'd actually want to do this. When you throw a flashbomb, it should go off. I hope my humble suggestions are helpful to you. I'm offering them with the greatest respect for what you've accomplished so far, and full appreciation of how difficult it is to implement all this. Any feedback from anyone is welcome! P.S. How is the lock-picking coming? Have you already planned out how it's going to work? I have a system I've come up with if you're interested. It's a simplified version of modern lock picking, and I've made a little flash game to illustrate.

Ishtvan, thanks a lot. I was able to load the map, framerate was ok, but then I went in the first door and down a corridor and my computer crashed - I had to switch it off and on. Does anyone know why? SneaksieDave, which files should I set to read-only?

After installing and patching doom 3 (with the patch provided on the dark mod wiki), and installing saint lucia, I ran the game, and got to the point of clicking "start mission" on the purchase equipment screen. Then a dialogue box appeared and asked for my cd key, with "<EMPTY STL" half cut off behind the field to enter the key. Also, there was an 8 in the field, but when I typed in my cd key it got superimposed on top instead of replacing the 8. Anyway, my cd key is not being accepted so I cannot play the game. The dialogue box that says my key was not accepted has "#STR_071 94" at the top. Does anyone know what's going on? P.S. The forum would not let me search for "cd" or "key", apparently because these words are less than 4 characters. I see what this hurts, and I don't see what this helps. Can this restriction be removed?