Deadlove

This is exactly what I was referring to in my previous post about Garrett, not so much that his honor or virtue, but that the objectives were much more creative than "stealing a fat nobleman's trinket" for more than a couple missions before the plot kicked in. Breaking fence out of Cragscleft, tailing Assassins, being hired to steal a sword by the owner, stealing talisman & the eye (instead of sceptors), escaping, going undercover, sabotage, freeing indentured servant, eavesdropping (as you noted), breaking into bank, framing the city watch. etc. This style of playing is way more exciting to me than "steal fat noblemen's trinket" because I never knew how the stealth skills would be have to be utilized or what I was going to steal, even if it was just information. I hope the new game has some variation in mission play style, and allows the player to have more interesting goals than just stealing "fat noblemen's trinket". Just for the record, I don't mind stealing the fat noblemen's trinket, I just don't want to do it 10 times in a row.

Congrats Grayman!! As usual, Grayman delivers the goods! This is one of the best missions TDM has to offer! It dawned on me recently that the character's name can be heard as "Will Steal" (action/future tense + verb), which is quite charming given the nature of the game he's in. Will have to report back with detailed feedback, but this is again one of the best missions for the mod!

One of the things about Thief that I liked a lot was that Garrett only stole the run of the mill expected things for a thief to steal for perhaps the first couple missions before the plot started to unfold, and then the thieving was based around objectives to further the plot...and new and exciting things that I didn't expect to be stealing, I was! Of course the extra loot in the mission was for buying things in between missions. The new game seems a bit like it's Garrett stealing just to steal, their marketing it with for the challenge, etc. The old games it felt more like Garrett is like "oh no, not this again, I'd rather just be stealing a sceptor, but I have to play hero and do some wild work I'd never take on otherwise...can't I just be left alone?" One of the most appealling traits to me was that Garrett was an anti-hero, the new Garrett seems to basque in his thieving glory.

Also save lots of hard drive space given old games take up a couple hundred MB, as opposed to new games are a couple GB.

Lysergic is a nice word. Makes me think of me of lysergic acid diethylamide.

Thanks. I wrote "Funeral Dance", anything by THE MANY is pretty much solely my own music. Everything else on the page is produced / mixed by myself, at Plastik Musik.

Didn't check out your stuff yet, but this is my channel.

EAX was giving the environmental reverb similar to what is created with a convolution reverb processing unit. All the individual sound effects that I'm aware of to Thief have reverb on them before they were put in the game. Quake is another game that has obvious reverb on sound effects.

According to the book of AAA, benefit would be that no lines go missed by playing by being very low. Just like with music, gaming seems to be on a compression kick where most everything is close to the same amplitude. I did it to make the sounds closer to what gamers are used to hearing and not so dry. As Mortem brought up, the lines for the drunk have 10 dB difference in some places, and I am under impression it would be better to close that gap to around 4 dB. I am NOT flat lining / hard compressing because that sucks all the life out of a given performance, whether film, music, game or what have you. It's not really a right or wrong, but that this is the general sound formula everyone is used to hearing so I used it. Sounds in video games are very unnatural to the real world. One of my past time professors did sound for games and was shot down by his producers because his sound for a machine gun wasn't "real enough" when it was the exact machine gun recorded. Their translation was that even though it needed to sound bigger and badder, because it's a game that needs to be competitive within the market, and not the real world. If all sounds were done, another thing that stood out to me is that missions with custom sounds, conversations, etc. would not have the reverb that is in the main .pk4 files.

You are aware the all the raw Thief sounds have reverb on them? Not too mention many other games?

What about models for characters? Can you post a couple things you've done?

Great models Xendrox!

Thanks Mortem! Glad you find the balance accurate. In regard to the compression, it was added twofold reasons. One was to bring the overall loudness up, and the other was to add the general compressed sound to voices that is common in video games. Voices in games tend not to be as natural sounding as real life, so that was my main focus with the compression. I wasn't too focused on the louder barks than the quieter barks, I was shooting for a basic balance between them so regardless how low the line (muttering and whispering) was or how loud (combat and shouting), it would not be that too far off in volume, even if that is unnatural in the real world. I do think you raise a very good point about overall the sounds reaching closer to 0 dB, as the vocal sets should probably be no louder than -3 dB and louder sound effects like mechanical/machinery would go to closer to 0 dB to give the sounds in the world a more dynamic feel and the player would be more immersed. I agree about the barks being cut off halfway through. For example, if a searching bark is playing and the AI spots the player and moves to a found player bark before the other is complete, it does cut off abruptly jumping to the next bark. Only thing I think to do for that is wait for software environmental FX, as the sounds would still have the environment to carry the bark verb trailing off. All in all, I do think the gentle reverb/compression does add to it, in the meantime before the EFX gets implemented into the code. Since also that the "raw" Thief sounds had reverb/compression on them as well, that was what I'm using as a model. Hoping to get at least one more positive response before I officially decide to make up my mind to set out to do ALL the sounds. If I do it for myself, I have no deadline to meet, but if others enjoy it and think it will benefit the mod, then it would be more motivating to work on it more often.

I have that CD laying around somewhere....Full Moon Productions, from Florida, USA.

Quake Quake II Thief Thief II System Shock 2 Err...I usually turn the music off during a game if it's not ambient. It hurts the immersion for me, because noone but Peter Griffin is cool enough to have his own theme music. Even on the games I listed, I really didn't play with the music (Quake part one and Thief being exceptions because the music was so subtle). Only games that I blasted through with music was Doom, Heretic, Hexen, because on the old computer my family used in the 90's we didn't even have a sound blast card yet, so the midi music was the only sound we had. I guess you can say those three games I also enjoy the music to, but probably because of hearing it so much, not because of instantly liking it.

Thanks for the positive input Springheel. Five other people downloaded the files, hopefully they'll have come time to try it out soon and give their opinion. Even just for my own enjoyment, I find adding the reverb does add to it for me. I'd like to imagine I have it in me to do to all the sounds just for my own pleasure playing. Of course, I'll share all progress with the board, in the form of downloadable files that all can load up, if they wish to.

Seems with the amount of knowledge here that many of us here would have a computer related income. Not I, my primary income has nothing to do with using computers. My side work is sound engineering. Now if I could turn that into the breadwinner I'd be a happy goose.

Btw, those crazy looking creepy things from the asylum (?) picture you posted are the best thing I've seen from a Thief 4 promo shot yet.

Tell them to send me a copy, I don't want to spend money on it.

I see lots of people like to ghost, I guess I'm just not that good yet! I like to knock out everyone. The guards, maids, cook, nobles, and the elite guard sucks unless I have a gas arrow. There's something extermely satisfying that I haven't yet grown tired of with a good blackjack, then piling bodies up in a safe dark room while I sight see the level without hearing those tension building footsteps coming up and around...

Yes, I'd be much better at playing your FM's on harder difficulty if there wasn't a KO limit of 2 people!!

Contribution!! Not a FM, but sound revisions... Here's a link to a zip file with the grumbler sounds revisited, there's slight reverb + compression. LINK REMOVED UNTIL SOUND SET FIXED INSTRUCTIONS: Download and extract the .ogg files into the tdm_sounds_vocals4/sound/voices/grumbler and it will replace all the current sounds with the new ones. I'd recommend backing up the original .ogg files first, so you can revert back to them. Run the game and it will play the new sounds. I demoed on "Business as usual" because I remembered there is a guard with the grumbler voice right outside the door in the beginning. INFO: There are A LOT of lines that vary in amplitude, so the reverb density was also a bit different for some odd number of the 363 files. It fluctuated usually between -19dB to -21dB with the very low lines / whispers given -15dB for rounding out. The compression / leveling was added to get all sounds to mostly float somewhere in between -2dB to 0dB, so they will be louder than most other sound effects, as most sound effects are from who knows where and recorded with gain stages all over the map. The reverb was a simple room tone. I plan to use this setting for all dialog. For outdoor sound effects, etc., I'll journey into some ambient and nonlinear reverb processing, not only for realism, but for distinguishment of sound. Hopefully I'll be able to knock off another character in the next day or so, to do the entire sound bank will take some time. Any and all feedback in welcome! Please share opinions on what you guys think! Random, who did the grumbler voice? It sounds like the same guy who did the zombie... Any suggestions for the next character to do? I'm trying to pick relatively popular vocal sets...the grumbler was one that I heard a lot. I think I might do the guy who's like "what's somebody doing hiding in here anyway...up to no good I bet" or he says something close to that...

I started on the grumbler, and am about halfway done. I loaded the sounds in game (kept the same file names) and the difference is marvelous. I used "Business as usual" as the grumbler is patrolling the street right outside where the player starts. Who did the voice to the grumbler? Sounds like the same person who did the voice to the zombie. Hopefully I can manage to get this one character done before I retire tonight, and I'll post a link to a zip so others can load it in if theyd like to and share what their opinion.

No noticeable degradation, was hoping for WAV files so there wasn't the extra conversion in there. In that case, I can start work on them now.

Nice art! Hope you do get to work on some campaign cutscenes, they need the help!!