Dunedain

Oh cool, is that a shot from Thief III with this accurate Garrett model fully working in-game? If such a model were available to replace the default model in Thief III, then I'm surprised I haven't seen it discussed before. Where can this fully functional model be downloaded for use in Thief III?

Hmm, very interesting. I bet a 3D wiz like oddity could do wonders with that...

ascottk: You mean there was a model of Garrett made for Thief III that has his accurate appearance with his long flowing hooded cloak, and you have it?! Is it in a form ready to be stuck into a Thief III directory to replace the default one so you can see Garrett the way he really looks when using the 3rd person view? Does his shadow cast properly on walls and such to reflect the presence of the cloak when using this model? Also, does he have his sword and sheath, as well?

Thief and this mod are medieval games, and as such, people swearing as we would think of it today is totally out of place. Hearing "taff" and it's variations (taffed, taffing, etc.) spoken by guards in their conversations is an integral part of the experience.

What can I say, guys? That is one seriously cool video of the The Dark Mod! That is the closest thing to a real Thief video from Looking Glass that I've ever seen, really nice! The mood, atmosphere and general style of the video is right on; I was half expecting Garrett to start talking any second. I love the rope arrows (those are sorely missed in Thief III), how they unfurl from the arrow and such (I assume they are retrievable from the wood?). The water looks great how it distorts your view as you swim and look toward the surface. Hearing that same "clink" sound when you pick up loot like from Thief is really cool. And special mention has to be made of the font being used on the notes, maps and such. It looks just about identical to the the font used in Thief, wonderful job, guys!! As far as the highlight fade issue. If you can get it to work like in Thief I and II with that fraction of a second fade effect that gives it that smoothness you barely notice but that makes it feel just right without any performance or stability problems, then great.

A very nicely detailed model. Hmm, that would have to be modified for no face covering (with a greenish tinge to his right eye color) and a hooded long flowing black cloak for use as Garrett in FM's the accurate way he always looked in Thief and Thief 2. Other than that, it's looks just about ready to go for Thief FM's.

oddity, you aren't working that much on the dark mod any more? Arggh! The quality of oddity's modeling is just excellent, something not often seen in any mod, it has really enhanced the look of the mod. It would be a loss to not have him working on the project.

Springheel and New Horizon have both brought up excellent reasons for not having knocked out guards wake up that I hadn't considered. So after thinking it over further, I'm against the idea of guards waking up after being knocked out, it just causes too many problems. A good point has been made, there are some important differences between killing and knocking out guards. For one, there is the benefit of knocking out a guard silently. This requires more skill and effort, because you have to get right up next to the guard without being noticed and precisely place a blow with the blackjack to knock him out suddenly. The reward is you can do this very quietly so as not to alert other guards. Also, there is no blood at all from this, this is very important for not tipping guards off that something is very wrong. And the mentioned crucial role-playing aspect. Garrett, for example, is a thief, not a murdering madman that goes around killing people needlessly. He steal things to make a living, and to accomplish certain tasks that he must complete when he finds himself caught up in rather serious matters involving the Hammerites, Keepers, etc. He tries to steal things without being noticed or having run-ins with guards. He always conducts himself in a professional manner, he is a master thief. So knocking out guards when possible is to be encouraged generally over killing, if one must interact with a guard. It's a central aspect to Thief.

Relax guys, it's just a discussion about varying ideas on game design and different perspectives that one can use to look at how to solve game design problems. Nothing should be taken personally, we're all Thief fans here. The example of the guy from id thinking that the light gem wouldn't work, or would be far too slow, is interesting. To his way of thinking, this would be just way too costly to ever make work. But it turns out there is a way to make it work without slowing the game to a crawl. But you have to think of clever methods to make it work, and be willing to allocate how ever much processing power is required to the mechanism to make it function properly.

It would be great if guards could be made to wake up after being knocked out for awhile, the animation of them getting up from their random ragdoll unconscious pose doesn't have to look perfect, just decent. Actually, I think it's quite realistic to have guards wake up other guards they find knocked out. If you were a guard and you found your friend knocked out in some corner, the first thing you would do is holler a warning to other guards in the area and try to wake up your friend to see if he's ok. And this raises all sorts of interesting game possibilities and tactical problems. The guard might wake up on his own after some random amount of time (several minutes at the minimum), this amount of time could have a modifier applied to it based on whether the guard was struck heavily (like in Thief where you could take extra time to raise your blackjack or sword for an extra-heavy blow). This could even be made a switch in the interface that FM authors could turn on or off (once guards are knocked out, they always stay knocked out, or they can wake up on their own or be roused by fellow guards). I like this idea of procedural animation software. If you can have the A.I. model figure out how to move it's skeleton ahead of time as to how to get up in a fairly realistic way from a wide variety of positions and then save that refined algorithm and have it canned and ready to use in any Thief mission, this would save a huge amount of hand animation work and still give pretty good results.

Well, first off, I wouldn't even have mentioned it if I thought a great deal of effort was involved. I'm well aware how busy the team is and certainly don't want to add significantly to the already large number of things to do. I was operating under the assumption that the armor could easily be removed (and, of course, the sleeves made plain and changed in color) without requiring any major work on the underlying main character model itself, and so it would be very fast to do, especially for an expert. Perhaps it's actually harder to do than that. And I don't think this falls under the category of a personal request. Even if you don't plan to feature Keepers in the story line you guys plan to make at some point, A.I. models that have a similar look to them would still be highly useful tools to have as basic building blocks for the kinds of missions Thief fans are going to want to make. Just as the "builder" character models are going to be essential for so many Thief FM's. Anyhow, perhaps it's so easy to make those adjustments that any reasonably knowledgeable DOOM III modeler can handle it without messing up the model in the slightest. If that's the case, then fine, I'm sure someone will do just that. And as for lending a hand, I never said I was unwilling to do that. I don't have any practical knowledge or experience on 3D modeling or programming, but I could help write lore, story text and such for readables, and also character dialogue, when you fellows get around to working on your campaign.

Yeah, the acolyte model could be used for Keepers by FM authors (by the way, great model work, as always, oDDity! ). The only problems are the breast plate armor, the decorative design on the sleeve (I don't think Keepers have decorations on their sleeves) and the robe color. oDDity, could you please adjust an alternate version of that acolyte model with no armor, plain sleeve and a nice rich black robe color? That would be about perfect.

Take as many high resolution pictures as you can of old and/or finely crafted stone, tiles, walls, ceilings, etc. This will all be extremely useful for TDM. E-mail them to the TDM team (even if it takes 20 e-mails to handle all the large file attachments). Hopefully you have many extra memory cards to allow the saving of many pictures.

The forum won't let me post the rest of my reply, can someone check why it might be doing that? It's just a few more sentences, I have no idea why it would give me an error message every time I try to post it.

If anything, FM's are a great help, as they give the Thief fans something to do while they wait for Thief IV. It also brings in new fans that will then want to buy and play all the Thief games.

Well, what TDM team can "officially" include and what fans will make are two different things. It's understood that the team has to refer to things in certain ways and such. Just put in a couple good models of men with long dark flowing hooded cloaks (you don't even have to name them) and some animations for their movements, etc. and the fans will take care of the rest. Situation handled in a way where there will be no problems.

I'm definitely one of those that really likes reading elaborate notes and books, etc. Thief is great for the detailed writings of the Hammers that you can read, their rules, their traditions, their holy days and so on. *next part of reply will be in the next post*

The problem is, how much image quality are you willing to give up? The DOOM III engine is state-of-the-art, so naturally if you go for high quality levels it's going to take more processing power to render it at a decent speed. But the DOOM III engine also makes for gorgeous highly immersive levels. And considering how much effort it will take to recreate Garrett's city, at least the parts we know about already from Thief I, II and III, you might as well go for a recreation that looks awesome anywhere go you go in the city. As this would be something used in FM's for years and years to come, so it's best to aim high on detail and let the hardware catch up. It'll run a little slow on average hardware when it first comes out, but fast gaming systems will run it quite well. And as faster and faster computers become available it will become commonplace for Thief fans to have systems that can run the full city level at super fast frame-rates. Then everyone will be glad that the city was made to look so good in the first place.

Yeah, it would be even better if the player could choose whether to go into "read mode" (game paused) or read with the game unpaused. And I agree that you shouldn't have to go into a well lit area or use a lantern or whatever just to read a note or book.

Yeah, Dram has it right. I didn't mean put a bunch of missions into the level somehow. I just meant have the core of the city, the places we know from Thief I, II and III laid out accurately, enterable and filled with the same furniture types as in Thief in the proper rooms, etc. Then the FM authors could create the missions, add loot and so on within the city and even add onto it for use in their specific mission, or use portals to allow travel to and from the outskirts of the city. Yeah, the quality issue is important. Since this would be a definitive reference level of the city, the whole thing would have to be done with quality in mind, it should look at least as good as the city does in Thief III anywhere you might go. As far as performance goes, bear in mind that considering how long it would take to do this, the hardware that will be readily available a year and a half or two years from now when TDM is ready will allow much higher detail levels to be handled. The idea is a representation of the city that is so good that it would be used years from now to make FM's and still be considered to look very nice indeed. When doing something like that you might as well aim high on the detail level, as it will be something that has to hold up well over time. It won't take long for the hardware to catch up, even while it's being built it will be catching up. And if you're careful about the angles of the streets and such, you could keep how much of the city is visible at any one time to a point that can be managed. It's kind of like when a new game is being made by id, they don't design the game for the hardware that is in an average system at the time, they design for the kind of hardware that will be available when the game is ready. This sky portal would make the farther away parts of the city look good while still allowing reasonable performance when traveling up high along the Thieves' Highway?

I agree about the city remaining mysterious, but remember that what we've seen in Thief is just part of the city. There's plenty more to it that is currently unknown, that's where those dead-end alleys and portals come in, it can be added onto to expand upon it as much as needed. But at least there would be the recognizable core laid out with some of Garrett's favorite hangouts. I wonder what the total polygon count would have to be for the parts of city we know about? And bear in mind that all of the city buildings that were enterable from Thief I, II and III would be fully enterable and recreated here, as well, with fireplaces, chests, tables, etc. The number would have to be huge. You'd definitely have to be careful about what views could be seen from the streets as you walked them and from windows in buildings, etc. Perhaps some longer-range views from special locations could be done with static views of the further away parts of the city, sort of in the distance a bit to keep frame-rate up but still allow a pretty realistic view. It would be a breathtaking sight to be up on the Thieves' Highway and look down and see the city sitting there with it's cathedrals and glowing windows, the wind sighing as it streams past Garrett's hooded face... Wow, that would be cool.

Hey guys, I've been wondering if anyone is going to model the city where Garrett lives in TDM. I mean take the various drawn maps of the city from Thief I and II and the playable levels that show parts of it, plus the maps and levels from Thief III and recreate the entire city in TDM. This would include the Hammerite cathedrals, various inn's, the docks, the Keeper compound, locations of alleys, shops, local fences, Garrett's apartment, the Thieves' Highway, etc., the whole thing as one continuous level. If one is careful about the layout of the streets and such, so as to keep how much you could see of the city at any one time to a manageable amount, this would keep the polygon count of what is visible within reason. Would it be possible to do this in the DOOM III engine without the need for portals like they used in Thief III? Instead of FM authors having to reinvent the wheel every time they want to have a Thief mission take place either in part or in whole in the city and massively duplicate each others efforts endlessly, there would be a master reference level of the city modeled with a high degree of accuracy that could be used in any TDM Thief fan mission. Either as a base of operations for parts of the mission or campaign to which they could add in a portal which takes the player to some location on the outskirts of the town, or as the location of a main mission or campaign which takes place entirely in the city itself. The city would have convenient dead-end alleys and such where any FM author could easily add in portals if they want to that could serve to simulate roads which take the players out of the city to other nearby locales for part of their adventures before they return. This would greatly simplify the creation of FM's, as there would an excellent foundation which any FM could build on or use as is. After all, the city is large and there are many adventures that await within it's sizable confines.

Like was said earlier, just make it an option in an ini file (perhaps with a little check box in the GUI for FM authors) whether to use pause Thief style reading of notes, scrolls and books or reading with the game un-paused. Then the designer of the mission can choose which he prefers.

Hmm, I didn't know that you could take screenshots at higher resolutions that your monitor supports. That would be very handy for getting super detailed shots for use in making posters and things of that sort. Also, is there a way to force screenshots to use full AF and AA applied to the scene before it's saved as a file? Might as well make the screenshot look as good as possible. oDDity: Just curious, is your avatar supposed to be a certain character or just a more or less random person? Also, did you model that avatar?

demagogue makes a good point. Will the TDM also have the option of going into a full screen "book reading" mode when reading notes, scrolls or books (game pauses while reading and/or flipping through pages) if the FM author wants to use that? It would be needed for scripted events or that sort of thing where timing is important after first reading an item. Or if the FM author just prefers that style of text presentation for use in his Thief missions. Also, has anyone ever figured out for sure what font Looking Glass used in Thief: The Dark Project and Thief II: The Metal Age in the Hammerite books and such that Garrett finds in the Hammer cathedrals and other places? I know there was much discussion over this among the fans and there were several opinions on which it might be, but I'm not sure if the fans had ever reached an agreement that the correct font had been discovered. It would be great if the TDM could use that cool Thief font for it's notes, scrolls and books. I like the parchment, it looks like you could reach out and touch it. It has a nice realistic grain and texture to it.