ZylonBane

Of course you can. Just not as well. Why handicap yourself?

Garish = typical more-gold-than-taste mansion decor. Are you saying the D3 engine is poorly suited to your favorite type of mission?

I said 4X, not 1/4X.

The new guard models definitely need a splash of color.

Ever listened to that sound (keehit_s.wav) at around 4X normal speed?

So... pleasant up to a point?

Yes Vadrosaul, we're all terribly impressed by your e-penis. Please wave it around some more. (so who wins the bet on how long it would take me to flame someone here?)

In fairness, ZIP does have a certain RAM and CPU overhead. The in-house schemes were probably optimized for speed and memory usage. These days it's easy to forget that not so long ago computers were barely able to play an MP3 in realtime. Now we use them for sound effects in games. Complex compression algorithms got cheap. Moore's Law be praised.

And ideally, there will be a standardized set of instructions for doing this. Much like the procedure for making System Shock 2 mod-ready. Just shuffle some files around once and you're set for life. None of "This FM requires so-and-so CRFs from so-and-so version of Thief". Those things are small enough compared to the Doom3 assets that people may as well just copy the whole lot of them. Damn handy that CRFs are plain 'ol ZIP files. Those LGS guys really knew how to make a moddable game.

Well this is cool then. When missions start rolling out in a year or two, there could be a "Requires Legacy Assets" tag for FMs that indicates a standarized subset of the TDP/TMA CRFs must be present in a specific location in the D3 folder.

Well hell, then this capability already exists! Right?

Yah, this would just be an extra capability for those who really want to use those old sounds/voices/whatever, but don't want to risk getting a cease-and-desist letter from Eidos. I've done absolutely zero D3 modding myself, so I have no idea how the asset management works. If you just rename a CRF to PK4 and drop it in the Doom3 directory, can custom missions access its contents?

That's not what I said. Distributing copyrighted game content with your FM is flat-out illegal. It's something that can be gotten away with for the most part, but TDM is in a position where such reuse would be subject to particular scrutiny. What I DID say is that, basically, however the end user obtains the required CRFs is their own business. This distribution model (if you can call it that) has worked exceptionally well for programs like MAME. No reason it wouldn't work here either. New Horizon, I'm not talking about AI barks. I'm talking about things like Garrett's quips, or conversations between characters, or even just really cool ambient sounds. Things that would be easy and desirable to reuse.

Not installed. The files can be copied directly off the CDs, if I recall correctly. So you'd only need the CDs, which I feel safe predicting the overwhelming majority of TDM players will already have. For those who don't have them, there's eBay. Or for those who just want the CRFs... well, let's be honest here... there's always P2P. And I don't see anyone getting too worked up over it. Game publishers are far more concerned about piracy of current games, not niche titles that are almost a decade old. CRF is ZIP. PK4 is ZIP. The sounds are WAV files (screw the old graphics, I'm thinking about the wonderful sounds). Formats shouldn't be a problem.

Okay... I think we can take it as a given that people will want to create TDM missions starring Garrett, or even recreate entire OMs. But of course, including Garrett's speech files or any other Thief assets in a TDM FM would be a copyright violation. So how about this-- Would it be possible to code TDM so that FMs can use assets stored in the original Thief CRF files? I'm certain this would be legal. It's exactly the same principal that's been protecting emulator authors for years now-- they prodvide the emulator, the end users provide the LEGALLY OBTAINED ROM DUMPS (wink-wink). So for TDM, end users would just copy SND.CRF, etc. from their (legally obtained) copies of TDP/TMA into the Doom3 folder and go. The CRF format itself isn't even proprietary-- they're just renamed ZIPs.