bambini

So it does. Sorry, misread your post on the other topic.

I think you have the right idea, and Fidcal, it sounds like you have the knowhow to make it work. To take the idea a step further though, I was thinking that part of the usefulness of a keychain was to reduce inventory clutter by taking all keys out of the menu and leaving instead just a keychain to represent all of your keys. Let me describe. You have a keychain in your inventory and the start of the game but no keys. You pick up the key to the cellar door. Perhaps a message comes up saying "cellar door key added" or somesuch, and then it is automatically added to the keychain. So at this point your inventory still shows the keychain (but perhaps has a little "1" in the corner to show that there is one key on the keychain) but the cellar door key is not on display in the menu - it's on the chain. When you come to the cellar door, you can just use the keychain itself to open the door - TDM recognises that the cellar key is on the chain and opens the door. You could then have a keybind (on the keyboard, not as in a key to a lock - let's say "K") to detach all keys from the chain and display them individually on the menu for those times when you want to scroll through and see what you've got. So you press "K" and you can now scroll through the menu and see the cellar door key. You can then use the cellar door key directly to open the cellar if you so wish. Another quick press of the "K" button, all of your carefully collected keys are put back on the keychain. All that is displayed in the inventory is the keychain and your inventory looks nice and tidy again

Done. Seems it's something that can be implemented by the mapper, rather than by TDM. @Fidcal: Think I'm sorted now. Turns out that .

Not trying to cross-post, but it was suggested that I should make a suggestion here We were talking over on the Heart of Lone Salvation topic about a way to make keys more functional in the game, and I mentioned that in Oblivion there is a mod that gives you a keychain: http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=oblivionmods.detail&id=681 It's a really handy piece of kit that keeps all of your keys together. You can open a submenu with all of your keys available individually (sort of like flicking through your bunch of keys), but other than that you can just use the keychain to unlock doors if you have the correct key by automatically selecting the right key and opening the door. I wondered if that would be possible to put into TDM, to save players from having to flick through large numbers fo keys that clog the inventory.

The keychain mod in Oblivion was a dead handy way for managing massive amounts of keys: http://planeteldersc...s.detail&id=681 I wonder if a similar thing could be implemented in TDM.

Thanks Fidcal, much appreciated. The other issue is that

OK, I'm wandering round and round and getting nowhere. I've completed some of the objectives but I've finally succumbed and read this thread. The problem is that at this point all of the rooms and corridors are blurring into one. I think I know where I need to be looking to move on, but can't for the life of me think where certain rooms are. Could someon help me on my way? I'm looking for Awesome map BTW!

And I agree. But where I'm fussing too much over manners and stealing intellectual property, your approach is bringing home the bacon!

I guess I'll probably do both. I'll message the other party now (we'll call this the Fidcal Method) and at the same time start to tinker with the map this evening, all the while knowing that I may have to scupper my plans (the Aidakeeley Approach). @aidakeeley: has anyone ever told you that you have an antisocial streak that is both scandalous and intriguing?

Well, I did do that a few days ago, but didn't want to mention it in case I came across as some kind of forum voyeur It turns out that the person in question last logged in a few hours after I sent them a message. Methinks they recevied an email notification, checked in to read the message but did not reply. I'll be good, I promise @Fidcal: Probably a good idea. Diplomatic, non-threatening. The only downside is that I'd hoped to work on the map tonight (my wife's out for the evening so I've got a night of just me, DR and some new albums to listen to on Spotify )

A while ago I was working on a level with another mapper, but it kinda fell by the wayside as life got in the way for both of us (you know how it is). I've recently decided to get back on the project, and I've sent a message to the other mapper to see if they were still interested and if not, would they mind if I continued building on their work to finish the map off. The trouble is that they haven't replied and I don't know if they are still active on the forums. We've both submitted different sections of the map that would eventually be combined to make the final level, but by far the most substantial and complete section has come from the other mapper. Do people think it would be OK to continue the work, even without their explicit permission? This is going to involve editing their work to fit into the rest of the level. On the one hand, I figure that their share of the submitted work was submitted on the assumption that it would be used in the map and possibly edited, but on the other I'm not sure I feel comfortable editing another's intellecutal property without clear permission. They will of course be credited either way. What is the correct way to go about this?

The camera view should update in realtime. If you pull a brush across the camera's angle in orthoview then you should be able to see it in the camera view. There are also key presses to move the camera, but I think you would still need to right-click in the camera window first. I would highly recommend the A-Z beginner's tutorial, which should take you through everything and get you used to DR. It helped me!

Fixed! Stupid Aero. DR now runs like a dream. For those who have a similar problem, you'll need to look at options>compatability and then check the box that says "disable dektop composition". I think that's what it says anyway. I'm having to type this post from memory, because, once again, I'm at work

Gotcha. I'll take a look when I get home (stupid work, getting in the way of my mapping...)

That'd be the way I'd do it. Edit the map so that at this point there are only a limited number fo places the player can enter from, all of which are well in shadow, and then some sort of script is triggered that temporarily freezes the player's movement (not necessarily turning) for a few secs while the conversation finishes. It may be a bit of an immersion killer, but seems to work for other games. Now, as for the script, I wouldn't know how to go about that.

I'm talking DR - mapping is just so much fun it feels like playing The latter. DR runs, but then the views (orth and camera) look empty ( just enpty whiteness). After a good few minutes or a bit of tinkering I might get something, but then it's very slow and jerky (e.g. if I zoom in on orthographic I get about 30 secs of lag). Makes the whole thing unusable. Disable Aero? How would I do that? I've found this, but this seems quite long-winded: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/disable-aero-on-windows-vista/ Any way of asking W7 to just disable it automatically when DR runs? Incidentally, is it a DR compatability thing with Aero? I have a beast of a graphics card, so aero shouldn't otherwise slwo me down. It's interesting that others can run DR just fine on W7. I've never been able to run it OK on W7, only through XP compatability mode. I'll double check that I've got the x64 version installed. Don't suppose that is the issue though. Such a schoolboy error to make

I was quite happy playing Dark Radiant on Windows 7 Release Candidate, by running it in "Windows XP Compatability Mode". Without it, DR was jerky, slow, often unresponsive and crashed a fair few times. Unfortunately, the RC has come to an end and I've had to install a full copy of W7 (I've gone with Ultimate edition). All of a sudden, I can't get XP compatability mode for Dark Radiant. I can get it for other programs, but for some reason DR's compatability options only go back as far as Vista. This basically renders DR as unplayable on my PC. Does anyone know how to solve this issue? Will a Windows 7 version DR be released?

Gotcha. Thanks for all the help, visportals are really starting make sense now! I think I need to practise a bit. Out of interest, when people are designing a room, do they make the room and then put in vosportals afterwards, or place the visportals as they go along?

Gotcha. So if I have a room with two entrances, both entrances must be visportalled in order for it to work. If only one entrance is visportalled, then that visportal won't work at there isn't a seal. Much like ensuring that there aren't leaks into the void. Right?

Visportals are one of the things in DR that I just can't seem to get the hang of. The wiki entry was helpful, but I had a couple of questions: - Does it matter which way round a visportal face is? - Does it matter if a visportal is overlapping a worldspawn brush, or do the sides of the visportal face have to be touching and not overlapping the worldspawn brush to count as enclosed? - If I have an irregular hole to plug, can I draw a large, square room in the void around the irregular hole and then place a visportal within that, cutting through the irregular hole? - If I have a 2 floor building, will I need to make a series of visportals that completely separate out the two floors to prevent the engine from rendering both floors (including a big visportal outside the building)? - if I have a visportal in a doorway, but above the doorway there is a small gap that goes into the other room, will I need to plug that small gap with a virsportal in order to make the doorway visportal work?

If you're talking about making an FM around the Builder's Grand Cathedral, would suggest that such a task should be reserved for skilled modders. I don't want to discourage anyone from modding what they want to mod (and hey, it has do be done by someone:)) I just think that such a landmark would be a key feature of Bridgeport (and would be incredibly complex), so it's important to do it justice. Ungoliant, I don't know whether you're a brilliant modder or not, but either way I wonder if you should collaborate with someone like Fidcal (or even better, several modders) on a task like The Grand Cathedral. It also has the advantage of breaking up a massive job so that a truly huge level can be made

I think we need to tread carefully here. I've always felt (and I know that others feel the same) that part of the reason that The City is so successful in The-Game-That-Shares-A-Number-Of-Striking-Similarities-With-TDM-But-Whose-Name-Shall-Not-Be-Mentioned is that it is a vast, sprawling mess of a city, filled with hidden nooks and corners that even if you'd lived there all your life, you probably would never know about. The key element of this is the unknown scale of The City and the fact that street maps aren't readily available. The fact that you didn't know how far apart the missions were allowed you to feel immersed in a real and enormous city. Think of the third installment of That Game. The City Hub was a wildly unpopular idea when carried out, as it made The City feel tiny and lifeless. Although I agree that we could do with some history and a feel for the quarters a bit better, for the love of Pete please vote no on fine detail.

I'm planning on playing Thief Gold (can you belief that although I've completed TDP, I've never played Gold?!), and then COSaS is next on my list

I finally got round to completing T2X yesterday, after starting to play it around 3 years ago. I enjoyed it, but I thought that the last couple of levels seemed to lose their way a bit (the objectives for the penultimate level were just ridiculously hard, with key items hidden in places that don't even look accissible, and the final level was IMO too well lit), but it was a solid plot and a hell of an achievement for a bunch of people to create in their spare time. I also noticed New Horizon getting a nod in the credits

Well it's good news that W7 can run all the old-school games. Does anyone know whether Thief likes dual-core systems with W7, or do you still have to do the workaround for it?