demagogue

That brings up the point that half the problem is an AI issue. If the AI can't play along with a PC's "choice", about the only things you can make meaningful choices about have to be material things, apples or oranges, or building things ... free form stuff like Sims, which doesn't lend itself to much drama if NPCs aren't really involved in it (short of the narrative-tree problem he kept showing, where you script a dedicated narrative-path for each chioce). And of course NPCs can't play along because their AI usually boils down to either flat out stim-response stuff, or at best some economic algorithm where they just do whatever maximizes some variable ... which throws the gameplay right back into the problem sphere, once you realize how you're really "interacting" with the NPCs. If you wanted an NPC to play along with a choice in a procedural way, you'd have to get it to recognize what the choice means to it in more semantic ways, which I gather from other stuff I've read pretty quickly descends into serious crimes of memesis or incoherence. But at least that's where you might want to focus your attention if you wanted to get interesting choice opportunities into games. ........................................ Edit: Another thing... Why is it that so many people talking critically about pushing the boundaries of games has to be either writing a technical academic article, a piecemeal blog, or making a quirky webcomic? I'm reading about the Interwar Paris art scene -- Picasso and Dali and such (my avatar gives it away!)-- and those guys knew how to techncially innovate their art. And half of it was just their take-no-prisoners attitude, which I'm not feeling with our scene, and this reminded me of that. The ideas are interesting, but it needs ... something. Some if it is just that these guys are clearly milking Yahtzee's schtick and need to work on their act. It's a start, anyway.

I'm on board with AI not waking up as a general matter. But I think the idea might have some traction in a gimmicky FM, where you could just take care of it through brute-hack scripting for the single gimmick purpose at hand -- like it if were part of the plot of the FM, or you had a gimmick tool like a "swab of ammonia" which when frobbed to an uncns NPC scripted their arousal, or something. So the team shouldn't waste time with it. But that doesn't mean an author couldn't play around with the idea in the confines of their own FM. In fact I think that 95% of the crackpot ideas people post in here are better off as fodder to experiment in the confines of their own FM. Let these guys take care of the basics. There will be plenty of time to hack together some gimmick FMs on your own time, with your own FM. That's the beauty of it being a toolset.

I get the impression that Prince Edward Island/East Coast Canada has more internet polls for its bands than anywhere else in the world, lol... Vote +1

Sort of a shame that it's such a good engine for modding, but it doesn't seem to get as much serious attention as other engines. Oh well, everybody else's loss. I'll be quite content concentrating on Darkmod mapping. By the way, I just had a brainstorm. You official guys have probably already thought about it... But I hope when you guys get around release time, or anyway eventually, somebody could put together some nice box art and a cover to slip into the jewel case (a nice manual too might be pushing it ... although that'd be cool too. And CD art of course, but I don't think it'd be good for the CD to have a big sticker on it so I could pass on that too). Since I bought Doom3 just for this, I personally think it'd be sort of cool to put it in a Darkmod jewelcase and box for my shelf. Just a nice touch that communicates its standing in the old game library, since it'll be just as important as any commercial game. Anyway, just a thought to add into the mill.

Might have come from something like a readme in Saint Lucia, or the date of a post advertising it, or something like that. It's an understandable mistake in that to most casual observers that haven't read anything about it, it's just another single Doom3 map, and they don't get that it's a toolkit ... esp given that there are already maps coming out now, so that's the only thing they see.

Yeah, I'm a fan of spiritual remakes. Not just because of the IP issue, but you make a level come back to life with a few surprises and twists that if you played the original you could appreciate.

Clearing has a site with screenshots from most FMs http://darkfate.ru/?show=files/fan-missions/Thief2 Unfortunately, the index page for them only lists up to the letter F, and is missing a lot (Emilie Victor being one it's missing). But I think if you manually type in the FM name you can still get to its page. I don't know why he hasn't fixed that yet! Emilie Victor is one of my favorite FMs, but it's more of a mansion mission than a City mission. Gaetane's 3rd mission, The Den, had more city-scape.

It's funny that right after you wrote this, this got posted over at TTLG. I guess rehashing old work wasn't so boring to Purah after all.

Stupid word of the day for me is: apophthegm Mr. Barbecue-Smith "re-read the apophthegm with a slower and more solumn utterance. 'Straight from the Infinite,' he commented reflectively..." lol.

In any event, it'd be nice if you guys put out a stand-alone installer to allow a Darkmod FM to run that went to all the trouble to keep out D3 assets. ... Or I guess that's what was meant by the TDM-Lite idea.

I've always liked the Tomb Raider series. Maybe the best "platform" type of realistic 3D game. I started with TR2 and went back and played TR1, then recently Anneversary. I was never one to think that 1st Person was intrinsically better than 3rd Person, just that they are basically different mechanics suited for different types of games. 1st Person doesn't seem as suited for platforming, but I haven't played Mirror's Edge so I'm willing to see. But when TR is at its best it does it well.

Merry Christmas =)

That could still work out pretty well. If there's one thing modders are, it's resourceful. And I think there are a good number of them that would think it worth the extra effort for the declaration of Doom3-independence. In a way, it's sort of befitting. The whole modding ethos is DIY and (legally) 'free the code', so going the TDM lite route would be like really showing you have street cred. I could imagine some contests for it, too. But personally I just really like the idea of having a download link to my FM on my website, with a link below it "Play with the TDML package - Download Here". Whoever stumbles onto the page can go straight to it. BTW, related question: For people that have Doom 3 but are only interested in it for TDM, is there a way to strip it down to just what's needed for TDM so it doesn't take up any more space? Sort of the next best thing to a standalone package ... Or (for someone wanting to build with it), would it still be better to keep all of Doom 3 around? You never know.

This is already a feature. You adjust it from the ThiefMP config file to whatever level of transparency you want.

I've done it. It's fun ... really fun. Now when insane things happen, there is someone there to witness them with you. And to think there are now 100s of FMs to take on co-op...

I wonder about pilfering sounds from YouTube videos... It just seems like a massive repository of all sorts of sounds for all sorts of situations. I read through the license and Sec 5 is on User content, and it seems they only want user data to be available in streaming form, as is, and in particular don't want it to be stored in any form. I wonder, though, if you got permission from the video owner, if that takes YouTube out of the loop as far as licensing the content goes. And since it's easy to PM people on YouTube (and to the extent the owner is the uploader), I think a lot of people would be cool about giving permission for that sort of thing. Anyway, just an idea to brainstorm. Of course I can see the advantages of either recording sounds directly, or getting them from a known source that's specifically licensed them for public use or are unambiguously in the public domain. BTW, I did recently get a new microphone for my laptop... Is there a wiki entry or something about a preferred way recording and packaging sounds if anyone is in the mind to contribute?

But I suppose that means others couldn't take them from those projects and use them in their own. That would disallow Darkmod using them, even if they bought a license, since the whole point is others who didn't would still be using them in their own projects ... not that there was a debate on that. But OTOH, it's nice that professional-level textures out there can get into individual projects to those that buy them and really raise the bar on quality. That's the plus side of the coin. They're really not that expensive and do make a good impression. Is there a site like this for professional-grade models with a similar sort of license, I wonder.

Could you put that red text on a black or white background so it's more readable? Just a little "deleted box" of background color behind the text will do. But the shots are very blurry, sort of grasping at straws at this point...

It's a little creepy how you know the physics of concussions so precisely.

Depending on what you want, you could still be clever with the "total access from everywhere" ... e.g., put in some intervening occluding rocky structures and some cleverly placed indescernable teleports, and you could break the crater into parts without it being apparent (and maybe experiment with distant parts of the crater being skybox art). Or even without the occlusions, if you are careful with the teleports you could even keep the seemingly-full crater view and teleport unnoticed. I've seen a couple of different contexts where this trick has been used to good effect.

Yeah, I was a little too quick on the spell-check there. I originally spelled it palatte, and palate was the stupid correction it offered me. Then I was too lazy to bother editing it after I saw it was still wrong (unlike this post )

IMO, what you are talking about isn't a bug to be "corrected" but a power that builders can potentially abuse in ways like you talk about, in the same way they can abuse other freedoms, even brushes. I think it's right that builders have the freedom to make whatever object they want frobbable; it's a general purpose function, and it should stay that way. But I also think a good designer would do well to keep in mind basic, time honored principles of mimesis and consistency, which would argue in favor of having some consistency with what's frobabble and what's not, and avoid old adventure game traps like "guess the object" and red-herring syndrome, which inconsistent frobability might slip into. But like I said, I think that's an issue of design for builders to worry about, not a problem of functionality worth limiting the freedom of frobability. (I answered this just so I could say the word "frobability" )

For the record, dromed's method is typically blunt. The first color of whatever palate the texture is using is rendered as transparent. So you want to make sure all your palates use like purple as the first color. I wanted to figure this out for TDM too for the strings on the lute I made.

Reading this thread makes me long for MegaTexturing so we can make all that space look good. I know the game-play doesn't focus on big, outdoorsy areas, but every now and then it's nice to spread the wings... Did anyone ever figure out if it's at all practicable to get it in after id4/Doom3/ET:QW all go open-source? Edit: A little research later, wow, I didn't realize that some workable Megatexture tech was already built into vanilla Doom 3 - link1, 2, 3, 4, . Well that opens up possibilities! It has limitations (no compression? apparently), but it's there. Maybe oldhat, I think I saw those screenshots before, but I didn't catch their significance.

Cool beans. Congratulations on getting it out there into the world. It must feel like quite an accomplishment.