demagogue

Ever think about publically archiving the team forums when everything is finished? Just to see its genesis. It'd probably be valuable to see these debates years down the road when future people revisit certain ideas. Anyway, another question for after it's done.

Yes, of course.

This isn't a request by any means, this is just thinking aloud. There was an old (2004?) press release re-posted recently that if they did make Thief 4, it wouldn't be medieval but in a different time and setting, and some people balked. But at the same time I think there is untapped potential here as well. I remembered that one of my favorite Contest Missions was Thief Noir, which had a 1930s-1950s flavor which I thought was cool, and there are parts about thief gameplay that could really fit well in a more modern setting... I particularly thought about like pre-WWI London (or like some synthesis of 1880s-1950s, the City 200 years on), like Jack the Ripper turf, or Sherlock Holmes style badguys, and the PC is more like a cat-burglar, wall climbing and jumping, and the watch are like old school bobbies with nightsticks and in an emergency maybe have a small pistol (maybe they go for tackling and handcuffing the PC, not sure?), and tommie guns might make an appearance, and gangsters, and the PC still has lockpicks, a grappling hook (effectively just like a rope arrow), maybe a swtichblade for an emergency, no gun, and still the blackjack of course. Not sure about working vehicles, but maybe just models. Mostly stylistic differences, I wouldn't want to change the gameplay, but new objects and AI. Not sure how flexible the toolset will be to add this kind of stuff, sounds like a lot of work. But anyway I was just thinking aloud about how it'd be cool to have the ability with TDM to start adapting thief gameplay to a variety of different periods and settings once the core gameplay is under wraps; at least the potential is there. I mean, if work grew on trees, it'd be cool to have a Jack the Ripper thief, Noir thief, contemporary thief, SS2 period thief (ZB already brought this last one up in TTLG using dromed, but TDM seems the way to go IMO), etc. At this point, though, I'm just thinking aloud about it, putting it on the table to deal with much later, "After Dm Is Done" as the topic says.

Maybe they're trying to oust the competition so they'll have a monopoly on Thief fandom...

I don't want to laugh but the situation seems kind of absurdly funny... With all the tards they have floating around TTLG why on earth would they want to pick on Komag? I'm sure it has to be temporary. I mean for god's sake they let Blue Haze back in (under the awful name Beauty Man) after he'd gone through 8 altnicks and a monthly spamming ritual. And everybody knows you and your site are one of the backbones of the community. I agree, they just like laying down the law sometimes; so I guess take it in stride. Vent a little here about how ungrateful they are, and realize that most people in the community are going to be on your side. Also, at least now you are in good company with ?Noid, Oddity and ZB ... the last of whom iirc, to give you an idea of just how arbitrary the whole thing is, was temp-banned recently (apparently by one of the "softy" mods; not hard to guess which one) only to be made moderator for a day while he was banned! (for April Fool's, although it might have been as soon as he came back.) Also, I never got the feeling people, David or GBM, hated you ... CommChat can be harsh to everyone, just part of its culture; you really have to stick to your guns and take things in stride if you actually find it fun to post/read there. And it may just be a personality thing; I've found it's more about the conversation and having fun with a topic than what's really "right", so there's no use trying to be too reasonable (of which apparently I am guilty a little too often for my own good) ... so maybe you just went in with the wrong expectations. Anyway, if you want we can start a "Free Komag" campaign for you over there. I'll make the t-shirt.

Komag selling the Dark Project. Say it ain't so.

They're not posting, though. I agree it's the trailer. I wonder how much exposure this is getting outside the Thief community. Do you guys have a feel for that?

Well, a lot of it may be subliminal but contributes to an overall impression, even though you couldn't put it into words. So I don't think it was "wasted". But anyway, all of these sorts of issues seem to be exactly the sort of thing you want to bring up near the *end* of the process, to tweak and polish and smooth everything out. Nothing really to worry about at this point, it seems (although probably still worth putting on the table for future refrence).

Wow, that was back in the day when they really meant them to be "Penitentiaries", that is, rooms to isolate a criminal so he could reflect on his sin and do penitence to God.

For what it's worth, my thinking is if a mapper wanted something like this, he should trigger it himself. Because it's really about design features that are at the mapper's discretion, which is what I thought Spar's more general point was. So there might be doors that a guard isn't *supposed* to be able to unlock. E.g., if he's running after the PC in new territory, like a strange house and gets locked in and tries to return to his old path after a while, or even if it's on his normal patrol route but he's like a city watch that goes through technically private property, it'd be strange to hear him say "why doesn't this lock work?" because it's not a lock he should be able to unlock. But if a door is on a guard's home turf, and his key gets stolen, it seems like a mapper could use scripts to custom trigger a bark to cover this kind of situation, and more appropriately, to say things like "damn, where'd my key go." (if he didn't see it get taken); "who's been taffing with the locks" (also, if he didn't see the door get locked), and even be careful enough to trigger different barks or cancel them if he *did* see what happened and just generally tweak it to be appropriate, and that could still be cool. The more general point here I think is that, people make suggestions all the time around here that seem so map-specific that it'd really be better to let mappers custom put them in (because in the right situation they really could be cool), than for the team to assume them in all maps for the toolset, which can only lead to absurd, out-of-context results.

I have to admit I was a little skeptical of the dragging, but watching it in action looks so intuitive. It's sort of what I'd feel like I'd want to do in that situation, to stay crouched low, and just pull a body into a corner. (Although I still hope shoulder-carrying is in).

It was a touching video, more than I expected it to be. The sneaking thief on the ledge, the first k.o., a few of the arrow take-outs and guards falling down stairs, over a bannister, in a pool with a splash. Pretty fun to watch and caught the spirit of classic gameplay quite well, I thought. The loot ching especially brought back fond memories. A few things seemed a little jerky, but as you said above, it seems those things will get tweaked towards the end; so I'm not really worried about it. You can see some of the need for a little more texture appropriateness and variety. Pretty much 3 sets showed off here (warehouse, mansion and cathedral; the cave was just one texture it seemed, although I like how it was bump mapped). I can also see a number of things that you've already updated on that didn't make it into the vid, e.g., the on-screen readable. I also recognized some of those rooms from the screenshots. I liked how it told a little story, ending with a sunken cathedral ... pretty cool. "Broken Glass" is a nice tribute in a number of ways, sort of a bitter-sweet name, actually. Anyway, all around a great release this time around. It was definately worth the wait.

For some reason I didn't catch this on TTLG. A little taste, but great while it lasted. Lots of things going on, but kept a coherant thread going. Too bad time doesn't grow on trees like it used to. From looking at your storyboard it would have been great to see it all played out.

Happy birthday Dram~

I was thinking about making some textures taken from buildings around New York City as a way to tour the city and take a break when I finish school, especially around the Village (1800s apartments, window-sidings and facade embossings), and downtown ("Civic" style, e.g., more "official" looking facade embossings). Whether you can use them or not, I thought it'd be great practice ... but if you can use them all the better. If I can get away with it, I'd love to dig into people's apartments and get some interior designs ... I could tell them I'm from an architecture magazine and want to take photos for a feature. Is there any way I can get my hands on the Doom3 Texture tutorial, since it seems to be missing on the D3 forum?

What about using the thief model as a stand-alone NPC? (... just wondering as long as the topic is raised.)

By the way, maybe the moment has passed, but while I'm thinking about it. I don't like the analogy between things like chess, baseball, football (either kind) unchanging vs. FPSs being rehashed over and over. Aside from the fact that FPSs at least purport to be story-centric (so like movies and comics will continue to be rehashed, even for plots that are carbon copies). But even thinking about them *just* as games, things like chess and football happen to have overseeing institutions that have a monopoloy on the "official" rules. You even sometimes see people trying to come out with alternative chess and football leagues every now and then, but they usually don't last, not only because the gameplay isn't as good (at least IMO, sometimes they seem just as good), but because there's strong institutional pressure to keep the official game "pure". But FPSs are market driven through-and-through, no monopoly on what is "official" gameplay ... just a lot of market research, a very competitive field, and a nervous, conservative investing environment. Add all this up, you get a lot of product being churned out, all swirling around a very small set of themes (they all see the same market trends) and distinguishing themselves along pretty nominal "stylistic" differences. It seems to me if you want to change the product you have to change the economic incentives. Things like chess and football were lucky in that respect. It could be argued that it's basically a historical accident these games turned into national games, which led to "official" rules and official institutions to enforce a monopoly on "good" gameplay. There are plenty of reasons to think this won't happen for FPSs anytime soon (for one thing, they are often reviled by the official-decreeing establishment). Of course, there are other ways you could change the economic environment, e.g., by supporting independent dev's with subsidies or contractual or investment incentives (sort of like how the independent movie industry works). It's acutally a very similar debate going on with independent movies; how do you change economic incentives to keep good movies coming out and keeping them from collapsing into Hollywood drivel? It's actually a hard problem.

Dammit, don't they know I need my fix! You may as well record those two posts and put them on repeat, Komag. It looks like we're in for this for a while yet.

Well, being a phil major, I can't miss out on this action: The fallacy is that causation doesn't follow by logical implication but by empirical expectation (that is, it's an exercise in probability and statistics, not logical inference) ... textbook Hume. So a later FPS doesn't have to suck necessarily just because it's an FPS; but if all the empirical factors are in place that made all the others suck it's statistically very likely to suck (for Oddity, anyway) as a matter of experience. Not exactly what I'd consider a very killer argument here. At best we're talking about, like, a statistically very small chance (in Oddity's worldview, anyway) that *this* FPS will be the one in a million that breaks out of the cycle all the other past FPS's have fallen into and be amazing. If he's playing the percents, you can't blame him. Then again, it's a free demo, maybe a few minutes time is worth the 1:1 million chance?

I was just about to say... Actually, it was down for a few minutes, and then up again for a few mintues, and then just as I submitted a post it went down again. The last time was a lightening storm. Acc to Dave there isn't supposed to be anything special about this month, but still...

Because I kind of feel strongly about this, I'll respond to it. Of course a game needs things like the PC needs a modus operandi (what do I do?) and "rules" for controlling the PC and interfacing with the world to advance the M.O. (x-control predicably = y-world response & y-world response triggers z-whatever) ... so there are your "rules". But I think (I'm not speaking for Oddity here; this is what I think) that he rightfully put the emphasis on interactivity because the "control of a PC in a world" is really the core of what a game is, and the rules are just one (still necessary) means of bringing that about. But it's good to even perhaps overemphasize it because games today aren't taking advantage of it. Easy example, for most games the level of interactivity is pitifully deficient (competing even with notepad it seems): run forward; shoot whatever weapon is at hand; kill whatever runs at you; pick up health or weapon stuff. But there are so many richer and deeper ways a person can interact with a world or NPCs, and richer situations: helping an NPC with a problem or injury, finding a restaurant for dinner, trying to set up two friends on a date or break them up, sparking a street riot to pressure the city to change a policy or let someone free from prison, or stopping it ... so you need better ways for PCs and NPCs to interact, you need a social world that runs on its own steam going on that you can use or abuse (other people going to work, having lunch, having sex at night). I mean I'm making these up, so these aren't nec the best ideas, but you get my idea. That's how I think about why the emphasis in gaming should be on the "interactive" part (not that rules aren't important too, because of course they are). I guess I should make a token response for the topic at hand. My laptop unfortunately isn't going to run the demo at anything near good speed, and I can't do it on school computers, so still waiting to see all the action. Except for the kid-mutilation (which strikes me as a little gratuitous and unimaginative as well), it sounds promising.

I'm on Oddity's side here (I think; one can never be too sure) on game vs interactive. When cinema first started 100 years ago, it was considered sort of a fluke offshoot of photography, and had a few gimmicks at first, then started rehashing some basic stories... But as it's matured it's really been able to do more than *merely* entertain, going into artistic and humanity sort of directions like we think about cinema and theatre. PC Gaming has that potential. Of course I'm sure "games" will always exist and be as fun always as they are now. But I also look forward to more expressive productions. And what separates gaming as a medium of expression is interactivity, engaging with the narrative or experience rather than just passivly watching it. Also, since it's a creative medium, there's no reason it should stay content with a few themes played over and over (again, like we think about cinema), except insofar as they are universal human themes that never age. But anyway, there's so much potential here, we should start expecting more from PC games and not be held back (while of course saving a place for the really great games that will always be fun).

*psst* By default in T1/2, the "r" key drops an inventory item quietly down without throwing it. I hope I have not shaken your world with this revelation (or did you already know this?)

This is the first time like I've felt like I've had some where else to go when it's been down, though. I remember going to Ion Storm's Thief page once when TTLG was down and no one was around to even complain to.

This has got to be the most unfocused discussion of an update ever. :V