Darkness_Falls

If we go with the uncompressed then I'd just rather have the weapon icons moved back to the corners where they were before. It does little good to put them into the middle of the screen at that distance apart like that. There's no cohesion and it's therefore distracting. And also remove those frilly wires from the gem. I was trying to find a way to make better use of the area that those frilly wires currently take up (to the left & right of gem). But if the compressed version isn't utilized, then I feel it's wasted space to putting any unnecessary graphic there at all, like those frilly wires. They look pretty, but they serve no purpose except to take up screen real estate.

Hmm, even those seem large to me. That light gem seems huge. Is that how big it really is in T2? I'd vote for smaller ...and compressed. I remember the suggestion being introduced that we should implement opacity/transparency options for the HUD (0% to 100% opacity). I hope we implement this. No matter what we decide on, I don't want a 100% opaque HUD. Except for maybe the light gem/health bar, but give me this option, IMO. The spread out option just makes things look too disconjointed (is that a word?) to me.

You're forgetting (or didn't read) Sparhawk. My proposal is that while you're selecting your weapon you get the big icon and weapon name off in the corner, like in Thief 2. Then after a short pre-determined length of time (a couple seconds), the selected weapon will only appear in one place -- that is, as a small icon next to the light gem. It's only a reminder, like Spring says. Do you really need a huge rotating weapon icon the entire time you're carrying a wapon like in Thief 2?? Next attempt (below): bringing the weapon icons closer to the gem again. Brightened the health bar; dimmed some of the metal speculars/highlights to create more contrast with the health bar; painted the North point of the compass gold. Brightened the colors in the weapon icons a tad. Added shading where the compass edges meets the gem. The compass also looked a little too much like a sailor's steering wheel, so I sharpened the points. EDIT: Sorry NH. Looks like you beat me to the punch. My mockup's cleaner, so maybe that will help.

My apologies -- I didn't have good quality originals to work from when making those mockups. I basically had to take that tiny icon from your screens and tweak it. Spar - The weapon would be shown beneath the ammo quantity indicator. It was in the mockup, just not very easy to see. I've brightened the image so you can see better. This was just a quick mockup of a water arrow icon to show you that we'd put the weapon icon here. Look under the "12" -- that's a water arrow (showing the selected weapon): Please don't close this thread yet. I'm going to re-post in a while with more thoughts. I still feel those wire frilly things on the left and right of the gem in Spring's mockup (which I think originally came from oDD) are wasted space. With something along the lines of my wire design, the weapon icons fit snugly underneath them and the quantities nicely above them. I agree the health meter could go beneath the light gem. If we wanted, we could even make it fold out when the thief is hit so it's not always visible -- similar in function to oDD's health crosses popping out. EDIT: And when hit, maybe even make the health bar's red color go brighter than normal for a second then fade back to normal luminosity.

I'd like to propose putting the health bar above (or below) the light gem, as shown here. I don't understand why it would need to be a big bulky health bar wasting space in a corner, as the earlier proposal shows: I'd actually like to take things a step further and put a rotating (in perspective) "half-"compass on the right side of the gem. And put the selected weapon with quantity of remaining ammo on the left side -- as shown in the next mockup (water arrow). Note changed ornamentation around gem also: Close-up: Actually, we could even take things a step further by moving the half-compass to instead be directly above the light gem/healthbar, and putting the selected alternate weapon (e.b., flash bombs, health potion) on the right side of the gem. Thus, it'd be easy to see what your left-mouse weapon is by looking at the left side of gem and what your right-mouse weapon is by looking at the right side of gem. Clean, concise, intuitive, your eye only needs to go to one part of the screen to see all your vital info, and no more need to keep big icons in the far-right and far-left corners of the screen like the way they were in Thief 2. EDIT: This last idea should be self-explanatory, but let me know if you want a mockup. Side note: The big weapon/ammo quantity icons would still initially be in the left and right corners (for a few seconds) while you're making your weapon selections, but after you've decided on your weapon, have that big weapon/quantity populate to the center of the screen as small icons by the light gem, as my mockup shows.

Trust me, Macsen, you don't want to go there with oDD I'm sure you can find some archives where he talks about his preferences for this. Not bad ideas, just not popular among the team. I believe one suggestion was along the lines of heart rate/breating getting faster, slower movement, etc... and no HUD showing health.

I would prefer the horizontal bar if we have to choose one of these concepts. I don't like the frilly wires extending out from any of them, though. Actually, same with the light gem. Adds unnecessary frills, when we're trying to minimalize. EDIT: In-game, I'm sure the subtle frills will be fine.

Hey, that would work very well for me; I'm not sure about the rest of the team, however. How do I sign up??

Fingernail - Would you be able to send us all chocolate chip cookies?? Or, if you're feeling really generous, maybe buy us all Lightwave or 3-D Studio Max. hehe, j/k

Bon anniversaire a toi, oh great and wise Dark Mod leader.

Just to help my web knowledge, what is the better way you'd use? I'm not involved with The Dark Mod website updates, so I'm just asking more or less for my own benefit. Thanks!

Yeah, I feel for you, too. It's never fun to lose something or someone we love or care about I wish the earth was a lot bigger and that we didn't have such a need or desire to condense populations together, resulting in these concrete jungles. And, of course, that there was peace on earth... but that's a different story

3 more pics added. I forgot I had these. This door one might come in especially handy... http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Art-Conce.../door-wood1.jpg Well, actually, Dram... I didn't really wanna say, but the pictures are actually from the house and property that I grew up. I took a bunch of pictures a few weeks ago because my parents had to sell the property, and the new people are going to tear the house down in matter of days/weeks and put like 8 houses on the property. Makes me very sad. I have a lot of good memories there and I lived there over 20 years of my life. Was the only home I ever had until I moved out. Sooo, lots of memories; you know how it goes. That's why I had asked people to PM me if if anything happens to get used in the mod. I thought it would be neat to see a familiar something in the game. We actually used that tree as a swing tree. There was this big, thick gray rope tied to a different branch much higher up in the tree. My brother, friends and I used to climb the tree out to the end of that branch there and somoene else would swing the rope up to whoever was on the branch then that person would swing down. Was lots of fun The big rocks are special to me, too. Not sure why; I guess they're just landmarks, ya know? I hope someone in the family can get heavy machinery to carry them somewhere else, like to my house or one of my family member's house. Here are the other 2 pics I added. Not necessarily good for textures, but maybe just for looking at: http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Art-Conce...alls/field1.jpg http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Art-Conce...Falls/tree5.jpg I wish I had some good quality pictures of when it is summer time there. It's very beautiful with all the flowers and leaves. *sigh* I'm going to miss it.

I'm glad to hear they might be helpful, Renzatic You're right, I did post a few of them just as design inspiration rather than texture. Like that twisty tree I thought might even help me in drawing trees.

I figured. Cheers! And one more time to NH, Happy Bday dude! LOL Okay, that's the last time I'll say that for a year.

If I only saw it in this thread I probably wouldn't have noticed, but right before replying I think I had seen 3 or 4 other threads where you were telling us to reply dammit! Cracked me up

You were ordering us to reply, like we were monkeys. I was just kidding Happy B-Day again, NH.

Happy Birthday, NH! PS: Dram, I'm not your monkey

I've uploaded a bunch of possible texture resources to the FTP for you to use. They're not on CVS; feel free to transfer them there if you wish. Feel free to PM me if any of them get used; I'd be interested to see how they turn out in-game. They're about 2MB each, so 56K users probably won't even take a peek. ftp://208.49.149.126/TheDarkMod/Art-Conce...-DarknessFalls/ I posted the ceiling images mainly for ideas of seeing how the beams attach to each other as possible interior designs. I love this tree branch: http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Art-Conce...Falls/tree3.JPG You may wonder why I posted the ugly orange carpet one, or the ugly tiles, but I'm always surprised at the different textures you can create after zooming in or out -- or changing the brightness, contrast or colors -- of a pic. In the end, I assume someone who is creative could use these pictures (and textures posted by others) in ways we wouldn't even imagine.

More input please That does little to help me understand the dilemma.

I like the 2nd one better. Better colors, better lighting, better placement of the bow (compositionally speaking). The placement of the bow in the top one, and the solid black colors of his clothes, just kind've makes him look more like a ninja with a curved ninja sword; that's all. Where did "Stories of the Shadows" come from? Did I miss a thread? I like it and think it makes some sense, considering FM authors will hopefully be making countless stories from our tool. However, when I play games (e.g., Thief) I play more for the gameplay than the story -- thus, I don't pay much attention to the story -- so the phrase doesn't do much for me, personally. Maybe we can make a couple catch phrases to use over time, during our marketing campaign. Appealing to the story side of things for a while like that phrase does, but then also maybe eventually including messages to appeal to those who like and focus on the adventures of thieving around itself, rather than the story. Just a thought. Note: I know we don't want to confuse people too much and I think we should remain somewhat consistent with our message (too much dilution isn't good), but I'm hoping there's room for a different phrase some day, when the time is right.

Could you use the FTP area until Sparhawk gets back? I still don't use CVS. Will some day, but just not yet. FTP works fine for me to post files.

Okay, NOW it's just right: HAahahahahahaaaaa! Oh, and isn't our thief gay? I figure he moonlights as cupid: Aww, isn't that sweet...

Looks cool. Only things that bother me: I wish less of his face was visible. Maybe move the light more above him to cast a moodier shadow so you can barely see his face. And the sword looks awkward/out-of-place there.

Excellent! We have a chest!! Woot