nbohr1more

I agree that it's hard to say where the perception is coming from. My ideas are completely from my own personal preference of having direct 1-to-1 sword movement control. A less drastic change would be to allow users to change the order from "Gesture > Click" to "Click > Gesture" as mentioned both by users in this thread and Lemony's "Daggerfall thread". Perhaps a poll about this would be in order?

Yes, the enemy who is central to your view will be the locked target. Once in locked mode, your mouse movement will only control the sword, therefore you cannot "look elsewhere". The lock key is for full and detailed engagement of a single enemy, the traditional combat can still be used for situations where you are managing multiple combatants. The build-up is very quick, akin to the current delay penalty for the "gesture system". It is meant to resemble a click-drag action in a GUI. Yes, you should be able to block against non-locked enemies. Sword position. Any amount momentum energy will work, the general concept is that a high momentum strike will FORCEFULLY parry the opponents sword block away enough to disorient them so that you can jab them or escape. The general flow would be: 1) Engage in combat as usual 2) If a single combatant has you cornered then hold the lock key 3) While holding the lock key, click and drag the mouse to swing the sword 4) When you release the click in step 3 will determine the force of the swing Again, the momentum build step would be VERY quick and possibly also influnced by how fast you drag the mouse.

Now that I've considered it further, I am not sure I recall any game that uses direct mouse movement to control sword movement. Sword actions are usually relegated to key hits and sometimes relative to player motion. As such, I would have to say that my mental picture of how my enhancement would work is purely derivative of TDM's own system. My proposal, fully fleshed out. 1) Keep the existing Combat system 2) Add a Lock-On key 3) When the Lock-On mode is engaged, the camera is fixed on the opponent 4) When the Lock-On mode is engaged the player uses the left mouse button to build momentum at the start of a swing then releases to complete the slash 5) The player can directly change the position and angle until they "release" In essence it works a bit like an old Golf game where you charge-up then release but more fast-paced and tactile. As I've said, I'm not sure if any game has ever done this but it's how I feel the logical extension of TDM combat to real-time sword control would work.

Well, that's just it isn't it? How often do you combat in the game? After awhile you loose the skill that you've gained during training. You would need to keep playing the training mission all the time to keep your skills up. If the game were mostly combat, people would love it but because you are discouraged from combat you loose the skill. Also, in training you get a warm-up period. Combat needs to be more pickup and play. Also, Demagogue mentioned in the other thread that the reasoning for this system was to try and avoid creating a game within a game that took you out of context. I'm sorry, but when I sword fight I want control of the sword I have very little care for controlling the player. An alternate lock-on mechanic would solve this. Yeah, it won't win me any friends to say it, but the Zelda "shoulder button" lock mechanic is what most gamers have become accustomed to and will instinctively return to. Or, to clarify further, when you "drag a window or file across your desktop, you don't high-light it then do a gesture then click" you click and drag.

Yeah, I believe that was a LemonyFresh sketch? (or was that from Ocn...?) Yes, side-evasion is a complication of a double-context mechanic. I suppose you could artificially fix this by making the engagement state permanent until it has some conclusion... Eg, if the attack key is released then you can change your camera view via mouse-look but cannot actually move. Or, alternately, have a "flee" key to disengage and run. IMHO, that is actually a tangential issue, if the combat view and options were exactly the same but the sword play were more tactile due to direct motion control, I would happily live with any restriction that kept the side-evade from happening. (Yes, I am sure as soon someone added this feature another player would look bring-up this weird restriction and request side-evasion. ) For me the proper use of combat would be a small skirmish where you could shove back an AI so you can escape. The current combat system seems to be mostly all-or-nothing, if you start a fight you'd better kill that AI. I have had fun with some run-n-slash berserker stuff but that was almost always an unintended kill (only rarely was I able to take a swipe then run with the AI on my tail). Edit: That was Lemon alright: http://modetwo.net/d...s-with-a-sword/ Edit 3: Anyway to move these last comments to Lemon's thread above.

Alright, I'll bring up the one area that has been repeatedly listed as a sour spot in many first impression reviews: Combat. I know that the new animations are on their way so that might improve the perception of it but I think that combat needs to be examined rather than brushed-off as "not a core part of the game". I will again state that players, even those who get trained in combat, instinctively try to use 1-to-1 sword movement to mouse movement. If the attack key made the player stationary and the sword-play real-time, many more players would appreciate that aspect. The all too common scenario: 1) How the hell do I combat? 2) Plays training mission 3) This combat ROCKS! 4) Returns to real mission 5) Stumbles over the interface IMHO, if a 1-to-1 sword movement mode were made available, we would see many more positive impressions. Let the mission authors make combat engagement difficult enough to be discouraged. The players should be free to enjoy it, even if it results in a failed mission.

A more in-depth recent review: http://andr01d.hubpages.com/hub/The-Dark-Mod

+1 \m/ \m/

Any texture artists wanna help with this old request for a "strings" texture? Echo.. echo.. echo... The reward might be the completion of another Nielsen74 mission Echo... echo... echo... (you know you wanna get this done ... )

I think the confusion here is with the term "ultra-rights in the US". Under conventional definitions in our political spectrum, Red-State Republican Neo-Con folk would likely only celebrate mass murder if it were enacted against "folks collecting welfare checks". The gullible red-state blue collar folk do not have the "sophistication" to grasp the idea of attacking the enablers of such a system... or would loathe to loose what they perceive as moral high-ground (attacking other white people knocks you off that high horse). If you are referring to the KKK, then they may be happy about these actions but we do call them "ultra-rights in the US" we call them Racist Radicals. Yes, the distinction is subtle but it is there nonetheless.

While the sentiment is good, I think it's better if we have evidence of the thought process that leads to these actions. Also, when right-wing thinkers are compared to Breivik, (if the Manifesto is defaced) they will be able to claim that Breivik "never said that" or worse "he said the exact opposite". Yes, some of the trends that Breivik railed against are rooted in real problems but the dialog should not be "hide all knowledge of these problems" it should be "How can we peacefully and realistically grapple these concerns? How can we ensure that nobody's culture is trampled? How can we ensure that cultural backgrounds that display inherent lack of respect for human rights are kept in-check without being offensive to those cultures and (especially) those within those cultures who don't ascribe to that backward cultural baggage."

JC Denton (et al) took a cue from Melan's "desaturation" methods and actually made this part of the color calculation process. Less saturation will naturally lead to darker visuals. I imagine that this improved the appearance of some missions that looked "too bloomy" when post-processing was enabled but I believe it has had an adverse effect on missions where the lighting was already well tuned for bloom (or otherwise) and... may have exaggerated Melan's intended effect too much when used in conjunction with "desaturated lights". http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Advanced_TDM_Visuals_Tweaking

Looks great Biker! Can't wait to see the culmination of that

No TDM doesn't have POM but these textures are higher resolution than the Doom 3 equivalents and have new details. The rock textures would likely be the only real useful ones for TDM but perhaps some of the corroded metal would work as well.

So.. any members here who can post over at Doom3 world wanna ask Wulfen for permission to use these (I am presuming that is a given anyway...)???

Doom 3 modder Wulfen created high resolution texture asset replacements for Doom 3. I'm sure that most won't be of use here but some of the Stone "Hell" textures might. I am not sure about whether these replica textures can be considered "Doom 3 free"??? http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=24708&sid=5a0c7b677937624b7270f7fd0566377d

Probably the wrong thread but some blog called "Games Codex" has a recent overview of the mod: http://games-codex.com/Blog/2011/the-dark-mod-a-worthy-successor-to-the-thief-series/

I've posted the link everywhere except here at it's source... Fixt. Springheel Interview: http://www.moddb.com...gheel-interview Edit: Adjusted the first reply per the request below.

I am presuming that you left Catalyst AI enabled but disabled "Surface Format Optimization" under Gaming/Catalyst AI? Correct?

In Doom 3, if the "AmbientLight" keyword is applied, the light will have no "directionality" which makes it use less resources. TDM's "Enhanced Ambient" adds a cubemap lookup which adds a baked-in direction to the lighting while the "Normal" ambient uses a real-time screen-space calculation to add some shading and directionality. Still, I believe that most of TDM's "Ambient Light" modes are still less resource intensive than "real lights" in most scenarios. As for the affect on the Light Gem, even Ambient World lighting will have an effect. You can only compensate via the Light Gem offset. This is probably obvious but if the origin of the decorative ambient lighting is out away from the surface it is intended to illuminate then you might be getting hit by unintended illumination. Since Ambient light has no directionality you should be able to use tricks like moving the origin inside the wall or surface so that it only illuminates the intended surface. Also, shrink the light size but increase it's RGB values (etc) to make an "overbright" light.

No problem Biker ... I think Gman and Tels are the bigger helpers\contributors here though... LOL Just get me a dmap file so I can see how bad the slide-show runs on my dinosaur system...

I am still wondering if the "Interaction Table Overflow" errors in missions like NHAT 3/3 might be due to the ratio of Events verses Entities and maybe this would help that situation too (reducing the initial queue). But Tels' "EVENTSPERFRAME" limit might be more relevant there.

Despite appearances (according to my sources ) the mission release is still way off... Option 2 is the best option AFAICT.

Biker previously posted:

My last shot at debug commands: listThreads (This shows active script threads) listActiveEntities (might get a ballpark from this) listCollisionModels (this would've come in handy previously LOL )