lost_soul

Interaction with the player would be neat. They never really did this in Thief. All the AI would do is start talking to you when you approached them, but I don't remember actually initiating a conversation with any of them myself. This would open up a new world of possibilities for story telling. Maybe we will end up trading equipment with an AI in a bar in real-time some day similar to Deus Ex.

I really love the new sword clashing sounds. They sound more varied and realistic than the original ones did. My question is regarding the animations. I don't want to sound unappreciative, but is it possible to have the guards legs move a bit when they fight? I know of and respect the amount of work that has gone into the new additions, but I think that would add a lot to the realism. I don't know much about Doom 3 editing, but I know back in Q3a they had separate animations for both legs and upper portions of the body. Does it still work the same way? That meant you could have a character running, walking, or crouching and at the same time attacking or taunting. Your thoughts?

I've heard in some Thief FMs where the author rearranged some of the stock conversations. That sort of thing was quite funny.

That would be epically awesome! I kinda doubt they would release id tech 4 so soon after Rage came out though because of all the work they are probably still doing on Rage (fixing bugs and whatnot). Still we can hope the source for id tech 4 comes out any day now. EDIT: Never been to idDevNet before, but I just tried it and it is down for me too.

Duh, duh, duh, duh duh duh duh It looks like he is playing with r_shadows set to 0. I did this once on a Geforce 6200, but it basically breaks the game for obvious reasons. I would trade texture quality and specular and bump maps AND resolution before I gave up my precious dynamic shadows!

Take note game designers: is how you prevent the player from going somewhere he's not supposed to... specifically at the end of the video. Guaranteed to crack you up.

Wow. If you open up haunted_voices03.ogg in Audacity and reverse it, you hear the following: "Bough to the woods and offer up your flesh, woodsy man, for the woodsy lord." Nice easter egg there. I remember trying this with the apparition speech in Thief but even after reversing it, I couldn't understand it.

I installed the demo today and gave it a try because it is currently ten bucks on Steam. It was sort of ho-hum. The game runs great on my machine, but I feel as though I am stuck on a path that I cannot vary from to explore at all. I thought the waterfall looked kind of cool on the second level, so I decided to jump in. Bet you can guess what happened there! It just killed me. If there's a hallway with lots of doors, the only one that will open is the one you're supposed to use. It really does feel like a step back from DN3D in every way except graphics. This includes the UI. While on the second level, I thought I could start a new game and explore the first level again to see if I missed anything in terms of interactivity. It told me I would lose my progress if I did that. Even Wolfenstein 3D is more advanced here. I dunno, I kind of want to buy it to see what happens, but I feel I would have more *fun* playing some Thief FMs where it isn't just an interactive movie.

I also agree with Tels that the dialogue could be expanded a little bit. In Thief 3, the AIs do have special greetings for monsters. "Builder aid me gainst this spawn!" "monsters!" etc Sooner or later somebody is gonna make an FM where guards and monsters collide, and it would be a little awkward to hear guards refer to undead as thieves.

"I am building a T1/TG mission at the moment but once I finish I think I would like to make a Dark Mod mission." Always glad to hear this... both of them!

Well, part of what made the Thief 1 vocals outstandingly awesome was that they were actually yelling at the player. I think that's what a lot of the TDM vocals lack. They mutter a bit too much. When they should say something very LOUD like the fact that they've spotted a thief, sometimes it isn't loud enough to be threatening. What's wrong with a *slight* pre-baked echo in the vocals? Thief had this as well. I guess they did this because not everyone had EAX hardware and voices would echo in a place like Bafford's or Constantine's.

I personally wouldn't say they're terrible, but they could use some work. I noticed how great the new builder character sounds who was added in 1.05 or 1.06... not sure. I may decide to do some recording this weekend. If I do and if it doesn't sound like complete ****, I'll post it here. Are we supposed to sound angry? suspicious? How about laid-back like we're interracting with other guards? I guess a bit of each would be the best bet.

My two cents: We've seen plenty of city missions thus far, but not so many mansions as of late.

I've played for a wile, but I haven't finished it yet.

".. instead of the default 64MB" ROFL what is this, 2003? I'm pretty sure my *netbook* has more video memory (shared) than that.

I usually just keep it at about 2x. I don't really notice much of a difference: even at high settings you can still see shimmering around edges of stairs and the like.

I got the card tonight. It plays great! I wasn't really expecting that when I saw the size of this little card though... "How is this tiny thing supposed to run the game like the GTX460?" lol I tested missions that are known to bring machines to their knees like NHAT3 on 1280x1024 and it runs perfectly smooth. Now I just have to send in the rebate.

Even Carmack admitted a wile ago that the textures weren't going to look so detailed when you get right up close to them. One thing I've learned today though is that (if I ever release software), I had better make sure it is almost bug free the day I ship it. Just look at the massive amount of 1-star reviews that this game has gotten over the past few days purely due to the bugs... ouch

This mod has some great ambient sounds. What's yours and why? Some favorites of mine are: basement01_loop.ogg -- Simple, but very creepy sounding. It gives me the chills. church_kyrie01.ogg -- a beautiful piece of music, especially when the vocals become loud desolation_loop.ogg -- another one that gives me the chills haunted_spectral_loop.ogg -- makes the player tense... Every time I hear it I expect something to jump out at me. mansion_outside.ogg -- really conveys the feeling of being a thief. This track never gets old. solitude_loop.ogg -- One of the great piano tracks that is rarely used. Sotha (AKA the master of ambient sound placement) has used this one a few times. haunted_eerie_loop.ogg -- has a sad/gloomy sound to it. I love it!

This game puts me in a difficult position. On one hand, I want to buy it and support id. This is because id has done more for the PC gaming community than any other game developer has or probably ever will do. Releasing their source code to the hardcore fans is greatly appreciated for all the usual reasons. On the other hand, RAGE requires Steam. I don't want to support that. I guess I'll have to wait to see if a Linux version of this game ever does come out. I've also been considering just sending Carmack a check when the Doom 3 source code is released to say thanks. In the past, I have always bought id games, but my tolerance for industry BS has worn thin due to other companies who only take my money and run, leaving me with deliberately sabotaged products a decade later.

Okay, I ended up ordering http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814134135 Not too expensive with the rebate and it has a bit more grunt than that other card .

Yeah and don't forget about setting tdm_lg_interleave to 3 or even 5. That gave an extra 5 FPS on my integrated machine. I wouldn't set it higher than five though, because you will experience "shadow lag" where you can dive into a shadow but the AI might still see you because the light gem hasn't been updated yet.

Turns out this motherboard is only PCI-e 1.0 x16 compliant. Will that make a difference? I only intend to run one mainstream card on this cheaper system and from what I read it would only be a problem with high end cards or SLI setups. They say PCIe-2.0 cards will work fine in a 1.0 slot at x16. Here is a GT240 with 96 cores. With the rebates, it is $30! Unfortunately I waited too long and the other card I looked at sold out. Should I get this?

Yeah, I played with 1 GB and on big missions sometimes you will get swapping where the game pauses to pull in more textures. One thing you can do that is almost unnoticeable to visual quality is set image_downsizespecular 1. This decreases the resolution of the shiny effect that you get when lights bounce off a surface. You could also use image_downsizebump as well, but that will impact image quality more because bumpmaps play an important role in bringing out detail of textures. You may also want to set image_downsize to 1 and image_downsizelimit to something like 1024. It shouldn't really affect image quality and it will prevent any FMs with mega-huge textures from eating up too much RAM.