Mr Mike

Ok, updating 207.8MB now at 100kbps I have to eat soon but after that I'll be testing Flakesbridge Monastery on what ever the hardest skill level is. If I've time after that Heart of Lone Salvation. Again, on whatever is deemed hardest.

Hi greebo. I was going to go back through a couple of missions tonight and can do this with 1.03 if you'd like. I know TDM's mechanics fairly well. I've got a modern system judging by most accounts here though a slow conn (<1MB). Let me know if I can help.

Surprised this thread is only 3 pages long but here's my thoughts... First up; Thank you Jesps. This mission was an absolute joy to play through and I can only imagine the work that went into it. Not to belittle the attempts of previous mappers but Flakebridge Monastery was the first time I truly felt like I was in a tangible universe and TDM was somehow gelling together in a cohesive way that I'd not felt before. Lighting was definitely one thing you nailed. I'm so disappointed when a mission has an ambient lighting that is too bright or noticeable, especially on the LCD screen I use, that it makes everything seem washed out. But, with FM, you really seemed to have captured how Thief 2 felt on my old CRT and it helped me enjoy this mission so much more. Of course, a lower ambient level requires more effort in placing light sources and this was completed with a great touch too - do I need to mention THAT stairwell? Sound and AI placement was also on a similar level and it kept the tension high for me the whole way through playing. My only slight complaints would be; The cracked plaster/stucco walls of the upper quarters became quite repetitive and could maybe benefit from being broken up with different textures or furniture. The other would be the looping sample used in the starting area. The start of every loop has what must be a very bassy noise, or the sound is clipping. It causes a moment of cracking in my headphones and I'm forced to turn the volume down almost entirely until I leave that section. The isn't FM specific as the sound is used on other FM's, such as BikerDudes Cathedral (the last one). Other than that, superb work though. Think I'll go and have another play through tonight

No, it's definitely the way he stated. I've not tested this but I think the best way to achieve what you want is to control volume control with a script that runs when the door is frobbed. I guess this is what you have in mind? Unless there is something particularly weird in adjusting sounds with a script in Doom3 it should be quite simple to do.

Thanks Chiron, will check them out. Here's a zombie from A:TDD. It's a pretty poor example to show the terror they convey but it does show the pace and power they have. Not suggesting we mimic that but I feel TDM could use a much darker, more ominous undead 'character'.

Zombies. In TDM I find Zombies incredibly disappointing. It seems they try to mimic Thief's zombies in most ways but feel incredibly gamey and their noises just annoying, almost laughable. Until recently I thought that this was just because I'd become so accustomed to zombies in computer games but Amnesia: The Dark descent proved that utterly terrifying zombies were still completely possible. They seem to brainlessly patrol in a more convincing manner than TDM's but, when alerted are able to pick up some pace and catch a slow thinking player. I've never seen their run animation as I'm usually trying to frantically find somewhere to run in blind panic, only to be spun around and visually see their clawing motion cut across the screen in a bloody mess(I thought Doom 3 also had such visuals with certain enemies but TDM just seems to highlight the edges of the screen in a red, watery puddle?!). Are there plans to improve this in TDM? Perhaps someone can suggest a Blender tutorial on how to animate in Blender for Doom 3 so that others might try to improve this?

Woah boy, here we go

Just to add; I've had a steam bot successfully use a (basic) patrol path before. This was a looooonngg time ago though.

Wholeheartedly agree!

Well this game is out now and currently downloading on Steam here. I get the impression that some of you haven't tried Penumbra. If you like the traps in this game you'll pretty much guaranteed to like Penumbra. Also, whilst certainly more linear than Thief Penumbra did have some locations where you weren't on a fixed path. The demo of Amnesia felt completely linear but I've faith the full game won't be like that.

Being a fan of Penumbra this has turned out exactly like I thought, and hoped, it would. Order on Steam and get a 20% discount too! Lantern hand or not in TDM I really wish we had a light source size closer to Amnesia than what we currently have. The current lantern in TDM is useless for anything bar banging around objects in a pitch black room (bad for gameplay) and the falloff feels far too abrupt imho.

I've got to say this really isn't true. I don't think we can say what FPS humans can perceive at on a screen, since we're all different, but I would think almost everyone can see difference in anything less than 60 frames per second. I remember Q3 on my old CRT i would notice whenever it was below 90. Thankfully I'm lucky enough to have TDM at a constant 60fps during all but the toughest times.

I'm not familiar enough with VP's to know how they interpret when they should be closed but is it possible that it is because you have 3 VP's all overlapping and visible through the first large portal? It's tricky to explain but, what happens if you delete the middle of the 3, so neither 2 left overlap? The VP's seem to be positioned a little strangely anyway. Why is the first large VP as wide as the widest point of the corridor when geometry there appears to be thiner? A smaller VP size should help reduce the number of open VP's.

Actually, now that you mention it, I did try the demo at the same time Thief III came out. Thief was just about playable and DX:IW was indeed horrid. Flys along on my current machine though. As for the patch, UK versions are already 1.2 :-/

Ok, a lot of us are old school gamers/TTLG board members around here and I realise I'm probably going to be slated for this but I'm finally playing through DX:IW for the first time and actually enjoying it much more than I ever thought I would. I'm not a gamer per-say (you could count the number of PC games I've actually completed on 2 hands) and pretty much the only franchise I ever enjoyed was Thief. I first heard of Thief in what was probably a PC gamer preview, got excited, and the series hit the nail on the head for me. I built up a similar expectation for Deus Ex when I heard about the guys working on it etc but I really never took to that game. Combat was clunky, the story way too cheesy IMHO and it just didn't seem to feel cohesive. Now, I'm fully aware with the slating Invisible War received and so I didn't even bother looking into it but a copy (genuine) landed on my desk recently so I checked it out. Installed a hi-res texture pack and am so far up to Cairo. Please, no spoilers, but what was the beef with this game from most of 'our' crowd? It's not awe-inspiring but fun enough to play through so far... Btw, my main issue so far is fairly occurant system crashes. Is there a known fix or updates I can do for this? (TTLG info has long since gone).

That card should be fine so try disabling Catalyst AI and, failing that, update your GFX drivers.

Are .lin files always created on compile, or just if there is a geometry error? Because I had a leak and the geometry was fine. Turns out it was a path-corner poking into the void and I couldn't find a .lin file to help me with the leak.

That's interesting stuff Seperntine, thinking out of the box and it saves on quite a few polygons. I created a version with each type of VP and then made a friendly patrolling guard go back and forth along the west/east corridor. The version with the single VP sounded quite buggy though. Watching the sound trace it would often bounce from reaching the player from either side of the VP, depending on the guards location. This meant the sound would not only abruptly change in volume but also switch to predominantly the opposite speaker channel. Going to go test some more to see if that can be resolved.

Those look awesome! Love it

Yes, this seems to be the behavior of graphical representation though I'm quite confident that sound is properly propagated (see my post above). Heart generally seemed to have quite authentic sound propagation though I did notice anomalies in the room in the first floor adjoining the courtyard with the partially open window. I might give that a closer look later today.

Was a nice little enjoyable mission. Thank you As mentioned, there are several doors where light leaks through slightly. I think it's a geometry error as the portals in those doorways never close.

Can we include a caveat by the resolution - "Suitable for some LCD TV's", or something?

It curves at the top because that's how bevels default in Radiant. Of course, this can be fixed though, it all depends on what you want. Adjust the bounding box to control its ultimate size but, if you want to adjust the degree of slope, edit the vertices. Default for this is to press E when you have the patch selected.

I can't recall where but I'm sure I once read that AI will be less likely to hear a player in areas of loud environment noise. As far as I can tell this isn't the case right now. Is it in the development pipeline? I like the idea of sneaking past guards in a warehouse by turning on generators to mask footsteps, with the penalty of lights being switched on

Another point... When drawing sounds the engine draws an arrow from the source to the nearest edge of the visportal it travels through to reach you. I was beginning to worry that ID had merely coded it this way for performance reasons and to give a sense of what direction the sound was coming from i.e gun fire coming from a separate room north of you would sound as though it was travelling to you via a corridor to the east. However, I created a series of test maps and this does not seem to be the case. Sounds do travel through each and every portal required to reach you, with the appropriate fall-off applied. This is much better for us as it gives a much more developed sense of sound propagation.