Professor Paul1290

http://www.soldak.co...e/Overview.html I think this got a mention in my trailer thread one time. Drox Operative is a top-down space ARPG set inside of a dynamic "macro-game" that acts like a 4X game that plays itself. It's from the same developer that made Din's Curse and Depths of Peril. Each game has several races that compete for control of the sector. They build colonies on planets, gather resources, produce fleets, and research new technologies. They fight each other, steal from each other, negotiate with each other. Sometimes they form alliances and sometimes to go to war. You however, don't play as the ruler of any of these space-faring civilizations. You play as a "Drox Operative". It's NOT your role to manage all those annoying people, build production facilities, command fleets of ships, or capture resources. Instead, it's your role to step into this mess and manipulate things to go your way. Maybe you'll form an alliance between the factions you like, maybe you'll help one conquer the sector, maybe you'll kill lots of people and make everyone fear your wrath, maybe you'll make yourself a hero everyone worships, or maybe you'll just get very crazy rich. However you want to do it, to "win" you just need to demonstrate to these space empires why you are the deciding power in the sector and why they won't get anywhere without you. It has a lot of mechanics representing a lightweight/simplified 4X game from a different perspective. Races research technologies that improve their firepower and you can sell/give them new technologies, do quests for them to speed up their research, or steal technologies from them to sell/give to other races in order to give them an advantage. Different planets have different resources l and what races a planet controls can influence how many ships they can produce, and you can help the races capture valuable worlds if you feel like being nice. Natural disasters can hamper ship production and economy, and diseases can do the same while spreading between planets. Perhaps you might help your allies resolve those situations for a fee. Unhappy colonies may result civil unrest that may eventually lead to civil war and faction splitting, and you may help a race suppress a rebellion or help the rebellion along if it serves your purposes. Different races will have different relationships with each other that you can influence by helping them, attacking them, spreading rumors, and forming treaties. Also it features the usual ARPG levelling up and loot collecting, but you already know how that stuff works. It's a rather interesting mix of a Diablo-alike "moment-to-moment game" built on top of a dynamic strategy/4X "macro-game". I've had a lot of fun playing this in Beta and thought I'd mention it now that it's been officially released.

It took me a moment to notice that was supposed to sync with the trailer. I guess on that note, I was thinking of doing a different TDM trailer with more text and setting/plot related stuff, but that might need more editing than I can do well. I might give it a shot anyway so I guess we'll see.

Since it seems like we're getting more videos on Youtube now I thought this would be worth discussing. One of the issues I ran into with my TDM videos is finding a good brightness and gamma to record at. Previously, I recorded all my videos with gamma much higher than what I played at to make sure things would be visible to more people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU5C6J_0nbA&hd=1 With my trailer and my last Let's Play, I turned the gamma back down and brought it closer to what I normally play at, but still slightly higher enough to compensate for recording issues: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz5qhH1wOKQ&hd=1 The reason I turned it back down has to do with comments I got from a couple groups of gamers who don't play TDM who I have shown these videos to. It seemed that with the former gamma I almost always inevitably got a lot comments like "the AI in this game sucks, he can't see you even though you were right there" or "the shadows are too washed out". In fact, in some cases I could hardly get any positive comments on these videos at all because of that until I went back and put in notes on all the videos that the game isn't normally that bright. With the latter gamma and brightness the above has not been a problem yet, and feedback seemed to turn out more in line with what you would expect, and I didn't get anywhere near as many comments about AI having poor detection. A few people seemed to think it was too dark, but those complaints seemed far fewer than the "the AI can't see anything" comments that I got with the brighter setting. For I've been going with the latter video's settings as it seems to get fewer complaints overall, though it still ends up being a bit of a catch-22. Now admittedly my sample size of gamers who haven't played TDM is rather small, maybe 15-20 or so it might not represent the majority, so I thought it would be helpful to discuss this and maybe get a sense of how bright or dark trailers/videos of TDM would ideally be.

Finished up what will probably be the final version of the trailer: I couldn't do much about the guard looking up at the rope, but I did get the music to sync better at the end. Here's the video file: http://depositfiles.com/files/t7sh4my1o Feel free to upload this as well or put in on the front page somewhere if you want. I only post on a few forums and most aren't Thief related so any help spreading it would be nice!

Could be fun, I'll think about it after I get go through a few more of these.

I agree that the old clip of that was better, but isn't in there for reasons I mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, in the few seconds leading up to that moment, it looked like I passed in front of a guard in plain view and in the light and I wasn't spotted somehow. In fact, the few seconds leading up to the guard looking up the rope where I pass in front of him seemingly in the light was the worst received bit in the trailer among the small group I showed this to that hasn't played TDM. It was bad enough that I hardly got any positive feedback at all about the trailer until I took that bit out (I wish I were exaggerating about that, but I'm not). As such, it's definitely not coming back. The trouble is that clip is really hard to replace. The "look up at the rope" behavior is really erratic and difficult to record in a way that looks natural and doesn't run into the problem of the old one. The clip that's in there right now is the best of five takes. It's unfortunate, but that's how that bit has turned out. On a more positive note, I did get a "I might buy it when it goes standalone" comment, to which I replied "What are you talking about? It's gonna be free!". XD

Trailer take 4: I split the longest sequence and shortened the intro. I also added in a new clip that shows a guard looking up at a rope while at the same time showing off leaning, and added a new clip with lockpicking. I also turned down the music and turned up the sound effects.

I did drop a flashbomb there, but I would agree that it's not clear. Actually, someone else I showed this too did point out that it looked like I just ran away without doing much. I think one even interpreted the flash as a gunshot. I kind of slipped the clip with the more obvious flashbomb right before the swordfighting clip to get the idea across and that seemed to help a little. I'm probably going to turn down the music and turn up the sound effects and such and that'll probably help somewhat.

The reason I cut the ending part of that clip was because I had a few other people say that the fact guard was looking right in my direction and somehow couldn't see me (it wasn't clear that I was hidden by shadow) was a serious deal-breaker. I would have to re-record that clip to add it back in (which might not be too difficult as I think I still have the save).

The Dark Mod Trailer take 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17GOzwDxCuo&hd=1 I shortened some of the existing clips, added a few more, and added a little bit to the intro. Let me know what you think! UPDATE: Small change, uploaded a new version with the font of the intro text changed. That font was bugging the heck out of me.

I edited in more clips, and now I've got something a bit more varied and "trailer-like": Now it has water arrows, sword-fighting, and amusingly enough it now ends with candle re-lighting! Enjoy!

I have been trying to figure out how to do that. Showing lots of stuff is a bit tricky without lots of cuts because TDM gameplay is relatively slow and I kind of exhausted the music track. Of course, maybe I shouldn't try to do it all in one take.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6iHx1_TJPw&hd=1 It's a short gameplay trailer I cobbled together using a leftover save from my Let's Play of In the North (I really liked this room) and a track from the mod. Let me know what you think. I haven't set this to public yet so it's only visible here. UPDATE: I edited in more clips, and now I've got something a bit more varied and "trailer-like". See other post for link. Now it has water arrows, sword-fighting, and amusingly enough it now ends with candle re-lighting! Enjoy! UPDATE AGAIN: The Dark Mod Trailer take 3 see other post for link. I shortened some of the existing clips, added a few more, and added a little bit to the intro. UPDATE AGAIN!: See other post for link. I split the longest sequence and shortened the intro. I also added in a new clip that shows a guard looking up at a rope while at the same time showing off leaning, and added a new clip with lockpicking. I also turned down the music and turned up the sound effects. UPDATE AGAIN AGAIN: Finished up what will probably be the final version of the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_IUXPlyU6M&hd=1 I couldn't do much about the guard looking up at the rope, but I did get the music to sync better at the end. Here's the video file: http://depositfiles....files/t7sh4my1o Feel free to upload this as well or put in on the front page somewhere if you want. I only post on a few forums and most aren't Thief related so any help spreading it would be nice!

Recorded The Beleaguered Fence: I tried using a different gamma and brightness setting this time around so it doesn't look as washed out and odd, hopefully it isn't too dark.

On the subject of making it clear the the player should stay on the rooftops, I think I would be somewhat troubled by the idea even if the you were caught at street level and it ended the mission. It would be better than simply killing the player and honestly it wouldn't matter to me too much, but it would still feel a bit arbitrary and off. What about more unusual circumstances to justify rooftop hopping so it doesn't feel as forced? For example, Bridgeport is a a port city so I imagine some parts might get flooded sometimes given terrible weather. Maybe part of the city gets flooded due to a storm and the water was infested by killer flesh eating leeches! Yea I know, that sounds absolutely silly, but you get what I mean. Personally I would feel better about being forced onto rooftops by something unusual like that rather than instantly being caught by guards or falling to death. (Your mileage may vary as always).

I had a hunch that would be the case. Feel free to lock and/or delete this thread if appropriate.

I stumbled across the following post on moddb: So I guess this question is, does this actually work? I have a legitimate copy of Doom 3 with TDM installed already so I haven't had a reason to try this. However, I'm curious as to whether this works at all, what issues may pop up attempting to do this, and if it does work would there would be any problems suggesting this to others.

From what I can see, the situation doesn't really favor the "Romney the business man" as much as it favors "not-Obama". By "not-Obama" I mean anyone who isn't Obama and/or anyone who can replace Obama, not necessarily a businessman. The thing is that in general Obama is very likable and he makes a lot of sense, but in the eyes of many he's already tried and failed. Obama says and wants to do a lot of things people want to happen, but lot of people (perhaps the majority) believe he has failed to follow through with his plans. That's pretty much what's working against Obama at this point, people don't feel like the economy has gotten better during his term and people feel like he's failed to live up to his promises. Romney doesn't have this problem, he just has to be an alternative. His "competent business man" angle actually doesn't seem to be working as well right now as it was a month or so ago due to a lot of things in his past that are being brought up, but he has been catching up recently anyway. I suppose to clarify my earlier point, if there was such a thing as a hypothetical "generic, ordinary, average" candidate you could somehow magically put in Romney's position, I think that candidate would automatically win. The fact Romney is only keeping up about 50/50 and not the clear winner is due to how awful Romney is.

I guess you could say the current republican party is our "party of crazies spawned from economic troubles" in the US. I'm not sure how apparent it is from the outside, but the current republican party is not the same as the republican party from before. It has changed a lot and has become more extreme far right in general. There's a lot more to it than that, but I'm not the right person to explain it in detail. It seems like economic trouble can shake up a lot of things. From what I can see, the only reason someone like Romney can reach close to 50/50 with someone like Obama is because the current situation so strongly favors "not-Obama". I think under "normal circumstances" (if such a thing exists) Romney wouldn't stand a chance.

I guess the biggest thing is that a lot of people have been feeling the effects of the not-so-great economy while Obama has been president. You might have noticed a lot of Obama's campaign is about trying to demonstrate that the economy has been getting better somehow, this is because a lot of people (perhaps the majority) don't believe this to be so and that's probably one of the biggest, if not biggest, thing working against Obama. That probably sounds rather simplistic and yes it's probably a bit more complicated than that, but like I've said before people tend vote out whoever is in office when they're unhappy (which would work out just fine in most cases, except for maybe right now). I'm definitely not an expert on this so anyone else feel free to correct me on anything.

If you want a simpler explanation that doesn't involve conspiracy, the impression I've been getting is that a lot of people who would/will vote for Romney don't actually like Romney that much, they just hate Obama. For them it's more a matter of getting Obama out than it is getting Romney in. The thing is, people aren't happy with how things have been going, and usually when people aren't happy with how things are going they tend to vote out whoever is currently in office. If Romney was actually a decent candidate he would already be the clear winner just because of the general dissatisfaction with Obama, but as you've probably noticed he's been a pretty terrible one. I guess you could say he's so awful that he's turned what would have been an easy win for him into a close tie.

Did "In the North", though it looks like Ungoliant beat me to it. I finally die in this one and have to re-load, and make a hilariously unmanly sound before doing so. Part 1: Part 2: Go to 0:10:20 on Part 2 for a quick laugh.