STiFU

HappyCheeze and NH beg to differ. According to them, the ambient light affects the light gem, but as you said, AO can still be used selectively to get a more realistic overall impression and diversification.

Yeah, but that's a 100% subtractive approach. Combine both and you got it perfect... Subtract the room, add the cross. Done with four brushes, of which three are for the cross! This is the way to go. Definitely the cleanest approach and that's what I am talking about all the time...

I guess it's doable, but you'd have to write your own scripts for that. I don't know the right syntax anymore but you can write two scripts, one beeing fired when you start pressing a key and the other when you release it again. I guess you could hack _forward and _speed into that. The problem is: bind "w" "_speed; _forward" does not work. As soon as there is an semicolon in the command neither _speed nor _forward works. I prefer to have run a toggle-button...

Man, some people seem to get really pissed by this topic... Nobody is saying that doom 3 or TDM sucks. It's just a general discussion, so please relax people. In the end, We love us all!! [Wiseass-Mode] Anyway, the word "static mesh" is no name of some sort, but a general term that can very well be applied to the corresponding elements in other engines, like "Models" in Id Tech 3. Whereas the "Entity" is a term too general, since it doesn't only describe static meshes, but also lights and stuff. So it is actually better to call them static meshes... :-) Just for clarification: In ID Tech 4, Static meshes and animated meshes belong to the group of models which belongs to the group of entities. And well, that big blue brush thingy wasn't introduced until unreal engine 3. The previous engines were convex void engines, so subtractive, with additive support... (Not sure, whether what you were saying was limited to unreal engine 3) [/Wiseass-Mode]

The Fog is also somewhat a material, right? Couldn't you then just blend it out at the borders utilizing an alphamap? Maybe add some noise to the alphamap as well...

Haha, sweet. Have you checked out the mission statistics afterwards? I'd like to know whether that was listed as a killed AI, or maybe as an accident!

I kind of like the idea of subtractive modelling. At first you carve out a very basic layout for a section of your map by subtracting a few basic brushes from the void. This is a very clean approach. No extra polys to render (makes the editor faster), less surfaces to align textures on, no chance of leaks, and the layout of a room is easily changed by editing one(!!) brush (if it is a cubig room) without having to realign textures in most cases. A Connected hallway with a door doesn't matter at all. This all is very nice for getting a first feeling of a new section. After that, you work just like you would in an additive engine, adding detail. So it actually only differs in the layouting process and that is really just a question of taste. Everyone must admit though, that this approach is cleaner and I must say, I kind of like it clean. Another smaller advantage is that you don't see the backface of your subtractive brushes, so you always look inside a room, even if you're outside the brush. In an additive environtment you'd have to hide the viewblocking brushes and if you rotate the camera, it's the same process all over.

Yeah, it does kind of, but I guess it would be worth an experiment. If you set it up wisely in a fashion like Komag suggested, it might work. Although, I think the ambient level also affects the lightgem (I remember reading something like that about raising the ambient level in The Outpost). Anyway those lightmaps could still be applied to places the player isn't going to reach, like a ceiling or a statue (uhh GI's on statue, that'd be sweet). It would, like I said, created some more diversification on distant walls/ceilings. By the end of the year I'll have some free time again. I will probably experiment with this a little then, if nobody else has done it yet. But feel free to do!! I am anxious to see some screens.

I ran over a nice tutorial today explaining how to bake Global Illumination into a lightmap and using it afterwards in Doom 3(screenshots included). What do you think? Could it be put to some use in TDM in combination with Doom's shadow volumes? I think it would make some places look a lot more vibrant and especially bigger areas would profit from it by looking less monotone. The process of achieving this effect seems to be pretty extensive though and I am not sure how well it would behave together with dynamic lights and the ambientlight... There is also the question of consistency. Rendering the Lightmaps for a whole level would be way too much work, as far as I can tell from the tutorial, so you'd have some places with "realistic" lighting in your map and some with the standard lighting.

Uh yeah, that one is important too. Projection in form of a parallelogram so to speak. The vertical borders of the projection have to be parallel to the borders of the window (so parallel to the sidewalls for that matter). That really looked like crap in TDS. So in conclusion, we need blurred and slanted projections for maximum realism.

My question is related to AH. Is it possible to have the projected texture blurred from within the editor through a shader or something without having to alter the sourceimage itself? If that feature doesn't exist yet, would it be possible to implement it into DR? I am asking this, because a projection should be blurred stronger, the further it is away from it's source. (dispersion) On AlHaste's screens you can see what I am talking about. The window is like 20m over the ground and yet the contours of the windows are perceived razer sharp in the projection on the ground. Also, can projections be slanted? This would be necessary in case the moonlight shines into the window in an angle different from 90° (like 45° or so). In TDS you could only rotate the projecting lightsource, resulting in the vertical borders of the projection not being parallel to the borders of the windwos, which of course is unrealistic.

Ah yeah, that makes sense of course. What really struck me was the texture-orientation, so we're on the same path here. Uhhhh nice approach, good thinking. And another example of DR's awesomeness!! I couldn't see those windows on any of the screens, but if those are responsible for the big projections, everything is fine. Would've been hardcore weird, if those small side-windows illuminated the whole place. I did. The difference is only, that the projection is veeeery bright, in contrast to the actual window. And a brighter window texture will also look better when you install a brightish lightshaft. I have no idea how to realize those by the way, sorry. I've only done the advanced basics with DR. Worth a try I guess. I don't even think that it would be such a hit to performance, because you got no shadows up there.

Hi. The third person feature in TDS caused some problems movement-wise and it is very time-consuming and demanding to implement it, at least if you want to be able to switch between first and third person view. Also TDM mainly focuses on recapturing the classic thief experience and there is simply no place for third person view... All information without engagement, I am just briefly reciting old posts here and I'm no team-member. ;-)

Hehe yeah, that screenshot was weird. Next time maybe just raise the field of view, if you want to show more in one shot. The applicable command in doom 3 is g_fov. Of course everything is bent a little then, but at least the viewer directly realizes that... ;-)

I really like the direction this is going, visually I mean. Could turn into one of those ultra awesome Oblivion-churches in big. Here are a couple of suggestions/ideas from my side though, feel free to ignore: Walltexture: Better choose one with bigger Brickstones that tiles better. On distant walls you can clearly see repetitive patterns. Beamtexture: The beam should not consist of single wood-panels but should be solid wood instead. Benchtexture: The texture on the seat benches should be rotated by 90° and have a slight vertical offset in every row, so that no repetitive patterns can be perceived. This is also more realistic. The projected light-textures and the windows: Since the light emitted by the moon is approximately parallel, the projections shouldn't be twice as big as the actual windows they originate from, at least not in a nearly orthogonal projection, like it's the case here. But since the effect is so nice, I'd just make the side-windows bigger (like a little bit smaller than the front windows at the altar). Also on such a big distance, dispersion should definitely kick in. Is it possible to blur the projected texture a bit from within the editor, or would you have to blur the texture itself and project that altered version? Windowtexture: The emitted light is very very bright, which is nice, but it doesn't fit in with the window texture. A bright colorful stain glass texture would be swell! Lightshafts: Maybe add some huge lightshafts to the windows! :-) (Those wouldn't even be unrealistic here because of incense) Glassdome: I could also imagine a big glassdome over the compass rose, also projecting a nice light texture and emitting lightshafts of course. Sorry, I always get hung up in my imagination and once that's the case, I tend to behave like an art director. :-) I am painting a beautiful bombastic monumental church in my mind right now. But I guess this will remain a dream, because at some point you will really have to watch performance I guess.

Radiant in general is the best. But Dark Radiant is indeed the cream of the crop. Cheers to Greebo and all others devs...

I prefer substracting engines too in general. It's just so much cleaner to build stuff that way and leaks are also less likely. But Dark Radiant is way better than any UnrealED, so that surely makes up for that additive doom crap... ;-) Anyway, I think there was a "make hollow" feature, resulting in just the structure you linked below.

I don't mean to sound too critical here, but I think that place - although looking impressive - is too huge for some actual gameplay. Imagine you'd have to search every freakin' row of seats for some hidden loot... ;-) That thing is nearly as big as Peter's Dome!

Do they start running when the arrow hits the first target or do you mean that they are already running after the player when the shot is performed? If the latter is the case, I am fine with that, but a well timed shot should definitely not cause a mass hysteria. Or the gas cloud would have to explode on impact to near maximum radius, so that the chance to hit multiple targets is increased.

Can you knockout multiple victims with one gasarrow like in TDS, or is just the direct target KO'd? I prefer the TDS way, because otherwise there would be no real advantage besides the higher distance. And since the player has to go that distance anyway, in order to hide the body and weapon, there'd be no use for that arrow, at least not in a ghostable map.

Thread seems to be derailed anyway, so here I go! "downright" is actually fairly understandable and I think that it's even a commonly taught vocable here in germany. But "how do you like them apples?" is really hard. Even though I looked it up now, I woudln't know when to use it really...

Nah, just throw drop it on us when you feel it's ready. We'll be gentle...

Well Broken Glass Studios is no commercial company of some sort. They are just a bunch of talented thief fans who make us, the other thief fans, really happy by releasing a BETA... And the "industry" knows very well, that a software can't be rated before it has gone gold. Ah, forgot to mention that I am running it fine on Windows 7 64 Bit professional here.

Ah yeah. The physics might have been better disabled on those staffs, that's true... On the other hand, your described situation is indeed really funny!! P.S. Erm, good one Fidcal! ;-)

Hey, I was wondering approximately how often the dark mod has been downloaded so far. The updater didn't work for me, because of too many people downloading, which was why I used the torrent. The number of peers active on the torrent still varies between 30 and 100 depending on the time of day, so I assume your download servers are still at full load. Are there some statistics? This wish also raised a general question in my mind: Is there any way to see how much traffic went over a certain torrent? I am thinking that maybe the Trackers could store info like that... It would be really nice to find that out, because even I have seeded TDM with a rate of 10 now and I got a crappy connection here. So all together, there must have been a MASSIVE amount of TDM-torrent-traffic so far!!