Glyph Seeker

Heh, don't worry, Sotha, I was using myself as a bad example of over ambition! I know full well that a very small heist / den mission is definitely the first thing to do! =-)

Well, as you say, I feel it's a mixture of different things - but I think it might be over ambition in the main, which then leads to frustration or drains so much time it becomes unmanageable. The thrill of the artist is in creating - but it's also in seeking approval when the thing you are creating only really exists when it is being /played/. You can get beta mappers to help with playthroughs and things. But it's such a lump of work to do before it can appear sitting proud in the download manager in game... If you're drawing some fan art of something you can show work in progress and people will instantly say "wow, looking good!" and you can get a drip drip of encouragement - but you can't do exactly the same thing with a Fan Mission, because it's an organic thing that either works --- or it's broken. =-P Just the impression I get! Speaking for myself - I have a burgeoning idea to plan out a Down In The Bonehoard type huge crypt level. Now, that is utterly silly for a newbie mapper- but it is something which gets me enthusiastic. I think that if you follow that enthusiasm to make your first level - you may well run out of steam because you keep hitting your head against a wall when you keep on trying new things every day!

Ha! Reading this post before I went to bed last night - I then had a dream about playing the first game! I've got a copy of it here I'm giving away to a charity shop with a few dozen other games I'm clearing out. It had gorgeous huge maps - but it was window dressing, mostly. I found the lack of a quicksave or even checkpoint save so infuriating I gave up after 6th mission I think, just watched my brother complete it instead. The endlessly respawning AI enemies were unforgiveable - without them I feel it would have been a top notch game and felt "fair" to play! =-P The best feature was that amazing Zip Wire stuff - and the wonderful satellite uplink / binoculars. That mission were you're hunted in the snow by a helicopter is brilliant.

Damn those are stunning - I didn't realise before joining the forum that there were prefabricated items larger than the static meshes for tables / trees / gravestones - looks like a real help to people wanting to populate alleys and streets with "scenery" buildings.

@Fllood That's a good way of describing it, yes. Whilst, when looking over things, it seems we've probably already lost some maps "through the cracks" - it would be nice to have a 'safety net' to try and keep some of the huuuge labour of love maps which appear to be heading towards limbo! =-P @Bikerdude I'm sure it'll be a great collaboration! =3

Ha ha! Tell me about it! Surely we could put stuff like Black Mesa in the "PBB" category as well? This is why I'm so blown away by the good management of TDM: despite staff having to move on and leaving areas like animation fallow for a while, all the critical stuff works - has been released - and is being improved upon --- AND IT'S A SINGLE PLAYER MOD! Yippee! Most mods of this quality are multiplayer ones like Living Legends, which makes me a sad panda. I find myself really wrestling to enjoy Deus Ex though after a decade and playing it so much - the engine is so clunky and combat so tiresome. --- I'm going to buy the Thief Complete Collection - I never dove into the world of fan missions, and I've been enjoying the DM missions so much I'm going to maybe have a go at Shadows of the Metal Age. I wanted to start a forum topic asking what's the best way of exploring the years old fan missions for the first Thief games - but I'm worried that I'll start a bit of rumble. =-/

The more graveyards / potential undead horrors I see, the better! Looking good! >:-)

The Nameless Mod is pretty stunning. When my laptop died I had a few happy hours playing it on my netbook. Ended up a bit bored though going through WorldCorp and trying not to kill plot critical enemies. And that's one of the first missions! It does have a huge amount of work in - lots of humour - lots of player decisions. Basically if you want more Deus Ex --- There it is. =-P The Cassandra Project is brilliant but it's only one level unfortunately. =-/

Oh man - yes please! MD, throw this one at Bikerdude, you saw what a great job he did with Return To The City! =-3 @ Fidcal Ah yes - I see what you mean about the difficulty in the "logistics" of people claiming another's work and then growing tired of it. I guess I was more thinking about whole mods dying out rather than the slightly more community - central cross pollination we get with FMs.

Oh don't you worry - I am VERY clear about avoiding all official Thief stuff in FMs - I rather enjoy the idea of the absolute freedom it offers!

I am not picky at all - I welcome all new content and fear that things get stifled by being too pernickity! Whilst British voices are the precedent and ideal since the City is a clockwork-punk London under-siege, I was never bothered by Garret's voice in Thief - and what is that if not a clear American accent? =-P

I get that impression - that there are very promising missions that vanish. Like most mods vanish tragically without sharing assets. Is there any way we can encourage people who are thinking of abandoning a level to upload it in partial form / email to a forum friend so it could be released in a partial state or finished by a fellow FMer?

Argh, I am an idiot! Ok, once again, that's my own oversight and not your problem! =-P

Some people have ripped and uploaded all of the Thief 1 / 2 / 3 ambient soundtracks to Youtube - I'm thinking that when I get into editing I'll be using that as background music for myself! =-3

Any new maps from you will be a pleasure - the sooner the better! ;-P

This was a really nice "break" after the Glentham Tower mission - and I'm glad that we might see more Thomas Porter prequel missions / non-story ones within his universe. Pretty much top marks from me - the first snowy mission I've played and I particularly enjoyed the I also LOVE attempts to expand the Mythos of the Dark Mod universe overall. By introducing a drug / opiate like this it kind of sets my brain churning over thinking about similar things - for example, rare or magical spices which could be the theme for a bit of warehouse thieving.

Damn! That's a real downer - I'm a huge fan of the undead and was hoping it was going to be just a retexturing job to open up the whole City for undead shenanigans!

That sounds reasonable / ideal to me. I love the hints in the official Thief series that - when you steal the Horn of Quintis and things like that - that's just to pay your debt / gambling bills / rent / living to stop people from slitting your throat - and the other stuff is your "professional spending" you can spend on luxuries like flash bombs and holy water!

Hrrm, speaking personally: I'm very happy to have played it! Can you tell I'm more of a Thief Gold guy than a Metal Age guy? =-P

Speaking just as a player - all the options suggested would be fine to me - even the teleporting in mission. I would be especially impressed at the interactive map suggestion though. One of the things which I feel made Doom 3 especially immersive was the interactive keypads / computer systems. The "floating" text you get in The Dark Mod is absolutely wonderful, so combining them in your "Den" to start with would be a fun way of choosing your entry point.

Hey Amita! Springheel is under pressure with regards to modelling and rigging / animating stuff - so it would be really amazing to have you on board so new content could be added to The Dark Mod! (Or even just finishing up things like rigging existing models!) Lovely to see your work!

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing the process blow by blow - DR is still intimidating to a newbie but this is a good demonstration of how something can be pulled together very quickly with a bit of discipline and familiarity with the system. I eagerly await playing it. =-)

Wow! Thanks a lot, Fidcal, for digging that post up - that's really cool to get an insight into a real work of art like the menu music. It gave me goosebumps loading TDM for the first time. That and seeing the glowering form of a Revenant in the background *shudders*. It really "sets out the stall" of TDM and what it's about, the aesthetic and atmosphere that pretty much every FM builder tries to capture.

Hey there, fellow newbie! =3 Glad that there's a flow of new people getting into the mod. ==== As for myself, my new computer (and only computer since my laptop GPU fried last summer) is this: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Intel Core i5 760 Processor overclocked to 3.6GHz Asus P7P55D-E LX Motherboard with USB 3.0 4GB PC3-12800 1600MHz DDR3 Memory Chillblast Radeon HD 6850 1024MB Video Card 1000GB 7200RPM Hard Disk (x2) Asus Xonar DS 7.1 PCI Sound Card That's the meat of it - other stuff doesn't matter to the Dark Mod really. Oh! And I run 1680 x 1050 on a 22" Dell Ultrasharp monitor. I feel like after years in the wilderness, suffering cruddy computers and making poor decisions, I finally have a really nice computer I don't regret spending money on. <3 So don't be mean about my spec :''-((

That is so adorable <3 I really hope that I can corrupt educate my own niece like this - she's way too young for games, but in a few years when she can enjoy them without getting square eyes so much - I really hope to be a good uncle / influence and feed her lots of comics, nice books, board games and games! =-P In any case, I am super-looking-forward to your FM - as I think, everyone here is. =3