RPGista

Here's mine, it's an environmental ad, thought it was a nice concept:

Its a constant iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii sound, its low but you can notice it, I think it comes from either the fan or the disk, you can hear it stopping a second after the computer shuts down and something stops spinning. It actually might have started after I cleaned it like a year ago, I couldnt really afford a new laptop but this is just not working anymore, my ears are buzzing everyday because of it, its that bad.

Very cool, my favourite (and first) book was also written by Ian Livingstone, City of Thieves. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/aug/02/fighting-fantasy-blood-of-the-zombies

What about this one guys, what do you think? For months now my laptop is making an extremely high pitch sound, you can barely hear it but it is driving me insane. I dont have spare money right now but I guess I have to make an effort (or risk damaging my hearing! ), this HP one seems like the complete package, 400£, looks very nice (the gray one) and has decent specs for the price. Is it as good as it gets in the price range? http://www.currys.co...puting~14272580

It is paradoxical, to say the least, to call Springheel of all people, "selfish", or somehow imply there is resistance from him or any mapper against making the missions more accessible to people. I know thats not the intention here (probably just the way the topic and the tone evolved) but this type of personnal adressing should stop, as people here are only voicing general concerns that applies for everyone and also the mod, not just themselves. The logistical problems are real, and perhaps you guys are missing most of points raised. None of this should keep translators from doing their work on parallel. The technical issues have to be solved however, of the kind Springheel just described. If you place an item such as a key on your map, it comes with a coded string name. Changing the name, as you most of the times must, and you'll get items that are automaticly translated (say, a corpse) and others that are still in english, in game. Without subtitles, english speech cant be translated, noone would be able to finish Winter Harvest, or understand clues and objectives in several missions, including A Score to Settle. Without going inside Dark Radiant and carefully edit readables, text WILL get cut, maybe even entire pages. So one thing is to translate the hard text in txt form, but some of these issues have to be addressed by translators, others in maybe a technical solution, I dont know much about it so Im keeping my opinions to a minimum. All must be done in accordance to the mappers wishes, I believe.

Thanks guys, but as I said there are a bunch of issues with the model, so it will still take a while to finish it. I've focusing a lot on heads and new accessories for the past few weeks, mostly tests, thats why there arent a lot of progress to show here, but hopefully soon.

Cant help you, but it would be nice to know more about that project of yours.

Yes, brilliant work, I particularly like the ribcage section, the collarbone and shoulder connection!

A big exercise in futility - texturing the olive press has been a ton of work for a piece that only i would probably find a use for, but I guess I needed the training as it posed problems the bench didn't. I probably wont finish it anytime soon. Failed in creating normal maps for the nails, needed bump maps all over, a lot of decal work too is needed, and Im getting some strange smoothing problems in game, so I'll leave it at that for now, and move on to other (possibly game-ready) stuff. A render just to show how far I got.

Hmmm... Hyeron and Echelon (and Tels), I've read all your replies with interest, sorry if I wont go into details as I just dont have the time, but allow me to be a bit blunt, and make it simple: Questions arose regarding the logistical issues involved in translating all the mod's missions (or most). This is only natural, and so far I dont understand the problem some people are having with this simple question. Instead of explanations, irony has been used, which is not useful. The question remains: how are the missions that will in fact get translations be available for the player (listed in the downloader?) and how to afford for the quite real possibility that missions will get fixes and even rework updates throughout time? EDIT: This was written before Tel's reply on the system itself Second, and most importantly, Springheel, Sotha and Grayman have all been quite reasonable towards the issue, raising the simple request that translations should be worthy of the original source. To put it simply - Translators (me included): 1- If you feel inspired to translate a mission into your language, first thing to do is always to get permission from the author (wouldnt hurt to make sure you mention you intend on doing a good job, and referencing any other work on this, if any); 2- Considering permission is given, make sure the translation preserves the intention of the author as best as possible. Again, I dont think there's anything else to this conversation, besides learning now all the technical steps to use Tels' system, for eligible missions. All contributors go through criticism as well as praise, when in doubt, just follow any of the mission threads or the WIP thread, you'll see a lot of demanding. We all are just pushing each other to get the best results or potential work possible.

@ lzz - Hmm, here we go again... Theres a thread just about shadowhide's ban, you should post your opinions there.

I think the attention to non-english speaking players is commendable and I certainly understand the value of having the missions and game available in other languages, but speaking for myself, the problem is mostly about artistic vision, yes, in the sense that I would have strong feelings about people playing the mission and experiencing the story exactly as how I intended, and not in any other way - what if by accident a translation makes a mockery out of your pivotal storyline moment? The point for me is simple, there should be a good relation between mission makers and translators, to make sure the work is accurate and the essence of the story comes accross perfectly. It would help immensely that the person that is going to translate actually played the mission and enjoyed it, as you can get rather silly mistakes and misinterpretations when you translate something literally, but out of context (which was my main problem translatiing the GUI - I didnt know where the strings were located in-game, so there are several out of context words in there right now, which I hope to sit down and correct before the 1.08 release). If you like the source material and are willing to put the work in order to honour the effort involved in creating the mission, that's all there is to it for me.

That's very neat, actually! Reminds me a lot of Mount and Blade, though you can clearly see some of the bugs, like a bit of the "stiffness" of the running horse and the fact you will actually hit him on the head when swinging weapons. But yes, I definetly would like to see this implemented in TDM!

Yes, very nice indeed! Looks like a good face for guards and a pagan warrior. Springheel - Maybe a stupid question, but how to make sure the weighting is preserved? Would saving as something like obj (or converting in general) erase it? Because though I can import md5 in 3DS max, I often save it as something else so I can work on the meshes in other software.

You are also a modeler then? Thats awesome!

Thats a damn shame, man... Isnt there a way to open it in some kind of heavy duty importer/viewer/modeler that would still give you the model, even if all triagulated and stuff? At least you would have that as a guide. Demagogue - I too do that when modeling for work. I end up with loads of in between files, but thats really important when you want to go back to a basic shape and take your design to another path.

I was taking a look at your WIP again (very nice... ), and I just remembered something about Doom in general but also present in TDM, the body extremeties that are a bit out of proportion (bigger), maybe in order to counter lens angle distortion. Take a look at the guards' boots: Or the original models: The hands and feet in Diego's model look pretty good and in realistic proportion, but do you think the Doom models are like this on purpose, and that they should be slightly exaggerated in order to look correct in game?

Definitely! Translated to Portuguese: TDM GUI (menus) Tutorial Mission FM - Thief's Den (I) But all translations were done before I knew anything about FMs' format, and directly over the text (or graphics) files inside them, without renaming anything (they were saved as separate files). I would have to copy and paste all the strings to the external i18n thing again. PS: There was some confusion at the time with different translation versions that were interchanged and the 1.07 GUI menus ended up having a couple of imprecisions that I need to go over as well.

Thats good to know, what I had to do to get the moon beam to work like that was to create a spot light on the top of your example window, and beam it 45º downwards to the floor, but that wouldnt work in all situations or window shapes, and it seems to me this method is a lot more confortable. Thanks!

For what's worth (and if I understood you correctly), when I was a pre-teen I used to be fascinated by language and that's something that attracted me to rpg oldschool games and fighting fantasy books, and comics like Conan, because of the way they would challenge me with words and meanings I had never experienced, something beyond the infantile fantasy fiction I was used to at the time (mostly cartoons and marvel comics). So I would say, way to go, games for children should be educational in some way, even if its not their theme, at least in language, or something like the message... Springheel - Wouldnt that perhaps confuse players? I think it wouldnt be immediately clear that you can get more listed missions if you swap from your language to english menus. But I do see the point that it would be annoying to have several instances of the same mission listed in all different translations, cluttering the place. Maybe just add a link in the mission downloader menu pointing to an specific page in the TDM's website with all translated missions sorted by language?

Well, speaking just for me, I have mostly limited my translation work to the mod's official maps (training mission and Thief's Den 1) as more of an effort to make the basic concept of TDM easily available to people who have difficulties with english, give them the minimum necessary to enjoy it. I have translated those thoroughly (including graphics like maps), with a lot of attention to accuracy and keeping the tone (also with Fidcal's permission). One of the reasons (the other being time) I havent translated bigger missions is because it does take time and care to translate perfectly and do the original's justice, I think thats the only way to translate anything and expect its the same for anyone else doing it. IMHO, if the translated missions were just separate files, there wouldnt be any problems in relation to possible bugs being introduced (even in terms of mistakes to the texts being made in the translation). Big future updates in a mission could include, if the author wishes it, the translated data in them from then on (or if not, the translated mission is just a different snapshot). I think there is interest in translating these works, there is still a lot of people to whom english is quite the barrier.

Diego - instant fan! The head in particular looks absolutely brilliant, theres a tormented look to it... Jaw dropping work, thats all I can say!

Was that a joke? Im afraid you lost me...

To tell you the truth, I found the information to be quite confusing at the time. It IS simple in the end, but there doesnt seem to be a single, A-Z file on it, had to pick up the info on several places. Putting a new texture into the game is relatively simple, you have to create a folder inside the TDM's texture folder, put the files there, then on TDM's material folder, you have to create your shader, referencing to the files you want to include. It should now be in DR. The wiki has info on those processes. Texturing itself is a science though, but there are loads of tutorials around, including Renzatic's very good ones. Springheel - thanks a lot for clearing that up, it can be confusing when you have no clue of the whole process yet. I did say I was going to give a go at making new head gear, you can expect some experiments soon. Will also try a new face, and maybe we can go from there. Haha, the point was to create some simple architecture models, then I stopped learning that to create a game-ready model for once (benches), now Im going over character modeling, so lets see if I can get something useful with my limited knowledge...

Hey thats very nice!, its about putting all the texts into a single reference file for editting, isnt it? Sounds very cool to me, though I have no clue how will all that be available... I still kind of think translated missions should be linked in the main page but be a different file than the original mission (so you wont have to update all the mirrors)? Is this accurate?