BlueSkyBullet

I did. I even sacrificed a goat. To no avail. Tonight I'll kill a whale and toss a pair of very expensive sunglasses into the brack.

It isn't a dead serious process, exactly. Which is why the two entrants that got in inside the contest rules should be the ones eligible to win the contest. The others can still take the contest part of it less seriously and rejoice and bask in the much greater side of it all: that they have concieved and created a mission and, in so doing, become fan mission authors! They should of course still put up threads (with polls if they'd like) wherein their missions will certainly be praised (I've little to no doubt their missions are going to be praiseworthy). This is the fairest thing to do. AND it relieves the pressure the "late" authors might be feeling to rush even the slightest bit.

Okay, yeah, that's definitely the thing to do. Start anew... "a 'new'"... and then just load the save you really want to pick up from. That'll do! Still it would be nice to have TDM work this extra clickage out by anticipating the situation as I described. I can't see where anyone would not want it to allow you to start a session and assume that you want the first load to be a "click-to-proceed". I am very, very opposed to bloat/meddling when it comes to software "features", and especially those purported to be user-friendly-improvements -- those that try and anticipate what the user wants and means to do -- because there are often too many variables for a machine (or rahter programmer) to make any assumptions... but this is a case I think that fits in the eliminate-redundancy, that's-what-a-computer-is-meant-to-do, area... Meanwhile, the solution/workaround is easy enough and thanks for pointing it out.

Good; Good; Excellent. Might have gone Good; Excellent; Good. Just a matter of distribution.... (need more than 5 choices! should be 10; or even a percentage thing) Maybe more on these votes later.

Good; Excellent; Excellent. Maybe, just maybe, more on those later...

I'm voting now! Before I get banned. High marks mostly, but honest ones.

Take $28. And no less. And no more (see below). Be staunch. Be stolid. Be stick-to-itive. If you take just $25 I guarantee you it will be something you will regret for the rest of your life. Start the bidding at $29. And then knock off $.50. And then, even if he doesn't ask for it, knock down another $.50. You will have made a wonderful deal AND you will have made friend for life!

Excellent. Thanks, to both of you. And, as for the link to the Wiki, it got me to looking into 1.08's promises. I especially like this: "Went through all our nearly 500 movable entities and added at least 200 new sound files to improve the impact sounds...". Can't wait for tomorrow! (I did read that it was coming out tomorrow somewhere around here, right?)

@SeriousToni: Dude, you can't be "serious"... The contest has been a great success. Your completing and submitting a mission (apparently somewhat inspired by RPGista) that is and has gotten tremendous praise is proof of that. And jysk's mission came out already too! It looks as if the contest has also the promise of eventually bringing out maybe 2-3 more missions (and these have been, in advance, spoken of well by a couple of the veteran FMAs)... The contest has been a great success. Your mission has been a great success. You've accomplished much. You didn't seem "sad" that day. Not at all. Rather "giddy", you were. So, try not to get distraught and negative about this now, eh? If RPGista inadvertently (or even intentionally) spurred you on, then that's a good thing! You are now an author because of it! ... Even if you don't win the contest (which, yes, should, at this point, be just down to the 2 of you (you and jysk))... you've still won. And so have we.

Yeah, I'm certainly not suggesting losing the moss arrows. I may not use them much but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate the idea of them and the gameplay they afford. It's just, as suggested, improving them by toning the visual effects way down. Isn't there a vine arrow thing coming very soon (1.08?)? From what I vaguely recall about the announcement/description it may be a good place to start. I think it's supposed to be kind of what could be imagined as a better moss arrow animation -- a creeping growth -- and a better result -- a more congruous, spread out, and much more subtle patch. If so, if the vine arrow is ready, just waiting for the rest of 1.08 to be completed, can we maybe get a vid of the deployment of one?

I never used these much (or noise arrows for that matter either) but have had occasion to -- and especially, just lately, in the excellent "Rightful Property". I agree that the animation and result should be improved over the somewhat (very!) comical/comic-bookish hoppin'-globs. It's a real unnecessary immersion breaker no matter how suspention-of-disbelief you look at it. And if a guard is "looking at it", btw, whilst it is popping and hopping it's even more ridiculous, to put it bluntly. Now I know that there is a sentimental tendency to replicate Thief stuff as much as possible, but, honestly not everything should be harkened back to. TDM is an improvement (oh how those who don't know don't know!) and this is another instance where something, I believe, can be made to look and feel better. Has there been, was there along the way, can there be any more discussion about this? Thanks.

Thanks, all, for reading and replying. @demagogue: You got what I was getting at with #3 except missed my point about the "take notice that you have just started the doom3 engine for a new session". You are correct, it would be worse than not having the click-to-proceed feature at all if the short-loads were hampered by it; but I'm thinking the system must be able to recognize that whatever it is (maybe the main doom3 assets?) that makes the initial load when you start a new session so long can be the determinant for when the click-to-proceed kicks in.

Looked around a bit for some general purpose sticky threads on the lines of models-that-might-need-tweaking; guis-that-might-need-tweaking; or smallish-suggestions-that-might-be-made-and-discussed-without-resorting-to-cluttering-up-the-elsewheres. But found nonesuch. Anyway: 1. The coiled rope model (?) seems to have an inordinately large and/or oblique collsion model (?); you have to mantle over it. 2. When you die you are presented with "Restart Mission" "End Mission" Or "Objectives"; how about a "Load Saved Game"? 3. The nice feature that lets you walk away while a newly installed and begun mission does it's long-load so that when you come back after putting your pizza french-bread in the oven you are presented with a "click to start" rather than a "dead thief" would be just as nice if it could take notice that you have just started the doom3 engine for a new session and, even though, you aren't starting a whole new mission, just a saved game, it works the same... because initial loads are all long-loads. ... Yes, #1 is random, #2 is possibly just a matter of clarity unclarified, and #3 is certainly so rambling it won't be understood.

Still loving the hell out of this one. But I did just experience some downside... I'll be terse, when I only mean to be concise, so that I can get back to RL and then back into the mission:

Well, while you are doing that... (and hopefully between you and Sotha it can all be figured and ironed out, for now and for the future) I'll have you think about this... I'm still only getting around to the (ostensible) "Main Quest". I've just been in for another session. First-time mapper or not, this is honestly turning out to be one of the best missions yet for TDM. So far at least; and with the eminently objective me grading it! (I am objective!); but I am also aware that I have been starved for a good mission for quite some time... Still, as yet, I can only think of a few plus maybe a few others that I would recall so fondly.

Still the best thing that can happen, as with the running flame war, is that this flame war keeps on running. Animosity! Resentment! Paranoia! Lovely.

They both (all3boths) have applications (ie Unt eg the old ones look more "chemical", but the new one{s} look much better as wood burning flames...). If the mappers can use the different versions of them selectively in a single map then all versions should be kept and left to the mappers. Absolutely. I guess make the new one(s) the default... but certainly keep the old ones about for the more exotic flames.

Thrice! Them Terroists have won, Them Some say, when The Innocent are accused so readily by Them 'Thorataiz! Alas!

Perchance a happenstance?

In the midst of playing 1.1 (and, so, not reading the rest of this thread yet)... So far this is really quite good. I've played 2 sessions of it -- meaning I've played to my hearts content and needed to get out and stretch & relax -- and yet I haven't even begun in earnest to set about on any of the main objectives! Anyway, thought I'd say that much, but I wanted to point out something before I forget it; something that either jysk or Sotha probably needs to look at: The briefing uses Sotha's excellent system. But I had a problem for the 1st time with this one. I got to the "Aside from that..." panel/page and wanted to rewind back to find out where this mission was going down -- the name of the town (I hadn't paid perfect attention). I was unable to rewind to the previous page. All the "back" button would do is replay the under-animation of the current page. I tried clicking it a few times and it was constistent. So, I moved on and another glitch probably related to my attempt to go back occured: the next page/panel's screen (text and animation) came up as it should but the "aside from that..." text repeated on top of the new text, resulting in unreadable stuff and such.

Great. I was just keeping myself to cursory glances through its poll-thread (not wanting to see too much {i.e. spoilers}) and thought I'd seen a few posts about sound and crashing problems in addition to the marketplace lag. I wasn't and am not too worried about the lag anyway, but will go ahead and wait for the update. I'm glad to see you too have been receiving many very high scores and congratulate you on that. I think the contesting has entered the "smashing success" realm just on the strength of the 1st 2 entries!

At some point, yes, but not at a point where you know it's not finished. This has become a very bad trend, this FM versioning, revising, whatever you want to call it, it's bad practice. If you are not satisified that your mission is really ready, finished and complete then please don't release it with a pre-determined intention to fix it up later. Sure, if a big ugly squashable bug or two crawl out of the woodwork, they should be dealt with; but this shouldn't be something so expected that it's just accepted. ... Speaking of which... is it safe to play the 2 contest FMs released? You see, I'm seeing things about "Rightful Property" having some issues? While "Sneak And Destroy" is pretty much confirmed as pretty much solid? I hate to be such a "critic" but it has come to this -- where I feel I can't begin playing anything anymore until it has been out for quite a while because I think it has become almost routine to have FMs reworked after they are released. ... I may come off a bit schizo here -- what with me earlier asking SeriousToni to go ahead and relase his contest mission -- but really I'm not. All I'm saying is don't hold back your mission because of some essentially irrelevant deadline if it is ready to go, and by the same token (other side) don't release your mission because of some essentially irrelevant deadline if you know it is not really ready to go. Thanks.

Yeah, Badcog constantly misreads things, has some silly reaction, and then just repeats the very thing he has misread... as if he was the one saying it. While Aluminum Haste is never hasty; rather he comes following along as soon as he sees an opportunity to be second or third in line at the let-me-be-angry-too stall. Nosslak can speak for himself, Aluminum Haste. And likewise Badcog can misspeak for himself. I was laughing at the idea that "it should be the same in all applications". It should be, but it is very, very unlikely that it will be. That's all. So, yeah, just relax, hero.

The best thing that can happen is that this is argued for ages. Animosity should be built up. Imperceptible and niggling things should be the source of such, too. As a fan all I can say is: Fantastic!