Search the Community

Yes, I providing stand-in anims ATM simply to get the characters in the game so the coding can defintion scripting can begin. We'll need some real ones later, and those on you site are fantastic, just the sort of realism we need. I'm not an animator, my animation consists of using common sense to get from A to B using the most obvious route possible. I haven't actually got any game ready charcaters yet, just a test model I was using to figure ont the maya-doom workflow, but I'm getting the haunt model ready for the game now. You could even look at writing a mel script for exporting vertex animation to doom if you like. There is already one written for max, so I'd think porting it woudn't be a huge task.

Well, it's not urgent, but it would be nice to have vertex animation, at some stage. I'm sure writing a little mel script would be childs play to some of you guys. As far as I know it's based on C++. Don't worry about testing it, I can do that, or Corth who also uses Maya.

My name is Cory Vogel and I am quite interested in your Doom III modification. I have experience with C++ and DirectX as well as a growing knowledge of the Doom III engine. It has been mentioned that coders with AI experience are needed. I have created a "mercenary" in Doom III that follows the player around, keeps track of it's health which regenerates at different rates depending on it's current action, keeps close to the player, and attacks enemies. Though I enjoy working with AI, I will happily script weapons or whatever is desired by the team. I have time each week to work on the project and being dedicated won't be a problem. If you would like me to send any code just tell me. I don't mind constructing some type of "test your skills" project with the team either. Thanks, Cory cvogel@nmsu.edu

You have total control over how many frames it blends between any anim. But all the script files are set to 4 frames for every transition, seems to work fine.But we should get the anim lengths right in the first place But what this means is that we don't have to be TOO amazingly accurate with the changes between anims.

I don't understand how you're going to rotate it though if it's just a static model. Wouldn't it be easier to have an animated model with 360 frames, one for each degree of turn, then in the script you can just point to the approprate frame number.

I have yet tio add the animations for that anyway) I also think the maximum distance is too long for a short bow, but I'm no archer so maybe it's not. I notice it can be changed at the start of the script anyway.

Just saw your post there oDDity - the script and def files aren't really cleaned up, and some of the variable names are still using the same names as the original weapons - for example, arrow_FUSE should be arrow_tiredtime or something. All I did was get it working, optimisation is the last step. But now that everyone seems to be happy with it and ready to tweak things, I'm more than happy to clean it up. (I just wish CVS upload would work for me, it would make this whole bloody thing easier)

THe problem with that is that is requires a separate looping 'BjRaised Idle' anim, which is not in the definition file as far as I can see, and therefore not in the script I would imagine. There is no equivilent in the grenade anims which are currently being used.

I've been using Flash since v4 hit the market, and been on the beta team for every release from 5 on. I've run a Macromedia user group for the last 4 years. I've only ever done an intro one time just to play with some animation techniques, which were heavily script-based. And that was offered as a 'goodie' on the site... The vast majority of sites I've developed with Flash use it to configure content easily. Only a few are meant to be eye candy. Over time, it actually becomes easier to develop robust, rich sites in Flash very quickly, especially when dealing with dynamic data and small animations (buttons, etc). I view Flash as a wrapper for content, whether it's a website, game platform, or mobile device application (yes, X-box games have used Flash as a menu interface, and many home automation systems are using the Flash API as a configurable interface, much like the context-sensitive consoles on Star Trek: TNG). So, Flash should be viewed as a front end that doesn't have the same browser compatibility problems that CSS, JS, or even HTML has. If the player is current, it looks the same everywhere and acts the same everywhere. And the player is a tiny download, which is usually included in most browsers today. Anyway, I'm not trying to push Flash, just trying to give some information to hopefully eliminate what I see as an unfair bias. Back to the subject at hand - I think something like Mambo wrapped around this forum software would be an excellent (and pre-buit) solution. It has lots of content editing features, and some of the modules are built with the idea of having a CMS or versioning system online. There might be some bug trackers out there, already, or one could easily be integrated once the features are built.

To all who wanna play my mod: When I finish the picking, etc, I'm gonna make a whole campaign (which will be playable in coop or solo) for the city and stuff (including new maps - yes, I will have a go at making maps in UEd again ). I'll have cutscenes as well (though the voices will be the ones from Thief2) and I'll try to think of a real good plot . That will keep me occupied for about a month or so (but as soon as I finish the mod [the lockpicking needs finishing] I'll release it to you guys and then after I finish the maps, I'll give them to you guys too. - BTW, the DramVis script now makes all maps silhouette mode friendly [ie: puts all ambient brightness to 0, though if you dont like it, I'll provide areadme on how to remove it ]). My mod should only take another week (hopefully ). --Martin

He will eventually be wearing fingerless gloves. THe positioning of this in-game still has to be adjusted, this is just taken from the Maya viewport. Like I said, the important thing is to get it into the game, and getting the mechanics of it sorted with its .def and script files, the animations and meshes can be easily fine tuned later on, I'm not spending any more time on it now, since I have other things to do. Do we want to enforce a certain time period between shooting arrow? I thin kthe time it takes for the bow do drop there is fair enough.

You're probably right. It would be pretty easy to make a little script that said if you've got this particular object in your inventory, then guards act like they do when you're all outside. Actually stealing peoples clothes in any game would be a lot more work, and not much benifit over that other way I just described.

HEre's the first draft of the bow animations.. It's not going to win any awards, but it'll certainly do for now. At least we can get the definition and script files written for the bow, and the mesh and animations can be easily tweaked or changed at a later date. This big anim will be cut up into various sections, and when the arrow leaves the bow in-game it will dissapear with and alpha skin. Everyone here seems to be an amateur archer except me, so I'm sure oyu'll all have opinions

Don't know why, but I just felt i had to say this: In my mod, I've now fixed several.....issues. They are: *Fixed the dumb need-to-press-f12-thing, now done by script. *Fixed the light (p button) and I'm working on the climbing and lockpicking (trying to kill the bugs. after that I'll finish off the 8pin locks.) Hmm. Guess I've found a reason . Which is, that if you guys like my mod and are playing it, then you might want the fixes. Also I'm fixing it cos I play it sometimes. Though Thief2 is still on my computer and played often . --Martin

Not nessecarily - you tell each weapon what models, animations, skins and materials it's using in the .def file for that weapon. But if making all seperate models is easier and simpler, which I daresay it is, go for it. We can optimise out any redundant models and textures after everything is working. The point being, to save RAM for people running the game. Yes, all weapons have their own def files, as I mentioned. Only the def files are relevent to the visual side of things. (Except for the timing for the animations in the script). I'll take care of those things, unless you are comfortable with filling out the file paths for models and skins etc. in a def file, which would save me a bit of time. Otherwise you have to be very clear about what file does what.

But each arrow type needs it's own file anyway doesn't it? It's the one that takes over when the arrow in the bow animation dissappears with its new skin. Even if the arrows are all different models, it'll only mean rigging and weighting a new arrow, and I'll be able to use the same stored anumation. And each arrow type will need its own def and script file too, I imagine.

Looking at the md5mesh and md5anim, for the grenade and its .def and .script files, I've worked out that the way to do the bow is this: Make the animaton with the bow arrow in place as normal, when animating the release animation, the feather end of the arrow only goes as far as the left hand and then a second skin with an alpha is used to make it disapper. THis is wrtten into the scrot fikle and not the .def. THe actual arrow is in a file of ts own with no animation at all, it takes over and flies off to your target. Shouldn't be too hard (if I've worked this out correctly)

Degineth. What a sorry ass you are. You think spamming our board will help you? You can stick your page up your ass. If you think you have to continue spamming feel free to do so. I have a script running which will kill your threads now anyway. From your postings I noticed that you can not stand up to criticism, which is a requirement to work on a team. Spamming our board just shows how childish you are and that we were right in not taking you into the team.

Well, we would have to see this first, but that's no real problem for now. Only thing we could need a hand in texturing, mapping (probably) and coding (has to be seen though). But nobody will force you to anything. IMO that is the only reason why Thief still has such a strong community after such a long time. LOL. You are right. Just wanted to get an overview of your style and what you did so far. The problem with ordering a story is, that we have to agree on something first. As you can imagine that caused quite a stir, because we had some ideas and some even presented a story, but it is very hard to come up with everybod can agreee upon. I guess I will make you a contributor and then we can discuss this in more detail. I don't want to talk to much about storie ideas on the public board, as this is one area where I wouldn't want to spoil anything. No problem with discussing algorithms or models, but certain things should be held back to have at least som surprises for our fans. I will wait on soime feedback from some other members. So far they were positive but it was to short a time to get a good sample. I guess in the evening I can give you a more definite answer on that. Your timezone would be a help, so we can better plan. Which area of physics? Can you also do some physics coding? That might be helpfull. It is not strictly required, just asking. We have other contacts who also have experience in D3 physics already, but of course having at least one teammeber would be preferable. I can imagine that. If I have the feeling that an algorithm is not good enough I rather rip it apart and write it new, than releasing it knowing it is not as good as it could be. That's good to hear. We have a very good team so far, and the standard is also very high. I certainly prefer to work on a professional team than with a bunch of 3771 hax0r script kiddies. Makes live much more easier.

I can do mapping (not sure of how good it is though, as I always tried it for Thievery but always ended up with an extremely slow running map [cos I made all the things like fences out of brushes not masked singular brushes] so I always dumped them and did'nt bother much. UnrealED really knows how to anger me as it loves to add irrepairable BSP holes - AARGH!!!) so therefore I don't know of the quality. I did try D3 mapping in the original editor (not using the sdk) when it came out. Had a good try at mapping but then my windows2000 caught the "skynet" virus and I had to re-install. After that I could'nt play D3 anymore (unless I'd re-install) so my mapping went down the drain there. Though I will install D3 and give it another shot even with this new sdk. BTW, gimme a couple of hours to find which files I have changed from the original Thievery so that you guys can have a look at my whole mod (if you bother going through it ). Just a qiuck overview: *added better splashy water-effects for everything *added GUI lockpicking (gets super-hard once your above lock difficulty 7, though it's not finished yet, gotta do more combinations for the 8 pin locks) which is heard by AI. *added wall-climbing (a bit annoying though, all it does is that as a thief when you jump and press jump again in mid-air it puts you into spider physics, there are controls to control it [i will write them in the readme with it]) *changed the loot so that when stolen, it spawns a TSTStolenLoot thing (which the AI notice and also [if you turn it on] you can see it as a redish circle) *added bleeding (inspired by Thief's "Trail of Blood") which happens when health drops below 50% (at below 20% your movement is hindered) which can be stopped by taking healing of any sort. *added silhouette mode ([mentioned earlier]always on, could switch it off in script though) which changes the player's texture in black shadow to total black (had a glowing problem) and in light to a normal texture (also made it use the Unreal Male1 model as the thievery model always was spread out [bad for silhouette]). However, if you move too fast in shadows you will light up like a light bulb (inspired by the fan made "Ultimate Difficulty mod" for thief) and the player glows a bit (so that any human player may see him ). *Changed a lot of textures (like the health drops, lightgem, etc). *and more... I could not however even touch the ThieveryMod.u package (think it was made in C++ or other) and that hindered the editing extremely as I always had to find a way around. So there you go, most of the changes I made to Thievery. I'll provide the files, maps, textures, etc (everything that is needed for the mod). Though it will take a few hours to sort it out (very untidy ) and then I'll chuck it up on yahoo. Oh yes, one more thing. I did do a small amount of Doom 3 lighting (in that map I tried mentioned earlier), but I'll need to learn more about it (downloading the sdk for a start). So yeah. I'll post here when I've finished sorting the files of my mod and have them chucked up on yahoo. 1 final thing: Please remember that my mod was made solely for LAN play and that it has it's fair share of problems (the climbing, for some stupid reason, does'nt work with more then one thief in the map - gotta fix it) and that some of it was made to prevent the dumb thing in Thievery where you could hide in a slanted wall or in the tiniest strip of shadow from human players (could'nt fix it for AI ) and that the mod was made mainly for ghosting (as I do that all the time - hence why I used the Ultimate difficulty mod in Thief) That covers all of it then. If you read up to here then you are very patient and I thank you . PS: If you wanna use any of the stuff I added into Thievery (textures, sounds, ideas, etc) then please, go right ahead. --Dram

It's "powered by Doom 3" but anyway - Thanks! That was my script. Nice to see it is appreciated. One of the small things that I contributed. And I really had to force it on TYROT. That's pretty easy to do. I have seen such tricks in the demo coder scene long before T1 used that. It is just used like a texture. Either with a 3D app, or a simple algorithm.

Sorry to resurrect a relatively old thread, but I have a question about the 'impaired hearing' property of rooms that Springheel mentioned, and some possible suggestions. Is the hearing impairment in an environment going to be a 'dynamic' variable that can be turned off and on (or ramped up if it's an analog scale), by scripts during gameplay? Or is it a map property that's set upon loading and stays at that value? I think you could do some interesting things with that if it were dynamic, for example: If ambient sounds were scripted to start and stop periodically, the hearing impairment could be linked to that, so you could time your movement to when the generator turns on or something. In a social gathering environment with multiple rooms, one could have a script that counts noisy party guests entering/leaving the room and adjusts the hearing impairment based on that. So if you KO all the guests or they leave the room, guards will be able to hear you better. If a character makes a lot of noise while moving (like the combat bots), that could also increase hearing impairment. If you wanted to get really fancy, you could build it into the audio system, so that guards close enough to hear your noises (the 'signal') would do some sort of signal to noise test comparing your signal to the other non-suspicious sounds they can hear. That might eat too many CPU cycles though, since you'd have to propagate both the Thief's 'suspicious' sounds and all nearby ambient sounds to all nearby guards, then run the signal to noise test on each guard (some might be better at picking out noises than others.. combat bot vs drunk Benny ). Maybe that would be feasible if you're already propagating all the sounds to the guards, and the signal/noise test is fast CPU-wise. I'm guessing that right now (and in previous Thiefs), only suspicious sounds are propagated to the guards? Anyway, just some suggestions. Good luck with the Mod!

I've only done a few yet, I didn't want to do more until I was certain of the workflow to Doom. I'm not sure how to show them to you inside doom. Can you record moives in doom or something? Using a screen capture program just gives you a stuttering mess. I put one on the FTP, I made an Animations folder, I can split it up into smaller animations, the looking from side to side after hearing a noise etc. It's quicktime format - anyone with sense should have the free QT alternative codec. If we don't need a character now, or no one's for writing an AI script there's not much point in doing more animations at this point.

Ok, well I'm happy that I can get any character with any animation into doom now.... ..so, do we need a test character with a set of generic animations at this stage? Of course, it hasn't got an AI file ATM, so it just stands there and you can cycle through the animations. I still have to work out the ragdoll shit yet. I'll take charge of the character's mtr, def, md5mesh and md5anim files, but the AI files are nothing to do with me guv'ner -though it has to be said some of the zombie AI scripts look pretty simple, I could almost write my own Thief zombie script from looking at these. The rest of our AI will be...slightly more complex I imagine.

It's not a mailing list. I just wrote a simple python script that is called from CVS whenever somebody checked something in and it will directly send mail via gmx.net (my mail host). That would be great. Only problem is, that this is only a small task and I don't have that much to do for you. Unless we find something else to occupy you, that is. Yes. And currently I create a new user, install the key, add it to the cvs group and add the mail adress to the list. All manually. What would be much more better, would be something where this would be kind of automated.