Search the Community

Just got back on the forums again..... Nice creepy ambient...... Especially the background moans/groans. The backwards voices sound like something that should be in "The Cradle." This would even work in an area that was just outside the city gates, or in a creepier part of town. Maybe even in a wooded area.... I can hear it breathe!!! Nice production, too! Good stuff! Very Thief-y!

Hi there. I'm in a fairly good mood right now, and I thought that having a public discussion directed to all these frequenters to the Dark Mod forums about the missions that I know we are just itching to start on. I'll begin with my own plan. Mission Title: "Opening Night" This mission came to me one late night with a friend when we were musing--after playing a mission by the name of Equilibrium--what the perfect Thief mission would be. We were particularly taking it seriously, but our little brain storm hatched an idea. Setting the Stage: We felt that the horror of the mechanist's impact on the City was left relatively untouched by the main story. We wanted to tell a story of the breaking of a man, of oppression of the poor the mechanists exerted, and the height of their power. We thought about whole neighborhoods in the slums being closed off, the people either arrested in their homes or wiped out to be carried into carriages to later be turned into servants. While this wasn't necessarily discussed in Thief 2, we felt that it gave a different picture of the Mechanists. The tightening of curfews and laws, and with Truart out of the picture, the Mechanists take advantage of the opportunity to directly close an iron fist of control around the poor classes. Thus, the story is how the main character, forced into thievery because of poverty, finds his wife dead, his neighborhood smoldering, his home ruined, and everything he knew finally destroyed, and thus the path of the destruction of his own soul. He eventually is approached by an interesting entity with a simple proposition: the infiltration of the new Opera house, and the assassination of the diva at the climax of her performance from one of the box seats with a crossbow, the girl who happens to be Karras's beloved niece. However, the consequences of the action sets a new stage: the final breaking of Karras's sanity, and his impending rage against this world--leading up to the decision to destroy it. The Mission Itself: The entire mission was supposed to draw direct references from musical, opera, and theatre lore--the mission design based upon the most famous opera house in the world: La Scala. With heavy Italian architecture, and references to the Romantic period of the 19th century such as The Count of Monte Cristo, Chopin, Beethoven, and many others. Incidentally, we were planning on using snippets from the opera "Robert Le Diable", the first romantic opera, that would set a small soundtrack for the level as the player sneaks his way through. We planned on a secret tunnel that leads down into a sewers like system in the basement, and thus a new optional objective "Steal the phantom's mask". I'm sure you will understand this reference. Some of the other interesting quirks of the mission will be eavesdropping on the conversations that run behind the closed doors of the balconies. We imagined a frustrated conversation between Karras and a work bot to lighten the mood. The Climax, as this is a drama naturally, would be the escape. After the diva is shot with the arrow, fall dramatically on stage, the player will have many escape roots that lead to the roof. Probably one of the more dramatic being using the chandeliers hanging from the roof as rope arrows and swinging up to the glass dome while guards fire arrows after you. And finally, once on the roof, the player goes roof hopping to reach the docks, where he has prepared a ship to leave the city finally, and the mechanists decide that their new firework display, designed as a surprise to the attendants at the end of the performance, would be better suited to try to fire at you. Full of triggers, I know that Dromed could have handled it provided that we divvy the mission up into two parts (Opening Night, and the escape). However, I'm worried the Doom 3's detail will severely limit the ability to make this mission run smoothly (I imagine that it will have to be partitioned in several places). This probably isn't the time to mention I don't have level building experience lol. What are your mission ideas for The Dark Mod?

Well, it seems that indeed converting the diffuse to a .dds file removes the green tint - the reason eludes me tho, it's probably something really odd like this 5 level directory limit, gah ! I've read in one of the DDS related threads tho that it's not 100% sure that the game will use .dds files, depending on a quality-setting of Doom3. Is this still true or did i stumble over a really old thread and there's better knowledge about this matter by now ? Or does the game always use the .dds version if no .tga is available ?

Yep, we're already going to do this: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...indpost&p=11432 (That's a private board, someone can quote it if they want) Yes you'll never get rid of all exploit's 100%, but you need to minimise it, and some of us feel this would be too big an exploit. In my opinion, the goal of any game where you have an opponent is to look for weaknesses in your opponent and exploit those weaknesses. In a real life sport game, the rules of what you can and cannot do are clearly defined. In a video game, you are left to your own devices to work out what you can and cannot do, and this is where I think a lot of fun comes from. You won't know it's an exploit till you exploit, so you can't blame people for looking for exploits because I think tha'ts what we're supposed to be doing in a game. For me, every additionaly exploit I have to ignore makes me less immersed.

There are issues with the new skeleton melee animations. I listed them in the melee thread.

There were a few different exploits, but those weren't the only considerations. There would be a tremendous amount of work involved. I know we've discussed this already in the public forums, but to briefly summarize: There are lots of pathfinding exploits. AI is halfway down ladder, thief blocks ladder at bottom. What does AI do? Or the AI is just at the top, but the thief stands in the way. AI is still on the ladder so cannot draw a weapon, so what do they do? AI catches thief while both are on ladder. What does AI do? Combat on ladders would require an entirely different set of coding and animations (two sets, actually one for going up and one for down). There's the kill/ko guard while on ladder exploit, as you mentioned, which can be used against multiple guards. Many types of ladders require the player to turn around and jump off at the top to reach the next level. How does the AI handle this? Anyway, that's several of the problems. Solving them seemed to require either a large amount of work or an immersion-breaking 'fix'. As for mantling, I don't know how difficult it would be to program.

The domain will be transferred in an hour or so and the forums will be closed until the new DNS settings have kicked in.

OK, not my problem as far as this thread covers I recommend you add it to tracker.

Yes but I'll post in the other thread in 'textures' forum. Can you post there describing more clearly what type of arch and where the grime wants to go? eg, if you can point me to one in an existing map?

I like it, too -- has the T2 feel to it. It looks a little awkward, though -- as maybe he'd tip over on his head. But maybe that's what's giving him character? I just see a baancing issue. There was an idea to give bi-pedal bots an extra joint -- similar to how an animal's hind legs work. Not sure what everyone else wants though. I admit my sketch here isn't the best, and we all agree it shouldn't look like he's wearing Nike's®, but maybe this helps to show you what I mean: Source: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...indpost&p=32776 I also feel your bot should have bigger, more stable foot pads.

I'm loosely a fan, read some good stories like At the Mountains of Madness and Shadow over Innsmouth. My gf is a lovecraft uber fan. She hangs out as a regular in the Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth forums. Ia Ia Cthulhu ftagn!!

Oops, wrong thread. Damn sleep deprivation. >_<

Thanks for clarifying. The fix I checked in should also address this issue - indeed it works fine already in my local SVN version (and it should also work in the pre-release build I posted in the other thread).

What's the problem with that, since I haven't played it. You try to manipulate objects too far away? Or you get the angles wrong when trying to manipulate them? What about a hybrid system where an object you can manipulate frob-highlights when it's in range? I guess that would kind of undercut the immersion factor that the whole thing is supposed to add in the first place. We already had that discussion with the depth of field thread...

I have to say i really like it. Looks like it just needs a little smoothing out, but maybe thats just the video. I guess i get to take credit for it since its in this thread.

Well, as I said in the other thread, I don't want to make this a major project at the moment, and it's starting to sound complicated. I'll just use the particle with no glare for now, and look into it after release.

Not intentionally I was indeed thinking this is TDM, because my laptop screen is so small that I can only see parts of the image and when I scrolled through the thread I only saw the gem purse and the gems (Dang if I hadn't said anything, everyone would have thought I jest

Hm my post didn't go through? Wierd. I was saying we should move the discussion here http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...t=0entry37402

Forgive the thread necromancy.... Anyone know what the difference is between a particle and a sprite in this case? Particles are just 2-poly squares, so what is it about them that keeps the orientation proper compared to a 2-poly sprite?

I was just following the description, is this link the most recent information concerning necromancers? http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=2089

Lets not turn this into a Darkmod VS Thief 4 thread. Rather lets all just be happy that we're lucky enough to have two major releases in the coming years for a cult following of fans and we will have the opportunity to enjoy both

I don't know how prop attacthments are handled in Doom 3, I suppose I'll have to check at doom3world forums to se if anyone has any info, but there are lots of prop attachments like cups and spanners that the ai can hold, I'd guess it's just attached to the hand bone. I'm not sure why you'd want a city watch to be using a hammer, or a servant using a sword anyway. I think it's much better to have diversity in the characters than have them all use the same skeleton and animations. That means I have to start bulding them all around a seketon template like in Nightblade, which kills creativity.

Now that's funny: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/05/12...nam4s-rev4al4d/ http://www.joystiq.com/2009/05/12/thief-4-...production-pha/ (ganked from TTLG thread)

i can open them once i'm home. But i think we should continue this in another thread. edit: also if you save your files as .ma you can change the version number with a text editor and open the files in 7.0

Egads. I hadn't seen this until just now. Yes, remove any mention of "Thief" or "Garrett" in relation to Dark Mod. If you're using it on other forums, remove the "Thief" title from there as well. We are more than happy that you are eager to help promote us but this kind of promotion will get us shut down and the last year of work will have been for nothing. As the others have stated, this is not Thief. I also mentioned in a previous post that we can not have the name Garrett associated with this mod, so please do not refer to the character as such. We appreciate the enthusiasm but careless disregard for someone elses property will get us slapped with a court order faster than you can say.... Edit: Signature removed until it has been edited.