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Interesting thread at TTLG. The Mystery Dev is back...this time releasing some old materials from the unfinished LGS game, Deep Cover. http://ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1621710#post1621710

The reason behind me saying you should use an alpha plane for details is that I imagined the details would be paint and/or goldleaf (or silverleaf) designs. In which case you really don't need normals (bumps) for the details. Also because the wood on a lute would be sanded very smooth so you wouldn't get woodgrain bumps thru the paint. It will also allow you to use an existing wood texture and ONLY make a texture for the details (256x256 is probably fine) If you painted the entire lute on a tex you'd probably need to make a 512x512. So it'll save space this way also. The 2 polys MIGHT add 2kb to the model, a 512 map would add at least 1 MB over a 256. I made a wooden sign which I wouldn't do this on, because it is made from rough boards. I want the paint to follow the shape of the cracks ect... So it needs to be applied to a wood texture that matches the normal map. @Max For the sword I'd probably NOT add planes for details. Instead you probably want to use a plain metal diffues (no details) and any shapes in the sword will be in the normal map. That'll make it look forged 'cause all the details show in the shadows. The specualr only makes parts shiny or not. So a leather handle specular would be black (not shiny), the polished metal blade would be white. A rusty blade would be specaled grey/white/black Well, in 3dsMax it is the material browser, a pop-up window that has slots for each texture. Each slots material has properties, one of them (the important one for games) is the map. This is where you load your texture (you can drag from a folder and drop into max). Then drag it onto the object. Then use the uvw tools to align it on the object. @demagogue, Since you are using LW you have NO choice but to triangulate if you want to import into D3. (3dsMax files work fine without this step). I'm not sure how LW works in this aspect. But in 3dsMax I can turn the edges in the center of a square that aren't outlined (they can be guessed as to their location, or seen from the lighting sometimes). But it is tougher, so triangulating them (turning into 3 sided polys in Max terms) just makes them easier to work with, that's all really. But sometimes it makes detailed models harder to work with cause there are so many lines on screen (that's the main reason to work with higher sided polys). A little unclear about what exactly you mean in that last part, hope I'm getting it right: The engine DOES care about how many polys you have, thus the need to be conservative and try to build as low poly as possible while still getting the desired shape and lighting props. Of course times are changing. In Max's 'something for ladies' post I posted a pic of a chest I made. The finish one for game is about 800 polys, maybe a little too high but it's a fancy chest that I hope won't end up in EVERY room of a castle. The high poly version for the normal map is 25,000 polys. It loaded in game just fine and could be used in a small area just fine probably, but overkill. I think I get what you're asking after reading again. The engine will render the light and shape based on how the triangle of the back of lute are. No matter if the are triangulated or not. They are there, just hard to see without being outlined. So I'd probably finish fleching out the basic shape and get it right where you want it. When you are done shaping, then triangulate and turn the edges. Always turn edges that need it. --------------------- This is why GOOD low-poly modeling is usually thought to be harder than high poly. With high poly you can add all the curves, shape, ect and make something look real. Low poly really makes you work to get a convincible and good looking object, textureing also plays a huge part because it can mask the fact that something is low-poly. This is a really interesting thread you guys might like, Low Poly Models : Polycount forums http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?C...;gonew=1#UNREAD You can see lots of great work there, along with pics of the maps and wire frames to get an idea what those guys are doing. This is one pic I thought was cool, old school low poly Oh yeah, @Max you probably only wnat to load a normal in the editor. Like in the pic of the doors, I used the normal for the hinge because that's where all the shape is, I wanted to align that. The diffuse is plain metal so it doesn't show you any reference. Then you need to make a material file, combining all your maps (diffuse, normal, spec) into a material. The name of the material is what you put on the object before export (in LW I believe - I know its different than 3dsMax, for 3dsmax I have to edit the object files with notepad and put the material names in myself). I think LW can handle the material names somehow, it is on the Wiki.

Just got a good news alert for you guys. I read on Gamespot forums but lost the thread. Basically PC Gamer UK says it's one of the best games ever made. Also there's a pivotal moment in the game that was very shocking and cool. You know one of those gaming moments that never goes away and stays with you in your fond memories. Like playing Thief: The Dark Project and hearing the A.I. talk with themselves.

It's really the kind of thing you pick up in wiki, forums, and tutorials. D3ed uses a similar system so its not completely new.

Nope. I'm .:MOO:.TheDestroyer|CK|, a JKA clan. I am also a member of The Jedi Academy [.net], also a JKA group. TJA is a major 12-13 thousand people family. Cool eh? for the links, get star wars jedi knight jedi academy, learn to use it, then download http://jediknight2.filefront.com/file/OJPE...me_Manual;80816. With this, and Open Jedi Project Enhanced v0.0.9v you will learn to fight. OJP-E changes saber fighting big time. Swdroids.com is just a good lookin' site w/ nothing on it, its just my major file center. I test forums on it, etc. etc. I'm working on different projects such as a RP kit for STar Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi academy. -TheDestroyer

We've come full circle. So... http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&am...st&p=118792 (I could/will make a bugtracker entry of course; I just wanted to know if the request was outright rejected before doing so, or if it would be considered)

Anyway, if no one can vote at all, then it basically locks in the result as of last night. I don't think it will hurt you, all in all. I think being popular on some internet forums worked in your favor for having a consistent turnout throughout, so if anything a final push might have worked against you, in relative terms I mean ... but that's just a guess.

If you do a search in the public forums for "sinusoidal shearing", you can probably find Gildoran's examples of grass that sways using animated textures. There is also a tree that we were given by EOC that uses animated textures to make the leaves move. I don't know a whole lot about animated textures myself--I've used them a few times in menus, but that's about it. I know that you can scroll side to side or up and down, which works like a conveyer belt if you have a tilable texture. You can also rotate the texture. The speed of motion is customizable, and you can also make the texture go forwards and backwards (the swaying effect). I'm pretty sure you can also increase the intensity of the texture (a 'pulsing' effect).

Here's an example of how the new weapons can easily be modified by different skins. By swapping different wood and metal textures, it's easy to make many different looks. These are just a couple. The rustic axe and mace could still use some work, but the others are "decent". I could work on them longer to make them even better, but I'm going by the philosophy that it's better to get lots of decent models in game now, so they can be used and then tweaked later, than a few excellent models here and there. Anyway, I think I'm going to take a break from the weapons for a bit and do something else. For those keeping track, our weapon totals are: 4 swords (longsword, shortsword, dagger, ceremonial sword) 3 axes (battleaxe, handaxe, rustic axe) 2 polearms (halberd, spear) 1 quarterstaff 1 hammer 1 mace ---- 12 melee weapons 2 longbows 2 shortbows ---- 4 missile weapons http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...enant&st=25

You know, my modelling has gotten a lot faster once I remembered the reloadmodels command...no more waiting for maps to load in between every model change. Just for people who don't know about it, there are tons of 'reload' console commands you can do to update changes immediately. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=2149

I'm using IE7... but it does the same BS on Firefox. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=6164

I'm not sure if this has been discussed before... I've just searched the forums but couldn't find any information about it (probably because I'm not sure what words to search for). I'll try to explain: In Thief3, you could wander around in the city, without people yelling ooooh, thief, because you're just a passenger pedestrian, and there's nothing that makes people think you're a thief. Apart from those who know who you are... This is what I really liked in Thief3... and if I remember it correctly, it wasn't the really case in Thief 1&2 (or at least it didn't really stand out as much as in Thief3). Also, it's funny how your own footsteps are "triggered" (people will come and take a look), and footsteps of a guard ain't. You probably know where I'm going to: how will others know you're thief and not just a regular guy, servant or guard? I recently saw a trailer of , and I immediately thought of Thief. Of course the game is a lot different, but the interaction with the crowd is a bit similar. Hitman also had some interesting ideas: the less you act like a regular guy, the more people will find you suspicious. I'm just wondering how this will be done in the Dark Mod Of course, most of this will apply to what's going on in the streets, and not really the mission itself.

First of all: can somebody (New Horizon?) give him Applicant or Contributor status so that we can discuss things in more detail? @Arcturus: I could take a look at it now, and I have some feedback for you. - While the normalmaps look good in theory, they are almost not noticeable for the "old" and the "white_brick" textures. They should be much more pronounced. I looked a the textures using "r_skipBump" and could hardly tell any difference between the appearance with and without normals. edit: Ok, after looking at them at smaller scale it actually isn't that bad, but the lights have to hit the texture at really sharp angles to make it properly visible. So don't take this too seriously. The brick normal can definitely be deeper though. - The normalmap of the tile textures is very grainy or noisy. It makes the shingles appear like sand, which feels a bit wrong. The roughness should be decreased a lot, this would look much better. The diffusemap is non-tiling, which can probably be fixed easily. - The "old" texture has non-power-of-two dimensions (1068 pixels). This will not work when the imagesa re converted into the DDS format. All dimensions should be powers of two: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, etc. Width and height don't have to be the same, of course. Please don't be discouraged by my feedback. If you are willing to put some more work on the textures, I can imagine that these could fit into our repository. I (or somebody else) can give you some more detailed instructions in the internal forums with respect to techniques and organisational stuff like naming conventions, DDS conversion and such. edit: Thanks for moving that, N.H.

I'll set you up as an applicant, then you can post your samples in our private forums.

I don't think the team has ever 'collectively' said any such thing. I think it's far more likely that they're too busy with new projects to respond to questions raised about a game they released three years ago than the possibility that they regularly read our public forums and were personally offended by the occasional isolated comment from individual team-members that they didn't think much of D3 as a game.

You can see this often in some game forums, even D3world. Somebody comes in and says he has this great idea but he needs somebody who codes it for him. For the trivial task of implementing a full featured game you will get 20% of the income after release. Sure. these guy all have the notion that the idea of the game is the most imporant thing and usually they wont even give details because they fear that it might get stolen. Knigers is a good example for that. Of course the idea is important, but it's the hard work that really counts. In the end you can have good ideas all day long for free, but that doesn't make you rich, until you start implementing it.

Just a reminder. I need everyone here to vote once a day until July 16th. It's a long process, but we can win it. Also, if you visit any other forums...pass along the info there too. If we can get support elsewhere, all the better. Thanks.

Welcome to the Forums! How's it going with your movie hunt?

jdude, I have to commend you on the quality of your work, one look at that street and you can tell right away this is going to be a very fine looking Thief level in TDM. I'm also impressed with the scale of the effort. Perhaps you would be the sort of level designer with the kind of skills and ability to design/create fairly fast that would be capable of modeling the city as we are discussing in this thread below. Who knows, maybe jdude will be the first level designer/FM author that will come at least fairly close to the dream of modeling The City in TDM at a high quality level. And thus, of course, attain legendary Thief fan status. hehe http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=3470&st=0

I should have mentioned this a long while ago (actually I covered this in the belcher thread): http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...=5452&st=75 Anything that's inheriting from atdm:ai_base tend to stand around when they should be attacking. I think most of the focus has been on atdm:ai_humanoid which has more functionality than the base. I think we should have atdm:ai_nonhuman because ai_base is pretty thin. So I think the problems you're facing with the bot is the lack of ai_base functionality.

New Horizon - Now I seem to have correct access to the Contributor forums. Thanks! Ishtvan, Springheel - thanks for all of your ideas and suggestions -- please keep them coming if you think they'll help me. Some of the questions you raise are issues I had thought of too, so at least I'm starting to get my head around what needs to be done. I'll grind away in learning/experimenting mode for a little while, then maybe write up a short design doc, encapsulting these ideas.

If anyone has some spare time, there are two good models on FTP that still need to be textured--a horizontal bookshelf and a furnace. We could really use both of them, and I don't think I'll have time for a while. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&am...st&p=106109

Ah, I hate when I write a long post and the forums doesn't take it. So this'll be much shorter... small gears would gunk up easier than big ones. So I don't think small bot disabled by moss and big bots not a problem. Don't remember what moss did in T3 other than the pagan stones, what comparision are you thinking of Springheel? Um... lantern being put out. The lantern glass IS a different material NOW. So it can be illuminated, so that material can have a seperate prop for stims. water, would be hard to extinguish lantern thru glass broadhead, maybe a little noisy, but well placed could break glass, put out lantern. selfshadows, what ever looks best, is mtr file prop so easy to change/test at any time.

wassup everyone! long time since i last checked the forums.. the screen shots available are really cool, i get very euphoric everytime i visit the site! btw, i noticed my account still have access to the rest of the forum. if you guys like, you can take me off, since i'm not a contributor for a long time now. Unfortunately college has taken all of my time, i even moved to a place nearer to the campus (where i don't even have a computer, btw). keep it up guys! if someone need any of those models i've done (all of them unfinished, i must add) just let me know.

I just heard from a veteran of building cpu's that SLI isn't that good. If you were to get the 8800 GTS from Nvidia which is in the 500-600$ range you'd be way better off. Which is what the system I helped build above has. As for Quad-cores which I find very interesting, a real quad core is coming in July. Right now this is what the market has available and it's not worth it that much. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductRevie...N82E16819115017 I also found an article via Gamespot forums on Eigth core CPU. That's right 8 freaking cores. People are estimating the cost for the cpu to be like 1500$. http://www.legitreviews.com/article/521/1/ I think with a dual core all the future games should be maxed out with the 8800 GTS and no slowdown. Like creed, bioshock, gears of war pc if it ever is announced officially. Honestly i'm just happy the entrance price of 1500$ is resonable.