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That's ok, this option wasn't in the wizard anyway. It was under the RGB colour calibration menu. The problem is that PS seems to want to make the gamma higher on everything. In PS5.5, telling it not to compensate for the monitor worked. But I can't find the similar option in PS7. Seeing as I don't know what PS7 is doing to make everything brighter, I don't really know how to make things look the way they are supposed to. But I can pull the same image up in both PS5.5 and 7, and side by side you can see 7 is much brighter.

Unlike 5.5 there is no colour calibration wizard in photoshop 7. Setup is achieved with a combination of Adobe Gamma (found not in photoshop, but in your PC's control panel) and the color settings dialogue available from photoshop's Edit menu. alternatively install linux and the Gimp.

Gah! Omega, check out the 2 page discussion on this very issue: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=43 We came up with a number of reasons why this might not be feasible and/or fun.

I have some ideas of how this could work...a similar look to each menu, but the central design could be different for each page, or different figures at the sides, or something. I won't have time to do anything tonight, but I'll play around with some ideas on the weekend.

Or the other thing could be that the shop is a pre-mission map. The question is if this adds really fun if you have to do it all the time. On the other hand it serves as a testbed for map creation. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=43&st=0 I have a pretty good idea how this could work in terms of game mechanics as it would have been a part of the city section. If there is interest in this I could write up a description how I think it should work.

I like this basic idea, Gold. It would fit very nicely into the style of the stained glass menu, if we went with that one. I have a request though...please don't use the Mason font for anything other than titles. It is too ornate for descriptive text. And we will have to be consistent in which font we are going to use for our selectable buttons. I favour Mason for the titles and Carelton for the buttons, like T1/2.

Great! So it had some effect to do this work. When you post it, please make a new thread though. Makes it easier to keep track and when I look through the forums to collect the consensus for the design.

Great! Could you take look here http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?act=ST&f=3&t=285 and assign or create some concepts for the other screens as well?

I dunno, something about the stained glass one reminds me of the T3 menu for some reason. Maybe its just the colors... but yet they're different. No clue. Regardless, it's obviously is beautiful, but it also reminds me of the Thief-TheCircle site. I'd still prefer the book style That menu might be good for the actual campaign we do, but I think the book style lends itself better to presenting an interface for people to choose the Fan Mission they want.

Doh! Damn....oh well. Want me to continue working on it and throw it out at the last minute or just go vote? If you wanna know what it is, it's a mix of the parchment and the book idea. The menu will be similar to my book idea, pushed off to the right and laying on top of the edge of the parchment. You'll always see the regular menu options at all times, and the parchment will display all the information those lead to, like if you click load your saved games will fade in on the parchment. That way you don't have to hit a back button to return to the default menu and you can keep it all on one screen, it also gives you alot of room to play with the art.

This isn't voting for which menu to use, but just which one you like the most so far. It will give us artists an idea of which one we should be expanding on. Here are the options so far: Inspired by Pak's dark parchment version: Inspired by Ren's Book version: New Horizon's steampunk version: Springheel's dark illustration version: Springheel's (very rough) stained-glass skyline version:

I don't think ambient noise is workable, since there will be other ambient noise going on all the time, not to mention listening for map-based audio information. It would get too confusing. As for removing the lightgem, that's a piece of cake. We'll have an option in the Options menu to toggle it on or off. The lightgem is one of the classic Thief icons, so I don't think we should get rid of it.

What is it with 3D apps and incomprehensible, overly complex and non standard user interfaces? Its as if they feel the need to justify the silly price tags by making them as unfathomable and proprietry as possible. Cinema 4D is heaven in this respect. Standard UI and elegant simplicity abound. Everything else is the spawn of satan. Shame on you software engineers Don't get me started on audio apps. All those hundreds of tiny tiny dials and sliders you're supposed to interact with via a clumsy mouse. WTF is that all about. Bastards edit - looking good omega

Yes it does. Trust goldfishguy. Apple Macs traditionally used to default at 72dpi for screen resolution but anything up to (and sometimes beyond) 96dpi is common these days. Take a 17" screen. 800x600 (about 62dpi) is going to be a different resolution to 1280x1024 (about 96dpi). comprendez. good. But anyhow goldfish guy, Springheels right too. Ain't no one got a 300dpi monitor. Not many folks have a 300dpi printer for continuous tone images for that matter. But yeah. Huge images on the internet is just rude. Post little pics if possible please. Or link to larger piccies if needs must. Life is nice and cosy when you are young and healthy and with good eyes - like you and me. 800x600 on a 17" screen is good for anyone a bit far sighted or a bit over the hill though. Feel sorry for anyone checking the forums on a web enabled phone.... (something I do from time to time)

Maya is the best overall 3d app available yes, but I spend a lot of time hanging around the CG commuity, forums etc, and Lightwave is regarded as the best poly modeler available. It has it's shortcomings obviously, no history, edges or NURBS are the main ones, but it's just so fast and intuituve once you learn it, and you can also virtually 'sculpt' in it , in a way not possible in other apps, apart from ZBrush. I used Lightwave 8, but it's virtually identical to lightwave 7 and 7.5, most of the changes in the newer versions were made to Layout, character setup and animation.

Ok, we have had plenty of discussion of what the lightgem should look like, and I think we have reached a consensus of sorts. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=48&st=25 Now what we need is someone to actually create the thing. I would be willing to do it, but honestly, I'm not quite sure how. Is this going to be a 3d model? If not, how is it going to be animated? I know it's not as simple as just making a single image in Photoshop, but someone is going to have to explain how to approach this so that we can get going on this.

Ah, thanks. Applegeeks' forums aren't bad for tutorials either.

If you're interested in some good tutorials and critical feedback, there are a couple good forums to look at. Epilogue is one that has a lot of stuff available that might help. http://www.epilogue.net/cgi/phpBB2/

Well I read in another post o the forums here that 7500-8k polys is the target for characters. I'll have no problem whatsoever getting to that level from the current 30k It's never a good idea to have large details like the belt buckle just a flat plain with a normal map, it's always best to have some basic geometry there as well that more or less follows the high res shape. That's not a problem though, there's a plugin for Lightwave call qemLOSS which does just that job. I'll have to get this textured and normal/spec mapped and into Doom to see what the final effect will be. I currently have no idea how god/bad/average it will look inside the game.

If you find something out then you should probably download this http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=255 and incorporate it there to test it out. My next plans are to figure out how to change the buttons, and how to let the SDK do something for me.

I like Springheel's idea of a picture on the left, the menu on the right. This would allow individual modders to make their own artwork to put on the left-hand side to give a 'teaser pic' regarding their mod, right? Might be a good selling point to other modders. "Stop, Thief!" and "The Man That Took Stuff" don't seem to really do it for me. Thief, as we know it, has a serious, dark and foreboding mood. I'd want to play on that feeling rather than something that seems lighthearted or comedic as I feel when I read these. They're definitely crafty, but not my personal preference. I immediately thought of the 1980s electronic boardgame titled "Stop, Thief!" when I read that one. (I used to LOVE that game!) Here are some ideas: * The Mod Squad * Thief: The Modding Age * Thief: The Immaculate Collection Haha, I'm only kidding

lol, we really need to quit reediting our posts and just start making new ones...I keep waiting for new responses and don't look up at the previous replies til later. I'm all for Spar's idea. It's easy to do and adds has a nice style to it. But the actual menu options itself still needs the most work...something beyond the font to flesh it out a bit and give it some more character. Like we could make it look somewhat like an old Victorian scientific journal. Leave the text where it's at but have a nice little diagram drawn next to it that's somewhat connected to the option itself. Like a diagram of an eye with a few very tiny lines of text drawn underneath it (that can't be read, but look cool) next to the resolution settings. Something like that, and maybe a few little notes dashed in the corners of the pages to make it look like someone was using it for research... Oh, and maybe assign page numbers next to the options to make it look more like a table of contents. For the FM's we could do a simple script that assigns random page numbers to them in ascending order..like... The Seventh Crystal Pg. 104 The Inverse Manse Pg. 206 Or even simpler, just make the numbers static and have the first FM on the list placed next to it.

Yeah, so do I...but I thinking we could do more with the background of the book itself rather than the text to spice things up a bit. Like have boarders that block the seperate options in somewhat similar to Thief 1 & 2's menu. Maybe it couldn't hurt to smear the ink a bit if we go that route, since the seperate options will be divided up it couldn't hurt to do a little touching up to see how it works. NH: That font would be good for diaries and letters, but I think we're trying to go for a more ancient and well regarded tome feel for the menu book.

I feel strongly that we should avoid this. First, Thief is not really medieval, and second, it will send a strong 'medieval fantasy' vibe, which isn't really appropriate, IMO. If we're going with a book theme, we should stick to an Elizabethean/Victorian look. We should use that on our maps, but I wouldn't use it on the main menu...Carelton was always the font used in the menus. We could still do the flare, but I wouldn't do the fade-out thing we were talking about. Too busy over top of a genuine illustration. With this I'd stick with the flickering flare light, and a 1-2 second page-turning animation when going to submenus. I like Sparhawk's idea of having a bank of random illustrations to use. We could all pick one image or screenshot that captures the 'look and feel' of Thief for us, and then include them.

I just had another idea we can play with. How hard would it be to make it look more akin to the old medieval style? Ornate boarders, one large gothic letter starting off the paragraph, lots of color and care put into it's production...that could be a good style to experiment with, though we couldn't make it TOO busy otherwise it'll be hard to navigate. Edit: I'll see about doing a mockup of the menu ingame shortly. I still have all those book textures BT sent me that are waiting to be put to good use... Edit 2: Also...think we could incorporate some of our other ideas in with this theme? Such as the fade in/fade out effect you were talking about last night?