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If I remember correctly, this project was inspired by Thief, which traditionally is presented in first person. This project was not inspired by Splinter Cell, and for good reason, they are different experiences. Thief makes you feel as if you are Garrett, you aren't playing a game any longer, but rather, you are a Thief, and you get the rush robbing in turn. One thing I disliked about Thief 3 was that I was constantly reminded that I wasn't Garrett, but rather, I'm watching him. When I climb I get to see his hands fumble on the ledge. The goal of this is to immerse the character with realism, but for the most part, it doesn't immerse me, it does quite the opposite--it distracts me. Traditionalists of the series praised the first person view of the other games because you felt as if you were the character. Looking glass *could* have put in a third person view, but their audience wasn't the one who wanted it; the exception was Theif 3, but that was put into place to support the Xbox and give the game more of a "console" feel. Although that wasn't done by Looking Glass, was it? As for comparing Thief to Metal Gear, please. As far as the only one I've played, Metal Gear Solid, there aren't even shadows. There is no reason to put the effort into a third person view, and for the most part, why are we even discussing this? It's a waste of resources to compensate for the gameplay by adding new animations etc. It's a waste of time. Think from the developers perspective because certainly I don't want them wasting their time with a third person view to appease a new audience in the Dark Mod forums when they could be spending it with features that would please everyone. In short, it's nice that you want to argue about whether or not the feature should be added, but you aren't the ones making the mod. Though you are certainly acting as if you are. If you want to include the feature yourself, you are more then welcome to. I imagine you'll quickly find it is more trouble then it is worth, but of course, you want to make a whole game as well? Oh sure, piece of cake. Happens all the time in fact. Good luck.

We could go with 1:1 if it looks good from the current camera position, I'm just saying don't change the camera since that's the only non-arbitrary thing we have, that and D3 reference characters that "feel right" when looking at them from that camera position. Otherwise we could be sliding around 3 arbitrary variables (camera height, map unit scale and physics unit scale) and never converge on a combination that works. It takes a while to establish a combination that actually works when there are obviously RL->game engine and psychological factors at work too. Try noclipping up in the air until the center of your screen is exactly at eye level of a character and tell me that character doesn't appear too short to you.

I've accepted the fact you guys aren't going to do 3rd person. It's your mod and you are 100% entitled to do as you see fitting aswell as the gameplay style, view etc. I was merely putting my personal reasons for liking the 3rd person, namely that of viewing the character you are controlling aswell as the actions he/she is doing. It's almost godlike as you are controlling them almost like a pawn. Some may say with the placement of the camera in 3rd person especially in closed environments i.e. corridors etc it may actually be more difficult as in FP you move around quickly for view, whereas the camera is not fast in the 3rd person to get the best aspect.

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=3606&st=50 Why don't we try it out, and see if the effects on the physics are really that noticible? And if they are, maybe we could just treat physics values seperately? People would have to remember that the numbers for physics don't equate to the real distances, they are still in doom units.

Re: Weapons Those will all be done with AF attachments, so the final animations probably should have no weapons attached. And yes, we can attach more than one AF AFAIK, so we can put the bow on his back when he's not using it and put it in the hands when he's firing. It might be good to do some test animation runs with the weapons in tho so you can make sure there won't be clipping issues. Re: Relative AI size I agree that getting the player model ingame is important, but I think for the AI size issue, the standard to go by is the camera height. The player model height is a bit arbitrary and might have to be resized to fit the camera height, but I think the camera is the standard. If we change the camera height, then all units effectively change and the physics will no longer be correct because all forces will still use the old units. It doesn't make sense to fit one arbitrary value to another one, when we already have a camera height standard, and D3 character heights to go by. As for the whole size issue, I was playing thru D3 again and noticed that when you look straight ahead, most of the characters eyes are above your eye level by a good foot or so. It didn't strike me as unnatural though the first time playing thru D3, they still psychologically seemed to be the same height. Maybe it's something about how we usually frame people in FPS when talking to them? It seems I tend to frame people so they take up about 3/4ths of the screen, with their eye level slightly above mine. Maybe when we talk to people in FPS our human eyes naturally look a little above the center of the monitor? I tried noclipping up to where my eye level when looking parallel to the ground was the same as their eye level, and they looked really short because they only filled the lower half of the screen. Maybe there is a reason why Id put the camera in the player neck/chest and made the AI models the same height as the player? I'm not saying everything's perfect as-is, some of the AI still feel way too tall, but the builder guard seems about right, maybe just a tad too tall.

But you're not just choosing wether or not to "be" the character. You're also choosing wether or not to accept a free view around corners.

I knew that already It moves around Garrett. It all comes back to what was said earlier in the thread. I reckon the Dark Mod will be class as the Thief style character is unknown at the moment anyway and you can imagine yourself as him. The FP is fine. However Garret, Fisher, Snake etc are not you. It's personal preference.

Thanks Domarius. I've planned what I'll do now. I'll obtain the PC version of Thief3, having the XBox version already, and design levels first. I'm going to look at the modelling stuff aswell as ligthing then start to read the DOOM3 stuff later on, closer to the Dark Mod time, where I'll obtain Doom3 PC and hopefully have a bit of experience by then. I was looking at the Doom3 forums and that Ninja Mod looks decent in the 3rd person. The camera is slightly far away. Is it possible to bring the camera closer and also maneuver it to a Splinter Cell/Thief DS style of one?

I'm slowly adding Odd's prop models to CVS, but there is a lot of stuff in there that's out of my league, like the architectural models, animated files, etc. Oddity apparently had the Thief character in game already, at least on his system. How hard would it be to get him on CVS and swap him with the marine player model for the May 31st deadline? BT? We need the thief ingame before we can address the AI size issue, and before we can really test a size standard for future maps.

You don't "go from" one to the other, you make it from scratch. Basically any 3D character modelling tute you can find will answer your question more thoroughly than we have time to here. And making a 3D human is just like drawing a 2D one, in the way that first and foremost, you need artistic talent and experience. It's not a technical plan that there is a blueprint you can follow. Even the technical tips you can learn for the 3D app are just for optimisation and speeding things up a bit, like learning which pencil to choose for which paper - it's nothing compared to the artistic talent and experience you need. This Joan of Arc character modelling tutorial is considered to be the "holy grail" of 3D character modelling tutorials. And it is indeed, one of the best you'll ever see, in terms of quality and thoroughness. http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/max/j...rc/joanmenu.asp

I was talking about ZylonBane, not you sparhawk . I was also being light hearted. The thing is you guys probably know of loads of places to find good quality stuff and info. Hence my asking. I use google a lot. I'm not hot on technical stuff. Maybe I should join the Doom3 forums myself. Have any of you actually played any Splinter Cell games?

I enver changed it, simply because I never had an image. I did find the cursor in the .pk4 however, I'll hunt it down again. These forums seem kind of empty, I had question, is the main menus in the other thread in game yet or not?

It's been a while since that news page changed, over 2 months actually, a good news article could simply be a culmination of things decided on the forums and maybe a quick FAQ cuz there are LOTS of questions oft asked on the forums that suck up threads...

http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=3017 This is all you really need. Everything I learned about Doom 3 level editing I learned from the tutes at Doom3World.org It even has forums for each 3D app, and I know there is a modelling tute to show you how to create a "Plasma Tick" from start to finish and get it into the game.

Character modelling & animation, and level design and archetecture, are two entirely different things. At most, all they share is keeping poly count low, and that's not saying much at all.

So where do I get these freebie ones from and how do I incorporate it with Doom3? As you can see I'm new to this. Are there any online tutorials for all this stuff and I don't mean the sticky topic linked to DOOM3 forums.

The level editor that comes with D3 is just for editing levels, guis, articulated figures, etc (things specific to D3). External assets such as pictures, sounds, models and their animations need to be created/edited with external programs. In other words, to create a new character you'll probably need Lightwave, Maya, or Blender. (note: Blender is free) TDM will have just enough 3rd person support to allow for reflections. When TDM is released, all sourcecode for it will be released too, allowing you to modify it however you want.

Hi ZylonBane. Good to see ya from the Ionstorm Forums. Yay. =D

Well, my menu problems finally are sorted out, and I come to find that there is in fact menu work going on. I'll read through everything in this/all the forums tommorow and try to get back on track, good to be here again

When in the 1970's word spread out about the mouse-window computer interface as opposed to entering text some people were excited. I am no longer excited about using a mouse and a monitor to play thief-like things. When time permits, (in a few years) I'm going to buy some equipment like 5DT Data Glove Ultra Wireless Kit and hi-Res800™ (2D/3D) and try to make darkmod into what I wish it to be. The movements of hands will correspond generally to various forces applied around you in the environment (eg. climbing an overhead branch or beam, something that's not possible in traditional engines), deft maneuvering (eg. to snatch a purse or slide by in a door half-ajar) and gesticulations to control variables such as movement vectors and positions (crouching, holding breath, etc). It's nice to see that already people are having success viewing their favourite games in 3d (since all computers games are "3d rendered" now people call them stereovision to be clear), eg: medal of honour allied assault, system shock 2, (thief doesn't work), soul reaver 2, .. these guys got doom 3 working with 3d. http://forums.stereovision.net/viewtopic.p...1760&forum=5&10 site about drivers and computer game stereovision benchmarks: http://www.stereovision.net/toxicx/1050info.htm

It amuses me in TV and films when a character is searching with an oil lamp or other omnidirectional lightsource, and they spot something and hold up the light in front of them to get a better view. I can confirm from experience that in this situation you would see nothing except for the light source itself.

I know what you mean about "seeing your character do things", it's cool in some ways, but all you do in Thief is sneak about, knock people out, run away from baddies, stack crates, and mantle ledges. Nothing really exciting to watch apart from the odd blackjacking sequence. Enter the Matrix on the other hand, benifits much more, because the camera takes a side on view when you enter combat, where you can clearly see your position in realtion to everyone else in the melee, and you can direct your kicks and punches in the appropriate directions, see exactly what kinds of attacks the enemies are doing, and parry/block/dodge appropriately. In the matrix example, I'm talking about individual limb movements, and where parry and dodge, etc are buttons you press in response, so this kind of view is really useful here. In thief, the most dodging you're going to be doing is to avoid projectiles, so you actually dodge by moving yourself around, estimating distances, etc. and first person is more suited to that. And the rest of the action (sneaking, crate stacking, etc) doesn't really benifit from 3rd person. You don't need to see what your body is doing when you're placing that crate, or blackjacking that guy - you need to see that your target is in the dead center of your screen, without having to compensate for the offset camera position, and the estimated size of the player model. But that's just my opinion. Also I don't yet understand what you mean by 3rd person being more strategic. I can see how it is in a RTS game, where you are a commander that needs to see everything at once, but in Thief you shouldn't be given that power to see around corners without moving. That's got to be the 8th deadly sin or something. Thou shalt not have 3rd person in a Thief game.

I see what you mean. But still this is wrong. First of all, if you are far enough into the tunnel, you would definitely not be lighted up, but visible from the other side. And secondly, this is a game engine and not real light, so they had to do some limits somewhere. In fact, the engine properly lights up your character, even if you are not directly in line with a lightsource.

I think you are overestimating the amount of skill that is out there. I would glady make textures if I had the time (hell I even applied at one point), but unfortunately I am just not that good at making textures. OK, but not that good. The problem is that once you learn a couple of simple techniques in modelling, texturing or whatever, you are immediately seized by the notion that you absolutely rock at modelling or texturing, just because you can produce stuff that you wouldn't have thought possible before you started (I've been there myself). Unfortunately, this applies to everybody else as well, which means that your own work is in fact pretty average. The result of this is that there is a big discrepancy between the number of "modellers" and "texture artists" who drop into the forums, and the number of actual talented individuals who can make a real contribution.

Yeah, it's hard not to notice when you change between 1stP and 3dP you're really changing the whole character of the PC, the game, and the gameplay. 3rd Person instantly makes me think of Tomb Raider-esque gameplay, where you really use the environment as something for your PC to manipulate to advance, more running, jumping, hanging puzzles, and NPCs as just another kind of environmental barrier to "navigate" around (but this time one that shoots back). A bit more gimmicky, although fun in its own way for what it is. 1st person, the environment isn't something you *use* so much as it's something you're *in*, immediately more immersive, more concentrated on the NPCs *as characters in the world with you*, who is where?, than on the hallways and ledges and NPC's around you as just different categories of hurdles in your way, which can never escape a kind of superficialism IMO. FP just makes the gameplay and the whole world a level deeper, again IMO. I wouldn't mind seeing a few 3P oriented FMs if they come out for Darkmod if they can be pulled off, some classic Tomb-Raider like hopping around. They could even be very fun for a quick jaunt, as long as the 1stPerson experience isn't in any way compromised to cater to them. But they just won't tap into what really excites me about FP gameplay that 3P just can't capture. Of course, this is just my preference, but I don't mind acknowledging that TDM's design comes with a kind of gameplay agenda that I happen to agree with.