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I decided to start re-doing even the existing animations that oDDity did because I decided I can improve on them. The problems with oDDity's version of the Elite guard walk cycle was; 1. Too much like the original motion capture file, and hence - too fast, and too groovy. 2. He's leaning back on such a wierd angle that I reckon someone would fall over if they did that in real life. The way I created this was just used the motion capture and mimicked only the placement of the feet, which I changed a bit in the end anyway. The rest is all completely original. I believe this is the way to go to create the walk cycles. They have to have their own character, so working directly from the mocaps is too restrictive. The mocaps are good for a start point for foot timing and distance placement (which must be changed afterwards), but that's it. The noble women will have to walk like they have had deportment classes (being a proper lady takes training). The fat men will have to amble in the way that only obese people do. So, the idea of the Elite guard walk cycle is he is relaxed but not casual. He's walking at a pace slow enough to see what's going on, hence he's very upright, as opposed to leaning forward in a determined "go straight from A to B" walk. His legs do not spring and bend with each step, because this is a stride. His upperbody movement is fluid but not casual - he's relaxed but in control because he knows exactly what he is doing. He knows what state his body needs to be in to react quickly and flexibly, like a martial artist. Because last time everyone agreed I needed to exagerate the movement, I created 2 - one that I think is finished, and one that is more exagerated. Set your media player to loop playback, to see the walk cycle continuously. Don't worry about the tiny jump, that is more to do with the camera keeping up not quite down to the last pixel. Elite patrol Elite patrol exagerated Animating creatures moving about with their limbs is the hardest form of animation, so I'm prepared for lots of critisism.

Not really, I was pointing out technical flaws in the animation, not aesthetic ones. Technical flaws are absolute, and should be fixed. Realistic character aniamiton isn't easy - in fact, its very difficult, and there are a lot of technical absolute rules that must be followed, with the aesthetic movement on top of that.

They are not easy to counter, as to counter them you have to induldge in all kinds of non-obvious interpretations of the text, and to put it in a context that does not make any sense for a bronze age tribe of desert nomads. I have not seen any countering of any of the contradictions in the bible that didn't essentially undermine the whole premise of the Christian faith. Christians on the one hand want to argue that the Bible is the literal word of God, yet when that word is contradictiory, or conveys something unpalatable, they immediately switch position and claim it is all relative and open to interpretation. Sorry, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Irrellevant - the entire Bible is someone claiming that God said this, Jacob said that, Whosiwhatsit spake thus. Christians base their religion on what Jesus is alledged to have said and done, as supposedly told and written down by his alleged disciples. In fact, the only book that directly quotes Jesus, the Gospel of Thomas, is not included in most Bibles and is regarded as heresy by most branches of Christianity. Mostly because it suggests that Jesus utterly condemned religion and organised faith, and because he claims not to be the messiah or the son of God, just a man with something to say. So, a version of the Bible could be... Wrong? OH dear. how does one then find out which version is correct? Surely God wouldn't have allowed so many people to have read a corrupted verion of His Holy word! Of course, the King James version was largely re-written by Francis Bacon to suit his own politics, but every other version also bears the imprint of the particular scribe(s) or monk(s) that wrote it down. In other words, the bible justifies seeking revenge, which any sensible person would recognise as a vicious cycle of violence. Other parts of the bible speak of vengeance ten-fold on those that wrong you. Sorry, your God is a very unsavoury character. Add up the number of men, women and children God commanded the Israelites to murder - it is over a million people. God commanded various characters in the Bible to rape, commit incest, keep slaves, murder people. He drowned every living creature (alledgedly) in a petulant tantrum, like a toddler smashing his toys because they don't work the way he wants. All the Bible is saying is that Jesus and all the other characters made certain comments. What is your point? Which is why the Bible is so open to interpretation. Yet there are numerous passages that cannot reasonably be interpreted in any other sense than an exact literal one, without undermining the whole concept of the Bible being the word of God (it is very obviously the words of various small-minded men, and it has been translated and re-translated, rewritten, edited, re-worked so many times that the original versions of any of its books are lost in the sands of time, and will never be known. The difference in this case is purely semantic. God was clearly testing Abraham by tempting him. Regardless, God tested Abraham in a way that any moral person would find disgusting. On another one of God's little tests, If I wanted to test your faith by demanding that you sacrifice your first born child to me, would you think I was a good person? If I tortured you to try and make you renounce your faith, would I be an evil person, or a divine agent of the LORD come to test your faith? There are websites which clearly and decisively illuminate the contradictions in the Bible, and there are numerous websites that try in vain to explain away all of the contradictions and evil that the bible contains. They fail, because to explain away the contradictions, they must undermine the very basis of their religion (i.e, that the Bible is the infallible word of God) by changing their interpretations to suit their agenda. Having read several versions of the Bible in full, as well as the Apocryphal texts, I very quickly came to the conclusion that even if the contradictory nonsense in the Bible was partly true, it was so morally bankrupt, and depicted such a violent, parochial, racist, sexist, homophobic, childish, intolerant and opressive religion that it pretty much closed the case for me as to whether I thought Christianity had any virtue at all.

We already have a pretty comprehensive list, broken into reasonable stages. Any animations we come up with that aren't there can be added to the list. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=1650

The West Coast has a lot of beautiful wilderness areas to explore, mountains to climb, and the climate is nice. It has Sun, and is a relaxing place. Culture I'm not so sure about. It's a longer and probably more expensive flight from where you are though. You could always go to Boston. There's always stuff to do there, and it actually has some character, being the oldest city here, but it's probably cold right now. Hey, I grew up in Chicago, and I was hardly ever shot at!

The whole "flood thing" is the result of very old garbled stories from around 11,000 BCE, when the last ice age retreated, causing global sea level to rise dramatically (several tens of metres) in a relatively short period of time. While the rise was generally gradual, it was punctuated with occaisinal rapid spurts, and the climate change at the time would have caused increased rainfall in many parts of the world, and increased drought in others. In Australia, very few Aboriginal tribes have flood myths, except those who have lived near the sea, and Australia became much drier at the end of the last ice age, hence the lack of flood stories. The same for most of Africa - those cultures already living far inland have no flood myths, those that were disposessed by sea level rise do. An area of land the size of the USA in coastline disappeared under the sea in a period of a few hundred years. People living on the coastline retreated inland, and relayed tales of their lands being swallowed up by the sea, as they moved futher inland. Over many generations these stories naturally were embellished, mutated, evolved and diverged. None of the people who were already living inland when this sea level rise occured have retained any stories of floods, but the people that do have wildly varying stories, with the only common theme being rising water levels. Some flood myths involve rain, some don't. Actually, in the biblical story of Noahs ark, God instructs Noah to gather "two of each beast that is unclean, and seven of each beast that is clean" (it might be the other way around, I'm quoting from memory). That is a hell of a lot of animals to pack into one little boat, considering there are an estimated 5 - 15 million species of animal, even considering that half of them are beetles. And then you have to consider that for most species, the minimum viable population size is >500. Some animals need several thousand individuals to survive. Then there is food - you need to feed these buggers, some animals consume their body weight in food each day, some have very particular diets. Most non-fundamentalist Christians are reasonable enough to concede that Genesis is a mythological story, and didn't actually happen. The story of Noah predates the Bible by several thousand years, it is found in the Sumerian myths in various forms, and these people were totally unrelated to the Semitic tribes that borrowed their mythology. It is probably based loosely on fact in the sense that some farmer noticed that the sea level was rising, and thought it might be worthwhile loading his cattle and other livestock into a boat in case it got hairy. He survives, has some kids, several thousand years later his offspring have proliferated and exagerated the story now distorted out of all proportion. Zachaeus: "If you think that any experience of any higher beings can't be anything other than a malfunction of the brain, then I guess there's not much point in any further discussions about it." I didn't say it couldn't be anything else, but that is the most liklely of all the possibilities. Many ancient societies did not recognise mental diseases like schizophrenia, instead, schizophrenics were (and still are in some societies) treated as people with a special conduit to God, or the spirit world. They didn't understand that when these people heard voices, or saw things that weren't there, that it was an error of their brain, they thought the voices were God, or spirits. Shamans, prophets, witchdoctors, priests throughout history have deliberatley induced visions (hallucinations) by starving themselves for days, weeks even, wandering around in the hot desert sun, consuming hallucinagenic compounds, and various other activities known to cause the brain to malfunction. Now, it is possible, however unlikely, that when some people say they are hearing the voice of what they think is God, that they really are hearing something and it isn't their brain being wierd. But they have no way of determining the veracity of anything that voice tells them, so to simply believe a mysterious voice or a character in a strange dream is just stupid, especially if it tells you a fanciful story that can in no way be verified. The voice could be anything - a pixie sitting in their ear, a dimensional rift, who knows. So to then be so certain about it that you construct an elaborate belief system around it requires that you depart with a fairly large chunk of reason and sanity. @ John D. : I would be curious to know what precipitated your religious epiphany, if it wasn't indoctrination as a child, or TV evangelists, or born-again cults knocking at your door. Why not Islam, or Rastafarianism? God apparently tells a lot of wildy different (not to mention contradictory) stories to different people, or so the people who claim to have spoken with him claim - on what do you base your version of belief? Or did you just keep a childhood imaginary friend into adulthood? Do you have any basis for your beliefs without reference to a Bible or Koran, or some other document? Can you follow your beliefs though a consistent line of reasoning, based soley on observations of the natural world? Did God speak to you personally? If you think He did, how do you know it wasn't an imposter (a Demonic spirit falsely claiming to be God, or a cheeky little Leprechaun trying to trick you, for example)? If you want to claim extroadinary things, like imaginary friends killing their children and thus 'saving' the world, you had better have some pretty extroadinary evidence to back it up, and no, absence of evidence for evolution in the form of something you don't understand about it does not constitute evidence for your imaginary friend creating life. You can't rely on dubious anecdotes, like "my Grandma saw an angel and it told her to move to so and so, and it all turned out well..." You need positive evidence that stands on its own, and can be independently studied and verified by anyone (at least in principle) - you can't say, "well, gee I can't quite figure this out yet, science isn't advanced enough at the moment, or we may never know, so therefore God did it!". It is a patent abuse of reason, and a cop out.

The mocap one is better, but I don't think there's anything wrong with having multiple versions. It looks more realistic if not every character turns the exact same way every time.

the headline basically says it: since about 3 days ago I can't access the cgtalk site+forums anymore. firefox tries to connect to the site for a few seconds than I get the "operation timed out" message, same thing with IE. I first thought they may have server-problems, but I asked some other guys and they don't seem to have any problems with the website. After that I tried it on another other PC and on a laptop here, which connect over the same router - they can't open cgtalk as well. Anyone an idea what's wrong?? They have actually no reason for banning me, since I probably have 10 posts per year and never had any argument over there - most of the time I'm just reading through the threads, which is quite interesting and I learned a lot over there.

It has nothing to do with being insecure, I just despise people who will belittle my intelligence because I dont buy into evolution and imply that I have some kind of character flaw because of it. You dont see me posting 'evolution is for monkeys!' do you? It's a nice sci -fi idea, Darwin was pretty creative but I suspect if he had the data availble today about human cells and DNA it's quite possible he would have come to a completely different conclusion on how things came to be. Now while I havent paid much attention to the court case involving I.D. I have read the book Darwins Black Box. Now if any of you have read it, the guy never claims to be a creationist or argues that all structures in a cell look like they have been designed, he just points to a group of examples and demonstrates that there is no way under current theroy that they could have evolved. I.D. really has nothing to do with Creation ideas-it just shows some data that says Darwin may not be the 100% truth that guys like Dawkins make him out to be. Someone who belives that I.D. is correct could attribute it to any god they believe in or even space aliens. The only area I'm 'stupid' in is that I waste insane amounts of time being involved in outside activites that bring me little or no gain. Video games, martial arts for a few years and now building levels for games-and for what? Nothing at all but a few dusty trophies and some files on a website that people download play once or twice and then forget about. I'm really dumb when it comes to hobbies.

Your first Yahoo link expired. I actually like Intelligent Design, not the actual theory, but how it will determine for me whether a person is a complete idiot by believing in it one iota. Good 'judge of character' topic

And what character are they for? The basic sword guard or the elite guard? Perhaps for now we should have a thread for each set of anims that have been completed, eg. elite guard thread, noble male thread, etc.

In case anyone's interested my most powerful computer is a PCI nVidia 5500 256MB video mem (not PCIe mind you) with only 256MB of RAM and 1.2 GHz Athlon and Windows XP. Although my main computer is a dual processors Pentium Pro 200MHz with 512KB on-die L2 cache each running debian. Yes, I'm a cave-man. I will buy something with at least 16GB RAM and dual processor dual core as soon as I get a real job. maybe SLI with both cards installed. I think the secondary processors should be used for things like AI and physics. Regarding Garrett's special keeper training alowing him to do what we can't do in RL: I always thought that the majority of his skill lies in mind manipulation of surrounding people, masking his thoughts and diverting their attention sort-of; and he can't do what some people can do in real life, look at the post here on the forums about the google video of russian climbing - if he could do that he wouldn't need rope arrows. editing, just rememberd what I wanted to say, though not how it connects to the thread. A possibility is to use inexpensive USB "VR" gloves on both hands combined with a goggle display or surround monitors to eliminate the old "press forward to run, backwards to backstep, turn, strafe left, etc" buttons replacing it with touch here on the wall, slide your hand here, hold your fingers steady on the cleft, etc. Just look at the russian climbing video on google video how the guy runs and jumps. To an outsider, of course, a thief-player or more correctly a modded darkmod player would look like a freak waving his hands about and doing various mudras.

Garrett is a recurring character very similar to Bond indeed. I think that most people have a sense of knowing his personality more than was revealed mostly because controlling him was more intuitive and had many more degrees of freedom than other game characters that existed up to that point. That last video inspired me that indeed a new athletic but not so magical (rope arrows) character would be nice who can jump and climb walls like in the video and has many more degrees of freedom than Garrett.

Just wondered what sites you frequent/visit. Heres mine. Polycount -Mainly for modding/modeling purposes Doom 3 World -same as above CG Talk -probably some of the best art i've seen on the web LevelDesign.nl -doom3/quake4 modding CDG Forums -Mainly for HL2/CSS modding XSI Base -XSI user base 3D BUZZ -Awsome CG VTM's BBC -Mainly for News

Late in the blackness of night, my mind, wandering from the task at hand, turned to my love of old, and a pang of rememberance gripped my soul. How I did long for sight of my beloved. As I sat musing thus, an inspiration fell upon me! I would seek news of her to fuel my reminiscent thoughts. When lurking in forums of old turned my nocturnal wanderings to my favourite engine for search, my heart gave a leap at what I did find. Hark! How the all-seeing eye of google doth provide! For there, before my sleep weary eyes, a most wonderous piece of news my gaze did light upon. The Dark Mod, of whose prophesied fame I had read long ago, had grown in beauty and grandeur. And now, before me on this fateful night, I beheld my beloved, as though she were born anew! Dressed all in the fineries of DooM III, she was verily transformed beyond all mine imagining. With tears, wetting my cheeks, as I did gaze upon her, I cried aloud, "Oh! My beloved! How thou hast changed! No longer art thou the low polygon creation of Looking Glass yore. Thou hast ceased from thy whoredoms and slavery to the evil Man Eidos and his treacherous mercerneries of Storming Ions. They who defilest thy bed with Deadly Shadows. Thou art transformed! And lo, behold thy texturing, thy lighting, thy models, and thy normal mapping. Harken to thy ambient music, thy sweet ambience, oh my love! Yes, thou art become a thing of such beauty. Joy in thine re-birth!" I remember thee as thou wert, before that vile toad took thee. I remember the nights long past, we in the intimacy of my solitude. I played thee as only I knew thou desired, revelling in thy foreboding depths, drinking in thy beauty. Oh my love! I remember thy secrets. How I long for thy mysterious touch! Come, my love! Play with me. All is not lost. Nay, all has been regained! Ok, I read briefly about the Dark Mod about a year ago, but as I haven't done much game-playing in the past year, I lost sight it altogether. Tonight, though, I had a sudden inspiration, and after viewing thedarkmod.com, I was blown away. This little bit of pretentious bullshit is the resulting heart-felt awe at what's being done--I couldn't stop it! And yeah, I DO realize that it sounds a bit like masturbation, but hey! It's a single player game, no? Looking good, Dark Mod team! Oh and if you're ever interested, I might be able to provide you with some in-game texts

Wow, if only there were a thread halfway down the page discussing this very subject... http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=1532

Garrett was a great character, as video game characters go. Most suggestions for a DM Thief are pretty much just Garrett with a different name.

Most Thief fans are getting rather tired with Garrett and want a new character if there is ever a Thief 4 anyway (I mean how many third rate save the world plots can this guy get involved in?). What's so great aboiut Garrett anyway? It's not as if he was ever that well fleshed out in the games. I never liked him. He doesn't make any sense. On the one hand he's supposed to be a cynical, world-weary, out-for-number-one thieving bastard, who takes along a variety of lethal weapons with him, so he's obviosuly not adverse to killing people for his own selfish ends, but on the other hand he's quite happy to risk his life for the greater good with very little persuasion or thought. He's also constanly used as a naivepawn by the other characters throughout the 3 games. He's a totally inconsistent vague thief character who fits into whatever mold the current plot happens to demand. Hardly a great loss to literature, or even a gaming community.

Hello all, I'm new to the forums, but this looks soooo good. When I was playing Thief: Deadly Shadows, I thought to myself... Wow if only they had used a tweaked Doom 3 engine...Lo and behold! I think once this dark mod is up and running, we can make Fms way better than the official Thief 3 and previous games. But about copyright issues... Can we not mention Garrett or Mechanists or anything? Because I was thinking about actually creating a new DS once this mod is released! (using the same storyline, videos, but changing the levels to make them much longer and way more in depth.) Anyways, keep up the great work

Merry Christmas to the DM team and everyone who visits these forums !

Well this anim can be applied to any character, so its not a problem if we don't use it for Elite. However, this guy doesn't have a sore back - he's just been standing in the one spot too long and is getting stiff, so he's popping his joints. Does anyone else agree with spar that its still unnatural? If it's just one person, I won't be as concerned (I don't hope to nessecarily exceed the quality of the latest games), but if other people agree then I will see what I can do.

Screams do carry very, very far. Female screams tend to carry further, something the player should take account of when attacking a female character. The big question is; do people scream when killed? According to research (well, some old people who fought in WWII) a person just takes a sharp, shocked intake of breath when stabbed in the back. In a swordfight the person would probaly do any screaming before being cut down, at which time he just wouldn't have any energy left for it (being dead). I think after the players cuts someone down that person should stay alive for a while on the floor, screaming and pleading, before kicking the bucket. It isn't really realistic that a person would go from good enough to stand erect in armour to completely and utterly dead with a single blow.

It's based on a motion capture file of someone walking, but they were a bit too "groovy" (walking like they were listening to music or something) and I had to do a bit of tweaking to make him look more determined. So I've been worried it's still too groovy looking but if you guys don't think so then looks like I've tweaked it sufficiently. Don't know how the shoulder guards are supposed to sit... PMing oDDity now... @Spar - I know its easier to watch to have him walking in place. Anims these days are done with the character actually animated as moving - what I could do is render the movie with the camera following him exactly so the final movie looks like he's walking on the spot.

Right now the elite city watch/professional guard/builder guard can walk, run, draw sword, attack. I've also seen one look up at the ceiling. I think these are mostly placeholder animations, though I could be wrong. I suggest starting with the Stage 1 and 2 animations in the master list: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=1650

OK, i have finally got Parkan II. I got it imported from Russia, so i had to spend 8 hours translating the whole language file into english (using a translator). Anyways, after i did that i tried out the game. For one, its graphics are excellent - on the level of D3 (though not performance wise, d3 eats it there, optimization is much better in d3. Though i did have HDR on in Parkan 2) and better in many ways. The planet surfaces are beautiful, and with the HDR the Jupiter-like planets are astonishing. Unfortunately the planet surfaces are not huge, but if there was an editor you could fix that. Now to answer those questions you had Sneaksie: X2 and X3 are not really much about combat, more centered on trading. Parkan 2 has a fucken massive space, several clusters of galaxies and in each galaxy many clusters of stars, and around stars many planets, each on which you can land. Hmm..well planetfalls could be better in Parkan 2. Yes there is trading and exploration, and quests. The game has good combat too, you can shoot off enemie's guns, shields, engine etc - basically it has different damage zones Your character is only rpg in the sense of better guns/shield/communications array, etc. You can own planets and orbital stations (and moons), so its really cool That is definately there, really cool when you land on a planet and walk into port, or board an enemy ship and fight on board them The ships have real interiors, but you can only see them when you land or board an enemy ship. Pity, yes Plenty of that Oh, there is Parkan 2 seems to have gotten most of it Though there could be improvements. Oh and Parkan 2 is coming out in the US sometime this month.