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I like detailed games, and realism is good IMO unless it tries to replace something that we do naturally in RL thru other senses than sound and sight with some clunky awkward interface ingame. For example, it would be silly to have a key for "step with right leg" and "step with left leg" and then 10 keys for different leg movement speeds. Personally I'm pro-saving, because things like game crashes and AI's getting stuck do occasionally happen, no matter how carefully we code the AI and how carefully the map is designed. When I'm playing T2 and an AI gets stuck at a corner or along a wall somewhere, resulting in the map becoming un-ghostable, I like to be able to restore the game to some point without losing 30 minutes of progress (maybe 5 minutes of lost progress is okay) I know we've been over this debate in the private forums several times, but I think making limited saves an option, or even just reporting the number of saves/reloads at the end stats screen is enough for people to enforce save-discipline on themselves if they want. Enforcing limited saves on everyone will not result in revolutionizing how people play games, it will just result in people who don't like limited saves not playing the game.

OK, that binary seems to work, thanks. When I tried to convert it before, it got through the Doom 3 exporter, but when I tried to use the md5anim on the original model the model would become badly deformed and only random jittering motions would be applied to it. I think it was the origin bone that was screwing things up, either that or I was renaming the bones wrong. What did you have to do to get it working, ascottk? Just remove the prefix and remake the origin as a polycube like the guy on Recall to Hell forum said? I noticed that the animation itself seems to have a lot of problems though, a lot of joints bend incorrectly and jump around, so I'll just make the animation from scratch using the bones instead of trying to modify the existing animations. I did notice that the model itself doesn't work when it is converted into motionbuilder (it had the same deformation issues in the animation that I had when I tried to convert it), but the bones seem to work correctly so I can just ignore the mesh and animate the bones directly, hopefully it won't slow it down too much. I'll see what I can come up with and post it here in the next few days. As long as we have an md5anim file that's compatible, we can apply it to the original model without changing anything else about it, right?

For the most part, we're sticking with standard doom 3 sizes, but don't worry too much about it. Just go ahead and make things a fair size. 1024 x 1024 TGA is genearlly our max size for source textures, then our texture department will convert them to .dds and we save the original in our hi-res repository for release in a separate "high quality" patch for the mod.

I usually have something playing on Windows Media player while I'm modeling, Radiant'ing, reading the forums or chatting on IRC. Ranges from David Bowie to Radiohead to music from the game Outcast, etc. etc.

Indeed, the goal is to be a full replacement for D3Ed (crossing fingers). When the Doom 3 source code is released, it should even be possible to port the ability to compile maps within Dark Radiant.

Hopping between the two editors is not part of the long-term strategy however. It is obviously necessary now, and will be for a while, but theoretically DarkRadiant should become "a better Doom 3 editor" which doesn't require moving back into D3Ed for anything.

I had a rather strange idea. I suppose it is possible to make a file converter to take non-portalized Dromed source files, and convert them to Doom 3's/Dromed map format. I realize that Dromed works with negative spaces/airbruhes for portaling, but utilities already exist to take a BSP'ed Quake format map and reconstruct the source from it. The Dromed maps wouldn't be all chopped and triangled, and so it would be easier, and I do use the word easier cautiously. There are hundreds of fan made thief maps, there are some really good series. It would be great to convert play them, and give mappers a head start on the geometry. BTW, someone is working on an open source Dark Engine.

I've always found it a lot easier to export your normal map surface as an ASE and render the map in Doom 3 using the renderbumpflat command.

Here is my experience with Dark Messiah: I open the box, look at manual - first inside page - my eyes catch the word "Steam". I'm about to just pack it back up, but I read further and it says installing Steam is just required for auto-updates and multiplayer. So I think "screw the updates, screw the multiplayer, fine". I put in the disc and start to install, immediately setting my firewall alert that just popped up to "Block", and then unchecking the multiplayer install option to proceed. First things first, I go to change the retarded default install directory (all games/software do it, some long path with three company names deep within Program Files) to just H:\Games\DarkMessiah. But as soon as I try to click "Next" it changes it to "H:\Games\DarkMessiah\Dark Messiah of Might and Magic". I'm like "What the freak?". So I just highlight it and take off the long part on the end, but it puts it back again, so now I'm pissed off, but I figure "Fine, be that way, I'll set it to 'H:\Games\Dark Messiah of Might and Magic' just to make you happy". But then it changes it to "H:\Games\Dark Messiah of Might and Magic\Dark Messiah of Might and Magic". Now I'm about to run over to Ubisoft and rip someone's nuts off! But I lower myself into the depths of humility and finally submit my will to the higher wisdom of the game, setting the directory to "H:\Games", then click next so that it will condescendingly change it to "H:\Games\Dark Messiah of Might and Magic", and I'm on my way. The install then proceeds quite slowly, finially finishing about 5 or 10 minutes later. It never asked me if I wanted to install Steam, so maybe that only comes up when you install the Multiplayer. Then I click to play the single player game, and after the intro movies I get another firewall alert that I set to "Block", then the main menu starts. I set all my favourite keybindings and start the game. The first level is the same as the demo, the training tombs. After just a minute of running and stepping around, I see that the movement is still just as slidey and muddy as the demo, very disappointing. I still can't tell what the aiming reticle is doing, but I think that it lights up in segments the more HIDDEN you are, the opposite of the way it should be. Being on the Half-Life 2 engine, of course the lighting sucks. Body awareness is cool to me, but looking down and seeing myself all lit up because half of me is in the light (while the mostly half of me in the shadow is practically glowing by the contrast), then inching over slightly to the shadow and seeing all of me fade to black (while the mostly half of me still in the lighted area is now a black silhouette) is quite jarring. I guess TDS and Doom 3 spoiled me! After playing a couple levels, I'm getting a better feel for what this game is all about. It's basicaly an action game on rails (mostly), no RPG at all really. I'm more used to the muddy jerky movement, and sometimes it works really well to make the action feel more wild and visceral. I'm not sure if I like or don't like the game yet, but it sort of strikes me as a medieval Far Cry, which is a good thing so long as you know what you're getting into. I'll play it some more over the next few days to see if my impressions change...

Yeah, it's the weirdest thing. I can't be 100% certain when it popped up though, as I had reformatted and reinstalled doom 3 on linux. Everything was alright on Sunday I think. Not sure what could have happened. We'll have to track it down though, it's impossible to work like that. lol

Well, I've FINALLY gotten doom 3 setup correctly under Linux, and my latest build of DR is working PERFECTLY now. Guys, I can't express how great this is turning out. Keep up the excellent work. DarkRadiant is really going to help make Dark Mod one of the top mod releases. Can't wait for the rest of the team to try out the new stuff. Only one really weird thing in the latest build. All the models have weird lines sticking out all over them. They look like pinhead from the Hellraiser movies. I think something must have gotten fiddled with in the latest build to display some weird setting. Here is a screen shot of what I mean.

XT are kinda like the GT versions nowadays. You now see that name on ATI cards like for example X1900 XT. But if you see an nvidia with that name it's probably an older card then the GT series. Nvidia uses GS,GT,GTX for their models. if your going with nvidia and want a card for a decent price you can also search for the 7600 GT AGP. It's much faster then a 6600 GT, has newer features and runs doom engine based games smooth in high resolutions http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2812&p=9 (although i think these are pci-express versions, it's just to compare)

I finally got Redguard to work on WinXP. I'm very happy cos i love the game . Here are 2 screens from the game of the same place but with a slight change - in one the character is normal Cyrus. But in the other i've changed his model to be a skeleton (duh!). But anyway, if anyone wants to know how to make it run on XP (or other windows for that matter) tell me, cos fishing for it in the TES forums takes quite a while. Oh wait, I got a link However, the only problem is that it's all over the place in that thread so read it if you're interested. But anyway, here's the pics:

Today I installed my ubunto on the hard drive, before I went to work. Actually I wanted to do this yesterday already, but I spent the whol evening to figure out how to set my desktop resolution. The live CD properly determined my monitor but didn't set the refresh rates, so I had to do this manually. The hard part was to find out that this simple issue was the problem. Also I have a seperate boot partition, but Ubuntu doesn't realize this and so the installation didn't boot. I did a backup of my previous installation of gentoo, so I can look at the config files to see what must be changed, so I hope that this will work when I get home. the good news is that ubuntu installed grub in such a way that at least my Windows partitions are still properly booting, so I can use this at least. And then comes the issue of configuring everything... I have an ATI Radeon 9800XT. Which driver uses KUbuntu by default? If I want to run Doom 3 on it, do I have to change the driver or is it already supported? Guess I will see it soon. And also I have to configure my soundcard. I wonder what a mess this will be until it properly works...

I guess I'm a little confused as to how all this works. Are we sharing the same skeleton between all Dark Mod characters, including the zombies? If so, then wouldn't I need to be editing the characters that already have the TDM skeleton applied to them rather than these Doom 3 format models which use a different skeletal structure? And if we use the same skeleton on all the characters and the md5anim files are separate from the mesh itself, shouldn't I simply be able to animate the characters with any generic model that we're using the skeleton on and apply that to the zombie later on? So for example I could take the Thief model and animate it, and then once the MD5anim is saved simply move it to the Zombie directory and the animation would work on the zombie? I just need to know what exactly I would need to animate for the animation to be applied to the Dark Mod zombie that we're using. If we have a .mb file of the basic zombie stance (unless we need to make that), then it should be simple to go from there. Will the zombie need any other of the standard animations (idle, alert, etc.) or do we just need a walk and run for them? If we're customizing them and changing the skeletons on them, the only animations that would work for them are the ones we've done for the other Dark Mod characters, so I'm not sure if we'd need custom ones for these or not.

If it helps, idChain is defined in /src/game/AFEntity (It stands for articulated figure entity) Also an interesting function you might want to look at to make the rope is: void idChain::BuildChain( const idStr &name, const idVec3 &origin, float linkLength, float linkWidth, float density, int numLinks, bool bindToWorld ) Apparently it needs the density to do a realistic hanging chain (ie, chain with heavier links is going to hang differently). So if you want nice behavior, you should put in the density of rope. I don't know that number off the top of my head I think I posted the density of modern nylon ropes somewhere in our private forums, but you probably want the density of medieval ropes which I guess were hemp or something. Also, I think origin is where it hangs down from.

NO the texture doesn't matter for this part. here's the dll I use. You may as well try it, in case yours is corrupt or something. Clutching at straws now) I think you may need to try for answewrs at the doom3world forums, since I can't think of anything else that might be the culprit. MayaImportx86_Maya60.zip

Don't know anything about this, but did you check this thread in Docs? http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=1485

What kind of indy? I registered an Indy engine for a similar purpose but haven't done much at the moment because I also want to finish this mod. Do you have ideas for a game already? That's cool. Since Doom 3 uses normalmaps you can model as highpoly as you want to create the normalmap from but you probably know this anyway.

You see, whatever link you click on the website, the url in the browser address bar stays http://www.thedarkmod.com. When you e.g. click on the Screenshot link, the url should change to http://www.mindplaces.com/darkmod/screenshots.php - but it stays www.thedarkmod.com. This means that the domain is masked. It's putting a frame around the website and loading content from mindplaces.com/darkmod. Read more here. It's no need to remove it, it's just a suggestion. However, when you click on the Forum link on the website, you are sent to the forums, but the url is still http://www.thedarkmod.com. This might confuse users who want to copy thread url's to paste elsewhere etc.

You'll notice some weird things happening with the forum colours for the next few days. The new website should be up in a matter of days, and I'm going to try to update the look of the forums to match. Unfortunately I can't preview changes before I make them, so if you notice some really, really bad colours, they're only temporary.

I kinda finally realised, now that I have gotten back into fan missions for thief 1/2 and playing the first mission of CoSaS. I would be real kool to play the Dark Mod since the main character doesn't have a name or anything, game creators would have more flexibilty on thier missions as far as storyline (if there is one) would go, Their not tied down to using garrett thus use some other characters people come up with an creativitiy would go through the roof... or at least sneaking on the roof.......er whatever... I'd Imagine this has already been disscussed but hey, I absolutly CANNOT wait (well I can) for the Dark Mod to be released, cause it would be kick ass for a thief-oriented game for Linux! an it looks so damn good. So yeah.... can't wait to see Judging by te forums new format this game looks more or less like a dream come true! SO thanks Dark Mod team! (oh an yeah I kinda don't like the dagger in thief anymore..kinda promoted killing.. I got used to ghosting, an Oddity was right about that.) Roguetech

No, forgot to say that this is on my Windows partition, Doom 3 is working just fine. I checked the radiant.log file but there doesn't appear anything suspicious. Can't you reproduce it on your Windows installation?

Used to hang around ISA forums a while ago (ISA = Ion Storm Austin, right?). However that was before i played Thief 3

Is this with or without the Doom 3 installation? It's worrying that it would crash though, even if there are no textures available.