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I just wanted to say I never knew about this mod, but after playing the thievery for ut, and waiting for NB, its cool to see this one too, never been a doom fan, but I might buy the game just for this mod! Keep up the good work, can't wait to play it!

I would understand if no one could be bothered doing the extra work for something that doesn't add much directly to gameplay, but being able to do stupid silly things with objects lying around really does add to the immersion within the game. Actually, it seems to be becoming more of a problem in games - the more graphically realistic games get, the more people notice things that are inconsisted with their reality. Peoples brains can cope with wierd rules when the game is simple and crude, but when it looks visually real, but behaves unlike reality, many people find it very disconcerting. I find T1 much more immersive than T3, I think because the level of visual realism is better matched to gameplay realism. So doom 3 renders more visually realistic environments, you need to ramp up gameplay realism to match, or it stuffs in-game immersion... Does that make sense to you?

I want to set up a loot system that gives diminishing returns on loot - the more loot you stuff into your bag, the more likely you are to be noticed, and the slower and noisier you will be. That way the player has to make a choice between getting enough loot to make the mission worthwhile financially, and getting greedy and getting chaught. If you think about crime statistics, most burglaries involve small items that are easisly fenced - jewelery, cash, small electrical goods, cds, dvds and so on, and real thieves don't carry lots of gear around (certainly not a quiver full of sundry magical arrows, a bow, numerous flash bombs, potions etc), that way they can hide in plain sight just as easily as in the shadows. Modern thieves carry things like screwdrivers, lockpicks, maybe a crowbar, pliars and wire cutters (usually a multitool or pocket knife with all of thes attatchments is enough) . they often dress as tradesmen so their toolkit doesn't seem odd. I think random unpredictable things like floorboards creaking unexpectedly add immensly to gameplay, to me having a visual clue is almost cheating - I want the thief to have to adapt to events outside their control. Like I said, I like a challenge, and this might not be for everyone... My point is, I want to play missions where the deciding factor is the skill and cunning of the player in as realistic a world as current computers can create, not the arsenal he/she carries - if you want that play Doom

In regards to a loot system, you could also simply limit loot to stuff that is a bit more sensible - don't have lots of large loot items - maybe have an inventory system where you have a set amount of space for loot, and you have to make a decision on what types of loot you want to pick up. As in TDS, you could then fence loot and by equipment, upgrades etc (but the fences and stores in TDS could have been implemented better, IMO). If doom 3 allows for much larger level sizes than TDS, then you should, at least on some suitable maps, have a large city level with lots of fences, shops, and of course, masions to rob. This probably wont appeal to loot completists - those who absolutely have to get 100% of the loot, but if done right, it could spice up gameplay a little. If you like you missions faily linear and goal oreiented, I can see why you might not like this idea, and it is heading into RPG territory I know. Some people see Thief as a glorified game of Pacman, I am not one of them, and prefer a bit more depth and intricacy

Thanks for posting a reply to my long post Macsen and Renzatic. Also thanks Macsen for the good laugh about how my brick texture turned out to look like chocolate bricks which I do mean. Also thanks Renzatic for the kind remarks about eventually being good at making textures. I've only recently just gotten photoshop, and doom 3 is the first game I've ever even tried to make a texture for. I don't believe I'll ever be as good a texture artist as most people can be because one thing I lack is creativity. This is mostly caused by having schizophrenia. In schizophrenics there is a lack of certain kinds of creativity in my brain. I'll try to explain it as easily as possible because thats something I do not lack. Basically if you can imagine that the nerves in your brain are like a busy street with all the cars (information) traveling at high speeds. Also in your brain there are bridges and in schizophrenics these bridges are often pointing upwards not allowing any cars to pass. So you can see that the information is there its just not being allowed to pass because the bridges are pointing upwards. So the creative bridges in schizophrenics are usually pointing upwards and not allowing the information to go to that part of the brain or out of it. But its not like that throughout the entire creative parts of the brain because I can creatively come up with ways of hurting/killing people pretty easily. This is NOT something I'm proud of but I have to live with. Last I know most of you are old enough to understand the contents of some or most of my posts related to my mental illness. Just for the record I have never acted on any of the thoughts in my head and that I'm actually a really nice and polite guy. If for any reason any of my posts become disturbing to anybody please let me know and I'll refrain from talking about the parts that are disturbing. Thanks again for all the people who have looked at my post and to Macsen, Renzatic, and anybody else who decides to post a reply. EDIT: It took me about 25 minutes to write this last post so I didn't get to see your post sparhawk. Thanks for replying and I'll keep practicing with the texturing.

Hmm...I'd say you could eventually be really good, but you'll need some more practice. You're basically making the same mistakes I did when I first started texturing for Doom 3. First off you'll wanna avoid running straight textures through the NV normalmapper, the end results are never too good. What I'd do is get some practice in with heightmaps or get good at using Blender or any other 3D suite...the normals you get from there will always be superior. What I recommend you do is look at Id's stuff for comparison. See how they did things and think about how you can either copy it or improve it for your own style. Ultimately you'll wanna ask yourself if the end results look natural, realistic, and most importantly, good. If it doesn't then try again, the more you do the better you'll get.

Thank you thank you! I've been learning the Doom 3 editor in anticpation of TDM and was sick at looking at all the metal textures. Your pack will be good to give me an idea how my architecture will look in the "real Thief world" as I build it, Course when TDM is released I'll go through and redo all the textures. Some City textures especially, please? Especially the Fachwerkhäuser textures, windows, and doors. Stone and such is pretty easy to scrounge up elsewhere.

to pak and co. my compliments. And all due gratitude to everyone here. I'm very busy and really only have time to play one game at a time (and it takes me a loooong time to get through a game)- ever since Thief Gold came out all I've really played is Thief games and fan missions- they're all I've liked enough to make time for. Now that I'm getting towards the end of DS, people are asking me what I'm going to play next, and my flat answer is The Dark Mod. Of course I have to explain to them what it is, and they think I'm kinda wierd because I get all geeked out telling them about it. I'm buying Doom 3 here pretty soon for the sole purpose of playing The Dark Mod. I can't wait for it, and I love it when stuff like this album comes out from you guys. Keep up the good work.

I'm buying a new PC so that I can play Dark Mod FMs forever more. I'll never need to upgrade again!* :lol: I'm a retard when it comes to PC bits and bobs. Any advice on what runs the Doom 3 engine at its best? *Until Dark Mod II on the Quake VIII engine...

Hey, thanks sxotty! I guess I need to spend some more time checking out doom3world. That's where I got those great video tutorials. I should have known they'd have texture resources. They have a LOT of texture resources. Whee! On with learning the editor! I wish you guys had a using-the-editor forum. Doom3World's is very nice and the people are polite and helpful but I'd like to hang with my own kind (Thiefy people). Plus some questions may, even unwittingly, be Dark Mod specific. For example I'm curious about scale. I've heard some speculation that the scale of things may change. I.e., some people think the player POV is too low. One of the first things I need to do with learning the editor is get a feel for the sizes of things: how big is a typical room? How wide is a street? I know how to do this but I'm worried about the scale eventually changing out from under me when TDM is released and my maps ending up too cramped. I long ago mapped out my ideal City on paper, but when I get started actually building it I need to lay details down on graph paper with a appropriate-sized grid. That way I can closely estimate the size of the hulls for each section (Each hull will be lined with a wide wall of tall buildings to block lines of sight, this is also where most of the Thieve's Highway will be located on relatively flat rooftop areas with interesting "hallways" connecting ajacent City sections--it's all planned out). That sort of thing. Or questions like, can the Doom 3 editor do shape primitives like in Dromed or do you basically always have to carve out what you want from a multi-sided cylinder? How can you easily create a pyramid or a dodecahedron? Just like in Dromed? Does the Doom3 editor have anything like multibrushes to store brushes of useful shapes for building things like rooftops, etc.? I hope you can create a editor-learning thread for newbies to feel comfortable (and the gurus who love them).

I don't understand that 'light coming through the black' thing. I've tried running Doom 3 and squinting like mad, but it still looks very much black to me. If you look at the screen at a big angle it does 'shine' white, but otherwise it's fine.

THe little 128x256 texture need for them would hardly be an issue. THere not much of a saving by not having a normal map, since it puts a default flat blue one in it's place instead. There is only a saving by not using spec or height maps. Poly count is not a minor issue either. Why do you think the doom models are all as low poly as possible. Most of the characters are very low res at about 2-2.5k polys. THe advantage of alpha maps is you can get perfectly rounded sies, rather than the agularity assosiated with low poly models.

no i don't - for the reasons mentioned above. i don't even have my copy of Hexen 2 anymore, but imagine the results to be most horrible to look at. if you are somewhat savvy with textures (ie their creation) as you have said you could make yourself a basic set to work with. a few stone and brick walls, a few wooden floors, grass, earth and a bit of metal and you're ready to go. i imagine the results would still look better than those Hexen 2 textures. just take a look at the various tutorials - making textures for Doom 3 is not all that hard (especially if they don't have to be of professional quality). kind regards gleeful

Great! I like the skin colour too; human skin in Doom 3 was too white and chalky. Nice to see some rosy cheeks... I also like the bags under his eyes, they give the impression of long shifts in the factory.

Ta-Da! Doom 3 runs like a penguin sliding over butter. Yes I know my study is a total mess.

hey there Ratty! you're not really planning on using textures from Hexen 2 or Daikatana now, are you? apart from the terrible quality/resolution you'll find them pretty much unusable as Doom 3 uses diffuse-, specular-, normal- and height-maps in all possible combinations. if you haven't already i'd take a look at the excellent tutorials right here: http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=2659 kind regards gleeful

I know what you mean. But there will be new genres, I can almost guarantee. I liken it to the late 19th century I think it was when they thought they had nearly invented everything there was to be invented. I'm glad they were wrong. I think the only thing that will keep me interested in the current genres, for the time being, is the increased abilities of future PCs. There's still a TON of improvement that can be had with regards to AI, graphics, sound, etc. I get amazed by technology sometimes. The thing that I hate about most FPS games is that there are so few enemies/NCPs. I've played nearly all the way thru Doom 3 and I think I can count the number of unique NCPs on one hand... maybe 1.5 hands. I get bored fighting the same enemies time and time again through most games. NCP/character skins/textures are re-used so much in a given game that you get bored with looking at them. How is it that in real life nobody looks the same, yet in a video game everyone looks the same? Technology will allow much more variety some day. I also hate townspeople in video games. They just stand there, barely have a purpose, are dumb as a rock, or have some stupid pre-scripted thing going on. Nothing innovative at all. I've been waiting a long time to have much more advanced interactions with townsfolk and see them actually have a highly advanced purpose and way of carrying out their lives. I think 3-D games will play a huge role in gaming some day. No, this wouldn't be a new genre, but it would be something to keep me interested in the given genres. (I know you can do 3-D games now, but again... there's a huge amount of improvement that could be had over time (technology).) Even though the genres are saturated, there will always be a shining star to put a new twist on things, or create a world we haven't been to and want to visit. I know this doesn't result in 'new genres,' but there's always new stories to be told. You read a lot. There are a fairly limited set of book genres, but are you bored with books? Maybe there's hope you won't always be bored by the same-o, same-o genres. Regardless, I still feel there will be new genres introduce over time. With advances in technology, I feel new genres will be introduced.

So you've abandoned any fear of being fingered by Eidos now and just want to make a direct port from the dark engne to the Doom engine, minus the names? You're seriosuly confused. The campaign = our distinct and personal vison of what a thiefy stealth game should be. The toolset = generic thiefy stealth game which is malliable enough to be easily pushed in any direction, including our own campaign, any other dev team's campaign (the Gloaming for example) or a clone of Thief, if that's what the community wants to do with it, but we couldn't be held responsible.

Yeah, it's pain in the ass the way the render works. Making a surface double sided means it won't cast any shaows, so I'll have to waste polys actually modeling the other side. Also, since self shadowing looks like shit on all models in doom,I have to make a separate shader for, in this case, the underside polys of the shoulder pads, the inside polys of the skirt, ans the inside polys of the bottom layer of the armour trim. I don't know if having separate shders ppointing tp the same textures casues any performace hit, but probably not.

sorry didn't mean to offend anyone out there I don't think that a no cd being used by licence users is piracy exactly. but I am no lawyer sorry if this pissed anyone off I just have a 3 year old who likes to play our computer and changes out the disks on her own she has scratched up many of my disk lucky not doom3 yet again sorry didn't realize this would be a problem (should have thought "public posting and all" ) well still don't know if having a no cd hack is illegal if used only to make Doom 3 more "My life Friendly" its a hassle to change out disks and take chances in getting them all scratched up just to find out I am not really in the mood. sometimes I might just play for a few minutes maybe some courageous person should protest these companies who want us to insert disks for no good reason. besides; it is not a deterrent to those twisted evil software pirates. you know that they don't live by the rules and they still have the option of burning a CD_ROM... my point after all the deranged ranting is this: Pirates just make CD Copies. cd insertion while game is playing is not a deterrent from piracy, it is a deterrent from playing top end games especially if you have kids who may scratch them or hide them. ( I don't usually play for hours or long periods of time I usually get in play a few minutes and get out to my real life. I just wanted everyone to know I am no pirate and am just a guy who is finding it inconvenient to click that icon and then find out the disk isn't in the drive and then find out the disk isn't in its box and then find out that the disk is scratched up ON TOP OF MY COMPUTER fingerprint and peanut butter AHRG!!!

Ah crap. I suppose we'll see Coca Cola signs hoisted up the side of Ngrughakk's Dark Tower of Doom pretty soon. We're already paying through the nose to play the game, without a bunch of immersion breaking promotions sordidly gyrating in front of us. And how dare they use the humble panda, almost wiped out by man for their own capitalist gain, to whore their evil projects. The mere demand for this system shows plainly that most MMORPG players have no girlfriends. When I'm hungry I just ring a small bell next to my PC and my female slave brings me snacks and similar foodstuffs. I joined a WoW guild yesterday, and the guild leader said the most amusing thing: "We don't accept time wasters here!" LOL. There goes your entire guild, mate.

All bow to Mordicai, Warlock of the Undead, Lord of the Black Pointy Mountains of Doom, of such a mighty level that it cannot be expressed by mere mortal numbers! Bwahahahaha!

Another option for if it's SpyWare-related is to install and run system scans with two free products: AdAware and SpyBot. I've heard SpyBot will find and remove things that AdAware won't, and AdAware will find and remove things SpyBot won't. So running one after the other should remove most of any spyware related things that may be on your computer. To get AdAware, go here and click the Download Now link: http://www.download.com/3000-2144-10045910...page&tag=button To get SpyBot, go here and click the Download Now link: http://www.download.com/Spybot-Search-Dest...subj=dl&tag=but EDIT: After installing, be sure to 'check for updates' before running. Also, in running these programs, be sure you quarantine/delete the right stuff. I remember I allowed one of the programs to quarantine a file that was actually needed for Windows Media Player to work. Oops! (They've maybe fixed that problem with updated files.) I just had to re-install the player, or use a System Restore to go to a previous checkpoint. Wasn't hard to revert/fix. These programs have saved a few of my friends' and family members' systems from certain SpyWare doom.

He probably has to wait... for The Phone Call of Doom!

I don't bother buying many games these days but I bought Doom 3 for two reasons. 1. Dark Mod 2. Respect for Id. I couldn't be more serious about number two. They are far more personal with their fan base and based on our contact with them during our work on the mod, they listen.