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Hmm, I guess there is a slight semantic problem with the term 3D. I do think we're generally agreed that it refers to perspective-based mapping of a virtual 3D environment to a 2D screen with the ability to move the camera relatively freely in at least two dimensions. What constitutes the first 3D game then depends on whether we define 3D to include vector-based perspective mapping or only polygon-based solutions. I can't honestly say I care, though I haven't the foggiest notion what the first polygon-based 3D game was. There were also a number of incredibly early bill-board based "3D" arcade games (by bill-board I'm referring to the way Doom 1 did enemies).

Unfortunately the editor is integrated into Doom 3 but if you have samples of what you have done in other engines, feel free to post a screen shot or two.

... but anyway here´s my current portfolio: keeper haunt enforcer profile badass mofo head detail zombie I´m also at the Hammerite Imperium team, but my artworks are mostly useless there (but that doesn´t mean I want to leave, there´s enough other work). That´s why I want to join also the DM team, where my concepts actually can be made into models. I could also eventually skin AIs and maybe objects, I did some retexturing for the HI. No experience with Doom 3 specs yet. These artworks are the latest ones and at this time I prefer BW, which you might not like as concept art, but that can be easily changed. If you´re interested in more various stuff, just have a look at my folder at the Imperium FTP. Oh and there´s one more thing: I have some major exams in may and june and at that time I probably won´t be able to do much. So that you know.

It's weird. I was thinking about this recently, the similarities and differences between mod projects and real game projects by professional developers (that is people who get paid to make games). Not so much the difference in final product or quality, as method of working. We're comprised of all part-time members who (most of whom) have work, school or college as a full-time profession. In the process of making a commercial game, the company might go through three or more months of pre-production, where concept art is drawn, plots are drawn up, ideas formed and features locked and discussed by the designers. The type and goals of the game is set upon. It takes a long time. When you consider that the Dark Mod has potentially as many assets to create as a commercial game that liscences the Doom 3 engine, you realise that we only spent perhaps a couple of weeks before work began. However, we had a pretty sure concept; we weren't creating something new. Nevertheless, there have been lots of feature arguments, and we only locked down features just over a month ago. So whilst work was going on in all departments, core features of the game were in a state of 'almost decided', and still under discussion. In some ways, this is a good thing, since it allowed us to be more dynamic than perhaps some game designs are; the game wasn't designed by any one designer, but rather contributed to by all through the medium of debate (Ok, argument in many cases :lol: ). I'm not sure what I'm trying to say; just that perhaps having no set 'preproduction period' was an advantage, at least considering that we have no 'set' team who are salaried for the whole development process. Time will tell

Does Doom 3 save information from the last loadzone when you go into a new area? If I killed a man in loadzone A, and went to loadzone C, when I returned through loadzone B would that man still lay dead?

I'm not a coder or mapper myself, but I believe that the Doom editor will probabaly allow for the flexibility of choosing mission order. It's not something we are aiming for in our mini campaign but it shouldn't stop FM authors from doing it.

I've come to realise that the way our current directory is set up is a bit....counterproductive. You can blame it on me considering that it was originally my idea, but I was more of a stark newb then and I now have a better idea of how to approach this. The biggest problem with the current directory is that it's a pain in the ass having to jump from folder ot folder just to load up specific textures that you need. None of the other editors out there, be it vanilla Doom 3, Unreal, Farcry, or whatever, are set up this way. I'm thinking of modeling it around a theme specific setup rather than the set/subset dealie we have now. For example, instead of: Mansion/walls/stone/mansion_wall_stone01 Mansion/doors/wood/mansion_door_wood03 or Crypt/doors/metal/crypt_door_metal01 Crypt/Floors/stone/crypt_floor_stone06 ..it'll be designed to load up every specific texture for that theme and organized by name. Like: mansion/mansdoor02 mansion/mansdoor04 or crypt/crypfloor06 crypt/crypwall07 That way a mapper won't have to jump back and forth between folders to have access to all the specific theme textures. If he wants to get to the door textures all he has to do is scroll down the window til he reaches em then jump back up to the walls later. Easy as that. Plus we have to consider that we're wasting tons of space by having an extra _ed file in there when we can just use the diffuse for both. This is how Id has it set up and we could easily cull an extra 60 meg from the mod by doing this. It'll take alot of material rewriting and texture renaming, but it won't be as difficult as last time thanks to Blackthief reorganizing all the materials into seperate files. The only problem I see with it is if we get ALOT of textures, as in more than 200, in a specific folder....but overall this is a much better setup. Your thoughts?

Realism is a tool of gameplay. How much or how little you add, depends on how you want the game to play. There's no rules like "more real = less fun". The whole fun of simulator games is to be as realistic as possible. Too little realism would be bad. Or "less real = less fun". Arcade style games aren't realistic, but they give a good blast of fun, quickly, no need to set a lot of time aside to get into them. Too much realism would be bad. And yeah, supporting Ishtvan's comment, one of my favorite games is Ghost Recon, one of those squad based combat sims. In that, you DO die in one or two hits, if you don't die in the first couple, you're usually so injured you can't really move well. You have the same chances of dieing as the enemy. What this means is that your advantages against the enemy are now depending on your planning, tactics, squad organisation, communication, and better equipment (as a team like Ghost Recon does in real life), not "more life" and "stupid AI" as it is in standard shoot-em-ups like Doom or Quake. I can't beleive you said that. That is what happens in Thief, and is the whole point of choosing the blackjack over the dagger/sword.

I'm excited about this mod's potential, and would like to contribute to the writing, once work on the campaign itself begins. I'm a journalist and a novelist (the former in English, the latter in Welsh), and I also write and design a level for the Hammerite Imperium project. I'd offer my services as a level designer, but my PC runs Doom 3 at a choppy rate that would result in much pulling out of the hair if I were to attempt to create a level for it. And you have much more talented level designers already. I've been playing Thief since the first demo was released all those years ago (with rope arrows at Baffords!) so I have fairly good knowledge of that universe.

It all comes down to 1 thing: I was bored. So, in my boredom, I decided to import a shitload of Thief 3 textures to Doom 3 to see how they look. The verdict? Not too bad, not too grand. They're actually high res textures, about the same size as ours, but they look like they've been run through a compression program about 15 times so they're a bit worse for wear...I can understand why John P brought it upon himself to redo a bunch. I probably won't upload em to the FTP unless popular demand is pretty high, I'm doing this mostly for experimentation and for a texture guideline to follow. Right now I have about 40 ingame with another 40 waiting in the wings (137 meg total)...once I get something impressive done I'll post screenshots.

After playing Thief(Gold), Metal Age, and Deadly Shadows. I'm very pissed at the events which have taken place in DS. The constant loading screens, tiny city size, glitchs, followed by lack of online game play has flustered me. We waited over 4 years for Thief DS, and they burned us without realising a level editor. Without fan made missions, i've been forced to shelf this game after beating it 3 times on all levels. On the plus side, I did enjoy climbing walls, stabbing people in the back, and the graphis. However, I do feel cheated by the company. I expected the same quality of workmen ship, and hourless game, that I recived from Thief Gold and The Metal Age which never came. In turn, I hope The Dark Mod entertains all Thief fans for years to come. Best of luck, I'll get Doom 3 and The Dark mod once it's finished.

Yeah, if you're using GTK that wont work. How come Doom's own editor aint running under Linux?

YEah, they're all great except the fire arrow ones, which could be kept as a specific sound effect for shooting fire arrows into windows, since doom has breakable glass anyway.

Cool. I guess I should get Doom 3 & the SDK installed on my PC now. The VC++ Toolkit compiler is identical to the VC++ .net 2003 compiler, it just comes without an IDE. So I had to write my own (screenshot). > If you have samples of earlier code I would also like to see a bit. I've attached the latest version of the Gravel v3 Physics Engine source code. EDIT - removed source. Please contact me if you want to have a look.

Your backgrounds sounds good. So I would suggest to make you a contributor and give you an assigment so we can see how you work. What you could implement would be the leaning stuff. If you need help with keybindings, that's easy enough and I already did it several times. So you would need to ind out where to best put this and implement it. Forward, left/right leaning. IMO that is a small independent task whch should get you started with the Doom 3 SDK code. What you need is a Visual Net compiler. I fyou don't have one there is a free Beta 2005 available which I use for development. If you have samples of earlier code I would also like to see a bit.

There seems to be a missunderstanding. We are providing the tools to create Darkmod style missions, but that doesn't mean that we write all the editing tools form scratch. Most of the editing will be done with the original tools and we only write additional applikations where it is neccessary and can not be done in a usefull way with the existing apps. Since all the Doom 3 files are plai ASCII files it is rather easy to write 3rd party apps for editing. But since we don't have access to the editor sourcecode we can't extend it which also means that we try to limit 3rd party apps, because it will make the workflow more complicated. I don't know how much Id changed from GTK Radiant and if you really can edit plain D3 files with it out of the box. If the source is available for this, then there should be no problem to rewrite it, that it can handle D3 files naturally and extend it for the darkmod.

Using doom GUI's for maps/books is being explored.

I am sooo pleased to hear about this mod... Doom is a great engine, way to go guys... n I hope it gets finished. PLEASE!! PLEASE!!! Keep the opposition human. I hated monsters etc in thief. A real thief in these times would never encounter such things, even though ppl believed in it, but please... no monsters... I much prefer a human opponent.. On the subject of Daggers.. how about a throwing knife? I think it'd be cool to be able to throw a knife at an unsuspecting guard, and either wound or kill him, depending how accurate (skilled) you are at it. Plus, its a skill a thief would have. As for a model on it, SOF2 had the best knife throwing routine I've ever seen. Not this game true, but be great if you could model it on that routine... Venus

We wont need to do death animations unless its for a cutscene, or a scripted death sequence (like you want something to die a certain way). Doom takes the force of the killing blow and applies it to the ragdoll. So we'll just need to setup the ragdoll really good

Screw Eidos! Thank you to all of the wounderfull TDM moders out there, with the Doom 3 tools at your hand you can create a better Thief DS version! I look forward to your work. PS: You would all rock if you make a MP version, but one thing at a time. We're all waiting.

I was going to mention that myself. Tis true, tis true. I think we're on pretty even ground, if not better off since the Doom engine already has a Thiefy feel.

I kind of agree with oDDity actually. From what I see in Dark Mod, I don't really care about a TDS editor given that the Dark Mod tools on top of the Doom 3 engine would be significantly better in terms of gameplay potential and engine performance. I can't know that for a fact, but I am willing to believe. Of course, we are going to have to wait a long time for Dark Mod to finish and a TDS editor could probably be released sooner, but I'm a patient person.

Keep in mind that we still haven't done a fullsized mission yet, so we're not totally sure what the ram requirements might be just yet. Since we're going with more detail and higher res textures, I expect it'll eat up a bit more ram than vanilla Doom 3 did. And as it is, D3 is a pretty ram hungry program.

When you look at the left top corner you will get a framerate of 23.1532 while when looking at the bottom right corner you will get a framerate of 45.7392, so the recommended playstyle is to strafe all the time while looking at the bottom right corner of the screen to opimize framerate. Seriously. What kind of question is that? How should we know what framerate you will get. The system specs are obviously the ones for Doom 3 and since we are right at the beginning, how should we be able to determine a reasonable framerate for any given system at this point in time. We have some developers with much worse machine than yours and so far there are no complaints, but of course there is not much in there yet what could cause any significant hit on the framerate. A reasonable estimation can be done at the earliest when the lightgem is working in a fully feature map including sound propagation and AI interaction, because these are the things that will affect the framerate the most.

I recommend looking at the Doom 3 alpha and seeing what you can potentially dig up there. Quite a few of the effects present in the alpha ended up being cut for final release, but as far as I know the engine still supports them. You might end up finding some soundbased goodies buried in it.