Search the Community

One of the biggest questions we ask ourselves after, "Is it fun" is, "Can it be exploited?" Guards climbing ladders has huge problems with player exploitation. Guards become quite defenseless while climbing, leaving them open to all kinds of attacks. It is also pretty easy to "trap" a guard on a ladder by blocking them. There are all kinds of guard behaviours that wouldn't be appropriate on a ladder (like attacks) which means all kinds of new coding would required to tell the AI how to make decisions in that situation. It's not quite as easy as it sounds.

The major problem with the AI is that it has to be coded. There is no such thing for free. If you make the AI smarter you have to use cycles for it. Sure it can be implemented that they cvan stab through certain surfaces. They can learn to climb ladders, and many other tricks. But this all needs to be balanced in such a way that the framerate is keeping up as well. We have several big drains on the framerate. One is the rendering itself which relies on the image complexity in a given scene, then we have the sound propagation, the lightgem and the AI. Of course there are additional things like particle effects and such, but these are the big ones. Adding AI complexity can cause problems in other areas so the question is: Is it neccessary from a game point of view and pays off for what you will loose.

Sounds realistic. There is no denying that it would add additional freedom for the player. The bigger problem for us is to circumvent this. The player has already big advantages over the AI and adding this movement mode would add another one. We don't want to make it easier for the player and unbalance the game. Also it would add other problems as well. You can believe me that we discussed the implications in detail and came to the conclusion that it would not add THAT much given the unbalancing it would cause. Especially when you consider the common scenarious for Thief style maps. We will release the sourceode anyway, and I expect that mods will be created containing such changes. Adding a prone mode is rather easy to code. D3 already handles crouching, so the only thing needed is to look how it does this and change the collision box accordingly, as D3 already does for crouching, and change the camera height in this mode. That's my argument as well.

That's not entirely true. Of course we try to recreate the Thief feeling. But that doesn't mean that our sole decision point is "Is it Thief?". Fact is that Thief is well proven to be an interesting and fun game. Adding features to it doesn't make it neccessarily better, so the major decision requirement is "Is it fun?". I know that many argue with "realism" but adding realism doesn't necessarily translate to a fun gameplay a player would enjoy. One of the curernt discussions. A Thief can not really know the value the instant he takes an item. To make it realistic he would have to investigate the current prices. Would you really like to do this? I don't because it would become tedious and doesn't really add to teh game. Other points are stamina, limited carrying capacity or going prone. Sure these features sound cool to have, but you should always see it from a game point of view. I know that prone looks cool in movies. But can you translate that feeling into good gameplay? We don't think so. If you really think it through you might realize that going prone would add many problems. Just try to play a scene in your mind where you are sneaking through a normal Thief style mansion and then try to imagine how it feels to use prone for this. Definitely.

If possible, I think we want to do some sort of reverse-mantle. Mantling hasn't been discussed yet as we haven't started coding it, so no promises. We've had a lot of discussions on prone-crawling, and came to the conclusion that the benefits do not outweigh the problems associated with it. It would only be useful in very rare situations, so we would rather spend the programming time on more useful stuff, like lockpicking or AI responses. When the basics are done, maybe we can re-evaluate prone, but who knows.

Yep, also considering this. They seem to have removed (at least tried to) all the usual problems with MMOs. Definitely interesting.

Thanks BT, I'll look into those problems you mentioned. I might need to redo the normal for the boots, I didn't think D3 had that much trouble with broken UV's. I shall look into it!

yes I'll upload it to the ftp. however there are two problems left: 1. the hands of the guy. the normalmap was extremely rough and it's hard to make a normalmap for a complex mesh like a hand with the nvidia plugin 2. the shoes - the normalmap seems to be rendered different in doom3 as you can see they look ok in deepexploration: but in D3 the textures don't fit together: btw seems like I forgot to make a screenshot of the latest textures ingame - here's it: PS while looking at the screenshot I noticed that I must have forgotten to enable antialiasing

Considering the effort to implement in and to create the potion models this is really a VERY minor effort on all accunts, but gives us the benefit of having the full set of the original Thief. Since we want to appeal to the Thief audience compared to the effort it takes, I don't see a reason why NOT to include them. If we don't use speedpotions in our campaing, then the same argument would apply to them as well. So why do the one and not the other? Especially when considering that the speedpotions can cause more problems then any of the others.

Btw, guys, let me begin by clarifying that I in no way represent id. I was a contractor there, and am no longer. (Actually, I'm at Human Head now working on Prey, so I've still got my nose very much in the tech ) As to id doing something like Make Something Unreal, I couldn't even guess. Hmm, an open source audio engine.. that's a tough one. I'm not a coder, so I can't really comment on what's possible or not. I guess theoretically ANYTHING is possible, but it would seem like a TON of work to me, because I'm guessing that you'd have to gut the original engine completely and code a new one. You're just opening a bag of hell at that point. Think about how tightly integrated the sound engine is with the world geometry, the portaling system, the animation system, func_movables.. I think you'd be better off adding to what's already there than reinventing the wheel. And though I don't know what audio special effects you all want/need from the audio engine, perhaps you should wait to see what future engine revs might bring, particularly from third-party hardware vendors. On lip synching.. gosh, well if you're a team lead and you're deciding what engine to use based on which game shipped with better lip synch anims.. ugh, you've got bigger problems.. Heh, never mind that you can run d3 at 800x600 with all the effects and shaders on and still be totally blown away visually, lip synch or no lip synch.

I know what you mean. And that's exactly why I say that I have to consider my child as a parent. I know my child, and I know which of them I can allow to see what. It's not that I say all my kids may see this, because they are quite different, and movies that are ok for one daughter is not suitable of rmy other daughter. But I can give you another example. Last Nicolaus there was Polar Express in the cinema. It was rated 6. This was rather annoying, because we were going to ride a train and I thought this would be a nice idea to watch this movie, and on the next day we are riding with such a train ourself. When I went to the cinema, they asked how old my younger one was. She was 5 so she was denied which was absolutely ridicoulous. When I complained they said something like "It is your decision if you allow your daughter to watch SUCH movies at home, but you are not allowed to enter the cinema." I mean. They were acting as if this was a zombie movie I wanted to force on my daughter. Now I watched this movie with my kids and there was aboslutely no problem, but I knew that already in that case anway. At the same time, my daughter would be allowed next year to watch Lord Of The Rings in the cinema provided that I go with her. This is absolutely ridicoulous, because LOTR is MUCH more violent, and I wouldn't allow her to watch this, because I know that she cant stand it. My other daughter is quite different, because even when she was six, I could watch with her LOTR in the cinema and she had no problems with it. When I was a kid I loved to see Western or Bud Spencer movies. They are also violent, if you think about it, but I never thought of them as being violent, because they were fun. James Bond is pretty similar, even though this is more "real" then Bud Spencer movies. The bottom line is, when I know my kids, I know what they can handle and what not. But these laws are IMO pretty stupid, because this is just censorship. It's ok, if the cinema uses this as a recomendation and to not let them in when they are alone, to be on the safe side, because the cinema doesn't know my kids. But if I as a parent decide that a particular movie is suitable, then they should let me in, provided this is not a clear case. If I would go into Return of The Dead with my 6 year old daughter I could understand this. I could even have accepted in case of LOTR, but Polar Express??? Come on. This is just patronizing for the sake of patronizing and not because there is a real reason behind it.

Actually I also would allow my daughter to watch James Bond movies. They are IMO in the same legue as Indiana Jones or Harry Potter movies, even though the settings is different. And considering that LOTR is also rated 12 DESPITE all the violence that is portraid I have absolutely no issue with Bond movies. Especially the older ones. I wouldn't call that mindless parents, because I think that I know my kids better than some made up USK. I have two daughters and a son, and they are totally different from each other. Movies that my older daughter has no problems with even when she was 4, are not suitable for my younger daughter even at 6, because they are so different in their mind and how they take up a movie.

Funny thing is that I do the same. I download from "dubious" sources and only have a firewall since aboiut a year, but only because it is part of the router, not because I thought it neccessary. In more then ten years I had only one or two virii, ond one of them was installed because of a fault of mine. I was analyzing it and hit the run button in the debugger instead of canceling it, when I was finished. Whats even more funny is: I was running Hidden and Dangerous some years ago on my machine. It didn't work properly and because I couldn't find a solution I decided to give the helpline a try (something I never do and never will do again). The result was that I had to reinstall my entire machine because of the things, the guy told me to do. I knew that this wouldn't work, but I gave it a try anyway. After my machine was screwed up enough because of the "helpfull tips" of the helpline, I was forced to reinstall. Needless to say that the game still didn't work. But I had a pirtated copy which worked fine. The guy on the helpline told me it is my gfxdriver and moboard and whatnot, even though I told him all along that the priated version works fine. THe only response that got was that he told me he has to sue me if I continue to use the pirated version. I told him he should try that. Well, so much for "priated versions only have virii and create problems". Usually it's the other way around.

Well, I seem to be on to something. When I put my slave drive (80g) in as the only HD, bios detects it normally. When I add the older 40g as a slave, it detects them both normally. But when my 40g was set to Master, bios had problems. Strange. edit: Just for the hell of it, I tried putting everything back the way it was, and it works, for now. God I hate computers.

Obviously you shouldn't just give in to everything that's thrown at you, otherwise anything anyone did would be a great big pile of monkey-droppings. (Perhaps literally) However, public opinion is a valuable thing to take into consideration, because it can prevent a project from becoming metaphorically inbred. A project should appeal to its developers, but what good is a _toolkit_ when it appeals _only_ to the developers, who are more likely to work on it than with it? Anyways, back to the sights issues. It's not a good idea to use the tip of the arrow unless the arrow is not at an angle to your line of sight, horizontally. At least give us knuckles, oDD! The knuckles! As for slantiness, it doesn't make one squat of difference to the ease of knocking an arrow. I can't think of a way the vertical or slanty bow would obscure the area you aim at, since the arrow is held to the side of the bow... I guess I'd have to see a screenshot, though... It's also definitely not easier to shoot, as you have to twist your draw arm the wrong way to keep the string straight. Doing this takes power from the shot, and not doing this makes the string vibrate left and right, causing the arrow to fishtail and spiral erratically. One of the things you are taught as an archer is to check your 'string picture' to make sure that the bow is lined up correctly, and is held steadily vertical. One of the people at our club has problems with this In the end, no, it's not archery simulator. But getting it accurate would be preferable to me, and in addition, I prefer a vertical bow aesthetically speaking. Slantywise looks weird! But I guess it doesn't really matter, anyways... I'm just a dedicated archer who's rather proud of his sport

This is turning into a slightly bigger problem. You are correct in what you've said, but the same could be true for virtually any feature imaginable. I want dragons, Odd wants guns, somebody else wants disguises, maybe Ish wants realistic unarmed martial arts, etc. Since, after the official release, people can add pretty much whatever they want to the mod without forcing other people to use it, there is no good argument for not including *anything*. Discussions will quickly (as this one has) break down into "I and people like me won't like it" vs "I and people who think like me will like it". To avoid these kinds of problems, I think we need to restrict our discussions to what should be included in the official release--at least until we get to that point. Then, the remaining team-members can go nuts coming up with whatever add-ons or modifications they want.

Okay, that is weird. I had similar problems about a year ago now that I think about it. For the life of me, I don't know what I really did to correct it. There were so many things. I know that I replaced my IDE cables and flashed the bios as well. Problem hasn't been around since. Could have been either but I had intended to put in the smaller wrapped cables anyway, so I didn't bother to test it before flashing. Silly of me.

I've burned all my important data to disk, so no worries there. Overheating is a possibility. I recently found out my case fan hasn't been working for a while. But I've had a new one for the past few weeks and the problems keep happening, so if it's related to heat, the damage has already been done. That's something I hadn't considered, thanks. I'll run a few tests this week, swapping HDs with my comp downstairs. That should tell me whether they're the problem or not.

Whatever it is, if you have some kind of backup software like Ghost, I'd use it now. I had what was obviously the beginning of HD problems last year, and figured to myself "Ah shit. Well, I guess over the next couple of weeks, I'll have to start transferring stuff to the other PC." Wrong. It took all of 2 more bootups for the HD to go unusable. Cascade failure!

This may be a overheating/damaged south bridge chip I get the north and south bridge mixed up but one of these contains the HD controler. If this is faulty you will get the stalls in windows as it drops the line as it were, and the startup problems. Then again as Dram pointed out the stalling could be a faulty driver install, fixable by a reinstall. Though that doesnt explain the hd not being detected. the only other thing I can think of that would explain all this is a flaky bios. Flashing it may fix the problem or give you a dead mobo if the chip is faulty rather than just the firmware being flaky.

*pulling the old thread out of the tomb* As you certainly noticed I wasn't very active the last week(s), I'm very sorry of this, but I've got several problems - a) my 'old' workflow (uvw-mapping the objects in blender and then convert them to lwo) doesn't work properly anymore and I've absolutely no clue why - faces are screwed up, colours don't fit anymore etc. b ) second thing is RL - the next three weeks are going to be really stressfull, so I won't have much time to work for TDM, which is of course a very untimely, since the milestone is approaching. anyway I'll probably work on some brush textures in my very limited freetime and hope, that I'll be completely "back" after the next three weeks.

Reinstalling everything is a last resort...I'm hoping it doesn't get that far. I'm basically having two problems, but neither one is consistent. This recent 'stalling' problem happened a few months ago but then went away for a good two months. Now it's happening again, but not consistantly. The other problem has been a more recent development. On boot-up, the IDE check frequently times out before detecting both HDs. Sometimes it detects neither one and gives me a 'no boot device detected' error. Sometimes it detects C:, but not D:. Other times it detects both of them, though this usually requires multiple tries and/or shutting the computer off at the back. I don't know if they're related or not, although to my untrained eye it seems like both could revolve around difficulty 'connecting' to the HDs. I checked my jumpers and cables though, and they seem to be properly set to master/slave, so I'm not sure what's up. I can't really take it back until I figure out which part is causing the problem, as different parts came from different stores.

There's nothing sophisicated about guns, their operation is very simple, the chinese were shooting projectiles out of bamboo tubes 800 years ago with gunpowder, and guns still use the same basic principal. I personally have no problems with flintlock weapons in the game, but not for the player obviously, they make too much noise.

Well, there are two problems with this: 1. It may give people the wrong impression. They might think all music ingame will sound like this. 2. Most of the people who made the music are no longer around. Not sure if I feel comfortable messing around with other people's work. Other than that it is of course a good idea, and I agree with you. It's more fun to listen to a more complete song than ingame music.

Yeah - they should not be considered priority material. I think it's normally better for women's voices to be played by women. I certainly couldn't do a woman's voice! As for modelling - yes, these high-detail models are far harder than the more blocky T1/2 ones. I've modelled a face with some success, but it seems I can never get the character that others can, although that could be due to lack of textures! As for normalmaps, it's not a question of detail, it's a question of it not looking "quite right" and also, not having enough experience to always know the best way to start modelling, giving me problems later on.