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No one is asking you to integrate the work of any random passer-by who has a good idea. If you chose to run things in that way, you would likely have more problems that you could deal with. Opening the source has nothing to do with the way you run your project. You may have a group of 4 or 5 committers who have final say on what 'gets in'. You may have only one person doing that. That's up to you: it's your project. Implement QC in any way you deem appropriate. Opening the source is advantageous for completely separate, better reasons. If someone wanted to implement their completely bloated and pointless idea, what advantage is it for you to stop them if it has no bearing on your project in the slightest? The worst that can happen is: the idea becomes brilliant and elegant, and eventually makes its way back into The Dark Mod. And who wouldn't want that to happen?

Great crits so far. Taking down notes heh. About the compression, I really dont have much experience dealing with compression besides using Cleaner XL a tiny bit. I don't even really know of any other compression programs. I'm eventually going to learn more about it and find myself a decent compression program for sure and not just a trial. But I've actually just been rendering the clips at a much lower quality now and it's like 1/4 of the previous size Too bad I never thought that earlier. I'll upload the smaller versions and edit my original post, and then I'll get to work on all the animation editing right after. update: k I directed all the original clip links to the smaller sized versions. Can't believe I never thought to just render them out at a lower quality. Sorry about that. Anyway I can clearly see pretty much everything you guys pointed out plus a lot more. I'm not happy with any of them anymore except for maybe one or two. It helps so much to look back at all the animations after a few days of not seeing them. I can pick out so many more problems now. Gah. ah well I'll get to fixing it all up.

I'd agree with the making it your own game as something unique from thief. IMO thief did well on the first impression but then failed after that, and it was mostly the little things that triped it up, like the lack of interaction, stupid limitations (like exploration restrictions), graphically poor (painted on windows and doors anyone?), or generally silly things. and to be critical of looking glass/ion storm, they never really put the polish on their games, it looked acceptable for marketing/screenshots but after that you didn't have much to apreciate in it. i guess that was eidos's doing now when it comes down to magic i think it could be done REALLY well in thief. magic could be outlawed in the world, with the occasional trial for practicing magic, however only the stupid ones or the weak ones are put on trial for practicing magic because anyone who has real talent belongs to some mages guild or is too friggin dangerous to try to prosecute, but they can of course be killed. thus magic would be rare obviously, but you could get away with it in places like mage towers, underground caves, dungeons, crypts etc... where no one from the general populace can see and report it. furthermore, magic would try to be subtle, doing it's best to avoid the attention of someone (though obviously some examples will break with this theme, ie faery fire). so for a magical ever burning torch the flame might look exactly like a normal flame, however it never stops burning, if you try to put it out, it sputters a bit and then flares up again to the surprise of the player. when you get to situations like a tomb and the fires are still burning, they have an eerie colour to them making it all the more spooky. on the matter of the crystal arrows, they are definately magical, if you have problems with other magical items then the arrows will fall into the same category. i think the key is to not avoid magic altogether as an excuse but to spend alot of time defining it in the world, in a thief world magic would be obscure, known only by a few and subject to alot of rumour, stories, lies and is viewed as criminal by some. if you went to define a system that both restricted it's use but justified it's existance then when someone sees a torch burning despite the conditions they will oh and ah at it rather than say "well thats a cop out isn't it". BTW i ran a DnD campaign based on the thief world, i kinda stuffed it up by not planning it properly. But basically i used the DnD rules and said that the highest level character around is about level 10 (the trickster or victoria probably) and everyone averages a level of 2. The world doesn't have many magical items due to the distinct lack of high level mages or clerics (i made clerics and paladins hammerites, the druids and rangers were the pagans). The system worked for the most part, but yeah being the first time I DM'ed a game I didn't prepare properly and it fell apart :S

Sorry, I was away for the weekend, I'll download everything tommorow morning, the transparency should work fine in .tga though, I've never had any problems...we'll see int he morning I can add the mouseover glow layer quickly thats fine.

I'm not sure...post in the dev forum where more people will be likely to read it...someone may have the same problem. I remember some people talking about firewalls causing problems. I can't log onto FTP with my regular client, I have to use IE. In the meantime, like I said, you can always email them to me again. I'd love to see the colour versions.

Tweaked some of the animations a bit and they also look a lot better with the nice color maps on But I got Smart FTP and I'm still unable to connect for some reason. It just times out. I've been having some weird problems lately though and I'm assuming it's gotta be something to do with my internet connection settings. I'm not using them but I do have Norton firewall and internet security. I tried disabling everything in Norton but still no worky. And for most of yesterday I wasn't able to log in here and even when I was I still couldn't post because it said I didn't have permission or something. Computers drive me crazy. edit: Is there a specific port I need to enter when I connect to the FTP server?

I did not know that about Bioware. Thanks for the info; I'll be avoiding them too, then. Online content delivery is certainly a decent way to get things done. I have no problem with it, in the simplest sense. I've played MMORPGs where you of course must connect and stay sync'd. It's part of the process for a game like that - but it's not for HL2 and its festering offspring. When, 1. you have to authenticate every time you start up, or whatever variations there are of that claim (because the developer is more concerned about thwarting piracy - which they will never succeed at - than at delivering a quality product people actually want to buy), 2. which brings it's own delays and problems, 3. you must run some reputedly bloated buggy system to do so (even the Sierra installer for HL1 annoyed me - Steam didn't stand a chance), 4. the whole point of it was going to be ease of use and reduction of costs, and yet the game still costs the same (more) than in stores, and it's anything but easy, 5. when soon every other company will want their own content delivery system, so soon you've got 15 different Steam type things running all the time, and my only voice/vote on the matter is to not support it with my money, Forget it. Not a chance. My cash will not support it. And if all companies start going this route, I will simply not buy games anymore.

I’m not ideologically against digital distribution. It could be a very good thing and funnel more money to the developer rather than the publisher. Though the sever owner now takes on the role of the publisher to some extent. But steam I hate. I have had endless problems with it and it still refuses to let me work offline. At least Biowares method, on the premium modules, states it needs the internet connection all the time, and I’m fine with that. But steam is a bloated and buggy mess that they seem to have done little to improve since it left beta, where believe it or not it was much worse.

Woah. It'd probably be much quicker if you handle the rigging next time heh. I'm going crazy still tweaking some areas that aren't working too properly. Having a bunch of problems with Max's vertice painting this time around. edit: 5:30 in the morning now and I'm finally done rigging and tweaking with it

Thought I'd start sketching some of the key poses for animations in Springheel's list. Some will also be sketches of inbetweens if they give a better idea of the weight. I'll update this thread as I go along so there is much more to come. The drawings are pretty poor quality but the main purpose these have for me is to get the poses down correctly. Hopefully they'll not only be helpful to me but to other people that are animating these actions. Just realized the 1st keypose in the overhead-hammer attack is from a different angle so it looks really off Not that that's the least of the problems with my drawings hehe. But they're just quick sketches to get the pose down like I said. By the way, I hope no one minds that I'm doing this as I haven't really recieved the go-ahead to start on any animations yet. edit: Forgot to mention that for very dynamic actions I usually only sketch the key poses from the anticipations to the follow throughs and that's why there are no settle sketches.

Ok the rigging is pretty much all done. Had some problems mirroring it because I didn't even realize the model wasn't completely symetrical heh. It took a couple hours in total. I was wondering how long it took you to rig him though. I just kinda want something to compare to so I know how slow at rigging I am heh.

We're going to want to use the classic Thief fonts for the most part. There's no copyright problems there is there? I can give you all the fonts for the menus. And all the graphics too, for that matter. I've assumed that you're using placehold graphics for the buttons and stuff up until now. Just let me know what format you'd like them in.

thats my second head model..first was very...hm unhuman this one still got problems..especially with its ear

Heyyas. I recently sent an application through E-mail to New Horizon but I hear he is having computer trouble so I should try posting in this section. Here's a bit of an updated version of what I sent to him. - Hey there. I'm Mike. I was interested in applying for a position on the Dark Mod team. I've been searching for something to work on and your project seems perfect for me. I'm a big fan of the Thief series, and I coincidently just started playing around with Thief 3 a few days before I found your mod team. I am taking a two year 3D animation college program and am starting my second year in a few months. We cover a lot of areas such as life drawing and traditional art. We also cover every part of the character creation process from concept to modelling, to getting the character textured and rigged and of course animated. One of my professors suggested that a good place to start getting some more experience with designing for games is the mod community, so here I am. My skills include Character modelling - Mostly low poly until recently I've dove into higher poly modelling for use with normal mapping. Animation - I have studied a lot of animation theory and techniques, 2D as well as 3D. 2D I've done mostly to just understand the basics of timing, posing and such. 3D I have experience animating characters' walk cycles, run cycles, jumps, and various actions such as slams/punches. Art - I noticed there wasn't anything posted about needing a concept artist but I figured I'd put this here since I believe it's relevant to modelling and animation. I've been drawing since I was a kid. I have taken life drawing classes in the past and will be taking more come September when I am back in school as it's one of the courses in my college program. Not much else to say here but I've attached some examples of my work. Weaknesses - Color is a problem for me. I haven't really had much experience with painting or just coloring in general. It is something I am definitely working on though. Another thing is my lack of knowledge about the Doom 3 editor. I'm not sure what kinds of problems that could pose but I'm willing to learn how to use it if I need to. I model using the 3DStudio Max 7 Package, and animate with it as well using Max's Character Studio, mostly just for the biped (All animation by hand, no simple "footsteps" tool or anything). I also have some experience with Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. And here are links to some of my work. I am not sure how many pieces you are asking for, but if you are interested in seeing more just let me know since I have tons of work online. (-You will probably have to fullscreen most of these to see the correct resolution-) 2D: http://img108.echo.cx/img108/5503/stunned2lk.jpg http://img104.echo.cx/img104/1706/somechick3gg.jpg http://img115.echo.cx/img115/8546/thaiboxers8wt.jpg http://img277.echo.cx/img277/1791/flesheatercolor29vc.jpg http://img292.echo.cx/img292/1948/monsters0fa.jpg http://img258.echo.cx/img258/7042/scan64aj.jpg 3D (All are either untextured with just colored polygons to get a general idea of the color layout, or they have a fairly low quality texture as it is currently not my main focus): Low poly- Little beast man. Two different versions of the character. First version is just about 2.5k tris, and the second one is around 3.5k tris. http://img296.echo.cx/img296/600/progress13om.jpg http://img204.echo.cx/img204/9853/progress1main2ng.jpg http://img204.echo.cx/img204/8995/progress29ve.jpg Throwing ideas around for a Boogieman type character. http://img206.echo.cx/img206/5954/shot31iw.jpg http://img206.echo.cx/img206/7340/collage8hf.jpg Simple human. 2.2k tris. http://img241.echo.cx/img241/2532/rigging456df.jpg http://img286.echo.cx/img286/4637/textureprogress41ta.jpg High Poly- A work in progress high poly model that will be used for a normals map. The low poly version next to it is currently 3046 tris. http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/3571/progress43ov.jpg http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/2057/pr...4closeup5oz.jpg http://img124.echo.cx/img124/9662/headprogress78vb.jpg At the moment I don't have anywhere to host my animations until I finish up a little logo work where I will recieve access to web hosting for a while as my payment. Though I don't have quite as much work to show regarding animation because I've been mostly focusing on the whole modelling process, I believe I still have a good amount of skill to offer to the team. I am willing to do either of the two (or more) to help the team. If you need to see any more information about me, my work or need to see more of it just let me know. Thanks for your time. edit: Forgot to mention that I also own zbrush and have a handle on the basics of it so far. Every model above was made in 3DSMax though. And another thing - Feel free to comment or critique as hard as you please on any of my work.

Gamespot gave a pretty terrible review to Stolen: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/adventure/stolen/review.html I don't always go by what gamespot says, but in this case the problems they pointed out, like an audio feed telling you exactly what to do all the time, are pretty clear.

Thanks. The Ion boards had the same sort of thing - you had to tick a box to have the 'edited by' added, and it didn't cause any problems or confusion to my knowledge, as long as proeple use it wisely and add the edit line if they've made content changes to their post after others have replied to it.

I think it looks great - as long as you use it carefully, and add trim at the edges of walls etc, and don't overdo it, I don't see any problems with it... I'd like to see the D3 relief mapping in use on the Dark Mod, It would really make those castle walls look special... That said, I know for the Unreal 2 and engine, and I would say maybe for for D3 as well (though I'm guessing, and D3 has a completely different lighting engine), that it is computationally cheaper to use more polygons than loads of textures... Just look at how much higher the poly count is in UT2K4 compared to D3. So you might be better off making walls with lots of bricks made of actual geometry and plain old normal maps than loading all those extra paralax texture maps into your graphics memory (that would of course involve more work for the modeller/mapper though). Polygons take up a small amount of memory compared to 32 bit textures, and graphics cards these days can deal with a huge number of polygons... Just a thought.

To my knowledge, and I may be wrong because I haven't used it myself, Half-Life and Half-Life 2 allow you to load the sound file of the speech, and you can match it up in the editor. UnrealED for UT2K4 does this, and makes it very easy to lip synch model animations to sound files.... It sounds like D3 doesn't do this, which means those of us without max or maya are going to have problems editing conversation animations... Oh well... I have tried Blender in the past, but found it didn't run very stably, and I found the interface incomprehensible, although I'm sure if I gave it time I would figure it out... Maybe it's worth my while to download the latest version and give it a go...

You should rather hope that the developers have slower machines then you (not true in my case). If a developer has a slow machine he needs to optimize that it performs well on his machine. If he has a fast machine he will not even see the problems you might run into.

Your speed problems probably have something to do with how you lit your columns: T3 uses a completely diferent, customised renderer to the vanilla Unreal Engine 2, and while it handles normal maps and dynamic shadows quite nicely, it doesn't seem to like having lots of lights at once or large poly counts (compared to say Unreal Tournament 2K4). You didn't say how you lit your columns, but I suspect if you are using too many lights, that will be the culprit. I have personally given up on T3 editing - too much seems to have been hard coded, and it takes too much time. I'll be very happy when Nightblade gets released though (I suspect I might be in for a rather long wait however)

As someone who has almost exclusively used UnrealEd, I am probably very biased in its favour. I guess it comes down to what you are used to. The latest version of UnrealEd actually makes vertex dragging very convinient, and since a lot of geometry in UnrealEd is now prefered to be static meshes imported from a 3D app like Maya or Max, you dont need to make very complex shapes, although the 2D editor certainly makes it easy to do. Unreal actually makes large outdoor levels very easy - you simply carve out a huge cube, make it a Terrain zone, and then you can add geometry similaraly to the way you add it to D3 et al... The downside to UnrealEd now is the need to use a second 3D app to make static meshes - for some reason, the static meshes made in UnrealEd are horribly unoptimised, and kill framerates (something to do with the way UnrealEd handles vertex information), which I find very annoying - I would rather make geometry all in UnrealED for workflow reasons. I haven't yet played with D3 Radiant, so I am looking forward to seeing how it does things - it sounds like it makes some things really easy... I wish game developers would bring out map editors that made it easier to get by without using the big expensive 3D apps - not a lot of modders in my experience have access to Max or Lightwave etc, but they do have access to a huge range of shareware apps, but you always need to convert anything they output and fix all kinds of normal problems about five times before you can use it ingame.... makes for very slow workflow

What do you mean by "you have to pay for it"? Are you refering to a licencing fee, or just the cost associated with the hardware, or some other problems - aare you saying it would compromise some other aspects of the game engine? Hmmmm

Well, hopefully the FM author has playtested their mission thoroughly before releasing it (and had others playtest it) so that problems like un-mantleable tables on a marble floor don't occur. Game bugs aside, a player who is patient, thoughtful, careful and above all stealthy should be able to complete the mission objectives without too much difficulty - not a walk in the park, just challenging and fun without too much frustration - and without saving more than a few times, and hopefully without actually needing to load from any of those saves. It is my personal preference for missions that make it easy enough to complete your objectives if you play well, but very hard to access every area of the mission and get 100% of the loot. You have to leave something for the L33T among us Whether or not playing without quicksaves makes you more L33T I won't comment on, what I was trying to get across is that if you challenge yourself, your skills will naturally improve, just like practising any skill will lead to improvement. Actually, playing multiplayer deathmatches is a very good way to improve your skill - no savegames there, and if you practise, you get better, and you also get better at single player games. Thievery is a good way to practise your skills, if you are good at Thievery, you will probably be able to get through TDS without saving at all (provided the game doesn't crash and you leave it running the whole time). And Thievery doesn't let you save, but that doesn't detract from the game at all, or make it less fun. OK single player games and multiplayer games are different, but the skills required are the same...

I think in game physics will really improve when Physics Processing Units (PPUs) start to appear on the scene - a few years off yet from mainstream computing, but check out these links: PPU white paper http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21648 Hopefully we will yet see the fast physics problems solved... AGEIA website

Hi. I would like to put my hand up for this offer. I have been programming PHP for 4 or so years. I have developed about 5 web content management systems, code bases and other data intensive WebPages. I’m admittedly better at coding than design but I think that’s more of what your after (you have artsy-fartsy folk here, they can help ) I only use LAMP setups, so no problems there I am a huge thief fan, I have loved it ever since thief 1 days (even mastered dromed too ) I’ve always wanted to contribute to something like this and my opportunity just kame knocking. I’m honoured to be able to apply Just so you know, what your asking will take a while, I’ve done this kind of thing before but not for whole teams, just a department or 2 (most). "Needleboy" has a really nice sounding piece of software there. Sounds like its just for you.