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Well the thing is: Going from our real life field of view, which is something like 160 degrees horizontal, to a monitor which takes up maybe 90 degrees of our view, when you're sitting at a reasonable distance in front of it. So until whatever company makes VR wrap-around goggles a commodity, playing a game on a monitor IS like looking thru a lens because it has to compress that 160 degrees down to 90 degrees somehow. The result is that stuff around the edges get distorted. You could only display 90 degrees of the vision arc and be 100% accurate, but then it would look like you were wearing horse blinders or looking thru a narrow opening in a helmet or something. So if you have a model in a 3d engine, on a monitor, it CANNOT look good from every perspective, because the edges of your vision will always be slightly distorted. So a model maker has to make the decision: At what angle will the player MOST OFTEN look at this model, and at what distance? The answer is pretty clearly eye level, and a medium distance. You COULD make the boots look the perfect size, and it would look right if you looked right at the boots, but then when you move your view back up to your regular eye level, the boots would move to the edge of the screen, getting compressed and looking ridiculously small. So I guess model makers have a decision to make, and the route Oddity has chosen (and apparently a lot of other professional modelers) is to assume the player will usually be looking eye to eye with the model. This means that the model's head is about in the center of the screen, and the boots are towards the bottom of the screen, where the "lens" distortion/compression of distances effect is the greatest. So they make the boots a little bigger than they "should" be, to compensate for the shrinking of distances that takes place near the edges of the screen (ie, where the boots would be if the player looks eye to eye with the AI).

Nice! Can't wait 'till you folks are real far along. The Thief universe done in Doom 3's engine is cause for momentous excitement. But while on the topic of fan work on Thief, have any of ya'll gotten wind of this? Apparently it's even going to be done soon. I can't wait for any of this.

You can change aspect ratios in the engine, and it does have a slight bit of perspective correction issues to the left and right of the screen when put into widescreen mode...but nothing that'd effect the size of the feet.

Which proves what I said. That there is no such thing as a "perspective correction" inside the engine.

The boots are not so big that you notice it at first sight. But if you take a cloer look at them it is slightly noticable. Actually I don't really buy that "D3 uses a persepective tweak" argument because it seems rather strange to me from a programmers point of view. The projection of a 3D environment onto a 2D plane (the display) is a mathematical formula. I was implementing a framework because I started to work on a 3D engine some years ago, and I started from the very basics because I wanted to learn it. The projection is a mathematical fact and works very well. The perspective view is a consequence of this formula. It can be influenced by parameters to give a wider or narrower view, but the perspective projection is still always the same for all objects goping through the rendering pipline. In order to make the boots appear smaller (why there would be a need for this is still beyond me) the models would have to go through a different render pipeline to achieve this. Also there would be the need to specify which one is a human model to make the boots apear smaller and I think there is no such parameter in the def files. Furthermore this would mean that if you create an animated object other then human characters they would look wrong and it would be very inconsistent for the code to behave like this.

I did moding for Age of empires and AOE2 lotsa detailed maps. That was my first moddding, lol I remember trying to make a map with like....2000 triggers to make it into a whole new game. Good times. Then I did mapping and modding for a couple different Q3 engine games, a little starcraft fora while, then onto this

Well, I wouldn't put the dark engine in that same category. It had a lot of potential to build upon. We're still seeing neat tricks that it can pull off. Who knows what secrets are hidden within. To push it to the limit is to discover the unknown.

I never really understood this need to push the Dark Engine to its limits.The concept holds about as much excitement as the speeding up an old lady's stairmaster. I just hope the game is good.

Never did that. I was implementing my own 3D engine, at least started with it, because I wanted to learn the basics and I tried DromEd and Gamemaker, but never did something substantial.

I think Thief 2x will push the Dark Engine to the limit and I can't wait to try it out. It really looks like a lot of care and attention went into this.

Update: I just played the Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory demo last night and it had a weapon HUD interface pretty much like I was proposing. Although it used the ALT or CTRL key (can't remember which) for bringing up the weapon HUD. Although I didn't much care for the execution of the Splinter Cell version, the functionality I was proposing is, more or less, there. Splinter Cell's clunky graphics engine and other stuff going on made it a chore to use the weapon-select HUD. The ideal version for Dark Mod would be smaller, have less intrusivene graphics, be simpler to use and have a smoother scroll-out animation. I still think it could be a nice tool for us to consider for the Dark Mod in the future. Just wanted to provide this update to the thread for future reference.

Well, I downloaded and played the Chaos Theory demo last night... and I wasn't that impressed. It was okay, but the clunky movement and obstructive 3rd-person point-of-view got on my nerves. The game's engine reminded me a bit of Thief: Deadly Shadows, actually. The NCP animations seemed stiff and the graphics were kind've choppy, also. Of course, the latter may be a signal that I need to upgrade my computer soon. There were several elements about the game that I liked, including the stealth and tools (infrared/EMF goggles, fiber-optic cable, etc.) but I won't be getting it mainly because of the 3rd person POV, clunky graphics and lame keyboard controls. I liked that it had two stealth meters: one for visibility and one for sounds.

wow, i have never heard of that mod/expansion pack before. as much as i love t2 - isn't it kinda late for a mod using that engine? then again i have played t2 just last spring and while it definetly looked dated it's was still acceptable and even had it's "oooh pretty!" moments. kind regards gleeful

I know D3 compresses any textures that aren't in powers of 2 with GUI graphics, and apparently it's the same for brush textures. So anything not at a power of 2 gets stretched or compressed by the engine and looks pixelated.

This isn't Unreal engine. It's Doom 3. Menus, weapon readouts, monitors and HUDs are done with GUIs (a far better system than any other for creating such GUIs).

But not every innovation and complication to AI's behaviour makes the game easier. Why not make some guards (not every) more cunning and unpredictable? They are too straightforward now - when they see you they starts to shout and chase you. They could for example quietly hide in some specified places, when they hear your footsteps but not see you yet and wait for you to attack in unexpected moment. Designers could specify those points similarly to flee points or vantage points in dark engine. You know - not every guard is Benny....

I don't think it's the style so much as the engine. If you were to take what was shown in T3, refine it a bit and make the details a bit finer rather than thicker, you could come up with some really cool and interesting stuff. There were some things I didn't like about T3, like how they used bold deep colors instead of more natural looking colors...orange for a candlelight instead of a light orange-white or dead on blue for ambient night for instance...but the textures (or at least their designs) and architecture were great. Mixing some of the better parts of T3's style in with T1 & 2 could do us some good in the long run.

Okay, there is really nothing too complicated about how the models are now setup. I tried to simplify the process so that if we decide to reorganize the models in the future, it won't require moving all the skins too. 1. Model resides in its own folder. In this case models/props/decorative/decorative_oversized 2. Textures are stored in models/darkmod/props/textures 3. Material files should look like this. I think the screenshot below is out of date. Your material entries can be named anything you want, as long as they're located in a file somewhere in the darkmod/materials folder, the engine will find them. The last time we went through a model reorganization, the material entries listing full paths became annoying and confusing, because the paths weren't accurate anymore. To avoid that, and just cut down on the amount of clutter in the material files, we decided to name material entries by 'tdm_[name]' where name is something related to the model (not necessarily the model name). That entry is then placed in the material file that corresponds to the folder that the model is in. For example, the material for a chair would go in the "seating.mtr" file, and look like this: (not all our old entries have the 'tdm_' prefix) All textures are placed in the same folder, models/darkmod/props/textures/

well i go away for a few weeks and my most watched mod has a new site with some new eye candy. vary nice guard (vary nice). out standing and i ment to ask a while ago about your animations of the weapons and guards or even regular people are. i saw your black jack and bow shots, good job on both of them but the DOOm3 engine is so much more powerfull then that. i looks better then thief gold but not as good as doom3 can do it. i understand its a early version but i just want to know. i say copy the original animations for the best thief experience. try to make them as exact as posible. on the note of weapons i need to know guys, will your thief use a dagger or sword? i think sword is original and more the weapon people want to use. also have you started your maping for the game yet. i now you dont have a lot of items to place that are textured and are still makeing more, but did you guys get started on the opener or anything yet? PS dont even let the idea of switching to the thief 3 editor enter your heads. that thing is a pease of shit. all ready out dated. doom3 cant even be pushed all the way yet so kick ass. TTYL peace holms

Hey guys, I just heard (realized) that you are making an editing tool set that can create "Thief" scenarios with the Doom3 engine, and what not. I just have a question: Will we be able to make maps of the city, not just interiors: i.e. to make a city with winding roads, lamp posts, alleys, etc.? Thanks, Shadows

As i said, you cannot loop a procedural effect like that, without altering most of the animation by hand. That's not a good thing. Can you imagine having 100+ bones just for a world object? Sure we have a decent amount of bones to play with, but not that much. Firstly, i can get decent looking deformation with bones. Secondly, it's not going to be animated. It'd be a Doom 3 Articulated Figure. A rag doll. The tied up curtain, for instance, will sit their inanimate until you walk into it, come in contact with the physics collision of the bones and it'd move accordingly. Again, the bone count (if using this convert vertex to bone thing) would be horrendous. Setting up a bone facial rig will be easier, faster, and only a little memory and performance hit ingame. If you want to do blend shape facial animation, you need a propper system, built for the engine like HL2's.

Well, all assets can be easily ported (weapon, character and world meshes, animations, textures, sound, music). Maps, though would need to be recreated, which isn't too difficult if experienced with UED (just time consuming). The only real problem would code, although from what i've read about UE3, there's so little code required now. With their new Kismet visual scripting system, the level designer can do so much without the need of a programmer. Same goes for assets. You don't need to code a thing to create a material in Unreal engine. Fett: WTF?

Thanks all I have 1 question. I noticed in a previous thread about aiming for an end of the year release date. Would you consider, after the Doom 3 version is done, to port it to Unreal Engine 3 (as the first UE3 game's supposed to be released 2006)? The more i read about UE3, the more i fall in love

I couldn't help but notice that, similar to DS, the screens I've so far seen all seem to be fairly claustraphobic, tight spaces. Does the Doom engine struggle to render wide open, large scale scenes? (I don't mean to be a dick, everything is looking good!)

It'll be roughly the same dimensions, as we decided to stick to them rather than be complex and use a 1 unit to 1 inch EXACT ratio. Best bet is always test out the scale ingame...in any engine, really. Even precisely scaled geometry can seem "wrong" in games.