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Gah! Omega, check out the 2 page discussion on this very issue: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=43 We came up with a number of reasons why this might not be feasible and/or fun.

Or the other thing could be that the shop is a pre-mission map. The question is if this adds really fun if you have to do it all the time. On the other hand it serves as a testbed for map creation. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=43&st=0 I have a pretty good idea how this could work in terms of game mechanics as it would have been a part of the city section. If there is interest in this I could write up a description how I think it should work.

Great! So it had some effect to do this work. When you post it, please make a new thread though. Makes it easier to keep track and when I look through the forums to collect the consensus for the design.

Great! Could you take look here http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?act=ST&f=3&t=285 and assign or create some concepts for the other screens as well?

Yes it does. Trust goldfishguy. Apple Macs traditionally used to default at 72dpi for screen resolution but anything up to (and sometimes beyond) 96dpi is common these days. Take a 17" screen. 800x600 (about 62dpi) is going to be a different resolution to 1280x1024 (about 96dpi). comprendez. good. But anyhow goldfish guy, Springheels right too. Ain't no one got a 300dpi monitor. Not many folks have a 300dpi printer for continuous tone images for that matter. But yeah. Huge images on the internet is just rude. Post little pics if possible please. Or link to larger piccies if needs must. Life is nice and cosy when you are young and healthy and with good eyes - like you and me. 800x600 on a 17" screen is good for anyone a bit far sighted or a bit over the hill though. Feel sorry for anyone checking the forums on a web enabled phone.... (something I do from time to time)

Maya is the best overall 3d app available yes, but I spend a lot of time hanging around the CG commuity, forums etc, and Lightwave is regarded as the best poly modeler available. It has it's shortcomings obviously, no history, edges or NURBS are the main ones, but it's just so fast and intuituve once you learn it, and you can also virtually 'sculpt' in it , in a way not possible in other apps, apart from ZBrush. I used Lightwave 8, but it's virtually identical to lightwave 7 and 7.5, most of the changes in the newer versions were made to Layout, character setup and animation.

Ah, thanks. Applegeeks' forums aren't bad for tutorials either.

If you're interested in some good tutorials and critical feedback, there are a couple good forums to look at. Epilogue is one that has a lot of stuff available that might help. http://www.epilogue.net/cgi/phpBB2/

Well I read in another post o the forums here that 7500-8k polys is the target for characters. I'll have no problem whatsoever getting to that level from the current 30k It's never a good idea to have large details like the belt buckle just a flat plain with a normal map, it's always best to have some basic geometry there as well that more or less follows the high res shape. That's not a problem though, there's a plugin for Lightwave call qemLOSS which does just that job. I'll have to get this textured and normal/spec mapped and into Doom to see what the final effect will be. I currently have no idea how god/bad/average it will look inside the game.

You might not need to, if id open-source the D3 engine before TDM is released.

No, we're going to pay id $500,000 to licence the engine, and then give to you for free.

If you find something out then you should probably download this http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=255 and incorporate it there to test it out. My next plans are to figure out how to change the buttons, and how to let the SDK do something for me.

Not really related in line with what we were talking about here....but I just mocked this up for fun. Someone at the ionstorm forums asked if we were going to change the name or just leave it as "The Dark Mod". Thinking of how Eidos and Ionstorm may take to us creating a mod inspired by one of their intellectual properties, I felt it would only be fitting to call the game THIS. On a half serious note...*L* I think I might even like that name. HA. @ pakmannen: Wow, I love that mock up. @ Springheel: I see where your coming from. The inspiration for that idea came from the idea that the fans will be creating prophecies in a sense. Fan Missions are essentially adding to the story. Kind of mystical and fantasy oriented I suppose, but it's also in line with the Thief universe, just approaching if from a different and I think more cerebral direction. Kind of quiet and reflective, like the game itself. As more fan missions are written, it would be like the prophecies unfolding. Just some thoughts to ponder. Anyway, enjoy my silly mockup.

THe T2 plates was just a flat one sided model with two sided turned on. I'm sure the dark engine had that abilty to render polygons two sided, since it saves on a lot of polys, and saving on polys seems to have been the primary concern of the modelers. YOu can make one sided polys render as two sided in UT. Flagging a surface twosided in a doom material automatically turns shadow casting off. so you have to model the entire surface area.

Yes. You should talk to Fingernail about that. He can give you access to the teams forums where we have the concepts and everything.

I think I remember seeing you around on the ISA forums back before Thief 3 was released, that render of the Thief jumping the wall looks really familiar (and absolutely completely amazingly awesome). I'm impressed, everyone else is impressed, and you're already a member of the team as I write this. Welcome to the team, man..hope you have fun.

I did this for Phantom a few weeks back, it'll tell you everything you need to know getting textures into the game...along with links to an indepth normalmapping tut. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=101 It sounds like you've already found the proper way to add a light, you just didn't switch to the renderer so you could check it out in realtime. To do that just hit F3 to switch from the cam to the renderer, and then F4 to enable realtime updating so it'll apply all your lighting information. When you say premade room do you mean one of Id's maps? For that you'd have to find the name of the texture you wanna replace, open pak001.pk4, track it down in there, and replace the 3 dds textures with your custom one. But that could lead to some really funkified results cuz their texture could've been applied to the wall in some weird way which might stretch and distort yours out of proportions if it isn't the right size, it'd be better just to make your own simple room in the editor for testing purposes. To do that all you'd need to do is make a texture set and use a generic name like Wall_Test01 or something like that. Plop it in a certain folder for easy access like base/textures/darkmod/test, make the appropriate .mtr file, then build your room using it. If you like it you can just rename the 3 textures and move it somewhere else, if not you can just make another set with the same name and overwrite the ones you have in the test folder. The next time you reopen the editor it'll have the new textures already in place to check out. I do something somewhat similar to that. If I find something about the texture I don't like while I'm working in the editor, I'll close it and zip up the current files, change it to fix what needs fixing, then just overwrite the files with the new texture and fire up the editor again to check it out.

Greetings Everyone! I wanted to start this thread on behalf of the DarkMod team to help keep our guests informed on our progress; to let them know there's DarkMod life in the project even when it may seem there is none -- and to keep them updated as such. There won't be a set schedule as to when this thread will be updated, but maybe check back from time to time. Anyone can post here and I'm sure you'll hear from other team members here in the future. Although many visitors might already have http://www.mindplaces.com/darkmod/index.htm bookmarked to see updates on screenshots and concept artwork, etc., some don't have it bookmarked and may not know about it. Other forums actually point to our site here and I figured there might be some benefit to providing occasional updates here via this forum, too. As an update for our guests out there, I can say that I've seen a LOT of activity from our team members behind-the-scenes on this DarkMod project. There are many discussions going on and a lot of concepts being worked on. As a team member with a primary focus on artwork, I've personally created a few concept drawings and have seen fellow artists showcase some very nice concepts. Our programmers, 3-D modellers, audio experts, etc. are also very active in these early stages of the project. I want to assure our guests that there's a lot of DarkMod life behind-the-scenes that you might not otherwise see from the outside. We have a long road ahead of us, but we have an enthusiastic group working on this and I'm confident you'll be happy with our DarkMod work once complete. Stay tuned, as I'm sure there will be many more updates in the future! Until then, may shadows continue to guide your journeys. Darkness_Falls

Or register here at the forums, so you can see the rest of the boards.

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=159 The second post in this thread is the important one. The aim of this thread is to collect all information about what we want to do on a more detailed level but not TO detailed. So discussion about conecpt art should be here, but the information that this beast should be done shouild be posted there as well. You should also look through the document and add items in the lists, if you think that they should be included and I forgot them. For example: I listed a number texture themes and what each theme must provide for. If you notice that a theme, or a texture for a theme is missing, the list it, there so we can keep track of it. You don't need to be specific, but specific enough that we know what you are talking about. Of course even if you are an artist, that doesn't mean that you may not look through the other sections to check if we forgot something. If you decide here that you want to do a belcher but the coders don't know about this, you can not animate your model afterwards.

If you agree or decide something like that, then you should post it in my project definition thread, so we can include/remove it there. Not everybody is following all the threads, but we should all know about these things. That's why I started this thread. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=159 Usually I don't look much into the Art threads, because I'm not an artist and can not contribute much there. So most of the time, when I look at these threads, I just look at the pictures and hope that the first mod is appearing fast because of the great graphics. But I don't read all the postings here. I guess there are others as well and we shouldn't rely on this when deciding what we want and what not. Especially since a thread has only a limited time and after that only few remeber it and what has been decided. Don't forget. If you decide something here, then the coders will also have to know about it, to give it life.

I'll work on these. PS: I just posted a sample environmental scene in the Art section: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...findpost&p=1795

Domarius the Wise: In my opinion, the goal of any game where you have an opponent is to look for weaknesses in your opponent and exploit those weaknesses. In a real life sport game, the rules of what you can and cannot do are clearly defined. In a video game, you are left to your own devices to work out what you can and cannot do, and this is where I think a lot of fun comes from. You won't know it's an exploit till you exploit, so you can't blame people for looking for exploits because I think tha'ts what we're supposed to be doing in a game. For me, every additionaly exploit I have to ignore makes me less immersed. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Bingo, Bammo, Right on the Money. When I played the Thief series, I used every damned thing around me to defeat the map andits AIs. To my thinking, if I can clear out a castle full of AIs or trap them or anything else to disable them, the FM author has failed, not me. There was a T2 FM, a really great map of a prison, where you had to sneak in via a well in the basement and free someone. I ran around and around getting all theAI guards to chase me, then ran back intothe room with the well. Then I simply ran around and around the hole in the floor until the AIs fell in and drowned. I had a screenshot underwater with like 10 dead guards at the bottom of the well. All that was required to address this exploit was a lip around the well, but, well, OH WELL! Another example was the FM Lord FishKills Curse. In that FM, a sorcerer has placed a curse on you , so that whenever your light gem gets so bright, a magical monster appears and tries to kill you. A great idea, but it backfired. Why? Because I would simply wait until a bunch of guard AIs were around, then run out into the light. The monster would appear, I would run to safety, and the monster would smoke the AIs for me, clearing a path whereever I went. After a minute the monster disappeared and I moved forward mostly unhindered. Some exploits, like the Nudge and the Leaning BlakJaK I did not use because they were obviously flaws in the Dark engine. Nonetheless, they broke immersion for me just KNOWING I could use them but choosing not to.

I really don't know what the fuss is with AI climbing ladders. If a guard gets caught out on a ladder in RL, they have naturally left themselves exposed. So has the thief climbing the same ladder. It is realistic and natural to exploit somones vulnerability for your own advantage, so to call it an exploit as though it is such a bad thing per se is just silly. What would you do if someone was climbing up a ladder after you? You might decide to lurk at the top and push them off when they get to the top, or you might keep on running, but if you push them off and they fall to their death, you no longer have to worry about them running after you (if it is a lone guard). Conversely, if you were trying to pursue a thief and he nips up a ladder, you will either make the decision to follow him and try to grab his leg and pull him off or not based on your judgement as to whether they will be able to take advantage of you while you are exposed on the ladder. The ONLY question regarding AI climbing ladders is whether or not you can give the AI a reasonably realistic way of making the judgement call as to whether they should follow you up or not.. I have seen very decent AI botpathing with ladders and elevators in a few MP deathmatch games, and Splinter Cell does ladder climbing AI quite nicely, so I know it is possible to code, but if it is too difficult or too much work to code WELL then I can understand it not being included. Personally, I would rather have an imperfect and slightly buggy implementation of ladder climbing than none at all, as long as it works properly most (80%) of the time. Are you planning to make ladders just by having a texture flagged as a ladder? If so that will create more problems for your ladder. A better way to do it is to create a ladder volume, with an invisible entity at the top and bottom with a directional property, and to define ladder exit/entry points on the geometry where the player AI gets off - this is how most Unreal engine games have done it, and making ladders work in Unreal is quite easy by comparison with Quake based engines...

Cradle-like missions are going to be absolutely phenominal using the Doom3 engine. I'll do one of those.