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Thanks for excluding me from your argument Pyrian. This thread is getting a little exhausing and it's probably going to get to the point where people will join in without reading everything that's been said, and all my posts would be for nothing. On that note, this thread needs to be summarised into main arguments for each side if we still need to debate this as a game option (or options, since some people are arguing for different solutions). That sounds like my games - I only died in Calendra's Legacy twice, on the hardest mission of the campaign. I was still placing my self-imposed save points for tension etc. Remember, my suggestion is just an extension of what I'm doing there, but the AUTHOR get to place the save points because they have the best idea of where they should go. FishFace is also in that list - he's for limited saves, but not for save points. I wonder if he's read my recent posts here though. Oh and Gildoran, for putting our point of view out there so well. Bhruic, are you opposed to save-limiting if it were an option you could turn on and off, and was off by default? That's the way I feel too, but I'm all for it being an option, even if it means it might be largly ignored initially. I'm hoping that it would slowly catch on through experimentation and word of mouth. I'm pretty sure it was Gaam Saav or something similar. Totally agree. I wish we could see more of this. Back then it made me squirm at first, but then I realised what it offered in return in terms of tension. People were playing password save games and battery backup save games on consoles for years, and no one complained. And RPG's are the kinds of games that you spend hours on doing non-linear things, such as travelling from place to place, fighting hoards of enemies. Running to the nearest town to save, and being forced to quit the dungeon and start again if they had to stop playing, was not that much of an inconvenience. That's why I think my idea is good. Anyone can turn save points on or off (off by default, majority rules) so just like the gamma setting, its up to the player to dicipline themselves. I just want the author to have the option to describe the challenge in the form of save points, same as they describe different levels of challenge in the easy setting or the hard setting. That wasn't a good example of your personal preferences, because I don't think that seperates you from the rest of us in any way That example could be avoided by good level design. Don't have jumping puzzles (jumping sucks in all video games, except maybe platformers), and put saving points in decent places, like right before a hard bit.

Which program will you be using to do the animation? I have the first set of chatacters completed - the Builder faction. I guess you'll be able to use a lot of the same animations and slightly tweaked rig for all 5 of them, thjough they will all require soe of their own special anims. They all have the same hand models. Obviously you want to be animating one of them, storing the animation and then when you rig the others you can apply that animation. Not all apps let you do that very well. We'l have to get an official list of animations drawn up, and you can be part of that process since you're obviosuly experienced. YOu need acces to the modling and animation forum here though, we can continue the disscusion there. Mods - if he hasn't got access there - GIVE IT TO HIM NOW!

Well, that is partly true, I did want to see how long a thread that has strayed so far off topic could go before it was closed Not true at all, I responded to all of the points brought up, and I don't think you really know what a non-sequitor is.... looking at your arguments (which I very pointedly did not ignore) in previous posts it is very clear that your arguments support my point of view more than they do yours... And Ishtvan makes a good point, but like I have said a thousand times, a properly playtested and designed level using autosaves will put autosaves at the appropriate places, so that you don't have to replay huge chunks of game to repeat annoying jumping puzzles and things like that (I hate jumping puzzles too). Doesn't make a case that you need a quicksave key, but, yeah I get it, I am just arguing for the sake of it, since I am in a very small minority here, and everyone obviously likes to play in different ways, which is really fair enough Of course it is, but I get bored occasionally when I'm at work, and have nothing better to do...

Can I get a status report? Is there any more information you need to consider the application?

Well, you were the one who brought it up by saying tetris was more random than Thief, and therefore had more replay value... That makes absolutely no sense - I don't care about the people who dont want to play my kind of game, and the people who do want to play my kind of game are not going to be put off by a reasonable restriction on savegames. Splinter Cell was quite popular, even though the savegame interface would be tremendously inconvenient by your standards, and I thought it had one of the most balanced savegame interface I have seen in a while. If you were paying atention to the game, you would have realised in advance that 1) deep water is fatal in TDS and 2) there were plenty of clues to warn you that you needed to drain the sewer before jumping down that hole, and 3) it wasn't the best level design I've seen. Sure there will be situations where the player might do something stupid, which is why the level designer will put autosave spots at locations near those places where people regularly do something stupid. Because I am just mean and spiteful . No, it is not to make the game more challenging, it is to stop people from using what amounts to a potential method of cheating, by using incremental saves and trial and error to progress instead of actual skill and brains. And if these people are largely imaginary, then there is really no one who will complain if unimited saves and quicksaves go out the door, is there. You would be surprised at how easily people adapt to the limitations that are imposed on them, and I really think you are overestimating how much people value convenience. Not if it can be used to make virtual cheating in-the-game world possible. Saving is the bridge between the in game and out of game worlds, and convenience in this respect should be limited for reasons that yI have already expounded. Then who is left to complain about reasonable restricitons on savegames? Since you obviously restrict your own saving, and like autosaves, I can't really see how not being able to quicksave, or having a limitation on the number of available save slots, would realy affect you in the slightest. Three save slots + autosaves should be ample convenience, and you have in no way presented any kind of argument that you need the dubiously added convenience that more than that would supposedly give you...

Well, I'm not suggesting that you have no saves at all - you can still up and leave any time you feel like - you just wouldn't be able to use the save systems to make a mockery of the game. Oh, yes, I know almost no one else here agrees with me... Maybe oDDity and Domarius, up to a point... Then why wouldn't you prefer autosaves or objective saves? Then you wouldn't have to think about it at all (and I am talking about autosaves that can only be triggered once in the game, so you can't go running back through them and saving again, and they are placed so thet you won't have much risk of the save being a dud). I'm not saying you don't get a few save slots, but so far, no one has presented a good argument as to why they need unlimited capacity to save every four feet in the game... Which is why I have been pushing for lots of random things in game design, and making levels that are nigh on impossible to see in their entirety in one play of the game - that way it WILL be different every time you played it. One of the biggest flaws with thief was that you could easily knock out all of the guards in each mission, and then explore the map at your leisure. It is better IMO to have a map that makes the player make choices about which pathways they will choose, and making players commit to a path that automatically means they miss out on other paths - they can do it a different way the next time they play the game. And I clearly don't think a save system needs to be so convenient as a quicksave key - convenience is a double edged sword, and is not all it is cracked up to be. Take the stairs, not the elevator - it might not be as convenient, but it is better for your health. Rubbish. I am only punishing those who couldn't be bothered playing the game properly, ie, stealthily, carefully, quietly, intelligently. If you plan your aproach to the game properly, and play smart, you will not experience any reloading drudgery (OK you might if the game crashes, but lets say that for most people this isn't a big problem). So if you aren't having fun, you are probably doing something wrong or playing like a lame duck... Making the out of game interface more challenging?! If you find having a few save slots or autosaves challenging, god help you when you are playing Thief! And I suppose quicksaving compulsively has something to do with the in game experience? Well it kinda does, but not in a good way... You realise it is optional. I realise it is optional. But there are a huge number of people playing games out there not realising that quicksaving your way to victory is lame, and they might actually discover a whole new type of fun if they are forced to play the game using their brains, rather than using the quicksave key and brute trial and error and luck to get to the end... Did I mention I was a dictatorial totalitarian bastard?

If that is true, why would it then bother you if the facility to quicksave was removed? Since you claim you are not using it significantly, why would you miss quicksaves? How would it really inconvenience you? Exactly what I am trying to do! Quicksaves take away the in game challenge, and if the in game challenge is balanced properly, and you are playing well, you will very rarely need to experience the out of game interface (crashes and bugs aside)...

Email sent. I offered to let him use the FTP, but in case he doesn't want to upload them I'll need your address, BT.

I have mainly made maps for Unreal engine games, and one of the features that Unreal engines make easy is having maps with multiple paths to other maps. As Doom 3 is quite new to me, what I want to know is, how easy is this to do with D3/DarkMod? Let me illustrate by way of example: say I want to have a level that has three alternative paths out of the level, leading to three utterly different maps, with branching paths, which might connect up again later in the game. Ideally, the player should be able to go back and forward between levels, much like the City section in TDS or much of Deus Ex. In Unreal engine, this works using teleporters placed at the transition points of all the levels, and for some games, a somewhat complicated system for keeping track of what happens in all the connected levels so they aren't reset each time you enter them. How would you do this in the DarkMod, assuming the D3 engine permits it? The reason I ask is that I want to build a whole bunhc of interconnected levels as part of a highly non-linear game, with multiple alternate endings, and multiple ways of progressing through the game, and I'd like to know if I'll be able to do it (I've been working out this game on paper for ages now, hope the time is getting near that I'll have an engine capable of doing what I need).

Considering when I played Quake 2 it took me quite long to get until the end, despite having unlimited saves. If I had only limited saves it wouldn't have made the game more interesting, insgtead it would become more frustrating. I simply wouldn't have bothered to play it until the end. So much for unlimited saves are not usefull. As a gamedesigner I would prefer for many people to see my game through instead of only a few elitists bunch. After all, why spending an effort to create content until then end if only 1% will ever see it? It depends on the type of games though, because there are certainly games which are more interesting without saving, but I don't think that this is the case for TDM . It is doing exactly that. There is no such thing as "play it the way it is meant to be". A game should provide fun for the player. How he comes to his fun is up to the player and not for the designer. The designer only provides the framework. This would be like saying: "Lord Of The Rings will not appear on DVD because the way it is meant to be seen is on a theater screen. The effects wont work on a TV and therefore nobody needs to see it there." Of course it is a much weaker experience on a TV than in the theater, but if I have the choice between seing it on a TV with lesser experience than in the theater, or seeing it not at all, I would still opt for seeing it on TV. It's MY choice. Same argument for swapping memory to disk. It is blody slow so nobody needs it. But considering that you need to run this application slow or not at all, it's better to run it slow. There is no such thing as All Or Nothing in the real world, and therefore it is simply sutpid to request to play a game "as it was meant to be" from everybody. I played D3 ONLY with god mode because it was so boring, but I still wanted to see what it offers in terms of capabillities. So you see, there is already a reason why I needed the godmode. Currently I play Guild Wars. You can not save on a mission because it is an online game and your state is only saved in between when you are in a city. Since I usually play alone (which is NOT the way it is meant to be) I have a hard time in some maps. Fortunately they provided bots which I can take with me, which are better than nothing. Now considering that GW is an online game and is meant to be played with a party, why did they bother to include bots at all? The way it is meant to be played is with other human players at your side, and AI is only for monsters. Apparently the devs were a bit more considerate then some here. Back to saving. I was trying to beat a map "Ruins of Samera" (or something like that) and I went in this map 20 times for sure. Believe me. It didn't make the game more interesting having to enter the same map again and again just because I can't save. After going in for the third time it simply becomes boring. You know the way around the map, you know what the AI will say at each point because the messages are script triggered and you even know where the monsters are at each point. So what does not being able to save achieve? Well I have to learn every detail of the map more than I want to. I have to learn all the locations of the monsters, because every time I get a bit farther, I will see a few new monsters. If I die I have to see the same map again and again. After entering the map several times it doesn't get more exciting to get through, quite on the contrary it becomes just boring because contrary to real live, everything is the same every time. That is what no saving achieves.

And in Doom, the objective is to kill the AI before they kill you, so if you play properly you shouldn't need to quicksave. How exactly is it "cheating"? Quicksaving doesn't keep you from failing. It just limits how much of your time has to be spent doing the same thing over and over again. If there's anything that "takes you out of the game" it's that.

Of course, don't get me wrong; we don't want some impossible-to-beat AI. I'm no coder, but i assume it would be difficult to put in an enemy AI with the level of intelligence the player has anyway. I'm more interested in having enemies that create atmosphere and tension, and hunt you in much the same way you hunt them; through stealth. Mind you, it would be a shame if it was over-used; it would make Thief become something like Doom 3, which would be a great shame. I think FM authors would be advised to implement some subtle way of letting the player know that some areas within their maps do contain stealth AI; perhaps through a pick-up (or lack there of) in ambient music, or by a note within the stage or something like that. I don't want to see 50 million maps with enemies i can't see, much the same way as i don't like too many maps with undead in them. We need variety Another question; would it be possible to implement the Keeper Enforcers in the Darkmod? Are you planning on any models for them? And further, would it be possible to implement actual 'Telepathy'? Perhaps when one AI sees the player, there is a script informing other enforcers of his presence, in much the same way a guard will shout to alert other guards nearby (this would not be bounded by sound propagation limits however, it would instantaneously inform all enforcers on the map), and the other enforcer AI;s would come a'running to their mate!

Alright, the image looks like crap, (it was intentionally done to look sketchy, but rather than making it look interesting it made it look bad ) but the concept is sound, the only parts i would think absolutely need changing are the feet and possibly the neck. This bot serves as an outdoor guard, it would probably find more use in environments that are all stone or metal, as it's attack mechanism is a flamethrower that jets from it's mouth. This is not one of the uber-flame throwers used back in WWII, but rather a smaller 4-5 foot blast. As it is in it's patrol state it could walk around and let out a huff of flame every now and then. Also, at least in my mind, it moves relatively fast, it's meant to be a small, fast, lightweight alternative to the larger cannon firing bots, who trade off their speed and size for a long distance projectile. (This bot might also be easier to disable as it is more lightweight) (Also, not sure if this is possible in the d3 engine, but will we be able to support world objects burning when they contact flame? Or is that pretty much unnecessary as it would only be used rarely?)

We are planning to only create the models required for the basic Thief inspired gameplay. Beyond that, of course we will create any additional models needed for our campaign. If we need such statues they will be created, if not then then not.

For the legs, I was thinking that adding an extra joint or two -- similar to how many animals' hind legs work -- might help. Just a rough mockup of what I'm talking about: EDIT: I don't agree with the long neck without there being some purpose for it. For instance, make the neck much shorter by default. But have it extend to peer around corners or over walls, thereby allowing it to check things out without it exposing its main body. Or something like this. Would be trippy to be going down a dark hallway toward an open room and have this thing hear you and make some noises, e.g., "I have-have hee-arr-rdd something..." from that room. It then quickly pops out its neck to see WTF is going on down the hallway. A nice cherub face would be staring at you, looking for you. Or another example: you're on a balcony, seeming away from everything, and this thing startilingly pokes its head over the edge to say Hi But I dunno. There would need to be joints in the neck at the head and body to allow for more versatility, IMO. I'm just not sold on the long neck yet.

We don't just randomly let anyone who passes have it - you need to prove your dedication and worth! So, uh, screens of your dromed stuff would be a start.

This thread seems to be closing, but... For this particular example, there is one obvious problem. Once you've "completed" the corridor, maybe you've knocked out the guards, tied them up, whatever. Assuming you've somehow rendered them useless, why do you deserve to save when you come back that way? In an autosave context, you're now saving for no good reason - it's an unguarded hallway, and if you're having zones where the player may save if they like, it becomes a safe place to dart off to and save, if they need to, so you've failed in the immersion side. This all springs from the fact that thief, as a _non_linear_ game, may call upon the player to return to an area they visited previously. This isn't just this particular instance, either, most other instances where you would save once in thief probably cease to require a save once you've passed, unless you're ghosting.

I'm doing my own bo designs as well, remember. We only need four altogether.

"We need to make the arachnophobics absolutely shit their pants." oh thanks for the care ;D

No, you need polys all the way round to cast shadows.

To some of your questions: 1 & 2) Importing textures into Doom 3 is creating some TGA images and putting them in a folder, with a text file to describe all their parameters. Much easier than T3Ed and you do not need any external software (other than to create the TGAs). Models are similarly easy, dump them in a folder using an open format (ASE or LWO), which you can export to from loads of free and commercial applications. 5) I never liked Dromed, but I did like T3Ed (in terms of the actual editor interface). Radiant is probably somwhere in between, it is not quite as nice as UnrealEd but it gets the job done. One thing you have to get used to with Doom 3 is the different workflow for creating levels - there are no subtractive brushes, everything is additive, which takes some adjustment if you come from an Unreal/Thief editing background. 8) Yes. Doom 3 can handle much more than Dromed. On my Radeon 9800 XT I can have a scene with upwards of 150k polys with dynamic shadows and it still runs at 1280x1024 at 25 fps. I can't answer your other questions as I am not a Dark Mod developer, however in general the Doom 3 engine kicks serious ass compared to the Thief engines. (BTW your English is indistinguishable from most native speakers).

If we do anything that's so totally photorealistic and fucking creepy as all get out...it should be the spiders. Like this bastard, but even more spidered out We need to make the arachnophobics absolutely shit their pants. Or this bastard too. I'm not normally scared of spiders, but this one gave me a little shiver when I saw it.

I think Hylix made a pretty good case for why that should be a few posts above. PC games are by nature much more likely to be buggy and or crash than console games. I don't mind losing some time if I manage to get the character killed, but losing a lot of time because the game crashed, or a bug made it unplayable, is just silly. You can't see a crash coming and auto-save the game before it "exits," because a crash is usually not a controlled exit, the program just stops at whatever section of code it was supposed to be executing. Aside from crashing, there are a bunch of annoying bug possibilities, such as getting stuck. How many times did you get stuck in TDS or T2X even? It happened to me a helluvalot, because I like to explore and find good hiding spots, which often results in getting irreversibly wedged into geometry, and having to reload from a save. Should I be thinking "Well I'd better not try to hide in that corner between those boxes, because I'll probably get stuck and I haven't reached a save point yet!" How does that help gameplay? That doesn't make the case for unlimited saves, merely that more than one is desirable. If you can make the case that you need more than two per level (three at the absolute most), even for a very buggy and difficult game, then I'd like to see it... If you have two saves, and one turns out to be a dud because of some glitch or a really stupid error, you have another one to fall back on, in the unlikely event that also fails you can restart the level... I really don't see the problem. If you have a campaign with 14 missions, 14 save slots - 1 per mission - plus one extra in mission save should be sufficient. If you are not using autosaves or checkpoints, then the case for more than even one save slot is weak, because the player can choose to save at a safe point in the game, and is not subject to running through asave point with 15 guards running behind them, and not being able to use that save... I did find TDS could be a bit buggy when saving, sometimes I would save by overwriting the previous save, and the game would crash, losing the save in the process, so I used two saves throughout, deleting the oldest save every time I saved... 2 save slots would have been more than enough.

I think the best part about Thief 1 and 2 was that you never quite knew exactly what to do. The Dark Engine as it was called was exactly that DARK. The game was never really designed for one specific way of playing. You just did as you saw fit and let everything else just fall into place. Don't narrow players options. Having a button that toggles Saves On/Saves Off is just a plain waste of time. If you don't wish to save then don't. An option is just a rube goldberge way of not pressing the Save Button. Just let the game speak for itself. It doesn't need facy toggle choices or Difficulty Enhancements. All that is needed is one game + one player + how ever that player chooses to play. I really don't understand why this is such a big deal. By the time anyone gets finished debating this issue, more important things could have been achieved. If all we did was sit and argue nothing would ever get done. I got to hand it off to this team making this mod, not only do they work hard in making an advanced mod, but they also take the time to debate issues as silly and pointless as this one. Cheers Taffers....

EGADS. Bad joke, sorry. Shoot me now. I like the four-legged suggestion, since it's a little guy. In fact, like the spider bots from T2. Edit: Re: spiders - heck yeah they add something... they scare the pants off of a large portion of the players. > Need a wicked grin smilie.