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No kidding obscurus, TDS's blood splatters looked like a graphic from the first Resident Evil. I had an idea for T2 a while back where the AIs would have differing levels of "intelligence" to respond to events. For example, the Thief fires a noise arrow to distract a group of guards. Now if the guards are all privates, raw recruits or whatever, they all go running yelling and carrying on. But lets say there is a sergeant in the crowd. The sergeant AI doesnt know whats up, but he knows something isnt right. Hes a little bit brighter than the goon squad. So rather than running off, he starts to sniff around, not red alert only yellow, but not green either. Maybe if he is still sniffing when the crew gets back, they may go to yellow for a short time too. But now lets say the Captain is on duty tonight. She hears the noise arrow and immediately remembers her Captains Training manuel where it warns of arrows that pop or click used to distract guards. She goes to high yellow/red (if those distinctions exist) and furthermore sends out a general alert. The whole place starts shaking up but rather than following the arrow they start tearing apart their general area. Heck, firing a noise arrow with a Captain around on Ghost could kill the game. There could be a priority list for different events. Noisearrows: Grunts follow it Sarge= yellow Capn= red/rallies troops Explosion : All go Red Rally----------------------------------------------> Buddy missing: Grunts= yello 2 red Sarge= yellow Capn=doesnt notice tilltroops do Too many torches G=grumble S= yellow C= red out: relight-----------------------------------------> Sounds of fighting: All go Red Rally-----------------------------------------------> Gigantic moss carpet suddenly appears: Yellow yellow red you get the idea. I dont think it would require recoding or anything, those would be those particular AIs scripted characteristics so you would only change them once.

1) Yes, 2) Yes, and 3) AI is pretty smart most of the time, so lots. And as far as I know dynamic shadows are almost entirely handled by the GPU anyway, so they should leave the CPU with plenty of clock cycles for the other stuff (that is the whole point of having a separate graphics chip). SC has a lot of scripted bits so I don't know how much of that is scripting and how much is AI, but the AI in a lot of games is getting better and better these days, and most engines are using dynamic shadows etc now (D3 seems to do this better than some engines, but game engines aren't that easy to tell apart any more).... I know you probably need a team of full time programmers getting payed big bucks to expect fully optimised AI, so in the case of DarkMod, I can imagine you don't have the resources to go to the level of detail some of us would like But my point about multiple threading was more that the trend is for separate chips handling separate streams - this is implemented in the Xbox 360, and physics processor units are about six months away, Creative has just announced a new audio chip that handles 3d sound propagation and occlusion, and has considerably more processing power than a 3.5 GHz P4 (!) And Id games is likely to add support for these to D3, as they become available, through patches... So when graphics, physics and sound are taken care of by separate processors, the CPU will have a lot more cycles free for gobsmackingly smart AI (or so is the industry plan).

Even chopping someone's head clean off may leave their corpse twitching or even thrashing on the ground. It's possible to muffle a sap - although that also makes it less effective(!). Still, BJ'ing someone with a loud smack and having them crash down to the ground in full armor, their sword ringing against the flagstones, with another guard two feet away who didn't hear a thing was always kind of silly. I'd just as soon the game rewarded ghosting as much as possible and made the "clear the level" style of play less plausible and certainly less of the path of least resistance.

Alright, sorry for starting a new thread, but the old one was getting kind of clogged and off-topic. I have a different question now, this time about movement options. I'm going call into attention the game Metal Gear Solid 2 (blaphsemy!) for a moment. Now, I didn't love the Metal Gear games--in fact, I never finished them--but one of the they had a few neat bells and whistles that I enjoyed a lot. For one, you could crawl, enabling the player to hide in small spaces, like under tables or other low objects. I also liked the fact that you could "tap" on a wall to get a guard's attention, although they did tend to forget about you rather quickly after that. The ability to hang over ledges was kind of neat, too, if not particularly realistic. So, are you considering implementing any of these features into your finished product? Or, maybe a better question, might any of these even be possible using the D3 engine? I hope you guys (that is, "the team") doesn't mind that I'm pumping you for information--I'm just really excited about this mod and eager to see how it turns out.

My understanding is that having AI's detect silhouettes is a relatively difficult programming task. The technique I heard was to project a "shadow" of the player as if the AI were a light source, and check the brightness of the textures that virtual-shadow falls on. My guess is that that could get extremely processor intensive under certain circumstances so you'd have to be very careful that it doesn't grind the game to a halt. To do that, you'd want to optimize and perhaps simplify the process as much as possible (obviously), and then strictly control the circumstances under which the check is even made (if they already see you or you're out of LOS there's obviously no point, for example). Unfortunately silhouettes are notoriously visible at long distances so you couldn't just put a distance cap if you wanted it to seem realistic. For realism's sake you wouldn't want a small percentage of stationary silhouette to give anything away, either; how visible it is should depend a LOT on whether its moving and also on how "recognizable" it is as a person (and not another guard!). The issue simply isn't simple. Also, the player shadow is a potential giveaway, and implementing that has a notably similar set of problems. I'd be worried that implementing all that would have a similar effect on the Doom engine as adding a pile of overlapping lights to a complex room purportedly does.

@Maximus: Supposing this "sweet spot" exists, what are the odds that you're going to hit it every time on guards that are always making slight movements like shifting their weight back and forth, looking around (which moves their head and neck around constantly) let alone walking on patrol? It sounds like you're trying to stab thru both the jugular vein and the windpipe with one blow, so any slight turn of the head will change the angle at which you'd have to stab to pull this off. Like I said a few posts above, a guy who killed a lot of people in prison was interviewed, and asked what the preferred method was. He said the "safest" way to stab someone was thru the armpit and into the lung. The reason he gave was: It's a large target with a predictable result that people go into shock when their lung is stabbed and collapsed. (The catch is you have to grab their arm with your other hand and raise it up to expose the target). The neck on the other hand was ruled out because it requires too much precision in terms of stab angle and location, so any small movement by the enemy could throw it off and turn a fatal blow into a non-lethal one that lets the enemy cry out. Even if you stabbed the enemy in the neck and destroyed their ability to cry out, I would think someone with a hole in their windpipe and jugular would still have some time to struggle before they die. (I don't really know though, maybe you go into shock, I'm just basing this on the fact that people with their throat slit don't die right away). An armored guard stomping their boots and flailing their arms around should make a fair amount of noise, even if you hold onto them so they don't fall to the ground. Realism questions aside, we want killing to be rather loud for gameplay reasons. That is the negative consequence of killing in our game. If you want to make an assassin mod where you can kill everyone silently, it will be very easy to lower the "death cry" sound volumes, or change the AI scripting so that they don't make the death cry if you kill them a certain way. Killing isn't the focus of our mod tho, so I don't think we'll be doing that ourselves.

So I guess I will just have to wait for next gen engines, physics processing units, audio processing units, AI processing units etc... Actually, the specs for the XBox 360 are pretty impressive, 3 dual threaded processors, so you can use 6 threads to independently process graphics, physics, sound, ai and so on... that thing is way ahead of current PC tech. But I never could get used to the controller for Xbox, I am addicted to my keyboard and mouse I think multithreading will open the door for realism, at the moment graphics are getting pretty close to pohotorealism (the Unreal 3 engine looks very impressive, but I wonder if I'll ever be able to afford the beast of a system it will need to run it? Windows Longhorn looks like it will suck a ridiculous amount of resources up too...), it is AI, physics and time/money constraints of developers that seem to be the factors holding things back. I think that once computers with 64 bit dual threaded processors become a bit more common, plus PPUs and APUs, interesting things will happen That being said, enemies can climb ladders in splinter cell, and that runs fine on the original X Box, which is basically a 700 odd MHz PIII with a modified GeForce 4 MX, so I can't imagine it sucks up that much processor time on a decent up to date system... And I thought rendering was largely dependent on the GPU these days, no? I guess from a level designers perspective, I would rather design my levels in such a way that at any given moment, there is only so much going on in the scene that a playable framerate is kept up, rather than compromise on the quality of the AI. As long as FPS stays above 30 (as low as 15 can be imperceptable in certain types of scenes) everything is sweet, I'm assuming people aren't playing Thief or DarkMod to show off their ultra overclocked rig with their liquid nitrogen cooler, they are more interested in an immersive game that gives them freedom to explore and play to their style...

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.

This is actually an urban myth (as far as I know). I can't remember where I saw it disproved, but it was pretty convincingly shown that you cannot cause a direct brain injury by pushing the bones of the nose on or up (unless you completly crush the entire face, but that involves a much more forceful blow to the face - say from a hamerite hammer). The bones of the nose are just not strong enough to get through to the brain at that point (too much bone in between). However, the eye sockets are very thin, and you can use your fingers or a knife to push behind the eyes and into the brain. Very difficult to do though unless the victim is pinned down, and the victim woiuld put up a huge struggle, and this wouldn't necessarily kill them, but they would be blind and brain damaged at the very least. Damaging the brain stem or severing the spinal cord at the base of the skull will kill instantly, but there will be vigorous nervous twitches for a minute or two afterwards, so it is not necessarily stealthy. Face it, there are very few ways to kill someone stealthily unless no one is in earshot, or you mask the sound somehow And as for going prone adding to gameplay, I certainly think it would, regardless of whether or not it is "Thief" - I can see it as a useful way to crawl through narrow pipes, tunnels, hiding under beds - anything too low to crouch under. It would add more ways to get into buildings etc, and would increase the challeng of trying to find a concealed entrance. It also offers an escape route for thieves who have been detected, as well as providing the ability to use low cover to avoid detection. My preferred way to implement this would be a double crouch - hit your toggle crouch key once, and you crouch, twice and you go prone. I played a game that let you do this this way (can't remember which, Deus Ex maybe?) and I found it quite effective. Hopefully if you don't include it as part of darkmod, this is simple enough for FM authors to implement themselves, I for one would definately include it. If you don't like going prone, you can just unbind the key:) As for loot values, I think a professional thief would have at least some ability to appraise the approximate market value of what they steal, otherwise they wouldn't know what to steal

Although my focus is on using Dromed for Thief 2 which I think still has lots of life left in it (for now), I did fiddle with a video tutorial for a certian game this weekend and finally got my first room.... Now if I can just figure out why I seem to have double cusors in the main screen!?

The definitive word on blackjacks, or at least the most definitive Google would yield with a quick search, can be found here: http://www.donrearic.com/sap.html FishFace, it looks as if a club to the face can not only knock someone out, it might knock them out of this world. Take a gander at the history of the "slung-shot", yikes. It does say that in the right hands, a BJ is very effective at what it does. (OK stop giggling!) What about the idea that 99.9 percent of the time, the Thief's aim is true and he KOs the guard. But sometimes he kills a target, which would zap a Ghost game, or sometimes he misses and the AI zaps him. I always enjoy a dash of uncertainty. P.S. does Don Rearic strike anyone else as being somewhat pro-authoritarian? Update Ok hes full on whacky, this guy sees a weapon when he looks at his Danish in the morning. But lots of good ideas for weaponry to be found here: http://www.donrearic.com/main.html

I guess what I am getting at is, OK you are aiming for a purist thief who doesn't train for combat (which I think is good), but I also think there should be the flexibility to have the player be an assassin (like Riddick in Pitch Black) - meaner than a simple thief, more like a mediaeval special ops guy. I am thinking of amaking a game where you can customise your character a bit before you start - you can choose whether you are a weedy little thief who will throw sand in your eyes and run away if caught, or a highly trained master of combat who (ab)uses his stealth and combat skills to commit a few crimes to pay a few bills. Or anywhere in between. My goal is to give the player choices on how to approach missions, and they will have to suffer the consequences of their choices - a big strong assassin type will not be able to hide as well as the thiefy type, will make a bit more noise, and will be too big to access some parts of the level, but will be able to take care of himself better in combat, while the thief will be able to hide and sneak much more effectively, and can get into some tight spaces no one else can get to, but will be absolutely stuffed if he gets cornered (he might have a flashbomb or salt to throw in a guards eyes though, so he can run away). Thus there will be different rewards for different choices - some loot will require brute force to get, some will require agility and cunning. I don't know how close you guys will come to what I am aiming for, but hopefully there will be a decent base I can build on, anyway, keep up the fantastic work, I am looking forward to the toolset being released!

I have it, but I have to download Thief 2 now as well, due to the fact that not a single one of my 50 game CDs is in a case and they've all been lying about loose since the day they were first opened. I estimate that less than 20 of them would actually install.

IMO a soundeffect can not really be copyrighted, because it doesn't hold enough "artistic creation" (Schoepfungshoehe). For entire tracks this c ertainly is true though. Even so, you shouldn't confuse copyright with inteleectual property. They have the copyright for their recorded sound effects, but they have no intellectual propery rights on them. Otherwise we would never see any heartbeat sound in any game anymore.

I just wanted to say I never knew about this mod, but after playing the thievery for ut, and waiting for NB, its cool to see this one too, never been a doom fan, but I might buy the game just for this mod! Keep up the good work, can't wait to play it!

Your drawing of orange liquid would have to look orange through the yellow glass because it is acutally another colour, made to look orange once you see it through that yellow glass. You need to work out what colour will look orange through yellow glass to be able to do it in the game

I see it pretty much like an 18th century Earth, where they made some scientific discoveries before we did, so their technological evolution is not quite the same THere are other cities outside this one, oter countries, other continents - which they trade with using their cargo ships. THe biggest difference being that in this universe, the laws of physics permit magic, and the periodic table contains different elements. If it were up to me,I would not have any msgic or woo in the game at all.

For me personally, more realism = more fun, and i want a thief type game that comes as close as possible to actually being in a mansion stealin' stuff (without the risk of actually going to jail). A real thief will usually avoid killing or even touching a guard, preferring to slip by un-noticed. It is extremely difficult to render someone dead or unconscious without attracting attention - even if you sever the spinal cord at the base of the skull, the body will twitch and spasm violoently for potentially minutes as random nerve pulses travel through the body. People being choked thrash around violently, and will probably make a lot of noise. Even blackjacking is pretty noisy (hit someone on the head even lightly and it makes quite an audible sound), and there is a fairly high chance that you will just hurt them and make you victim cry out in pain before you get another whack in... a pure thieving expereience should involve no murder or violent assault unless the thief is cornered. Flashbombs, throwing sand in the guards eyes and other distractions are the preferred method of escape once detected. Granted, the Thief series was always pretty flexible as far as murder and assault went, and if that is your cup of tea, you should have the option, but i think there should be some realistic penalties for doing so.

What about releasing small animals to distract guards (this is an old Ninja trick, so it is based in reality)? Also I would like it if AI responded to animals being disturbed - say you've just mantled over a wall, only to disturb some pigeons... Oh shit, did the guard notice? Maybe the guard gets a bit suspicious, but after a while thinks nothing of it, and goes back to his patrol or whatever. I like surprises and unpredictable things that force you to react on the fly. One of the things that limits the replay value of most FPS games is that enemies are usually in the same spot every time you play the game, which makes it way too predictable. And while arrows were cool enough in thief, they are totally unrealistic for a thief that travels light and leaves no trace, other than the absence of a few valuable items, to give away his presence (A bow and arrow would be realistic for an assassin, though). Go the grappling hook I say, sure it may be difficult to implement realisticly, but it is a hell of a lot more realistic than rope arrow which couldn't possibly support the weight of even a tiny thief (unless it is made of some high tech carbon nanotube fibre). And don't say it is a "magic" rope arrow, that is a cop out. Anyway I think the best option is for FM authors to give players a choice of weapons and inventory at the start of each mission, or the option to buy gear with loot, so that people who would rather have a grappling hook or climbing gloves can do so, people who like arrows can do that too. It is very obvioous that some people like to play thief without being detected at all, while others like to empty their quiver of every arrow by the end of the mission, and I guess there should be the option to cater for differences in thieving styles... However, if you can't shoot your way through a map because you have no arrows, it will force you to be more creative, which I like...

You know me...I love to butt my nose in... As far as lifting guards (and I'm greatful that the devs chose a small thief instead of opting for a tall and lanky pc), though it would seem at first thought that a smaller framed "person" might have a more difficult time with a bruiser guard than one with more leverage, if you're talking "realism", you have to take into consideration fast and slow twitch muscle: You figure a thief (or anyone, really) that can climb clear up a rope, jump quietly and switfly from rooftop to rooftop, and mantle (essentially a "pull-up") from ground level, or even proceeding a jump from another ledge, would have to have a combination of balance and strength: Fast twitch muscles (which generate more force and intensity, but fatigue easier) would be necessary for quick jumps, rope climbing, mantling, and sprinting. Slow twitch muscles (which generate less force and intensity outright, but facilitate endurance) would be necessary for long periods of crouching, slow crawls, stealthy walking (or stalking), long distance running, and for overall balance (since we don't want our protagonist creeping around getting tired and knocking shit over). All of that said, with this COMBINED advantage our thief would need to facilitate his ability (both fast and slow twitch muscle power), even if he is a smaller built thief, our thief would be exceptionally strong "overall" and would at least be able to "drag" a bruiser even with full war gear. Dragging, I think, is a sensible comprimise between outright lifting a body and not being able to do anything at all. I actually liked that the guard in TDS got tired it made sense to me, not only because of the armour, because you figure with all of the work they did to make themselves huge, they'd neglect any kind of endurance training, and suffer for it. And besides, if you can believe that a wooden stick with a sharp piece of metal at the end cannot only extend a rope at any desired length upon dispatch, but can also support a man's full weight, well then why is it such a stretch to believe that a small man can lift a 280 pound guard? Same premise of disbelief suspension applies to loot, I would think. Though I like oddity's idea of needing to pick and chose what you pilfer. As frustrating as it would appear, I'd love to make a grab for something that looked plenty valuable, only to find after all of my troubles it's worth only pennies. I love options! Which leads me to my next point ( if you can call it that ): Odd made a comment about broadheads being useless, and I disagree. Broadheads are essentially "ye olde sniper rifle" yes, but, more importantly, they give the player another option while playing. I loved the Thief games because you could improvise...with the possible exeption of Far Cry, I really haven't seen a game recently that allowed the player to do that so freely. Besides, I used broadheads all of the time: They made for a great diversionary tactic when I ran out of noisemakers....just point at a stone wall or piece of metal and...voila! Hylix.

What about having a drop off point for loot in the map? A designated dump where you can return during the game and unload, near your entrance/exit place. Maybe some kind of object could be made that would tally what you dumped into it, call it Garretts Big Ass Velvet Bag. In the storyline, he would'nt grab this until he was ready to flee the premises. It could still be limited in size and weight, just more than he can carry in his kit. The last act of the FM would be Garrett moving this heavier bag, which would limit his actions like carrying a body, out the back window or door. I used to wonder back in t2 about the possiblity of Garrett having to "catch" a BJed AI. Say I sneak up behind him, whack, now I have to grab and drag the body to shadow before it hits the ground. The body would only be frobable for a few seconds while the AI crumples. This way: 1. Garrett never has to support a huge guards full weight, and just as importantly never has to dead lift it. And maybe some guards are heavier than others? Maybe some are nearly impossible to carry/drag, while others are like rag-dolls? 2. The noise, a regularly garbed man collapsing to the ground will make a noise, an armored one should wake half the castle. (In fact, a year ago I watched an old, old lady collapse on the street here in Philly, her tiny little body and head made a thump that I heard half a block away.)This realistically accounts for that *huge* crash missing in T1/2/DS when an AI was whacked, cause the bodies should never hit the ground. There can still be noise of course, and it should pose a threat. 3. It would force Garrett to pick his ambush areas very carefully. You whack the AI, catch him as he falls, then have to quickly drag him to shadow. You can still move a pancaked guard, its just noisy and hard with all that armor dragging across stone. 4. It would fine tune balance the gas arrows. They are a pretty powerful weapon, but imagine if you knew that to use it is going to A. make a big noise cause you cant run and catch the dude as he falls and B. make dragging a body away a lot harder, slower, whatever cause you couldnt catch him. You would think twice about firing away with them, or you might have to nock another expensive and rare gas arrow to take out the clowns who come running. Either way it limits their use and utility, a plus in my book.

In regards to a loot system, you could also simply limit loot to stuff that is a bit more sensible - don't have lots of large loot items - maybe have an inventory system where you have a set amount of space for loot, and you have to make a decision on what types of loot you want to pick up. As in TDS, you could then fence loot and by equipment, upgrades etc (but the fences and stores in TDS could have been implemented better, IMO). If doom 3 allows for much larger level sizes than TDS, then you should, at least on some suitable maps, have a large city level with lots of fences, shops, and of course, masions to rob. This probably wont appeal to loot completists - those who absolutely have to get 100% of the loot, but if done right, it could spice up gameplay a little. If you like you missions faily linear and goal oreiented, I can see why you might not like this idea, and it is heading into RPG territory I know. Some people see Thief as a glorified game of Pacman, I am not one of them, and prefer a bit more depth and intricacy

Thanks for posting a reply to my long post Macsen and Renzatic. Also thanks Macsen for the good laugh about how my brick texture turned out to look like chocolate bricks which I do mean. Also thanks Renzatic for the kind remarks about eventually being good at making textures. I've only recently just gotten photoshop, and doom 3 is the first game I've ever even tried to make a texture for. I don't believe I'll ever be as good a texture artist as most people can be because one thing I lack is creativity. This is mostly caused by having schizophrenia. In schizophrenics there is a lack of certain kinds of creativity in my brain. I'll try to explain it as easily as possible because thats something I do not lack. Basically if you can imagine that the nerves in your brain are like a busy street with all the cars (information) traveling at high speeds. Also in your brain there are bridges and in schizophrenics these bridges are often pointing upwards not allowing any cars to pass. So you can see that the information is there its just not being allowed to pass because the bridges are pointing upwards. So the creative bridges in schizophrenics are usually pointing upwards and not allowing the information to go to that part of the brain or out of it. But its not like that throughout the entire creative parts of the brain because I can creatively come up with ways of hurting/killing people pretty easily. This is NOT something I'm proud of but I have to live with. Last I know most of you are old enough to understand the contents of some or most of my posts related to my mental illness. Just for the record I have never acted on any of the thoughts in my head and that I'm actually a really nice and polite guy. If for any reason any of my posts become disturbing to anybody please let me know and I'll refrain from talking about the parts that are disturbing. Thanks again for all the people who have looked at my post and to Macsen, Renzatic, and anybody else who decides to post a reply. EDIT: It took me about 25 minutes to write this last post so I didn't get to see your post sparhawk. Thanks for replying and I'll keep practicing with the texturing.

Is this an official/unofficial Metal Age expansion game? Where can I get info on it, like how many levels, the general plot without spoilers, etc...