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The reason I am so excited about helping out with this project is because I love the Thief series its one of my favorite, I have played the first 2 several times! But I haven’t kept up with the series since then, just haven’t had the time to play many games, all work and studying to get in to the game industry. I would prefer not to post to some free art archives, like deviantart after carefully reading there user agarments, they can retain the rights to uploaded works. AKA it now belongs to them! I will have a host soon, and will try to display as much of my work there as is possible. Till then I would like to start on some Concept Sketches of Environments. Then after you approve of my ideas I will Model, Texture & Normal Map all the recourses needed for sed environment. (design before you implement right?) Then with the peaces of a map in hand I could design a level or 2 or 3 using the assets. To help me better understand what your project needs: Are adventurer(the Thief)’s desire for wealth leads him to loot Ancient Ruins and raid Dens of Evil Creatures. Or duss the hero have other motivations? Have areas already been decided on, or should I just make a place up? Do you have a story I should try to follow with my concepts? What creatures have an influence on this environment? Hum built it and why? Ext… If there is already a design in place pleas give me what information you think would be helpful in making concept for you as a test to prove my self. Thanks for giving me a chance to help with this project. Regards, Maus

Maus, Please understand that we're not rejecting you, we're just interested in seeing some more thief style artwork, and particularly computer modeling work. You obviously have excellent artistic ability, and your sculpture is quite impressive. Meanwhile, you can show us some of your other stuff by uploading them to a free service. Not a great permanent solution, but it will work to at least show us some things. Try www.deviantart.com or www.photobucket.com to upload some images that you can then link here. (Note that you should link the images and not place them in-line on the forum page.) If you want to get your hands dirty with some quick models or concept sketches, here are a couple suggestions: Concept sketches of architecture, furniture, in game objects, and decorations. Concept sketches of level design elements; scenes containing guards and the thief, for instance, that convey the mood and setting of a level Concept sketches of characters and designs for builders, guards, pagans, zombies, or the thief. Modeling any of the above; untextured is probably fine. A textured model might be nice to view your skills at that also. Keep in mind that we're looking for an appropriate style for concept sketches. Style isn't quite as important for modeling, but it still plays a factor. If you are unfamiliar with the kinds of things we're looking for, make sure you've played through at least the first couple Thief games

Lies. I didn't make it up. I just know Thief 1 very well. There's a few conversations in T1 that relate to Hammers being very powerful long time ago in the city. No shoulder plates? and these are what? Try carrying a heavy hammer on your shoulder or swinging it from your shoulder. Chain mail isn't as good for such work. You need some metal shoulder plates to support it! More T1 concept art: (look at the thick plating around the neck, once again so you don't break your neck with the hammer) http://www.thief-thecircle.com/media/paint...darkposter2.jpg Thief 3 Hammerite concept art- (once again, heavy shoulder plating) http://208.49.149.120/Files/ThiefSeries/t3...hammer-safe.jpg There were no cloaks in game cause they were TOO LAZY to implement them, but there were cloaks in the T1 concept art.

Any particular opposition to me posting this as Work In Progress on CGTalk.com? I don't have too much hope for any real crits, as I have bad luck with those, but it'd be nice to get some feedback on it as I'm doing the real hard work. But if you want to keep this in-house till it's done, that's cool. Edit: Whoops - re: Springheel's concern about visibility, the model will be the same for other thieves in-game (there were a few in T2), so it'll still be usable for that. Plus, a nice, superawesome thief model should generate some buzz/interest.

Looks awesome! Will you be wanting a colour version soon? Also, before we do a highpoly version, do we actually need one for the game? Will we see anything other than the hands?

This might be true, but what is their function now? They guard the churches and the property owned by the church. I don't know how you know this, but I'm going by the art that is actually in (or used by) the game. The T1/2 armour is late-medieval. The T3 armour is lighter and less modern. None of them look arcane to me. Says who? None of the hammerite pictures I have ever seen have had them with cloaks. The T3 hammers did not have shoulder plates, and I'm not sure the T1/2 did either. If you have access to some Thief reference pictures that I don't, please share them.

I have anim8or that I use to design objects/characters in Thief, and I've been told it's useless for Doom 3. I read somewhere that people use 3dsmax to make objects for Doom 3, but that you need lightwave to get them into the game. So what exactly would I need to get my own objects into Doom 3? Wouldn't it be better just to learn Lightwave and forget 3dsmax?

I'm not a music guy, so get your salt grains ready. I think these sound pretty good. Nice, quiet background ambience style tunes. The first one is nice, although the exact tone of the piano gave me a different 'feeling' than I would expect in the game. A little more light and airy that I would expect, but not bad altogether The second one is also nice. Defintely more ambiance than music. I was with it all the way till the end, where some of the sounds became a little too rythmic, and began to sound more music than ambiance. I think there is a place for musical ambience and environmental ambience, but I question whether they should be mixed together in the same track. Triggered changes could work with this, of course... music changes are great when done correctly! The third one was probably my favorite, particularly the beginning. Great, dark, brooding musical ambiance. My one complaint is the drastic change between the first half and the second half. This is two different themes smashed into one song, I think, and maybe they should be separated. The first half should continue into a new movement, but it should definately carry over the themes. Also, I noticed quite clearly the chimes used in the first two, sounding like distant clock bells. Nice sound on these. However, in ambiance, I think you may want to avoid features such as these. On a five to ten minute loop, the reoccuring bells could seem strange to a player who recognizes a midnight clock chime occurring every 5 minutes. The chimes would work fantastically as an intro segment that isn't looped, or a triggered musical bit though. Note that this restriction doesn't apply to all features; bangs sudden dischordant sounds, etc. can fit in with the environment and not call attention to themselves. Anyway, just my opinion, as a non-sound designer

Yup, that is a thief font. It's the original font used for letters, journals and books in the original games. It would be SWEET to use that in our mod. I just modified Thief 3 with the original fonts for my Minimalist project. The other original Thief font is called Carelton. It was used on the menu's and some other places in game. Carleton

Don't use realtime render...go into the game for god's sake. Much less memory intensive.

I have no doubt about that. And while seeing a full courtyard through a transparent pane of glass is undeniably cool, you always have to take performance issues into consideration. You might have so much detail down there that an opaque window would be the better option. I'd rather go with highly detailed areas that are somewhat closed off from each other, IE you can't see inside a house from outside or outside from the inside, than sparse open areas. Visportals can help with this a little bit, but a few sacrifices will have to be made to make sure it runs well for everybody. I'm not saying we can't use transparent windows, we'll just have to be selective about how we use em. I remember a map for Vamp I made that had almost 2000 brushes on display in a single screen...ran great on my comp, but it crashed the game for alot of other people. Since then I've tried learning how to keep something that looks good in check with it's performance.

I'm like "Why wasnt the mask in the original game??" That's how much I support it. Look at what Ninja wear. Only just the eyes are visible. Cause white skin really glows in the dark. I've always wondered why Garrett never bothered with a face mask. And then of course, it's easier to implement... When something has this many good reasons, it's a sign.

I mean how would you get your own into the game?

I sent a PM to Friendly today. He's the admin of thief2.de and a works as a professional game developer. He was interested in our mod, however he just starts modelling - normally he does leveldesign and textures. but I believe he would be able to do some furniture and stuff.

Okay, I've started resizing and once again have come to realise just how freakishly small everything is supposed to be in the game... 512x512 isn't a massive texture by UT2k4 standards....but Doom 3 shrinks everything down to an obscenely small size that we might as well reduce the sizes down to 256x256 just to make everything easier to fit... Just check this out... That's the actual size of the texture vs. how big it needs to be. An amazing difference if you ask me.

Gonna play devils advocate for a sec... The Thief 3 SDK can have levels at least almost as large as what we saw in Thief 2 assuming that ISA didn't build a memory cap into the editor itself...which I don't believe they did. But for everthing else Doom 3 is a much better engine. Considering how versatile the SDK is apparently gonna be, it doesn't seem to be a matter of if the engine can handle a Thief-like game, but rather if we have the skills necessary to make it handle it. Course if there is one thing the TTLG crew is good at it's making some amazing stuff with clunky and limited tools, if the T3 editor is released we'll see some great FM's no matter how awesome or crappy it is. But no matter what happens we'll still be over here working on Darkmod simply...well...I guess cuz we want to and it's fun.

Quake 3's Source was never released. Wolf 3d, all of the Doom's, hexen 2 and Quake 2 have. We are discussing Game Source, which is the source that comes with the SDK's, not the full engine source itself. From what I have read. Quake 3 MIGHT be GPLed by the end of 2004.

Hey there Subjective Effect! Good to see you popping in. Even if there were to be a Thief DS level editor I don't think it should deter us from our goal. Thief deadly shadows is a fun game, but in many ways it lacks a certain thiefness. The early concept shots that we have on display here have captured the look of the previous games but with updated graphics. I think once things fall into place with the SDK the atmosphere will follow. It already seems to be there in the screen shots. Since I'm in early prep for a Thief 2 fan mission I'm primed to get some voice sets done for the Dark Mod. I'm thinking I'll do two versions as I'm recording to save some time and that way should a Deadly shadows editor ever arrive they can be used just as easily with that.

The problem with T3 is, that they changed the palette, they changed the look and feel of the houses and they changed the mood. Basically they changed the entire artistic style. It is consistent throughout the game but not consistent with the series. Actually this warm glowing feeling is one of the things I always loved in T1/T2. I just loved just to walk though some manors because of that.

Renz: Nice as your room is, and 1337 though your skillz be, there are some problems. Did you test the map in game mode? You can't have done, seeing as it is not buildable in it's current state. Even though I added an end wall, it still 'leaked', because the other walls were too thin. Make them thicker. And no gaps. Also, the scale is a bit off, as seen here: I know walk-in fireplaces might be considered a luxury. Anyway, otherwise it looks great. Put in a scientist for Great Scalability.

Oh god, not the sword vs dagger again. The size argument just doesn't work, since we also have a thief walking around with a longbow and quiver full of arrows, and who can carry a dozen goblets, plates and paintings around with him on missions. No one is talking about having a thief with a five foot broadsword, either. But a short sword makes sense (and is also the classic D&D Thief weapon, btw). Arguments for a (small) sword: 1. Continuity. Two of the three Thief Games have Garrett using a sword. (and interestingly enough, even in T3 the other Thieves in the game had swords) 2. Versatility. Garrett doesn't just break into houses, he also travels through underground ruins, crypts and pagan forests. Any character who risks battling zombies, giant spiders, treebeasts and burricks is going to want something longer than a dagger. 3. Gameplay. Fighting with a dagger comes down to clicking fast and circle-strafing. In terms of gameplay it was not enjoyable at all, at least for me. The sword fighting in T1&2 allowed for parrying and fencing, and was more fun to do. Now, I suppose we could allow for both options...although I can't think of a situation where a dagger would be preferable to either a short sword or a blackjack. But please, if we decide not to use a sword, let's not do it because it's "realistic".

I've got your ceiling in the game, but I can't seem to get it to fit in with the rest of the room. That style of ceiling is great for rooms with only a little emblishment along the walls, otherwise the tiles conflict with the positions of the posts and it starts looking funky (I'm pretty anal when it comes to mapping...in case you can't tell ). I'm gonna try and do it with different layers of tiles, smaller ones along the edge and bigger ones towards the center so it'll line up properly. Edit: ere we go The normalmap needs a bit more depth to flesh it out, but it looks alright. The ceiling looks too flat in comparison to the rest of the room, though. I'll have to fix that up.

Yup, Dom, Blackthief needs to get the game so he can have as much fun with it as I am. Yet another quick update, this time with BT's blue windows in tow. I really need to learn how to make light materials, once I do I could get the shadows being cast on the floor to mimic the window perfectly and get a nice crosshatch shadow setup going on.. Whoop But as it is it looks pretty alright. Needs furniture and light fixtures...and a ceiling still...and maybe some more tweaks on the lighting...but anway, there it is.

It looks good. Much more professional then the other one. Actually I thought the other one is just a draft release to give an impression. I wouldn't take it as our banner because it doesn't looks good enough for that. While this one looks much better, from the quality point of view, I don't really like it as our Thief banner. It reminds me more of a kind of Prince Of Persia game and doesn't invoke Thief for me. Regarding this the other banner fits better. Maybe if you give it more black/blue tinge instead of read/yellow? Edit: Just noticed somebody commented saying it looks Alladdin Thief which is quite similar to whay I meant.

I would like to be a tester for this mod, I have a good deal of experience when it comes to Thief games, I've completed the Thief series, and I'm also dedicated to playing Thievery Ut a Multiplayer game. So Thanks for hearing me out, hope I could be of assistance.