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The thievery community has heard (EDIT2:http://forums.blackcatgames.com/showthread.php?t=5086), but the last time I went there was a while. Also, it was made for mainly personal use and anyone wanting it is free to use it/change it/etc, not that I care. Just that since I changed so much, a lot of people here wanted those kind of changes so I thought, hey waht the hell, and so that's why you hear about it. Don't worry, it's not like I'm against the Thievery community anyway (I play Thievery very often, though not lately), so yeah. BTW, when I made it, it was made to balance a 1-on-1 thief vs guard LAN-Play with my bro, so there is no good balance in multiplayer. EDIT: Yeah, I know that the sounds are copyrighted (probably), but it just isn't the same without them . I am not trying to be illegal anyway . Just wanted to share the spoils --Dram

Actually Dennis Nixon (DenTheef), Modetwo just supplies the lovely forums. It's due to both of them that we're still here!

Not sure, I've never come up accross that particular problem. Might be best to visit http://ttlg.com/forums and check the FAQ. If someone else has experienced the problem, it's likely there.

Yeah. As I said. Gamewise it is really good. I just found out how to continue and now I'm chased and this is already quite nice. But still. Apart from the characters t is not THAT exciting technically. Well, I usally prefer gameplay over eye candy so I have no problems with this.

That's a cool take on them, Saxmeister. With them floating, they can gracefully float in or out of a scene. Gives them a sort of "heir apparence" to them. I suck with cliches, so I have no clue if that's the right one You know what I'm trying to say, ROFL. EDIT: Dude, just went over to the TTLG forums and someone wrote something about an "air of mystery." Heh. Please toss this cliche into my above description also. Thank you very much.

I couldn't give a damn about hockey. I haven't never really been keen on any sports. Yes, call me a nerd. I've no life. Maybe that's why I'm writing on these forums.

dear Kris ! HEY i just noticed ...Thanks for stopping by...I dont know what to say.. I m about to finish that Lost souls.. status report to Phobos Mod from the DARK mod forums...But HEY accept me as i am.....I have three sides in my brain. 1-Thief side... the DARK MOD 2-Sci Fi side...Phobos MOD..(Im the only guy here actually fell in love with DOOM3) 3-........side... .......... MOD... Wait for 31 th of JAN. Finger! calm down..i cant help it!.. i have to make a teaser every month otherwise Life is becoming BORING and DULL.. Kris I am definetly so happy that you loved the thief...Every thief player acting like a evangelist and spreading the word of thief... so ... it s your turn...GO outside and find a stranger....Tell him to play THIEF if he doesnt ..Push him..if he still doesnt care...you know the first rule of Fight club.......IF you cant reach Tyler Durden...call garrett ...he must be in that particular room in T3 and waiting for help..SO..remember we do not have names...we are not snowflakes...(*)... BEST (*) mixture...(**) (**) in case you dont realize... (*) see i have created a DEEP NOTE WARP

The problem is not that we don't want a new HUD. The T1/T2 style HUD works very well and it is easy to code. Since the HUD is not strictly core gameplay it can be tweaked later. And considering the configurability of D3 and we having the source and everything, NH can write a Minimalistic HUD D3 version (if he feels like it) where we can define HUD templates for all tastes with a nice interface. So I don't see such an urgency to discuss the HUD right now as we have far more important things to do first.

We sorted a lot of stuff out, reorganised the forums, set clearer targets, but I think the big step was assigning department heads. We'd be nowhere without delegation, and at the very beginning it was just me trying to coordinate the whole thing.

actually I was just too lazy to change dave's wallpaper edit: oh and before I forget: as you can see your painting-model is rather small ingame, Oddity. we could use some bigger versions as well. and I noticed a little uv-mapping mistake on the edge - nothing important though. @ dave such areas are great, but I think we should really start to try to make some bigger maps for playtesting (performance etc) now. If you need inspiration check out the mansion reference thread http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=1038

Quote: ---------------------------------------------- Thief 1 and 2 are still the greatest games in the world... but sneaking past AI will never be as intense, difficult, or fun as sneaking past people. The thievery formula is probably one of the best multiplayer thief formula's out there. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than most people give it credit for. They should try it. ---------------------------------------------- you should try my mod . (lockpicking that ai can hear which is also gui, as in it is on screen, not the normal thievery way. Moving the slightest bit lights you up to 20%, and walking or running to 40%[this the ai can see easy] and when walking or running, the player model becomes unlit [cos i put in silhouette mode, making it hard to hide in those annoying tiny shadows but the shadows in every map are tuned automatically at start to be REAL dark]. Basically, it makes the game super-intense [even against the ai]. LOL, I have'nt even passed my version of Bourgeois ) BTW, SE, I heard the nightblade torches couldnt be taken out on the forums cos of lighting problems (theyre apparently not dynamic). Quote: ----------------------------------------------- If we ever do a multiplayer I would prefer it to be like a normal Thief map. One thief and the other players are taking over what would be the AI. ----------------------------------------------- Sparhawk, I agree with you on that

I don't so art. I only do site code. HTML, CSS and JavaScripts, although I like to avoid if at all possible since I also use the far superior PHP (and JS is not always cross-browser compatible, but PHP is). Oh, and of course mySQL. You've seen thiefpetition.com. That's all my hand coding. I don't do art though, and the colours are just those of the forums (I thought they looked nice ). I chose JScripts for site wide stuff there because it was easy and quick. And now there is no need to change it to PHP as the editor is on it's way and the site doesn't need any further work. I like this site. But the versions that whassisname did were pretty nice too. And I still cannot understand why you guys don't have thedarkmod.com. I'm also of the opinion that graphical links are bad, unless they are specially fudged to still work sans images/scripts. Eg, on this site removing images borks the menu. If you want to read without viewing the screens and whatnot you are screwed. You can't get to the forums either. Why would you want to do it? Many reasons - slow connection, machine has images turned off by admins/parents/ebil forces, resolution issues, browser issues. The only sites that can have heavy graphical interfaces are those that are all about graphics as if you can't see the interface there is no point being there anyway. Not so this site.

When that happens, I think I'll throw in the towel too. I vowed never to, but if even the biggest modding Doom 3 forum kicks the bucket, I don't think there's any more point in me modding I really don't think so though, cos BNA himself is a modder, and theres still a lot of activity going on (even id developer Brian Harris visits that place from time to time) Sure wish someone would go hack the HL2 forums though. Time to teach them a lesson or something

A total conversion means that you create an entirely new game based on a particular engine. Thief and Doom 3 are both first person, and that is about as much similarity as it will get. Everything else will be coded by us or converted in such a way that is suits the new game mechanics. The difference between a TC and a mod is primarly the scope. A mod extends on the existing game while a TC creates an entirely new game in all regards. This is basically the same thing that game companies are doing when they are licensing an engine. As for the tools. This is not THAT clear right now. Many things can already be done with the existing tools, because they are much more flexible then I thought. Of course we are still pretty much in the beginning, so we have to feel our way through. The first priority is to get the core game mechanics to working. This includes the lightgem, sound propagation, improving the AI, extending objective conditions and all these things. Once we have the core gameplay working, we can focus on making this things a more or less smoot ride for others to use our assets to create thief style maps. Thjis could mean that we just need to write a howto and explain how to set up i.e. frobable objects, or it could mean that we need to write a third party editor in order to setup things that are not supported by the D3 editors directly. Of course the ideal solution is to write plugins for the editor, which is possible, but I'm not sure if we have the tools for this, as Id didn't release everything. So I know that plugins can be written, because Id uses this as well, but if the interface is not available, we can not do it.

Oh, DOOM 3 does not use Havoc? Well as I said I am not someone who is moder, so I have no iterest in all technical stuff. I do know however that I have seen stuff done with DOOM 3 physics which ware at least at the level of the HL2 physics. I did not say HL2 was not capable of normal mapping, just that it was not used, or at least not used enogh. Face it, normal mapped characters look better. I do not "hate" the Source engine, I just say that it is not all everyone belives it is. the faceial animations, well I don't see too many uses for that gameplay wise, and if you screw up with them, you screw up big time (take VtM:B for example, the sometimes sloppy work makes it so some of the characters are sometimes stuck with the same dumb smile when someone else is acting during a sceen. In addition, you all must understand that Source has one major drawback. the shadwos And not just that, even with many fetures unimplemnted the preformence ratio of the game is worse then the DOOM 3 one. HL2 may be a great game, but the fact is that you can do much more with a better engine, and Source is either not polished enough, or not known well enough by it's creators, to make a stable pruduct. When I speek about polish, all I want you is to take a look and compare Unreal 2/ Unreal turnament 2003/2004 to a game such as Postal, they both use the same engine, but the Unreal sires creators know how to optimise the engine, while Runing with Sisors don't. And it appears that Valve has no idea how to optimise Source. The screens you posted are nice looking by the way.

I'm often surprised by how much of a guilt complex some young Germans have about the Nazis. There was a German guy on the ISA forums who was almost grovelling to be forgiven, even though his grandfather opposed the nazis and helped jews escape. I can't imagine what must be in the minds of those who's grandfathers were actually nazis or gestapo officers and were responsible for murdering 1000 people or something. Of course it's nothing to do with them, but they can hardly ignore it either.

Man, I can't belive how hype guided people can be. The (all I do is Flash ActionScript 2, which is not actuall programing), engine is not superior to any of the noteable engines of the current generation. I am no moder, and I am defenetlly not to be called a programer*, but I am a person who is very interested in technology, I am also a hobby site/game designer, and as one I am allways looking for ways to optimise my "products". I know that if i'll program a VB6 tettris game, and use graphics in a way which is not optimised, I will never be able to run the game on a Pentium 1, with 2 mb RAM, but I am able when I am done. This long paragraph, was here to say that optimisation is importent in order to achive a good product. And as far as I have seen Source is either not optimised as a whole, or just hasen't been used in such a way in any game that ran on it. Let's say this, DOOM 3 ran on my system** with no slowdown at all, I would gues taht I had a frame rate of about 30-35, I had all options on(in low quality, but shadows ware all on, as well as "special effects"), exept for resolution which was set to the minimum. Half-Life 2 ran on my system with a frame rate of about 25-30, with slowdowns every time I had more then 2 "characters on screen, I had all options off, resolutin was minimal. I had loading times of 30 secounds betwen levels in doom 3. The loading times in Half-Life 2 ware 1-2 minutes, and the "maps" in both games are the same size. I had the same expiriance with the other Source game out there, Vampire Bloodlines. The same preformence issues ware present through out several computers, every one belongs to diffrent users, and I don't mean that HL2 was unlayabe, I mean That DOOM 3 ran better. Now let's say that I would as a user look at the "stuff" I would get from each game. DOOM 3 has "Real time Shadows", what I as a user see on screen is an actuall visual effect of shadows in a pixel per pixel ratio. HL2 offers me as a user only "Real Time Lightning" it may not state so, and shadows may be present, but they are not real "Geometric" shdows. They are, in effect, projected on each "Polygon" of a model in the world, as far as a user can see. DOOM 3 has "normal mapping" used in game. HL2 does not. "Real mapping" is by far one of the best technologies develpoed ever. it gives us the ability, as we all know, to give textures the feel of 3D objects, I don't actually know the way of it's work, but as a user I can see it probabbly just controls the gamma/contrast that is applied to parts of a texture in any give situaltion. In the modern ara, you can't have a sneaking game with out shadows. It just adds to much, both graphically, as well as gameplay wise. Now we have the Havoc engine. Havoc was used better in HL2 it is true, but it is also present in DOOM 3. And is going to be used in a "similer" (well let's admit it will be a rip-off) way in the expention pack. So as far as Physics go, which are also importent in the kind of game the Dark Mod wishes to be, are included in TDE. Will someone please tell me what makes anyone belive that Source is superior to TDE, or even Unreal 2.5? So, as you can all understand I fully support the Dark team in thier wise choise, and I hope that they will make full use of TDE, so we can all enjoy a quality game. *I only use Flash ActionScript, which is really no programing language. **My specs are: 1.3 Ghz of CPU power; 256 RAM(ya I know this sucks, but I could still run and play DOOM 3 and HL2[not as good as DOOM 3 but even so], so ha!) and a Gforce 3 GPU. I base my viwes on the Demo versions. I am sorry for my poor writeing, I am not a native english speaker, I will fix the text when I get home, and get my word to work.

After Morrowind I am slightly dubious about the gameplay aspects of any future Bethesda game. (Not the visual aspects so much, obviously! Morrowind is the only recent game I have where the art direction really impressed me.) Having people acting realistically is good - however it seems like Oblivion will have the same problem as Morrowind, which is that actual world is very small - less than 1,000 npc's, which would be ok except that the game is supposed to cover an entire province. Daggerfall was much better at simulating immersion into an entire society.

HEY GUYS Cloak has been discussed and decided. If you want to rebuke the desicion, read here first. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...indpost&p=14844

This is something I think we can consider before the initial release. The bow is a weapon, just like the blackjack, just like the sword. In Doom 3, you can see what weapon you're using at the bottom of the screen. You don't need an icon because you can SEE it. If a player doesn't like this, they can turn View Weapons off. And they will see NO weapons. I don't see why we need to make a special exception for the Bow, just because T2 did. It's inconsistant and doesn't lend itself well to customising your HUD. But as always, we shouldn't be talking about things SOLEY in terms of realism - rather, Gameplay first, realisim second. In this case, we're talking about interface optimisations. This is something I don't think we can consider before the initial release, but I'm mentioning it anyway. You can make it so that everything is selected the same way. Deux Ex did it. Deus Ex was made by Looking Glass after T2, and I think the interface is a general improvement over T2's. In Deus Ex, you have less keys to fiddle with, because there is no distinction between "items" and "weapons", and you have a "HUD Item Belt". You have way less keys to worry about, because you simply select an item with item up, item down, then you see it, and you press fire to use it. It could be a MedPack, or a gun. Makes no difference. The use key is reserved for interacting with fixed game world objects, like switches. No need to put your current item away. To manage all your items, you have an item belt, which is always on screen, has 10 slots each with a corresponding number key, and you can put anything in any slot via the inventory screen. Item up and item down only moves through these 10 items. This is better than T2 because; All the items I can cycle through are all on screen, so I know how many clicks I'm going to have to go through to get what I want I know exactly which number key to press to get what I want instantly. I dont have to cycle through stuff I'm not currently interested in, including certain weapons. And in our mod, a hard core user could turn off the belt display, already knowing what they've got in each slot. I only think there is a distinction in T2 between weapons and items because they don't have an interface like Deus Ex does. Obviously making a Deus Ex type interface is more work, but it proportionately more useful to the player, I think. Eg. in the (heavily GIF compressed) top screen shot, I dragged the medpack into slot 6. In the bottom screen shot, I pressed 6 on the keyboard, or scrolled the mousewheel over to slot six, and he's holding it out in front of him, ready to drop it or use it.

No, the disguse option is right out of the question. It completely kills gameplay in this type of stealth game. Except perhaps for specific missions or plots where it might be required, but it shouldn't be a default part of the game where you can use take anyone's clothes and walk around unhindered wherever you want. It was totally stupid in Hitman as well.

@Vadrosaul: One of the reasons why it takes so long is because it is a free project. If I were to work full time with a paid job on it, I can assure you that we would be much farther ahead, but of course we have a real life as well. I have wife and kids who also demand some time. And I think we are not doing such a bad progress after all. You also have to keep one thing in mind as well. Working on such a project is a huge drain on motivation. When you start the project everybody is excited and progress is tremendously fast, but as the time goes on this enthusisasm dwindles and is replaced with hard work. That's why many mods fail after a few months of work. So it's better to take it's time with a steady progress then put to much energy into it and it's gone after a short time. I hope you know what I mean. That's also why I'm really impressed with the work of T2X. Not because their campaign is so good or anytrhing (I can't comment on the overall quality, as I haven't seen much beyond a few screenshots). The real achievment of T2X is that they really sticked four years to their project and made it into a finished product. So even if it were crap quality, that stamina accounts for much more than anything else, because of what I said above. So currently the team has settled into a good workflow with steady progress and continuous working habbit. As it is I think that our core team has established itself and I guess that most of our current members will stick to the project. Another thing why it is slow going is because of the SDK itself. It's not as if you are handed over a 300 page manual where all the technical aspects are explained, and a clean API you can code with. Most of the stuff we have to find out ourselfe, as we are on a frontier. Many things that we do, are not needed for other mods, or even if they are, other mods are on the same frontier with us, so there is not THAT much help. The lightgem is something that many mods, I talked with, are quite interested in, because the functionality is aboslutely new and alien to D3 concept. Same with the sound propagation, which is a core feature of a thief style game. Not to talk about the advanced AI that for such a game is needed. You wouldn't do with a standard attack AI as it is used in D3. And cocnerning the physics of the rope. There is no Havok in D3. That's HL2. D3 uses it's own physics implementation which is not so bad. But doing a physically correct rope is not our top priority at this point because this is mostly eycandy. First and foremost we will implement the core gameplay elements so that the game gets rolling and FM authors can start on developing campaings. After that we can improve the darkmod with eyecandy features or stuff that is not strictly neccessary. If we have a rope arrow like it was in T1/T2 that's enough for now as a proof of concept. You can use it, which is the major point for now. And one additional point. The SDK was released on 15. October. This means that we are working now about 3 months on the actual code. Considering that game companies take 2-3 years even when they are NOT developing their own engine, it should be obvious that we can not be THAT much ahead by now.

We are discussing this a lot, because we have all kind of players in the team. This is quite good actually, because I want the mod to appeal to as much players as possible. Without sacrificing gameplay though. So don't worry that it might become to easy because of that. We are not T3.

What is with the "guest" bashing? Just cuz I'm not a member and new to the forums doesn't? Why does it matter? I just don't understand the climbing glove hate. I'm not trying to make you change your minds (as if!) but if you know that your dislike comes form TDS, you must also realise that it is a little unreasonable.

Cool, thanks for answering that concern. Seems like the frog is the best way to go then. I'll just be crouching in the shadows, working on my 3rd party "black painted sword" texture after we release the first version. Also, a small part of me wants to suggest replacing the loud shoes with cloth-wrapped moccasins or something, but I can deal with copying Thief's tap dancing shoes for sound FX / gameplay purposes.