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I'm not a part of the Dark Mod team actually, I can't code, do models or textures anyway. Kinda dedicated to Black Cat Games aswell... I'm just hosting the forums for Fingernail and the crew.

Dang dude, that rules. The bow, arm and bracer details look awesome. The framerate seemed a little slow, though, but that's more of an optimization issue or something, right? For games I seriously love, like Thief and a couple others, I'm okay with enhanced clones being released. Give me some new levels, new areas, a new story, and enhanced AI, maybe some new tools or something, and I'm good. There are only 2 or 3 games I feel this way about. The gameplay mechanics are already so strong, imo and for my purposes, that they shouldn't get F'd with too much. EDIT: * In regards to the guard-drawing-his-sword animation, that looks great, too. I especially like the jerky movements of his arms and head; it's quite realistic. * In regards to the content of the video. The only way to make stealth look interesting on a promo video is to stealthily do something. For example, hide behind a hallway corner, peek out around it to see a guard walking, then dart across a lit area when he's not looking, water-arrow a flame then snag some loot. Or use the rope arrow to get into the rafters and watch the guards patrol around a beautiful, seemingly inaccessible gem. Or creep in the shadows as you watch a guard on his patrol or at his station. Scenes like this would need to be created in order to make the current build of the toolset/game look interesting. If it's not possible to make stealth look interesting at this point, then an action video would be preferable, imo.

Yes that is technically true, but the predictions your brain makes are largely unconscious - conscious thought is a much too slow process for that sort of thing, so my point still stands. @Maximius: Well, different neurological processes take differing amounts of time, and while the fastest processes take a tiny fraction of a second (for example, the nerve cells in your ear sample the world up to once every twenty thousandth of a second roughly, while your eyes see the world about 72 times a second - hence why the optimum refresh rate for a monitor is 72Hz), the ones involved in conscious thought quickly build up - add a tenth of a second for each of the processes that occurs, and you can wind up with a fairly large time delay. Regardless of how long it takes for nerve cells to generate an action potential and communicate with other neurones, the fact remains that your decisions and thoughts are already formed in your unconscious mind before they emerge into your conscious awareness. This is clearly highlighted when there is something that disrupts "normal" neurological function. For example, blindsight, where a person can see, but they are not consciously aware of being able to see. Or when you drink large quantities of alchohol, and you behave in ways contrary to what your normal "will" would dictate. Or a tumor pressing on part of your brain that controls self restraint, causing you to have uncontrollable outbursts of rage. Or a hormone imbalance that makes you clinically depressed, and think scuicidal thoughts. Your will is dictated from the outside in. In the complete absence of all sensory input and memory, there would be nothing for your "will" to work on, and you would be conscious of nothing. Even the feedback of your conscious thoughts back into the unconscious is controlled unconsciously. Have you ever done something and wondered why you did it? This is the illusion of self control, the illusion that you have a disninct will, breaking down. Free will is an illusion, a pleasant one granted, but an illusion nonetheless. We have no more free will than a worm does, just more complex neurological processes and a tendency to think too much of them. As for interstellar space travel, as much as I would like to zip off to Sirius for the weekend, it is highly unlikely that space travel will ever be other than a tediously slow process, and a ticket to Alpha Centuri will almost certainly be one-way only. Robotic colonists will be th norm, because humans are just not physically built to endure the rigours of space travel for the long periods involved. Even with the fastest conceivable propulsion system (and I don't classify warp drives or FTL drives as conceivable), it would take decades to travel the measly 4 light years to the nearest stellar system to our own (although the journey for the travelers would seem shorter because of relativistic effects), and communication with earth via radio will be mostly pointless because of the temproal delay. Don't know about quantum entanglement and the potential application for a real-time long distance communication system. Seems unlikely, but some wierd things have been done with entangled atoms... So if we travel to other stars, it will be in one-way colony ships, most likely where several generations will pass on board before the ship reaches it's destination, unless some kind of hibernation can be induced in the travellers. Actually, I am working on a science fiction novel whenever I get the time, about a colony ship built from a hollowed out asteroid that leaves earth on a two thousand year journey to a distant star, and the people (the descendants of the astronauts who left earth) who occupy the computer piloted vessel have degenerated into savagery, no longer knowing the languages of the computer systems or what they are doing there, and the ships resources are running out as it begins to orbit the destination planet... Haven't got very far yet, I'm trying to come up with some really good plot twists, like maybe they arrive at the planet, and it is already populated by colonists who left much more recently in a faster ship, or the planet that looked habitable two thousand years ago to astonomers is no longer quite so appealing... Any ideas?

great work man I hope I get D3 tomorrow in the computer store, where I buy my new computer components. If everything works fine I'll be able to play D3 on highest-details in 2 days BTW: as soon as you've got your ceiling we should post this screen in the ttlg-forums, I think people will be really impressed.

There's nothing wrong with the window, looks perfectly thiefy to me. A moon? Never! No time to modify. Springwheel's stuff's perfect anyway. (Runs away with the artwork to the Imperium forums.)

Arg. Sorry forgot to include contact info. God_is_my_goldfish@yahoo.com Or PM me in ttlg or ionstorm forums.

"...but our intelligence is different from anything else yet found." Well, I must say nonsense to what you imply. While no, we have not yet found any intelligence like ours, we haven't really been looking, nor do we know what to look for. For example, elephants are highly complex, intelligent creatures. We do not, however, know that they are so different to us - we do not know whether they discuss philosophy, whether they are self aware, capable of abstract thought. "Rather simple designs can give rise to extremely complex behaviours." Emergent behaviour does not make us different or special at all. If you look at a flocking simulation applet, or a rendition of Conway's life, you would not say that what occurs there is special, as you know its simple rules. Likewise, I think there's a good chance our vast intelligence, while not being as vast as we a tricked by ourselves into believing, is probably emergent in this way. Without bringing in "weird stuff" we cannot conclude anything but autonomy for living things. Extrapolating from that to observed behaviour, we must conclude that our behaviour is simply more complex than its rules. Given that all animals appear to have similar rules, I think there are three options: 1 - there's "weird stuff" going on, with free will and suchlike. 2 - we have more rules and 3 - we are the same, but we cannot tell. Clearly, we have more complex behaviour than an amoeba or, indeed, many other beings. But I think 3 is quite likely to be the case for at least some animals. As for the fatalism/determinism, I don't know the correct term for what I'm describing. Essentially, there is only one path that we can take - if there were an end of time, looking back each choice that was made, we could only choose one thing (which may have been a combination of the choices) Now, with quantum physics it is unlikely that we can devise the entire history of the universe from the very beginning, since things occur randomly microscopically. However, randomness is not a basis for free will. I honestly don't see how "free will" can exist. There is simply no mechanism for consciousness, in the classical sense of the word - we are automata. Of course, it doesn't matter one bit, but with that in mind, we cannot be so different to every other living thing. Abstract thought is a pair of words that have been lobbed around a fair bit... What exactly do you mean by it? Putting two-and-two together? Whatever you mean, I think this wasp thing is probably just a case of the wasp not having enough rules. If you build in another rule, which in macroscopic pseudocode might be: "if ( lastcheck->time < time() + 60*60*10 ) { carry(&grub, &hole); }" then what would we have? The difference in humans appears to be that our rules are usually built up of many many other rules, including neurones that migrate according to our personal experiences. This is a difference of scale - one that as far as I'm concerned, doesn't really count much towards Difference with a big 'D.'

A cool tutorial from the D3W forums about creating new creature models. http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=5133

I've made you an administrator now, Fingernail. Set up the forums how you want it.

Since when was Object making not under Art? Yes, more art forums: Objects Concept Art Characters Textures and another forum for levels/test screenshots.

I won't be avalible this weekend, just so you know. We can make the arrangements to the forums next week, before we open it to the public.

I like to compare computers with brains. Mainly because their objectives are pretty much the same. They are data processing machines, but maybe such a concept is to simplicistic. Anyway, I strongly believe that computers can get consciousness if their complexity and processing powers will break through a certain point. I simply believe this, because I think that our own consciousness is the result of the complexity of our brain. Now when I look at computers, the size is clearly irrelevant. In fact it is quite the opposite, because older computers were much worse then nowadays pockect caclulators but had the size of a house. It would also not work the other way around because small computers are not neccessarily smarter than bigger computers. So what it boils down to, is the internal complexity. A CPU inside a washing machine is much less complex then a modern PC CPU, simply because it doesn't require this kind of complexity. And even if you put a 64 Bit CPU into a washing machine, it will still not be smarter than even a Windows PC is (in terms of flexibillity). So in the end, what it boils down to, it's the software that operates the hardware. A slow big copmputer can still be more efficient, if properly programmed, then a modern 64Bit CPU which just runs an endless loop that plays a simple song. Personally I also don't really believe that we will not reall inhabit the universe. I also rather think that we will build machines, which will do this for us. We might survive this as a concept (which Dawkins coined the term meme for in an analogy to gene). So these machines could have our knowledge and way of thinking incorporated, and may even think of themself as the next generation human because they may run a similar software.

hey been off for a few days. but yeah i revamped that room. much better now. but i havent had the chance to play around in the editor since friday. my POS cheap mobo just killed on me. so i decided to stop working around my computer problems and just order a new one. i have a nforce board and nforce controls my internet adaptor with its nforce m something something something. i dont realy give a shit but i bought a MSI so . i have a AMD athlon XP 2600. but still running so what ever. i can play D3 in high easy so what ever. jbut i will build a new system with in a year. Whats the Ultra setting going to do for the dark mod? i never realy new the diffrence from high to ultra.

Death *happens to* certain cells automatically under certain conditions. We do not do it automatically, we make a concious decision to do it. If you can't see the difference, then there's no hope for you. Our ability to communicate abstract information and passs it on to the next generation is a large part of what has made us advance so quickly. It'd an essential skill for any advanced species. I'm refering to the laws of evoluiton, which aren't actually laws, no, but they are the widely accepted theory. Other animals use tools, but that does not automatically indicate sentience, only a degree of intelligence. Sophisticated tool use requires a specialized way to manipulate the tool, and no other animal has that. THe species would also require a way to communicate abstract ideas and pass them on to future generations, if it want's to reach our level We *are* doing the same. The diofference is that our 'programming' gives us the complete free will to do literally anything. THat's what makes us so superior. It has only free will within the range of behavioural traits and instincts given to it by nature. We have limitless free will. There is literally nothing that we can't choose to do.if we want to. Of course it does. It is driven by random mutation. That is how speices change, evolve and adapt. Random mutation is the essential drving force. We no longer only evolve and adapt by random mutation, we discover knowlegde, build machines to help us, and invent new techology to extend our lifespans, and improve our chances of survival. The other speices with a chance of developing sentience is perhaps chimpanzees, but we share a common ancestor anyway, and they live lives very similar to that of early sentience humanoids, so that would not be so much of a surprise. Other branches of hominid had sentience. You think, I think, it doesn't matter. Their is no evidence to point either way. Like I say, one example is meaningless. We adapt using deliberate decision making, not by natural selection and survival of the fittest. That means we can adapt very quicky where other advanced species take thousands of years. Bacteria adapt more quickly than us simply because of their sheer numbers and rate of reproduciton cycle, one of the mutations is bound to be the right one. Once we achived sentience we forever broke away from pure natiral evoluiton, nature did not make us what we are in the 21st cebntury, we did it ourselves. We are the dominant species, at the top of the food chain, and that automatcally means that we are superior to every other species. THere is no argument to be had. Little amuses the simple. ignorance is bliss, etc. I'm sure you're *very* happy.

I spent most of my weekend attempting to set up a dual boot WinXP/Linux machine, with not much luck... Every time I try to shrink the Windows partition, it gets so badly corrupted that it won't work. I have a functioning copy of Yoper installed at the moment, but LILO won't boot windows... it gets as far as saying "Loading Windows" and just hangs... I'm glad I backed up all my essential stuff as I've had to re-install Windows 3 times andit still doesn't work as a dual-boot. As linux goes, Yoper is pretty good (although I find KDE to be a bit overly complicated - XFCE seemed cleaner and less cluttered, and I am yet to try Gnome or iceWM), but getting software is a nuisance, as I am still using a 56K winmodem to access the net at home, so no internet on Yoper yet. I have an Ubuntu CD on the way, so I'll see how that goes. I tried to install Vector, but it kept hanging mid install. Morphix loaded OK as a Live CD, but without an internet connection it is very limited. I have Fedora Core 4, yet to try. My copy of Lycoris kept freezing during install - must be something in my hardware not compatible. I am going to try having Windows and Linux on separate drives, so I don't have to mess with partitions on the Windows install, to see if that helps. So far Linux has proved to be an enormous amount of effort for little gain - I had a perfectly healthy WinXP installation that hadn't crashed or locked up in two years (maybe I'm just lucky), but now that is gone. Nevertheless, I am determined to persevere until I can get a dual boot system working, so that I have a better opportunity to evaluate the capabilities of Linux. If anyone can help my dual boot efforts, please let me know. I am attempting to run a dual boot system in the following configuration: P4 2.6 GHz 1 GB RAM nVidia FX 5600 SB Live! Gigabyte Mobo with LAN, USB 2, Firewire etc onboard Primary Master (C:/hda/hd0) 80 GB Maxtor - NTFS Win XP Primary Slave (hdb/hd1) 20 GB Seagate - Linux - 3 partitions (root/swap/home) SATA 1 (sda/sd0) 120GB Seagate- several partions - data storage Sec Master DVD Burner Sec Slave DVD-ROM Question: does the Linux MBR have to be on the same drive as the Windows install, or the Linux install to work properly? Partitioning my C: drive is not working (it keeps fucking up windows). I am starting to think it might be safer just to build another machine for Linux, and one for Windows, because I can only get one OS working at a time at the moment. And if you are attempting to try out Linux, be prepared to sacrifice several days of your life, and BACK UP YOUR DATA FIRST, or you will be sorry. I've gotta get off dialup and onto broadband

A giant feather, with every part of it scaled up uniformly, probably would fall like a rock. For the same reasons that a giant waterstrider (those bugs that walk on water) would not be able to stay on top of the water anymore. You have one force pushing up (drag force in the case of the falling feather, and the water surface tension in the case of the water strider) and the other force is gravity (mass * g) pulling down. When you scale everything up uniformly, the mass increases linearly, since it depends on density x volume and you increase volume. The surface forces however do not increase linearly with the size, so the forces are no longer balanced the same way. Think of it this way: A feather is made of lots of tiny fibers, and the drag force from these fibers is enough to give the feather a very low terminal velocity when it falls, so it floats down. If you increased this by 1000x, you'd have big ropes instead of tiny fibers, and I think we all know that a pile of big ropes does not float down gently when dropped. Another example of this type of thing is capillary action: If you put one end of a cyllinder of cotton in water, the water will get sucked up into the cotton some distance. Does this mean we can build a giant cotton cyllinder to move water into space? No. That also doesn't work as you scale it up. Similarly with bugs, there are internal forces controlling the limbs that do not change at the same rate as gravity forces when you increase the scale of the bug. So we can expect some different behavior for the large scale bugs than small scale bugs, like a heavy limb flopping down when the spider goes limp. (I read somewhere that the breathing mechanism for bugs would not work on large scales, so technically giant bugs wouldn't even be able to breathe, but I'm happy to suspend disbelief a little in order to have giant bugs)

I've been researching this myself lately - not because I've had any problems with Windows, my installation at home runs flawlessly - but because I have Linux at work, and I have been having a lot of problems with it, and I want to learn more about it so I know what I am talking about when I go to complain to my system administrators. I have so far got it down to a few distros - Ubuntu or Kubunto seem to be the most popular at the moment (and fairly easy for noobs), and are very well put together by all accounts, but there is a question mark over their business model and hence their longevity. Mandriva (formerly Mandrake) is a very good distro for the newbie, as is Lycoris, and they have good hardware support, and aren't expensive, but Mandriva has taken over Lycoris so expect the two distros to be rolled into one soon. There are a few distros that run as Live CDs, ie, you don't need to install anything to your hard drive, so you can try them out to see how they work before you go and partition your HD and install it properly. There are a staggering number of distributions out there, and it is quite bewildering for someone like myself who is quite new to the whole Linux thing. My advice is to invest in some hard drive partitioning utilities and read some reviews of various distros, and do some extensive googling before commiting to anything, abd back up your hard drive! I have kind of settled on Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE instead of Gnome - KDE is more like windows in appearance, so less of a shock to the system IMO), Ubuntu send you a CD in the mail for free, takes 4 - 6 weeks though, if you have fast internet, download the iso, and you can just install KDE to make Kubuntu. I think I will build a dedicated machine for my install though, rather than partition my HD, as I want to see how well I can network it with my Windows machine. I just wish Linux was a bit simpler, without the bewildering array of options... I kind of feel swamped with decisions when looking at Linux.... That is something I like about Windows - it is fairly simple, and I know what software will work on it, wheras with Linux it feels like a mystery tour that could end in tears if I make one wrong turn. Personally, I had OpenOffice.org installed for ages, but it just wouldn't open Excel and word files properly, and didn't have the features that Word and Excel had, so in the end I forked out for a copy of M$ Office 2003. Maybe OpenOffice has matured a bit since I last used it, but I've got M$ Office now, so I might as well make the expense worth it... But if OpenOffice works for you and does everything you need, go for it, you'll save yourself a fortune that you can spend on better hardware...

Philosphers did take reason and logic and draw up a set of rules around them and make them 'official', but, nonetheless, they did exist before, and separate from, philosophy. That's exacxtly the point I made in an eariler post, so we're in agreement. You cannot build your foundations on shifting sand.

I don't know a lot about it myself but I've heard that the Debian build of Linux is pretty user friendly and robust. Perhaps give that a google and see what comes up.

Finally I got what seems to be the last kink out of the thing. As some of you know a few months ago my 3 year old E-machine finally keeled over for good. Unable to scrape the money together to get a new system anytime soon I slowly had to get a part at a time to build my own. I thought it would be a while before I could pull it off, but after nearly being driven crazy by my old HP (1 gig athlon, 256 of ram and WinME ) I bit the bullet and now have finally got the thing together! I used: Codegen atx case Gigabyte motherboard 512 stick of Corsair Ram Athlon 2800 XP processor Sony Dvd Rom Seagate 7200 rpm harddrive sony floppy disk drive (reused old keyboard, mouse, speakers, monitor etc) Here it is! Special thanks to the Eidos Tech Forum and Maximum pc forum, newegg.com. I'm financially broken right now so it will take some time before I can make further upgrades or buy back Doom 3 and the other games I had, but I plan to get a Cd writer drive first and some other things. Right now I'm in the middle of putting together another Dromed FM that I started on while I was marooned with an old PC, but maybe I can start back on Radiant around the end of the year when that project is finished.

What do you mean? In our code at least, the FOV cone remains the same regardless of alert state. The visual acuity is what can increase with higher alert state (although it doesn't have to). To people who are doubting their ability to enjoy the game with silhouette detection enabled, I'd suggest playing a game that does this before passing judgement. The only one I've had expereince with is that America's Army training mission (the Escape & Evasion mission, don't know if it's even in the latest version as this was a year ago). After a while you get some idea of how far out your virtual "shoulder" extends from your body, even without body awareness. An analogous situation is walking on a beam (again without body awareness). You have no feet, but you know that your collision box extends a little in either direction, so after a short time of playing you have an idea of how far sideways you can walk before you fall off the beam. It also applies to combat. You need to have an idea of how far your body extends out when you're trying to say hide behind a pillar when an AI is shooting at you, or dodge an AI that is swinging a sword at you. This player knowledge of their bounding box is needed for so many things we're implementing. I don't think it's a good argument to rule out silhouette detection because it also requires that knowledge. Again, we can build in some leeway for the player by controlling how visible they are when only their shoulder point is sticking out vs their whole body, etc. Anyway, I don't think we should forget about implementing the feature simply because it could potentially be implemented badly. I don't think anyone is suggesting that, but just want to make sure.

There is nothing magical about climbing gloves per se, in fact Ninjas used them in mediaeval Japan as a means of scaling walls - they were a simple leather glove having a band of iron with short curved iron spikes, and they doubled as an effective close quarters weapon. They made it relatively easy to scale rough stone walls, trees and wooden pillars (I've seen these in action in a documentary about Ninjas - they work). The idea of rope arrows is just so preposterous, that I just can't really ever like them at all. And nowhere in the Thief series is it ever even implied that they were magical, that is a supposition people have made to explain away something that would be physically impossible. If not a grappling hook, then climbing gloves, but please, no rope arrows In almost all of London's history, police have never carried guns - they have a cudgel/club/nightstick/blackjack type apparatus, and even today most British police do not carry firearms. And guns, while quite common in western USA, were a rarity in 19th century London, something only wealthy aristocrats and soldiers would possess, even today England has one of the lowest levels of gun ownership in the world... I would prefer to see flintlocks over revolvers, but it wouldn't bother me if there were a few guns here and there. But most guards should be armed with a bobby's cudgel, not a sword, not a gun, although in a victorian setting a gun would make more sense than a bow and arrow. If you distribute gun-toting AI sparingly, they would not be a problem. And if you think about it, why weren't there any guns in Thief? After all there were robots that launched explosive cannonballs, and mages that fired of fireballs - surely a Mechanist with the smarts to build explosives and robots would come up with a gun pretty quickly...

THere's no problem with extra joints, but no, you cannot use the animations from two different rigs on the same characters. In fact, even if you tried to build an identical rig in maya with the same bone names the eported MD5 anims would not work on on mrdes's MD5mesh. Of course, we could have two different builder guard MD5meshs and anim sets, you wouldn't notice the difference in the game if they were swapped for different anims, but there's really no need for that. There's plenty of animation to be done on other characters. Mrdes is doing the bulder guard which requires a lot of his own anims anyway. You can start on the forge worker or the priest/acolyte/prelate, or the revenant or the noble woman or the city watch guard. Take your pick and I'll link the relevant file here.

It does make one wonder then if the lack of originality is such a problem that we are involved with a mod that’s stated goal is to recreate the playing experience, though not the setting, of a past game? After all improvements or not the core gamp lay will be the same or what is the point in making it? Any sequels stated goals are build on the success and good points of its predecessor. Stating that because only thief 1 and 2 were successful at this type of game play and so it is still fresh is a rather blinkered view. These two games are as derivative as any other fps, but like many fps it introduced one new mechanic an in this case it worked. Stealth to carrying degrees has been used in every fps since (save serious Sam :lol:) There are games that copy thief’s ideas closely and others that take what they need for their gamp lay mechanic to work. The closest to thief is splinter cell this merged the gamp lay mechanics of thief with the more traditional fps. You can ghost almost all of the first and third game, I’ve done it. The only real difference between these games is the setting and characters the basic rules of the game are the same. Can you name something new that can be done with stealth? Some of the newer fps' are merging RPG elements inspired by Deus ex, it is this merging and evolution of ideas that will keep the genre going. A complete new start is not possible for the simple reason that there is no point in recreating the wheel. The mechanics are not the problem. The problem is a lack of story depth. Some try, max Payne and strangely tribes 2, though that was very badly implemented the potential was there. If the stories are returned to the centre rather than as the excuse for the shooting then more of these games will be worth purchasing. The point about an artist publishing their own work and being paid for it if it has merit is well made. However this brings us full circle to a digital distribution system, and why I, though I hate the thing, will use steam. The developer is empowered by these systems to publish their own work. The only costs they incur are development and the distribution, which is massively smaller than printing the DVD manual and box. It allows them to gain a much larger share of the profits of their own works, and in the end their works will win or lose based on their work.

I see your point but from that thinking every tennis game is the same, every baseball game, every football game. The mechanics are the same, the interactions are set in stone (the rules) But these games don’t go stale because setting and the apposing team is different, the chance of winning is never known. The fps genre cannot change into something it is not. It will always boil down into pointing a gun and shooting. But the setting, the opposition and the difficulty and indeed the rules will change. The plot/story will also change and it is these things that need work. I will agree that many fps games are very similar but stating that all of them are the same and any new ones will be bad is plainly wrong. The evolution and innovation in this genre does have to be increased. INdeed I want a much better plot. I hopig that Remedy does it again with Alan wake (http://www.alanwake.com/) Ritual has produced some of the most interesting and rewarding games in this genre, I have hopes that SIN2 will build on this. If valve were doing it I don’t know if I would be at excited. Yes they know how to rework an ID engine and call it their own, and yes they make a good facial system but their plotting is full of hole's and their endings are right of seventies TV sci-fi. I hope you didnt take offence with my above post I reread it just now and It could read as a bit rude, which I didnt intend.