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thanks for you help I finished it: Now I've to figure out, how to import it into D3...

For something like this I can imagine that the FM author would set the player up in the lead in objectives, saying that the Sceptor is in the throne room. Once the player starts making his way to the throne room however he would stumble upon a notice or overhear a conversation that the sceptor was lost, perhaps while Bafford was out for his evening stroll...while the note would only have the facts that it was lost...the player could overhear a conversation that it was lost while Bafford was on his DRUNKEN stroll of the evening. It would then be up to the FM author to not only Spawn the Sceptre in a different place, but also script clues that would be tied into each outcome in order to help the player find the way to the lost item. This could mean that Bafford took a different route in each circumstance. Perhaps he was found passed out in a different location in each instance...this would raise the question of how many routes should there be to each location. Could be very fun and add a LOT of replayability!

I agree with the pacing issue. We'll definitely be looking at it, but I don't know how difficult it would be to make them interact with their environment more. The random paths is already something we're planning, and that would certainly help. It would be interesting to see if we could create 'AI objects' that could be interacted with by AI in the area, like a chair that they might wander over to and sit in, or a fire that they warm their hands at, or a book they look down at and flip a page. Little touches like that could add to the realism of the situation. The interaction could probably be scripted and attached to the object itself, so than any non-alerted AI (or perhaps only civilian AI) that comes near the object has a 20% chance of 'using' it. This might require extra animation work, however, unless we stick to things that are already going to be animated. I think the idea has endless comic relief value as well. For example, creating a wine bottle that AI occasionally stop and take a drink from, or a painting they occasionally stop and scratch their head in front of.

With the help of Jay and some threads on D3world I finally managed to create my own custom model and import it into D3. And it is already frobable, but that is probably to be expected now. Don't expect to much, because it is just a simple bowl, and I think it might be much t heavy for such a simple object. It's a drab bowl and it has 84 faces. The problem is that i don't know how to lower the polygons while maintaining the detail. Maybe somebody could explain that to me. At least it is a start and I can now create my own objects for testing until I get good models from our artists. Are there any still around, or did they all leave now?

I'm not aware of any door rattling sound yet. Perhaps one of us can work on that. Unfortunately, I think I'm pretty much limited to my keyboard for sounds, so I won't be able to help with this one yet.

I was thinking of trying out some modeling myself, but would really like to work off of Oditty's templates to keep things consistent. I also learn from disecting things as well so I think it would really help to have a perfect specimen to work with. I'll have to try and contact Oditty somehow and see if he'll post them on the ftp. Life in the vocals world won't get super busy until we start recording and that's not going to be until I have the cast finalized....which is looking to be a few weeks away yet. This is more of a ...I'll try it in my spare time and if I suck, you won't hear a word from me about it. LOL

I was just looking on blender.org to see if a new version is available and I found out that there is now a plugin that supports character modelling. I know that there exists a plugin that would create heads/faces based on parameters so that you can easily create different faces with a few minutes. I guess this character plugin is similar but for entire characters. Since we have not enough modelers right now, this might help in creating basic characters at least. Something like Oddities templates. And of course the advantage would be that we would have a consistent look (though I'm not sure that a consistent look is needed on characters or rather if this should be avoided). Edit: I just read the various releaselogs to see what has been added to the new versions. It seems Blender now contains good support for UV mapping which may be good for skinners. So it might be worth to check this out nevertheless.

I was thinking last night about the most effective way to get some of our models into the game for testing purposes. Then I remembered that our plan was to use some of the zombies already present in the game (since the model and animation are already done) with modified textures. I've also been looking for ways to try my hand at skinning. So in a brilliant flash of synthesis, I thought I would try my hand at creating custom skins for one of the zombies. Since I'll be modifying something that is already created, it won't stretch my limited skills as much, and we should be able to use it fairly easily in our mod tests once I'm done. However, I need someone's help, because I have absolutely no idea where to look for the relevant files. I need the UV map, the texture map at a minimum...I can make my own normal and specular (if they even use that). Can anyone tell me where to find those files? I'm thinking of the thin zombie with pants and no shirt (although the fat one will do in a pinch).

This isn't an accusation thread, so don't worry Deep Omega. You've obviously had your hands full and that's fine. But, this combined with other abscence and people actually just disappearing or not being active, has meant a real decrease in productivity. A message from someone asking to be excused for a few days/weeks/months even isn't too much to ask, and it saves us the position of just not knowing where they've gone or if they're still onboard. What would help, in the future, is to UPLOAD EVERY VERSION OF A MODEL TO THE FTP, OR CVS. That way work can continue in another's hands.

I could help with weapon modeling,i have no portfolio,but you can send me some things you want me to model to see am i good or not.

And I wish you the best of luck with your mod, mang. If you need any help from us just ask and we'll see if we can't give you a hand up.

Alright, I'll try to set that up for what we've already got. While we're at it, does anyone know a good 'skinning for beginners' site? I've made simple skins before, but usually just by working with a precreated shape. With a little bit of information I might be able to help out in that area with simple objects like coins and plates.

found a great tutorial to my question about normal maps ...It may help somone else normalmaps

I think the one thing holding you back is that you don't have enough actual game experience just yet. Doing some mod and map work, not just for ours but for a number of other projects down the line, could help bolster your resume and draw some more attention to it. Doing stuff like this is how a number of people got their start. If a company sees that you understand how to make game enviroments, something that plays as good as it looks, then they'll be more willing to look your way. Edited for teh grahm...graim...good wordin.

I thought this should have been used for the load progress. But using something like that for the options seems fine. What I meant was not the clock in itself, rather how it is presented here. BTW: I removed the reference to .NET from you help required posting. We don't need that as .NET is something different and not used in Doom 3 coding.

Don't forget the coding. Well, but this is not really hard to do. We only need to calculate the distance. Or do we ignore the distance and always make lootglint? From the coding perspective we have to do the following. Read the distance parameter. If an object is visible and within distance the glint will be activated. It is pretty much the same like the frobhighlight. I would say that we have two parameters for this. A global loot glint option to switch it off entirely. And a per/item lootglint distance. If it is set to 0 we will activate it depending on the global setting. If it is not 0 we take the lootglint distance and use this but it is ignored when the global option is turned off. This way we can determine for each object an indidual distance. I think that this could help a lot as we don't want to have the glint being visible through a hallway. And you can set a lower distance for smaller object and a larger one for bigger objects (or vice versa). Personally I'm not really fond of the glint. It takes the fun out of searching for the loot. I don't like the loot hunt if you have to go for every last item, but the glint made it way to ease. So if this suggestion is acceptable then I will add it to the item design.

I've spent today reading up on shaders and normalmaps in a quest to improve the quality of my work. So far everything I've done has been okay, but they've been simple surfaces...sooner or later I'm gonna have to work with more complicated textures. I figured the best way to do this would be to work in Max and base my normals off of what I render there. Now the question is..how complicated is this to do and are there any good tutorials out there that could help me get the hang of doing this fairly quickly? I can do basic shapes in max already, but detailing, which is what I need to worry about the most, is still a bit above me. DeepO, Oddity, anyone...if you have a few hints and tips to share with me I'm all ears. Anything you can impart on my behalf will be greatly appreciated.

Hi Alan. I'm the Lead Artist for the project. Your portfolio looks very good, and although we need to wait for Fingernail to get you set up, I think it's safe to say we could use you. The more modellers at the moment, the better, and I could use someone else to help me out with character art.

Okay, who has experience implementing sounds in games? I'd like to know how the sound files should be created/structured as far as the length of sound snippets go and how transitions are accomplished. I'm more referring to ambient sounds and music, than I am sound effects. Sound effects are pretty simple, I assume they just get triggered by the object that's supposed to make the noise But how do games go from one ambient track to another without there being a discernable clip in the audio? Well, I have played games where there's an obvious cut from one track to another... but we should try to avoid this as much as possible. I figure sound files get mapped into the map and as the player goes through the map the different ambiences occur. But what if you want a really creepy and melodic ambience in one area of the map and something more lighthearted in another section... but you want the transition between the two to be smooth? What do you do? Are separate transitionary (in-between) sound tracks created to accomplish this, or do most games just cut the track completely over to the new track without any care to how smooth the transition is? I'm just trying to better understand how sounds will be implemented to help me when I create sound files.

Thanks go out to Pakmannen for the heads up. I've already fixed these problems with the pack on the FTP, but for those of you that don't feel like downloading it all again here's how to fix em.. Having trouble getting mansion/floors/tile & /Mosiac to show up in the editor? Simple solution, delve into the texture pack and go to the corresponding directory...change floors to floor, problem solved. Can't get Mansion/Walls/Wood/Mansion_Wall_Wood01 to show up? Yet another simple solution, go to said directory and find the file Mansion_Wall_Wood_ed.tga...change it to Mansion_Wall_Wood01_ed.tga. Yup, forgot to add the 01 to the filename. Pak: I can't find a problem with the crypt stone floors, I'll investigate it more but it'd help if you checked your directory structure against the .mtr file. Any other problems with the pack, either now or later, just post em here.

I think adding those kind of details might not be that useful...when it is shrunk they will hardly be seen anyway. I think colouring the north spike would be sufficient. If we could see it actual size that would help. I quite like it.

Nope, sure didn't....don't have any PM's at the moment. Thanks for the help, I'll put all the stuff together and send it your way here soon.

True, but our concept artists are just that. They can't program. They may as well keep concept-artisting. No harm done. In fact, it'll help us all keep in theme. Concept art sets the theme.

I don't really see how Da Vinci sketches will help. He did seige engines and stuff like that, nothing that really seem "thiefy" to me. But i may not have seen all of the sketches, post some up to let me know what you mean. I also think that we should keep at least some mecha-style robots. If nothing else, to keep with the steampunk world and the style of T2. I for one liked the bots better than the undead. I think this is another one of those fantasy/steampunk conflicts we're going to keep having. The arrow kept going ugly yellow when i adjusted it, let me see if i can tweak it better. The similarity between it and the moss arrow was one of the reasons i made the white one.

Yeah, that's fine..it'll help make sure we don't accidently overwrite another one of our textures in case of a (much dreaded) naming conflict. The finished and packaged products are gonna use the default naming scheme, though...and one of us is gonna have to decide on the final order everything goes into to keep things running smoothly. Guess I'll volunteer for that job. Oh, and work on the newly restructured tree has commenced. I've done about 4 folders so far and let me be the first to say......blahhhhh. I tells ya, if you need any proof that planning ahead is a good thing to do, this is it.