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heeeey, that's pretty sweet! Well hell, i guess your choice now is if you want to be a beta mapper or a team member. The only differences are: Team Members: *Always have access to most recent mod crap *Have sort of a deadline - for example: when we make our campaign us mappers will have to crank out levels like they're cheeseburgers *Are LEETER (jk ) *Usually have to be quite active on forums (ie: not disappear for years) Beta Mappers: *Get Builds rather then constant access *No deadline - they are doing just their own things for themselves - their own fm's rather then predetermined things *No obligation to be super active but feedback is expected from them, such as bugs possible improvements etc Both: *Both take part in making tutorials for FM-making directly related to DarkMod. They don't need to do this but it helps if they discover a new way of doing things and document it for the whole community to use in the future *Give their resources to the DarkMod team to be packed with the mod so there are more models etc to use upon release (no point keeping a model to yourself - plus it's part of the agreement of joining the team - whatever you create you have rights over but the community is free to use it only for DarkMod related missions or tools etc [i don't know if it encompasses T1/2/3 too]) Basically now you have to choose which suits you better. I have spare time usually quite regularly, so I have enough time to be a Team Member, but if you have very sparse time then it might be a better idea to join the beta mappers. None is better then the other, just depends how much time you are willing to spend into TDM. Once you choose NH or Spar or whoever will give you the correct privileges etc. Welcome on board wherever you choose @NH: I'm expecting he's coming on board - he's good at mapping AND modelling - which is excellent

what happens from here then? btw IF i should get time again in the near future, at the moment time is valuable and mainely used up for University, i might even start to map again i have a long history of mapping, to show some of my older work for various games check out http://hive-dev.net/flix/maps/

Hello and welcome to the TDM forums I'm glad to be able to tell you that mantling is already finished (and is extremely good, much better then in thief 1/2 or 3) AI is in development and so far they're going great We have several Team Mappers and several Beta Mappers atm so if you wish to apply for a position in either please send an application to recruiting@thedarkmod.com and New Horizon should get back to you soon. Well, the SDK allows many things except access to the renderer, however you can do many many things with scripts. You can make a script for a map to make for example a monster appear after a certain time somewhere etc. So in general, D3's scripting is very good. Hope that answers your questions

hehe, on the Dev forums Odd can be reasonable, but also the same as here. Plus i recall a few times when he was level headed here.

I have on my wall a Darwinia poster from the Temple cutscene from Introversion. I have it because the in game art is so beautiful it deserves to be seen in big, lots. I reckon you should sell posters of some good screenshots. In my mind I picture one like the long corridors of the Museum of TDS, where that game looked best, loads of detail and style (I reckon your artwork'll be up to it) and a guard at one end, just like in gameplay minus the HUD and englarged, in hi-res. That would look cool. Or some kind of rooftop scene'd be cool. I'd pay about £5 or even £10 if it was really good, have it mail ordered. Darwinia one was £5 minus p and p. Could be a real earner if you get enough people interested.

I think further discussion on starforce should be in a starforce thread. That topic is totally going to take control of this thread and is easily worth it's own thread. Go here; http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=3435

Hi and welcome to the forums Those cars and shotguns are very nice in regards to detail very very nice. As to a modelling position, we could use good modellers afaik (NH will top up the details hopefully) but our biggest problem atm is that we don't have too many skinners. BTW, that Audi is very sweet

I dont' know, it's probably has something to do with smoothing errors. I dn't use max or the max exporter, so you'd be better asking o nthe doom3world forums. The guy who wrote that exporter hangs out there, so he'll know if any one does. A word aboutt he textures. YOu dont want any details in the diffuse map if you're putting the same detail in the normal map. YOu want flat colours generally. You certainly don't want any specular detail in the diffuse map, you want the specular to be dynamic, not static, so that should all be in the specualr map. I changed them quickly, the normals map is done with the nividia plugin, and it's usless for anything other than small texture details. You really need to be modeling high res versions of the model and generating the geometry detail normal maps from that. I know it's hard to get out of the old habit you picked up from texturing in older engines where all the detail is in the diffuse map. THe spec and diffuse maps shoud be looking something more like this, and you get a better result.

I dunno oDD, i hated the anims/stuttery fps/shit physics (if any at all) in Morrowind too, but I still loved the game. It was the history in it and the characters etc that was really good. But I hated how Redguard (the previous title) had at least some movement physics and all and great voice acting and suddenly in Morrowind there was neither. Does'nt matter really, I'm buying the collectors edition of Oblivion if not only because the company has good values in regards to making games fun (unlike someone like Egosoft).

I'm also part programmer, and I say it does have to be a numeric 90 degrees. There are parts of a game where art crosses over into mechanics, and this is one of them. Your solution to the clipping is bad - he will end up 90 degrees AND shifted sideways slightly. So he will not be turning exactly on the spot. Look, remember how you can urge the T3 guards to fall into the water just by standing on the boat and watching them shake their fist at you? The fist shaking animation takes them forward, a TINY amount, not noticible to the eye, but you wait around and they eventually fall in. It's these kinds of techincal considerations that artists are not always aware of but programmers are. The way I did it is fine, and it was quick - entering numbers is quicker than manually animating, when you are doing simple yet accurate things. Ironically, its THIS subsequent obsessing about details that will waste time.

This optimisation can most likely help avoid checking every light every frame; http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&sh...indpost&p=49600 (This is an anchored link, let the page load completely so that it auto-scrolls down to the relevent post.) In this thread you said you would check it out, what do you think of it? I don't think you really need to read the doc - just the post I made, to get the gist of it. I think the doc might have useful equasions though.

Well, for anyone who wants to put something into action they would need to look at these problems. The selection of content to add is one, how do you categorise the content to the differing standards? You guys want a specific theme, but others might try / want something weirder. I guess thats simply a matter of the people running the system categorising content appropriately, but it shouldn't mean that content should be excluded or ignored or marginalised because it's unusual. Censoring is another issue but thats pretty simple. Content quality is another, the panel members would need to assess if the content meets basic standards in quality (like resolution for textures). but if the content doesn't meet standards what do they do with it? if it's an awesome piece of artwork but has some minor resolution issues do THEY do the legwork to bring it up to standard? do they ask the creator? do they simply reject it and mourn the loss? i don't think you could have any hard and fast rules about this but you really want to maximise the amount of official quality content. How do you acquire content? do you have people roaming about searching for new things to add? do you allow people to submit content? will you only look at submitted content? if you search about thats more work but it could foster a sort of standard, eventually people will be submitting on a frequent basis (almost like a gallery or something). Ideally you want people's default behaviour to be submitting content to you so you can build up a big gallery. However now you hit a big problem, plagiarism could screw the managing group over, they obviously can't search the internet to find out where texture x came from, theres no guarantee it will be on the internet. Obviously the consequences for distributing playgarised work could be brutal. Fortunately i think there could be a simple way to weed out most cases of this. If you make every piece of content have a public preview for a certain length of time before it is allowed to even be panel reviewed you can rely on the people to be your eyes and ears on the matter. not 100% reliable but again if this system is big then you will have alot of people checking for you. Once a piece of plagiarised work has been identified then the user who posted the work should be banned and publicly humiliated. if however it manages to pass all reviews then gets outed as plagiarised once it made it into a distributed pack then thats a tricky problem. you will need to update the pack that it got released in so it's no longer in there, in which case packs themselves will have different versions and could cause compatibility problems, especially for those FM's that use the plagiarised content. I dont think the risk of plagiarism would outweigh the benefits of the community having a huge content base to work off, but all it takes is some litigous asshole out there to rain on everyones parade. I guess legal advice here would be handy. Arrangement of the content is another issue, obviously piling it into one big file makes things awkward for everyone involved so thats a no go. monthly updates that people can grab can make things alot easier for people BUT if an FM author needs to wait a month before the shiny piece of content they made makes it into a pack and they've basically finished their FM they will be pissed. Making FM's bundle the content they used can also have problems, it would eventually bloat the FM's as content builds up and authors decide to use heaps of it and it's a problem for distribution too. I think a monthly + individual distribution method would be best, an author can bundle items not yet packaged within the FM, but once the object has made it into a pack you cannot bundle it individually (well you can't force them, i guess it all depends on how you let people view the content). Finally who makes up the panel? you will need a large number of people who are level headed enough and have a few spare hours every few days to review items alot of time is involved. Also hosting it online is another tricky issue, a public review system would be difficult to run (think deviant art but smaller). So what are the benefits? well FM authors will have a HUGE base for things to add to their missions, all high quality pieces of work, eventually quality of work is a self reinforcing cultural thing among the FM authors/players leading to more enjoyment for all. The cons however are, hard work, potential for assholes to ruin a good thing, costs for distribution. Well i rambled again, but this time i think it was worth it

Thanks for the feedback guys. I will base the real sword drawing anim on #2 then. Sneaksie, this is the thread where I demonstrated the sword is too long. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=3195 We concluded you'd be pulling back the frog to pull it the rest of the way out, but you can't do that with this model. I'm sure in real life you can draw a longer sword, but there are some (quite reasonable) physical restrictions on this rig.

Nothing wrong with a power triangle, but I don't think the Mages should be in it. We basically agreed that we didn't want mages (and therefore magic) to be very common. And based on our discussions last summer, we did establish that the Builders aren't the primary power in the city...they only have authority over 'church law', and are constantly getting into power struggles with the nobility for who has jurisdiction over what (just like in history). Anyway, this all starts to get into 'official setting' discussions, which doesn't affect the model any. Is there any chance that this model could share animations with the builder priest? Actually, I suppose that wouldn't work since he has a staff.

Agreed. Otherwise it would be too common. There are probably lots of people who use slight of hand and other various tricks to convince people to pay them for magical services (like love potions, removing curses or hexing their neighbours, etc.) That was quite common in history. The reason I'd argue for only _some_ mages having white eyes (either because it's only one possible mutation or because it only happens later) is because we don't want mages to be too easily identified, or else they'd never survive long enough to get powerful patrons who can protect them. Many babies born with white eyes would likely be killed right away by superstitious parents. Those that weren't would be at constant risk from witch-hunters and zealous Builders, long before they had the power to defend themselves.

At the moment we are trying to keep a somewhat unified style to our art assets. We have standards of quality, and a few guidelines about what we wouldn't include (nothing too modern, frex). Once the toolset is released, however, I don't think there could feasibly be any real restrictions.

THe player will be able to drop everything. Zylon may remember I had this exact argument on the Ion forums for T3, which turned into a bit of the flamewar. The T3 team were a bunch of worthless cunts, but we aren't, and we'll be doing it the right way this time. FM authors will be able to flag certain iems as undroppable, if they are essential for the mission, at all other times the player will not be forced to carry redundant equipment. THis should rarely be necessary, FM authors should not have to stoop to such hamfisted methods as making tems undroppable, they should make it clear in readables or other clues if a certain widget is needed for a certain door.

I don't think it is that simple. I'm pretty sure that you can grow into it just like you may or may not like some food at one time and later on you suddenly may like it because your taste changes. I don't see much difference in sexuality either, only that it may be more restrictive because of social interactions and the perceived emberassement coming along with it. It's also interesting that apparently women had a much lesser problem with lesbian tendencies than man, which may be another indicator that this is also tightly related to your social environment. That's an interesting question. Especially when you consider history as well. Would that mean that ancient greeks were all "weirdos" because it was an accepted lifestyle? Somehow this doesn't really fit.

Hehe, that issue is a drop in the ocean compared to what is going on in the dev forums right now, on the related issue I mentioned. Not to worry, it'll get sorted soon, it always does.

Right. So it's biological reductivism all the way. Essentialism - that is, the appeal to some kind of essential "whatness" of a given entity (to paraphrase Diana Fuss, I think) - has often been deployed to combat discrimination against gay people. However your post is a great example of the dangers of employing it. By appealing to one of the arch scientific quasi-spiritual narratives, in this case evolution, those seeking to denigrate or devalue homosexuality in some way are able to strategically position it as some kind of genetic anomaly. The truth is that despite what you claim in your earlier post, there is no universally accepted "proven cause" for homosexuality in the same way there is no proven cause for almost any other matter of embodied experience, be it schizophrenia, cancer or liking red sweaters (interestingly homosexuality is often scientifically investigated in the way same way that a disease might be, which is what invited the first two parallels I just deployed). Genetics probably comes into it, but there is a vast network of micro and macrosociological structures implicated in the development of sexuality and expressions of that sexuality. This does not mean, however, that sexuality is something that is necessarily a matter of choice, and I find it staggering to believe that someone supposedly gifted with some kind of intelligence, enough to operate a computer to some degree of skill, can believe the idea that someone can just choose to become, for instance, bisexual. If you aren't attracted to someone, you aren't. It's that simple. If you've been straight all your life, you're no more likely to suddenly start wanting to sleep with men any more than you're likely to suddenly develop a sexual preference for cupboard doors or car windshields. You might come to terms with a a latent or repressed desire at a later point in your life, one that is not, i stress again, necessarily rooted in some kind of basic biological instantiation, but you will not create one from some kind of cartesian, objective and rational choice, maybe by leafing through gay porn in the same way you might read copies of What Hi-Fi? before you go out to buy a new stereo. Furthermore, an appeal to evolution and the earlier reference to homosexuals as "freaks" of evolution is curious. If you believe that the teleology of evolution is entirely arborial and linear, and that it accelerates towards some kind of (infinitely receding) "perfect" end, and that homosexuality is merely an unsuccessful footnote to the development of the species, you're forgetting that we do not live in a culture in which eugenic control of the right to reproduce is the only thing that affects what is contributive to the "greater good". You're basically implying that the only people who contribute to society are people who have children. In some societies and in some crowded restaurants I'd go as far to say that the opposite is true. There are plenty of gay people in history who have contributed to society and the richness of your life without having to squeeze out any kids. So here's a new question for you: why is it that only "depraved weirdos" want to "fuck each other in the ass"? What makes the desire to do that depraved? What makes those who do it weirdos? Here's a hint: you can't appeal to religion to justify this one. You're on your own. And here's another hint: just because sexual activity that doesn't contribute to procreation is not "furthering the propagation of the species" doesn't make it somehow wrong. I'm sure you wouldn't turn down a blowjob any time fast. Unless, of course, it was from a guy.

So far it's looking lovely. Far better than the bland and quickly ennui-inducing blue stone of TDS, one of the reasons I prefer TII FMs still. And the models look great! Good work Oddity. However I'm asking how much resources for FMs will you provide, like lots of different styles or not? You seem to be going with the traditional Thief Steampunk meets medieval. But there's lots of ways to go. You could base it on England/Scotland (lots of grey granite. Rain. Snow. Wind. ) / Europe (some TII Fms have looked very European, like France or Venice some of them/ Germany for some Gothic Germanic castles/ or even stray to some mediterranean or even Middle Eastern/ North African stuff. Where do you think you're going to go? What would the public like to see?

Not all sexual traits need be adaptations. And just because a trait is not concerned with reproduction does not mean it does not play an important role in the life of the organism. Sexuality, not just but especially human sexuality, goes beyond mere reproduction, it also ties into questions of social relations and individual identity. Ever see one male dog "humping" another male dog? Its a dominance display that uses sexuality at its leverage. Its hard to argue that homo/bi sexuality are somehow simply genetic mishaps, due to the fact that many human cultures have openly accepted them as natural parts of their lives. We would then have to accept that the Classical Greeks and Roman civilizations were filled with genetic mutations, as bisexuality was widely accepted in both cultures to greater and lesser degrees over time. In Rome for example, relationships between young men and older men were thought to be healthy for both. However, when that young man became an adult, at the time of his fathers demise by Roman custom, it was no longer acceptable for him to be involved in such a relationship, it was time for him to find a younger partner. In fact, Julius Caeser was infamous for his sexual oscillations, Cicero wrote that he was "Every womans man, and every mans woman.", essentially calling him a "slut!" Not the picture of the political and military genius we think of today. Such things may make most of us go "Eeeeewww" but then that was their world, not ours. Its being ahistorical to judge the whole of human history, which has had numerous examples of cultures openly accepting of homo/bi sexuality, by our current Western/Christian rooted standards. Even in our societies non-hetero sexuality has has periods of greater and lesser acceptance. Our nearest living relatives, the bonobos, are wildly bisexual in nature as well, using sex and sexual play as a sort of "social currency" to keep the family unit ummm, close. Next in line, the common chimp, also engages in sexual border crossings but only up to a certain age IIRC. Once the adolescent becomes an adult, its pretty strictly hetero sexual though I would have to recheck my facts on that last point. My understanding is that human sexuality is a combination of genetic and psychological factors. Partly formed by our genetics and partly formed by our culture. Whatever it is, my position is that full freedom of sexual expression is part and parcel of human rights. I support those communities who seem to "broadcast" their orientation at times because for so long in Western Euro/American culture (and others!) these peoples have been harshly repressed. Sometimes they can get annoying, sounds like the WOW clan is doing that a bit, and they need to be constructively criticized like anybody else, but on the balance Im happy to live in a time when they feel comfortable enough to come out of the closet.

There's no point trying to work out some big, fancy reason why honosexuality exists, when the answer is perfectly simple. It's just a random genetic flaw, like colourblindness. THe flawed genes are carried by women which is why it hasn't died out ,along with more complex social reasons. I'm sure homosexuality in an animal species would lead to the affected animals never reproducing, since the instinct to mate with the opposite gender would be gone, and instinct is all animals have. Humans aren't shackled to instinct, we do what we want, so homosexuals can still choose to have kids even in the absense of any instinct to mate with a woman. So no, it isn't a debilatating disorder in humans, because of our unique ability to make free chocies, the downside of that being that for a lot of human history it has been pretty dangerous to your health to be homosexual.

Actually I think the confusion has arisen from a different issue. Changing the default "droppability" of things will only make sense depending on the rules for what can be dropped and when - and judging from some of the posts, this is still unclear between team members. I've raised this issue in the dev forums.

While it has been brought up even before this public thread started, I appreciate your understanding of how separating the lantern from one's person can be useful. It's useful in a variety of situations too, not just a special case in a single FM. Setting the lantern down to do other things while lit could be useful anywhere it's dark. The great majority of FMs contain places that are dark. Why should this use of the lantern be limited to an FM where the author has specifically gone in and toggled droppable on? For that reason, I don't think this statement of yours applies to the lantern: Again, it makes sense anywhere it's dark and the player chooses to do something requiring both hands with more light provided by the lantern. You can't predict where that spot will be. It's up to the player and it could be anywhere. If we did make it an FM author option toggled off by default, how would the player know beforehand whether the author toggled the lantern to droppable? Are they expected to pull out their lantern at the beginning of every FM and test it? Or should they wait until they're executing a plan that relies on setting the lantern down for light, like they have gotten used to doing in other missions, and all of a sudden find it's superglued to their hand? No immersion break there. Or even better, you could let them know in the mission briefing. "I have a simple job planned for this evening... Btw, LANTERN IS DROPPABLE." This is starting to go in circles, but I simply am not convinced that this needs more policing than a simple player option of whether to hit the "drop" key. A rational player stays prepared for the worst; if they don't know whether they'll have to go thru a pitch black area, they'll aim to keep the lantern with them in case they do encounter such an area. We all agree that setting down the lantern is not totally useless, in fact it has practical uses. I just hate to see the usefulness of a tool decreased because we choose to baby the player instead, because they might manage to throw their lantern down a bottomless pit. If LGS had taken that approach with all of their player tools, tools would have been a lot less interesting. Anyway, I'd say vote on it if nothing is being resolved by debating, but internally, we already did decide this issue by majority. If Domarius is really not happy about it he can post a new poll in the development forums and see if anyone's changed their mind. I don't think anyone's going to change their mind by now if they haven't already.