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The editor is built into Doom3 itself. For doom 3 specific usage, take a quick look through the forums at www.doom3world.org, it will help you get started with doom 3 level editing. You can see the editor by bringing down the console and just typing editor when you have doom3 running. This isn't the best way to start it though. You actually need to create a copy of the doom 3 shortcut and make some changes to the "target" path. I can't remember exactly what you have to do at the moment and I'm almost falling asleep. If you have trouble finding the directions over there either myself or someone here will look it up.

Modetwo, who hosts and maintains the forums on our behalf, is no. 1 since he installed the forum software!

It's the art of discussion Hexen Think of it as a sparring match.

In the last 11 pages of this thread: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...l=limited+saves Though I think it spilled over into other threads as well.

Hey there. Been following this project for a while, and I must say I wait eagerly to see it complete. Although I have browsed thru older topics and even read some of 'em, I couldn't find one where this theme had been fully discussed. If there is, I may have missed it . Well, here I go anyway (sorry for the long post): I think that there should be more than one choice for a damaging melee weapon (aprat from the blackjack, which MUST be permanent, if not this wouldn't be Thief related anymore!) that the player can choose to buy or just pick from the start depending of the mission and the objectives you have. It would help a lot to mission balance. I've already got some ideas and the different scenarios to make an example: 1.- Dagger (don't flame me for this one!!!): let's say you have a mission where you need to sneak inside of a very fortified zone, like your typical Thief mission. A dagger is easyr to carry and is capable of killing foes cleanly and quickly. But it's pretty useless against armored foes. It would be useful only in places where you expect less or weaker resistance, or if one of your main goals is to stealthily get rid of some character that's inside the complex for some specific reason. For that last one, a sword would be less-than-ideal. 2.- Sword: but then there's a mission where you somewhere you know there'll be heavier resistance, call it armored guards, better trained swordsmen... or maybe you go into a pagan forest or a cave inhabited by dangerous animal species. A dagger wouldn't cut it, but a sword would be much more effective, because of its longer range of attack and superior damage dealing. Let's not even talk about blackjack here! I found pretty stupid the fact that you could just go and blackjack a giant two-legged, gas-belching lizard with an enormous and thick cranium. 3.- Small mace: then come the zombies... they feel no pain, they won't die from bleeding wounds, won't stay put for long after they fall down. That makes the dagger a no-goer, and makes the sword much less useful. You should have some means to deal with the undead face-to-face. To crush their rotten bones and rend them harmless. Can you spell "mace"? But a mace is a mace, it's heavy and slow. Zombies are slow too, so no big deal. But most guards and pretty much all of the critters aren't that slow, or aren't slow at all. So a mace could be evaded easily and lose a lot of potencial. Of course that Thief has always been about stealth and stuff. But shit happens. You do run out of fire arrows to blow up incoming zombies. You can accidentally trigger a trap that sets off an alarm and sends five or six guards after you. You can accidentaly wake up a whole nest o' burricks. You can't always rely on stealth to survive. I believe most thieves don't have a magic "Quickload button" to resort to in this cases (well, we have one... but that's no excuse! ). And a master thief always plans ahead for a mission (even if you can't always predict what you'll find). So I believe it makes sense from a realistic point of view... Apart from this: will we be able to see our body? I really liked that about TDS. I think that it's pretty dull when in a game you look down and you don't see yourself. It's like "Yay! Looka t me! I'm a floating hand holding a sword!". At this point of gaming history, it's something so basic I wished that more game devs had thought of. If you made it down to here, thanks for reading!

Whatever, I prefer to be refered to as a man on forums.

Since it is stated that at least one mission (not yet finished?) will be in T2 no matter what, I think that a change over to TDM might be... wow, while it's kinda scary, because it might fracture the community badly - and might even risk HI ever coming at all - it might instead have the effect of producing some serious content for TDM sooner than later, and might help convince people to "come over" to the dark side (as if that's necessary - it's perfectly possible to enjoy ALL the thief games at the same time - I do). From the look of Imperium that I've seen (and drooled - don't forget also that a lot of TDM members don't know anything about HI beyond being a watching fan), it'd be like suddenly having uber-mapping going on with the mod. There would also be contributions in art and design, which as we've all seen is quite impressive. Collecting, pooling, sharing ideas and... and stuff! is never a bad thing.

I don't get this. Are you saying that it will be quicker to do in TDM? sparhawk, I actually think it would be a good thing for HI to switch to TDM. It would be a great thing in fact. But since TDM wont be out until at least the end of 2006 (according to New Horizon) will that delay the release of HI? If HI switches to TDM it would, imo, be silly to release some missions in T2 and some in TDM. For people eager to play more FMs it would be good of course, but it will look rather sloppy otherwise. I've just realised something. There is a lot of animosity between TDM and TTLG but when TD is released they will in all likelyhood have a TDM forum. What does everyone think of that? TTLG is THE Thief forum, of the English speaking world anyway, and it's likely that more people will go there to find out about TDM, ironically. Of course these forums could become like the BCG forums. That also makes me thing about something else. Thievery is by BCG, T2X is by The Dark Engineering Guild, who are we? Just the TDM "team"? Fingernails Bad Boys? The Anti-T3Ed Crew? TFAKOT3E (Team For Ass Kicking Of T3Ed)? Oh, I can do those all day But seriously?

Yep, pretty cool. It's pretty crazy that his candles in this screenshot look a lot like BlackThief's: http://home.planet.nl/~kolk0405/3D/levelde...ll/d3_map3d.jpg I will maybe try his map out later tonight. If he is into that type of atmosphere, surely he would want to have our ravamped AI and stuff to work with for a more stealthy type of game? Heh, I just read that he based his map partially on the Rose Red movie. The mansion used for that movie was this one that I posted about a while back: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&sh...indpost&p=39472.

Could be hyperthreading problem (if you have hyperthreading, launch T2, then alt-tab and open up the task manager (ctrl-alt-delete), right click the Thief2.exe process, and set the Affinity to one CPU or the other (CPU 0 for example). Or could be that safe textures problem. There should be an FAQ on getting it to run at www.ttlg.com/forums , under thief general discussion.

Screenies look basically just like concept art. I can zip up the menu if you want though just so you can see what it currently looks like. The choices that currently work are as follows (* beside = doesn't work) NewGame:LoadFM*/Darkmod:EasyMedium/Hard(leads to hauntcity map) LoadGame* Options:Graphics/Gameplay/SOund/controls(all placeholders for options buttons in each menu) Credits:(leads to short list of names I'de assume we'll change to videorolling credits) Quit:Yes/No VersionButton/soundofffordebug Mainmenu button for exit from all submenus

Any small loot items, like spectacles, golden hammers, or small statues, would be good. You can also check this post: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=2266 Also, if you wouldn't mind, could you upload your new models to CVS and post a screenshot for them? I'd like to get all our finished models onto our master list.

I looked into it, but it seems the rss feature isn't doing any permission checks, thus I can only enable it for the public forums. I'll read up on it, maybe I'm missing something.

Doom 3 vs Thief 3 editor (pre-written response) (From the perspective of our Mod) http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=369 http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=1367 Renzatic's post from the above link (I've edited and applied formatting for clarity) New Horizon: *) We have already extablished that we can recreate the atmosphere and look of classic Thief...something that will not be available right out of the box with T3 and something that a large number of players missed. *) We have a better engine. *) We will have better designed character models. *) Less broken tech...*crosses fingers*. *) Thief 3 may have the jump on us by being "official", but I think we can and will show it up with uncompromised quality. Sparhawk: *) We can support Linux (some care for it like me) *) We can add in any features that we want or need and we know this BEFORE we even start on it. *) Ragdoll animation in T3 is simply laughable at the very best. *) We can have female guards. Pakmannen: *) There is a system for ingame cutscenes. How many people actually have the tools to create avi briefings? *) If we get swimmable water and rope arrows to work, people will probably choose the darkmod instead of Thief 3 (That is, if we get the gameplay right of course). Fingernail: *) Doom 3 map compiles are measured in miliseconds, and rarely take more than a minute to complete (even the large SP missions).

Doom 3 vs HalfLife 2 (pre-written response) (From the perspective of our Mod) Doom 3 has: Superior dynamic lighting effects Check this out. This tutorial shows how any texture can be used just like "stained glass windows", to project a colour image the same way an overhead projector does. This can be used for many dark moody effects, such as dappled moonlight coming through tree branches or windows, and obviously stained glass windows in churches. Try and imagine what someone walking under the coloured image cast by a stained glass window in a church, or under the dappled moonlight through the leaves of a thick tree. Also, the Doom 3 renderer excels at dynamic lighting and lighting quality. The shadows and lighting effects look much better than Half Life 2. The downside is that having many intersecting lights can slow down the renderer more than it's worth, hence, the Doom 3 engine is suited to really cool dark looking levels. Guess what Thief has always been about? Half life is meant for sweeping areas with tons of fights. It doesn't do darkness well. It doesn't do flickering light well. Not all textures are normal mapped. D3 is built for darkness - this is why every texture is normal mapped. Normal maps make better appearance in darkness. The specularity maps in particular work for this. OS Support With D3 we can reach all the popular OS's fully, without the need for WineX or anything. Half Life 2 is not supported for OS X or Linux. Editing support Doom 3 has been out for longer, and there are heaps of tutorials at www.doom3world.com as well as many users with a lot of experience with Doom 3's game engine. This level of support is bigger than Half Life 2's at the moment, simply because it has been out for longer. (Can we back this up?) Halflife has: No SDK yet. The work we have made so far would all be thrown away if we did the switch. We could only have made it so far at this point in time because Doom 3's SDK has been released earlier. Superior physics But the Doom 3 physics are quite sufficient for our needs. Good graphics? Doom 3 is capable of more sophisticated rendering. HL2 clearly looked fantastic, but this was largely due to brilliant art direction and design. HL2 had better art. Climbable ropes (ie. rope arrow) True, but rope-like physics are clearly visible with the hanging lights underground in Doom 3. There will be some work to do, but it's hardly impossible. The mod A Terrible Secret seemed to be very similar to ours and they switched from Doom 3 to HalfLife 2. If you read their reasons, you can see why they are not the same reasons we need the Doom 3 engine. Their reasons from their site (link above) are quoted here, but a summary follows if you don't want to read it all. In summary, A Terrible Secret switched to Half Life 2 for these reasons (and our counter reasons for each are listed): Large, brightly lit out-door environments - Not seen in Theif games Existing textures and models that suited their theme - There are some victorian textures we could use, but not much else Awesome physics - True they are better than Doom 3, but Doom 3's are certainly sufficient for us LOTS of enemies - We aren't making a shoot-em-up. Thief is about sneaking, and very very intelligent AI, that can't be many of them by definition, because of the processing power they require. Barricades; dynamic objects that can be stacked to block AI, but knocked down, thanks to the physics. Apparently the physics can be used to block doorways with objects so that AI can't get through. Sparhawk has said that his swinging doors can be blocked by objects like this. We're ready for the next "HL2 physics can do this" claim. The ability to carry only two weapons at a time - Having personally (Domarius) worked on the weapons side of Doom 3, I hardly think this is a reason to mention, since limiting the number of weapons you can use/carry is all dependent on the mod, wether it's HalfLife, Doom 3, Quake, or Duke Nukem 3D. Voice acting and matching model animations - Doom 3 has enough of these to prove that it can do it too, but apparently Half Life's mouth movements are dynamic, so that you don't have to animate lipsynch manually. However, we have decided lipsynch isn't important for our mod since you are rarely close enough to AI (trying to sneak) to see their lips moving, even while evesdropping on scripted conversations. (Like all our documents, this is open to debate, as long as you read the document in its entirety, and post in the appropriate board, ie. not here. However, the only reason to debate this topic at this point, would be to flesh out this document. Ultimately, we have done too much work to turn back now, and if Doom 3 came out earlier, and looks better in dark places, that's reason enough.)

First of all, i would like to say that i appriciate all the effort you have put into this new mod, it looks stunning. (guess i'll have to opt for the doom3 engine now instead of the halflife2!) I am really dieing to play it!!! (especially since i am on a thief diet ever after finishing all three games in expert modes, and splinter cell being a poor comparison) Well after coming across your link in the thief 3 DS forum i decided to become a member of your forum... in order to give my opinion on some things i would like to see in the mod Now here it goes you might think ! another looney! However some things have ever bugged me, for example the lockpicking, i found it lacking that whenever you picked a door with an AI standing behind would not notice you picking it. (it makes a hell of a noise in all three thief games, i wonder why the guards never heard it!) Now here is something i wonder if its possible to implement that the AI reacts to you picking locks if they are standing close to the door thats being picked (i.e. on the other side) cause that would make it harder for garrett and the user would have to think of different ways to accomplish missions. Another option towards doors is that if the user could skip to 3rd person view he could open a door stealthly and peek through the halfopen door, instead of opening a door full out as in the case of all 3 of the previous thief games Furthermore on the topic of knocking guards out and garrett being to light build to carry a heavy bloke around, i cooked up (read: rip off from splintercell 3rd person) the next idea: wouldnt it be cool to give the user the option to Blackjack a guard or to grab the guard while sneaking up behind. The grab option would mean something like the splintercell series grab only not a threat with a gun but hold the guard under threat of a knife then move towards a dark spot where you could knock out the guard with the pommel. This would then solve the problem of garret being to light build to carry a fully armoured guard as the guard would walk on his own. One more question could the revive BJ guards option by other guards ... as in splintercell ... (damned i like the thief games much better but these options would compliment the thief series only to the max !!!) be implemented as well? Well since i never have played anything running on the doom3 engine yet i really dont know what is possible and what is not... so i hope you could take that into consideration... (me being ignorant etc... ) Sorry about blameshing these forums by quoting/snatching good features from splinter cell, but i really think they would compliment the dark mod/ Garrett very well (and it really was something thief3 lacked in my opinion) Greetzzzz |M|adhatte|R| p.s sorry for the long post

Oh, they could be animated. Here's the menu slightly animated in AfterEffects. I really don't think we need to argue about this right now. As Oddity said, we are years from even needing a complete main menu anyway. And Napalm should have coded the menu in a general way, so art and buttons can be easily replaced. I thought this was the way we wanted it anyway, since FM makers should be able to replace the menu art to suit their mission, as you could in Thief.

They look great!! I especially like the concept art in the background. Perhaps grime them up a bit more and put some other detail in the bottom or top left corner though, it looks just a little sparse there.

Well, I was looking through the concept art list thread and found this in the Menu concept thread. I just realized I never actually uploaded these pics. We already decided not to go with the "Morrowind" look, but I thought I'd post 'em here anyway, just for fun. I do like my "loading screen" image though (featuring Goldfish's Thief pic). Maybe it could be useful for something somewhere. Anyway, here they are (all pretty dark, sorry about that): Loading Menu Settings Heh, now that I look at them, I realize they're so old I didn't even know we were called the "Dark Mod", not "Darkmod".

WTF, are these the *worst* installation instructions in history? I went through their FAQ steps of: install the client, install the textures, install our patch. First off, the instructions make it sound like their patch is a manual install, but it's actually an automatic .exe install. Then, it warns DO NOT LET IT UPDATE! and what does the game do as soon as you launch it? It updates, of course. It started trying to download some 150mb utx file before I killed it. Guess I'll just delete all this crap and start again, another 4Gb install.

Welp, I'm at work, and at 88% of the big file downloaded already (steady 167kb/s). The smaller files are already done. Woot. One thing I'm concerned about: since this is a Richard Garriott game (I think?) then it's probably free-for-all - PvP against anyone at anytime, against your will, even. While I'm not a complete MMORPG wuss (EQ, AO, carebear games), that would sure piss me off if I gave a damn about my character and some leet-speak wanker smacked me down and took all my shit. Yep, I'm on dialup at home. I simply refuse (so far!) to give comcast more money. They are raping everyone with their frigging monopoly, and I think I'm even going to drop my cable TV and go satellite - if not just bunny ears. I watch very little TV anyway - the only thing I like is History channel and an occasional Fox show like House, and the news when it's important. That, and my dialup is free - local call to alma mater. Booyah. "For Fuck's Sake"

When i made a massive open space just for test, the aas compile took only a little while. I think that if the huge area is complex (as in building all over the place) then it will take long. But i usually leave my map to compile while i go watch tv or just listen to music (or read the forums). Since the mansion i'm making is gettting more and more complex, it is taking heaps longer to compile, but the overall space taken is large, but not huge - yet . I think that doom3 was a good choice for darkmod, cos its easy to add textures/particles/models/sounds etc, and it can render huge scenes - i've tried . The way you optimize these huge outdoor city scenes, is that you have doors on each house thats enterable, and have either opaque windows or blinds which block your view etc. something in that sense. Unfortunately i think we're the only big mod left that's modding for doom3. Still interesting why if you ask me.

Cool ~ turning double-sided polys helped get the color I wanted and stuff. But it still looks weird where the light hits, etc. I guess it's probably something in my texture or bump mapping that is making this thing not be clear. Or a light or two too bright. I'll try again tonight after work. I hate how I have to wait an hour or two for it to render. Is that what you have to do, too, oDDity? Or is your PC faster? Maybe only having 512MB RAM is screwing me over with the speed of this, too. Do you render into 1600 x 1200, or 1024 x 768? And what is your setting for anti-aliasing usually (low, med, high, very high)? @SE: Fire - I agree. I'd prefer if oDD's concept was taken a step farther by having extruding jaggies- per my concept art - but I'm okay either way. Water - Partially agree. Don't feel it should look like a big frozen water droplet, for instance. Again, something more like the concept I'm working on is what I'd prefer. It's somewhat drop shaped, but not rounded/polished smoothe. Need to have some crystalline angles. I would like it if my concept had an inner pocket to house the water effects, like TDS' concept art, but my model doesn't yet show this. That's my next step for practice. Gas - Sure. I think TDS' Concept Art - Crystals was half-way there. (Notice the water arrow's inner-pocket, too. Moss - Woulnd't really be my preference.

Well your colours are good Same as the concept art.

A lot of societies would be baffled and disturbed by the extreme levels of individualism displayed by modern Western societies - there was a time when people were expected to put their society first, but now in the cult of the individual, it is expected that people will look out for number one, and screw everyone else. This is unfortunate, because a cohesive, stable civilisation demands that people cede their individuality to a large degree (at least in public) to the greater good of society. This is why democracy is starting to fail in countries like the USA and Australia for example: because we pursue our own interests without regard to how our actions affect others, and each of us develops wildly divergent interests, we lack the cohesiveness and comonality, the shared outlook that makes democracy work. The freedom to be and individual comes with it the responsibility to show restraint and curb excesses of individualism, and to be mindful that you are a lesser part of a greater whole. What does this have to do with Rikyu? Well, he was dividing his loyalties in a way that was a no-win situation: to the Hideyoshi he was putting his individualism above the stability of his society, and was threatening to cause turmoil and dissent through his art. But from his perspective, it was his duty to his art and himself to express himself honestly and with integrity. So he couldn't live with himself by being respectful to his society (or more specifically, the power structures of that society), and he couldn't be true to himself and be allowed to live by his society. Basically, it show what happens when people are unable to compromise, to reach the common ground that binds a society together, and by killing himself, Rikyu took the only option available to him that approximated the common ground neither he nor the Hideyoshi could find. Well, I am not suggesting that we go to the extreme level of denying the individual as the mediaeval Japanese did, but people need to need to keep in mind the balance between their interests and the interests of others, and be willing to compromise, if we want have a functional society, and to avoid backing ourselves into stupid corners like poor Rikyu...