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I searched the forum on loot values but didn't really come up with much. Probably not a huge deal at this point but probably needs looked into by the team before release. I'm adding loot defs so I thought I'd post my thoughts. Obviously the main thing we are aiming for in loot is the ability to easily recognize it. Values : seems to be the one factor that is most important. I've added alot of skins to the loot.def file. I did this so we get consistant loot values. Other wise the author would create a gold ring and have to choose a skin and change the value for a silver ring. Of course we can't stop an author from choosing any value they want, but most likely will stick to convention if it's easy. Probably the most important reason to have standard loot values is for the players. Often times at TTLG someone would be looking for that last 75 gold. It was easy for someone to say: gold goblets are 75, look here and there, a coin stack and a plate would be 75, ect... Anyone can double check my values and give input. Basically on things like rings and coins silver = 1/2 gold. Also I tried to make diamonds the most expensive with emeralds second, opals, down to less precious gems like amethyst. I didn't change any existing values, just tried to base ne values off of the existing items. Moveable/Static Loot : In my forums search I came across a thread or two talking about this. I think this is old news but would like to hear what you all currently think about it. I think at one point the team wasn't sure if it should move or not, due to explosions blowing it out of reach, whether or not the mover would work with loot, ect... All these issues seem to have passed so I suggest we get rid of static loot, is there a reason to still have these entities? (other than it already being used in maps?) With the exception of the scepter, statue loot, religious symbol and the diamond all of the loot models have collision models. I can add collision for the scepter and the statue as they are ase. The diamond needs retex so I can do that and add collision, although it will then be an ase. Someone else will need to add collision to the religious obj. I think bonehoard has some static loot which would be better as moveable anyway. I couldn't reach so I shot 10 arrows and it never budged. It was a gold vase which doesn't appear in the loot list but should. I suppose angua just added loot props for that map. Also, I'd like to get more opinions on the gem textures. I want to replace the diamond and ruby textures of old with these. I've got one thumbs up so far (from PinkDot?) the big blue thing is my diamond, the little white thing is the old one. of course there are several sizes... The tex on far right is meant to replace the ruby (small red next to large red) The red on left turns out to be a bonehoard specific shader. --EDIT--forgot to mention, the small red gem with my tex needs remapped, it would look more like the large one.

Do you think I have time during work hours to post essay-long rebuttals on internet forums? Some of us have jobs to do, you know! I'll outline some quick thoughts, seeing as its lunchtime over here. We seem to be mostly in agreement, it's just the wording that's causing problems. I'll ignore all that you do agree with me on. Regarding the story - as I said somewhere on the last page it doesn't have to be a complex story about an imporobable affair or whatever. Just little stories to make the characters feel more alive. Everyday, humdrum things. Perhaps someone could mention that they visited a dentist and had a tooth pulled out by some new steampunk contraption and it hurt like hell. Just little tales to add a bit of life to the mission. A sense of discovery - As I said they don't all have to be 'finding the lost city' style moments. Chopping down a banner to find an alcove, or something. I'd be suprised to find an old house without anything to find it it. Anticipation - Why should this kill the suprise? What the player finds where he's going doesn't have to be what he thought was going to be there. A twist - We'll just haveto agree to disagree on this one. But as I said before twists don't have to be big. Personally I enjoy 'em. Originality - Team members don't want me to discuss this. Keep it human - Agree to disagree. I don't like zombies and bug beasts. It's not much of a sneaking game if they just walk after you when you're caught. Haunts are fine because at least they involve some sneaking. Each to his own I guess. Rewarding Loot - As I said before realistic placement of loot and loot as a reward aren't mutually exclusive. Loot would be in hard to get areas - whoever owns the house doesn't want thieves and servants getting them after all. The loot would be where the guards are. Anyway, I think this disagreement is best resolved through the medium of level building!

Thought it would be good to move this to the public forums.

I tested them in an empty room. The goal was to test the effect of a number of meshes, so I wanted to eliminate any other considerations. The test showed quite clearly that multiple meshes had *no effect whatsoever* on framerate--at least on static meshes. It's possible it added to the overall load time for the map however, I didn't really pay much attention to that. Here's the original thread: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...&hl=submesh edit: the original test, using 5000 poly objects, showed only a drop of 2 fps when going from 1 mesh to 4, even with *135* models on screen. So while there does seem to be a marginal decrease, the effect is so low as to be not worth considering, IMO.

http://www.iddevnet.com/quake4/LevelEditor_Performance This link is not new on this forums (Gildoran posted it some time ago). You can find there some info on Draw calls and Batch sizes. Basically draw is a batch of polygons of the same shader and for one light only sent to graphics card. So 10 AI with 10 shaders each lit by 3 lights mean 300 draw calls. It's plenty, because 1000 is recomended maximum number of draw calls per frame. And where's the rest of rendered map? Springheel - I believe 10 meshes AI are a performance killers. Did you check them in empty room or in full map, with plenty other models and geometry with various textures? If anybody has time to do some test (sorry, I can't for a while) just check how many draw calls each AI adds to scene. There's a commnad r_showprimitive which shows draw calls number.

@Baddcog: the thread where discussion started: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&am...st&p=135335 I'm not on my TDM system at the moment, but I do have one performance thing I can mention. When I was doing the recent AI tests, I noted the difference between D3 AI and TDM AI. The setup used 40 D3 imps, and later, 40 TDM city watch (same map, same environment). After trying all of those AI performance testing cvars (several of which shut the AI down completely, so we can figure any TDM AI complexities are not factoring in), I found that the room full of imps gave me, ~20-40 FPS. That's a lot of polys running quite well on my slower system. The 40 citywatch (not animating, not aware) brought the framerate to the low teens (12-14). I believe the citywatch and typical TDM AI have close to 5K polys. The D3 AI have half that. They're quite blocky actually, but it's hidden well by really incredible materials. So anyway, that at least would indicate that yes, while Doom3 can render a truckload of polygons really well, it does add up. In this case, double the polys nearly halved the framerate. I believe 125k polys is a pretty packed scene. It can definitely be done, but it's pushing it, especially with all of our advanced systems in place.

Got some new info for you guys from official Eidos forums. Deus Ex 3 is going to use the Tomb Raider Revival engine from Crystal Dynamics. http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=176735 Here's a Q &A. http://www.developmag.com/interviews/104/Q...-Eidos-Montreal Just started reading but it looks like this time they chose something that has already been established and won't waste time like Ionstorm Austin did with Invisible War. I have high hopes for this game.

I don't know why I bother, you are the wost debater on these forums, no better than a child at times. This isn't about any grand anthropological conclusion, I'm simply backing up my initial statement, whch was challenged, that the urge to have kids is not instinctual, does not occur in animals, and therefore cannot be instinctual in humans. The conclusion is that it's an intellectual process, caused by a mix societal brainwashing and tradition, the realisation that new generations are a necessity, and as an inevitable consequence of the the fact that sex is so desirable. Yes, nature makes sex desirable to make us do it so evolution can happen, but it does not give us an innate desire TO HAVE KIDS, only TO HAVE SEX. A desire to have kids, and weighing up all the pros and cons that go with it, is too complex a thoght process to have evolved, it's something that only human brains can think of.

The mitten hands are separate meshes so it's not that hard to rerig: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&am...st&p=102537 Not that I don't mind someone else redoing my work

Texture forum, not thread. It's here: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showforum=4 I guess Contributors don't have access to the start-up thread... or SVN in general. Perhaps there's some confusion over which group you were supposed to be added to?

Don't know about Opera, but you can block it quite effectively in Firefox using Adblock with the URL http://forums.thedarkmod.com/uploads/av-254.jpg Maybe there is an equivalent plugin for Opera which allows more specific URL filtering.

SubVersioN. We mostly use TortoiseSVN around here (Linux users use something different). Once NH gets you set up, you'll be able to see what we're talking about and how to get it set up. For repetition's sake, the link you will need to get started on TDM: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=6694

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/17/internet....e.ap/index.html Myself included. Considering in BCG forums I was not a good person and raged a lot. Will the internet ever have accountability? What would it take for such a measure to be passed? When is enough really enough? I guess you can say the freedom should never be taken away and the responsibility rests on the individuals and family. It sure does but could other measures be taken to protect people who are under 18 and really have a very limited view of what's out there? Should the internet be limited to those who are under 18 regardless of content for their own protection? hmmm

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?...293#post1658293

The CG isn't that good, in fact looking the trailers, a lot of it looks like the average level you see on forums like CG talk. The animation is good because its all motion capture and lip syncing. Judging only from trailers I've seen, I hated it, and never want to see it. It looked like dumbed down kiddies crap. I can't trust Komag's opinion since his ridiculous review of the Ice and Fire books.

I'm wondering if someone can help me figure out why the grid coordinates aren't working. When I first load Doom3Edit I get this: Yet...when I click on the program window the console dissapears (expected) and so do the coordinates. Notice that the red arrow points out that "Show Coordinates" is checked. Now, I have searched all the Doom 3 forums that could find on the subject and found only one topic for it. One person suggested deleting the editor config file but that didn't work. (The editor just recreated it.) DarkRadiant works just fine: ~Daniel

Well I've tried multiple times to set it up correctly, but now I'm just out of energy to try again. I'd love to animate the horse but unless the AF works correctly I cannot. I'm posting here in the hope that someone who knows how to set up the AF could take a crack at it so that I could finally animate the damned horse. Thanks to anyone who tries. Here's the link to the original thread, and it is also the direct link to the image of the bone hierarchy in the model: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&am...st&p=130277

The current rigs from ascottk are still usuable. Some tweaks have to be done to the weighting of the legs/ hands? But you can still use those as a basis for animating. I guess these are the latest (top)? http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=5035

Welcome to the Forums, phide. Concerning a startup task: we were badly in need of lockpick sounds and wood impact sounds. Does this sound suitable for you? We would need to discuss the requirements we have for these sounds beforehand of course.

Excellent! We could certainly use some help from someone of your talents. I checked out your samples. Some of those are exactly what we need (especially the page flips and lock clacks), which is great. You've got my vote. We have to be careful about our sources; we haven't quite decided what licence TDM assets are going to be released under, but it's probably going to be the equivalent of a Creative Commons licence, possibly a Non-commercial one, possibly a Sharealike one. Either way, it's probably best to avoid samples taken from royalty-free libraries unless one is quite sure that they're compatible with whatever licence we end up using. We still need a lot of foley done; many of our foley sound effects are still placeholders. We're better off in terms of ambients, but you can never have too many of those either. There are more comprehensive to-do lists in our private forums.

Yes, we want grouping and layering be supported. See discussion here: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=6697 The D3Ed problem makes the custom map format a non-ideal solution, comments are a no-go too. No conclusion yet, but the possibility of creating a separate information file containing the additional stuff is a possibility. The way it currently is, the WorldSpawn is in fact a so-called "Doom3GroupEntity", which is the same type as the func_statics are - technically this is correct and still most users don't notice. It's the selection/traversal code which treats the WorldSpawn's children in a special way. So, the special code for making the worldspawn objects behave more userfriendly is already there.

add collision model to bottles. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...mp;#entry131392

I'm afraid that you need the 1.3.1 version of the SDK. Most of us don't have a lot of time. Greebo is an exception; I am decidedly not. That's quite alright. Forums. This thread is internal, by the way.

I already set you up with developer rights for The Dark Mod and as "updater" for DarkRadiant. That's absolutely no problem, I'm aware that I'm probably the only one from TDM team who can spend so much on the mod. Any help you can provide is appreciated, that's for sure. As soon as I'm ready with merging my AI changes back into the main codebase, I can assign you a few startup tasks. Or Ishtvan assigns you something for the meantime. We have a lot of internal forums, which are the primary means of communication. We once had an IRC chat, but this was already out of habit when I joined one and a half year ago.

There was, but there seemed to be a misunderstanding and he left to work on the opendarkengine project. From where I stand, it came down to complete and utter silliness. I messaged him at TTLG and invited him to work on the Dark Radiant renderer. His apparent assumption was that this meant access to the TDM assets, which it didn't. TDM and Dark Radiant are separate code bases, and you don't need TDM assets to work on the Dark Radiant Renderer...because it already works natively with Doom 3...which he obviously had because he was working on a doom 3 model something or another. If it was another part of Dark Radiant, like stim/response...then yes, I could see it...but not for the renderer. I know, I would like to see it improved too. I've been pouring over coding forums, it's not an easy sell.