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If there is anything I'd comment on it'd be the orchestra hit sample you use in the first track, I think something that sounds a bit more lonely and eerie might fit better. Everything else sounds great, and I'd probably use it in a map or two. One thing you'll need to keep in mind is that with Thief you rarely ever have true single tracks, instead you have individual pieces that play at certain points and can mix together easily and produce something that sounds great. Like if you were to start a mission you'd only hear a bassy rumble, but as you approach the mansion you intend on breaking into you'd eventually have a weird warble sound come in on top of the rumble that'd go away if you were to back off and go return to the starting point. It's all locational...if that makes sense.

Good job on the builder concept, Springheel -- and thanks for posting the historic reference material, Alexius. Hey Springheel - I added a new folder to the DarkMod FTP area called "Art-ConceptDrawings," and within that folder added a "Springheel" folder and a "Darkness_Falls" folder. This gives us our own separate playgrounds to keep track of stuff in without getting confused. Alexius, if you'll be doing concept drawings and need webspace, feel free to add a folder there. We could add other folders, too, if other artists come on board. I wanted to keep only drawings in there, but realistically we may want to re-title the folder and morph into more of a Art-ConceptArtwork area. You guys may already have webspace and don't care, but I needed the webspace.

I like what I see so far If you artist guys are using lots of reference material from the appropriate time periods, and making design desicions based on the Thief world that we want, I'm happy. Just as a suggestion - have you thought about adding bolts or screws to the logo, if you're having trouble putting a hammer with one other thing, some little things like bolts could give you more options to arrange things to look nice. After we come up with a design, we should read some "meaning" into it, eg, the cog surrounds the base of the hammer, to represent its power that spreads over everything... etc. so the Builders have more things to write about.

Thanks guys! I think it has potential also!! I need to play through Thief 1 and 2 again soon to try and re-capture the feel of some of the aural delights they had. I'm sure you already did this, but while listening to my tracks, close your eyes and try to envision differen't scenes/moods/situations that could be happening. There are a few bits of sounds in there I've noticed, for example, that might work well for machinery -- especially when looped. The piano & strings music sound used in the 'Darkness_Falls-1.mp3' file (about :45 seconds into it) is very similar to the one used in the mansion level of TDS (the level where you could see lightning flashes from inside.) That's the only reason I did that. And, no! Honestly, I've never played Silent Hill. Does it use similar ambience? I watched a friend play a little bit of SH2 on the PlayStation2 many years ago, but I seriously don't remember what the music/ambience was like. I love working with audio, so I'd love to try and help out with the audio portion of things. PS: I've edited my original post to now have the revised URLs. Thanks Renzatic!!!!

Precisely. On the down side, I'm seriously gonna need reams more RAM before I'll be able to finish this. I only have 512 megs, and it's starting to stutter at only 25,000 polys. If I turn on the subdivision, it turns into a slideshow. Time to double my RAM.

Well I have just been listening to the MP3's, and Darkness Falls has my vote to keep working on the ambience tracks for our mod That kind of thing sounds like it could be developed into the style from Thief we all know and love. I tried uploading them to the DarkMod FTP, but I had problems, I posted in the FTP thread. (I have cable access here at Uni)

Don't use realtime render...go into the game for god's sake. Much less memory intensive.

I have no doubt about that. And while seeing a full courtyard through a transparent pane of glass is undeniably cool, you always have to take performance issues into consideration. You might have so much detail down there that an opaque window would be the better option. I'd rather go with highly detailed areas that are somewhat closed off from each other, IE you can't see inside a house from outside or outside from the inside, than sparse open areas. Visportals can help with this a little bit, but a few sacrifices will have to be made to make sure it runs well for everybody. I'm not saying we can't use transparent windows, we'll just have to be selective about how we use em. I remember a map for Vamp I made that had almost 2000 brushes on display in a single screen...ran great on my comp, but it crashed the game for alot of other people. Since then I've tried learning how to keep something that looks good in check with it's performance.

Very nice, DO. Love the bag. I had a couple thoughts. Would it be easier on you if we had our character wear a balaclava over his lower face? It would save modelling the mouth and would be another way to visually keep our character looking different. It can be a good look too. May be controversial, but I thought I'd throw it out there. How often will the character's face come into play anyway? Also, I notice the edge of the armour has been modelled like a depression. My intention was that the edging be raised, almost like a seam. Probably not clear from the drawings. The way you've done it might be better anyway.

It's not too late to start. If you wanna go ahead and help BT and I out I can tell you everything you need to know to get a basic working texture in place. I had never done any texturework before I started this mod, so it's not really a hard thing to get into. All it takes is patience, trial and error work (I went through 7 specular maps before I got one I was happy with for instance), and a good idea of how to apply depth with heightmaps and you're ready to go. And another test using the new trim is up. Still looks a little plain, need more detailing textures.

I mean how would you get your own into the game?

K, that's easily done..just gotta add bubbles. Hey Finger...speaking of textures on lights....have you been reading up on that? I haven't even tried looking for any tutorials since I mentioned it awhile back, have you found anything? I wanna start getting into them here soon.

Hey there, I see you already have a few artists signed up for the "DarkMod," but please let me know if you'd like me to assist in any way. I'd like to help out with the artwork, if possible. Here's my website, showcasing some of my artwork: <link removed> All the artwork is done free-hand (not tracing). Even though I was referencing original artwork on most of the examples, I can create my own stuff, too. To help explain the 1st drawing, that one was done with colored pencils. To help explain the 2nd picture, the following original drawing was provided to me first. I went into PhotoShop and enhanced it to create that 2nd pic on my site: <link removed> To help explain the 3rd picture shown, the following photo is where I got the original Mickey: <link removed> (I made the CGI-looking background free-hand with PhotoShop.) Also, I did the Flash animation at the top of my site completely on my own. All the graphics used in the animation are my own, created in PhotoShop CS. The sounds, on the other hand, actually came from the Tron 2.0 video game; ones that I particulary liked and wanted to use for my animation. I can help create any concept artwork or finalized artwork, such as for maps, characters, weapons or anything like that. I don't have any 3-D computer modeling experience, but I have PhotoShop CS which I'm very familiar with using. I've also worked quite a bit with "dEdit" (editing tool for Tron 2.0 game) and messed around in Blender a little, but not much. Here are a couple Thief "funnies" I did: "Deadly Shadows": <link removed> For the "Blue Arrows" Controversy: <link removed> I also have a Roland XP-50 keyboard that I might be able to help produce sound effects with, if needed. I think I'd be great at voice work, as well, but I don't have any special audio equipment so am not sure how that would be accomplished. Regardless, I just wanted to let you know I'm out here if you need any help. Thanks for your consideration! - Darkness_Falls

Renz - select a brush or surface and press 'S'. A window will pop up. Now you can scale the texture, move it, rotate it, to fit the surface/brush. So you can fit 4 panels into that space, ensuring that nothing is too big. DO NOT MAKE THE TEXTURES SMALLER. Scale them down in the editor.

Gonna play devils advocate for a sec... The Thief 3 SDK can have levels at least almost as large as what we saw in Thief 2 assuming that ISA didn't build a memory cap into the editor itself...which I don't believe they did. But for everthing else Doom 3 is a much better engine. Considering how versatile the SDK is apparently gonna be, it doesn't seem to be a matter of if the engine can handle a Thief-like game, but rather if we have the skills necessary to make it handle it. Course if there is one thing the TTLG crew is good at it's making some amazing stuff with clunky and limited tools, if the T3 editor is released we'll see some great FM's no matter how awesome or crappy it is. But no matter what happens we'll still be over here working on Darkmod simply...well...I guess cuz we want to and it's fun.

Hey there Subjective Effect! Good to see you popping in. Even if there were to be a Thief DS level editor I don't think it should deter us from our goal. Thief deadly shadows is a fun game, but in many ways it lacks a certain thiefness. The early concept shots that we have on display here have captured the look of the previous games but with updated graphics. I think once things fall into place with the SDK the atmosphere will follow. It already seems to be there in the screen shots. Since I'm in early prep for a Thief 2 fan mission I'm primed to get some voice sets done for the Dark Mod. I'm thinking I'll do two versions as I'm recording to save some time and that way should a Deadly shadows editor ever arrive they can be used just as easily with that.

I know what you mean. I mean, I have never played Thief 3 YET (still trying to get my upgrade) but from the screen shots, it doesn't look like the original games the way Renzatic's and BlackThief's work (in Renzatic's screenshots) look. I'm still trying to work out why this is. One thing that popped into my head is that it actually looks more angular than Thief 3, so it looks a bit older, like the old Thief 2 and 1? But looking at some of the indoors screenshots, Renzatic's room is just lacking the other details and bump/specular mapping that make the room feel more "rounded". I think it's the colour palette. Renzatic's screenshots feel very warm, very fiery and orange. The Thief 3 screenshots, while still cool and thiefy, seem more "over-cast grey", even indoors where the torches are. I'm sure these texture artists know this kind of thing already, but I'm going to make a texture palette mention in the "Targets" thread.

Oh god, not the sword vs dagger again. The size argument just doesn't work, since we also have a thief walking around with a longbow and quiver full of arrows, and who can carry a dozen goblets, plates and paintings around with him on missions. No one is talking about having a thief with a five foot broadsword, either. But a short sword makes sense (and is also the classic D&D Thief weapon, btw). Arguments for a (small) sword: 1. Continuity. Two of the three Thief Games have Garrett using a sword. (and interestingly enough, even in T3 the other Thieves in the game had swords) 2. Versatility. Garrett doesn't just break into houses, he also travels through underground ruins, crypts and pagan forests. Any character who risks battling zombies, giant spiders, treebeasts and burricks is going to want something longer than a dagger. 3. Gameplay. Fighting with a dagger comes down to clicking fast and circle-strafing. In terms of gameplay it was not enjoyable at all, at least for me. The sword fighting in T1&2 allowed for parrying and fencing, and was more fun to do. Now, I suppose we could allow for both options...although I can't think of a situation where a dagger would be preferable to either a short sword or a blackjack. But please, if we decide not to use a sword, let's not do it because it's "realistic".

to be honest I don't like this proposal. It just doesn't look like a lightgem anymore. I thought, that we wanna give the taffers the real thief-feeling back, that they sometimes missed in thief 3. I added NewHorizon's lightgem into Renzatic's test-screen - I think THAT looks like Thief, doesn't it ? http://www.dark-project.com/BlackThief/light-gem-test.jpg

most of them are really nice but I think the white wooden door and the other white wood texture don't fit properly into the thiefworld.

your map looks great man yes the texture isn't perfect, however I thought it would look a little bit more old and medieval that way let's move this into the art-forum...

Somehow my posting was posted with the wrong button. Whatever "Reporting" means on this board. Yes. Otherwise it tends to get everything into the general board and clobber it with discussions only a few are interested in. This just makes it harder to read. We should create a board for every major aspect of the game. I think I listed all of them, but if somebody identifies another one, we shold mention it as well.