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I wouldn't worry THAT much about projects being shut down. Seems you don't have much experience with software development, otherwise you wouldn't be so surprised about that. You can look on ANY free development site (like sourceforge for example) and you will see the same effect. The reason is not because D3 is so much worse or HL2 is so much better, but simply because it is one thing to START a mod, but quite another thing to keep on working on it for several years. You notice the big droprate right now quite strong, because it is much to early that serious mods have finished their work by now. Big mods or TCs are under full development right now and they will not be released in the next few days anyaway. What you can see right now is the normal timeframe it takes for a mod to be shut down. My opinion is that about threee months is the critical time. A mod that can be finished within three months has good chances to get finished. A mod that takes longer and gets beyond the three month period will suffer a morale problem because this is about the time that enhusisasm for a new project will turn into hard work and realising this. Considering that the SDK has come out about three months ago it is no big surprise that we see this effect right now. Any mod that survives this first crisis, has good chances to become completed as well, but of course there are no guarantues. Since The Dark Mod already had this first crisis, and we passed it quite well I would say, I see no real problem for the near future. We will see if we can master the next cmrisis just as well, but I think we did some important decisions to avoid this as much as possible.

Question: If they hit fire again shortly after firing, is the bow going to drop offscreen, then come back up again? Or is it going to pause in the "onscreen" position for a time representing the time to get another arrow, then re-knock and fire?

come on - the centre of technology was always Germany. The Americans have just 'stolen' our scientists and technologies

Oh you should listen to suggestions and constructive criticism. No harm can come from that. You just need to be able to ignore the usual flamewar stuff. And hold your ground.

How come its going to take so long? I mean the SDK is out, you are talented individuals, and you guys said its not a full game but a conversion & toolset....

:lol: No guest bashing going on here. Sorry if you were given that impression. As we said, there will be vertical wall movement. It just won't be with gloves. You have to understand that with the inclusion of rope arrows, vertical movement must be balanced a little differently. Nothing more complicated than that really. Some feel more strongly about it than others but in the end it has to come down to a design decision and nothing more. If we refused to include any form of vertical wall movement...now THAT would be unreasonable. That's really all that can be said about it without repeating what has already been said.

Comments: Gregorian Great stuff. I'm thinking of breaking it up into three files, much like they did in Thief with the SINGING1/2 files. They could then play randomly with a shader or similar. New objective Not bad, but keep experimenting. Also, I get some distortion the first instant of the sound. Maximised too much? Waterdrips Also great. Maybe a tad longer than it needs to be, but don't bother with that, it's great. Machinehum Okey, that's it. No more machinehums people, we've got like 200 already. Growl I don't know about this one. It just doesn't sound very intimidating to me. Go crazy with effects and see what you come up with! Ambient haunt Now that's more like it. Pretty freeky in some spots. You could try to lower the background hum a little, especially if it's intended for looping, since it's kinda naggin. About the tension loops, is there any reason to have the sound engine handle the fadein/fadeouts? Anyway: Ambloop 7 Great. Feels very Thiefy. Ambsubstr Same goes for this one. Very Thief 2. Amb underground This one is frickin awsome. Great job! Only thing is that it doesn't loop perfectly. But I dig the sounds. Reminds me of the bonehoard. The wind sounds The first one is ok, but the second one is better. The bell sounds Bell_01 and bells_02 are great. The deep one sounds.. weird. Sounds like a stereo effect gone wrong or something. The bell sound comes out of the right channel, and the bass sound from the left.

I'm happy with Springers concept art as well. Some of the above pics may come in handy for some details but, as you said, you're still going with the same basic concept.

I don't underestimate them. That's why I want to support them by adding features that makes it interesting for such hardcore player to play it. Otherwise I wouldn't bother the extra effort. LOL. Whatever a "little shove" means. Why should I bother to change anybodys attitude? They can see the threads on TTLG and read about this playstyles and if they are interested they will give it a try. But nobody needs to be forced into such a playstyle he doesn't want. That's what T3 was doing. I hope that we do better in that area, because we are NOT catering for the total newbies. I felt it quite insulting in T3 that notes were literally shoved into my face because the devs wanted to make sure that you read their great lyrics. But enhancing a game means to me that the challenge should come from the gameplay mechanics and not from arbitrary restrictions that are only frustrating in the end, because this will just cause players to drop it.

Hey guys, I've been studying through some of the original Thief 1/2 sound sets (as well as Thief: DS) and have noticed a pattern in some of the ambient "swell" sounds. It seems the sound designers would take a low synth sound in which the volume would slowly rise and very slowly fall and then render that sound to disk (maybe as a .WAV file). Then, and here's the Looking Glass Studios "magic", they would take some wave editing software and, taking the original stereo file of the sample, would reverse one of the channels to make it play backwards against the other normal playing channel. So, a swell + reverse swell effect is created. The files stayed in stereo but had a nice "swirly" effect. Of course, using this would pretty much limit the use of any higher sibilant or formant sounds since they would be mangled by the reversal, although some neat effects could come out of that! Look below for an image demonstrating this process using Sound Forge. It should be very similar for any audio editor. Just some discoveries on that.... thought I'd share. cheers! -sax

Thanks for the good news (sighs of relief). Would'nt want the same stupid problem like in t3 where the blackjack absotlutely MUST come up into the middle of the screen in order to be able to KO. The problem being in the fact that sometimes it would go up and down and by clicking it results in a pissed off guard. Glad to hear it will not be the case. --Dram

lol... maybe we could use that in a map. At least some good has come out of this discussion.

Oh! Poor guy. Looks cool, never saw the movie though. So there's another dream come true eh?

STALKER is gonna be freaking awesome if GSC can pull off even half of what they've promised. Between it and Gothic 3 I'm gonna be spending tons of time playing games. I'd throw ES4 in there but it probably isn't gonna come out til 06, unfortunately.

Yup, it could be potentially the best game ever, if they don't fuck it up with blatant laziness in some areas like the last time, but the main problem area in Morrowind is sounding pretty good in Oblivion at least... 'Oblivion features a groundbreaking new AI system, called Radiant AI, which gives non-player characters (NPCs) the ability to make their own choices based on the world around them. They'll decide where to eat or who to talk to and what they'll say. They'll sleep, go to church, and even steal items, all based on their individual characteristics. Full facial animations and lip-synching, combined with full speech for all dialog, allows NPCs to come to life like never before.'

By saying "we" I do mean the dev team and we are making this as much for the community as we are for ourselves but please remember...we are as much a part of the community as we are developers. Final decisions have to rest with the development team...otherwise, nothing gets done. We do this for free and we do it for love of the game. Just because we disliked an item does not mean we will do away with the function entirely. There are many different ways to achieve the same effect, it doens't have to be a set of gloves. I can't really comment on that any further other than to say, you don't need "climbing gloves" to climb walls. Let your imagination run wild and hopefully what we have come up with won't disappoint.

It's hard to come up with a balanced display with four elements. Here's another possible configuration. I've shrunk the inventory objects even smaller, as people should need only a small reminder of what they selected. But they can't move things around, can they?

This could come in handy for the loot textures to control how well they stand out from other objects.

Come now...we can't give away all our secrets just yet. We've only begun.

dear TEAM especially SPAR (our pissed off leader) Im uploading an animation..YOu can see some detail on lightgem and working style.. BEST http://www.tyrot.com/lgem.avi watch out for (especially pissed off) SPAR... (come on spar you see we are working here...!)

Yeah, with some of the detailing removed, and at that size, it looks much better. One thing, Tyrot, can we see what it looks like with just the gem? Remember that players wil have an option to have that compass part not be visisble, so the gem needs to look good on it's own too. BT, what do you think? Can you come up with a nice, roughed-up metal texture for this?

dear SPAR 1- Code and art is 2 different things.. art is an individual process (there are no group of painters or composers) But in this kind of team we are trying to do our best...Please happy with that.. 2- We have stucked because WE didnt have a GUI CONCEPT ART..Springheel will draw something and we will move from that CONCEPT art.. 3- Im uploading another angle..for you to see the model... 4- It s not related with dignity. I dont take over other's model.It s not my principle otherwise you would have recieved many models based on oDDity's template.. I have tried to do it just for you to see another option..This thing will be in the screen..It must be damn cool..and even animating.. 5- COME to IRC! BEST

dear SPAR Nothing is wrong with me..:I was trying to pull myself out of lightgem discussion.. I told you i cant continue on someone else's model..i forced myself seriously ..That s the only thing i can come up with... But look at responses Im not saying it s uber cool....But when im trying to make something in Builder's fashion it s end up with sci-fi.. YOu guys decide which model you like..Im not gonna remodel this AT ALL. YOu are loving soemthing, spring doesnt love, oddity loves, BT doesnt...Im sick of this Shit..That s why im not gonna change it..It s utterly useless discussion...Probably for the first time we will END up with MOST CUSTOMIZABLE game ever... Our gamer will Choose his Lightgem, Helmets, Arrows.... Yes spar it s damn easy to make it Just as you wish...But we started to discuss about model itself..so .. after a decision, i will or someone else will make the CORRECT lighting response(this is the easiest part) and animation. BT you can change the textures as you wish i dont have any problem with that.. BEST

Ok, here's the concept I came up with today. Basically, there is a hollow tube attached to the arrow (on the left side so it can be fired without problem). The tube is attached to the arrow at the front, and by a weak clasp at the back. On impact, the clasp at the back comes off and the tube falls down, releasing the coiled rope inside. The spines on the head keep the arrow from going so deep that the tube is knocked off, and can give a little extra gripping strength if the head goes deep enough. (Obviously this wouldn't be able to work in real life, but no rope arrow can. At some point either magic or unexplainable technology (same thing as far as I'm concerned) have to come into play. No one will spend as much time dissecting rope arrows as we will.)

I just came up with a sketch that I think might work. It is basically an arrow-shaft with a hollow tube attached to one side, On impact, the tube comes loose from one end and hangs down, allowing a coiled rope to come out. I'll have to wait until I get home to scan and post it.