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dear Rottenbery Thanks for your concern. Im just flattered... I will work for the DARK MOD as long as this team accepts me. This team is amazing. They are not just my team members but also my best friends. And there are so many stuff should be done for the DARK MOD. And PHOBOS is also consist of amazing mappers and good guys. They are not releasing anything yet but trust me something BIG is under development. If you believe that DOOM3 levels were supreme well ..... You will see their levels ... For Phobos im creating character models (especially monsters) and sci-fi textures. Im exteremely enjoying creating twisted stuff.And hopefully we will make something so good with them..You will see... Tomorrow 30th of January is my birthday. but i m planning to give myself and your guys a gift. Im not gonna tell what it is....Wait for tomorrow night.... BEST

Damn double post.

Well, I don't think it's as simple as that. We're still deciding to give them...a configurable hud. From there THEY can decide what they want. All these great ideas that have cropped up here are idea for the campaign, then we can really cut loose. I'm all for it. I just hate seeing us get side tracked all the time and forget what the toolset is for. Don't worry, we'll have every opportunity to show off and stick up our noses with the campaign. Patience my friends. Nobody is trying to hold back anyones creativity. On this topic, this is a little something I'm considering for Minimalist project 1.3 and it may work well for us here. I took into consideration that oDDity likes a clean hud and that others like the weapon icons to appear. I also considered that the number of remaining weapons should always be available. I think for our purposes the weapon names could be removed and the weapons and numbers could be slightly transparent...however, I'm not doing this in Minimalist so I didn't bother mocking it up. This is solely focussed on the weapon icons at the moment. I didn't do anything with the health bar or the light gem. One thing in T3's favor is that you can really mess around with the hud. Now, this idea works within the existing format of the Thief 1 and 2 weapon/ item hud...but puts a bit of a twist on it. We do need to provide a "default" setting but it doesn't need to be exactly like the originals as long as it is similar. Some of the ideas here were looking to redefine the existing system but that's something to keep in mind for the campaign...where we will push the envelope further and make our own game. Really though, we don't want to be giving away our campaign designed settings in the Toolset do we? Oh, and enjoy the video. You'll need xvid. weapons.avi

Yes, every topic such as this should simply be subtitled 'let's decide how much we can steal from thief on this subject and get away with it' - just give people what they're used to and not make a single decision about what we actually want to give them. That's fine by me as well, as long as it's out in the open now.

Yep. My thoughts too. Shame though, as the HUD looks great. One issue with mods like that is they are SP and so have to have a plot. Not so The Dark Mod, Alien Swarm or Nightblade. Sure there is an underlying plot, but SScar is an RPG of sorts, in the SS2 mold. I was part of The Shock Project team initially, but I bailed because I felt they were too disorganised (and I was v.impressed to see them continue for so long). But the other issue for me was. . . the plot. We had so many plot ideas and no one could agree on anything. In the end they kept what I felt were some really ghey ideas (mostly because I hate stupid science, sci-fi fine, stupid science no). That aspect of the mod is what is causing, and what will cause, difficulties.

I hacked the old shields in by swapping out the hudhealthgem with the hudhealthgemcrack version in the ini's and then replacing the actual texture with the shield. As long as the hudhealthgemcrack texture isn't shared like the red version of the gem, I should be able to keep the shields in for version 1.3. Thought I would share my little find with everyone.

Also, see my post in Weekly Targets (sticky), to garner inspiration for our current theme.

It's leather filled with lead shot, usually. I don't think we need to go overboard on the floppiness. As long as it moves a little bit when swinging, that should be fine.

Dear TYROT, Keeper Orland was very disturbed when he heard those words. He acted quite incensed and bid me take down a reply. I have delayed it as long as I can in the name of tact, but Orland was most insistent that the reply be delivered. I now present it: Yo, yo, Keeper Orland comin' atcha from the highest shelf, Gimme the mike MC, so's I can defend my self! Garrett you a Hater You're Brethren and Betrayer One part keeper helper one part keeper Slayer! You cannot be trusted, Your metal brain's rusted Assassins in yo face, 'cause you gots to be dusted! You're sneakin thru my library, peepin' every entry! Why couldn't you just stick to targeting the gentry? Did you get bored with the lords and their jewell encrusted hordes? Instead you bring trouble right to my front door, Openin' secret passages by steppin' on the floor! Unlocking buried secrets from the days of yore! I saw I watched I kept but now can stand no more! yeah, I'm... Getting notes from keeper Caduca although she's dead I can see why one one would think I might be wack in the Head! Yeah I might be crazy, bustin out with this rhyme, But at least I ain't the one that's tryin' to stop time! Yo, yo, Keepers Grab your wands when you see Garr-ett, Grab your wands when you see Garr-ett, Grab your wands when you see Garr-ett, [... and it goes on like that]

Man, I can't belive how hype guided people can be. The (all I do is Flash ActionScript 2, which is not actuall programing), engine is not superior to any of the noteable engines of the current generation. I am no moder, and I am defenetlly not to be called a programer*, but I am a person who is very interested in technology, I am also a hobby site/game designer, and as one I am allways looking for ways to optimise my "products". I know that if i'll program a VB6 tettris game, and use graphics in a way which is not optimised, I will never be able to run the game on a Pentium 1, with 2 mb RAM, but I am able when I am done. This long paragraph, was here to say that optimisation is importent in order to achive a good product. And as far as I have seen Source is either not optimised as a whole, or just hasen't been used in such a way in any game that ran on it. Let's say this, DOOM 3 ran on my system** with no slowdown at all, I would gues taht I had a frame rate of about 30-35, I had all options on(in low quality, but shadows ware all on, as well as "special effects"), exept for resolution which was set to the minimum. Half-Life 2 ran on my system with a frame rate of about 25-30, with slowdowns every time I had more then 2 "characters on screen, I had all options off, resolutin was minimal. I had loading times of 30 secounds betwen levels in doom 3. The loading times in Half-Life 2 ware 1-2 minutes, and the "maps" in both games are the same size. I had the same expiriance with the other Source game out there, Vampire Bloodlines. The same preformence issues ware present through out several computers, every one belongs to diffrent users, and I don't mean that HL2 was unlayabe, I mean That DOOM 3 ran better. Now let's say that I would as a user look at the "stuff" I would get from each game. DOOM 3 has "Real time Shadows", what I as a user see on screen is an actuall visual effect of shadows in a pixel per pixel ratio. HL2 offers me as a user only "Real Time Lightning" it may not state so, and shadows may be present, but they are not real "Geometric" shdows. They are, in effect, projected on each "Polygon" of a model in the world, as far as a user can see. DOOM 3 has "normal mapping" used in game. HL2 does not. "Real mapping" is by far one of the best technologies develpoed ever. it gives us the ability, as we all know, to give textures the feel of 3D objects, I don't actually know the way of it's work, but as a user I can see it probabbly just controls the gamma/contrast that is applied to parts of a texture in any give situaltion. In the modern ara, you can't have a sneaking game with out shadows. It just adds to much, both graphically, as well as gameplay wise. Now we have the Havoc engine. Havoc was used better in HL2 it is true, but it is also present in DOOM 3. And is going to be used in a "similer" (well let's admit it will be a rip-off) way in the expention pack. So as far as Physics go, which are also importent in the kind of game the Dark Mod wishes to be, are included in TDE. Will someone please tell me what makes anyone belive that Source is superior to TDE, or even Unreal 2.5? So, as you can all understand I fully support the Dark team in thier wise choise, and I hope that they will make full use of TDE, so we can all enjoy a quality game. *I only use Flash ActionScript, which is really no programing language. **My specs are: 1.3 Ghz of CPU power; 256 RAM(ya I know this sucks, but I could still run and play DOOM 3 and HL2[not as good as DOOM 3 but even so], so ha!) and a Gforce 3 GPU. I base my viwes on the Demo versions. I am sorry for my poor writeing, I am not a native english speaker, I will fix the text when I get home, and get my word to work.

Agreed, on second thought. Disguises would be pointless. I still like the notebook thingie though - especially if we were able to write in it, import small images, maybe tear pages off to leave behind. Anyhow, as long as broadhead arrows remain visible (and frobbeable) when stuck in wood, I'll be a happy camper.

The reason I am so excited about helping out with this project is because I love the Thief series its one of my favorite, I have played the first 2 several times! But I haven’t kept up with the series since then, just haven’t had the time to play many games, all work and studying to get in to the game industry. I would prefer not to post to some free art archives, like deviantart after carefully reading there user agarments, they can retain the rights to uploaded works. AKA it now belongs to them! I will have a host soon, and will try to display as much of my work there as is possible. Till then I would like to start on some Concept Sketches of Environments. Then after you approve of my ideas I will Model, Texture & Normal Map all the recourses needed for sed environment. (design before you implement right?) Then with the peaces of a map in hand I could design a level or 2 or 3 using the assets. To help me better understand what your project needs: Are adventurer(the Thief)’s desire for wealth leads him to loot Ancient Ruins and raid Dens of Evil Creatures. Or duss the hero have other motivations? Have areas already been decided on, or should I just make a place up? Do you have a story I should try to follow with my concepts? What creatures have an influence on this environment? Hum built it and why? Ext… If there is already a design in place pleas give me what information you think would be helpful in making concept for you as a test to prove my self. Thanks for giving me a chance to help with this project. Regards, Maus

I would add that it's kind've an alternate reality, where many technological advances have been made using simple steam power and mechanical gears/clockwork. Electricity exists, but it's mostly used to power things, the precise control of things is still mostly done by gears. I don't know, maybe that's "clockpunk." I've been wanting to read "The Difference Engine" by William Gibson again. I started reading it a long time ago and stopped.

@Vadrosaul: One of the reasons why it takes so long is because it is a free project. If I were to work full time with a paid job on it, I can assure you that we would be much farther ahead, but of course we have a real life as well. I have wife and kids who also demand some time. And I think we are not doing such a bad progress after all. You also have to keep one thing in mind as well. Working on such a project is a huge drain on motivation. When you start the project everybody is excited and progress is tremendously fast, but as the time goes on this enthusisasm dwindles and is replaced with hard work. That's why many mods fail after a few months of work. So it's better to take it's time with a steady progress then put to much energy into it and it's gone after a short time. I hope you know what I mean. That's also why I'm really impressed with the work of T2X. Not because their campaign is so good or anytrhing (I can't comment on the overall quality, as I haven't seen much beyond a few screenshots). The real achievment of T2X is that they really sticked four years to their project and made it into a finished product. So even if it were crap quality, that stamina accounts for much more than anything else, because of what I said above. So currently the team has settled into a good workflow with steady progress and continuous working habbit. As it is I think that our core team has established itself and I guess that most of our current members will stick to the project. Another thing why it is slow going is because of the SDK itself. It's not as if you are handed over a 300 page manual where all the technical aspects are explained, and a clean API you can code with. Most of the stuff we have to find out ourselfe, as we are on a frontier. Many things that we do, are not needed for other mods, or even if they are, other mods are on the same frontier with us, so there is not THAT much help. The lightgem is something that many mods, I talked with, are quite interested in, because the functionality is aboslutely new and alien to D3 concept. Same with the sound propagation, which is a core feature of a thief style game. Not to talk about the advanced AI that for such a game is needed. You wouldn't do with a standard attack AI as it is used in D3. And cocnerning the physics of the rope. There is no Havok in D3. That's HL2. D3 uses it's own physics implementation which is not so bad. But doing a physically correct rope is not our top priority at this point because this is mostly eycandy. First and foremost we will implement the core gameplay elements so that the game gets rolling and FM authors can start on developing campaings. After that we can improve the darkmod with eyecandy features or stuff that is not strictly neccessary. If we have a rope arrow like it was in T1/T2 that's enough for now as a proof of concept. You can use it, which is the major point for now. And one additional point. The SDK was released on 15. October. This means that we are working now about 3 months on the actual code. Considering that game companies take 2-3 years even when they are NOT developing their own engine, it should be obvious that we can not be THAT much ahead by now.

Serious about what? I asked a question. Kinda sucks that it'll be so long, but I guess time can be taken, especially after hearing that some pricks at Eidos want to take Thief out of its Medieval steampunk setting and plop it into some Splinter Cell garbage.

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: Never one to mince words! oDDity has yet again proven why we keep him chained in the basement, working long hard hours on those mouth watering models, without food or water. How the hell did he get out here? Shoo shoo. BACK I SAY!!! At any rate, yes...there are people on the team who loathe climbing gloves, there are people in the community who loathe them. It makes absolutely no difference what our motivations were. The point is that the FUNCTION will exist. For some there is a stigma attached to climbing gloves, might as well start fresh and give it a fair chance.

Modelling the sheath with physics should solve that problem as long as the sword really fits into the sheath. But I guess that "frog" is also sufficient.

I like the idea of the leather frog for the sword. If we're making the sword reflective metal though (and not painted black), do you think he'd use a longer leather sheathe (or 'frog,' not sure how long frogs can be) to hide all that highly reflective metal when sheathed?

I was thinking of having animations of the weapons and items being prodeced on screen, so we won't need any inventory or weapon icons in the corners. We could then have the health bar up one side of the screen and another long thin lightbar up the other.

Don't know why I haven't responded to this earlier. Well the reason it, if you look at the naming scheme, that all things you frob have the "frob" prefix. Like this: "frob_door_metal_open", "frob_door_wood_close", "frob_food_apple", frob_food_deerleg", "frob_instrument_harp" and now then: "frob_instrument_victrola" and "frob_instrument_musicbox". It's a much smarter system than the one which was used in Thief 1/2 (if you even can call it a system, they just threw everything inside one folder and named it stuff like "DOORS1C" "dronelp", "FAKEWIND5" etc.) And of course you can use it in a cutscene if you wish, but the main purpose of the sound is to be played when the player frob a musicbox. Oh, and I'll make the names as long as I want to!

Yeah, but most of the guys here now were not here then. I'm going with the same basic concept as yours, I just thoght it would be nice to give everyone an opinion first. It is the main charcater, after all. We don't want to get into an argument about a cloak not being practical, when he wears those hobnailed, tapdancing boots. Practicality is obviously not an issue wth him. THe model can be high res for the cutscences and mirrors though, so getting some basic deformations in the cloak should not be a problem, as long as he isn't breakdancing or anything. I though we didn't like in-game cutscence and prefered movies anyway. To use Spar's usual argument, the original thief games didn't have cutscenes and they are still really popular today with a big fanbase, so in-game cutscenes are not important. Another point is that all the THief concept art showed Garrett with a cloak, but he never had a cloak in the game.

S'cuse me? I don't force concepts down people's throats. It was discussed and approved long before you got here. If people would like some changes after living with it for a while, that's fine. True, although a cloak is not at all practical for someone sneaking around in an indoor environment, nor for someone who gets chased a lot. It certainly would be appropriate for outdoor cutscenes though. That was exactly my approach.

Yeah. I can imagine that the two raving fans of your playstyle will be pretty dissappointed. You know I'm quite selfish. I want as many people, as possible can, enjoy the game in order to get many FM missions back for freem without sacrificing gameplay to the XBox crowd (like T3 did). As there is no body feedback in a game, the player has to get some info on his state. Not everybody is directly connected into his machine with a brain interface. Who said it's impossible? You can play it without it, no problem. What you don't seem to get is, what OPTIONAL means. Nodboy is forcing a lightgem on you, so I don't really know why you bring this up again and again. Weapons are not really needed on the HUD. Doing distinctive models the player can see what he has equipped just by glancing at the screen. Yeah. I know why you are annoyed about this. Because we couldn't make our minds up and now we have 351 icons simoultanously on the screen. I didn't tell you this earlier because I was afraid you wouldn't approve, but after carefully thinking it through I came to the conclusion that we can't do without them. Yeah. That's why we provide the default version. That's what choice is about. And as long as YOU are not forced to use this version, I don't see a problem. It's not as if you need to stick to it. I don't want your playstyle and you don't want mine. You should be able to respect that because it will not interfere anway.

Right on, yeah I agree with all that was said. I'll try to get them to be smaller images later tonight or tomorrow, and have the images show up in the post instead of as links. Good idea! Not a problem. [uPDATE: Done.] I agree that the room is bland and I actually, honestly, kind've hate it. It looks better in-person, when standing way far away (LOL) -- actually kind've looks real. BUT (and this is a big BUT) it does lack A LOT of the dynamicism and moodiness we all know and love about Thief. Fortunately, I already realized this and won't be doing another room like that I think I did that room as almost a "study," if you will. I was using Thief 2 as a reference and was seeing how they did the panels on the wall, etc., though I know I erred on a couple things. When i look at that room though, I'm like 'borrrrring' I have a feeling the drawings will get better over time. I'm actually working on a different room scene right now that I think you might appreciate more when I'm done. There's more life and moodiness, in general, to it -- and it feels more Thief to me. I'm using PhotoShop and the coloring will be much better. Once I get a digital pen, I have a feeling you'll be seeing a lot more cooler things, too. Thanks for the feedback guys. Let's rock this thing!