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Greetings- I've been working on some SFX while I've had some downtime. Here are some samples that I think haven't been filled in yet on CVS. Start Level sound Level Start SFX test 1 (may be a bit bass heavy, but it gives me cold chills when it plays at loud volumes!) sfx_creepy_voices.ogg (similar to the creepy voices from T1/T2 - I played around until I got close)[added 1/5/6] Piano Frobs (5 samples from which to choose) frob_piano1.ogg frob_piano2.ogg frob_piano3.ogg frob_piano4.ogg frob_piano5.ogg Another possible "tension" ambient (similar to T2 style) fx_tension_orch1.ogg "Haunt" SFX (New 7 Jan 06) fx_haunt_joinus.ogg fx_haunt_soul.ogg More on the way.... I'm reposting the links to some of these from a while back. Ambients ambient_haunt_v2.ogg (this was the version with less bass - I'm learning the art of compression finally!) rain_loop.ogg (this was recorded in a light rainstorm but should be labeled for forest crickets or something similar) SFX clocktick_60_loop.ogg (for the mansion) clocktick_30_loop.ogg (also for the mansion)

In case anyone's interested my most powerful computer is a PCI nVidia 5500 256MB video mem (not PCIe mind you) with only 256MB of RAM and 1.2 GHz Athlon and Windows XP. Although my main computer is a dual processors Pentium Pro 200MHz with 512KB on-die L2 cache each running debian. Yes, I'm a cave-man. I will buy something with at least 16GB RAM and dual processor dual core as soon as I get a real job. maybe SLI with both cards installed. I think the secondary processors should be used for things like AI and physics. Regarding Garrett's special keeper training alowing him to do what we can't do in RL: I always thought that the majority of his skill lies in mind manipulation of surrounding people, masking his thoughts and diverting their attention sort-of; and he can't do what some people can do in real life, look at the post here on the forums about the google video of russian climbing - if he could do that he wouldn't need rope arrows. editing, just rememberd what I wanted to say, though not how it connects to the thread. A possibility is to use inexpensive USB "VR" gloves on both hands combined with a goggle display or surround monitors to eliminate the old "press forward to run, backwards to backstep, turn, strafe left, etc" buttons replacing it with touch here on the wall, slide your hand here, hold your fingers steady on the cleft, etc. Just look at the russian climbing video on google video how the guy runs and jumps. To an outsider, of course, a thief-player or more correctly a modded darkmod player would look like a freak waving his hands about and doing various mudras.

Ook. Here's oDDity's response to Dram on October 18th: Don't be so patronising to young Dram if you're going to stoop to the same level of immaturity when you can't win a simple argument. Being extremely loud and calling your opponent names works when you're 13 but won't quite cut it whe you're 31.

That's very loud oDDity rant to try to justify an obsession with a completely mind numbing game No. 2012. Neanderthals weren't stupid, but they weren't cultured either. They may not have had anything better to amuse themselves than flipping small items and pushing rocks off the tops of mountains to watch them fall, but thankfully we live in a much more interesting world than them. Were they more intelligent? Perhaps, but because of the shape of their larynx they couldn't speak much better than a drunk on saturday night. Poker is also completely pointless - so that's one pointless thing to help you do another pointless thing. Congratulations.

Just wondered what sites you frequent/visit. Heres mine. Polycount -Mainly for modding/modeling purposes Doom 3 World -same as above CG Talk -probably some of the best art i've seen on the web LevelDesign.nl -doom3/quake4 modding CDG Forums -Mainly for HL2/CSS modding XSI Base -XSI user base 3D BUZZ -Awsome CG VTM's BBC -Mainly for News

Late in the blackness of night, my mind, wandering from the task at hand, turned to my love of old, and a pang of rememberance gripped my soul. How I did long for sight of my beloved. As I sat musing thus, an inspiration fell upon me! I would seek news of her to fuel my reminiscent thoughts. When lurking in forums of old turned my nocturnal wanderings to my favourite engine for search, my heart gave a leap at what I did find. Hark! How the all-seeing eye of google doth provide! For there, before my sleep weary eyes, a most wonderous piece of news my gaze did light upon. The Dark Mod, of whose prophesied fame I had read long ago, had grown in beauty and grandeur. And now, before me on this fateful night, I beheld my beloved, as though she were born anew! Dressed all in the fineries of DooM III, she was verily transformed beyond all mine imagining. With tears, wetting my cheeks, as I did gaze upon her, I cried aloud, "Oh! My beloved! How thou hast changed! No longer art thou the low polygon creation of Looking Glass yore. Thou hast ceased from thy whoredoms and slavery to the evil Man Eidos and his treacherous mercerneries of Storming Ions. They who defilest thy bed with Deadly Shadows. Thou art transformed! And lo, behold thy texturing, thy lighting, thy models, and thy normal mapping. Harken to thy ambient music, thy sweet ambience, oh my love! Yes, thou art become a thing of such beauty. Joy in thine re-birth!" I remember thee as thou wert, before that vile toad took thee. I remember the nights long past, we in the intimacy of my solitude. I played thee as only I knew thou desired, revelling in thy foreboding depths, drinking in thy beauty. Oh my love! I remember thy secrets. How I long for thy mysterious touch! Come, my love! Play with me. All is not lost. Nay, all has been regained! Ok, I read briefly about the Dark Mod about a year ago, but as I haven't done much game-playing in the past year, I lost sight it altogether. Tonight, though, I had a sudden inspiration, and after viewing thedarkmod.com, I was blown away. This little bit of pretentious bullshit is the resulting heart-felt awe at what's being done--I couldn't stop it! And yeah, I DO realize that it sounds a bit like masturbation, but hey! It's a single player game, no? Looking good, Dark Mod team! Oh and if you're ever interested, I might be able to provide you with some in-game texts

Wow, if only there were a thread halfway down the page discussing this very subject... http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=1532

Hello all, I'm new to the forums, but this looks soooo good. When I was playing Thief: Deadly Shadows, I thought to myself... Wow if only they had used a tweaked Doom 3 engine...Lo and behold! I think once this dark mod is up and running, we can make Fms way better than the official Thief 3 and previous games. But about copyright issues... Can we not mention Garrett or Mechanists or anything? Because I was thinking about actually creating a new DS once this mod is released! (using the same storyline, videos, but changing the levels to make them much longer and way more in depth.) Anyways, keep up the great work

Merry Christmas to the DM team and everyone who visits these forums !

I don't see why death screams should be louder. Either they are loud, then they are propagated because of their loudness, or they are not as loud, but I don't think we should artificially push it.

Right now the elite city watch/professional guard/builder guard can walk, run, draw sword, attack. I've also seen one look up at the ceiling. I think these are mostly placeholder animations, though I could be wrong. I suggest starting with the Stage 1 and 2 animations in the master list: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=1650

Yes. But the reason is because I'm NOT living in a mansion. My kids sleep in a room pretty close to my own. And in fact I was raised in a house that you might call a mansion, at least in terms of size, and I can assure you that no amount of screaming would have traveled from one room to an arbitrary far away other room. In fact you can't even be sure that a loud scream on the same floor would have carried far enough to reach the other end, much less cause any substiantial suspiciousness.

Now you're talking crap. A loud scream in the dead of night would travel through a whole mansion.

We are used to Oddity telling crap, but now you start too? Sounds travel according to their volume and are propagated properly. There is no death-scream-is-heard-everywhere exception. The only exceptions are extremely loud (explosions) or environmental sounds (like thunder crashing).

True, without the tactile and non-auditory/visual feedback you get in real life, it is very difficult to make a realistic deep reality simulator where you can role-play a thief. That said, I think there are areas where you could quite reasonably boost the realism without any negative consequence, provided you dispense with a few long-held gaming traditons. For example, take footstep sounds. One of the main reasons the sounds "have to be" made unrealisticly loud is because of the decision to have ambient background music. I personally hate ambient music in games, and I always turn it off when the game gives me that option. If you don't have the music, you can make things like footstep sounds and other ambient sounds much more realistic, because you aren't trying to hear yourself over a meta-game thing like music. I personally find games to be generally much more immersive and atmospheric without music, provided that the sound design is good. Turning off the music in a game very quickly shows up any deficiencies in the games sound design... The sensation of movement can also be simulated with carefully designed view-bob, thus further negating the need for boosting footsep sounds to an unrealistic level. I would prefer unrealisticly exaggerated view bob as my feedback than unrealistic sound design. But that is just me I guess... Some things, like pickpocketing, can't be at all realistically implemented in a game, but other things can. And realisticly, a thief would be wearing soft shoes that make little sound on hard marble tiles, but wooden floorboards are almost impossible ot walk on quietly regardless of footware in RL, so wooden floors should be the noisy floortype, marble tiles should be fairly quiet. There is no reason not to do it that way, except for sticking blindly to the unrealistic precedent set by Thief. Computer game technology has come a long way since Thief, so there is no reason to clone all of the defects in the original Thief when you can improve on the original. And don't give me any of that "but X realism feature isn't good gameplay" BS - gameplay is what you want it to be, and is entirely subjective. Some people find resource management sims to be good gameplay, others find them boring. Same goes for a lot of features in Thief. I consider many aspects of Thief to be very poor gameplay, and my enjoyment of it comes from the gameplay features I like, while trying my best to ignore the gameplay I found annoying. but I reiterate, keep up the fantastic work!

Although I agree with you that a sack of shot would not make as loud a noise as a lump of lead, I still think its possible that the majority of its energy of motion would transfer through the metal into the skull. True, the curve of the helmet would displace SOME of the force but then you only need a bit of force to bounce a brain around inside a skull. A bag of shot that weighs 1 pound moving at 3 feet a second delivers nearly the same amount of force as a one pound lump of lead moving at the same velocity, although the individual pieces of shot would lose some forward energy due to slipping and moving. But not much AFAIK.

I've been exporting blendshape facial expression and lip sync vertex animation from maya to to doom using a script that parsonsbear from the doom3world forums wrote. He's willing to configure and change it to best suit our needs. I'm basically beta testing it for him. This means there's no problems from the animations side of lip sync and facial expression, its up to you coding boffins to work out your end of the deal.

I distinctly remember throwing the shovel you find outside on the bank level to distract the guard away from the door which is right around the other side of the building. I was doing it when someone challenged me to ghost into the bank on expert without taking any tools, weapons or items (which is how I like to play the game) Sometimes he doesn't do anything at all when you thow it, sometimes he says something, sometimes he goes into an alert search, and sometimes he wanders off toward the sound. I guess it's got to do with exactly how close to him it lands, or how loud he hears it as.

Really? I specifically remember guards speaking such things as "Alright, Where are you?" and "Come out, Thief!" with the inception of any sort of audible, be it a loud footstep or even a thrown container of some sort. Perhaps in the actual game code there were certain levels of guard alert, but in the game's presentation it surely wasn't so.

Hmmm.... the best possible set up would probably consist of a solid-state recording device (like a flash memory recorder) that would have high quality mic preamps to handle good condensers. Something like the Rode NT4 stereo mic that runs off a 9V battery and records perfect stereo sounds plugged into a flash based recorder would sound wonderful! I've used minidisc recorders, but out in the wilderness the sound of that disc spinning is always picked up by sensitive condenser mics (unless you bury the thing in a thick carrying bag). Flash based recorders make absolutely no noise whatsoever and record instantaneously with no wait to "spin up" the recorder! Some of these even have built in stereo electret condenser mics which do a pretty fair job. As far as mics go, a dynamic mic would sound good enough, but they just aren't as sensitive as the condensers, which makes them better for recording really loud sounds up close. Shotgun condensers are good for picking up sounds from only one direction and are usually built more for location recording, so they hold up better with handling. Any type of decent mic will fit the bill and cost is ALWAYS a factor. I have been cheap and used a minidisc recorder with a dynamic stereo lapel mic and gotten decent results. The bass isn't as rich and the highs were cut off, but some of that could be tweaked once dumped into the computer. I think I picked up the mics for US$39.95 at Radio Shack and the Sony minidisc recorder for a little over US$100. I've even seen guys using old tape recorders and some of those small flash based recording "pens" that have built in mono mics, but the response is tailored for speech only with lower quality recording abilities. Again, my dream setup would be an M-Audio MicroTrack (24-bit/96kHz recording with stereo phantom powered mic inputs) and either a Rode NT4 stereo condenser mic (2 small diaphragm cardioid condensers, 20Hz-20kHz, Max SPL: 143dB so it can handle loud sounds) or a Neumann TLM 103 (mono large diaphragm condenser, 20Hz-20kHz, Max SPL: 138dB). This is a dream setup, so I picked some of the best mics on the market! Realistic (read, cheap) setup: Sony MiniDisc recorder (or even a laptop with a decent soundcard) and an Audio-Technica AT2020 condenser, Shure SM57 dynamic, Samson CO1 condenser, or one of the other cheaper priced Chinese built condenser mics (and, of course, a preamp for one of the condensers). They tend to be "brighter" sounding (more treble) but do the job well enough. Okay, my two bits worth. I'm always open to hear anyone else's suggestions as well. I hope this has helped. -sax

I am very happy with my LCD monitor, except when playing Thief on it. Since I use my computer mainly for music and audio recording, I prefer a monitor that is cheap, quiet, doesn't take up too much space, and doesn't use much power. I don't care that much about 1337 image quality, LCDs are more than good enough for my needs. Unfortunately, Thief looks way worse on an LCD monitor than it does on a CRT - the contrast ratio just isnt there (my LCD is 600:1 contrast ratio - a good CRT is more like 12,000:1). You can get high contrast LCDs that are a reasonable match for CRTs, but they are still quite expensive. I can hear unusually high frequency sounds, and the high pitch whine generated by CRTs (CRTs produce a ~16KHz hum that can be very loud) is very uncomfortable for me. Walking into a department store with a bunch of CRT TVs running is painful to the point I get nauseous and disoriented. Most people my age can't hear the noise generated by CRTs anymore, but I can hear things that humans aren't supposed to be able to hear (ie, above 20KHz) - things like those ultrasonic pest repellers drive me nuts - people see me blocking my ears and wonder what is wrong with me. Some LCD monitors have noisy EL backlighting (50-60 Hz hum), I stear clear of those, although they are merely annoying while CRTs are painful... If I spent more time using my computer for things that required high quality image manipulation etc, I would suffer with a CRT, but I don't so I prefer LCD monitors. My LCD has 8ms response time, so ghosting is not a problem, but the contrast ratio is a problem when playing games that are very dark, like Thief Another reason people perceive LCDs as a better choice than CRTs is the lower radiation emissions - CRTs pump out radiation near the Gamma frequency band, and while there is not much evidence that it is harmful, it might make your risk of cancer or mutant chidren a bit higher. I personally doubt CRTs are that bad for you, though I find LCDs are less straining to my vision than CRTs are (though a good CRT should be able to operate above 72 Hz, which should be OK for your eyes). So if superior image quality and low price is your thing, get a CRT, otherwise LCDs are generally better.

I was playing an FM the other day, and it got me thinking about thief and its universe. I just love how insted of having somthing that can only happen 1 way, like pushing a button, they make many ways of hitting buttons, insted of the 1 standard walk up and smack it method. What are the plans for this(if any) in TDM? Well we be able to shoot them with broadheads/moss etc(assuming they will exist in some form)? Might you even take it farther by making ANY physical object capable of hitting buttons/moving leavers? Maybe even bodies of guards? I just wonder because I grow tired of the closed in linear universe of so many games, where theres a leaver/button that isnt easy to get to, but it isnt really a leaver/button, its an object that can only be interacted with in 1 way, via activation through proximity or touch. Thats one thing Ive always been interested with in gaming/computing. The idea of building a world that operates on basic principles, where there isnt really 1 way of doing anything. Where you dont have to wonder whether or not you can do somthing, apply the basic principles to it and anything that would work will. Buttons/leavers are a simple example but they serve the purpose well. Another, slightly off topic question I had regards AI attention. I love in thief being able to use noisemaker arrows, but they have drawbacks(if you want it to be realistic). A guard would probably find this noisy ass arrow, and then realize without a doubt that there was a thief around. Are there any plans to make noise in general attract attention, not just noises from specific sources? I always thought it would be awsome if you could just throw somthing and it would cause a guard to go look, not in the "search" mode, but just in a curious non-threat mode, and after seeing the object, be on maybe a slightly higher state of suspicion, but not actually worried. It just goes back to my thoughts about how I would like games to work, where you build a system basic enough that it can expand the possible playing styles/gameplay beyond what one could do by just coding every senerio one can think of. I hope not too much of this has been discussed elsewhere, Ive been reading around on these forums a while unable to post because my registration was being silly.

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=2955 thats where you'll find the newest version. you have to wait till an admin transforms you into a beta mapper though (damn it admins, stop being lazy! ) Welcome aboard

Maybe that term is not used on foreign forums... Flooder - someone who writes useless posts.

Already happening http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101261