Search the Community

In the last 11 pages of this thread: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...l=limited+saves Though I think it spilled over into other threads as well.

We are experiencing the end effects of *yet another* hurricane right now and, believe it or not, I recorded these samples right before I posted. It was raining and the crickets were chirping at the same time. All I did was edit to make a continuous loop out of some pieces. It was a strange, eerie feeling! I toned the rain down a bit so that it wasn't so loud. I can upload the version with the rain louder, but I thought this sounded more like walking through a forest with crickets and a light shower or being near a waterfall.

Whatever, I prefer to be refered to as a man on forums.

I don't get this. Are you saying that it will be quicker to do in TDM? sparhawk, I actually think it would be a good thing for HI to switch to TDM. It would be a great thing in fact. But since TDM wont be out until at least the end of 2006 (according to New Horizon) will that delay the release of HI? If HI switches to TDM it would, imo, be silly to release some missions in T2 and some in TDM. For people eager to play more FMs it would be good of course, but it will look rather sloppy otherwise. I've just realised something. There is a lot of animosity between TDM and TTLG but when TD is released they will in all likelyhood have a TDM forum. What does everyone think of that? TTLG is THE Thief forum, of the English speaking world anyway, and it's likely that more people will go there to find out about TDM, ironically. Of course these forums could become like the BCG forums. That also makes me thing about something else. Thievery is by BCG, T2X is by The Dark Engineering Guild, who are we? Just the TDM "team"? Fingernails Bad Boys? The Anti-T3Ed Crew? TFAKOT3E (Team For Ass Kicking Of T3Ed)? Oh, I can do those all day But seriously?

Yep, pretty cool. It's pretty crazy that his candles in this screenshot look a lot like BlackThief's: http://home.planet.nl/~kolk0405/3D/levelde...ll/d3_map3d.jpg I will maybe try his map out later tonight. If he is into that type of atmosphere, surely he would want to have our ravamped AI and stuff to work with for a more stealthy type of game? Heh, I just read that he based his map partially on the Rose Red movie. The mansion used for that movie was this one that I posted about a while back: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&sh...indpost&p=39472.

Could be hyperthreading problem (if you have hyperthreading, launch T2, then alt-tab and open up the task manager (ctrl-alt-delete), right click the Thief2.exe process, and set the Affinity to one CPU or the other (CPU 0 for example). Or could be that safe textures problem. There should be an FAQ on getting it to run at www.ttlg.com/forums , under thief general discussion.

Any small loot items, like spectacles, golden hammers, or small statues, would be good. You can also check this post: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=2266 Also, if you wouldn't mind, could you upload your new models to CVS and post a screenshot for them? I'd like to get all our finished models onto our master list.

I don't mean footstep volume (as percieved by the player) would affect the AI's response - I simply mean that the player's footsteps seem louder as the ambient music volume gets louder, so that the footsteps of the player are audible to the player. You wouldn't even have to give the player direct control, just have it so that the volume slider for the ambient music also automatically adjusts the players footstep volume as the player hears it (but it won't affect the AI's perception at all). This is entirely for the purpose of gameplay balance (and auditory aesthetics too I suppose) - if you have the default volume of footseps set on the assumption that the player will choose to have the ambient music at 100% volume, then it is logical that if the player chooses to turn the ambient music down to 30% or 0%, then the footsep volume will be accordingly reduced, so that the footstep sounds aren't overwhelmingly or disproportionately loud. Does that make sense? The other part of my question, regarding ambient noises masking player sounds is a separate issue regarding AI sound perception, I hope both questions are clear...

It would be possible and pretty easy actually to make guards hear sounds from lockpicking. I'm not arguing against that idea, but I do have some comments on how 'loud' sounds are ingame: IMO, the noise from lockpicking is similar to the noise from walking on different surfaces: It's artificially amped up when the player hears it, for gameplay reasons, to give the player feedback on how noisy they are being. To the AI though, these sounds are about equivalent to their real-life volumes. In reality, walking on a carpet and delicately picking a lock would make sounds that are near the threshold of human hearing. The guards respond in accordance, not hearing you walk on carpet until you are practically right next to them. However, it wouldn't really work to play the sounds at actual volume to the player, because they'd be so quiet that it would be difficult for the player to get any sort of feedback on how loud they were being. Also, your footsteps would get drowned out by the ambient music. What I'm trying to say is, if you took the sound of walking on a carpet from Thief, and played it from a speaker on the floor of the room, people would be able to hear it much further away than the actual sound of someone walking on a carpet. But if you used the actual volume of what your ears get when you walk on a carpet, the player would barely hear it and not get any info on how much noise they were making. There's another reason for making lockpicking in particular artificially loud: The sound gives you feedback, telling you how close you are to opening the lock. In RL, lockpicking involves a lot of tactile feedback as well as audio. Since there's no way to translate the sense of touch, the audio is amped up to compensate.

I looked into it, but it seems the rss feature isn't doing any permission checks, thus I can only enable it for the public forums. I'll read up on it, maybe I'm missing something.

Doom 3 vs Thief 3 editor (pre-written response) (From the perspective of our Mod) http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=369 http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=1367 Renzatic's post from the above link (I've edited and applied formatting for clarity) New Horizon: *) We have already extablished that we can recreate the atmosphere and look of classic Thief...something that will not be available right out of the box with T3 and something that a large number of players missed. *) We have a better engine. *) We will have better designed character models. *) Less broken tech...*crosses fingers*. *) Thief 3 may have the jump on us by being "official", but I think we can and will show it up with uncompromised quality. Sparhawk: *) We can support Linux (some care for it like me) *) We can add in any features that we want or need and we know this BEFORE we even start on it. *) Ragdoll animation in T3 is simply laughable at the very best. *) We can have female guards. Pakmannen: *) There is a system for ingame cutscenes. How many people actually have the tools to create avi briefings? *) If we get swimmable water and rope arrows to work, people will probably choose the darkmod instead of Thief 3 (That is, if we get the gameplay right of course). Fingernail: *) Doom 3 map compiles are measured in miliseconds, and rarely take more than a minute to complete (even the large SP missions).

First of all, i would like to say that i appriciate all the effort you have put into this new mod, it looks stunning. (guess i'll have to opt for the doom3 engine now instead of the halflife2!) I am really dieing to play it!!! (especially since i am on a thief diet ever after finishing all three games in expert modes, and splinter cell being a poor comparison) Well after coming across your link in the thief 3 DS forum i decided to become a member of your forum... in order to give my opinion on some things i would like to see in the mod Now here it goes you might think ! another looney! However some things have ever bugged me, for example the lockpicking, i found it lacking that whenever you picked a door with an AI standing behind would not notice you picking it. (it makes a hell of a noise in all three thief games, i wonder why the guards never heard it!) Now here is something i wonder if its possible to implement that the AI reacts to you picking locks if they are standing close to the door thats being picked (i.e. on the other side) cause that would make it harder for garrett and the user would have to think of different ways to accomplish missions. Another option towards doors is that if the user could skip to 3rd person view he could open a door stealthly and peek through the halfopen door, instead of opening a door full out as in the case of all 3 of the previous thief games Furthermore on the topic of knocking guards out and garrett being to light build to carry a heavy bloke around, i cooked up (read: rip off from splintercell 3rd person) the next idea: wouldnt it be cool to give the user the option to Blackjack a guard or to grab the guard while sneaking up behind. The grab option would mean something like the splintercell series grab only not a threat with a gun but hold the guard under threat of a knife then move towards a dark spot where you could knock out the guard with the pommel. This would then solve the problem of garret being to light build to carry a fully armoured guard as the guard would walk on his own. One more question could the revive BJ guards option by other guards ... as in splintercell ... (damned i like the thief games much better but these options would compliment the thief series only to the max !!!) be implemented as well? Well since i never have played anything running on the doom3 engine yet i really dont know what is possible and what is not... so i hope you could take that into consideration... (me being ignorant etc... ) Sorry about blameshing these forums by quoting/snatching good features from splinter cell, but i really think they would compliment the dark mod/ Garrett very well (and it really was something thief3 lacked in my opinion) Greetzzzz |M|adhatte|R| p.s sorry for the long post

When i made a massive open space just for test, the aas compile took only a little while. I think that if the huge area is complex (as in building all over the place) then it will take long. But i usually leave my map to compile while i go watch tv or just listen to music (or read the forums). Since the mansion i'm making is gettting more and more complex, it is taking heaps longer to compile, but the overall space taken is large, but not huge - yet . I think that doom3 was a good choice for darkmod, cos its easy to add textures/particles/models/sounds etc, and it can render huge scenes - i've tried . The way you optimize these huge outdoor city scenes, is that you have doors on each house thats enterable, and have either opaque windows or blinds which block your view etc. something in that sense. Unfortunately i think we're the only big mod left that's modding for doom3. Still interesting why if you ask me.

It does now keep a record in the database of which thread you have read and not read. What it used to do was that you had a cookie session time-out limit of 15 minutes. If you visited the forums with a lot of unread threads, then closed the browser window, all of those threads would have been marked as read within 15 minutes. This does not happen anymore. A thread is never marked as read until you actually read it.

Not sure if you are aware of this, but the forums appear to be running much slower now. I've emptied my cache and everything, so I know that's not the cause.

It doesn't matter why a gelatin arrow is locked in a chest in some nobleman's mansion. It just doesn't matter. It doesn't matter any more than the thief wearing loud boots matters. It's a gameplay device, and doen't have to be explained. I'm not against finding ingredient to make your arrows, it would be a nice feature, but it certainly isn't necessary.

Here was Springheel's thread regarding this, to tie the two together: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...findpost&p=3963

For footsteps, Theo had sent us these:http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/audio/unf...tstep_human.zip Found them in this thread: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...indpost&p=12726 I think the sounds need some polish, refinement and/or reworking after comparing to Thief 1's footstep sounds, but maybe the above could be used in the meantime? PS: Yes, Pak, all those footstep sounds are used in Thief 1 and/or Thief 2 (in case you were still wondering). For the Thief 1 sounds, I think there might be a file missing. When Garrett jumps up and lands on metal, I think the sound is different than any of the ones in that ZIP. I know it's louder (which could obviously be just an increase in volume of one of the other metal WAVs), but I also think there's a different pattern to it; which is why I think it's a different sound altogether. Might be the same for the other surfaces; not sure.

Not sure this is the right place to post this, so please move if it's not. I recently started playing Gothic (and I'm loving it) and there is a sort of random conversation that goes on in between NPCs. It consists of generic barks they can say back and forth to each other that blend together for the most part. For example, walk past a couple of NPCs in conversation and they might say (I don't have it memorized - this is just to give an idea), NPC 1 "Are you sure you want to do it that way?" NPC 2 "Well, I don't know..." NPC 1 "I told them it wasn't going to work, but no one listened." NPC 2 "When you rely on people for things, this is what happens." NPC 1 "I'm going to have to take care of this myself." etc... In Gothic, it's a bit simplistic, but with some creative design and a system of tags where only certain replies can be given to certain barks, this could really work well, in places where generic talk is desired rather than a scripted conversation. I'm pretty sure a lot of that goes on in Thief 3 already, e.g., "Look alive there, you vagabond." "Yes, your lordship................................ . idiot." "Evenin'." "Who asked ya?" or "All's well!" or just "Evenin'." Combining T3's concept with Gothic's, and making the responses actually *directed* could have fantastic results. I believe some brief talk about this has taken place, so do take a look at Gothic if you get a chance. I'm imagining something like: Group A: "So, what do you think?" "What are you going to do about it, then?" "What happened?" "What?!" can have responses from, Group B: "I don't know, it doesn't make much sense to me." "Who knows? I wasn't there. Who cares, anyway." "It's not good, I can tell you that much." "I don't see it as important. They can easily find another way to do things." which is followed by, Group C: (followups) or, Group D: (sidetrackers) or, Group E: (re-initiators) Etc. That sort of thing. Anyway, I was just thinking about the structure of it all because of Gothic. Obviously the usage is limited to areas where the NPCs are not the focus, because there is clearly no replacement for real conversation and scripted events. But in areas like the populated wing of a mansion during a ball, or city streets (like Gothic - the AI feels quite alive), it'd be very useful.

PS - I see there might already be an underwater ambience in CVS: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...indpost&p=14953 PS: That thread should probably be made a "sticky", if possible.

Those are really cool concepts. I really like the explosive arrow one -- would that mean there's no need for a fire arrow? I'd be okay with that. Having explosive arrows rather than fire arrows could be a way to eliminate the exploit where people light their way with an arrow. How? Make the explosive arrow just have very dimly glowing embers in it's tip when it's nocked. Then when actually launched, as it travels through the air at a high velocity, the oxygen interacts with the stuff inside the tip to make it burn brightly inside as it becomes aflame. Upon impact, it explodes. Other reasons why explosive arrow is better than fire arrow: * Fire arrow has a brightly burning tip. This is bright to look at, considering you're alwasy in the shadows. * Fire arrow is very bright when nocked, meaning enemies can more easily see you. Not a very stealthy tool to have. As for noisemakers, we had already decided to do both: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...indpost&p=11329 I'll comment on the gas and water arrows in a min. EDIT: Gas Arrow - Although it's awesome from an artistic/inventive aspect, I'm not really into it from a gameplay standpoint. I really liked that in T2 the gas arrow tips seemed very delicate (very thin glass surrounding the gas) by the thin shattering sound they made upon impact. Therefore, using them was very stealthy. When I think of 'gassing' someone, I normally view that as something that should be a very quiet operation. T2 made it virtually silent. Your concept doesn't seem as delicate and stealthy to me. Also, I normally prefer arrows to have pointy tips for the most part; not spheres at the end. Water (Gelatin) Arrow - Aside from preferring pointy tipped arrows, it's just my preference to have a crystal arrow for this.

hi hi, newbie to the forums, love the work you've done so far can't wait to see a beta realase.. anyways on to the topic at hand. If you are going to/thinking about adding sqeaky floorboards at least put them in an area where guards have a set patrol route. so that when your watching the guard to figure out where he goes and how long it takes to get there, you can see him step on the squeaky board and have a chance to learn where it is. i think that would be a good way to impliment this idea in to the game. That way if the player did get caught by the noise made by the floorboard it would be the players fault and not just some random event brought on by the code or an invisible trap put in place by the mapper. ::off topic:: i would love to help model random objects ie: furniture, chairs, glasses ect... but i can't find an MD5 plugin for maya if anyone could point me in the right direction i'd whip up a few things and apply.

It cant be as bad as this bat house. Im sure Canada is not heaven and I plan on doing a lot of research before doing anything but its actually pretty tough to live here sometimes. Not tough financially, although it is and its getting worse but tough in other ways. We work longer than anyone else, get paid less with less social spending and less vacation time, less "golden" years to enjoy, more stress, more pollution except maybe for China or India, greater social inequality, weaker labor laws than any other industrialized nation. Im not the only U.S.er who feels this way I assure you. The real spectacle is yet to come when the reconstruction effort gets underway. The wealthy and powerful of New Orleans are already lining up to shape the project in their own vision, you can imagine what that means for the less fortunate. The Monkey King is relying on the private sector to fix things up as always. The vultures are already circling, celebrities are holding concerts to raise awareness of their careers, and no ones even talking about the entire fucking coast of Mississippi which was whacked to hell as well. Oh, thanks for editing those tags!

Im trying to think of ways to move to Canada in the next few years myself. I dont believe this country is going to be a very nice place to live in the next decade or so, politically, economically, whatever. Maybe New Horizon will let me crash on his couch for a couple of months. I like my eggs cooked over hard, BTW. Oh, but dont worry about New Orleans, the tourist trap in the French Quarter is already opened back up for business! Come on down folks, party your asses off amongst the toxic sludge and the yet to be found corpses. I was reading an article the other day that revealed that the U.S. government is using not only heavily armored and armed police and National GUard units on the ground in New Orleans but even mercenaries. Yes, thats right, mercs. Blackwater Security people, the hired guns protecting the high ranking Americans in Iraq are also active in New Orleans. Who knows what the fuck those murderers are up to. There are also reports of the police shooting unarmed people, one reporter overheard two cops telling a national guardsman that "No one on this street is innocent", essentially saying these people dont need assistance they need a bullet. Im sure I dont have to tell you what color those people are. The sad thing is, our government did not get a majority of votes, it only won government because they redrew the electoral boundaries in such a way that they won a majority of seats in parliament. It is a sham democracy, it isn't even remotely representitive, and my fellow Aussies were stupid enough to give the government control of both houses, which by tradition we never do, meaning the government has pretty much free reign to do as they please for the next three years. So far they have used this absolute control to approve the privitisation of yet more public assets, push though some very disturbing new "anti-terrorism" powers that set the country up as a potential police state - all the government needs is another terrorist attack or disaster of some sort to use as an excuse for introducing sweeping legislation to completely rip up every last vestige of democracy and install a fully fledged dictator. It is exactly what happened in Germany with Hitler, and while I would like to think it couldn't happen here, fact is it wouldn't take much. At least in America your president is limited to two consecutive terms, and you have a bill of rights... in Australia we have nothing like that, we have relied on the traditional cultural practise of tearing people down when they get too comfortable and cocky in power - we don't tolerate arrogance or self aggrandisement for very long. We are the king of sham democracies. In 2000 and 2004 the Republican political machine worked on numerous levels to intimidate voters (in Florida State Troopers went to black neighborhoods, going door to door asking who the inhabitants were voting for w/o explaining why or who they were. For a black family, having a Trooper on your doorstep is scary enough, why were they asking about their voting plans?), to fuck with voting machines (the new voting machines in use around the nation can be tampered with simply by unlocking the back panel and one of the companies who makes the machines is owned by a Republican senator.) and to remove black voters from the voting rolls by incorrecting assigning thousands of people as being ineligible to vote. The two terms limit is nice but it doesnt help when a cabal has taken over like Bush and Co. They own all three branches of the government now, executive, legislative, and judicial. Its so bad that the Democrats, the few that are left, are regularly ignored by their Republican colleagues, left out of important meetings or given maybe 18 hours to read through a new bill that has a thousand pages. The Bill of Rights in under assault and many seem unconcerned, the Patriot Act gives the pigs all kinds of new powers to spy and detain, its not a pretty picture. I agree. Folks here would shake their heads and laugh but I dont think its that far flung of a possibility. Edited by Sparhawk: I fixed your quoting tags.

Of course turning the arrow tip into a spinning rocket would probably make a pretty loud sound, regardless of the method used. [Edit: Maybe we could say it has a baffle after the vents to lessen the noise... or something]