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Hello, and welcome to the forums I'll try and answer a few of your questions: If you liked Thief 1/2 (some parts of 3) then you'll like this mod Generally speaking we all loved Thief and are trying to recreate something similar in the D3 engine. Basically, we're making a Thief-ish mod for D3. I'm not sure if we discussed this on the dev forums but I think that if we added shields it would be a bit too much (it's bloody hard enough to hit the guard in the face etc with an arrow as it is). We don't have the random deformation water ala HL1 but we do have water like in HL2. The water effect atm looks very nice and because you'll be easily able to modify the textures etc, you can change the water to look different if you wish etc. Also, there's several types of water, or "liquids". You can easily make your own and this will be in a tutorial. While most people did have swords or whatever in the medieval ages, to see a thief suddenly pop out in front of you is very unnerving, plus he might look like an assassin to you, so you might just get scared shitless. Otherwise, it might be law that no swords to be worn in the street, who knows? In Thief 1/2 there were the Hammerites, which forged their own hammers etc. They also DO swing their creations at you In the DarkMod, the similar faction is Builders. While we are making a campaign later on, we're first releasing a toolset, so it'll be up to FM authors to create levels. So it's up to the FM maker to decide what happens Though we will release a few sample maps to try out an play. I'd love to see some daytime missions, but again, it's up to FM authors to make missions once the toolset comes out Yet again dependant on the FM creator, though we will provide a vast variety of meshes etc that you can use, such as wheelbarrows, etc. It is very easily possible to make a large city map though, so you can easily have several missions happen in the same map. With the sillhouette, don't know how feasible it is or not. The guards' acuity also depends on difficulty, so if you choose Expert, expect nasty surprises > Well we discussed this problem and I believe we came to the conclusion that AI will not climb ladders because it would be a bad idea (in their mind), such as the Thief can wait at the top and kill the guard as he climbs up. There were arguments for it of course, but I think the main issue was balancing it, so we decided against it. Expect better then Thief AI > The mod will be open-source, so you'll be able to mod in whatever you like. Though it's of course limited to free projects, so you can't make money from our free work Hope that answers it all for you

Currently there is a problem with implementing items like torches as prefabs because names are preserved, thus messing up triggering. See: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&sh...indpost&p=70114 Even if the torch problem is fixed in a programmatic way (*crosses fingers*), it would still be useful for other, non standard items, if DarkRadiant had logic built in to preserve assocations/relations, instead of names. E.g., a prefab made up of: torch_trigger_1 torch_light_1 would be "intelligently" duplicated as: torch_trigger_n torch_light_n Where I suppose n could be consecutive numbers within the map (perhaps the first lowest instance among all items within the prefab could be determined), or failing that, perhaps just a random number or string. For instance, "torch_trigger_356a" would rarely collide with another entity of the same name. If it did, the user would only need to generate another. Disclaimer: I don't know for sure this isn't already in GTKRadiant, as I don't currently have it installed.

Just for pak, the two ambients I posted in the Team forums: http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/audio/amb..._greenhouse.ogg http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/audio/amb...s_cementary.ogg

Spring already mentioned the problems with AI waking up, and it is very much a programming issue...as much as a mapping issue. In addition to those problems, you're further encouraging the player to kill..because if the AI won't stay down, they're sure as hell not going to dick around with guards they supposedly knocked out and have to knock out repeatedly. The guards who wake up, would likely also bring in backup...so again, the player is slapped in the face for being stealthy. Knocking out guards is supposed to be a gameplay reward, for using stealth...over..murder. It also throws a wrench into the whole 'no kill' objective that crops up in higher difficulties...what if you're in a heavily populated map and the awakening guards make it next to impossible to finish without becoming completely frustrated? Yes, I know that this can come down to mapping as well, but it's pretty obvious that the gameplay would become severely unbalanced with re-awakening guards. The choice you make...regardless of how miniscule it might seem, is the difference between you being a Thief and a cold blooded killer. Killing AI is louder, more messy and (at least in TDM) more of a hassle...for those who are a little more determined to be a killer, they will just try harder. Blackjacking can still be tricky, but it is encouraged more because it carries moral implications...and the stats will let you know it...or a Failed Mission screen on higher difficulties. At any rate, we discussed the pros and cons to death within our internal dev forums. It's bad for gameplay. Sure, the initial waking up might not be hard...but the introduction of such AI behaviour creates a veritable hell storm of 'extra' gameplay issues to balance. It changes the nature of Thief style gameplay more than you might think...and balancing the system we're already familiar with is going to be challenging enough. It's a 'cool' idea, but not necessarily a good idea for what we're trying to accomplish. Maybe for a different type of game, but not for a Thief game.

No it wasn't...I took it while playing around with the AI. (and it's there to show AI in action, not the map) There's discussion about head-turning here: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=3705

So to understand this correct: The bones are required for coded animations, while the MD5 files are requiered for generic animations, but for this there would be no bones needed as it is applied directly to the mesh? And you can have a mix of both, meaning that you can apply an MD5 and at the same time interfere with code? Is this understanding correct? Still the question is, do our models already have these necessary bones?

No - it's a fact. Unless your post is explained to me, it will remain nonsense to me. Well we don't. Like BT said, the Doom 3 monsters do this already, and I've seen the meshes for the Imp etc. It's all one mesh. It's done with bones. The programmers can directly interact with the bones no matter what animation is playing.

But I think we will need a seperate Guard/Head model for this. Otherwise the animation will be part of the regular animation just like any other movement, like walking and such. AFAIK currently we have only full models where the head is part of the mesh.

Oh jeez, I didn't mean to start WW3... Look, I just made the assumption, that since you a ) are promoting TDM as a freely available toolkit for making stealth based games and b ) have a public forum where non-contributing parties may discuss the mod, that there was an implicit invitation for ideas, comments, suggestions and criticisms, which I have obviously been making. Now if I am wrong in that respect, it begs the question as to why you have a public forum at all, after all, if you have discussed it all internally and made final decisions, discussing things on a public forum would seem to be a waste of your time, and you might as well close the public forums and just post progress updates on the website. And as Sparhawk says, why would I wan't to go through the process of putting a team together and starting my own project from scratch when there is a free toolkit in development which looks like it will fulfil most of my needs? And since you appear to be inviting public input, why wouldn't I make suggestions for things that would mean less work for me? I don't expect you to follow them up, but it would be nice if there was some serious discussion, not out of hand dismissal, or deliberate misinterpretation of what I am suggesting to avoid a properly considered response. @Domarius, at the risk of causing you a great deal of offense (and I promise you I don't mean to, I really have nothing against you personally), I have to agree with Sparhawk in so far as to say that you do come across as someone who has been formally educated in the creative arts, and it has been my experience that this type of education instills a certain mindset that does come across in your comments. I dropped out of a Fine Arts degree and switched to Science very quickly when I realised how quickly the formal Artistic education was eroding my creativity and ability to think outside the box. This type of education teaches you The Way as though you could formally define artistic works using a formula. this is why most of art, music and computer games come across to me as being formulaic. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that a formal education in Game Design (for example) is inherently bad, just that it teaches you a certain skills at the expense of some other skills, which are often more important for certain endevaours than the ones you may have been taught. I'm not saying that this applies to you, I don't know you, but I can only go on what you have written in these forums, and all I'm saying is, your comments are consistent with a certain school of thought which I have some difficulties with.

Excuse me? Sorry, but that ticks me off a little bit. This is a Thief inspired toolset, and we appreciate fan input, but I personally don't appreciate people coming into our forums with an agenda and trying to force us to incorporate ideas, that we've already discussed and voted down years ago, in hopes of just being able to walk in after we've done all the hard work...just so you can 'test' some ideas. The Doom 3 SDK is openly available...and for that matter, the full Quake 3 source code is now available. You could gather your own team and create the technology by rewriting the engine with your own team...instead of pushing ideas on us. We've got a big enough workload without this crap. Sorry, I don't mean to be rude...but it really upsets me.

ok I'm able to import the fbx into maya now, however 2 skeletons are imported - I guess I can delete the one, that doesn't match the mesh, but I'm not sure about this and why 2 skeletons are imported. oddity any idea what's going wrong?

Haha, you see computer RPGs the way I do, cool @obscurus, in general, I agree with pretty much everything you've said, except maybe the extra focus on combat, since it's barely used, it begs the question of who's going to spend time developing such a system that's only really going to be used when you're cornered - a good thief will just run and evade whenever possible, which is 90% of the time. I could even be convinced that some form of stamina would be a good idea. But a lot of the reasons behind our desicions is it's simpler - people will be happy if we get this thing out with sort of Thief 2 features - we're focusing instead more on AI behaviour. Once it's out, and we've done all the main hard work, the Thief community, with each individual potentially having limitless time to make their dream feature, can add all these extra things. Regarding your "realistic" ideal of video games, it's nice to think that, but I've seen proven again and again, that no matter how realistic you get, even in driving and flight simulators, video games are not reality, so there will always come a point sooner or later where you have to fudge something. The art of making a good game is deciding where to do that. Go to far, and your game never gets out. Go to soon, and people won't find your game believable. Take physics for example - in the real world, collisions happen over time. There is a period of time, no matter what materials we are talking about, where the force is dispersed throughout the object and the whole object "squashes", and then bounces back. But not in video games. Video games use a "rigid body" system, where collisions happen instantaniously. Simulating the squashing would be ridiculous in a real time game. You can make so many optimisations for polygon collision if you can guarentee all the verticies of the mesh will always be in the same position relative to each other. Because ridgid body is not realistic, you can't use realstic math all the way. If the moment of collision is infinently instant, then you get problems with things such as infinite forces. So you have to fake the results. And this is where you get different phsyics engines better suited to different things. WIth any phyics engine, if you push something too far, it will go weird, (thanks to the non-realistic maths) so you have to work around it, untill you get what you need for your specific game.

Just wanted to say, the TTLG staff has been granted an interview with Irrational and is collecting questions for them in a thread in the BioShock forums.

Aww. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&sh...indpost&p=62289

I've posted some concept art for this: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=3760

Welcome to the forums (8?]=

Hmm, I don't know of a list, unless you're referring to BT's mansion floorplan post (which I doubt). http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...1038&hl=mansion

ah, do you have that list of rooms requried in the mansion? Its hard to make a floorplan without them. I remember seeing a list somewhere (and i'm sure i printed it out), i hope its still on the forums.

I was being silly. To tell you the truth I am unsure about the vibe of the forums, whether they are light hearted or serious. It is childish that comment I made. And I apologise. Sometimes I feel like my back is up against the wall here and I resort to what the great Japanese sword saint Miyamoto Musashi says with regards to dealing with multiple oponents. I have to check the graphics card at home. So loading is the only issue? Surely the more powerful the system, then shouldn't be affected by the loading times so much?

First rule of Thief related forums: Don't take ZylonBanes comments to heart. He is always like that. Most of the time I like his comments though, because they go usually straight to the core.

As I said I took ZylonBane's one personally, not anyone elses, and I was making a comparison, not a generalisation, as not all American teenagers are spoitl. Good for you if you're an American. Pity you obviously can't accept other people's opinions just like ZylonBane. Good thing Domarius and some of the others can. Ombrenuit, we were having a proper discussion about 3rd person modding, difficulty etc until it got sidetracked. Obviously there are a lot of jerks on these forums, you included mate. It's good to see that some of the folk from a certain country getting defensive and taking the whole thing personally, then changing it to race etc. I apologise to the good people from that country who've added to this topic in a thoughtful and nonabusive manner.

We have the arrow models in Odd's pack, so perhaps someone should give them to drumple to use (or do we still need the low-res versions made?)? If we're going to be putting arrows into the game they might as well be the right ones. Here's the high-render shots (I think the gas arrow had been replaced with a cylindrical canister instead): Drumple, since you're playing around with the bow, any chance you could look into modifying the position of the hand/bow so that it doesn't block the spot you're aiming at? http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=3611 edit: Ah, here's the updated gas arrow and noise arrow:

It's an honour to have Dom, Isht, and spar actively engaging in this thread. By the way, to humour you, I'm reading darkmod forums in Links after getting tired from learning bash scripting (I don't have X installed, nor do I really want to into my 32M of mem.) and it's nice to be able to quick reply and see that these forums are Links friendly.

For anyone that doesn't know, Fingernail -- the guy at the top of the team listing here (ok, everyone should at least know that much, although I haven't seen him post so much in the public part of these forums lately, but anyway...) -- Fingernail valiently represented the UK guitar-players in fine style yesterday at the European UK young musicians competition and only missed winning by a clearly fixed vote , everyone I know that saw it agreed he was tops (all biased, of course) . He also happened to play some of my very favorite music in the world, manoche genteel aristocratic style classical guitar. So I thought I'd pop in the OT forum here to give a good shout out: Good show Fingernail!

If I remember correctly, this project was inspired by Thief, which traditionally is presented in first person. This project was not inspired by Splinter Cell, and for good reason, they are different experiences. Thief makes you feel as if you are Garrett, you aren't playing a game any longer, but rather, you are a Thief, and you get the rush robbing in turn. One thing I disliked about Thief 3 was that I was constantly reminded that I wasn't Garrett, but rather, I'm watching him. When I climb I get to see his hands fumble on the ledge. The goal of this is to immerse the character with realism, but for the most part, it doesn't immerse me, it does quite the opposite--it distracts me. Traditionalists of the series praised the first person view of the other games because you felt as if you were the character. Looking glass *could* have put in a third person view, but their audience wasn't the one who wanted it; the exception was Theif 3, but that was put into place to support the Xbox and give the game more of a "console" feel. Although that wasn't done by Looking Glass, was it? As for comparing Thief to Metal Gear, please. As far as the only one I've played, Metal Gear Solid, there aren't even shadows. There is no reason to put the effort into a third person view, and for the most part, why are we even discussing this? It's a waste of resources to compensate for the gameplay by adding new animations etc. It's a waste of time. Think from the developers perspective because certainly I don't want them wasting their time with a third person view to appease a new audience in the Dark Mod forums when they could be spending it with features that would please everyone. In short, it's nice that you want to argue about whether or not the feature should be added, but you aren't the ones making the mod. Though you are certainly acting as if you are. If you want to include the feature yourself, you are more then welcome to. I imagine you'll quickly find it is more trouble then it is worth, but of course, you want to make a whole game as well? Oh sure, piece of cake. Happens all the time in fact. Good luck.