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So far, I've certainly been enjoying it. Yeah, there are a few problems - the inventory is rubbish (check the official forums as I saw a possible fix, but then the forums died and i need sleep). I've had some graphical glitches - dissapearing npc bodies mostly - conversing with a floating head or disembodied eyeballs is always fun if nothing else. No crashes or plot breaking stuff though. My PC is pretty close to the minimum - 2.4ghz, 512 ram, radeon 9600 pro. Graphics card sems to save me and with the exception of stuttering when it loads a new area it runs fine on medium detail. For my thief it plays infinitely better than morrowind so far. Yeah, its not as indepth as certain other games, but there's enough player involvement to keep you interested. I've suffered badly with the main quest and particually the first oblivion gate though. My level eight character entered having pretty much exclusively raised non comabt skills, expecting to maybe be able to sneak through. Oops. Hopefully the rest of the main quest will improve to allow more stealth or other approaches than combat, but in the meanwhile there's still the thieves guild and excellent dark brotherhood (designed by a former Thief 2 guy I think) to play with...

That doesn't work with me (nothing does), because unlike zylon 'I enjoy sucking moderators cocks, the bigger the better' bane, I dont' back down. He acts all big and brash and then when a mod slaps his wrist, he goes of and has a cry, and returns acting like a good little boy so he won't be banned. He actually cares, whereas I dont give a shit, which is why I've been banned from at least 10 forums.

As for the lockpicking, how does it work? I've read there's apparently a mini-game ruining exploit, see here: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.p...pic=291211&st=0 The poster says, "Smack up twice, and click. Then it gets jammed." ?

Strange. I haven't tried it myself yet, btu people on the official forums seem to think it works. You're editing the ini file in the "\my documents\My Games\Oblivion\" directory?

Hmm? Oh, I got temp-banned until Monday. I guess one of the Editor's Guild mods finally got enough sand up their vagina to nag an admin into approving it. This is what it says when I go to the forums: Heh. That definitely doesn't sound like Dave.

Zylon, what are you doing over here when I need you at TTLG? http://ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104978&page=2 For some reason, I feel compelled to argue with some posters who are adamant that Garrett having no scar in Thief 1 and Thief 2, then suddenly having one in Thief 3, is not a continuity error. I really don't know why I'm arguing with them, it's such a pointless thing to tango over, but I just can't stop myself. I find that I'm infuriated by the arrogance and the ignorance.

whoah.. now that looks decent odd.. something like that would really look nice on the mission/loading screen.. what program you use to animate? lightwave? also.. i mentioned that a progress bar is to doomish.. but i spoke to soon.. i can see that a progress bar of some style would fit into that sort of scheme well. and about the roq's.. i read in the doom3world forums where they have to be in powers of 2 to play in doom3 guis.. but im hoping that isnt true.. otherwise it would be a pain to make something like that work. im going to check more into that, but from what i can see.. its a very simple thing to add video.

Well, that question, who we are to determine this, is quite simply answered. We are the creators of The Dark Mod. We decide what goes in and what not. We are doing the work, and therefore we decide where we need and want to spend time on. Apparently you don't understand how a free project works. It's not as if we are getting payed for and the one who pays is in command. We have to make sure that it will be finished and that, first and foremost, WE are satisfied with it. I know this is a fairly minor item on the big scale of things, but in the end I wonder what sort of development beliefs lie in motivation of the project. Does this mod say; LOL! You sound as if you had any rights to demand something. You have not. You can join anytime and create it yourself, if you think it so important, but you have no right at all to demand any asset or tool to be in- or excluded as long as you are not doing any work. You can ask us if we can or want to do it, and if it is a good idea, we may consider it for inclusion, but as long as you are not doing anything yourself you have to be satisfied with what you get, or motivate somebody to do it for you. That's how free projects work. You remind me a lot of the people you often can find on mod and game developer forums. "I have this REALLY GREAT IDEA and I'm looking for people who can do it. What? What do you mean, what can I do??? I had this REALLY GREAT IDEA and this should be enough for you to accept me as your project leader and make all the real work the next four years! Geez, that lousy guy really expected of me to put some additional work into this mod, after spending at least one hour to come up with this REALLY GREAT IDEA" Yes, we are gratefull beyond believe. People like this can be found by the dozen, on any forum. Why should I use the search button? *I* just registered and had this question. Why should I bother to read the FAQ? *I* just registered and expect somebody to answer my question NOW! Why should I wait for three hours before I bump my thread? *I* just registered and expect that others answer my question as soon as I sent it, after all *I* need the answer!!! ...

Hmm, see it was this sort of attitude that confused me about the dark mod to start with... At first I considered the "professional" approach to the mod a bit OTT, but I think i get it now. I hope that it works for the mod but I also hope that the inner workings of the team are a bit less... stalwart(?). After reading these forums and ttlg it seems somebody must be monopolising the fun factor, if the joy is not shared around then people will burn out and not feel the love of the project enough to pull through the long development journey you guys have ahead of you. I am not saying that the love isn't shared internally, but the PR machine seems kinda cold, all I'm saying is that I hope it isn't indicative of the inner workings. As I said, I think I understand the professional approach *and* the cautious PR management but don't take yourselves too seriously to the point you sound arrogant; a great portfolio or a great person to work with, who would you hire? So I get the uber professional approach but I am still concerned about what you guys see as the final result of this project. There is talk about priorities, which I also understand, you have to stay on task, but is this going to turn out as a toolset that you guys are really proud to show off; an excellent Doom 3 mod showing of your leet modding skills, or, a really cool "toolset" that can create great thief levels with? If you are aiming to create a great toolset for 21st century thief levels, then who are you to say that scouting orbs, slowfall speed inv potions aren't essential thief? Apparently LGS thought they were and dismissing them off hand seems kind of arrogant. I know this is a fairly minor item on the big scale of things, but in the end I wonder what sort of development beliefs lie in motivation of the project. Does this mod say; "Look at me, look at me, pleeeeaaase use me, I am a great toolset, and this is going to rock. You are going to have so much fun --- HEY Mister! Yeah, you with a precious small amount of spare time. Devote it to meeeee, cause the pay off? MASSIVE!" Or "Look bud, you are lucky to have this. i am clever, i am great and I've sweated blood and tears to be so - you are so privileged to be using me, you just don't have a clue." I know that this may sound very harsh, but this is why the love of the project (and any project/map/hack/mod/... non-commercial game) has to be there, self sufficient, within the team. Who are you doing this for? no really it is a serious question. I know your time is precious, but IMHO mine is more so, so why should I give a care about this project if it is only your pet bunny and yous can't even be bothered to put in scouting orbs. This is exactly the same problem level editors have, "Who am i making this map for? Why should someone even care to download the map and waste their precious time on it? I should be thankfull that they spent time playing my humble little map". If you can brush these ideas off with the belief that you are self sufficient and you don't have to win over anyone else's attention then good luck! but a little friendliness and flexibility to outside ideas and influences will go a long way to getting people to cheer on your cause. --now aren't you gratefull i took the effort and time to register and rant

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=3400

actually, they can be virtually the same.. with the lighting and normal maps they look almost identical. a while back i modeled up a gear and used just the normal map from it on a flat 2 poly mesh and rotated that, it looked real good. its easier to rotate the model with the gui code as you can make gears mesh perfectly and in unison but that only looks good if players vidcards can do perpixel lighting and use normal maps. otherwise it looks rather plain and shabby. but, you could also just make decent gear textures, say 5.. and apply those to a 2 poly mesh and rotate those and it would look real nice, and thats what im hoping we will all decide upon. im not shure if images alone can be rotated, so far i have not seen that done in the guis, but a simple 2 poly .ase can, and its basicly the same thing, plus the benifit of it scaling proper will make it look better over standard gui image scaling which can be a bear to deal with. EDIT: i was thinking of a 3d clockring with the inner workings, here is the clockring style i had in mind, though it isnt textured yet. the only other benifit to this of course is that it wont look so 2d.. instead it will look like its popping out at you.

actually.. i think it would be very simple to make a decent clock like that, it looks complicated.. but to get it working in a loading gui is a simple task. md5's are not needed, nor is any type of animated mesh, just simple models and let the gui do the rest. im making a mock up of one right now to see how it will work, and it looks very promising. having the small hand of the clock rotate once to complete the loading is basicly one variable added to its windowdef. i'll see what i can put together for a test and add a link to download it. to make it work with any map you just rename the gui "mymap.gui" and place it in the guis/map folder. i'll see what i can slap together for the test and get a link here when i can.

im going to try some experiments with moving models on the loading screen to see what it does, but im assuming that any movement thats put there will slow down the load times, hopefully im wrong. i have a gear that i was using to rotate and mesh with other gears.. simple model.. so if it works fine, it should be do-able for a better model similar to that clock, which looks real nice.. because im thinking if it takes one revolution of the second hand to indicate loading 0-100% would look nice, even if the clock stopped and stuttered at times would still look nice.

Yeah I remember saying exactly that in another thread http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...=database&st=50 This is the thread where I first pointed out the misleading idea instilled by the "Cyberdeamon in new york" Doom 3 screenshot. and on that page I said this; Just one of many tricks you can use.

More: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.p...howtopic=272868

Hell, Gamespot are doing a live stream of a guy playing Oblivion 12 hours a day. I watched it for about an hour - it's more then enough. The game looks to be pretty fun and good imo. The stream vid link is somewhere on the Oblivion forums.

A really good long user video in this thread: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.p...c=275592&st=20#

I wouldn't be so bitter about it ... to me they were just joking around, and even then mostly about Slash's free use of the term "official", not really about anything he was going to make per se. Also, I think TDM's quality will largely be able to speak for itself ... It's not like the team is going to be policing what can and can't be made with it. Dromed never got a wiff of LGS support and the Editor's Guild is notorious for attacking the latest mega-projects; doesn't seem to make T2 FM-making any less popular. And even if some guys do appear to attack some projects with a roll of their eyes, sometimes mega-visions should be chastized a little to force the creators to defend them or at least think realistically about them. If Slash thinks what they said was unfair, he can try to convince them otherwise. Anyway, this thread looks exactly like the one in the Off Topic forum, so my answer will be the same: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&sh...indpost&p=61672

I'm at a loss as to why this is being argued as if it's being considered for the toolset, it isn't. As I've stated, the toolset will have the standard system. This is for FM authors. When the toolset is finished and we begin work on a campaign, then we'll look at these ideas and decide how they will work. Until then, I think we should all drop it and quit making fools of ourselves with schoolyard tactics in the public forums.

Not without the source code...some tweaks are possible, and I've released some myself...but the kind of optimization won't happen without source code...or someone who can reverse engineer really well. There is no Thief sub forum, for the simple reason that this is the official forum for "The Dark Mod", and having "classic Thief" directly on our site, is likely not a wise step for a mod that is already treading a very fine line when it comes to intellectual property. We're glad you think highly of us, but we are not here to take people away from the already great Thief community forums that exist out there. TTLG and Eidos provide a wonderful community for the fan base. When our toolset is released, we hope that they will create a sub forum for us, much like they did with Thievery.

Could some one actualy optimiz the engine? since ION is gone there is no hope for the game so if some one made a custom patch that re optimizas the engine then the game might run way better. might be posible. and why in the fuck is there no thief series channel in your forums. this web site should be the fucking data base of the thief community. everyone should be here in steed of looking glass forums or small forums through out the net. and the circle will never update so what ever. you mod is the future of thief btw. if you havent realized. if i was u i would make a whole thief series section below the dark mod ones.

Glad to hear it. I'd like to get the chest in too, but I'll have to see whether I can figure out where to put everything--like I said, animations are beyond me. I looked at the gaslight and it has a similar problem to the goblet. It has a great mesh, but could use a lot more detail in the texturing. If you don't mind another comparison: (and actually, this is even after I modified the original texture a bit to tone down the yellow.) Not everything has to be as ornate as BT's, but the texture should be more than a flat colour. If you want to have another crack at it go ahead, otherwise I'll tinker with it when I have time. BTW, for most objects, it's helpful to add noselfshadow to the material...especially rounded objects look better when they aren't casting a shadow on themself.

Macsen: Journalist with some interest in writing, architecture and fantasy. Does some work for the Hammerite Imperium and Dark Mod from time to time. ZylonBane: Obsessive compulsive fidgety nanny who gets riled up over the smallest mistakes. Probably a member of the apostrophe society. Does nothing for Thief other than try his best to scare fans away from the forums. Who is the loopy one? I have too many bones in my mouth to comment.

Ah, yes, thanks for removing that... picture. Relax, I am not the person who takes all things serious, besides, I can make jokes about myself ("Plumbusius" was another possibility for my nickname, but somehow I decided better to use "Magnesius". Well!). True, we do not want to create just another mod which would eventually dissappear in oblivion soon. By the way, I do not insist that you use every mesh I am sending to you, Springheel. Uhm..., honestly, the goblet is quite tawdry. Just take the ones you consider as useful, I have no problem with it. But I would like to see the chest and the gaslamp in the game, though!

The texture was (is) experimental. It looked somewhat OK in the game, so I decided to inlcude it in the mesh package. I won't convince you to include it in TDM as well, though. It's not so nice to show the *worst* texture of the whole package for a comparison, you know I will create a completely new texture for it. Errm..., please remove that ugly picture and my goblet for now.