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Okey, I uploaded the soundeffects I've made so far for the Thief2D project on the FTP. I'm going to be able to start making some new ones next week (hopefully).

I forgot to upload the ambience sounds (rain, wind and thunder). Anyway they're on the FTP now. I also uploaded the stuff Fingernail has done (hope you don't mind! ) Also, I'm leaving the noisemaker sound up there until we've decided on a concept and the new sound has been created.

EDIT: I like that idea new horizon, would also help account for the arrow's "dissapearance" after being fired. I vote we keep flashbombs. A flash arrow would make it a bit too easy to blind someone from a distance, rather than judging arc and such. Plus, flashbombs seem more steampunkish.

next texture: a new wooden door:

My apologies for not posting sooner, the multimedia company I work for is getting shut down (the owner spent all are money on his drug problem… ) so I had to work 3, 12 hour photo shots last week to try and wrap up are projects, so we could get are last paychecks and leave this sinking ship with what we are owed. But now that that’s almost all over I will have more free time to work on art for your project and to fill out my portfolio! So in all I am happy! After closer review of what is posted on this mod's site: I would like to come up with a unifying theme for the environments. You know how the hammers had control over most of the cities and there influence was seen in the design and architecture of the first and second Thief games. If we are going to try and have some originality and not make reference to any intellectual property of Eidos as part of the Thief Franchise. We will have to come up with some original ideas even though we are going to mimic Thief stile of game play. We should have a story line with different characters (no hammers, no druids, ext), different environments that help drive your plot? And even a different mane character that is more then just a vial over his face away from the design of the Thief in the game we are takeing inspiration from. I think this is a grate idea for a mod but I think we need to decide on whether or not you are Photocopying Thief or Inspired by Thief? If what you want is to copy thief (for the irony of stealing thief) I don’t think you need artists like me, because Eidos has already dun all the creative work for you. However if you want to create something new and original I will gladly help beaus I love the Thief stile of FPS games and would like to work on an original mod of that nature. I am not trying to upset any one with this post I just don’t want to be part of copying another artist ideas and claming them as mine. It looks bad in a portfolio and I am planning on going in to the game industry with my portfolio as a compelling demonstration of my creative ability’s. So you see, I just can't redraw the past Thief games and call them my work... I want to work with this team but if we are not going to do any thing original my time is probably better spent working on a different mod.

the first texture done on my new comp hope you'll like my roof (as you can see it's already on the ftp): I took the source picture on my trip to the castle.

Good job on the builder concept, Springheel -- and thanks for posting the historic reference material, Alexius. Hey Springheel - I added a new folder to the DarkMod FTP area called "Art-ConceptDrawings," and within that folder added a "Springheel" folder and a "Darkness_Falls" folder. This gives us our own separate playgrounds to keep track of stuff in without getting confused. Alexius, if you'll be doing concept drawings and need webspace, feel free to add a folder there. We could add other folders, too, if other artists come on board. I wanted to keep only drawings in there, but realistically we may want to re-title the folder and morph into more of a Art-ConceptArtwork area. You guys may already have webspace and don't care, but I needed the webspace.

Heh, yeah, I don't normally use crappy speakers for my sound and music needs. I'm getting a new computer soon, and I wont bother to rig my things up again before I get it. I could post the sfx I've made for Thief2D though. Thief2D Music This is a little almost-done music thing for a movie or something. I'll put the sound effects on the FTP once I get a chance.

I'm not a music guy, so get your salt grains ready. I think these sound pretty good. Nice, quiet background ambience style tunes. The first one is nice, although the exact tone of the piano gave me a different 'feeling' than I would expect in the game. A little more light and airy that I would expect, but not bad altogether The second one is also nice. Defintely more ambiance than music. I was with it all the way till the end, where some of the sounds became a little too rythmic, and began to sound more music than ambiance. I think there is a place for musical ambience and environmental ambience, but I question whether they should be mixed together in the same track. Triggered changes could work with this, of course... music changes are great when done correctly! The third one was probably my favorite, particularly the beginning. Great, dark, brooding musical ambiance. My one complaint is the drastic change between the first half and the second half. This is two different themes smashed into one song, I think, and maybe they should be separated. The first half should continue into a new movement, but it should definately carry over the themes. Also, I noticed quite clearly the chimes used in the first two, sounding like distant clock bells. Nice sound on these. However, in ambiance, I think you may want to avoid features such as these. On a five to ten minute loop, the reoccuring bells could seem strange to a player who recognizes a midnight clock chime occurring every 5 minutes. The chimes would work fantastically as an intro segment that isn't looped, or a triggered musical bit though. Note that this restriction doesn't apply to all features; bangs sudden dischordant sounds, etc. can fit in with the environment and not call attention to themselves. Anyway, just my opinion, as a non-sound designer

Am actually home for the weekend right now, so I'm not gonna get any more work done till I get back to my dorm. But on the plus side, I think I've picked out the hardware for a new-ish computer - a 2.8 GHz Xeon machine with an open slot for a second SPU when I scrape the cash together, and 1.5 gigs of RAM. Awwww yeah. Once I run this by a few of my friends who are better with hardware, I'll order it and put it together. BTW, Springheel - awesome sketch of the face, it'll be great for what I need.

I'll have to check Google to find out what Cubase SX + VST instruments are... (tomorrow after I've gotten some sleep) Goldwave rocks. Ahh, thanks for the info regarding DarkMod FTP. I hadn't seen that before. Regarding the samples -- you should get better speakers, m'friend!! There's some rumbling bass in parts, and other subtleties, that might not be audible on cheaper speakers. Perhaps you already do and are just using a different PC than you normall do...? PS: If someone with DSL or Broadband can do me a HUGE favor and move the above MP3s to that DarkMod FTP area, I'd really appreciate it! I'm on 56K and it'd take me a while If you're able, let me know what the new URLs are and I'll edit the above links.

Here's the link for the Thief font: http://desktoppub.about.com/library/fonts/hs/uc_jd.htm According to a post at Ion Storm's forum, this font is for the original Thief games. You maybe all already had it/knew about it? (I know New Horizon already knows about it, but I hadn't seen it before.)

512 works for me....but I have an Athlon 64 so stuff should just get better as I get new graphics card, more RAM etc. I think my next big upgrade (if I ever do one on this machine), will be 1024Mb of RAM and perhaps a 512MB graphics card

Hey, not bad at all, Fingernail. Once you get done you'll need to post a tut on how you did it so we can all join in on the fun (wow, that rhymed). Oh yeah, a nice tip on making specularmaps. I went through your mini tutorial and make my first specmap by just making a darkened greyscale image of the material I wanted to shinyize. Thing is once you're done with it the lighting will end up being too uniform across the surface and won't look quite as realistic as it should... The solution to that problem is surprisingly easy. To fix that, just make your greyscale image as usual, add a render cloud on a new layer, gaussian blur it a bit til the clouds don't look quite like clouds anymore, tweak it til you're happy with the results, then blend the layers (I used overlay, but quite a few of the blend filters will work). Instant nonuniform specular map, the end results are alot better and you only need basic photoshop knowledge to do it.

The windows gain a new level of texturized beauty: You HAVE to see this ingame, the glass distorts the image behind whilst the lead stays put...magic.

It's not too late to start. If you wanna go ahead and help BT and I out I can tell you everything you need to know to get a basic working texture in place. I had never done any texturework before I started this mod, so it's not really a hard thing to get into. All it takes is patience, trial and error work (I went through 7 specular maps before I got one I was happy with for instance), and a good idea of how to apply depth with heightmaps and you're ready to go. And another test using the new trim is up. Still looks a little plain, need more detailing textures.

I really don't understand why you pick a new, empty server. Why not put it on irc.starchat.net right next to all the other Thief projects? *shakes head*

Obviously I've been interested in this mod from the start but since I'm involved in some other issues I've not made any comments. The screens you've show so far are very nice. I don't recognise anyone on the team from other mods or FMs except ModeTwo from TUT and NB. How experienced are you guys? And how are you finding it? My main query is - what will you do if we get the TDS editor? There will be a bit of a software conflict with people making FMs for TDS whilst you guys work on this. Given that you have stated that this will only be out next year at the earliest do you not think that many of your ideas will be overtaken? Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to bring a negative vibe - I'm just being realistic. I don't have Doom3 and won't get it until XMas at the earliest (as that is probably when I'll get my new gfx card). I have a NB/TDS map/FM in the works. It's really a SP FM but I can adapt it to NB MP. If the TDS editor is released I will make it for that 1st. But now I have an MP version designed I want to take to NB eventually anyway. And if there is no TDS editor then I'd love to make it for The Dark Mod as that is the only way the real atmosphere and plot will come out. Can someone explain the SDK/editor score with Doom3? What comes with it and what can you DL? And what are it's limitiation, what is it's scope?

Whoa, holy hell...my scale is way off. I figured that the characters chest would be about even with the top of the wood panels. Guess that explains why the little scale marker on the Z-axis window is smaller than it was in Vampire...Doomguy is alot shorter than what I'm used to. Oh well, it won't be that difficult to fix. Also, the reason it leaks isn't because the walls are too thin, walls that are 2 grid units thick are about the average for Id's maps, it's because my lights are too big at the moment. I'm still learning the in's and out's of D3's lighting, and right now they're too large considering the size of the room. I have cleaned up the geometry in my most recent mockup, though...so it shouldn't have any gaps. Edit: Now that I think about it, the fact that the lights have to be bigger than what they need to be might be a good indication that the room is too large...I'll have it fixed up over the next few days. Edit 2: New map (non shrunk, what's shown in my most recent screenshots) is available here. I would've uploaded it to our regular FTP, but I can't seem to access it at the moment. Since the geometry is cleaner than it was in the first rev no BSP errors should pop up.

I think it's important that the texture artists try to work with a certain colour palette - it seems they already have the warm fire feel for the indoors lit with torches. Now out doors should be decided on soon, like strong blues and purples or greens maybe (and yellows, for the lights), or something, like the Thief 3 concept artwork. All good artists know that less is more. By that I mean, if the scene is filled with all sorts of colours, it loses its identity, but if there is a specific theme going on, it shows and it really has its own character. People were saying "This is what Thief 3 SHOULD have looked like!" about Renzatic's screen shots, and I beleive the colour palette is why. We (well, the artists) should strive for a unique, and unified feel for this Thief world. You can see good examples of this in a lot of 2D games. I think 3D games are only just catching up there, as the tools let artists express themselves more easily - a lot of older 3D game all sort of look alike, but now, with some of the nicer looking games, you can take a screen shot of it, and it is so easy to tell straight away that it is from that game, and not another game of that type. I think a good example is Need For Speed Underground. All the neon colours glowing in the dark, and the motion blurring. It's not the most realistic racing game out there (check out some of those new rally games), but it is certainly one of the prettiest, and best looking racing games out there. (If I have people disagree with me about NFSU, then maybe I chose a bad example, but I hope my point gets across all the same)

Whoa, place lost alot of it's cheer since while I was away...now it's all gothed out. Anyway, new textures placed in a more properly lit room for your persual. I even threw in my ugly ass wallpaper texture just to show it off....still think it belongs in a bathroom. Pic I intend to throw in a fireplace near the center of the room once I get an appropriate texture in place. I also wanna make it less angular, but I figured it'd be good to test out the lighting engine so I made a few pillars and grooves to see how it'd do. I haven't imported Blackthief's paneled ceiling yet (hence no ceiling), but it'll be in there soon. I'll also try out his other wallpapers in place of mine, too.

I would suggest you make the normal texture (with lattice) transparent and translucent and then put the lattice on it. of course everything must fit exactly, but I think this will look best. I tried to make a no lattice version, but it looks like crap, cauze of the dirt and some other things on the glass, that is dependent to the lattice. I hope you understand, what I mean - sometimes it's hard to explain in english edit: a new wallpaper

a new texture: a pavement-texture (<-- is that the right name ?) I wanted to test it in thief 3, however the bumpmap didn't work properly for some reasen. so I just uploaded the texture - somebody else should make the bumpmap for it

I'm working on one here and there, but I'm quite busy today. I might have something tonight. Edit: Ok, I have a few more minutes to make some comments...The typical banner size is 468x60, which is not a lot of space. The new one by Alexius looks great but is far too busy to be used at banner size. Perhaps it could be used as a website header or something. I'm not entirely sure I like the colour scheme, which is awfully bright and red...it makes me think more of Aladdin than Thief, but that's me. I have two different versions in the works and I'll post one of them tonight for comment. I can't work on it from this computer though.

Is the official Thief font or something? I find some of the letters really don't seem to go well together, and the smaller ones are almost impossible to read. I like the tagline though. The face isn't my favourite part. I have some small experience with banners...can we hold off posting it for a day or two to tweak a few new versions?