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a new brick-texture (also from the Cloister) http://www.dark-project.com/BlackThief/brick_test2.jpg

I also favor textures over shinyness, but think shinyness could be used as a cheap workaround for us and/or FM authors who don't want to take the time to make different (i.e., more ornate) textures for everything. Some (maybe most) loot objects should certainly have different textures to distinguish themselves. But New Horizon's mockup really shows that different textures wouldn't be needed for every piece of valuable loot, and I think it's cool to just have the slight variation NH's image shows for some loot. Sometimes just a more enhanced or brilliant texture like that can go a long ways.

Maybe, but we're not making your dream girl. Hehe. Personally, I find more realistic more attractive. Look, how about a game where the females are realistically proportioned for once? We're really going to break some new ground with this Mod. Thief 3 had fat and thin male guards. Lets consider having fat and thin females too! Even if we only implement female nobles, and not female guards. Fat or thin, they still have to have realistic proportions. None of this Tomb Raider "anorexic girl with beach balls in her tank top" crap.

hi tom, i just started with these guys a couple of days ago so I am pretty new to all this too. Your environmental work is excellent, from concepts to textures. Why do you mainly do environments? Are you working in the games industry.

Hi My name is alan and I have been a commercial artist for the last fifteen years, I have been poly modeling and texturing for five years building my portfolio. It is my aim to work in the games industry and would be very pleased to work with you on this mod. I would be happy to help with either modeling or texture, concept work ...it all helps to build the portfolio and would be great to work with a group towards a greater goal. take a look at some of my work at www.alandickinson.net.... I have a load of new digital images I have not updated ...if you are interested I can send some to you ?

Ive only heard the term brushes used in context with game editors, so if you haven't used one before then it's no surprise you haven't run across it before. At it's most basic a brush is just a cube...or 6 polygons if you wanna be exact. The broadest term is any geometry you lay in the editor besides patches (curved surfaces) or imported models. They're the building blocks of your maps, you'll use them more than anything else. Edit: looks like Fingernail beat me to the punch. Like he said, since you're gonna be a modeller you won't have to worry about brushes at all. lol, anyway...I think I mixed you up with the other new guy..judging from his work it looks like he's gonna be interesting in mapping at some point.

Ok. Here's the scoop. Working on flat(ish) surfaces in Max is not too big a deal, especially if you have a good reference. I highly recommend you learn to use the Editable Poly, as it is elegant and powerful. Find a few good basic poly modelling tutorials, as they'll go a long way. Then you'll need to learn to use the Cut tool (which is arguably your greatest friend and ally when detailing.) UV Mapping is a non-issue - this will be a planar texture. Normal mapping is not a big deal, either. My best advice is play around as much as possible. Find a simple texture, and try it out. Bring it here if you want advice, or go to maxforums.org - a great resource for new modellers. Best of luck!

Okay, who has experience implementing sounds in games? I'd like to know how the sound files should be created/structured as far as the length of sound snippets go and how transitions are accomplished. I'm more referring to ambient sounds and music, than I am sound effects. Sound effects are pretty simple, I assume they just get triggered by the object that's supposed to make the noise But how do games go from one ambient track to another without there being a discernable clip in the audio? Well, I have played games where there's an obvious cut from one track to another... but we should try to avoid this as much as possible. I figure sound files get mapped into the map and as the player goes through the map the different ambiences occur. But what if you want a really creepy and melodic ambience in one area of the map and something more lighthearted in another section... but you want the transition between the two to be smooth? What do you do? Are separate transitionary (in-between) sound tracks created to accomplish this, or do most games just cut the track completely over to the new track without any care to how smooth the transition is? I'm just trying to better understand how sounds will be implemented to help me when I create sound files.

Within the next few days I'm gonna be reorganizing the texture pack so it'll be easier for us to plug textures into our cooresponding packs with only minimal fuss. Not only will the directory structure be changed, but I'm gonna adopt a new naming system that's more homogenous and easier to manage. First off, instead of just having 3 main catagories (Walls, Floors, Objects) I'm going to sort them into themes. For now I'm thinking Mansions, Cityscapes, Churches, Factories, and a misc catagory for things that can easily overlap among all the themes. The directories below these will still be the same, a folder for each type and material. This is open for discussions, of course, so if anyone has a better idea of how structure the texture tree feel free to add to the discussion. Next comes the naming scheme, we're gonna keep this as straightforward as we possibly can. If you have a wood floor that'll go well in a mansion then it'll be called Mansion_Floor_Wood0x to coorespond with the directory it's gonna be placed in. Any variations on the same texture should have a letter applied to both...like Springheel and I both have Jay's tile floor in our respective packs, but somewhere down the line I changed mine to a black and white marblesque texture, so Spring's version will be Floor_Tile03a and mine will be Floor_Tile03b. Simple, straightforward, and easy to change if we have a naming conflict. If we do it right we can all send each other small updates that can be plugged into our material files easily without having to worry about sending increasingly larger packs to keep up with. Another thing to keep in mind is making similar textures share the same specular or normalmap. Once again I'll bring up Jay's floor texture for the example. The changes on mine are just cosmetic, so both can use the same local and spec and save on some file space. Just name it Floor_Tile03_local or _s and direct the material file entry to it. If you want to make 2 versions of the same texture with different overlays or material properties, like a really shiny version of a brick wall that has an ultra reflective spec or a glowing fullbright window, just name them what you think is appropriate..like wall03_wet for the shiny wall or Window02_lit for the fullbright window. Nothing complicated there. Taking this and the above change into consideration, we can have entire families of similar textures that can be swapped back and forth easily. We'll have to keep track of what we're all doing for awhile, but once we get this rolling it shouldn't take much management to keep things running smoothly. Blackthief: You'll need to get in the habit of doing this, too. You don't have Doom 3 yet but you will eventually, getting into it now will make things easier for you when you do. Just remember to name your dither as x_x_d and the normals as x_x_local and save em as TGA files...rar em up if you're worried about them being too large, they compress well. That should about do it. I'll also post an update listing all of our current textures once we get this squared away.

I found out how to do the frob highlighting and now I need some object that I can use to implement for real tests. Frobing is not yet working, I only know how it has to be done, so I can't show you anything. But I have to create a new item for this and since I have to do it from scratch (almost) I was wondering if one of you has already an object ready which I can use for this. I was thinking on something where it seems to me that we already have some models. Like the flashbomb, an arrow or something similar. I would prefer a flashbomb as it is a little bit bigger (and thus can be better seen), but it doesn't really matter.

Renz you were right - I'm on a roll new marble texture http://www.dark-project.com/BlackThief/floor_test3.jpg the white line isn't a texture issue - the brushes just don't fit together properly. I've to learn this editor better edit: it's on the ftp now - folder: Dark_Mod/Mansion/Interior/Floor/Marble mansion_mosaic01_d.tga mansion_mosaic01_ed.tga mansion_mosaic01_s.tga mansion_mosaic01_local.tga

It's done. All I need to do is make the material file and we're good to go. While I was finishing up I decided that it'd be a better idea to just upload everything in the texture pack to the FTP in the current directory structure so we could all follow it. If you intend on adding a texture just go to the proper folder, check your file name against what's there, and upload away. Basically what will be sitting on our server IS the texture pack, anyone that's interested in doing textures or maps at all just needs to grab the dark_mod folder and drag it to their base/textures folder in Doom 3. It won't overwrite the old darkmod directory just yet, that'll still be in use til I port my maps over to the new texture set, but it's there for anyone that wants to use it.

new texture: a marble floor in T2 style http://www.dark-project.com/BlackThief/floor_test1.jpg edit: brighter specular map: http://www.dark-project.com/BlackThief/floor_test2.jpg

thx. I'll upload it. Maybe I should start organizing my new textures. So I'll put it into a Mansion/Walls/Stone folder, alright ? edit: everything is on the ftp, including the normal- and specular map

new texture (marble border) + test of another rug texture ingame http://www.dark-project.com/BlackThief/texture_test2.jpg

This isn't voting for which menu to use, but just which one you like the most so far. It will give us artists an idea of which one we should be expanding on. Here are the options so far: Inspired by Pak's dark parchment version: Inspired by Ren's Book version: New Horizon's steampunk version: Springheel's dark illustration version: Springheel's (very rough) stained-glass skyline version:

I don't mind at all, man..that's what they're there for. The new floor and rug gives the room a more elegant and clean feel, I like it.

I don't know if this is clear to everyone:the stainglass is from "The Circle of Stone and Shadow". We can't use that, right ? - so we first have to do our own version - after that we should do a new vote IMO. I voted for the dark parchment - IMO it has a lot of dark atmosphere and is very thiefy

Thanks for the support, Domarius. You should see my old work to copmare this to - even in the past month or so there's been a huge upgrade in quality. oDDity, my biggest issue now is actually hardware-related - I can't work on the subdivided mesh, since it's about 200,000 polygons and brings my 3-year-old computer to its knees. I am now accepting donations for my upcoming hardware upgrade. My plan is to develop some high-rez displacement maps to generate the ridiculously detailed mesh. If I had ZBrush, I'd use that, but unfortunately I don't, so it all has to be done in Max. The cracks in the leather, texture of the cloth, and so forth will all be displacement mapped, unless I can find the money to scrape my new computer together within the next two weeks or so.

It's zero problem to sculpt several diffent heads and body types from the same mesh. Making all the new textures for them is the real pain in the ass. I know you can have random anmations playing on the legs body and head, but I'm don't think you can actually change the meshes randomly. This would probaby mean making all the charcaters to some sort of template, which kill creativity.

I don't see why not...it's close enough to what we're dealing with already. I've actually done a new one as well. I stole the graphics from The Circle, but I was thinking earlier about something like this, with a circular stained glass design and the city skyline in the background. I put this together in like 5 minutes, so obviously it's rough. I think it addresses Sparhawk's thoughts about sticking to the major colour scheme.

Is this a new head in the skinning or modelling sense of the word?

Agreed, there should definately be an option to remove it...but we still have to keep in mind that we are creating an editor for people to create their own Thieflike fan missions. We shouldn't really deviate too far from the course we have set, which is to capture a Thief 1 and 2 style game. Not to be a nag, I just want to make sure we stay focussed. Should we all decide to stick around for a large campaign then I definately want to push the envelope and see what we can do to improve the gameplay in new and interesting ways. For now though, lets give the fans what Eidos won't.

It wouldn't indicate danger, just that he's in full light, and it doesn't have to be a blasting sound, but subtle as I said. It wouldn't take new players 5 minutes to get used to the light/shadow sound/music, which would obviously have to be distictive. There should be no danger sound telling you when AIs are close etc. I imagine it working perfectly. We need to be innovative as well as copying THief, surely?

hey thanks for the feed back dark, i appreciate it. those are not final i can fine tune them after we agree if that is a sound we want (i use numerous ways to get my sounds: record myself, use my synth, use some samples and overlap other sounds then loop them too). and that gulp test was just that, a test, the gulp should be done by new horizon anyway, since he is handeling the voices. i would like to atually take the factory one, and add some slight strings or a small piano chord into the mix to add some variety. i also plan on going to my work to record sounds from there in the near future (probably within a month, ill have to get clearence to bring in a mic setup ) thanks again peace LB