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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 decided to finally get with the times and updated my PS5.5 to PS7. I've been having a bit of a problem though. The gamma when I have PS7 open is higher than everything else on my monitor, so that when I view images in other applications, they are much darker. I had this problem with 5.5 at one point too, and fixed it by going into RGB colour management and clicking off the "Use Monitor Compensation" box (or something close to that; I forget the exact wording. I can't find any such option in PS7 though. Anyone know where I would find that option, or something like it?

When you go to the FTP to either upload a new texture or grab an old one you'll notice that there are 2 new folders in place of the big list we had to weed through before. I did this because looking for Springheel's frame and BT's new floors was a pain in the butt with the current configuration. So now we have the Old Texture Archive, where all our old textures that were previously a part of the big list will go, and Dark_Mod, which is where all current textures that haven't been incorporated into the pack (and using the new naming scheme, hopefully) will be plopped. The new one is also gonna follow the same directory structure as the texture pack (it IS the texture pack, actually), so it'll be easier to organize and manage everything. They've both been organized into subcatagories, so if you're looking for an old window just check the windows directory in the old archive and so on and so on...feel free to add your own directories if you think the one you're uploading doesn't fit in any of the current catagories. And lastly, the texture pack reorg is almost done. I should have it up in the next couple of days. Just for a nice visual cue, and to open this up for comments, I'll post a pic right fast.. See anything wrong, tell me. The better it's laid out the smoother it'll go for us. Edit: BT, I added the textures you had in the mansions folder to the new WIP Texture directory..so if you wonder why your folder is gone it's cuz I put it in there. They've been renamed Mansion_Floor_Tile03 and Mansion_Wall_Trim04.

I'm open to suggestions...I was trying to work in a hammer and anvil symbol, but I haven't come up with anything great yet.

What about Maya? I found this much better then Lightweave and Max. But now I prefer Blender :lol:. It's open source and can do all that I need. Which is much less than the app provides anyways.

Good job, LB! You must have a microphone/recorder set-up of some sort. That's cool I'm not sure if these are tests, or finals... but if I may?, some constructive feedback real quick... * The popping sound at the beginning of 'thief gulp test' (which I assume is a cork being popped off a flask?) sounds kind've cartoony. I like the sipping sound. The gulping sound at the end doesn't sound realistic. * The more prevalent cicada (or whatever) sound on top of all the other sounds in the 'grasshopper' clip has a pretty repetitive frequency. If we were to use this in-game, I think it would be cool to just have the grasshoppers in the background be the general atmosphere, and then randomly add a few cicada clickson top... and then remove them for a while, and then add them back in for a short duration, etc., in a random fashion. But then again, maybe that's not how nature works. But then again, also, a game player would pick up on the repetition of it and hear that it's a loop eventually. The better you can hide the fact that it's a loop, the better. * The running horse could be usable, but depending on how it's used or what the horse is running on, could benefit by having some underlying bass tone stomps added for each step, thus making the horse seem like it has more mass. * The 'door open' sound is pretty creepy. I like it This creepy one should probably be used sparingly if we're ever going to make a campaign. I don't think I'd want to hear that loud of a sound every time a door opens; well, especially since we're a sneaky thief. We should make a few door sounds to choose from, some more subtle sounding. I'm sure you already had thought of most/all this stuff. Just wanted to mention. Thanks for your hard work so far!! I really like the 'Factory' sounds too! Good job.

If I ever manage to get some extra time between all the mapping, texturing, and bossing people around with impunity (haHAAA) I might consider helping make a town map or dungeon for you. I love me some Secret of Mana, and it'd be fun to do a little something for your mod later on down the road. Just keep an eye open for potential copywrite infringements. Square-Enix shut down that really cool Chrono Trigger remake recently, and they might eventually look your way if you stay too close to their material.

Hiya! Hmm... not sure what's up with my personal site. If you just click on it it should open up in your default player tho.

mixture of efx and ambient sounds crickets and grasshoppers factory grasshopper the shore people in town walking through water footsteps on stone horse running open door thief gulp test (recorded on lower quality mic, the ahhh will be left to new horizon )

Well, if it's parchment we should stay with a sepia tone, but we can always increase the contrast. I don't know if everyone is determined to go with a parchment theme or not, but that seems to be the consensus of the people posting. I'd be open to other ideas, but like I said earlier, we have to be in agreement so that the various menus go together. (I actually had envisioned something like a glowing clock face surrounded by machinery, with the menu options in the center of the face). Maybe I'll do a couple very quick mock-ups of other theme possibilities.

I've taken the liberty of procuring some...ahem...preview copies and I can tell you right now that they won't be useable right out of the box. Cept for vols. 3 & 5 they're not much different than what I'd find off of any high quality free texture site. They're HUGE, like 1600x1200 or bigger, most are non tileable, and they're open for extensive editing. The big advantage of using them is that you have loads of textures in one easy to find spot, but cept for 3 & 5 (which are great for detaling, and would be the ones I'd definately buy) we could do the same with steady camerawork and creative Photoshop useage.

Brr...you must run these things by me first, and instead of an open free-for-all thread, you must assign individual tasks by PM using the format detailed on the sticky thread link, after people have volunteered. Since you are concept art, each task reference should have the following prefix: ACn followed by a four digit number, for instance: ACn0001 might be the main menu concept, etc. etc. And then you have to PM ME with the tasks so that I can keep track of who's doing what. Don't fall out of line, please. It's so difficult to keep things organised.

I think if you have some experience with Maya then you will adapt more easily to blender then with other animation packages, at least from the interface. Well, I only knew Maya, Blender and Cinema 4D so I don't have that much expierence. Anyway. Blender is Open source is now my prefered tool for animation. Not that I'm the creative artists guy . But I must say that Blender was the first Program I ever used, that I couldn't do ANYTHING with without a manual at first.

Either get Blender (free, open source), or use some P2P to...umm...find out how to get 3DS Max cheap. There is some good advice on emule, for instance.

Honestly, I didn't even think about the hand motion. I probably would suggest not even worrying about it because once you go that far you get into ...why doesn't he reach out to pick up loot and other things like that. Probably more trouble than it's worth. Things that are eaiser to control...like the holding the sword, arming the bow and arrow, lock picking....easily setup in a controlled environment. Anyway, just shooting the breeze and it would be fun to open a drawer.

Ahh, good point. I'm mixed on this. I think moveable drawers and swinging cupboard doors would be a nice-to-have. If we're to make a campaign, tho, I think we should try to avoid putting mission critical info in the drawers. I hate having to open every drawer or cupboard to complete a mission or risk missing out on key story information. Maybe just have 'extra' things (miscellaneous loot, miscellaneous background story notes, very unique non-mission critical weapons or tools, etc.) in them if they're implemented?

Hmmm, I"m not a programmer...just the sound guy, but it sure would be cool if you could open drawers and find loot or letters inside. Something I was expecting for Thief 3 but it never happened. Not sure how hard it would be.

Here is a low-detail concept sketch for our Builder guards. Their armour has more metal in it than any other group, which I think is appropriate. This is based heavily on the concept sketches for T1. I still need to come up with the symbol for the chest plate...I'm trying to combine a hammer with either an anvil or cog. If anyone has any ideas, I'm open to suggestion.

they don't just guard temples. They enfoced the laws within the city b4 the police was formed. They also used to be the most powerfull foce in the City, long ago. very arcane, very precursor, very heavily dressed on the shoulders your concept sketch is wonderfull for a city guard, but a Hammerite has to have a more arcane uniform, with a square, or more open mask, a red cloak and shoulder armour.

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 have no doubt about that. And while seeing a full courtyard through a transparent pane of glass is undeniably cool, you always have to take performance issues into consideration. You might have so much detail down there that an opaque window would be the better option. I'd rather go with highly detailed areas that are somewhat closed off from each other, IE you can't see inside a house from outside or outside from the inside, than sparse open areas. Visportals can help with this a little bit, but a few sacrifices will have to be made to make sure it runs well for everybody. I'm not saying we can't use transparent windows, we'll just have to be selective about how we use em. I remember a map for Vamp I made that had almost 2000 brushes on display in a single screen...ran great on my comp, but it crashed the game for alot of other people. Since then I've tried learning how to keep something that looks good in check with it's performance.

Ok, I'm not a team member but I had a looky and noticed that the thread was closed - which is a shame because some further clarification might be needed. I havn't read the terms and conditions yet, but as far as I know Doom 3 and Id's Doom3 SDK are not released under the GPL. Id only release their code as open source (quite a different thing from letting people play with the source code) several years after release and the shelf life of the product has expired. Neither is GPL a 'non commercial' or 'free' license, it just happens that a lot of free software uses GPL. Meeting the (fairly hefty) requirements of the GPL will almost certainly infringe Id's own copyright as you will be granting the right for anyone to distribute the code commercially (doh). And, just in case you havn't got the gist of this post yet, the GPL has been designed exclusively for the distrubtion of software code. It is next to useless for licensing creative content such as audio, textures, level designs and so on. The deeds offered by Creative Commons are much better suited for that kind of thing. In short. GPL is wholesome and good, but unless you specifically know otherwise, steer well clear. Id will probably mention terms and conditions for distributing Mods in one of their readme files.

I agree. Call me a nerd, I dont care, but I play D&D. And out of all the thieves I have played and played with, none have ever used a sword or anything bigger then that. Its just not the way of the thief. AND since we are basically recreating T3, which had a dagger, should we include that in our mod. I mean think about stealth. How stealthy are you with a big blade out in the open glinting any available knife vs. the use of a dagger covertly tucked away from all view. Plus a sword is a little bit conspicuous when you are walking around town. Think about all of the movies you have seen with thieves....how many can you recall sneaking around with a big sword?

Oh, Agreed. For sure. I thought this was fairly expected of most Mod projects, especially considering we would be using an open source SDK, and indeed creating for the specific purpose that people create custom content (levels mainly). But I will spell it out. And I think GPL would be a pretty good way to go.

GPL mean that EVERYBODY can use it. They are not allowed to seel it or sell derivative work from it, but they can use it in a commercial product. If you don't like this then now is the time to leave the team. That's exactly why I raised this subject NOW instead of when we are finished. If they are using it in a commercial product then they will have to make this also open source. Or at least the part that contains the GPLed stuff.