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It was very nice, but not essential. On the flip side of the fence: If Thief 2 had instead used clockwork arrows and we were proposing crystal arrows for TDM, I'd say clockwork arrows were nice, but not essential. Regardless, I agree with Springheel that we should provide both. This way, if an FM author wanted to have a level focused on Pagans or has a lot of caverns and such, s/he could use crystals. If, on the other hand, it was a level based on mansions, clockwork and steam engines, then they would instead use the more mechanical/clockwork arrows. With this, I think it's a good compromise, and think it would actually be cool to be able to tailor your arrow supply for the type of level you're making so the player gets more wrapped up in the world s/he is playing in. Do you agree? EDIT: And this is in-line with the thinking of why some Thief levels feature rope arrows, while others have vine arrows. Same sort of thing.

As sparhawk pointed out, there is a huge difference between actually exploring a level for real and activating console cheat commands and floating through the walls and such. That would be zero fun. I actually accomplished these things as Garrett, from his perspective within the Thief world, and my reward was overcoming the difficult tasks and enjoying the splendid views. And I think the LG guys would actually like to know that their levels are so well crafted that a player would want to take the effort in the middle of a mission to explore them and look at them for long periods of time from different locations just for their aesthetic beauty, even as loot and danger beckons him in other parts of the level. Anyhow, to each his own play style.

I don't think this reall is an issue. Exactly because it such a trivial thing it doesn't matter if we change i. It simply has no consequences on any other actions. Wether the rope arrow is mechanic, magic, fuel or something else doesn't change anything for the gameplay mechanics. The player has his rope arrow and will use it as a rope arrow, and whatever explanation we give, or how e visually design it, it doesn't change the fact that it IS a rope arrow. The explanation is only for narrative anal people. This is exactly the reason why we can include more choices than in other areas. If you say the lightgem should also indicate the tiredness, heaviness of loot and silhouetting it is a major change with lots of effort. If you say we replace one model of an arrow with another absolutely doesn't matter. Do you have the same problem if Oddity suddenly decides that he doesn't like his revenant and changes his head? What consequences would it have if he did so? None. It would neither change the function of the revenant, nor would it change the behaviour of it. We don't need to playtest anything here. We just copy the def file and replace the name and modelfile and that's it. I don't know what we need to test here. And if it doesn't work, so what? We can still provide the model and tell people to fix it themselve because we provided at least one set, and the other one is only as a bonus. I don't want to release a buggy or shoddy project, but if we hand out additional stuff and poeple start complaining then you know how much I would care. We don't even need to explain anything if we don't want to. Explaining is just to make you feel better, but it doesn't really change anything at all.

Well, I just finished reading this interesting and quite long thread. There have been some intriguing points made. First off, I want to say that I'm very psyched up about this mod! Thief fans are in desperate need of a set of tools that will allow creation of elaborate Thief fan missions that are authentic to Thief: The Dark Project and Thief II: The Metal Age and that has great graphics to boot, and this mod will make that fully possible. Excellent work, guys! I wanted to comment on the whole save-game issue. Springheel made a good point on a particular subject in a couple of his posts. I, too, like to explore levels in Thief very much. Get on top of things, or climb rope arrows and just admire the architecture from different perspectives, sometimes I'll sit by a window in Thief III (a.k.a. T:DS) just to enjoy the super cool stained glass church windows and watch the moonlight pour in through the window in shades of blue and gray as the dust particles dance in it's light. Or see if I can climb high on a ledge or battlement just so I can take in the view of the surrounding buildings with their lit windows and interesting roofs or perhaps the city skyline in the distance. Ahh, I love doing stuff like that. In Thief II, for example, I was in a Hammerite or Mechanist cathedral and there was this brass or bronze angel sticking out high in the air from the wall on one end of the main cathedral chapel and there was a balcony not too far from it. And I wondered if I could shoot a rope arrow at the right distance into one of the ceiling beams so that I could leap from the balcony railing and barely grab the bottom of the rope as I fell at a downward and forward angle. And then climb back up the rope and jump off at the top of the rope, up near the ceiling, and then fall far enough forward that I could get onto the top of the angel. Well, after some tries, it worked! I was just barely able to make it onto the angel. It was cool to look around the large hall and enjoy the view from an angle not really intended for the player to be looking from. It was a challenging jump and it was fun to see that I could make it. But if there were limited saves forced in the game, I would never have risked such a thing so likely to get me killed if I missed my jump. Or dared to waste one of my few valuable saves that I might really need later in the mission on such a trivial thing. But that would also greatly lessen my enjoyment of the levels in the game, if I couldn't take such risks for things not important to the mission, but that I really like to do. Since restricted numbers of saves per level/mission will always be an option only, and never forced, it's really not an issue. But I just wanted to point out that Springheel is right when he says there are reasons for wanting unlimited numbers of saves during a mission, even on expert difficulty, that have nothing to do with making the mission easier to complete, but are related strictly to the enjoyment of exploring the level and getting into interesting, and sometimes difficult and dangerous to reach, locations in or on the buildings. Anyhow, I can't wait to see authentic Thief fan missions in the DOOM III engine. They are going to look spectacular!

Yes, this is why you don't get dynamic shadows with lightmapped stuff. The models in the lightsource I think are lit approximately dynamically, i.e. they light up in accordance of how near they are to the light sources. What they were probably referring to would be how shadows are rendered - you take an image of the player and so on as seen by the light, and project it onto the objects as a texture. Well, the second holy grail would be infinite detail, then. It would look shoddy if you had beautiful lighting but the same old polygon limits.

The player has a choice at the purchase screen to buy the weapons they want. Anything found in the map should be there because the FM author knows it will be useful or because it make sense in the context of the map. Cluttering up the inventory with a dozen ingredients to cycle through does not make the game any more enjoyable, nor does having to stop and frob a bunch of items on the ground in order to make an arrow. I'd rather you be stuck with your original tools than see a system like that.

only lights that affect the visibility of the player with regard to other AI will affect the lightgem, and since the guards cannot "see" the faked lightmapping, it's irrelevant. Still, once again I say, in certain situations this would not matter anyway.

It improves that the player has the choice which arrows he wants to have. I already posted my reasoning above.

Well using this technique is up to the mapper not the mod, it can be used to accent existing dynamic lights or perhaps to light areas visible but inaccesible to the player with usage of fewer dynamic lights. It will of course not affect the lightgem/gameplay, but does add another way to seperate ones work from others. (assuming you have and know how to use the modeling program) Parallax mapping, a 2d approximation of depth, would be a nifty feature to implement as well, but would require a pixel shader and an extra depth texture. Although im not to sure good it will look on the same plane as a "normal" texture. http://www.infiscape.com/doc/parallax_mapping.pdf Also looking at this screenshot, http://www.mindplaces.com/darkmod/screen23.jpg, using skyboxes/cubemapped skies (hand drawn or generated by something like terragen), with a sky portal (map brushes / model) accents would improve things. But im not sure how well implemented sky portals are in doom3. Mapping is getting exponentially harder though with each generation of gaming, but retouching finished maps with these features may be worthwhile down the road.

The primary objective is to find loot and solve the mission objectives. So why does crystal finding get boring? It's not something that you HAVE to do. And the mixing of the materials should be properly easy. There should just be three maximum four materials. Just put them together and you have an arrow. It gives the player some additional choice, it explains why the stuff is found in the map somewhere and the map designer has a better way of distributing the materials, because he doesn't distribute it totally arbitrary. And this is certainly NOT a crap load to implement.

This would not apply in this case, because the player would combine it themeselve. And obviously the individual ingredients are not THAT expansive. It's pretty simple. Normally these arrows are done by workers specializing in them. They are harvesting the crystal and build arrows from them. These ingredients are also growing naturally in it's specific environment, but of course they are not as widespread. It's the same as you can find wheat growing wild as well, but to turn it into profit you will have to cultivate it into wheatfields. Same here. So this explains why the crystals (or whatever it is) can be SOMETIMES found in places where you wouldn't expect them, but they are not so abundant that everybody can make a profitable business out if it, unless he spends some actualy work to do it. That's why they are expensive, but still can be found in unusual places.

Well, if the player can make his own from ingredients, them the realistic ones are the way to go. Isthvan made the best point, that these things are so expensive, yet at the same time they seem to grow in any puddle of water. A total nonsense.

I'm with Spring on this. The concepts are great...but I would leave Fire, Water, Moss and Gas as crystals. I don't see why crystal arrows couldn't be made less generic. If we're really worried about style and originality...just make each type of crystal a unique shape, and employ the particle effects we were speaking of ages ago to give them some character and make them more than just a reskinned version of the same crystal. For example.... The moss arrow: Pea Green, glowly slightly. Little bits of moss slightly trailing back onto the shaft of the arrow. Very organic looking...not metal parts on the arrow. Crystal held in place by some kind of netting perhaps...not sure exactly how to describe it. Fire Arrow: Glowing somewhat brightly. Player can hear an almost inaudible smoldering sound....like coals just before a fire sputters out. A very subtle heat effect is noticable and occasionally a small flame will flicker from the tip. The crystal is held in place by a metal claw on the end of the shaft. Water Arrow: Nothing too fancy. Perhaps just some stylish metal pieces on the end of the shaft to hold it in place. Gas Arrow: Again, very subtle. Small whisps of gas appear, almost as if the crystal is evaporating. This allows for much easier placement of the elemental crystals. Noisemaker is fair game. It can definately be mechanical.

What I meant was, that the fire went out because I took the fire arrow from it. but this is not neccessarily so I think most fires are indpendent from it. Actually it is not more fun (don't know about that), but it is more logical for the player. I wouldn't expect a fire arrow in a swimming pool. And if I'm in a sleeping room with a fireplace, it might be a good place to put a fire arrow in, but why would a person, who is supposed to live there, have a fire arrow lying around on the locker?

Actually that is a goo dpoint that Spring makes, and it is the same thing that I also thought. For me as a player it felt quite natural to find a fire arrow in the oven and a water arrow in watery places. Not that I really thought that they would grow there. When I first encountered a fire arrow in a oven, I thought the owner put it there to create the fire in the first place, because it would be a convinient thing. As I accepted the magical nature of it, I didn't mind tha tthe fire went out after taking it. Having a "real" explanation how they work, takes away the consistency and the placement of such additional arrows really makes it feel contrieved. Just like everburning torches in a deep down cave system.

I'm not opposed to the idea of non-crystal arrows on principle, and the designs above are attractive, but there's something to consider. Currently, the thief can find crystals growing in places throughout the map and put them to use. As a mapmaker, if you want to give the player some extra fire arrows, you add a few crystals to a fireplace or pool of lava somewhere. It may be 'magic' and a little contrived, but it has its own internal consistancy. It's a lot harder to justify the existance of a mechanically-created arrow like those above just lying around in a kitchen or a crypt.

I've been thinking about ways to make a particle trail work and I can't think of how it would reasonably translate into a hanging rope without looking strange. If it's not going to look good, there's no point in adding it at all. I think we should do the following: The arrow is fired like any normal arrow. As it hits its target the arrow makes an impact sound (thud) then there is the whir of a drill for a second or two. A click, and then the (regular-sized) rope falls from the arrow with the sound of the spool whirring. That will make it sound all nice and mechanical, so people who don't like magic can convince themselves it's all clockwork. We don't have to actually animate every step of the process. When the player wants to retrieve the arrow, they frob it, there is a spool-whirring sound (of the rope being rolled back up) and then it disappears into their inventory. If we get rope physics working, we can always come back and modify it later (though if we get proper rope physics we might as well go straight to a grappling hook and forget the rope arrow entirely).

I don't think this is a good idea, because it would have to get lower the farther away the arrow goes. We should not. This is just an explanation and nothing more.We don't need to implement all the complicated details just to backup teh explanation IMO. How do we handle this anway? IMO the rope just deploys and falls downward. It is not going from the player to the arrow, unless we implement the ropewalking idea as well, which is a seperatre case though.

Agreed that the thin wire doesn't have to be visible, we can just play a "spooling out" sound from the player when the arrow is in flight. There may be some problems showing the thick rope going up to the arrow though, if we want to show that. As SH said, if the arrow arcs and falls below a railing or something, the rope going in a direct line to the arrow would clip thru the railing unless we made it follow the path of the arrow and drape over (actually, maybe that could be done with a particle effect.. it just has to follow behind the arrow, so a delayed particle trail that looks like a rope might work) Just for the point of anal realism, conservation of energy means that the spindle would have to have some extra spring loading when it spins back the other way, because the thick rope is going to weigh more than the thin rope, and also it needs to spin around more times than it spun out to pull in the thin rope + a few winds of thick rope. That's no problem tho, we could just have another assist spring that's idle until the spindle unwinds the first time and it's going back the other way.

GAH!! I've only said THREE TIMES in this thread that they're already modeled. This entire thread started because I posted looking for someone to texture them BECAUSE they're already modelled. If we start redoing everything that's already done, it will take us six years to finish instead of three. If you really want to come up with a new arrow concept, Oddity, the noise arrow still needs to be done, not to mention lots of other player equipment.

How do I make a model not colliding? Aparently not all models are colliding with the player, so what do I need to set to achieve this? Is there some model that you are aware which is not colliding, so I can take a look there?

For water I think the crystals are ok. But having crystals for the other ones, is just boring and easy to do. For example the fire arrow could be a realistic fire arrow with some cloth wound around it and smoking. This would also explain why the player is lit up when it is out of the box.

Now, with that beauty of a device, why shouldn't it be reusable? Rope arrows are just too damn enjoyable to become so limited. Just look at the outcry of them missing from T3 completely. I'd be willing to bet every Thief player loves getting to the top, crawling in a window or onto a beam, plucking it out, and thinking, "okay, where to next?"

I don't know, the gas would have to escape fast enough to actually drill the arrow into the wood. It's really coming out more like an explosion than a slow hissing. But I guess for game purposes, having it "silenced" would be okay. To me, that is no better than saying it's magic. I agree that my idea is pretty convoluted, but we wouldn't have to show the player pulling the rope thru or anything, it could just kind've happen automatically. The first cable would probably be too thin to see anyway, so maybe we would just show the arrow go in [and play a cable unwinding sound from the bow while the arrow is in flight], then a small weight drops from it and a thick rope is pulled from your side up to the arrow ring and through until it drops down to exactly the right height (our thief is actually really good at measuring, cutting and tying on the fly ).

I can suspend my disbelief as to whether or not the arrow could penetrate the wood. Honestly, it's no more difficult to believe than the 'magic' rope arrow. Making them non-reusable is also not really a problem. It's up to the FM author to ensure that there is access to enough tools and this also makes the player think a bit more before deploying a rope arrow. @oDD In reference to the arrow function. Cool, that's how I thought it should function. It's just when you said 'clockwork', I thought you meant some kind of mechanical device inside the arrow. I think it's cool and it differentiates our arrow visually. It's the same functionality in the end.