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I'm all for making aiming a little more difficult, especially at a distance. In T3, arrows were far too easy to use. I could run around levels taking guards out with arrows at distances where they couldn't even see me yet. So I'd support leaving the crosshair thing off for now. We can always add it later if need be. Personally, I'd like to get rid of the zoom as well. I think we should limit the strength of the bow. Since it is short it shouldn't shoot that far anyway, and it will stop the player from taking things out from too far away. I'd also like to avoid the 'backpedal while firing' method that made it so easy to take guards out in T3. Even if they were alerted, you fired once, started backpedling, and often could get in two or three more arrows before they got close enough to hit you. Frequently that was enough to kill them. You probably should have to be standing still to draw an arrow, and perhaps we can make the knocking and drawing slower. We're not Legolas.

I think the issue with the bow aim is not that easy. I can understand that most players may want to have a target indicator. On a real bow this is different. Even if you have a aim help it may not be really of a help. The reason is simple. There is some Zen in shooting a bow. Normally when lerning to shoot a bow is all about body control. You don;t learn to aim with your bow, you learn to aim with your body. You need to learn how to place your body in the exact same position that you need to acquire every time when you target something. If you don't learn that you never learn to shot a bow properly because there is to much error margin. And that is exactly the problem with our bow in game. We don't have that body and it would be quite hard for a player to learn it. Of course you can always play around with it, and still learn it, but the question is, will our audience accept this?

I think the size is ok. From what I remember when I was shooting a bow the flights were not THAT large and yours seem to be about the size I remember. Though that was quite some time ago, so my memory could be wrong. I know. I didn't mean that it was wrong, just wanted to comment on which style this bow is. We can use this in the game. Why not? But I think for the archer guards we should use something more like an english longbow but not as big. I don't think that they would use this type of bow on guards. Still it looks great as props anyway. I never knew that there were so many different types of arrows. Of course in the game we shouldn't do that, at least not for the player, because it would be a pain to differentiate all these arrows and it wouldn't make sense for the game. And somehow I doubt that the players would know which arrow to choose on which target. This one is quite good. We can use it as our broadhead model. Yeah. Could be. Never heard of this before.

Yes, we will have many enemies with bows as well, it'll be nice to have different models. A rope cutting arrow! Imagine a guard spotting the player climbing a rope and cutting it down with that arrow, that would be fantastic I think.

I knew that most people woul;d be reminded of Harry Potter, but the idea is much older than that. The Ring was a rather good movie. Funny thing is that I watched it on SVCD and our DVD player has a bug. It playes wrong colours with (S)VCDs only (DVDs are ok). And we thought that this was the way to go with The Ring. These wrong colors made the movie even more strange and frightening. Great experience. I watched it after some time on DVD again and it was really boring after that.

Would be cool to have this guy in-game with an eerie flute tune. :)Some kind of haunt or such. Instead of attacking he plays the flute which could influence the player movements.

Heh, my friend had a book of beksinski art work, it inspired a few ideas in me as well. I love his image of the flute player. Whoops, it's actually a trumpet

Ok, here is a mock-up of my new menu proposal. I didn't have much to work with to animate this, so bear with me. When the menu loads, we will see a warm, inviting mansion room. A crackling fireplace creates flickering shadows. Through a window we can see the roof-tops of the city. The camera zooms in slowly, until the window fills the left side of the screen. The title and menu options are visible from the beginning (couldn't add them to the video). When the zoom finally stops it will look like the still shot below. Through the window we can see clouds moving across the sky, window lights blinking on and off, and smoke from great factories belching forth into the sky. When the player clicks a menu option, a black, shadowy silouhette passes suddenly across the screen (turning it briefly black). Once the shadow passes, the new menu text (the option screen, for example) is now visible. All the while, our intro music plays, perhaps with the sounds of the fireplace in the background. Obviously this is a mock-up. The real thing would need a bigger window, probably without glass (or very clear glass). The animation is on the ftp site at: TheDarkMod/Files/Darkmod_Intro.mov (I don't know how to link directly to it)

IN fact, we'd have to go the whole way and have an animation of the player lifting the book, opening it etc, it would get very complicated, let's just stick with the page turning for now I think, a more complex animation can always be done later.

Yeah, it's the essence of tricky trying to paste a 2d atlas onto a 3d globe. the pic I used came in two separate halfs as well so I had rto split the globe into two hemispheres. I'l fiddle around with it some more. I made the globe parrt a separate object so it could be a func_mover, and spin on it's axis if the player initiates it, also because I don'y know how to implement two texture for one object yet. I'll upload it to the FTP for now.

That would be great. So we can see how this will work out then. I think the problem is that the zombies are usually not being looked at that much. There is no time for that in D3 gameplay. It's quite different with our mod. The player usually has plenty of time to look at the models when he is hiding in the shadows. I hope that having less polys means, that we can render more of them. Would be a shame if two guards on screen would already hog the machine.

Thjat reminds me. We could use a cube and put the gem on this. If the texture has proper alpha then this should matter, because the player will only see the round gem. Since we don't need to rotate the gem nobody would notice it, and a cube is easy to render. I think I will try this.

I think the max payne player model has a cloak.

And does it matter how high res the compass model is? Does it affect performace for the player?we could dicus these sorts of things in real time, rather than like this - it's taken all these posts and the best part of a day to sort this out, which could have been sorted in 10 minutes real time, I suspect. Message board really aren't a very convienient way to tak, it's really just a succession of one sided arguments.

No. That's crap. The compass itself will be a real 3D model which will turn around with the player moves just like any other 3D model. It would be to much effort to make the compass images. 180 images (if you take only every second step) and that again for each step of the tilting.

As I said. The gem needs to be normal textures. Not normal textures as in normal substituting for geometry details, but normal as in just like any other image. That's why I said it should actually be two different models. One that will yield the gem textures when rendered in 16 steps and the other is the compass model that will turn and tilt around with the player.

ok - I resized the chair. I think the proportions are ok - here's a screen with the Doom-Guy in the model-viewer (ignore the strange stuff around - that's atteched to the player-model)

Absolutely. In my little town, $225k bought a mansion (literally - I mean a huge place) up on the bluffs overlooking the river, 14 short years ago. I know, because it was the family of a close friend. I remember thinking to myself, with an internal laugh, "those rich bastards paid almost a QUARTER OF A MILLION FOR A HOUSE!!" as if it was such a big deal. Today, the friend himself paid $275k for a place half the size (same town). There was just a home for sale on main street for $900k. This is not Beverly Hills, just a fairly quaint, semi-nice town. The average price for an average place around here (yard, 3 floors, etc) is around $400k. To think that the house I was born in some ~30 years ago (3 floors, basement, big yard, driveway) was $15k makes me dizzy. Inflation, yes - but a "middle class paycheck" has not changed anywhere near as much as real estate (and cars, etc). I feel people accept too much. If no one bought, there'd be no choice for manufacturers and sellers but to produce and offer for less or go under. If suddenly 400k players said to Sony, "we're not paying our subscription this month, as a unified player base, unless it comes down to $9.99 again", you better believe that price would drop. Now that would be an interesting precedent, wouldn't it. Must. Resist. Topic. Re: Valve - I don't honestly think they're up to shenanigans, either. But it's a model I don't want to support. At least... not until/unless I have little other choice.

I had an idea that may make everyone happy. I don't know if I could buy into the destructive force of a rag burning on the end of the arrow..[ sorry sparkhawk ]..but how about this. Since these crystals have somewhat magical/ enchanted elements...it might make sense that they do not become active until they are drawn. For example.... Player selects a water arrow. As the arrow is drawn back on the bow...it slowly begins to glow that familiar blue color and a drop of water rolls off the tip of the crystal. For a fire arrow. As it is drawn back on the bow it slowly glows and then a flame erupts around the crystal. In both situations, the crystals are completely darkened before coming into contact with the bow. Should be possible with the D3 engine. Essentially, some of the more volatile elements could have a small animation as the bow is drawn back for firing.

I (We?) am not talking about the trechnical issues. It's more the legal implications that are my concern. I can't sell the game if I don't like it, because I have no CD, which is a requirement here. I'm forced to have an internet connection. I'm forced to register. I have games that are about ten years old. What if Valve decides in five years that it don't wants to support my game anymore? What if Valve decides in two years that registered customers have to pay an additional fee (despite having payed the price for the game)? Electronic Arts already did this to some extent. What if Valve decides that it wants micropayment pay-per-game? Some Musiclables are already have plans for that and don't tell me that game companies wouldn't do that. Players not accepting that? Why not? It's only fair and it doesn't hurt THAT much. This argument applies always and companies do exactly for this reason gradual changes where each step "is not THAT bad". Why do I have to register at all? I just want to play single player and I'm not even interested in multiplayer. Always remember: Companies do their stuff for money. Not for the customers. MS gives away IE for free? Why? Because it loves it's customers? Valve does this to protect the online comunity from cheating? Get real! Copyprotection? Steam doesn't prevent pirating.

I'm just skinning the lightgem. Of course I do this for myself and not for you, because you can expect how it will look when I do this. I noticed a severe problem with the model from oofnish. It is hollow. Doom 3 can not render this because it doesn't accept doublesided polygons. So for all models that are built they always need a seperate bottom even if you think it will never be seen. In the case of the lightgem this is of course not really true, because it depends on the players position what you can see. If the player turns around enough the bottom might be seen a little so it will need it anyways.

We won't be using a flashlight, so does it matter? The flashlight in D3 isn't actually a 'light'. It uses some kind of texture-shader cheat. The player's flare and and lanterns/torches carried by guards will be true dynamic lights, so they probably won't have the same problem. Still would be interesting to know why though....

This happens in T3 - sparhawk, don't you remember? I had a guard say "Hey, we've got a Thief on the stairs!" when I was running down the stairs, and in another instance "What's that? Better go and check the door..." when I was seen in a doorway. It can be done, just have to provide a way of letting the mission author create zones that have one of a finite list of "places" associated with it. Eg. stairs, street, garden, etc. Then the AI can play one of the appropriate recordings if the player is seen in that zone. It's possible, just a lot of work.

It would be a very good re-playability feature. It's not something you tend to see a lot of nowadays, games being made as a kind of interactive movie. Instead of like the original Worms game for the PC, which had a lot of work put into it's random level generator. I've often wanted the very feature just described by SneaksieDave, in many newer games, for replayability. It wouldn't be more technically complex than having several player spawn points in a Doom 2 map.

We had briefly discussed (in a different thread) using different sounds for the same object in relation to musical instruments that a player might come across (e.g., a harp). I thought it was pretty much a given that we'd want to do this for most sound effects.