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That's not the way the lightgem works/worked classically. Otherwise there would have been no reason for it to get brighter when holding a weapon, or running, because neither of those things are going to suddenly cause more light to fall upon you. The light gem basically was an indication of how noticable you were. However, in this case, I'd agree that there's no real way for the lightgem to factor in silhouette. Whether or not your silhouette is visibile is determined by the location of the guard looking for you, meaning that it is based on the individual, not something that can be represented in general. Bh

While messing around with lightwave I came across this problem several times - the mesh doesn't have a uniform colour in smooth shading, as it should have - sometimes you can see lines, where the colour changes. I think mostly, when you connected two parts of a model. http://www.thedarkmod.de/misc/differentcolour.jpg (I know that the wireframe is a bit messy in that area, but I don't think that's the reason) I guess this has something to do with normals, but I couldn't find a proper way to fix it. Has anyone of the lightwavers around here an idea, how to fix that? (this is nothing darkmod related, so I posted it in the off-topic) edit: June 7th - forget it. I just figured it out myself

Yes, having a back story to explain things is better than just having an inexplicable excuse, but you have to be careful to come up with an explanation that is not contrived, and you need to work the explanation into the story in a way that makes sense. So finding a book about magical torches (with an explanation similar to yours) before you descend into catacombs lit by said torches would be better game design than just having strange torches for no apparent reason... In a way, part of the charm of Thief is the fact that little backstories are worked into the game via the many books lying around, though there are a lot of mysterious things like rope arrows (which are obviously a gameplay device developed as an alternative to the more difficult to implement well, but more realistic and plausible grappling hook) which seem, to me anyway, just a bit silly and contrived.

That's exactly the reason why I said using the term "power of 2" to much is not a good idea. Textures are specified in pixel width. A texture of size 200x123 means that it has a width of 200 pixels and height of 123 lines. BUT! For a texture in games such a texture wouldn't be good or may not even work, because the dimension has to be a power of two. So it would have to be 128x128 or 256x128 in this example. Because 256 = 2^8 and 128 = 2^7.

Oh well... as long as there is a good technical reason (normal maps), I won't complain. But PNGs are not lossy compression - their compression doesn't remove anything at all. Does Doom 3 support PNGs?

Seriously, if you think IE is 'just fine', it's because you haven't tested another browser for more than 5 minutes. IE is the most feature-lacking, unsecure and buggy browser out there. The only reason why 80-90% of surfers are using it, is because most of them do not know better than clicking on an icon on the desktop to fire up the browser.

I don't see any reason why a successful thief would be any smellier than a guard.

Tweaked some of the animations a bit and they also look a lot better with the nice color maps on But I got Smart FTP and I'm still unable to connect for some reason. It just times out. I've been having some weird problems lately though and I'm assuming it's gotta be something to do with my internet connection settings. I'm not using them but I do have Norton firewall and internet security. I tried disabling everything in Norton but still no worky. And for most of yesterday I wasn't able to log in here and even when I was I still couldn't post because it said I didn't have permission or something. Computers drive me crazy. edit: Is there a specific port I need to enter when I connect to the FTP server?

OF course some of them made decent money, but none of them were rich by the equivilent standards of todays music 'artists'. The point is you don't need any talent to make large amounts of money with the current system, so its much better for the 'artists' than letting them try to claw their way to the top on their own. The reason all famous composers are so great, is because you only got to be famous if you had talent. That rule doesn't apply any more. A publisher can sell any performer and make them rich.

THe difference between a shooter and a non-shooter is that you have a choice of whether to kill or not. It doesn't matgter how many weapon slots you have if you're not forced to use them. I see, so as long as the story gives you a very good reason for running through levels shooting everything that moves, it's suddenly good gameplay? I don't even need a story or save the world plot to enjoy an RPG, they're so tedious and have been done so many times it's painful. The gameplay in a good RPG stands on its own. Morrowind was a weak game, overall it failed to deliver, but I'm hoping Oblivion will be much better. Certainly the AI is looking 100 times better and there's a far better stealth system. Yes. In the early days was great for the novelty value, and multiplayer games stand on thir own as it's the interaction with other people that makes the game what it is, not the game itself. See above. Multiplayer games can be really lazxy becasue the players more or less make their own fun together. You'd be surpised how much you can play of Baldur's gate without killing. You can sneak a lot of it, you can decline quests to kill, you can take peaceful alternates, you can talk your way out of fights.. Obviously thre are main bosses that have to be killed, but for example, there are five dragons in SoA and you're only forced to kill one of them. PS:T is probably the most dialogue intensve game ever made. In no way could you call it mindless hack and slash. I didn't claim that all RPGs were good games. I didn't like Morrowind and could write a full page complaining about it. You genuinely consider that hackneyed old si-fi plot in HL2 as a good one? lol. IT depends just how much dialogue, story and other things are in there and how much shooting there is. There has to be a certain high amount of shooting going on for it to qualify as a shooter, and not some adventure/RPG hybrid. CoD is a movie in game form. It's all I despise about games. It's barely interactive, just enough to qualify as a game. Interactivity is the most important feature of games and should be played up as much as possible, not muted as is the current trend, particularly among the shooter/action genre.

What? Its perfectly true, as pointed out by your tomato comment Deus ex, you talk to people and have stats but 90% of the game you shoot people Thief. Yes you can ghost the whole thing but guess what you have weapons, you can go though the whole thing killing people Splinter cell, granted its not first person and you can ghost large parts, but the game comes with more gun modes than doom3 How are they not fps They certainly play like them. The point was fairly clear, and you made the point for me. Without the story which a few post up you argued didn’t matter + npc interaction you don’t have an RPG, you have a hack and slash much like serious sam. Put a good story in and you have an RPG, put a good story in an fps and you have a much better game. Just because it has levels where you kill people doesn’t mean it can’t have a good story. Oblivion and morrowind are 90% killing things, doing it to boost a stat doesn’t take away from the fact that you are just farming points to be strong enough to kill something else down the road. So Morrowind was bad. Everquest(Ill grant you), quildwars, wow, bauldurs gate, planescape? There missions were all variations on the go here kill or go here deliver go here collect, go here find/meet someone, go here wait for the weather to change. You claim but it this/these main plots that deviate from the FedEx type quest and made Baldurs etal what they were. For call of duty and doom3 you are correct on the purpose, but triebs 3 farcry(to an extent) Halflife2, NOLF 1 and 2, Pariah and so on your wrong. The plot here directed the missions aims, there were reasons given for the actions taken, alot more than go here fetch which was morrowinds main reason outside of the main quest. An fps that has a good story is no longer an fps because it has a good story a stats system and you can talk to people in it? I would argue that Call of Duty is a good game. Not for its story or particularly for its characters though the interaction does give it a certain charm. But it is good for its recreation of the period however over the top it tries to be.

You can boil them down to this yes. I don’t think they are, I was using an extream. But take the story and the interaction out ( the rpg elements) and you are left with a hack and slash, and fps with swords So do some good rpfps', Deus ex, thief splinter cell all offer multiple ways to complete tasks. Why? Take the npc interaction and the story out of an rpg and you get a big map and lots of things to kill. Which was my point, fps are becoming action adventure. They need to, on the one hand you get the Serious Sam games which some people enjoy to just blow stuff up, then the doom3 kind which adds a little plot as an excuse to shoot things. Then there is the dues ex, the Max Payne, Pariah, which add a plot and story but at the core are still point a gun and shoot games. But they have a plot a story and adventure to improve it. But that isn’t taking the story out. it is only removing the main plot I agree, But more stories (plots?) are created by the npc's, the “I lost my child can you help?” quest is a story. The endless go here kill that fetch this quests are just the same as a go to level what ever and massacre the npc's missions in an fps. The better the ai gets in an rpg the more stories are created in a believable way I agree. But there is no reason why the stories that explain in an fps (or action adventure if you will) why you have to go to point A and kill who ever, cant be as good as the story in an rpg where you are told to go to point A and kill someone or rescue someone or make a pot or what ever.

It does make one wonder then if the lack of originality is such a problem that we are involved with a mod that’s stated goal is to recreate the playing experience, though not the setting, of a past game? After all improvements or not the core gamp lay will be the same or what is the point in making it? Any sequels stated goals are build on the success and good points of its predecessor. Stating that because only thief 1 and 2 were successful at this type of game play and so it is still fresh is a rather blinkered view. These two games are as derivative as any other fps, but like many fps it introduced one new mechanic an in this case it worked. Stealth to carrying degrees has been used in every fps since (save serious Sam :lol:) There are games that copy thief’s ideas closely and others that take what they need for their gamp lay mechanic to work. The closest to thief is splinter cell this merged the gamp lay mechanics of thief with the more traditional fps. You can ghost almost all of the first and third game, I’ve done it. The only real difference between these games is the setting and characters the basic rules of the game are the same. Can you name something new that can be done with stealth? Some of the newer fps' are merging RPG elements inspired by Deus ex, it is this merging and evolution of ideas that will keep the genre going. A complete new start is not possible for the simple reason that there is no point in recreating the wheel. The mechanics are not the problem. The problem is a lack of story depth. Some try, max Payne and strangely tribes 2, though that was very badly implemented the potential was there. If the stories are returned to the centre rather than as the excuse for the shooting then more of these games will be worth purchasing. The point about an artist publishing their own work and being paid for it if it has merit is well made. However this brings us full circle to a digital distribution system, and why I, though I hate the thing, will use steam. The developer is empowered by these systems to publish their own work. The only costs they incur are development and the distribution, which is massively smaller than printing the DVD manual and box. It allows them to gain a much larger share of the profits of their own works, and in the end their works will win or lose based on their work.

This has certainly been an interesting thread to read. I got through all 13 pages, although I had to skim a few of the longer posts. Most if not all of the arguments regarding savegames that I personally have, one way or another, have already been discussed. So all I can do is give a "what I'd like" comment and hope it's of use to the devs. I generally believe strongly in giving the FM author the control over the player's experience. For example, I thought the idea of squeaking boards with no visual indicator was perfectly sensible, although it would be dangerous due to misuse. In fact I liked most of obscurus' thread-initiating ideas as usable tools for the FM devs. I have a few ideas with regards to the squeaky boards implementation, but I'd rather not dilute the core issue of my post regarding savegame restrictions. With regards to saving, though, I really have to urge the devs to err on the side of caution. Implement whatever save restrictions you wish, but please make them optional as well as completely separate from any other difficulty settings. One of the (many) great things about the original System Shock was that there were a number of different difficulty options, not just one slider like so many non-simulators have today. I liked maxing them all except for the time limit one because I liked, even back then, to play the game as a FP sneaker. I agree that over-saving is cheating, to me it clearly is, but I do argue that if a player chooses to cheat then let them, so long as there is no form of MP or competitive rankings involved. I personally would do everything in my power to circumvent any forced save restrictions, not because I like to cheat, but simply to maximize my enjoyment of the game. There are two primary reasons for this. First, for me, if there are restrictions other than those I impose on myself, I think about them...constantly. You may well argue that is my flaw as a player, and I'd agree, but unlimited saves allow me to not think about saving at all. I can think of a number of reasons for my having this "flaw", primarily years and years of gaming which allowed it, but that's not really important. More important to me is my second reason. When I was young I was perfectly content to play the same (sometimes very long) sequence over and over, until I did things the way the devs expected me to. But I'm no longer all that young. Every minute of my playing time is now precious to me because, as an adult, I find very little free time available to me. So, indeed, I prefer to save all I want and then strive very hard to load as infrequently as possible. But I like to be able to choose. Sometimes, I'll even reload from an older save (not just relying on quicksave) to replay an area that I felt I played poorly, because I really care about earning my progress. But, if I just died after a particularly unenjoyable session, I'd rather take my most recent save. I never want to suffer when I'm supposed to be enjoying myself. There's enough suffering in real life. In pure single-player gaming, it's rarely a mistake to let the player choose their own preferred method of play. Do I have any right to play this way and then either complain a game is too easy or gloat about my prowess? Hell no! But an intelligent and experienced gamer is not going to do this. obscurus' save on exit, die forever, option is actually quite reasonable, perhaps the most realistic of all options, but I'd be miserable playing such a game. My gameplay stress would be so high I couldn't really enjoy myself. Indeed, that system is used in several of my all-time favorite games, such as the magificent classic Nethack and Origin's Autoduel. Indeed, it would be a great additional option for the truly hardcore and should be reasonably easy to implement. The arguments in favor of savepoints make sense, but I think savecount limiting is more sensible, although only if optional. That's purely opinion and I can't really back it up with anything other than it seems to make more sense to me in a game with such flexibility. So, just as a gamer, I'd like to vote, with whatever small voice I have, in favor of optional save restrictions. I think an ideal (both for giving the most options to players and for ease of development) would be to give players all three of the following options, without otherwise affecting anything else in gameplay: 1) Completely unlimited saves 2) Limited savecount 3) Hardcore-obscurus-mode Additionally, for "2) Limited savecount" I feel the best option is user-assigned but with a FM author recommended default. Purely FM author assigned isn't really taking into account the out-of-game issues players have to deal with. Sorry for the length of the post, I just had really strong feelings on this and wanted to give some substance to my opinion. I hope I didn't step on any toes, as I have a lot of respect for this project and its developers.

Yes, fully articulated fingers, there's no reason not to have them rigged and weighted that way becasue you never know when you're going to need them - that's why I've made the hands with quite a lot of polys so the points can all move. The heads will be animated separately at some point, with movable eyes and maybe even some basic lip sync, because we want to swap heads on the models for variety. I haven't looked into exactly how this is achieved yet though, but it's the method they used for the doom characters so it cant be too difficult. You will be storing the animations in .bip files anyway, so even if the characters to have to be re-rigged minus their heads at some point it won't be a problem. And a note about that model. Set the smoothing angle to 180 degrees and weld all the verts, since Max has a habit of unwelding along texture seams on inported models.

I'm using placeholders but if you have everything now there is no reason not to use it. I don't know if the classic fonts hold copyrights or not, I'de assume any texture copyrights on the original game would hold for the font. Even if there isn't copyrights the font will still be redone for D3. If you gimme the font I'll recreate it in higher res, and the menu graphics can just be placed on CVS under guis/assets/menu

You'll have to make a def file for the AI that lists the animations and points to the right files. If you want, you can look at the prelate and revenant def files for an example. Of course for some reason beyond me, the Prelate has trouble turning at sharp angles when it plays his walk animation, while the revenant does not have that problem. I'm hoping that once we get more AI ingame I'll be able to see the pattern, 'cause I can't figure out why that's happening so far. Anyway, once you get the anims in, you can play them in DoomEdit (if you open up the entity there's a little pulldown menu saying "anim" and there should be a play button and slider bar).

1st, it is The Dark Mod, not The Dark Mode. 2nd, Why on Earth would it be wrong to set it in a generally Victorian period, when most people seem to agree that it is already a quasi-Victorian/pseudo-Mediaeval/Steampunk setting to begin with? Hell, the Angelwatch section in T2 was very obviously based on the 20th century Art Deco movement! I think you need to dust of some history and art books and have a good read... If you wan't to map for TDS, by all means do so, but to say that a game set in a mediaeval world is more immersive than one set in a Victorian age is laughable. For that matter there is no reason why a Thief-inspired game set in 21st Century Cairo (just for example) would be inherently any less immersive than any other time or place - it is the story, plot, attention to detail and gameplay that makes it immersive. I still find Half-Life and Thief 1 & 2 to be immersive even though the graphics are getting pretty dated, they were so well crafted that they just suck you in, that is what immersion is about. Yes, you did! That is not what you said, and in very few worlds indeed is that true! If you are so sure of this assertion, then surely you would develop a more detailed exposition of your point of view, after all that is what this thread topic is about. The fact that you don't suggests that you haven't really thought your positon through very well, and your petulant posts have not helped your case at all.

I don't know what response you hoped to ellicit by saying you would refuse to play it for X reason, other than "So what?" We're an amateur mod team, doing this for our own reasons. To get a decent response, the best you can do is start a polite discussion regarding X feature.

I'd like a 1-3 mintue window to edit my posts after I make them like on TTLG (in fact this is the only board out of about 6 I visist where you get an 'edited by' message if you immediately fix your message after posting it). I absolutely never use the preview post option for some reason I can't fathom - just habit I suppose. I don't know who's responsible for these settings so I'll just make an open post here.

Well updating without the page refreshing is reason enough alone for me to chose it

I usually play GW for the same reason. To get to the next level. At least I'm now through the drap part of it where the landscape is all broken. It gets better again now. But I guess I will restart Gothic 2 soon, because this gives me more a sense of living in that world and is much more involving and immersing. Still GW is nice to play and it's well worth it's money.

Renz - CVS or FTP? If they're zipped on the CVS, we'd (56k) still have to download them in order to sync properly. I just zipped a 3Mb texture and it only came down to 1.3 Mb. That's still pretty hefty. As for compression, yep, I've had that enabled since day one on maximum, and for some reason, it only seems to work with things other than the TGAs. For instance, map files come really fast, even if they are large. But a 4Mb TGA still takes me 20 minutes to pull down. Either format, all I ask is that we do something soon. It's really tough to stay synced with humongous textures, and if hopefully hundreds more are coming soon, I'm begging it be put into place before then. Batch conversion is a friendly thing. I did the following just as a demonstration for whoever hasn't tried personally. I'm not pushing JPG with this, just using it as an example. I picked two particularly colorful textures, cropped them to make them manageable for my upload, and saved them as BMP so there's no loss in the new cropped version. Then, I saved them as standard encoded JPG with only 10% (high quality) compression. See the results. With a file size difference factor of 10X, and barely any reduction in quality, compression is just too effective to pass up. And remember the mantra: the high res versions won't be thrown away, and could be optionally used by anyone who wants them at any time. But for the sake of CVS sync'ing, and HD space, we should go with compressed textures by default. The comparison images: 1. BMP JPG 2. BMP JPG

That depends on your hardware - if you have up to date hardware - say a FX 6800 GT, a decent AMD 64, 1GB ram, it is absoluteley practical for a game - that is why a lot of the newer engines like UE3 are/will be using it. If on the other hand, your hardware (like mine) is a fair bit below bleeding edge, you might find your framerates dipping into unplayable territory. But by the time TDM is released, there will be no reason not to include some version of parallax/virtual displacemnt/relief mapping, as enough people should have updated their hardware sufficiently to make it worthwhile. Unreal Technology made a good decision, IMO, to break compatability with older hardware and release a purely Direct X 9 game - by spending less time and resources on implementing backwards compatability, you get a fully optimised game that supports every trick a bleeding edge graphics card can pull, and by the time the engine will be released, those cards won't be so bleeding edge (or expensive) any more... So bring on parallax mapping I say, if you do I'll upgrade my machine

Ok, let me respond to your points about "deathmatch in darkness" first. Why no deathmatch? For one, BOTH human teams can lose this game. If the AIs catch on to one group, they go nuts. That impacts your team as well, and I would want that impact to really count. If the guards catch on, there is no relaxation period to wait for like we did in Thief hiding in the rafters. When the alarm sounds, formerly stationary and lone partrolling guards form pre-assigned squads and begin to tear shit apart. Pre-assigned lone guards stay on lone patrols but sneak and hunt. Lamps come out, torches relit. So if one team attacks the other right away, chances are no one will walk out of the place. So it behooves both teams to play it quiet, real quiet, sneak to the target, try to get it quietly if possible, if not grab, run, and start unslinging arms. Because neither of you want to get the AI involved. Its still possible to finish the game when the alarm is sounded, as long as a man is standing and can get the loot bag out the escape window, or nail the target for assassination, or whatever, that team scores the win. That being said, sometimes the opportunity to kill the other team and get away with it will arise. A good team might lay an ambush at the end of a map if the other team grabs the loot first, but a good opposing team will know that since they have not seen a hair of the other team, there is probably an ambush waiting. And nothing stops the AI from busting in on a brawl two feet from the exit and killing everyone, so it had best be a fast ambush. Im thinking of making it more like 1 AI could wipe out 2 thieves easily, three if given half a chance, and four if they are really inept. So all four would pretty much have to engage a guard if he stumbled on them, do it FAST, QUIET, and then work with the knowledge that he will be missed in about 15 minutes. When a guard is missing, you guessed it, alarms. None of that Thief 1/2/3 baloney, these are real guards who would be executed if they left their posts. They dont go away w/o reasons, and never for very long. Now, the reason I proposed classes is because some maps may require the skills of a specialist. Taking a boxman into a bank, good idea. Taking a sorcerer into a crypt, good idea. If its a middle of the road map, maybe a race to grab the loot, go thief. If its an assassination.... But it could be done with a generic thief character, with different equiptment for different maps. I just like the idea of differing skills and limitations/advantages, however its arrived at. Obscurus, whats wrong with the D3 multiplayer code? Not good enough?