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But we could create our own icons if we wanted. I like the glyphs; maybe we could change their designs? If not, we could definitely create something else to use as small icons. Sorry, I didn't see the last few posts before I just wrote my long-winded post there. Didn't realize the conversation was getting so heated. Here are more thoughts: "Better" is subjective. I feel you've done a great job so far; I personally don't want you giving up just yet. I also feel Springheel did a good job with our existing site. However, I'm of the firm belief that neither your's, nor his, look finalized enough for me to give my personal final stamp of approval. Neither of them look polished enough. In all honesty, I know you have spent several hours on this so far, but it's hard to create a completely finished, polished website within 3 days; no matter who the client. Obviously simplistic websites can be whipped out in a few hours, but to make them truly refined -- taken to the next level, if you will -- it can take much longer. When you proposed this, I thought this was going to be a couple week process, at minimum. To wish for things to be done and agreed upon within 3 days of starting is a little unrealistic, imo. At this point, I still prefer Springheel's site. Maybe it's because I'm used to it, but no -- I think it's just easier for me to look through all the info faster. But I have broadband, so load times aren't an issue for me. I don't know what 56K users think. So with that, I'm not seeing the big reason to switch over just yet. With more polish on your's, I feel the time would definitely come to switch over. But you must understand it's only been 3 days. None of us have had time to revamp Springheel's site yet, so it has remained. I hope you can apply more time to working with us; refining and building the mockups to really make everyone go "Wow!" It can be done, you just have to be patient with the process and try not to take our feedback personally. Since the internal site wouldn't be viewed by others and is based more on functionality than looks, I think you'll probably find that to be a less frustrating site to start with. Cheers! -Darkness Falls

Hey Degineth - Thanks a lot for trying so hard to help us out with this! You've put so many tired hours in to make us happy, and that's definitely appreciated! I know it's early in the development, and that our team leads' main desire is to have the internal site built, but I thought I'd offer some constructive feedback. Based on your mockups, I feel we're still a ways off from having the a final version that we'd all be happy with and hope you can understand this -- despite the number of hours you've put in. I've built a few other websites myself, so I know it can be a time-consuming process. DarkMod members: Stop reading this if you're bored with my post already or don't agree that I should give feedback at this point If it's any consolation, I prefer the direction of the bluer site. Here are my quick thoughts, though. (I know this process is going to suck for you, since everyone will have different ideas.) I'm not a team lead; so take my thoughts for what they're worth. If nothing else, or if my teammates don't agree with anything I say, just take these things as feedback and do with them what you will. I'm only trying to help. Some things I mention have already been mentioned by others. In regards to the blue site: (1) The colors seem a little too "Thief 3," in general, for my tastes. The powder blue in the top title definitely reminds me of T3. Also, the font colors in the body of the page are a little dark and hard to read on the black background. (2) The pictures on the left, on the News page, are a little dark. I understand the attempt at doing an effect there, but the images just don't pop out enough. I'm also trying to figure out if there's a pattern to the images used there (as far as what chracter gets posted with what news item -- like, are they icons?), but I don't see one. That's a bit misleading to my eye. (3) The powder blue horizontal line between news items doesn't seem necessary. Adds clutter. Separation between news items could be improved, in general. Indents, etc., could be used. (4) I like the initial functionality you're building for the Gallery page. I hope you can expand on this idea more, refine it more and make it faster to navigate. Maybe even add an "expand all" button so broadband users don't have to expand each category individually. I must admit, though, that I miss the "immediate gratification" I feel on our existing site where you immediately start seeing concept artwork and the such when you click the Gallery link. No need to go into 10 different folders to view screens and concepts. (5) Is there a way to pre-load the top menu bar rollovers and cache them in the user's browser so there's no pause in the image changes when you hover your mouse over them? Obviously Flash would do it, but I know you're trying not to use Flash at this point. (6) The top banner could use some graphical work. Do you have a portfolio of artwork you've done so we can gauge your artistic capabilities? If you're fairly new at Photoshop or creating orignal artwork, I'm sure one of us could work on the banner and other graphics to help out. (7) I'm with you, though. I can totally see our site in Flash... but I know several of my teammates hate Flash for some reason *sigh*

I wouldn't say that - your builder priest concept was the very reason I joined the mod in the first place.

I thought that too (including elite pagans...fun!), I just wasn't separating the private guards and city watch into different factions. No matter. If you want elite city watch I see no reason not to have them. The only question is how to make them visually distinct when they use the same standard equipment as the regular watch. Unless we make the elite watch be of a higher 'rank' or something. Like the captain of the guard, or whatever. Or like how riot police look different from regular cops. We should be somewhat consistent with the weapons though...if the regular watch uses bows, then the elite ones should use bows too. Actually, do we need to have a discussion about who uses which kind of weapon? Or is that something that can be addressed fairly easily after the models are created? Be my guest. I never got the sense you needed much concept art anyway.

I'm so glad there are people other than myself who feel this way about "background info" :) Especially for being scared, I feel more scared the more "real" it feels. Which is why I found The Ring really scarey (you could look into all the reasons the things were happening if you payed attention to the movie), but not it's cheesy "b grade horror movie" sequel, "The Grudge", which just had things in there because "they looked scarey" and no other reason . It was so try-hard. Well oDDity, undead never looked like this in a game. This is going to be cool. And I agree with Darkness and Spar - we should be holding back things for surprises. Seeing this stuff before it's been "properly introduced" in the game, is like skipping to the end of a novel. A guy as scarey and cool as this, needs a whole build up, to get you way scared before you even SEE him. All this literature you can read about what happened, and peoples diaries saying they're seeing things, and then one that ends in the middle of writing, and all that stuff...

I don't see any reason not to. There could quite easily be only about 20 polys per spike. This is not a big load on the system. D3 can take it IMO.

The wires were only for security systems and helped to track them to their control panel, whcih is a good idea. For normal lights we shouldn't use wires though because there is no real reason to do this and it just would add a lot of work. Gold if you create machines, please indicate also if these machines should have animated parts and which ones that would be. In case of your pump I think the modelling should take this into account and model moving parts seperatly so we can animate them with scripts (no need to create animated models for that).

Excellent post, Ombrenuit, but I must caution you there are differences between the MUD world and the mod world when it comes to copyright law, historically speaking. Unfortunate to say, but I too have acquired much experience on this issue. While you've given excellent reasons for why they wouldn't shut down the project, there are many legally strong reasons why they would. To cite one example, you said yourself SOE shut down the Star Wars MUDs to protect the success of their own game. I wouldn't put it past EIDOS to shut down a too similar set of mod tools for another game to protect their own (eventually released) editor. Irrational? You and I would probably agree on that, but there are far too many examples of companies shutting down mods that treaded on their copyrights without, to us at least, good reason. Sapphire Scar, anyone? But getting back to the issue I raised, I think you guys are underestimating your influence on FMs, even when you're specifically trying not to influence them. Can I make the religious order I mentioned in my last post? Of course I can, there's nothing stopping me. But do you believe the FM makers who come to use your tools will look at those models, characters wielding warhammers, dressed in red, and bearing the symbol of the Hammerite order, and not use them as Hammerites? I don't believe every single designer will go to the efforts of coming up with their own backstory for them when they can use what's immediately obvious to them. And although I know you guys are striving to not infringe on EIDOS' rights yourself, I do not think a flurry of Dark Mod Hammerite FMs is exactly going to endear them to your cause. Need I point out the file sharing program parallels? In truth, if you really want to give the FM designers a blank slate from which to work, you would have to release what are essentially nondescript models for use. Guards, for instance, without any immediately obvious Thief insignia, and so forth. In creating content that too obviously matches concepts unique to the Thief world, you're unintentionally slanting the potential use of said content in the direction of a literal interpretation. Don't get me wrong, guys, I'm behind you 100%. I just don't want to see you hit any snags along the way that could derail the project. A corporate entity's legal department is a powerful foe, believe me. Quite right, but you of all people should know Naraza needs his mouth uncovered. Hard to use a blowgun when you look like this --> Aye, and like I've said, that may very well be the problem. What I'm suggesting is cutting them off at the pass and providing an alternative that won't risk legal endangerment. And since you reminded me of it, considering some of your TTLG Dark Mod idea posts, let me sort of combine it with one of my own. You'll recall your mention of elite guards appearing in place of regular ones on harder difficulty settings? Taking an aspect of my Haunt idea, specifically the lock on a character model, imagine if Dark Mod steam beasts could have doors on their boilers. On the easiest setting there are none, so a simple water arrow will shut them down. On the medium setting doors are closed over the boilers, but you can dash up and open them. On the hardest setting, these doors would be locked, requiring you to pick the lock to open them before even thinking of shutting them down. But I'm rambling now. I do that. Hope it doesn't lessen the importance of the rest of my post.

Doc_Brown: You have some good points. The setting in The Dark Mod does resemble Thief, and no one will deny that this project's purpose is to bring the game into fashion with the technology of today. However, could there be a legal problem? Not likely. I'll lay out the basics of the matter. Copyright law is a very convoluted and difficult to understand business. Working extensively in the MUDing community I have acquired much experience on this issue. Look on any MUD database and you will see that over half are based directly on copyrighted games. Yet, they are still up and running. Why is this when they are so blatantly violating copyright law, you ask? There are more Dragon Ball Z and Star Wars MUDs then you could possibly count. There are exceptions: Sony Online Entertainment did shut down a chosen few to make room for Star Wars Galaxies way back when, however I can not stress more that sort of occurrence is rare. The reason why these Copyright violators are not being shut down?: 1) Court costs time and money- Court is one long, monstrous, money consuming battle. Even if you were to file a case now, it would be years before an trial occurred. Lawyers cost serious money for both sides. Companies don't bring people to court lightly. They try to avoid it at all costs and they only ever do it sure of their success. 2) Fan made projects = publicity- In the instance of games, when fans put enormous amounts of effort and time into a game they love, they are respected. Fan made projects for the most part will promote and highlight a company's interests. They create hype, excitement, extend the life of the game in question, and draw in a new crowd people who before were uninterested. It's free publicity for them, and if it's positive they love it. The repercussions of bringing a highly respected and hyped fan project to court could wound any company greatly. Loyal customers supporting it feel betrayed: the company is a money hungry legal machine bent on world domination, in their minds. 3) Fan made projects and money- Firstly, when a company sues in court, that company has the burden of proof that they have lost money. As discussed earlier, a company will only go to court when they feel threatened--a threat to a business is a threat to their money. Thus, a non-profit fan production such as The Dark Mod, poses no threat to that company. In United States Copyright law: you bring someone to court when they are profiting off your idea. Copyright is the desire to protect your economic claims to an idea (in general). Therefore, with no money involved, there isn't a problem. Also, The Dark Project is discreet enough not to directly claim it's using Eidos's intellectual property. So, while similarities exist, it's not directly associated with Eidos. Anything negative about this project can not be associated with Eidos in this case, and it would have to be something negative for the business department to even take notice enough to think about shutting this down. Bottom line: There is nothing to gain by threatening or staging a legal battle over a small project that would chastise fans and cost serious dollars with such little legal significance when there are zero damages to collect. The probability that this project would be shut down is understatedly minute. You have many unique and interesting ideas, however, the Dark Mod doesn't need to tailor their system for you. The beauty of Fan Missions is the freedom for you to express your creativity, which I observe you would greatly enjoy doing. You can tailor fan missions any way you would like and make any world you like. All the Dark Mod is providing are tools to help you with that world you want to create. It's a foundation. As the creator, it's your job to build on that.

by the way, for some reason dream weaver (i used to send the files) created a folder named frank for two of the videos

His links are fine, just right click > save as. I think you always have to do that with geocities for some reason. EDIT: no sorry now they've gone screwed. it let me grab the first video (old guy with hat and a walking stick) but none of them work now

NO WIP binary data in CVS please, unless there is a good reason for it. CVS can not store binary data very well, so it just would blow up the CVS. If the model is ready and just needs to be textured, then it's ok, but if you need to continue on the model itself, I would prefer that you finish it first before you upload it. To upload you must add it to CVS first. then use commit. If it is already in and you changed it only commit is needed. If the model is ready and only the textures need to work upon, then you probably should fix the textures first. Same as above. I thought he sorted it out by now? Yes. Pakmannen already did it. Thanks, though.

It's hard to make skeletons look good moving around, but we should definitely use them for 'decoration'. I don't see any reason to model our own though, when we can just use the D3 ones.

Well, we would have to see this first, but that's no real problem for now. Only thing we could need a hand in texturing, mapping (probably) and coding (has to be seen though). But nobody will force you to anything. IMO that is the only reason why Thief still has such a strong community after such a long time. LOL. You are right. Just wanted to get an overview of your style and what you did so far. The problem with ordering a story is, that we have to agree on something first. As you can imagine that caused quite a stir, because we had some ideas and some even presented a story, but it is very hard to come up with everybod can agreee upon. I guess I will make you a contributor and then we can discuss this in more detail. I don't want to talk to much about storie ideas on the public board, as this is one area where I wouldn't want to spoil anything. No problem with discussing algorithms or models, but certain things should be held back to have at least som surprises for our fans. I will wait on soime feedback from some other members. So far they were positive but it was to short a time to get a good sample. I guess in the evening I can give you a more definite answer on that. Your timezone would be a help, so we can better plan. Which area of physics? Can you also do some physics coding? That might be helpfull. It is not strictly required, just asking. We have other contacts who also have experience in D3 physics already, but of course having at least one teammeber would be preferable. I can imagine that. If I have the feeling that an algorithm is not good enough I rather rip it apart and write it new, than releasing it knowing it is not as good as it could be. That's good to hear. We have a very good team so far, and the standard is also very high. I certainly prefer to work on a professional team than with a bunch of 3771 hax0r script kiddies. Makes live much more easier.

I agree; good thinking GIMG! Failing the air compression method, I like this alternative better than a wind-up lever process. (It *might've* looked kind've funny to see our thief winding up an arrow like it's a music box. But if we really wanted the wind-up, we could go with my earlier suggestion and mount the lever so that it's flush with the arrow cylinder and you pry your finger underneath and lift it up to start winding.) I should say, though, that any of these three options for re-setting a noisemaker arrow (pulling the end out; winding it up; or twisting the housing) would be fun to do. Thanks Domarius. The old Thief 2 noisemaker didn't make much sense to me. It bothered me at first, but i got used to it. I think deep down, though, I still wished there was more of a 'logical' explanation for their sounds; considering they were so mechanical in nature. I wasn't happy with thinking there was some sort of magic dust that was sprinkled on them. (Being facetious.) Doh! Yes!!! Thanks for catching me on that. I have no clue why I've always said "broadband." I think that's what I read the arrows to be when I first played Thief, and it kind've just stuck with me. Duuuuuuuuuude Thanks again! I do enjoy it. I agree that most things don't need a presentation of the innards, but for noisemakers -- where we're discussing whether to use beads/ball-ball bearings, or clockwork, or fireworks, or whatever -- I thought it might be nice to bring logic (rather than magic) into my explanation for the clicking sound. Afterall, I'm trying to sell my idea so of course I'm going to try to bring explanations to the plate I guess I'm just used to concept artwork for Star Wars and stuff where external designs take into account the internal components. Trust me, though, I know it's not necessary for everything. If I start doing steampunk concepts, most of my designs that I come up with probably won't have any mechanical rhyme or reason. Good point. I noticed Thief 2 doesn't have an arrow tip on their's. Makes sense that you don't want it lodged into a wall, showing where it came from. Maybe some code can be created to make the noisemaker fall in a random fashion to the floor when it hits something, so it doesn't reveal which direction it came from. I say this because I think in T2 it usually fell straight down, unless you shot it from an angle. I think our's should have some sort of tip on it, though -- even if it's just a very dull arrowhead. It looks kind've funny without anything...

But it affects how it will look! That's another good reason why I think we should do it a little bit at least. You come up with something that looks kind of practical and believeable and original, instead of something that just "looks cool" which you can tell has been designed to just "look cool".

I can do mapping (not sure of how good it is though, as I always tried it for Thievery but always ended up with an extremely slow running map [cos I made all the things like fences out of brushes not masked singular brushes] so I always dumped them and did'nt bother much. UnrealED really knows how to anger me as it loves to add irrepairable BSP holes - AARGH!!!) so therefore I don't know of the quality. I did try D3 mapping in the original editor (not using the sdk) when it came out. Had a good try at mapping but then my windows2000 caught the "skynet" virus and I had to re-install. After that I could'nt play D3 anymore (unless I'd re-install) so my mapping went down the drain there. Though I will install D3 and give it another shot even with this new sdk. BTW, gimme a couple of hours to find which files I have changed from the original Thievery so that you guys can have a look at my whole mod (if you bother going through it ). Just a qiuck overview: *added better splashy water-effects for everything *added GUI lockpicking (gets super-hard once your above lock difficulty 7, though it's not finished yet, gotta do more combinations for the 8 pin locks) which is heard by AI. *added wall-climbing (a bit annoying though, all it does is that as a thief when you jump and press jump again in mid-air it puts you into spider physics, there are controls to control it [i will write them in the readme with it]) *changed the loot so that when stolen, it spawns a TSTStolenLoot thing (which the AI notice and also [if you turn it on] you can see it as a redish circle) *added bleeding (inspired by Thief's "Trail of Blood") which happens when health drops below 50% (at below 20% your movement is hindered) which can be stopped by taking healing of any sort. *added silhouette mode ([mentioned earlier]always on, could switch it off in script though) which changes the player's texture in black shadow to total black (had a glowing problem) and in light to a normal texture (also made it use the Unreal Male1 model as the thievery model always was spread out [bad for silhouette]). However, if you move too fast in shadows you will light up like a light bulb (inspired by the fan made "Ultimate Difficulty mod" for thief) and the player glows a bit (so that any human player may see him ). *Changed a lot of textures (like the health drops, lightgem, etc). *and more... I could not however even touch the ThieveryMod.u package (think it was made in C++ or other) and that hindered the editing extremely as I always had to find a way around. So there you go, most of the changes I made to Thievery. I'll provide the files, maps, textures, etc (everything that is needed for the mod). Though it will take a few hours to sort it out (very untidy ) and then I'll chuck it up on yahoo. Oh yes, one more thing. I did do a small amount of Doom 3 lighting (in that map I tried mentioned earlier), but I'll need to learn more about it (downloading the sdk for a start). So yeah. I'll post here when I've finished sorting the files of my mod and have them chucked up on yahoo. 1 final thing: Please remember that my mod was made solely for LAN play and that it has it's fair share of problems (the climbing, for some stupid reason, does'nt work with more then one thief in the map - gotta fix it) and that some of it was made to prevent the dumb thing in Thievery where you could hide in a slanted wall or in the tiniest strip of shadow from human players (could'nt fix it for AI ) and that the mod was made mainly for ghosting (as I do that all the time - hence why I used the Ultimate difficulty mod in Thief) That covers all of it then. If you read up to here then you are very patient and I thank you . PS: If you wanna use any of the stuff I added into Thievery (textures, sounds, ideas, etc) then please, go right ahead. --Dram

Sorry was logged out for some reason

Now THAT is concept art as I love it. Not because it is plausible, it isn't. But because you went to all the trouble of thinking how it could make plausible that it at least to appear as working. Very nice indeed. I think if we had more such concepts it would be much more easier to model the stuff, then because the inner working of such a device also defines the outside shape if it. Making fancy stuff is pretty easy, and I always hate it in stories when I have to take such things as granted, without any explanation. Yes. That's exactly the point of good concept art. It should go into much more detail then ever will bee needed for the actual game content, because it will help and inspire the modelers and also give a frame as to how an object can look if it has the assumed properties that it needs. Definitely. That's why I liked GIMG's model as it could explain that easily. Yeah! Me too. One reason why I'm oposed to that fireworks idea. And it doesn't make the arrow reusable either.

I was trying to figure out a way the arrows could make the T2 clicking sound without using magic. Although my adventure in creativity was probably a bit of a waste of time, I wanted to try to show the mechanics of what I thought would be somewhat plausible; mechanically. The main reason for creating this is to show that if we go this mechanical route, we might want to encase the mechanics using an appropriate enclosure. I know this may not be 100% realistic, but it seemed kind've fun for me to imagine for the Thief universe. How this noisemaker arrow works: * When launched, the arrow is at it's fullest length. Arrow is at full extension. * When the arrow strikes a target (e.g., a wall), the arrowhead sticks into the target. However, some energy is absorbed on impact as the tip of the arrow retracts into the air chamber casing, forcing the rubber gasket (which is attached to the arrow tip) to compress toward the rubber gasket stop. (I say arrow "tip," but I'm referring to the front 6"-12" (roughly) of the arrow.) * This compression causes the air inside to be forced through a fairly small hole in the rubber gasket stop. The air that escapes through this hole does so at a high velocity. *The air escaping the air chamber through this hole blows the wooden fins in the center of the wooden gear which causes the whole wooden gear to quickly rotate on its axis. I envision this to rotate pretty easily. A very well-designed mechanism. * There are different sized pegs on the wooden gear, at varying heights. The distance between any two pegs also varies. The variety in peg sizes results in a variety of different *click* sounds being produced when the wooden hammer lever appropriate reacts, causing the hammer to strike the wooden platform. Some clicking sounds are softer, some louder; some possibly different pitches than others. The varying distances between pegs causes the delays between clicks to vary. * The hammer striking the platform creates clicks -- naturally. Also, the hammer lever (opposite end of hammer) creates other various clicking sounds when it strikes the gears. * There is spring tension in the hammer mechanism to allow it to return to it's default point. The tension is not so great, though, that it wastes all the energy that is being transferred through this system. I wanted to throw this idea out there. I didn't create as many views as I wanted... and didn't get to finish my visualization of the hammer lever mechanism, but I hope it makes some sense. With these mechanics, we could make the encasing larger or smaller, depending on how much sound you think will be created by the hammer. The encasing can also be pratically any shape we want it. If you feel this concept alone wouldn't be loud enough. then perhaps an amplifier and speaker could be attached to the inside of this. We know speakers existed in the Thief universe (Thief 2). The amp/speaker would also be powered by the impact the arrow makes on a target. In-line with the need to re-use, this arrow could be reused. All that needs to happen is the tip needs to be re-extended. The fact that there are sound vents makes this possible, as air can re-enter the air chamber. Note: My scanner isn't working, so I just made these from scratch tonight. The length of the arrow and other dimensions may not be very accurate. . I liked GIMG's concept of the 'drill' appearance of the noisemaker. By somehow incorporating this into my concept (see 3rd pic below), we could imagine this would create the 'whirring' noise as it travels through the air toward its target, like in T2. As a side note: I really don't like the fireworks idea. I hated them in Thief 3. I actually laughed the first time I heard it... I was like WTF??! Sounded like the 4th of July and just killed the immersion for me. It didn't seem very professional to me and I just loved the subtlety of Thief 2 clicks so much better. Let me know if you need higher res shots of anything here.

Yes, no definite desicion has been made, which is what I'm trying to explain to you. But for some reason or other, the discussion has ended. Those aren't design documents. They are summaries.

"The format we are using for SFX: Ogg, 44100Hz, 96kbps, mono The format we are using for Ambient: Ogg, 44100Hz, 96kbps, mono The format we are using for Ambient themes (longer pieces): Ogg, 44100Hz, 160kbps, stereo" I think that if longer pieces are to be higher quality (stereo, 160kbps) than there's no reason not to make short ambient loops the same quality as they will not get much larger in size. Just my $.02

It's not quite the same thing with water arrows. If you use a water arrow on a torch where no guard can hear it, then you can either assume that the thief picks it up again, or it isn't noticed, because the area where the arrow fell is now dark. IF you put a torch out near a guard, then he should definitely invesigate and act as though he knows someone has just dowsed it on purpose. With noise arrows, you're deliberately directing the guard towards your arrow, and announcing you are there. We don't actually 'need' noise arrows if we are having an alternate solution. They are not a good idea. It seems the only reason to include them is because they were in the original games. That's not a particularly satisfactory argument.

no, No, NO! NO Fireworks. That was SO ridicolous(sp?) in T3. And it also isn't very realistic. The noise arrows, always emitted that kind of hypnotic sound, where I thought that would be the reason why any guard would investigate at all. In case of fireworks I would really wonder why a guard would investigate at the arrow location. It should know that this is the work of an introduder immediately.

The reason is the huge amount of Ambients which will be created. Stereo files are twice as large as mono, so if we have 50 megs of mono ambients that would mean 100 megs were they recorded in stereo. And that's not really necessary for sounds like rain/wind/dripping water/rustling leaves/electricity sparkling etc since they don't need to be in stereo. For music however, stereo is a nice thing since you can do all sorts of nice pannings and stuff, which you of course already know so I don't know why I'm typing this.