Search the Community

It all stirs my blood a bit overmuch, so pardon me in advance if I get heated without due reason. I despise the entire notion that such a thing (especially as loose as it is in this case) could even be conceived to be enforceable. The only legit, somewhat tangible copyright is the naming of a stealth video game "Thief", and we're not doing that. It's not Thief 4. It's not Thief: Revisited. It's The Dark Mod. It is stated clearly to be influenced by Thief, so there is no ignorance plea in that area. And of course, they (meaning the Thief copyright holders) don't own the word thief, and they don't own the word dark. They didn't invent wacko religious zealots (if only), they didn't invent hammer weilding - especially by religious folk so as not to draw blood with a blade (D&D clerics, anyone?), or city guards, or houses to break into, or stealth. If they DID invent something like mantling (which they didn't, hello to Lara, as just one modern example), something like that is no more theirs than the "forward key" belongs to whoever used it first. Each time someone makes a new shooter, they don't need to ask for id's blessing. Making this Thief-style conversion (because let's face it, that categorization is the most appropriate) of another game (which is much more loosely binding than a full game-for-production where actual story and profit! are an issue) doesn't require asking EIDOS' permission any more than it requires asking for permission from they who made Metal Gear Solid (...before Thief) or Splinter Cell. Our City is not Thief's City. Our character is not Garrett. Our order is not the Hammerites. If they wanted to claim ownership to the Pagans, they'd have hundreds of millions of people to argue with for that right, first. Heck - The Dark Mod isn't even focused on a campaign - it's a tool kit first and foremost. As for the fans making missions which call things Hammerites, or Garrett, or Trickster... well, there's not much we can do about that. And I frankly don't care to. In fact, I can't wait to see Garrett and ol' Constantine find their way into TDM fan missions. Ahem, with that said - I doubt they even care. TDM is not copyright infringement, and it's not a threat to the (now questionable) future of Thief. If a SDK for T3 comes out, the fans will still use it. If a new Thief game comes out, the fans will still buy it.

I like that idea of overlapping sheets of metal being an indicator that you can't BJ. For that reason, I like 4, 3 and 5. I also think 2 is great for aesthetic reasons... looks very T2 mechanist.

Thank you! I really loved drawing this thing for some reason.

now that's why we dont give access to our forums for any greenpeace activists... btw do i underand correctly that you throw these things together on one day?

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*

You know you're playing too much Thief when... ..you start making posts on internet forums entitled 'You know you're playing too much Thief when...'

I'm not sure if you're saying that we treaded on EA's copyrights without good reason, or if we were shut down without good reason -- I'd say the first is wrong, the second right Of course, I'm naturally biased. Sort-of. We had been in informal contact with Irrational, and they basically told us that they had no problem with our efforts, but EA might. The System Shock IP is a huge, convoluted jumble, and the only thing that resulted from Irrational and EA trying to untangle them was legal fees. [1] We had decided that we were going to fly under the radar until we had some solid material [2] -- a major concern of some of these publishers is if a crap mod will tarnish their image. But one of our forum members took it upon himself to bring us to EA's attention, before we had anything to show :/ In a last-ditch effort, we decided to fully disclose to EA and formally ask permission to proceed with the mod. The rest, as they say, is history. Of course, it's safer if you can avoid direct copying, but that won't stop the highly litigious. When we got the EA "cease and desist" nastygram, the only mentions of copyright infringement were vague ("the System Shock name is under copyright") [3]. In fact, there was no direct mention of copyright infringement at all[4]. If we had gone to court[5], we would have ripped Mr Bené a new one. Unfortunately, in no way would we ever be able to even begin to confront EA in a court battle, no matter how right we were. And EA knew this. Fortunately, Dark Mod won't have to face off against EA, but if I may quote one of my favourite movies [6]: "Innocence is a highly overrated commodity." I don't mean to be a doomsayer, and I do think that you've taken sound precautions to stay out of trouble. I just hope you verily did learn the lessons that we had to learn the hard way. You have some solid work here, and I want to see it come to fruition A fellow LGS-inspired modder, -Glee --------------------------------------------- Gleemonex Sapphire Scar --------------------------------------------- [1] Note that even Irrational themselves don't want to touch the System Shock franchise -- their newest endeavour only fleetingly mentions SS as an inspiration. [2] Or any pertinent material at all, for that matter. All we had at that point were some concept images, the mod's name, and the attention of System Shock 2 fans everywhere. [3] That may not sound like a big deal, but keep in mind that legal documents are written in a very specific manner, for a very specific purpose. [4] Not surprising, considering that a. System Shock 2 is abandonware, and b. copyright infringement only applies in cases of actual or potential loss of revenue. [5] It's obvious that the nastygram in question was written in haste and with poor attention to detail. Note the mention of "your company, Digitally Evolved" (Digitally Evolved was the parent website of SS2R, not a company). [6] The Hurricane

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.

I thought we had an agreement that we keep silent on public forums about the new abillities of Garretts special moves and martial arts capabillities.

Yeah, the requests were the main reason why I started this thread. Maybe we should let the others know about it.... post a link in the other forums, maybe?

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 only wanted to discuss it here before I knew you were being added as a contributor Now we can discuss it in the dev forums of course.