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for some reason I read it as "Rise of the Denominators", like it was some souped up math game for 8 year olds!

OK, I thought 'end of line indicator' had more to do with extensions for some reason. Textpad sounds complicated but hey, I'm a wild and crazy guy, I'll give it a try. -EDIT Cool, textpad is cool, multiple doc in 1 window! cool site for gems, gem cut guides, ect... --EDIT bunch of messing around with files, my lantern bot spotlight went missing, screwed textures, someone deleted my switch hieght map??? Everything should be back to normal. added model pics of gargoyle, gears, rings, teaset, doors to model gallery

Yes it does. Trust goldfishguy. Apple Macs traditionally used to default at 72dpi for screen resolution but anything up to (and sometimes beyond) 96dpi is common these days. Take a 17" screen. 800x600 (about 62dpi) is going to be a different resolution to 1280x1024 (about 96dpi). comprendez. good. But anyhow goldfish guy, Springheels right too. Ain't no one got a 300dpi monitor. Not many folks have a 300dpi printer for continuous tone images for that matter. But yeah. Huge images on the internet is just rude. Post little pics if possible please. Or link to larger piccies if needs must. Life is nice and cosy when you are young and healthy and with good eyes - like you and me. 800x600 on a 17" screen is good for anyone a bit far sighted or a bit over the hill though. Feel sorry for anyone checking the forums on a web enabled phone.... (something I do from time to time)

Maya is the best overall 3d app available yes, but I spend a lot of time hanging around the CG commuity, forums etc, and Lightwave is regarded as the best poly modeler available. It has it's shortcomings obviously, no history, edges or NURBS are the main ones, but it's just so fast and intuituve once you learn it, and you can also virtually 'sculpt' in it , in a way not possible in other apps, apart from ZBrush. I used Lightwave 8, but it's virtually identical to lightwave 7 and 7.5, most of the changes in the newer versions were made to Layout, character setup and animation.

Ah, thanks. Applegeeks' forums aren't bad for tutorials either.

If you're interested in some good tutorials and critical feedback, there are a couple good forums to look at. Epilogue is one that has a lot of stuff available that might help. http://www.epilogue.net/cgi/phpBB2/

OK, back to topic Added an emerald and pink gem (not sure what kind) to the textures and a skin for each. Touched up the ring tex. Resized. Uploaded most of it, except the mtr and skins. For some reason SVN says my copies are out of date and won't let me commit my changes. So I updated my mtr file and now alol the files have no breaks, instead they have a box(instead of paragraph break) and all the text is on only a few lines. Anyone know why this is? All my mtr files are screwed.

Well I read in another post o the forums here that 7500-8k polys is the target for characters. I'll have no problem whatsoever getting to that level from the current 30k It's never a good idea to have large details like the belt buckle just a flat plain with a normal map, it's always best to have some basic geometry there as well that more or less follows the high res shape. That's not a problem though, there's a plugin for Lightwave call qemLOSS which does just that job. I'll have to get this textured and normal/spec mapped and into Doom to see what the final effect will be. I currently have no idea how god/bad/average it will look inside the game.

I'm watching the news and apparently some statistical report just came out saying that the highest rate of depression in jobs this last year was young people in food service. So I guess it's official. Worst job of our times? If you count it as a job, maybe crack dealers... "Studies show that timber cutters, the most dangerous job according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, have a 1-in-200 chance of being killed, while the Black Disciples gang of Chicago's crack dealers have a 1-in-4 chance of being killed while earning a salary of $3.30 an hour (well below the minimum wage, and the reason crack dealers live with their mothers)." (link) That's just pathetic.

If you find something out then you should probably download this http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=255 and incorporate it there to test it out. My next plans are to figure out how to change the buttons, and how to let the SDK do something for me.

Yesterday I started to play Dark Messiah. I only went into the first mission, where you have to take down that cyclop, and so far I liked it. The story introduction reminded me a bit about Half 2 though. There are some nasty bugs though. When I tried to use that telekinetic spell on a fixed box, it crashed, and when I shut it down, it always locks my resolution to 640x480x256 for some reason. Only solution is to reboot to get back to my normal desktop. Anybody else played it?

Man, you think Bagels are bad? Try working retail in a liquor store for the country's largest chain of supermarkets. The filthiest, most reprehensible dregs of human society shuffle daily into our store like zombies; pawing orgiastically at the Jim Beam displays or $4 sparkling wines that I painstakingly shelve every Sunday night. As They gibber, drool and stumble their way to the counter; I console myself with the fact that someday they'll drink themselves into oblivion and won't ever come back. They also smell; they have this stench of sweat, urine and a 5 pack-a-day habit that physically hits you like a wall. I have to stand 2 feet away from some of my customers and hold my breath because of that smell. Then there's the ones with diseases, like the guy who's a Leper; and if he isn't a Leper he has some disease equally serious because his skin flakes of his face like dandruff. I serve hundreds of people a day, and there must be about 20% who i wouldn't cross the street to piss on if they were on fire. Alot of them are just a series of mismanaged bodily functions, like the ones who, swaying on their feet, eyes blurring in and out of focus, mumble through the spittle in the fetid, cavernous orifice they call a mouth about 'seeing a manager' after they've been refused. And I daren't even mention the other orifices they have. I have to routinely write up incident reports about refusing people for 'being fucking stupid' as they lack the hand/eye coordination to pull money out of their wallet or swipe their credit card. They might be drunk or not; but I figure I'm doing society a favour by not allwoing such mental deficits the right to buy alcohol. A typical conversation in one of my shifts goes thusly: Me: Hi, can I see some ID please? Customer who looks 12 yrs old: What? Me: Can i see your identification Young Customer: Why? Me: you need to be over 18 to buy alcohol, and you need to prove it Young Customer: Are you serious? Me: Do I look like I'm joking? Young Customer: Fuck man... (Hands over ID) Me: Oh wow, gee, you're 19 yrs old! Hah, how could I even possibly think you were under 18. You're fucking ancient! Young Customer:Fuck you (Leaves) Customer who is about 100yrs old: Hur hur hur; do you need to see my ID? hur hur Me: My god thats hilarious, side-splitting, I'll bet you could inspire Oscar Wilde. Seriously, I've had that very same conversation about 1000 times now. It's getting to the point now where I feel like buying a gun. And this is just the customers; wait till you hear about my superiors. About the only perks my job has is the fact that under current legislation i can refuse customers for any reason whatsoever and after 3 pm (the time when every manager in the store decides to have an early mark) I can do what i like, including swearing at customers and dressing shabbily in my uniform. It might actually sound like an ideal job to some till you realise that I get at least one death threat every fortnight (and you never know when they might actually follow through) and i have to deal with disgusting people who either drunk, high, stupid, crazy or a combination of them all. All this on a minimum wage. I can't even stand to drink anymore! If I weren't a student who needed part-time work on weekends I'd be gone in a flash.

Not really related in line with what we were talking about here....but I just mocked this up for fun. Someone at the ionstorm forums asked if we were going to change the name or just leave it as "The Dark Mod". Thinking of how Eidos and Ionstorm may take to us creating a mod inspired by one of their intellectual properties, I felt it would only be fitting to call the game THIS. On a half serious note...*L* I think I might even like that name. HA. @ pakmannen: Wow, I love that mock up. @ Springheel: I see where your coming from. The inspiration for that idea came from the idea that the fans will be creating prophecies in a sense. Fan Missions are essentially adding to the story. Kind of mystical and fantasy oriented I suppose, but it's also in line with the Thief universe, just approaching if from a different and I think more cerebral direction. Kind of quiet and reflective, like the game itself. As more fan missions are written, it would be like the prophecies unfolding. Just some thoughts to ponder. Anyway, enjoy my silly mockup.

Yes. You should talk to Fingernail about that. He can give you access to the teams forums where we have the concepts and everything.

I think I remember seeing you around on the ISA forums back before Thief 3 was released, that render of the Thief jumping the wall looks really familiar (and absolutely completely amazingly awesome). I'm impressed, everyone else is impressed, and you're already a member of the team as I write this. Welcome to the team, man..hope you have fun.

Regarding pressing escape to end the mission, the reason I don't like that is not because it hasn't been done before. It has, it felt very sloppy and unprofessional. IMO it's always better to do things within the game world if possible. If you want your character to move from one place to another, it feels more natural to actually use the movement controls and move your character, rather than leave your character standing there while you go hit some key like escape to move on. Crispy summed up what I was going to say already, that it should be an objective to get to the exit with no AI on your tail, if the mapper wants that. It might be a little tricky defning that. How many AI is too many AI tracking the player? How close do they have to be? How alerted do they have to be? Yes, objectives do track alerts caused by the player, although it's currently not broken up into sight/sound/tactile alerts (it could be). It is currently sorted by the level of alert (alert state 1,2,3, positive ID/combat). So yes, it might be possible to set up an objective to get somewhere with no AI nearby tracking you. However, I have some concerns about even that. In an ideal world, the entire game world would be modeled. It would be one seamless experience from the mission, the places you go inbetween missions (although it would be boring to do 45 minutes of uneventful city-walking to get back to your appartment), and the next mission. We can't currently do that, so we artificially define some entrances and exits for each area. Now, what if the artificially defined exit opened up into some place where, logically, it would be very easy for the player to lose enemies, like a forest or a warren of caves or something? If I were the player in that case, I would feel cheated if the game wouldn't let me end the mission if 2 AI were following me to this exit that led into a place where logically it would be very easy to lose them, and indeed I could lose them if the technology were up to rendering the whole of what happens outside the mission. But instead you're forced to run around the artificially constrained area to lose the AI, when logically there's a whole open area out there. Since we're not able to render that huge open area, I actually prefer the mission to end at that point. That's more immersive than saying "We can't render the huge city past the invisible barrier right in front of you, so you have to lose the AI that are chasing you in this area of two alleys that we can render."

Sounds like the CameraWindow's _parentWidget pointer is NULL for some reason? Which window layout are you using? Splitpane, floating?

Sure, I agree that's unrealistic. It would be nice if the game could let you play the escape all the way out ot a massive, detailed and populated city where you can lose anyone who's chasing you, but the technology isn't really up to that. That's no reason to make it even less reaslistic by just ending the mission when you pick up some object you need to get, and not even playing the escape out to one of the exits of that area. I remember quite a few missions where, during the escape, some alarm was set off to make it more challenging. Or the escape route was not the same as the route of ingress, and you went through a different area with guards you hadn't enocuntered yet in order to escape. I agree it's boring if you KO everyone and run back through an empty map, but I don't think "most" people do that. Ghosting reports were pretty popular. Again, I'm not saying that every single mission should have an objective to exit the map, I'm just arguing with Odd's contention that no mission should ever exit it by leaving the area, and instead we should hit the escape key on our keyboard. How are people even supposed to know when the mission has ended and they can hit escape, do we flash "MISSION ENDED, HIT ESCAPE TO LEAVE" across the screen?

I did this for Phantom a few weeks back, it'll tell you everything you need to know getting textures into the game...along with links to an indepth normalmapping tut. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=101 It sounds like you've already found the proper way to add a light, you just didn't switch to the renderer so you could check it out in realtime. To do that just hit F3 to switch from the cam to the renderer, and then F4 to enable realtime updating so it'll apply all your lighting information. When you say premade room do you mean one of Id's maps? For that you'd have to find the name of the texture you wanna replace, open pak001.pk4, track it down in there, and replace the 3 dds textures with your custom one. But that could lead to some really funkified results cuz their texture could've been applied to the wall in some weird way which might stretch and distort yours out of proportions if it isn't the right size, it'd be better just to make your own simple room in the editor for testing purposes. To do that all you'd need to do is make a texture set and use a generic name like Wall_Test01 or something like that. Plop it in a certain folder for easy access like base/textures/darkmod/test, make the appropriate .mtr file, then build your room using it. If you like it you can just rename the 3 textures and move it somewhere else, if not you can just make another set with the same name and overwrite the ones you have in the test folder. The next time you reopen the editor it'll have the new textures already in place to check out. I do something somewhat similar to that. If I find something about the texture I don't like while I'm working in the editor, I'll close it and zip up the current files, change it to fix what needs fixing, then just overwrite the files with the new texture and fire up the editor again to check it out.

Greetings Everyone! I wanted to start this thread on behalf of the DarkMod team to help keep our guests informed on our progress; to let them know there's DarkMod life in the project even when it may seem there is none -- and to keep them updated as such. There won't be a set schedule as to when this thread will be updated, but maybe check back from time to time. Anyone can post here and I'm sure you'll hear from other team members here in the future. Although many visitors might already have http://www.mindplaces.com/darkmod/index.htm bookmarked to see updates on screenshots and concept artwork, etc., some don't have it bookmarked and may not know about it. Other forums actually point to our site here and I figured there might be some benefit to providing occasional updates here via this forum, too. As an update for our guests out there, I can say that I've seen a LOT of activity from our team members behind-the-scenes on this DarkMod project. There are many discussions going on and a lot of concepts being worked on. As a team member with a primary focus on artwork, I've personally created a few concept drawings and have seen fellow artists showcase some very nice concepts. Our programmers, 3-D modellers, audio experts, etc. are also very active in these early stages of the project. I want to assure our guests that there's a lot of DarkMod life behind-the-scenes that you might not otherwise see from the outside. We have a long road ahead of us, but we have an enthusiastic group working on this and I'm confident you'll be happy with our DarkMod work once complete. Stay tuned, as I'm sure there will be many more updates in the future! Until then, may shadows continue to guide your journeys. Darkness_Falls

I believe the origin needs to be animated moving, because that determines the walk speed of the character in-game. Walk speed is entirely determined by the animation data. If the character isn't travelling in the animation, then it won't be travelling in-game. Yes. I think it would need to be used rarely (i.e. with low probability), for that reason. Otherwise it would start getting stupidly clichéd. (Edit: And oDDity beats me to it. )

Yeah, I think that would be great. Currently guards are already set up to react to other classes of AI by giving specific barks--there's no reason they couldn't do certain animations as well.

They're not that size on screen. However, D3 images must be saved as powers of two to avoid stretching. As I said earlier, I'll be going over all the icons when we're closer to the release date. Consider everything a placeholder until then. I can't see any reason why not.

Or register here at the forums, so you can see the rest of the boards.

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=159 The second post in this thread is the important one. The aim of this thread is to collect all information about what we want to do on a more detailed level but not TO detailed. So discussion about conecpt art should be here, but the information that this beast should be done shouild be posted there as well. You should also look through the document and add items in the lists, if you think that they should be included and I forgot them. For example: I listed a number texture themes and what each theme must provide for. If you notice that a theme, or a texture for a theme is missing, the list it, there so we can keep track of it. You don't need to be specific, but specific enough that we know what you are talking about. Of course even if you are an artist, that doesn't mean that you may not look through the other sections to check if we forgot something. If you decide here that you want to do a belcher but the coders don't know about this, you can not animate your model afterwards.