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Hmmm, It seems to keep logging me out whenever I press reply, and when I log back in and try clicking it again It logs me back out and makes me type my "Unregistered User Info". Anybody konw the problem? Oh and for some reason I couldnt find the Reply button on the last thread I made... is it only on the first page of the thread? That could be it cuz I remember I was reading on the 2nd or 3rd page when I thought of replying and couldn't find the button.

Well, this is one of the problems with secrecy. The public just dont like to accept decisions which have been taken behind closed doors for reason unknown to them. And also, I like to have a good argument for the sake of it.

I don't like flash (or similar sites) for one simple reason. It delays the loading of the site. When I want to access a site, I usually want to acces the content and don't have a flash movie forced on me. Don't know if flash can be used for other things as well, but an intro movie is a bad thing for me. If I want to see a movie the siteowner can provide it as download, which I prefer much more.

I appreciate your comments Springheel. Let me explain my train of thought on our Mr. Thief. From the Guidelines New Horizon gave me: This seems to be in contrats with the Garrett type of Thief, who is very 'non-personal' when it comes to his work. If our character does not emerge as a hero and 'save the day', the only way the plot could put our character in any real danger and create powerful villains is if there is a day to be saved, and the character decides not to save it. The first possibility is that the character is simply a coward, and decides the day isn't worth saving. The game player probably wouldn't like that character. The second is to create something the player would perceive to be more important than saving the day, which in this case is the character's daughter. By making his story personal and deciding that he would not 'save the day', our character could never be Garrett, who hides a heart of gold under a curtain of cynicism. I decided that our character should have been at war for six years because he is wearied of taking orders and being the 'pawn in the game', and also because having been in the awfulness of war would make him a pained man, who has seen hell and can't quite get over it, and would appreciate a family, and could walk away from glory and 'saving the day' towards a quiet life. I also decided there should be a war because it gives a reason why the conflict between the two sides of the City has only recently flourished into a threat, and because it explains why our hero has been away for six years without knowing what his daughter looks like. Being in jail for six years would make him look weak, and having him simply be 'away' would make it seem as if he does not give a toss about his family.

I have a problem with this...our Thief character is supposed to be inferior to trained warriors. He is not a combat veteran by any means. As it doesn't seem to be crucial to the rest of the plot, it might be better if he was away for some other reason. Maybe he was caught and exiled by the old prince of the city, and now that the city has been taken over he sees an opportunity to return. Or perhaps he has been working in another city for a time. I like the first couple missions. I also like the idea that our Thief used to be a high-ranking member of the guild, but there is no one now who remembers him. I also like the idea that the city has been taken over, providing lots of opportunity for political intrigue. I'm not so sure that the Builders would be conquering cities though...they aren't an army. Would a political coup work? They certainly might have the power to overthrow the government. Or perhaps some other force has taken the city, but they have turned power over to the Church. My biggest problem is the ending. I wasn't thrilled with the idea of our thief having a wife and daughter, and the ghostly girl thing makes me think too much of the Cradle in T3. Having the climax be bringing his daughter back to life is not my favourite. It also kind of leaves the whole cauldron thing hanging. Who is 'the baron'? Why was he brought back? He seems to just vanish from the plot. And why does bringing his daughter back to life make him worthy of becoming head of the thieves' guild? That conversation with the new 'baron' didn't make sense to me. Another thing--it still seems like just about every mission is the Thief being 'duped' by someone, or doing someone else's work for them. I got so sick of that in T3...Garrett always did everyone elses dirty work, and never seemed to do things to further his OWN agenda. Still, no story is going to please everyone. I definitely think there is potential here. We can see what the others think.

Well I'm not talking about the graphics; I'm talking about the interface - a row of 10 objects of your choosing, they are the ones you cycle through with "item up/down" keys, and press "fire" to use. The HUD reflects the interface, so I want to throw in my suggestions for the interface. And I'm not saying we should do this, I'm just showing how things can be done differently. (And better.) I feel that the only reason there is a distinction between weapons and items in T2 is just to lower the clutter of cycling through too many things. Since it means two seperate pairs of keys for cycling through things (whereas Deus Ex just has the one pair), I think it could be refined. The other thing that annoys me about the T2 interface is that they've mushed the usage of the "use item" key with the "action" key. In T2, the same key is used for using your items, as well as using game objects (switches, doors etc.) Then you have another key for firing weapons. But in Deus Ex, you have the fire key that always uses whatever your holding, and the use key always uses game objects. Makes much more sense. No more throwing flashbombs instead of opening doors.

To some extent this happend to us as well, so we had to put down a firm foot and refocussed. This happens rather easily, and that is exactly the reason why you need a good project management and lead that will take care of such situations.

There is a reason why the dev boards are not public. And it is not about keeping design decisions from the public. And it seems to work, otherwise there wouldn't be a guy calling us mature. LOL

DF, I think you can rotate the arrow so that the fletchings don't hit you in the hand... just like they won't smack into the bow as they slide along it. What hurts usually is when the bow string smacks against the inside of your forearm, but we're already wearing leather bracers, so that problem is pretty much taken care of. As for the angle, I asked this question too, and the answer I got was that it gives more control over the arrow, because you're letting gravity create a little 'nook' for the arrow to rest in, between your hand and the bow. If it's straight up and down, and you're resting it against your finger, it's VERY easy for the arrow to bounce over to the side if you're not careful. I think Springheel was saying that tilting is better for combat/speed shooting for this reason.

I wouldn't worry THAT much about projects being shut down. Seems you don't have much experience with software development, otherwise you wouldn't be so surprised about that. You can look on ANY free development site (like sourceforge for example) and you will see the same effect. The reason is not because D3 is so much worse or HL2 is so much better, but simply because it is one thing to START a mod, but quite another thing to keep on working on it for several years. You notice the big droprate right now quite strong, because it is much to early that serious mods have finished their work by now. Big mods or TCs are under full development right now and they will not be released in the next few days anyaway. What you can see right now is the normal timeframe it takes for a mod to be shut down. My opinion is that about threee months is the critical time. A mod that can be finished within three months has good chances to get finished. A mod that takes longer and gets beyond the three month period will suffer a morale problem because this is about the time that enhusisasm for a new project will turn into hard work and realising this. Considering that the SDK has come out about three months ago it is no big surprise that we see this effect right now. Any mod that survives this first crisis, has good chances to become completed as well, but of course there are no guarantues. Since The Dark Mod already had this first crisis, and we passed it quite well I would say, I see no real problem for the near future. We will see if we can master the next cmrisis just as well, but I think we did some important decisions to avoid this as much as possible.

Campaignjunkie, everyone was discussing it earlier, but what I hate the most uberly about HL2 is not that the source engine looks a bit dated (which it does cos valve had been sitting on it's ass for a while expecting no comp till Doom3 came out) but the main reason is Steam. The most annoying thing in the universe (unless you Download a steam-crack, thus removing steam ). But I played HL2 and i enjoyed it, so im not saying it is "the worst game of the century", just saying that they got a bit lazy in production . --Dram

You know it's funny, cos tbefore morrowind there was Redguard. Redguard had one of the most innovative sword fighting IMO. No "sorry you're only level 56, you miss" crap. But that's my opinion. Though the puzzles in the game were so immersive and challenging that their hotline had around 200 calls a day asking for help with the puzzles . But sadly, (as mostly RPG players loved daggerfall and arena, redguard did'nt sell as well as it should have. I bought it myself too) it was'nt as recognised as it should have been. Before Redguard they wanted to make Morrowind to have "vast armies marching the lands" and "over 10000 cells" though technology prevented it. But if you play Redguard, you get a lot more in-depth info on the gods ,etc. (lol, there was one part where you got to another dimension to talk to Clavicus Vile - freaky). There was also this Dark Elf Assassin whose name was Dram (hence my nickname). LOL, it was funny in some points too - governor says "what do i pay you for, Dram?" Dram says "for my chilling countenance, of course". and also - "should we continue with the attack? (Dram said this when explosions were heard from the harbour as the redguards were attacking Stros M'Kai) and the governor replies "who do you think is blowing up our ships, Dram?" :lol: . Also, EVERY word said in the game was voice acted. Also, the actual voice acting was superb, the imperial voice actor voice acted for Morrowind too. So basically, Morrowind was meant to be spectacular because of it's armies, though technology (and money) was not so readily available, and as redguard had'nt sold well to the RPG-ers, they did'nt want another dropped game. Hence why Morrowind is as it is. Upon saying this, I wish to say that I have bought Morrowind and all it's expansions (Tribunal, Bloodmon [my favourite!!!]) and my mod count for it is well over 100 (downloaded ones that is). So I think you should give it some slack as it was the RPG-ers that wanted it to be an RPG. Though, the reason of low-environment-detail is that the editor needed placement of EVERY friggin object, so yeah.

That is fine for an RPG, but not for an FPS style game. i think we should stick to the original style because that worked well, and there is no reason to clutter up the hud anymore then neccessary. And I never heard a complaint that to many keybinding were required to usefully play the game.

Crazy Idea #1: Since you're planning on setting the game in a non-copyrighted parallel universe, I was wondering whether you've thought about giving Terry Pratchett a call and asking him if you could set the game in his Discworld, which is a very, very similar fantasy steampunk world. I've met Terry Pratchett before and he's a very nice man so I'm sure he'd hear you out. Apparently he plays Thief FM's as well, so he may have another special reason for granting you use of his little world. After all, there's a Thieves Guild in Ankh-Morpork, and an University of Wizards (mages), a Guild of Assassins, a Guild of Alchemists...

Hiring you as a writer IMO makes mostly sense if you can come up with a good story AND defend it. The problem is that we tried to come up with one ourselve and this didn't work out really well as many members tried to push their story forward and others didn't agree with it. But our members are not writers anyway, so I was not to happy with the currenty story proposals on a whole, while individual ideas were pretty good. So there is no clear direction yet. One reason is also, because we initially started this mod as a toolset for FM authors to create their own missions. Doing a campaign was more thrown in later because Eidos/ION (inofficially) announced that they are working on the editor and we thought that we should change direction a bit. Personally I think that writing the story is just a creative process as the modelling, sound and all the other components. Therefore I don't want to push a particular story idea beyond a few general restrictions.

Seems you are talking in circles. The point was NOT that it can not be done, the point was that we provide ready made doors and windows and there is a reason to it. First, we need to set sound propagation values, and second this would ensure a consistent door and window size for most FMs. This will NOT prevent FM authors from making their own, though.

Don't know why, but I just felt i had to say this: In my mod, I've now fixed several.....issues. They are: *Fixed the dumb need-to-press-f12-thing, now done by script. *Fixed the light (p button) and I'm working on the climbing and lockpicking (trying to kill the bugs. after that I'll finish off the 8pin locks.) Hmm. Guess I've found a reason . Which is, that if you guys like my mod and are playing it, then you might want the fixes. Also I'm fixing it cos I play it sometimes. Though Thief2 is still on my computer and played often . --Martin

Since I was supposed to finish that model last week I've been busy. I was doing the elite guard concept, then figuring out the rope for Domarius, then making the player arms an bow, then getting together some references for this model, and I'm currently doing the bow and blackjack animaitons. I'll finish the house guard before I start on the thief though Ishtvan, those are good points, but if we start getting into this realism thing, then he shouln't be wearing loud shoes either. The reason I'm doing the frog and not a sheath, is because it's easier to animate - or at least when he draws and replaces the sword its'll be too quick to see that it is cutting through the frog straps. If there was a sheath you would see it cutting through. I'm goign to do this frog idea foe all the weapons. For the hammers, they can have a ring holder on a baldrick. Springheel pointed out that there is no game in existence where players draw their weapons out of sheathes, and theere are technical animation reasons for it.

Don't know why I haven't responded to this earlier. Well the reason it, if you look at the naming scheme, that all things you frob have the "frob" prefix. Like this: "frob_door_metal_open", "frob_door_wood_close", "frob_food_apple", frob_food_deerleg", "frob_instrument_harp" and now then: "frob_instrument_victrola" and "frob_instrument_musicbox". It's a much smarter system than the one which was used in Thief 1/2 (if you even can call it a system, they just threw everything inside one folder and named it stuff like "DOORS1C" "dronelp", "FAKEWIND5" etc.) And of course you can use it in a cutscene if you wish, but the main purpose of the sound is to be played when the player frob a musicbox. Oh, and I'll make the names as long as I want to!

Comments: Gregorian Great stuff. I'm thinking of breaking it up into three files, much like they did in Thief with the SINGING1/2 files. They could then play randomly with a shader or similar. New objective Not bad, but keep experimenting. Also, I get some distortion the first instant of the sound. Maximised too much? Waterdrips Also great. Maybe a tad longer than it needs to be, but don't bother with that, it's great. Machinehum Okey, that's it. No more machinehums people, we've got like 200 already. Growl I don't know about this one. It just doesn't sound very intimidating to me. Go crazy with effects and see what you come up with! Ambient haunt Now that's more like it. Pretty freeky in some spots. You could try to lower the background hum a little, especially if it's intended for looping, since it's kinda naggin. About the tension loops, is there any reason to have the sound engine handle the fadein/fadeouts? Anyway: Ambloop 7 Great. Feels very Thiefy. Ambsubstr Same goes for this one. Very Thief 2. Amb underground This one is frickin awsome. Great job! Only thing is that it doesn't loop perfectly. But I dig the sounds. Reminds me of the bonehoard. The wind sounds The first one is ok, but the second one is better. The bell sounds Bell_01 and bells_02 are great. The deep one sounds.. weird. Sounds like a stereo effect gone wrong or something. The bell sound comes out of the right channel, and the bass sound from the left.

The reasons are pretty simple. Most of us didn't like them, so we wont implement them. And the other reason is, that we feel that the player has many advantages already. Putting in climbing gloves would add just another thing that makes the game easier and thus less challenging. We want Darkmod to be a challenge, and many things that were done in T3 were put in to make it easier and more newbie friendly. Exactly the opposite from what we want to achieve. Which doesn't mean that newbioes shouldn't be possible to play it, but it should not be as easy as T3. T1/T2 were a pretty good challenge so we aim for this instead.

Yep - I was thinking that myself. Is there any real reason to not just use that shader? All it needs is an alpha map included in the diffuse - no problem whatsoever, and very easy to set up.

Yes, definitely some great work. The marketplace didn't really inspire me much, though -- too much activity for me. I don't really like the "city/market" type levels in Thief, especially not in T3. I'm fine with just mansions, houses, churches, courtyards and castles for some reason

Another idea whioch would require no visual indecators would be to hollow out the arrow and have the rope squashed upo inside it like a spring. When the arrow it's the spring-like rope shoots out. Don't ask me what material this springy rope is made of though. All ideas require some suspension of disbelief, but that's no reason to go the whole way and say it's a magic rope.

Of course a rope arrow doesn't have a real world back up. Though I seem to recall movies where a grappling hooks has been fired with bows. I think this would be possible, but certainly not with such a wrapped up arrow. And since I Thief wouldn't carry a big rope with him, has the time to put it on the floor in nice coils, so that he can properly shoot them, this will have to suspend believe anyway. But still the rope arrow should at least LOOK as if it could working. This means that a rope wrapped around the shaft wouldn't really work for the simple reason that it would jerk the arrow off it's path.