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Now that we're cutting back on our AI expectations, we should probably revisit the idea of using the Doom3 zombies rather than creating our own from scratch. I don't think they're quite core enough to justify making our own (at the expense of a more versatile AI), but they are pretty important in a number of Thief missions, and since we already have haunts it would be a shame not to have them. As it turns out, most of the D3 zombies have too much obviously-modern clothing to use (though perhaps with some skin changes they'd be ok). However, the one below would work very well and is a comparable size to our own models. We probably wouldn't need anything more than the standard D3 animations, and could even reuse the sounds. And since zombies don't really require sophisticated searching abilities or anything like that, how much modifcation would they need to be useable? Ishtvan?

Saints and Thieves looks stunning (I haven't played it yet, still have a big backlog of catchup missions). Looking forward to seeing what you make for TDM.

Holy macaroni! As the guy (arguably representing a small portion of users): just going compression 2 and forgetting D3 textures is not a good thing. I use the D3 stuff more than our own, and not just because we don't have much - because the D3 stuff is really good. There will no doubt be people that make high tech missions, or even total conversions (modern day stuff) of TDM. I'll give up the 100Mb HD space compressed textures would have saved, gladly. Edit: Saw your edit, one moment... Edit2: Nope, the ones I have locally which haven't been added to CVS yet qualify for that, and they are as screwed up as the stock D3 ones. There has to be a reason that D3 sets my value to 1. I keep suggesting it might be because I have a GF4 generation card. So D3 recognizes that and goes into failsafe backward support texture mode. And if that really is the cause, it's no longer a small portion of users. Hell, if half a gig of HD space was lost to not using compressed normalmaps I wouldn't care less, and it'll never be that high. We can still compress the diffuses.

Don't worry, I got it straight off I should put you into one of the missions on one of the "wanted" posters hehe..

It's going to be unique and good on it's own as far as modding. Of course I would like to thief-ize every engine lol. Would be cool to have a accurate square mile of city scape with no loads just in missions appointed by keepers. And the alife will be used for peasants and merchants. Ok I am done, stalker has been in dev for a long time. I am actually waiting for "Alan Wake".

That would be so cool. The whole city completely mapped and free to explore. You have a central story possibly, or get given missions to do etc.

I take it you are referring to contributions by FM authors who create and distribute Dark Mod missions, not the core mod code itself? Obviously with the core code being under the GPL there can be no restriction on using it for something non-TDM-related.

The only reason that comes to my mind is replaying the missions with a higher difficulty (with all the new AI abilities like looking around during walking and climbing ledges... do they climb ledges?)

Thief's swordplay was pretty simple: holding the mouse button made Garret extend his arm left or right, depending on the position of the enemy (so that the sword was closer to him) and releasing the button made him swing. My idea of expanding this system is as follows: 1)Hold the LMB 2)Swing the mouse left, right or up (this makes Garret extend his arm appropriately) 3)Release the mouse button And then optionally: 4)Swing the mouse in the same direction as the sword goes 5)Press the LMB as soon as the swing is over (requires some good reflexes from the player)- this "intercepts" the swing allowing you to once again quickly... 6)...release the LMB and swing the sword in the opposite direction. If this is possible to implement in DM (alongside with some nice collision detection), I'm going to drop out of school and devote my life to developing DM missions.

I've noticed that a lot of ordinary sounds can be turned into "Thiefish" sounds just by slowing them way down. Heck, the "Thooooooom" sound that starts all the Thief missions is just the slowed-down sound of a ball being hit.

That's way too reasonable a proposal. Yet another problem with allowing core equipment to be discarded before the mission even starts is that it means the game is making a tacit assertion that ALL MISSIONS CAN BE GHOSTED. This is clearly false. The purpose behind Thief's loadout screen is that each mission starts you out with what you'll reasonably need to finish the mission, then allows you to buy more stuff to support your personal play style. This is a damn good compromise between allowing freedom of loadout and ensuring that the player doesn't screw himself before the mission even starts. Suggesting that essential equipment be placed in the maps themselves is quite lame, because that reduces Our Hero to the level of incompetent unprepared scrounger.

I couldn't see any doors in the Object Gallery. Are we really missing such important things? Maybe I'll model some...? Is there anybody modelling in 3DS Max? What are the proper units? As I can't still test my models ingame I should know the common dimensions (AI, door width and height etc...) What are they? BTW: The Atti's well model is more than 5 metres tall in my 3DS Max.... Atti - what was your intended size? And coming back to models-to-make: is there a kind of Object Request Thread? I think it would be better to make models which people need for their missions rather than producing random stuff...

I considered a design like that but it didn't work very well. What we could do is replace the "Main Menu" button with a "Continue" button as GIMG suggested. If the missions is a standalone mission with no epilogue, this button just takes you back to the main menu. If the FM author has written an epilogue it will take you to that and then on to the next mission (if part of a campaign). Basically the Epilogue would be a simple GUI like the Objectives one, with text supplied by the FM author.

Really gotta work on that wording sometimes. There are quite a few missions where you might have 7 keys and 10 readables. Throw on top of that some clock parts or machinery or a screwdriver you don't know if you'll need or not, and you've got a cluttered mess which is annoying to search through, and dangerous in a pinch.

Ayup.. that would be what I was referring to. So someone with very bad GarrettLoader experience (me) is now completely fucked - no way to run missions without it. Yay for proprietary design.

I stopped keeping track a couple of months ago, but it was a dozen then, so I'm guessing there's probably 15 or so, maybe a few more. You can supposedly run them fine with GarrettLoader (remember, the guy who wants to support TDM in his loader), but I've never tried it again since it erased half of the TDS folder on my work machine. Oddly, everyone else seems fine with it. So I used a tool of my own to overwrite files with renames of conflicts, and then undo it all in the end. That's all there really is to installing a TDS mission. For now, at least. There are a lot of changes in the works to make it "more simple" for the masses, which in turn will make it much harder for those doing it the way I am. At that point, I may have to start skipping TDS missions. :-\ Damn, though, spar, UnrealEd kicks some ass. And no, you don't need it if the mission is assembled correctly.

WOW! That screenshots look really impressive! At first sight I thought they were TDS missions (especially the first shot). Never thought that the good 'ol T2 would make such a remarkable display. Thx for joining.

Thanks guys. Maybe I'll try modelling too someday, which frightens me even more than texture creation did, because beside the technicals, that very much seems like an artist's field. Maybe I could make simple stuff, though. Too many incomplete missions over the years finally has me trying other stuff, I guess. It's nice to actually finish something.

Please tell us you're just pretending to be dumb. There are missions, even in the Thief OMs, that REQUIRE the core equipment. The player doesn't know this in advance. The player shouldn't have to know this in advance, because only a stupid and/or suicidal thief would intentionally embark on a job unprepared for the unexpected. This end result of this design flaw is that mission designers won't even be able to put in something as basic as a slashable banner and assume that the player will be able to get through it. Or more realistically, word will get out that the ability to start without a sword and blackjack is a silly feature pushed through by a borderline insane member of the team and should just be ignored.

Yes, if FM authors really feel the need to spoonfeed the player, they can flag an item as undroppable. However, it's really a poorly designed mission that absolutely requires you have the blackjack or have the sword for you to complete it. Good missions should be ghostable by good players, and if it's ghostable, I see no reason why you'd need a sword or a blackjack. ...or a thief that's so good and so confident, he prefers to rely on his skills than some contrived gadgets and gimmicks.

I'd hate to interupt this new line of discussion, but tying a guards hands and legs and gagging them is pretty much a given if there is the potential they will wake up again. Didn't happen in thief because they didn't wake up again, but imo the point of a blackjack is not about a particularly silent kill, it's fufilling the no killing objective on a map and getting a better rating. I think you could just as easily stab someone and be as quiet, obviously it would have to be a surprise attack. Murder is obvious, there tends to be alot of blood, if a guard finds a murdered body as opposed to someone who got knocked out, the reaction should be immense. If a guard finds someone who is KO'ed the reaction should be similar but not as intense (perhaps taking longer to kick off a search or something). Also in appropriate missions extra guards should be called in (perhaps town guards) in order to search for the murderer. Though i'm not too familiar with D3 i was just thinking about how you would reanimate someone (if this wouldn't work then just ignore me ). I would do a few tests to determine what state the body is in, if on it's back apply a force to make them roll over onto their front. If on their front apply a force to get the arms and legs into the standard get up animation start position (which would be arms beside the body, legs out straight). From there it's just animation, it's not going to be that dynamic, infact you are only creating 1 standard animation sequence and some physics manipulations to perform a standup. If you wanted to start on this, start with the physics, if you can get that working, then it's just an animation after that. Also oblivion has a reanimation feature, though from memory they do some magical transitions to get the body doing that. and it's literately a reanimation feature. It's part of a quest and after defeating this guy you can reanimate dead bodies (necromancy) with his staff under your control.

" If I had my way, over half of the games in development would get canceled and replaced with something that is more fresh and innovative and emotional and less of a rehash of the same ideas. I can't believe how many people are still interested in power fantasies about guys with guns or driving fast cars or jumping around on platforms. Interactive media seems like such a powerful platform for exploring ideas about the human experience, and the games industry winds up focusing on the equivalent of a Charles Bronson vigilante flick over and over and over... it totally makes me sad." Please, someone put this guy in charge of the games industry immediately. One thing I didn't realise was that LGS actually owned the intellectual property rights to Thief 1&2 and then Eidos bought it when LGS shut down. I was under the impression that the publisher already owned any rights to the games being made. It seems the designers had alot more fun and satisfacton working at LGS when they owned the rights themselves, than at Ion where Eidos owned the rights. I guess we have to accept what he says abut consolitis not being a major factor, but that means that a lot of the crap we saw in the game and attributed to cross-platfrom design decisions would ahve been in there anyway even if it had been a PC only release. That does'nt make me feel any better. I think we all liked the direction they were trying to take of making an open city and taking the game away from a linear series of missions, but a lot of tiny bad decisions can add up to ruin a game, no matter how good the core concept is, and that's what I think happened here.

one thing i realy havent heard about or talked about is the keepers. obviously the most important character other then garrett in the series. he does missions for them and was trained by them. what are your plans for them? will you make them dark and misterious like in the first game. you never realy lay eyes on them but you know that they are vary important. and when you do there blackend by the shadows. vary dark indeed. the keeper is the most powerfull character in the story i think. there so compelling.

Well, first off, I wouldn't even have mentioned it if I thought a great deal of effort was involved. I'm well aware how busy the team is and certainly don't want to add significantly to the already large number of things to do. I was operating under the assumption that the armor could easily be removed (and, of course, the sleeves made plain and changed in color) without requiring any major work on the underlying main character model itself, and so it would be very fast to do, especially for an expert. Perhaps it's actually harder to do than that. And I don't think this falls under the category of a personal request. Even if you don't plan to feature Keepers in the story line you guys plan to make at some point, A.I. models that have a similar look to them would still be highly useful tools to have as basic building blocks for the kinds of missions Thief fans are going to want to make. Just as the "builder" character models are going to be essential for so many Thief FM's. Anyhow, perhaps it's so easy to make those adjustments that any reasonably knowledgeable DOOM III modeler can handle it without messing up the model in the slightest. If that's the case, then fine, I'm sure someone will do just that. And as for lending a hand, I never said I was unwilling to do that. I don't have any practical knowledge or experience on 3D modeling or programming, but I could help write lore, story text and such for readables, and also character dialogue, when you fellows get around to working on your campaign.

You've got to be kidding. We've already said we're not including keepers, so why would we go back and modify one of our models to make one? Do you think we don't have anything else to do? If people want to make carbon-copy thief missions they might *gasp* actually need to do just a teeny little bit of work themselves.