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On reactions to physical things: I think that setting a player_touched flag is too simple, certainly. For example - imagine if two people walk down a corridor, and one knocks something into the other. The injured party should get annoyed with the first person. I guess you have to think about what you'd do in the situation. If you walk past a table, and the candle falls off, you'll assume that it was your own fault. On the other hand, if it just fell over, then you'd get spooked. If there was nothing indicating what had caused its movement, then that's what'd happen - you'd be freaked out. Otherwise, you'd start looking for signs of an intrusion. Obviously, if something was lobbed across the room, you'd go over to where it came from. Likewise, if a box falls on your head and you were walking past a large stack, you'd probably assume you'd somehow nudged the stack - it was sitting awkwardly, or something. If it flew across the warehouse, then you'd run over to where it was, and start yelling for whichever young taffer was back there to get out here to be given a good hidin'.

atti can you generate a normalmap for the small chest for me? it tried to do it myself but the programm I'm using (ORB) generates only half of the normalmap for some reason the layout of the uvw-map doesn't really matter for such a simple object

well actually it's quite simple: you have a seperate CVS-folder and you download the stuff from CVS directly into it - nothing else goes into that folder. when you're working on new textures create a seperate folder (in your normal darkmod directory) textures/test/<here the usual file structure> and write you material - test.mtr. when the work on the texture is done you check out CVS first and then you can check if the filename is already used or not. if it's not used yet, then you can copy your textures out of textures/test into /textures and simply use the replace function of notepad to replace the paths textures/test into /textures in the mtr. that may sound complicated, but it actually isn't - takes less then 1 minute. If the filename is already used you rename your tgas from blahblahx.tga to blahblahblahx+1.tga and use notepad's replace function to fix your paths in the material-file. that's the way I do it with all the textures and models. I'm not 100% sure, but I think CVS warns you before you can overwrite a file. And actually you should always do a resync before you commit something to CVS anyway.

What about a simple gold embroidery pattern on the lower half of the robe? Like that Greek pattern you see a lot. [EDIT: What I meant was the "Greek key" embroidered in subtle gold around the circumfrence of the robe near the very bottom. The pattern would be something like THIS , except without the upper/lower border, just the key. Just a suggestion ]

That's a nice idea to set them apart and looks great on its own, but it doesn't go as well with the simple brown robes. How would it look if the robes were black?

@Oddity: I would like to do a CVS update very soon that will include your Revenant models. In the zip file you have on ftp, they are put in the directory "darkmod/models/mymodels" Is this the location you modeler guys want to have them in CVS? Or should we add a new folder like models/characters (/char for short)? Also the same goes for the "mytextures" folder in textures. I have no idea where this stuff is supposed to go, and I want to put it in the right place when I update CVS, so we don't have to remove them from CVS and re-place them later. What's the SOP on this? Also, it would be awesome if you could put a .zip file on the ftp with all the necessary files in the correct paths, once we decide what those are. But if you don't have time to do that, you guys can just tell me the paths you want and I'll put them there. ALSO: Any news on what frames in the animation should have footsteps? I can try and judge it myself, but this will take type, and I'm no animator/sound editor, so the sync up to the animation may be crap But once I know what frames to put in the footsteps, adding footstep sounds for the Revenant will be a a very simple matter of editing only 2 or 3 lines in the def file. I want to get footsteps on them so you can hear them move around as they patrol (although NH's Benny humming impersonation is doing a pretty good job of that right now

Are we just using the same model as the Builder guard, but with a skull for a face like they did in Thief, or are you thinking of doing some specific artwork. Haunts are supposed to be undead Hammers/Builders, so it makes sense they'd be wearing the same gear. I could give him a skull face and hands, make the armour old and rusted wth holes, and tattered cloth. Are they basically skeletons wearing armour, So if I tatter the leg cloth, you can see the leg bones inside? Is it also true that the hammer priests become ghosts and not haunts? There's a very simple effect you can do in doom to make charcaters look ghosly - just add the word transparent in the shader. I suppose we'd need some sort of 'blue glowie' effect on top of that.

One possibility would be to combine the techniques, such that only a player-set-off chain reaction that went down in the amnesty period would go unnoticed - a relatively reasonable reaction. (Indeed, one of the things I liked about the "amnesty period" solution is that the guard wouldn't be able to pick out player actions from a chaotic situation - although, as you pointed out, in simple situations it can break down.) Can you chain the flags such that a chain reaction caused by the player is picked out from chain reactions caused by NPC's?

lol - I placed the light in front of her head just for testing purposes I think you missed one point: We're making a game not a 3d-render scene. The player will be able to look at your models from any direction in any lighting-situation. It doesn't help if a model looks great on one screenshot - character models will walk through the level and you WILL see them not properly lit. I think there's a small problem with the normalmap of the noblewoman and it doesn't help to ignore it, because it appears in many lighting situations. here's a simple example: you'll see such a lighting situation a hundret times - the model is between two lightsources, that are placed on a higher level than the model. here's a screenshot what it looks like, when D3 renderes the scene:

well that's kinda strange. when I set-up the barrel I get an error in the console, that it's not possible to use the mesh of it because it has too many vertics....hell it's a barrel - there aren't a lot vertics on a barrel, so it seems that the collision models have to be very simple

Pretty simple. You put it in the directory where it should end up. If it is a new file, you click on the file and use Add. Then you use Commit and that's it. Easy as pie. If you want to add multiple files, then you would first add all of them before you do commit.

oddity can you upload the nobelwoman as a lwo (maybe in some simple pose?) with all texture-maps to the ftp? I'd like to throw it into one of our maps to take a screenshot for the website. your screen is great, but I guess it would be a bit irritating for the 'fans', when they see the standart-d3 textures. I can already hear comments like "You don't even have enough textures for one single scene? OMG!"

Renz: send me the textures and I'll do models for the normalmaps. They all look like simple panelled stuff, wooden boards etc. So they should be quite quick to do, but greatly improve already great textures!

I don't suppose my opinion means too much considering I haven't had the privilage of reading through your production discussions, etc... but because of that I am forced to reluctantly take to the gamers perspective on this subject. A few simple "gamer's" opinions which support what everyone is saying: a) When playing any game which falls into the same category as Theif does, I will never, ever cease to be entralled by, and overjoyed with the realness that developers can integrate into their game. The closer to real life the game is, the more the player can relate to it, thus the better the game becomes. Obviously, during production these factors will always exist: Time, Budget (?), Technical Ability, & Necessity. Apparently those have been discussed amognst you, and documented accordingly. This shows professionalism. There's really no way you can argue with what has been determined to be the optimal way to integrate certain elements of the game once they have been measured up against the above factors. Which i think might be the reason for the frusteration of your team members, oDDity. c) Lastly, my opinion of this specific element of gameplay (being the black-jackery of unsuspecting, 'technically advanced medival folk') is that the more real you can make it. the better. I would hardly call this an arcade game. The object of each level, should never be to steal a certain amount of money, cuz that's just ridiculous. A thief is unscroupulous to say the least. He's not some good hearted guy, with tons of self motivation. There is no such thing as ALLADIN. What ODDity mentioned about risk factors and such are very very smart ideas. In a case when stealing is the character's occupation, he should not be limited to this environment to steal from -- in reality he could attain gold (if he REALLY needed it badly) from any other person, household, or safehouse in the village (with the exception of special artifacts, which was mentioned above). I feel that if there is any reason why the guards shouldn't wake up, wake each other up, or brew up a massive search of the entire buildling, it should be because of a restriction on Time, Budget, or Technical Inability. I fully feel that there is a 'Necessity' to make this style of game as real as possible, and the whole risk factor of guards that can randomly wake up and potential alert other guards after being brain beaten makes a WHOLE LOT OF SENSE. 'Nuff said. oh 1 more thing -- i totally second the notion of using techniques to permenatly incapacitate K.O.'d people by binding them up with rope, shackles, or locking them into rooms (with the option of passing guards within the sound radius to hear their pleas to open the door). Again, it's more work -- but it adds sooo much more realism, fun, and strategy to the game. If you don't want to turn your gamers into a group of knife weilding rambos, then you must provide them with other alternatives. Never-waking K.O.'s is just a cop-out in my opinion.

Sounds for milestone: - Objectives - Loot - Blackjack - Bow - Broadhead - Footsteps: Marble, Wood, Stone - Explosion - Basic Voice set for the AI SFX currently on CVS: /tools/ - arrow_broadhead_wood1-4 - arrow_swoosh1-2 - blackjack_sheath - blackjack_swing1-2 - blackjack_unsheath - bow_draw - bow_sheath - bow_unsheath - key_pickup - mine_explode - sword_sheath - sword_unsheath - tool_pickup /world/ - body_collapse1-2 - element_fire_fireplace - element_fire_torch - frob_frobber_button1-2 - frob_instrument_harp1-3 - frob_instrument_musicbox - frob_instrument_victrola - frob_loot - material_explosive_destroyed1-3 - material_glass_destroyed1-4 - material_wood_destroyed1-3 - material_wood_impact1-3 As you see when you say we need a "broadhead" sound, it's not quite that simple. Currently we have sounds for broadheads against wood, which will do for the milestone, but of course we will also add metal, stone, soft etc.. We have placeholder sounds for "objective", and "footsteps", which are not on CVS atm.

Ishtvan, the proposed interface was in addition to the standard Thief functionality we all know and love. See this quote: The point of this idea was that some of us don't always remember if hitting '7' does a rope arrow, gas arrow, or whatever. Domarius said it best: "I too, forget which number key is what weapon in T2, and just cycle around till I get what I want." I'm visual and would appreciate having an alternate (secondary) way of selecting my weapons and tools. If you don't like to select weapons using this completely secondary way, then you just would never use it. It's that simple. Before commenting, please read my last few posts to know what all I'm talking about and again, this is not a replacement of Thief 2's methodology.

Does Hideo Kojima even play his own games? I recently got a playstation 2 (again, after selling my old one a few years back), so I finally got a chance to play some of the more hyped games that came out in the past six months or so. GTA: San Andreas, Siren, and Silent Hill 4 to name the few. Yesterday, I rented MGS 3: Snake Eater. I was looking forward to this title even in lieu of my general malaise (sic) at the series as a whole. I wasn't that impressed with MGS 2, though unlike most I enjoyed the storyline. The gameplay was tiresome, and I wasn't too thrilled being at the helm of an androgenous blond in latex. Mr. Kojima had begun to fall off. Like it or not, Mr. Kojima is the father of the stealth genre, and it was kind of sad to see him fading away. Then I heard about Snake Eater. I figured with all of the top notch (and I use that two word phrase loosely) stealth titles that recently hit the scene, I figured Hideo Kojima would step up and delivery a brand of stealth only he could, thus reclaiming his crown. I hoped that, in the spirit of humility, he would see what more recent stealth titles had offered, accept how the genre has evolved, and assimilate the finer aspects into his own game, thus providing his loyal subjects with a well honed stealth machine, through which we could be processed and refined. It is not to be. 15 or so hours later, I'm watching the credits. "But Hylix!" You may be thinking, "15 hours of solid gameplay is par for the course nowadays! Whatever are you going on about?" While that statement is true, it has no relevence here. Why? You ask. Well, I take issue with the phrase "Solid Gameplay". I just completed one more playthrough, this time skipping the movies. On Normal Difficulty, No Special Weapon use, and a Haphazard Sprint from beginning to end collecting only what I could from memory...I completed Kojima's best in Three and One-half hours. That's right people...Minus some continues my first playthrough, roughly 10 Hours of Movies and Codec Conversations. In his attempt to refine the characters, storyline, sounds, visuals, realism, and man-destroying-himself dogma, Hideo Kojima forgot he was making a game. Not only that, what little actual gameplay is there is riddled with Why's. Why can't I move in first person? Why can the enemies spot me from across the map, but the camera will only let me see the floor? Why does Snake run like he shit himself? Why can Snake "climb" a tree, but not a fence? Why can I only "climb" one or two trees per forest? Why are the only trees I can "climb" essentially really round ladders? Why can Snake pull himself up from a ledge after hanging precariously off a cliff, but can't mantle onto a box two pixels higher than his waist? Why can I "mantle" onto a box waist high, but not simple step over a wall knee high? If Snake is allegedly the sum of his years in Special Forces, and the greatest soldier ever to walk the face of the earth, why can he not move and crouch at the same time? (Sam Fisher does it, and he's supposedly in his early forties.) Why, after witnessing Snake (in a fifteen minute long cinematic) take on 7 Spetznaz agents single handedly, using the finest judo/aikido ever put to polygons, are my hand-to-hand fighting options limited to "punch, punch, kick"? Why must I be adept at brain surgery to understand the gamepad input scheme? Why, with all of the brain surgery I am forced to do with my controller, is there no fucking JUMP button? Is this not the 21st century? Perhaps then, it is not that he forgot to make the game, he just forgot how. Mr. Kojima: I implore you. Give up game design, and direct CG movies. Your Films would be a whole lot more fun, make a whole lot more sense, and be a whole lot more interactive. Please forgive the rant. Flame me if you must. Hylix.

well pretty simple - googled for a high-res picture with moss and put it onto the bricks with the stamp tool

Hello everyone, first post here, and its just a simple question about theif III... anyone know of a mod, that can disable, or maybe change the blue glow/light, when you hover over items in Theif III. It is ruiing the game for me, I dont really think it was a smart choice to put into the game, its a shiny light blue vibrant color, that doesnt match at all with anything around it. If anyone knows anything, please reply Thank you

The fewer things moving the better, to avoid drawing attention to itself. A simple rotating letter wheel would be the most efficient, and was what I had in mind when I put it together.

I am not saying you should. However, there are many people who would find that interesting. I asked a simple quesiton "Whether the d3cdit sun script would work with light gem" It would be interesting in my opinion. Sure there are many other options, for example just a timer accomplishes the hurry up as well, but I personally think that there is nothing wrong with sneaking in the daylight, after all it is still dark inside

It no doubt sounds good on paper but if you were to try and implement that in a real game, I think you would find that it actually makes the game less fun. The purpose of the game, in its simplest form, is to have to try and avoid the guards hearing or seeing you. Yes, there is the illusion that you are in a simulated world but that's the beauty of it, you aren't. For all of its complexity, it's really nothing more than a suped up game of pacman....the thief is Pac and the guards are the ghosts. You avoid them, they try to catch you. I don't endorse adding a multitude of bells and whistles to something. The more "stuff" that is added, the more the simplicity of the concept is lost. It's good to hone the core elements and tighten up what has already been established. Keep it simple.

Basically, I'm implementing the rope arrow as it is in T2 (this was a team desicion) since that is what everyone really wants to see again and its quite easy to implement. Compared with a full blown rope that actually can have physics applied to it. That would be a lot of work, and not nessecary to get the simple T2 rope behaviour. So we are leaving that sort of thing till after the first milestone. The "rope" in T2 is just a different kind of "ladder". And the wobbling you see it do in T2 is just an animation in response to being deployed or being climbed. You can't actually interact with it with real rope physics. Hope I didn't dissapoint you - I think the other guys were hoping you actually knew how to do rope physics already. We chose not to get into that thing just yet, otherwise.

Dizzy was my thing, but I never completed either one of the series. That damn vulture always got me. I used my make simple games like this. I once made one so addictive it consumed my life for about a month. I had to manually delete it in the end, so that it did not spread like a virus throughout the world and cause the collapse of civilisation.

Damn awesome, Spring..I like it. You could do a heightmap and convert it to a normal fairly easily with that texture, just do a simple version in black and white with a gradiant along the edges. If you do it right it'll turn out really well when ran through the NV plugin.