Search the Community

I have a 9 year old Seagate that I use in an external USB enclosure to transfer files between work and home... works perfectly. My C drive is an 80GB Maxtor, I've had it for nearly 2 years, but you have me worried now... Most of my important files are backed up onto a 6 year old 20 GB Seagate - they seem to be unbreakable I have a couple of old Western Digitals that are very reliable, and several ancient Quantum Fireballs (around 200 - 500 MB average, I can't believe how much you can fit on a 3.5 inch HD these days) that are in perfect working order.. I'll be sticking with Seagate or WD for the forseable future, that was the last Maxtor I'll buy, I just hope it doesn't fail anytime soon, I have a lot of backing up to DVD to do...

2005/06/25 - Uploaded three city-themed ambients Had bit of a creative low and lots of work in the last month..

Thief 1/2 has become my standard too, with the exception of Ground Control and Homeworld, ( I know, Sierra) but they are mooch-o immersive. But they are such different genres anyway. For FPS, its Thief. Drakon, your list is identical to my own. I just replayed Red Fracture for the cool weapons, the only really good part of the game. The AI layouts were stinky, it was like they had all been waiting for you to arrive the entire game. BG1 was pretty fun, NWN was dull,the Planescape mod thingy was pretty bland too. And I though all the Diablos were crappy. With DarkMod, I want to make scenes that will haunt the player (mongst other things). Not necessarily gory, but dark, spooky, ALIEN shit that makes you forget you are sitting at your desk. Not space alien, but weird. Id like to develop recurring characters, in different FMs you meet them as opponents, allies, and sometimes even just cameos. I wrote something about this at TTLG. A vampire character, one that works with, against, and sometimes along the Thief. Think of the immersion, if you play an FM against a powerful undead badass, the battle is unresolved, then two, three FMs later you bump into him/her/it again, just for a brief moment on the rooftops. The vampire greets you with a laugh and reminds you of some petty detail from the last mission, then is gone for three more FMs. Course, it doesnt have to be an undead thing, a Detective from the Hammerlikes, sometimes after the Thief, sometimes calling for assistance. Little details can be used to create a web of memories around a character that build depth. You help the Detective out one night, save his ass, and ten FMs later he slips you a lockpick set while you sit in the pen. Add a few character models, a few good scripted scenes (D3s cutscenes are pretty damn cool), and you have yourself a little character development, which pays off big time. That being said, I dont want tons of flash, simple, dark, direct scenes with compelling dialog (hopefully). If I can get a little Lovecraft feel in my FMs, mmm, thats good stuff. Come to think of it, those ancient statues in Thief 1/2, the figure with the squid head, is none other than Cthulu. Hai, Cthulu!!! Hai Yog-Shothoth!!! If someone wanted to look into such a project Fingernail after a well deserved rest, they would have my eternal gratitude for one. I dont think the fact the NB exists, bless its soul, should stop anyone from making yet another game. Make seventeen if we can, cause no one else is making good games anymore.

Man, if it were to turn out like Thievery (the multiplayer) I would kill someone. Thievery SUCKS if you play with DM Thieves. It fucking gives me the shits as they run around as they would in Splinter Cell. Man, I had to modify sooooooooooooooo many things to get that game playable. Now you light up shitloads and the lockpicking is gui blah blah blah... Anyway, that game was very unbalanced, it was like the guards were just "obstacles" which in Thief 1/2 they were not. If you play Thievery online today, you will find NO Thief 1/2 players, in fact, for some fucked up reason they hate Thief. I mean, there they are, playing Thievery, a mod developed from Thief, and when I ask them "who here plays or likes Thief?" the answer I get is "man, you should'nt ask that question around here much, you'll get no responses". Man oh man... Anyway, that's just my rants. Point is, I would not want multiplayer in TDM unless it was VERY HARD for a single thief to win against 1 or 2 guards. The reason: I do not want to attract the DM Thieves here, that's the last thing I would want, to go and play TDM online as a guard, doing my daily patrol, when arrows fly in like shit. I would only ever play TDM online if there was NO KILLS ALLOWED. That's just me of course. Anyway, back to the topic...

well it's not very hard actually. all I did was cutting out some good areas of the rock and used them as the "colour" for painting the bricks. I used some references for the shape of the bricks, so that they look natural (when you paint the shape totally from scratch you tend to make them look too uniform). the rest was just simple photoshopping - adding some shadows, moss and post processing. glad you guys like it. I started on the normalmap last night, but it's really hard to make it look good.

Maybe you should compare it to the IP from the guy that we had to ban. Could be that I'm just paranoid, but it doesn't hurt and only takes a minute. Last time he frequented our board again he still got the same IP as he had the first time when he started to spam our board (before he got permanently banned).

Take away the background and the title and that also could be for any game out there. Which is, of course, true of virtually every menu in existance. It's not the buttons that make a menu unique, it's the surrounding graphics. And our last consensus was that people wanted an animated game-map in the background. If people have other versions to submit we can always put it to a vote, but it's pointless to have Napalm wait another two months to get started while people rehash debates we had back in December.

** MOVED FROM THE OLD JOURNAL THREAD ** 10/01/2004 - I have commited new sounds effects to CVS. A few of which I got from my swedish contact. 09/01/2004 - Commited new sounds by mrD and Saxmeister, our newest member, to CVS. Still haven't edited any of the sfx from my connection, but should do so this week. 07/01/2004 - Have returned from London. Will take some time for me to get up to date again. Will help our two new members theo and saxmeister get set up and ready for work. Will also check out the new stuff by Muze and mrD. 30/12/2004 - Last update this year. I have gone through the files, and sorted out what might be useful. A lot of metal doors, swords, explosions and glass breaks. And also some wood breaking and thunder/weather effects. 28/12/2004 - I have begun to go through all the SFX (from that swedish guy). Found some interesting stuff already. 27/12/2004 - Talked to a guy (from Sweden) who is happy to provide me with some free sfx. And they are great quality too! So I'll be going through them in the next few days, and see what can be used. Also approved mrD's latest sounds, and updated dotProject. We are 9.8% finished. 26/12/2004 - Updated dotProject with the Ambient design doc. Also uploaded all the SFX we currently have to CVS.

Well, I didn't mean to tell you something you already knew! Sorry if I misinterpreted what you said... What I meant was the GPU can only render so many polys at once at any given framerate, but you can limit AGP/PCI-x16 bottlenecks by using static meshes. It will only improve framerates when memory is the critical factor slowing things down... otherwise a poly is a poly as far as rendering is concerned, and total number of polys, textures and lighting factors are what count in the end. Hmm that really puts the last nail in the coffin for T3 editing for me - it is beginning to sound really limited... I just think T3 has been so optimised for consoles that if you deviate in any way from its hard coded limitations, you will have dodgy framerates. too bad, at least we have DarkMod on the way!

The last days i work with the editor. A found substract, vertex editing, and how possible select brushhes these under some other brushes!!!!! The resize is very good, i could work 2 times faster than dromed. Only the lighting not good for me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! doom3 engine use pixel sized realtime lights. This Eat much cpu power (10-25 framerate plus when i off the shadows) and not look too god!!! In first time when i look projected shadow i think how i look some grafical erorr!!!!!!!!! I used shadow off option in system/advanced menu, in doom3 and the framerate is good. when i on the shadows, the performance boosted!!!!! I think in darkmod impossible off shadows options, if possible, cause less shadows, more difficult the hiding!!!!!! And the mods several times slower than modded game. This slowness plus shadows cause how darkmod not enough fast on my poor machine p2 2.4 512 mg ati 9600 xt! ANd additin how realtime shadow not enough nice:( The lightmaps very good things in games unfortunately doom3, and t3 not use !

I'm kicking myself that I'm probably part of the last generation that won't get to go to Mars and such cool stuff. But come to think of it I haven't been to most places on Earth yet, and there's a ton of more interesting stuff down here.

I dont think that's much of a possibility, a space shuttle might look good on paper attached to a large fuel tank but I've heard Nasa has jacked up security around their launch areas over the last few years. Plus you have to take into account the fact that the area around the launch pad is kept clear of people when there is a flight about to begin, so an attack would be likely to only kill the shuttle crew. Terrorists like Al Queda like big body counts so I would worry more about crowded sports events or places where there are hundreds/thousands of people coming together at predictable times.

It's actually very simple. (oh, forget I said frequent - it's more like sparse). You don't place them just before a hard bit, you place them near enough that the stuff in between it and the hard bit is not a big deal to get through. This is not dependant on linearity - take Calendra's Legacy for example. I would place one somewhere near the cathedral in the streets, near the east side of the cathedral, since it so happens that the only two entrances for the cathedral are on the east side. Since there is only one good way to the cathedral, the player would never miss this, and therefore never have to worry about having to specifically hunt for save points. Although on that note, I dont' have anythign against having to specifically hunt for save points. I don't find this any more abstract than having to specifically hunt for 90% loot, when I have 85% and am about to die - any sane thief would just get out of there. Plus I would reffer to Outcast's example of tying in saving to the game world. The justification is the same as having to find 90% loot - its a crossover between gameplay and reality. In reality, I would leave with 85% if I didn't think I was going to make it. But in the game, you need specific goals or the whole gamplay system just falls apart. I would be hunting around for save points to increase my chances just like I painstakingly hunt for that last percent so that I can see the ending sequence. Another example is if you ever get down into the dungeon of the cathedral, I would place one at the top of the stairs beyond the locked door that leads there. It (like most save points would) serve a multiple purpose as a reward for getting that deep into the cathedral, and a point to fall back on if you die in the dungeon. Another example (still in Calendra's Legacy) is the grave yard. I would place one, not just outside the gate, but some ways from it in the nearby streets. It wouldn't take long to run from there to the gate if you ever died inside the graveyard. Now keep in mind that save point placing is a creative process, and for every flaw any of you find in my descriptions above, I will counteract it with what I would do to resolve that flaw. It's just that I haven't thought about the above in as much detail as I would as if I was making the level myself.

Hrm. I actually thought there were better ones out there? Maybe I'm wrong. The only one I really like there is number 4. The nature scenes look cartoony, and all the ones with chars appear to be at least partially faked. I'm not saying U3 can't do it - we all know it can. But these pics are just odd looking. The marine guy's lighting is all wrong, so he's probably just an overlay, and the other guy's lighting is terrible in the last shot, so he's also probably been digitally added afterword. Haven't companies learned not to fake up photos for distribution? If they're not retouched/added to... um, then the lighting needs tweaking for character models, badly. Anyway, the few movies that are out there show off Unreal tech 3 MUCH better. Those are indeed incredible.

Obscurus, your last set of responses to me made it painfully clear that you're arguing for the sake of arguing and not actually responding to the points being brought up - many of your responses were complete non-sequitors, and all of them ignored the central arguments. This is a waste of time.

Except that exploring sometimes means dying. If I were a real thief breaking into a home, I wouldn't bother trying to explore the entire house. I'd take the best loot I could get to easily and run. Playing without quicksaves creates the same type of thinking. Since failure is such a huge hassle, I'll try to avoid it at all costs. That means I won't take risks if I don't have to. If it's easier to knock out the gaurd than try to sneak by him, I'll do that. If it's easier to bypass the libarary, I'll do that. That's not the way I want to play the game, however. I want to feel reasonably secure in exploring new areas and trying things that are risky. I don't want to cheat myself out of experiencing parts of the map simply because I'm too worried about having to replay the last half hour. As for reloading the map and playing it again, that totally cancels out any immersion benefits gained from not quicksaving the first time. I don't think people are going to agree on this issue. As long as we're not trying to force playstyles on people I think we'll be fine. edit: Oh, about the movie analogy...you realize that what you see in movies IS created using 'quicksaving' right?

Hey guys, I am researching for an essay on the future of the games industry (my last assignment till I can start work on the mod again ) and I found this page which I think all of you in this thread will really appreciate. http://www.pcgameworld.com/article.php/id/316/ When I read it, I remembered this thread.

Hello Dark Modders! Firstly, sorry for my English. I hope it is at least comprehensible. Secondly, I would like to buld another FM (I've done some demos and FMs - Old Comrades, Old Debts among them - in the past) and right now I am wondering whether I should use T3Ed or Doom3 editor. I've been using T3Ed for the last few weeks (since it was released) and, frankly, I do not like it. Or perhaps I should say: I like it less than I liked DromEd. That is why I started thinking about the Dark Mod. I hope you will find some time to answer some of my basic questions about the toolset you're going to release. 1) I make my own textures. In T3Ed it is very easy to use them in the editor (one just needs to place pictures in proper folders)... if you owe 3ds max (each texture is some kind of "material" assigned in max). How is it in Radiant? What do I need to make custom textures for this editor? What file formats you use? 2) And what about custom meshes? Is it easy to place some standard format files (like .3ds) in the editor? Do I need some special tools / plug-ins to texture models for Radiant? I could ask the same about sounds... 3) When do you plan to release this toolset? Of course, I am not asking for precise date. And I know it is probably very difficult to tell, but... Will you be able to release it in the next year? Next two years? 4) I heard that there will be functional water and rope arrows in the editor. Is that correct? Do you plan to include ALL features (water, fire arrows, scounting orbs, mines etc.) that can be found in T1/2 and TDS? If not, what features are out (I guess climbing gloves are out)? 5) I guess there are some DromEders and users of T3Ed among your team members. Could you tell me if Radiant is more or less difficult to use than T3Ed / DromEd. I was able to learn Dromed quite well. Do you think I'll be able to learn Radiant? 6) Is Radiant at least as "flexible" as DromEd? Will I be able to create - for example - new arrow types, new AIs with specific behavior, objects interaction (making one object of few gathered parts), new scripts that allow some puzzles (the simplest one: pressing some buttons in proper order makes the door open) etc? And what about objectives? Can "anything" be an objective (like in TDS)? 7) Will there be such sound propagation as in DromEd or TDS? 8) Will I be able to create levels as big as the ones from original Thiefs that look and run well on standard computers (512 RAM, Radeon 9800 etc.)? Thanks in advance!

I passed this idea by Corth and Spring last night and wanted to get an opinion on the matter. We were talking about doing basic facial riggings along with animated normalmaps to achieve realistic facial ticks for our character models. I realise that this would be a whole helluva lot of work for our modellers to do right now, so I suggested just doing a single test model then setting up the basic riggings so someone could come back and do it later once all the models are finished. That way we wouldn't be pressed to finish it one model at a time, but do it anytime later...even when the mod's been released. Though it's not what I'd call a necessary feature, it could add loads to the ambience and feel of the game and make our characters seem that much more lifelike in the end. It's something worth considering.

Ok, so I take away the last two until I have the permission, ok?

I simply generated them with the normalmap plugin for The Gimp. The first I found on a site about Möbius The next two are some symetrical pencil sketches. The last two are from a private web-site. I just try to get the permission to use them.

You guys have never heard of a pause key. You also conveniently ignore that save points, passwords, etc. have been used for years in games, and not the sonic the hedge hog variety. I'm talking the eipc 5 CD RPGs that take part of your lifetime to complete because of their sheer size. Pyrian, Unlimited saves = unlimited ammo is the extreme, but there are many degrees in between that, because the game gets easier proportionately to how often you save. And there is nothing destructive going on here. These save limiting features would be OPTIONAL OPTIONAL OPTIONAL. There are enough of us interested in it to warrant it a different playstyle or something. You guys don't have to accept it, it would be optional. So I shouldn't have to defend the concept itself. All I want to discuss is possible solutions. You've all convinced me that limiting saves, or specifying a save total, could be useless, so I can only fall back on the save point solution. (That is, going to a physical place in the game to save.) Spar, save points aren't specifically for linear games at all. Every single console RPG is an example of a non-linear game that uses save points. Spring, the novel analogy is a bad one because you have no effect on the course of action in the novel. The main character doesn't do better just because you decide to re-read the last few pages and say "well THIS is how it should have happened."

Very lucky, Ive been getting them since I was sixand its a good month if I dont have one You wouldnt believe the number of tests and strange concoctions Ive been made to take. For me they normaly last one to three days, but when they are really bad it can hang on for more than a week. I had to get used to some of it, I cant do the same amount as normal and I certainly dont drive when I have one, but its better than lying in bed hoping my head blows up. As for only women getting them? Well I dont know, I think Im a man, if im not then someone was very wrong in biology class. My GF never complained either but with modern girls who can say :lol: (yes the painkillers have kicked in, its nice when they work.)

It's pretty good (my last one only cost £500), but for a REALLY pro concert guitar you could expect to pay £5000 or more. It's (my new one) a low-level "concert" guitar, really. A high level student guitar would be about £1500 - 2000 - and after playing so many yesterday, the quality difference is ENORMOUS - the leap you get from going into a higher price bracket is quite large.

Ok, this is the last update for this head (unless someone doesn't like something about it ) Before: After: My next post should be his walk cycle