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Have you thought about allowing level designers to make "custom difficulties"? Not only allowing level designers to choose how many difficulty levels there are and what they're called, but also allowing them to create multiple controls that the player can select at the start of the level. For example, Inverted Manse renamed the difficulty levels to cut-purse, rogue and warrior if memory serves me right. Imagine if for Dark Mod, such a level could instead create a second control and call it "character class". This way, a player could choose both a difficulty and a character type. Maybe you could also allow check-boxes. For an undead mission, a level designer might by default have standard undead creatures but make a check-box called "realistic undead mode" (pardon the oxymoron), so at the mission breifing the player can turn it on/off. With it on, haunts couldn't be killed by backstabbing them, and ghosts could automatically sense the player if they're within 20 feet. (of course the mechanics of setting this up would be implemented in the level, or custom gamesys if Dark Mod has such a thing) You could use such controls to slightly alter the map to facilitate various playing styles/preferences that it would be hard to accommodate simultaneously. As another example, you could make a "ghosting" checkbox, and set up the Easy difficulty so it gives you some extra health-potions if the ghosting checkbox is off, and removes certain guards if it's turned on. Similarly, other difficulty levels might do different things based on the playing style chosen. You could make it so that such controls defaulted to whatever you chose the last time you saw them in the campaign. Just an idea I thought would be cool... I'm guessing you'd probably wait until v2 before considering it?

We are looking for a gallery software, where we can host our images and organzie them. The requirements would be: *) It should run on Linux and be web based (PHP, Perl, Python, etc. with MySQL). *) It should be possible to add users who can update descriptions or upload images *) It should allow to specify categories and descriptions. *) It should support hierarchies (optional). *) It should allow to have multiple versions of the same image (optional). I tried coppermine, but the problem is that it only allows one album per user. So multiple users can not manage the same album. Apart from that it would have been very good for our purposes. The last two points are optional, so if they are not included it doesn't really matter. Of course I would be also happy about any hints about web based photogalleries managment software so I can check it out.

I just found a software which can do the first four points (the last one is not really neccessary anyway for us). It's called Gallery and available on sourceforge. You can give detailed permissions per album for each user individually and it can do hierarchies of albums which is really usefull for us.

We had a discussion about leaving arrows in the guard, but there's a few problems with that. The biggest one is that it could lead to clipping errors depending on where it hits. It could also wind up looking silly, with arrows sticking out of a guard's feet or hands. It could also get in the way during combat...imaging trying to swing at an attacking guard and frobbing the arrow sticking out of his chest instead. We may do something where the last 'death arrow' remains visible in the body--it depends on how it works in playtesting.

Those two descriptions about savaholics describe me perfectly. I personally prefer the game designer to limit saves for me, as otherwise I tend to feel like I should be playing perfectly, and I'll just reload as soon as I get any damage or anybody sees me or I waste a single peice of equipment. I find it more tedius and less immersive/fun to play games where I can save anywhere, at any time. Having said this, I don't like the idea of limiting saves by saying "here's 10 saves, use them anywhere you want", because I don't know how long the level is in advance, so I don't know how much I should be rationing saves. This is particularly troublesome when old objectives can be canceled and a bunch of new ones can be added part-way through the game. My personal preference is to have savepoints or checkpoints (a la Far Cry). As long as they're properly placed, you never have to lose much progress. And if you need to quickly go away from the computer, you can always just pause the game. However, I think which saving limitations are used (or not used) should be up to the level designer decide for their level, and DarkMod should be able to support most styles. If you don't like save limitations, then don't play levels that have them. Of course, the standard campaign should probably support any save-style and allow the player to choose which one to use at the beginning of the level. [Edit:] I just thought of another thing that could be done to allow players to leave the computer at any time without allowing wussy-saving. You could make a special save slot that is saved when the player quits the game, and is deleted upon being reloaded. That way, a player can quit the game and pick up where they last left off, but would be unable to reload the save after then (unless they backed up the file or something).

The reason I use Corel Draw (vector manipulation) than a paint program (pixel / bitmap manipulation) is, that I have more possibilities concerning the manipulation of the objects (rotating mirroring, etc). For example the is a tile that looks symetrical, but not 100%, I first design the first half, mirror it and adjust the few last inaccurate points. It's also possible to create some "synthetic" textures: Pyra_s as .tga The step between (heigtmap) Pyra_n as .tga That looks: Here is a screenshot from Corel Draw while I was wokring on the tiles (see my first post). The thin dark lines are the edges of the gray areas.

It proves sweet FA. I am definately NOT saying that "just adding more realism" will make for a great game, there is much more to it than that: story, plot, level design, balancing of risks and rewards by rewarding the player proportionate to the risks they take, good AI placement and so on. It is not a simple procedure by a long shot. Absolutely, you can make a game worse by carelessly adding realism, but from my perspective, making a game by carelessly avoiding realism is just as bad. Ultimately it all comes down to level design. I am the sort of person who notices little details when playing games, and after a while inconsistencies and a lack of realism really start to bug me. Like for example, the way guards make no noise when you blackjack them and they fall down armour and all, or the way guards can't see you in a doorway even though there is a lit room behind you. Don't get me started on rope arrows... And the way level designers fail to think about the purpose of every little object in their map - as a level designer, I always make a point of making sure there is a reason why everything is where it is that isn't contrived, and I notice when other games have been given the same attention to detail, it rocks! What you also fail to understand is that what you find fun might be utterly different to what other people find fun - I have played a few fairly realistic games, usually simulators of one sort or another (never quite realistic enough for my tastes :lol: ), and built a few quite realistic (from a design point of view) levels for Unreal and Thievery and found them to be fun (although I am still tweaking them, and the engines themselves have limitations on realism that shit me). And there is a big difference between a game that makes no pretence of realism, say Sonic the Hedgehog, compared to one that does, like Rainbow Six. In the former, realism wouldn't make sense, in the latter, the more the better. Actually, I have been working on a game for the last 5 years, but I have had problems switching engines, full time work and family responsibilities, and being a perfectionist, I'm never happy with anything, so it will probably be another five years before I release anything, and everytime a next gen engine comes out, well I just have to port all of my game assets over, and find someone to do the coding for me.... If the Dark Mod has most of the features I want, I think I settle with it, or I'll never get to release it...

We've discussed this a lot actually. If I recall correctly, we decided to maybe have limited number of saves/reloads as an option, but never force it on anyone. I don't think we liked the idea of save points. It's too easy to screw yourself over by getting really low on health or something, or about to be shot by 10 arrows, and then accidentally walking into a "checkpoint" that overwrites your last, healthy checkpoint. Also it's NOT going to be a requirement to have limited saves when you play on "expert." We're planning to have separate difficulty settings and "playstyle" settings, because someone (like me), could conceivably want to play with the AI on the hardest setting, but also want unlimited saves. So we divorce such "playstyle" options from the "difficulty" options, everyone can set up some custom difficutly the way they want, everyone's happy. Disclaimer: This is of course not official and subject to change.

Sorry it's taken me so long to reply guys... to be honest I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do Anyway I have 5 or so years of C programming but in the last couple have really taken to C++ and am very familiar with the language (and nuances...). I'm pretty familiar with the physics areas in the D3 SDK but I'd be happy to try and learn other areas if you need me to. ps.. I've never played Thief... I'll go and try and find a demo or something

Yeah, i saw it last saturday. I thought it was really good, though some parts of acting were a bit below par. Overall it was good though .

I agree with Sparhawk. All textures need alot more detail, they are screaming "im repeating!" all over them, increase the texture size or rework them to not show so much that they are repeating. They almost look cartoony. Secondly, the arch in the last pic needs to be increased in geometry. If you were going for the smoother effect (a perfect half circle) normalize the face normals on that arch to show a smoother transition from one polygon to another. Hope that help.

In the first shot the reflections are way to strong IMO. In general it looks good. But especially on the last shot, it somehow looks wrong. Maybe it shows that the textures were not designed for this engine, or it is just a lack of detail on the geometry. Could very well be that it is just that.

Thanks for explaining that, I assumed the worst only because in the past I've been on lists that treated newbies +hard+. Plus I've been trying to edit with a goddam skeleton program for the last week. Please note I certainly dont expect lightning service, you guys are too busy producing glorious miracles, but I thought I was getting the "treatment" for a bit.

since I can't start on the wardrobe right now I'll do it. but I think you should make the frame of the windows thicker - here's a photo of a gothic window. you see the difference ? maybe it'll help you - here's a high-res texture of a gothic window I did last year:

Just saw it last night in a friend's theatre (he downloads them, so thankfully, no $9 of mine went toward it) and it was possibly the worst piece of shit I've ever seen. I am not one of those people that usually calls people down on acting, and am probably too forgiving (or even naive) in that area - but in EpIII, it simply cannot be missed or ignored. And did anyone count the number of pointless, go-nowhere, serve-no-purpose scenes? Lucas is nothing more than a completely untalented hack that got lucky and somehow came up with a mere thread of a story that some otherwise bored(?) people became interested in - then he sold it out and was forced to expand on it (unbelievably poorly) so it would support him for life. And he succeeded. Figure that one out. To quote the theatre owner, "I can't say enough bad things about that." Think of how cool SW could have been, if the writer/director had any talent at all, and wasn't so concerned with selling it to children. What a waste of time - I could have been watching the new Jet Li.

...and seven months later he's actually in the game. I haven't been doing any CG work for the last two weeks (I get totally bored with it sometimes) but I'm finshing of the Builders now.

:lol: Malevolent humour is the last resort of the ignorant, I say. Then why go see it? Just because of the hype?

When's the last time you saw an engineer wearing a suit at work?

And that is something that could have been done better in TDS. In the city levels, the guards all knew who you are, and would attack you on sight. But it would have been better if they ignored you until you were spotted doing something naughty, and then those posters could have gone up. You could even have it so that guards would ask you if you had seen anything suspicous last night, because they found a body but no-one saw you kill/KO them, rather than immediatly suspect you (even thouugh you do look like a sneaksie thief!).

Argh! I downloaded it from the Gamershell mirror late last night, went to unzip it today and found out it had been corrupted. Gonna give that mirror one more chance since it's pretty fast. Edit - Nope, that one seems to be corrupted or something, keep getting the exact same error from Winzip about the exact same number of bytes missing from the zip. Shame too, was getting 600k/s on that one Guess it's time for the torrent.

Thanks for the kind remark Fingernail. That was the first texture that I applied a proper normalmap too. I used the heightmap template method to create the normalmap. There is still some tweaking I need to do like make it tile a little more seamless and play around with the normalmap some more. Also I got rid of the specular heighlights because it made the texture lose a lot of detail. I think that making specular heighlights is actually harder to do than making a nice normalmap, either that or maybe I added to much specularity when I was playing around with the texture last night. What settings should I use for the normalmap plugin for photoshop? I'm currently just using the default settings and playing around with the scale setting under the heightmap generation. I'm also just pluging in numbers till I find the right one that I like for the scale in the normalmap filter. Is there a, right way, of putting in numbers for the scale, or a general range of numbers to use? Any help on this would be much appreciated. Edit: Updated my album again this time showing off a better tiling brick texture with a new heightmap, localmap, diffusemap, and a house I made awhile ago. As always I love to hear constructive criticism about what you like about it, what you don't like about it, and how I can make the texture better. Here's the link again http://photobucket.com/albums/y182/Outlaw706/

What about having a drop off point for loot in the map? A designated dump where you can return during the game and unload, near your entrance/exit place. Maybe some kind of object could be made that would tally what you dumped into it, call it Garretts Big Ass Velvet Bag. In the storyline, he would'nt grab this until he was ready to flee the premises. It could still be limited in size and weight, just more than he can carry in his kit. The last act of the FM would be Garrett moving this heavier bag, which would limit his actions like carrying a body, out the back window or door. I used to wonder back in t2 about the possiblity of Garrett having to "catch" a BJed AI. Say I sneak up behind him, whack, now I have to grab and drag the body to shadow before it hits the ground. The body would only be frobable for a few seconds while the AI crumples. This way: 1. Garrett never has to support a huge guards full weight, and just as importantly never has to dead lift it. And maybe some guards are heavier than others? Maybe some are nearly impossible to carry/drag, while others are like rag-dolls? 2. The noise, a regularly garbed man collapsing to the ground will make a noise, an armored one should wake half the castle. (In fact, a year ago I watched an old, old lady collapse on the street here in Philly, her tiny little body and head made a thump that I heard half a block away.)This realistically accounts for that *huge* crash missing in T1/2/DS when an AI was whacked, cause the bodies should never hit the ground. There can still be noise of course, and it should pose a threat. 3. It would force Garrett to pick his ambush areas very carefully. You whack the AI, catch him as he falls, then have to quickly drag him to shadow. You can still move a pancaked guard, its just noisy and hard with all that armor dragging across stone. 4. It would fine tune balance the gas arrows. They are a pretty powerful weapon, but imagine if you knew that to use it is going to A. make a big noise cause you cant run and catch the dude as he falls and B. make dragging a body away a lot harder, slower, whatever cause you couldnt catch him. You would think twice about firing away with them, or you might have to nock another expensive and rare gas arrow to take out the clowns who come running. Either way it limits their use and utility, a plus in my book.

We just did that for the last milestone. Planning for half a year. And two months difference is not really THE difference to warrant different dates for everybody.

Holy shit yeah he will..I still bear scars from the last Tyroting.

LOL, I was going to say in that last post: "LOL, did I just say *twinkly*??" Yes, I agree it should just be subtle. Nothing girly.