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So when do we get to release THOSE screenshots. Damn good. Now, to come up with an equally good healthbar. I'll wait until we see what the other compass/gem combo looks like in game. BT, if you are still doing the texture for it, can you try to make the colour scheme for the metal and gem match up with the classic model above? That would make my life easier. edit: btw, is this on CVS yet? I'm dying to try it out.

Oddity its true that lockpicking in thief is essentially pointless, but nevertheless i would have to concur with Taz that it adds that much more feel to the game - after all what we enjoy is not entirely rational. Also, just to add to the issue of locked internal doors, these places might have to lock some doors just to protect from the guards themselves. I, also, do like cycling through my keys. Im not sure about which lockpicking method id prefer - some doors should definitely be impassable though.

So, getting the lockpicks from your inventory and pressing the left and right mouse buttons for 20 seconds makes it 'more satisfying' that you got into an important room? Well fuck me, but you're easily pleased, aren't you? It's much more satisfying for me if the door was unpickable and I had to do some difficult task to get the key. Lockpicking a door in any of the Thief's is the most unsatisfying sense of underachievment and tedious timewasting nonsense that's ever been concieved in any form of entertainment. Real lockpicking cannot be transcribed to a game. Not really, not when they have a dozen guards patroling around already. I don't mind important doors being locked, but only if you have to find a key for them OR they are so heavily patroled by guards and in full light that it makes them very hard to pick. IN TDS when you got near a door and used lockpicks you lost control of your player and were automatically sucked into position in fronmt of the door, so the lockpick animations would look correct. Well I prefer to get on with the game to key juggling. It really doesn't add anything to the gameplay at all in my view, but it's always amazing how different people's tastes can be

Oh dear. . . No it's not. Those two elements are extrinsicallly linked. There is no reason why the nubmer of pickable doors would be in any way linked to lockpicking mechanics. UNLESS they are ALL pickable and ALL need too be picked, ie there are no keys at all. You know what? This makes no sense. Right? What do you mean "right"? This is ridiculous. That is like saying I HAVE to make my FM easy because everyone has the right to finish it. Do I HAVE to slow everything down in UT2004 because people have some right to not get owned because they are too slow, crap and poor shots? And "patronise"? I think you need to go back tot the dictionary. If bothered to read what I said I think you'll find that I said just that. No twisting. If there is really THAT much of a difference then you just plain suck and should go and play another game. There is no way that lockpicking times will alter the design of a map form a mappers point of view. Unless it takes 10 minutes per lock. But that's not going to happen.

Lockpicking doesn't always have to be a gameplay element. It can be atmospheric. A secret loot stash is likely to be locked, right? If that area happens to have no guards, and the door to the stash is made unlocked as a result, its not going to feel quite right "breaking in" to said loot stash without the breaking in part. If/when i make levels for this mod, I wouldn't want to place guards at every door just because I want it to be picked with a sense of tension. Again, atmosphere. Something T1 had lots of; T3 had lots too, I just didn't like T3's atmosphere as much as T1's. As for key cycling, I like that. 'Main character thief' is not going to just grab his key ring and by chance select the right key every time. If someone is in a panic, they are likely to fumble around the ring and have trouble finding the correct key - as the feature of inventory cycling allows. (I've gotten into trouble a few times because I got the wrong key.) Its an element of gameplay no one wants to think they have - player stupidity. If you eliminate all the chances of being stupid, its not much of a game, is it...

You may have noticed that I said there will be an auto-lockpick setting for those who don't want to bother with the 'minigame' version. We are striving to accomodate lots of different styles. Believe me, just about any issue raised in the public forums here has been discussed ad naseum in the dev forums.

well you obviously miss the point then. This is like saying that theres no problem with having a game based on hiding in the dark and having enemies that can see you in the dark as well. Obviously how you rationalise this will make a HUGE difference.. otherwise people are going to be frustrated. You should also check out some of the complaints people had against the Thief 3 lockpicking - it took them a long time to figure out that they could tilt it. They certainly didnt enjoy it as much as you did. And they have as much a right to play the game as you do, without being patronised. Simply, if its too complicated and counter intuitive, whats it doing there? Oh and thievery? The system fits in with the rest of the atmosphere of the game - but obviously such a system is NOT FINE for a single player experience such as the dark mod - so dont twist the comparison

actually there was one major weakness to the T: DS way of doing it over T1 and T2 - there were no "unpickable" doors.. sure you might say a master thief like garret could lockpick anything, but then again in the first mission of T2 he is not portrayed as such, and has to rely on basso to open the door holding Jenivere. This is just my opinion, but in T1 and T2 unlockable doors greatly enhanced the gameplay. it meant that there wasnt one surefire way to get in anywhere, and required actual hunting for keys and clues to complete a mission. The whole concept of unlockable doors melded into the game remarkably well too. The importance of this shouldnt be underestimate - while a lot of freedom was given to the player, thief missions did not reflect real robberies - they presented the player with lots of unrealistic albeit fun stumbling blocks that required a change of appraoch. This diversified the gameplay somewhat, and unpassable doors were one very popular way of stopping the players advance. They also gave mission designers far more freedom to make interesting missions which people didnt fly right through. The darkmod doesnt have to emulate the Thief 3 way of lockpicking. Im sure there could easily be a way to make unpickable doors, but it would be more challenging to meld this concept into the actual game without creating disbelief - after all, once the player has to exercise skill to pass an obstacle, they expect that skill to be able to pass another obstacle of the same type. A detached approach as in thief 1 and 2 ensures that the player never percieves the bypassing of the lock as being in their full control, and so isnt as frustrated when it is not possible. In Thief 3 doors would become a testing ground for how fast you could get through them, and not being able to pick them at all would have proven very frustrating. I think each approach needs to be looked at in quite a lot of detail, as it does make a large difference in the game. A detached system such as in t1 and t2 can be made to be very simple yet just complicated enough to give the player the sense that they can speed the process up in some way. In thievery players would only use one set of picks and frob a door for the required time. This proved infinitely more boring than the pretty simple system of having 2 sets of picks that require switching. The advantage of a system like this is that the player never feels that they ought to be able to get through any door and therefore isnt frustrated when they cannot, the system is simple and melds easily into the game, is relatively easy to do yet satisfying while avoiding the random frustration of a more involved system. This is because a more involved system involves chance as you scout for pins, and missing the mark repeatedly can be very frustrating - the player is relying on their skill, and having youre picking time slowed down due to mistakes is not going to go down well. In essence the T1/T2 system is a very DEFINITE system - you can switch picks quicker, but other than that theres nothing you can do to speed the process up - it doesnt require much concentration, yet is still quite entertaining. It melds in easily enough, and seems very similar to using a key - this is important as similarities between picks and keys should be emphasised to create credibility. Finally the player isnt frustrated when their options are limited by unpickable doors, as they never had all that many options for unlocking doors in the first place. The player also never gets the feeling that they entered a minigame. An involved system such as in Thief 3 invariable requires a lot of concentration and ends up quite complicated. Compared to T1/T2 system, it is far more prone to chance, and at the end of the day never really stops the player getting through the door. All that such a system does is provide an interesting minigame and a chance to influence picking times with the players skill and a little luck. This is gonna create large disreptencies in the picking times between players. This type of system has almost exactly the same result as the more simple model - that is to open a door - as it is unlikely to involve so much skill as to make some doors impossible to pick. However, it does so in a more interesting, rewarding and deep, albeit more complicated and frustrating way. In the end the important thing is that player's experiences on this subject in thief 3 differed, so players should be given an option as per springheel's post. However, even in such a case it may be more difficult to include doors that cannot be bypassed by lockpicking without creating disbelief and/or frustration. This is a stiff negative. Another negative is the inherent difference in operation this will likely create between using a key and lockpicking, again taking away from credibility and detracting from the feeling of a common, universal and intuitive way of doing things. The third option is to create a system that is so scalable and yet so difficult at the high end that only highly skilled players will be able to pick the best locks, and yet even the lowest skilled able to pick simple locks. This would most reflect the real process of lockpicking, where an unskilled user will take a half hour, if at all, to pick their front door lock, while a highly skilled pro will pick almost any lock in under 30 seconds (personal experience!). However, it is a bit much to expect that such a system could indeed be made in a game without extra sensory inputs. I agree with Oddity that it is mostly improbable that the skill associated with lockpicking in real life can be even partially translated to a game. This system would also prove very complicated, frustrating and difficult to meld into the game, but would be very rewarding. Nevertheless, ruling the last system out, it comes down to which abstraction would prove most fun and flexible for both players and map designers. Both will serve no other purpose than to abstractly make the player feel that opening a locked door takes time and is difficult, creating tension and atmosphere. This is their primary role. Giving the player a choice as to which system to employ is probably the safest bet, but when you look at the purpose of lockpicking in the game in this way, it seems illogical to make an involved system so easy as to involve almost no delay in breaking in at all, and likewise illogical to prove slower than doing it the good old fashioned click and wait way. This combined with the difficulty of making an involved system convincing and not seem like a minigame means that even a system giving the player a choice is not going to be easy to implement. This is a very long post and probably excessively long, so i apologise to those who have managed to make it even half this way. I hope some of this helped!

Sounds alot like Enigma to me. Not really my cup of tea, but then I don't know what the game is like. For a loner game (SS2 style) I'd prefer something darker, harsher and more elektonic.

Here's an idea on how to achieve a similar thing to steam: Instead of using software, use hardware. Basically, when you buy the game, a small usb thingy comes with the game, which you need to insert in order to "Activate" the game, or if you wanted to be a bit more strict, you could make it that it has to be in whenever you play the game. However, this would'nt work for Valve as they are sick of publishers (just as much as Bush is sick of the UN) and would rather sell the game over the internet - nowhere to return it. Either way, my suggestion was but an idea on how to keep the gaming at least a bit fun, prevent piracy (which i do believe is justified in certain circumstances, ie: HL2) and not have to go updating steam every 5 minutes. But that would (OMG!!!!) raise the production price from $3 to $4 OMG!!! NO! WE WANT YO PAY VERY LITTLE AND MAKE SO MUCH!!!!! - F****n Valve

Sure. Do you still believe in Santa Claus as well? Guess what happened when CDs were introduced. Nobody could copy them for quite some time but there was no drop in game prices. You know why? Because they claimed that the development prices are so high so that they had to take the extra fee to put out much better games. If they can make more money out of it they will simply take it. You don't really believe that they will lower prices if there were no pirates? The only thing that will cause prices to drop is if other games would take over the market they want to reach, because they need to compete with them. That was meant to be sarcastic. I certainly don't hold the position that "the greater cause" will warrant any action to enforce it. That's usually the claim of people like Bush, or companies who want have more control like Valve. Funnily enough Vlave is rather closely related with Microsoft, which is also not exactly know for their care for the customers rights. Public disconsent worls only where public opinion really counts. And also only then if there are enough voices raised which would matter. Obviously this is not the case, because despite the many complaints about Steam people buy like crazy, which means that they are happy with Steam. They pay to get this and they get it. So they shouldn't complain either, bnecause they get what they pay for. If Steam locks them out of their legally bought games, then they shouldn't complan because this is what they payed for. This is what Steam is designed to do, and what it doesn, and obvsioulsy it seems to work quite well, otherwise there wouldn't be so many complainers. So far my "conspiracies" seem to be turning out quite well. Let's see. When they built the Berlin wall there was one famous quote which seems to fit very often. From one of the people in charge at that time "Nobody wants to build a wall here." IMO that was said a few weeks before they started to build it. Now in Germany there was a toll system introduced for trucks ONLY which didn't work out to well in the beginning. I was of the opinion that this automatic observation system (which it is) will be not only used for toll collection, it will also be used for private cars and other purposes in the end. Now let's see. The system was not even in place when a politician already "thought loud" about using it for *UH!* private cars! Wow! What a conspiracy guy I am for thinking. And now guess what. They are even thinking to use this system for the police, because it is perfectly suited for it. All for the greater good of course. A few days ago a guy was murdered in Munich who was kind of popular there (or at least he was made popular). So they found out his murder about three days later because it happened that they had a DNA registered from him from som earlier testing. When I heard that news I said to my wife that this will now be used to level DNA analysis on a much broader scale into the police methods. And guess what. Not even one hour later when I heard the next news, they already "thought" about using more DNA analysis. Now lets read the EULA from Valve. There are some reall niceties in there. For example that they can introduce or change fees whenever they like without you having a say into it. Well, that is not even legal in Germany, but that's not the issue right now. Now tell me. Why do they write something like this into the EULA? Because they accidently put it there? And guess what happens to your SINGLE player games. That stuff, they shouldn't have a claim about fees and such crap because what fee could they mean when you just want to play a single player game (like I usually do)? Seeing what success HL2 had in terms of sales this would indeed be pointless. Because what I would get (if I would get anything) is a standard form saying something like "We apologize for any inconvenience but you must anderstand that the evil pirates force us to take such harsh actions and we do everything that we can to make your gaming experience more pleasurable nevertheless. blablabla". More likely I will not get any answer though.

dear team in the game called legacy of kain.... blood omen, soul reaver and defiance... crystal dynamics was using the same ...technic hammers weapons..even helmets were glowing when the vampire gettin close BEST

I made my bitmaps and put numbers on them to get a better idea in-game of the values. It seems that even when you stand in the brightest light in some maps, it never goes above 11, so the brightest 5 bitmaps are not being used. The sensitivity is going to have to change I think. Also try it on the blackjack test map, you do hget a full range of values there, but they don't make sense. If you gounder the ramp into the corner, it goes to bitmap 1, indicarting you're in total darkness, but looking at that area under the ramp, it's pretty well lit.

Remember, you don't toggle the compass on and off in game. It is either on or it is off at the beginning of the mission. That frees us up, since the two gems don't have to look like they interact. Hell, they don't even have to be the same gem. edit: BT, what method are you using to create the .bmps?

Here's some glowing hammers. NOt sure how this would be achieved in-game though. THey'd need to be dynamic lightsources as well as glowing.

Actually, I took your map file and blended it with another parchment file I had, so it's a combination of the two, with some extra playing around. Here's a quick look at what it would be like in-game:

I haven't tested it in game yet, but just from the .gif I think the brighter settings need to be brighter colour. The red dots are a neat touch...I didn't even notice them until Dram mentioned it, but it's a nice tribute to the T2 gem.

IT's doesn't work very well in-game. THere is nowhere near enough contrast between light and dark - this is caused primarily by the specular highlights on it. and it' also very jumpy as it moves between the stages instead of smooth, so maybe we need more than 16. ALso it's not goingt o work having the housing of the gem as part of the bitmap, the whole housing and compass will be part of the 3d model. THe red dots will still be possible though, since the housing will not spin with the compass, we can add an alpha map to it to let the red dots show though from the underlying bitmap.

Though Spar, it's important to note that Valve was bit in the ass by their own program, cos all of the warez versions of HL2 were downloaded through the Steam servers (or most). So that will make them take 1 of 2 courses of action: 1: They say stuff this crap, and go back to normal, or 2: Shit! They hacked us! Ok people, I think we need to tighten the grip. Either way, I still think that it is in fact very cruel to the loyal customers that actually DO buy the game and are so inconvenienced by Steam, cos the people that don't pay a cent for it get much more pleasure out of it cos they don't need to update the motherf***er. In fact, here are some points on steam: *Steam chucks all valve games into a single folder *Everytime you startup, steam starts and (most of the time) updates itself) *Steam runs in "silent" mode (meaning that it will not show up in task manager) *If Steam detects a CounterStrike Source cheat or trainer on your pc, it automatically disables your CD-Key, hence preventing you from playing HL2 or CSS *It has happened to 2 or 3 people that their CD-Key was invalid when they bought HL2 cos someone else had downloaded a CD-Key generator and (unluckily enough) got that CD-Key *The last point (and the most important one) is that Steam is the gayest-piece-of-shit that came into this world, and it's creators shot be lined up and shot.....well........spanked. So there you have it folks, why Steam is gay. Last thing: The most effective way to reduce piracy is to reduce the price . Though you'll always get pirates (in fact, in Asia, 93% of games are pirated), and there is nothing that can ever prevent it. But on the lines of Steam Spar, I'm with you 100%

YTEs, excellent. It probab;ly wouldn't be noticble in-game that every scroll have the same brackground, but how difficult would it be to have some different dirt decals and alpha maps (for the torn edges) Probably a waste of time.

Sure. Sex is decreasing because there is enough of a stupid lobby that thinks sex is bad. Violence in TV is increasing though. Why? Because it seels just as well as sex. And in America it seems to be the case that, while sex is something ugly and nasty, it is still good to be violent. Because being viloent doesn't mean hat you are viloent it means that you are a strong healthy American, and if you can even use a gun and are not afraid to use it, you are even more an upright good American. Not one of those nasty ugly beasts doing some sex. I would have bought HL2 just as well. I did NOT buy it for exactly ONE reason, and that is Steam. And I didn't buy Doom 3 because it is such a cool game. Quite on the contrary. I also bought it because of one reason. Because at the time when Doom 1 and 2 came out I had not that much money and copying was not illegal so I got copies of Doom and played it a lot and had fun from it. Since then I have changed my mind a lot and I usually buy all the games that are worth buying, while at the same time I'm no longer interested in getting warez. I even bought all the software for my machine, that I regularly use which includes some expensive bits like Visual Studio Enterprise and SoftICE. The major change that I went through is, that I no longer install all the crap that I get, instead I select very carefully what I buy and what I install, because 99% of the software is crap anway and I never used it. So there is no point in having the newest and 3771 software on my machine when all can do with it is tell my equally 3771 budies that I have this great thing. And I bought D3 only because I thought to give ID something back, and I had bought D3 even if it were the worst game on the planet for that reason. As it turned out it is one of the worst games, but at the same time I got some fun back through the modding, so it's even now. Yeah. That's exactly my point. You accept the loss of rights as long as you are given enough fun in return. That is what I said. It doesn't matter if you get your "fun" from the eye candy graphics, or from the gameplay. Bottom line is still what I said initially. As long as they give you something to google over you gladly accept such things as Steam, while at the same time complaining about it. The responsible thing to do is to NOT buy this and forget about the fun in favour of keeping your rights. At least that is my opinion. And I'm well aware that warzing doesn't help because this will trigger exactly the opposite. So the only thing to do is to hurt them where they can be hurt, and this is with salesnumbers. That's crap and you probably know it. If there that much money lost just because of stealing, these companies would long be out of bunsines. You don't really believe that everybody compensates for that? There are much more numbers in the equation then just stealing, but this shows nicely how well the propaganda works. If companies claim loudn and long enough that they have to raise their prices because of stealing, then everybody buys it without thinking. Why do you care? I mean. It's just for the greater good, so you should be happy that you are observed every minute you enter a shop. This should give you the wamr and cozy feeling that you are on the right side. Personally I prefer an atmosphere where I can stay in a shop as long as like, looking at their stuff, without fear of being accused a thief or treated like one just in case. They didn't change their ways. This is still in there. But it was done more in silence now so that the public outcry will not happen again. And the next round is coming and already in the planning. And if you had observed this, then you would have noticed the strategies they employed t cover it better. TCPA got to much public attention. What happened? The renamed it to soemthing that is much harder to memorize. What you can't pronounce is harder to talk about. And the public hubhub has already subsisded a lot and the frist machines are already sold without much of a hassle. So much fro your "public disconsent" having any effect.

We've discussed so many issues over the last 6 months, it's hard to be sure with out a search (and I can't be bothered) but I don't thionk we have decided yet. My personal opinion is that lockpicking is the most tedious of procedures in a game, and cannot be made interesting no matter what. It's only exciting to pick a door when there is a chance a guard is going to patrol past you at any second, so it creates a sense of urgency and tension. Having to pick a lock under any other circumstances by any means is utterly pointless and irritating, and the skill required to do it cannot be transfered to a game, wiht out making it a separate mini puzzle game (which everyione would despise even more) I think we should keep locked doors to a minimum (who locks internal doors anyway?) and only to areas with AI patrols. THe problems with having the hamds coming out, holding lockpicks like in T3, is that you have to have a 'suck in' animation to hold the player in the right position so the animaton lines up with the lock. No one here is a fan of sucking in. I always prefered to have to find keys to open important doors. Picling them always seemed too boring and easy asnd definite. I prefer the automatic door opening if you have the right key. Either that or you have to try every key you have, not having any idea which one it could be.

You won't be able to kill undead wth a sword in our game, or a tree. Undead are already dead, so the only way to 'kill them is too blow them to pieces or magically woht holy water. Tree breasts are made of wood and would require an axe if anything to dispatch -= just try cutting down a tree with a sword and see how far you get. Wy wuld our thief want to murder pagans above anyone else? The only target would be spiders, but carrying a weapon on the rare chance of meeting a giant sapider hardly seems sane. Spiders are easy kills anyway, you can evern club them with your BJ. The dagger may have some minor miscellaneous uses for a thief, but it's primarily an assassins tool and would be used as such in the game.

Coolness. I like. Would it be hard for you to do a quick mock-up of the hammers having the handle switched around so that the current bottom side of the handle becomes the top? Keep the head in the same place, just rotate the handle around I guess that would be 180-degrees. I'm curious to see how that would change the look. In my mind it seems like would look even sweeter, but want to see it. I'd like to see him holding them in a view similar to your first view (http://forums.thedarkmod.com/uploads/post-5-1107635579.jpg) for comparison. As for the upside down hammer necklace, I like that. The weight of the necklace is at the bottom, somewhat symbolic of (and visually complimentary to) the weight of the hammers. The other way looks too much like a cross, which gets overdone. But I don't know the backstory of this guy to know if he's supposed to be "pro-builder"? If he's pro-builder, than an upside down hammer wouldn't be advisable; we'd want to come up with a different design if that's the case.

I can't help it, but I have to throw my opinion on swords into the ring. I more or less agree with oDDity although I don't think I would unhappy if a sword was the only weapon used in the game. My style of gameplay is all stealth and no combat so I never used my sword to attack anything anyway. If I've got a weapon I never use, that doesn't really bother me. That said, I always did find it odd and seemingly out of place that Garrett walked around with a sword instead of a dagger. A sword seems to imply that you expect to encounter heavy resistance that would require fighting skills, but a thief hopes never to be caught. If you are caught, then as oDDity mentions, something like a flash grenade would seem like a more likely tool for a thief to use to escape. A sword would also seem to be rather inconvienient to carry around if you're trying to slip through small spaces or climb over walls. As a thief, I'd be worried about knocking stuff over with it or clanking it on things (of course this whole idea kind of goes out the window when you think about your thief dragging around a sword, a bow, a pile of grenades, 300 lbs of art work, 1000 pieces of gold, candle sticks, books, potions, rope, etc.). A sword seems more appropriate in the hands of a knight and not a thief. As for a dagger. I was bothered by the idea that the dagger was introduced in TDS as a means to dispatch your enemies. I like Garrett's philosophy which generally involves not killing people, but a knife doesn't have to have killing as its only purpose. A knife or dagger would be much more effective than a sword at cutting someones purse strings from their belt. You could use it to cut ropes or tear pictures out of their frames. If you want to make noise, flip it around and use the butt of the dagger to pound on the doors or whatever else it is you wish to bash. A dagger is something I would expect a thief to carry. If I want to bust something open and not worry about noise, I would expect a thief to use what's on hand like a chair or maybe grab a sword hanging over the fireplace. But, we're not playing Garrett anymore, so we could decide that our thief has no scruples and will kill anything that moves. In that case, I still think such a thief would more likely choose to backstab people with a knife than carry around a sword. So, I would rather play a thief game with a dagger I don't use to kill people than with a sword I don't use to kill people. But, this is all just my opinion and I respect anyone who wants to disagree.