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Thanks for the input... I'm just trying to get a feel for the overall atmosphere and the input helps tremendously. I've reworked the two samples you heard and tried the music box up an octave and without as much of the scratchiness. I saw a post in the forum after I had started working on this file that said that it would be interesting to hear a sample of this with that "old record" kind of scratchy. I feel like maybe this sound drags on for too long now, maybe??? mansion music box cue rev. 1 I also reworked the underground ambient theme. I wanted to leave it as just the bass but curiousity wouldn't let me. So, I tried it with some sounds in the upper extreme to try and add a touch of creepiness to it. I'll probably wind up taking those sounds out as well later. underground ambient rev. 1 Here's another water drip sfx as well.... water drip fx 02 with reverb And, since we can't use the original "loot pickup" sfx, how about this one possibly? loot pickup lo sfx loot pickup hi sfx Again, thanks for the input! -saxmeister

Don't know what version of Thief you were playing, but in T2, it makes clicking noises and some obviously clockwork wirr-ing noises. The stuff that comes off of it in the air is hardly the thing that makes the AI interested, since it spends most of its time sitting on the ground wirr-ing and clicking, and THAT'S where the AI heads. The circles that come off of it in the air are just some special effects for the player's benifit. If it was sound, it'd give your position away. If it was visible, it'd give your position away even more. Yes, there's going to be some disbeleif, but I still feel this is the most "beleivable" idea.

Whatever the final verdict is, it's most likely going to be something that will require a mild suspension of our disbelief. If FM authors dislike what we decide on, they can easily change the sound and the model themselves...and no doubt some will.

It was clockwork? All it did was get fired and go waaaoooo waaaoooo. I assumed the arrow was shaped so that it caused sound waves to come off it.

All the Thief games use dynamic ambience that blends from one area to another. You have a church with a choir ambience, you walk into a hallway that leads to the crypt and you get a mix of choir and scarey ambience, and when you enter the crypt, you get scarey ambience. I think the mix is done specifically, with an intermediate zone that says "play this AND this as well". But of course, you can hear the ambience from one zone playing over the current one, if you are close enough to it. I think this freedom of re-usability should be maintained. If someone wants to use your ambience where there is NO background hum around, well, I don't think it's so good. Why not make the hum and the music seperate files, and let the author play them both in the level? WILL there be a noticible difference when jumping from 96 to 160? Maybe if you're an audio technician. I used to fiddle with sounds a bit and I don't think I'd notice the difference even if they were overlayed, as long as they both sounded "good" quality. (Whereas I noticed that in older games, I would get used to the 11khz sound quality and think it sounded "good" and then hear something else, like a CD play, and THEN I'd notice the difference when it was overlayed) I'd be keeping the sounds seperate at any cost, just so people can re-use your media. FM authors coming up with interesting uses for the existing T2 media, including ambience, always surprised me. One particular ambience, that I thought suited a deep forest, became freaky and scarey in another mission (cause of the associated visuals of course). (Sorry, usually I edit down my ramblings...)

Dear Tyrot. First, thanks! I had a great trip. Second, yes, it is indeed a pity that we can't use licenced sound effects. But fear not! I am sure we will provide excellent sounds on our own. About music: I will be sure to let you know if we need anything you could provide. Cheers!

why shouldn't a zombie, who is dumb as a T-bone steak anyway be distracted by a shattering glass sound ?

Well a shattering glass sound could work. And it might even be a good explanation why the guard will be distracted for some time. After all, if you hear shattering glass in a museum at night, the guard WILL have to investigate. But what about dungeons or caves? The T2 noisemaker is versatile, because it doesn't rely on an environment.

My own personal choice would be an arrow that shatters on impact or the traditional magic arrow that made the hypnotic sound.

Don't come again with realism. NONE of these arrows is realistic, apart from the broadhead, so don't start talking as if a noise arrow with firework would be realistic. It isnt. That's where you are wrong. I never said that I'm in favour of the ball bearing arrow. I'm not. For me it would be enough if we say that the noise arrow is a [magic] arrow which produces a hypnotic sound which will cause the AI to get distracted. It doesn't really matter anyway, but IMO that is the least problematic explanation because nobody can argue against this. If you start on trying to exaplain a noisemaker arrow on realistic basis, then you get in all kind of discussions which are pointless. And if there were a firework they would NEVER suspect that. They would say "OOHH! What a nice firework that is. There sure is somebody who wants to make us enjoy our work, what a lovely idea!" So any guard, working for some time in their job and is still alive, would see this fireworks the first time? Evdn though it is standard thief equipment? I see. Flawless. Yes.

Christ, we've been over this more times now than the lightgem. Do we need to re-open this issue too now? Those who don't like noise arrows can throw pebbles. Those people who like noise arrows voted down fireworks as an option. They wanted something simple and semi-mechanical. A small clockwork box on the end would be fine. I suggested the ball bearing idea to GIMG because ball-bearings rolling on marble floors make a nice clattering sound that a guard would investigate. Unfortunately, I forgot to think about how ineffective they would be on carpet or soft surfaces.

what do you actually do? textures, models, coding, sound, what? Or are you a 'jack of all trades' as it were? And please talk in sensible sentences with proper words, thanks.

no, No, NO! NO Fireworks. That was SO ridicolous(sp?) in T3. And it also isn't very realistic. The noise arrows, always emitted that kind of hypnotic sound, where I thought that would be the reason why any guard would investigate at all. In case of fireworks I would really wonder why a guard would investigate at the arrow location. It should know that this is the work of an introduder immediately.

I hear what you're saying about saving space, and mono vs stereo. I agree that the short ambients don't need to be stereo, and that the longer themes benefit from stereo panning. But the bit rate difference? Also the way I'm creating ambients and themes is to allow for level designers to have an ambient hum loop in the background until they want a theme to come in, in which place the theme has been mixed over the same hum so as to sound seamless. There will be a noticeable difference to one's ears going from mono 96k to stereo 160k.

Halloa my friend. We sure do have an opening for another sfx guy. You are now a Sound contributor which means you can see some of our developer boards. I also sent you a PM. Welcome!

hi , I like the sound of this mod your working on and am very interested in offering my services as a animator. I have a website you can take a look at and a showreel available. Although the work on my site looks very cartoony I am looking to expand my portfolio with more realistic sort of work. Hope to hear from you soon. Pete

We must wait what New Horizon says, as he is our vocal sound engineer. It really sounds good, but we already have several good peoples, nevertheless. And I don't want to invite people in the team if we don't have something to do for them.

sounds pretty good to me. Only problem is that we currently have no campaign where we could use such speciallized(?) sound stuff. We are working on that, but until we have something definite I think there would not be much to do for you.

We really don't have any 'music' as such in this game, just sound ambience, the voice sets are already entirely in the capable hands of another member. We have SFX guys as well, but another one wouldn't be too many if you're good.

You can't really expect to code Sound or AI with an foreign SDK when you not even know the language. You must learn C++ and you must learn the SDK and if you have no background in 3D programming then you must learn that also. That sounds quite a lot to me.

heh Man, I've moved so many times I can't remember where any of my old stuff is. As far as what my band sounded like think of it as a cross between My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost on the music side, with Bolt Thrower-style vocals (that was from an actual review done for our demo). Melodic, and heavy as hell. Ah, the good old days . . . It may sound corny, but I believe that my taste in music (now more like Bathory, Arcanum, and Black & Viking Metal), my roleplaying experience, and my love of zombie movies, combined with my dark sense of humor, makes me well-suited for a dark fantasy-style game. I didn't really get into the demon-infested story of Doom 3, but I very much enjoy what id did with the visuals. When I heard that someone was working on a Thief conversion/mod for D3, my jaw hit the floor. I thought "oh, hell yeah!" I'm trying to get some more general game design experience, because I'm trying to convince some work buddies to help me design either a Mech game (I love Battletech, too), or work on a FPS based on an old RPG called Living Steel (scifi). We will be utilizing the Torque engine (I did look at others, but it seems that Torque is the best suited for what I'm thinking), and I hope that the new graphics stuff for Torque lives up to the hype. It's nowhere near the graphics capability that Doom 3 has, but that level of power is not necessary for a 'mech game, or a FPS that takes place primarily outdoors. In the meantime, I wanna start getting my feet wet in projects that I like. Just tell me what you need, and I'll see if I can do it.

Ok, I've already run into some issues with the scripting. The books are actually harder to script than the main menu, which always does the same thing every time. Books are different. For example, clicking the rightpagecurl button will cause a sound (and possibly animation) for turning the page, and then a leftpagecurl button will appear. But how do you decide whether or not the rightpagecurl button should show up in the first place? It should only be there if the book has more than two pages, but that depends on the FM author. The same thing applies for how many times the rightpagecurl button should appear, or which text it should call. I'm not quite sure how to script for all the different possibilities. Sounds like there are going to have to be all kinds of 'if-then' statements that are beyond my abilities. The tutorials on D3W don't really go into that kind of detail, either, at least that I can see. So if there is anyone willing to look into this, I'll happily hand off the GUI as it currently exists.

I don't think we should bash Aditya here for several reasons. 1) W edon't know that it is him, and considering the posting stile it doesn't really sound like him. More like a 8 year old 3771 haxor who wants to be "cewl". 2) Even though Aditya is not an expert in politness, I have the impression that he likes the darkmod and anticipate it. 3) We should keep a professional position even with those who might disagree. We can't please everybody anyway, and an every forum and newsgroup there is always the occasional troll. It's not something special to us, so we shouldn't get sidetracked by that and accept it as something unavoidable.

Nice soundwork on the trailer. I'd tone down the screechy guitars, if that's what they were . Looking forward to what you're going to come up with. I'm a fan of the Thief series. Airon Truecombat.com Sound Designer

dear mrDischarged That s great my grinder....you will be grinding the engine soon i guess. That s terrific...We have a great sound crew as well... BEST (I WAS NOT JOKING ABOUT THE BAND!!!!)