Search the Community

But you missed my point. The dagger is not primarily a weapon, it is a tool. The thief carries it around as cutting implement to free a purse from someones belt, a painting from its frame etc. IMO it would be the only weapon the thief would carry, and would be one of a few tools used for stealthy thieving. A small dagger is of no encumberance, unlike a bow with a quiver full of 30 arrows or a shortsword. My weapons loadout screen would list the following weapons: 1. Dagger (primarily to be used as a tooll, not a weapon). As far as iusing the dagger in emergency situations, I am talking about relatively stealthy kills (shough stabbing someone with a dagger should be messy, bloody and not that quiet), not going toe to toe with a guard - you should rightly be slaughtered like a pig if you actually get into fisticuffs with a guard. Of course, you would have to implement the dagger as a tool with some animations and coding etc, so I expect to have to do that myself, but hopefully you get the idea. I am not in favour of combat or murder in TDM (except in very restricted situations), that isn't what it should be about, and weapons should be restricted to dual use ones that have severe limitations, ie daggers and the like.

Tapping w w w to progress silently is exploiting a bug in the Thief sound code and is considered cheating, I believe you will find. You shouldn't be doing it, so stop it. Use moss arrows or find a way around the noisy floor, or wait 'till guards have moved out of ear shot. As far as I know, TDM won't have the forward tap bug that plagued the first two of the Thief series, so you'd better get used to it....

Will the player cast a shadow onto objects? While body awareness is nice, having the player cast a shadow over objects adds far more to immersion, though if you aren't doing animations for the thief player 3rd person model, I guess it would not be worth much. What about seeing your reflection in mirrors? IMO it would be well worth doing the animations and coding for the 3rd person player model, not so players can use it to cheat, but so you can implement player reflections and shadowing, and if you have gone that far, you might as well go the extra mile and implement some degree of body awareness. Sure it is a pain in the arse to code and animate, but I disagree that it doesn't add enough to make the effort worthwhile. Maybe in TDM v.3.0? As for weapons, I see no reason why a nimble thief would carry around a clunking great mace (or a sword for that matter). A dagger yes, because it doubles as a useful tool for prying open locked chests, or cutting ropes, or cutting paintings out of their frames, so in my opinion, the only weapon a thief should carry is a small dagger or knife, and they wouldn't very often use it as a weapon, but as a tool except in dire emergencies (but I think I've made my opinions on what sort of kit a thief should carry pretty clear by now ). A thief would be more inclined to use his/her environment by picking up sticks, rocks etc, creating diversions, using stealth even ....

Ok, I know you guys don't want to switch to the Source engine because of many different reasons but I just had a great idea. Then I realised it can be done in TDM because of the D3 expansion - Resurrection of Evil. Why not give the Thief glyphs that he can use like the Gravity Gun from Half-Life 2? It would rule!!!

Did headshots not count for arrows? (I can see it now, smack a guard with an arrow in TDM and we'll have an announcer saying "HEADSHOT!" over the speakers)

I already figured it out now. But the saving (or the lack of) is extremly annoying. I don't think that I will really play this through. I already considered removing it from my disk, because of that crap saving system. I guess Odd and Domarius will love it because it "intensifies" the experience. The only thing it intensified so far though is my annoyance, because I already had to click myself several times through several cutscenes and was forced to play a chapter through. All the more reason to allow unlimited saves in TDM. No matter what Dom says, but anytime I experience a crippled saving system I'm all the more convinced that the only proper way of handling saves is to allow saving everywhere, everytime.

I don't think it's that. They rather destroy TDM because they religiously cling to Thief as if it were the holy grail.

Got a chance to play it. Looked good from what I saw, although the game faded out and booted me to the main menu when I jumped down into the cave with the slime tentacles. Maybe I died and didn't realize it or something. I liked the animated models you made...those banners would be right at home in a TDM level. Good doors too.

It's beyond just simple skepticism, though, imo. They'd rather destroy the project just because they have personality conflicts with TDM members. I don't like the 'high and mighty' attitudes and egos of certain entertainers, but I'm not so unreasonable or childish that I boycott their high quality product. EDIT: Sparhawk, you missed my point. I know Marketing is there to publicize and shine glowing light on their product, but they wouldn't allow their developers and artists to egotistically put fans or competing projects down from the beginning.

Personally I think that will happen in about 5 years anyway. When D3 will be GPLed, there is no reason to stick to Thief anymore, because TDM will offer much more. Of course we have to survive that long. HEHE.

You don't have it yet??? You are joking, right? You are a member of the TDM developer team and you don't have D3?

Who cares really? If they reall switch over to TDM it will give us a big boost IMO. Both in moral as well as in acceptance. And't it's their choice. It's not as if they will come out next week with their campaign, and they can already build a lot with out current implementation. Since Soundprop is pretty finished, and the rope arrow also we can start working on the AI pretty soon. So I guess if they switch now and create the maps, as the beta mappers do, then it would certainly benefit us a lot, and they may not have such a big disadvantage either. If we can keep up the pace, that is.

Oh dear god, please don't. We (some of us) have waited, drooling, forever for this thing, and are dying to see it and play it in Thief. After that's done and in the can, Imperium2 can be TDM. Also, Fingernail (I believe) posted this link long ago - surprised no one checked it out. It's quite inspiring.

yeah, but i think it would only take at most 5 min to DarkModerize. I think it's worth asking the author, he'd be happy anyway, that his work is appreciated that is. About HI, man, that sounds cool! That would rule if they switched to us, though yeah, it'd take a while for dm to come out. Either way, TDM is getting more and more popular

Ok, I think GL should work on those as well (if you are meaning something other than TDM ).

There is a caveat that I've noticed about large maps in D3 though... The amount of time it takes to calculate the AAS (AI awareness system) seems to be proportional to the volume of travelable space in the level, so a level with that much open space takes FOREVER to compile if you have an AI in it. Of course, for a game like TDM, I don't think there are flying enemies, so in a map with large open skies you could probably put a clip brush in the sky, covering areas you don't expect the player/monsters to be able to get to, in order to cut down on compile times. I should also note that I don't have much experience with AAS, so there may be other better ways of decreasing compile times. As for Farcry, I played through on medium and really enjoyed it. The game was stunningly beautiful, the AI was great and on medium it seemed to have just the right difficulty - it was tough and I usually died a couple of times for each checkpoint, but not enough to make it boring. (though I found the final boss to be very difficult, they had enough sense to place a checkpoint right before battling him) With the lack of quicksaving I found myself just enjoying the game more rather than trying to conserve ammo, and was terrified to enter mutant-monkey-infested jungles at nightime. Also, I think people who like Thief would love farcry - aside from having stealth combat with wonderful AI (I thought it was perhaps the best I've seen in an FPS), it's loads of fun going level spelunking in farcry levels. I was often able to figure out how to climb into areas I wasn't supposed to (and was rewarded with great vistas), and there were even a few levels where I was able to bypass entire sections by climbing over the right mountain range. The only thing that really bugged me about farcry was the water reflection bug (things below water would appear in reflections, which looked wrong).

Yes. That's what a good physics engine can do. And that's why I maintain the position that physics should also be done well in TDM because it adds immensly to a gameworld.

This is a crystal fire arrow. I was devising a way to solve the problem of crystal suddenly becoming an arrow when you find one in the wild. With this, the devious and well prepared thief can attatch the crystals he finds to the arrow shaft on the fly. It's pretty obvious how this works from looking at it, you just pop the crystal in and tighten the screw bolt, and you have youself an arrow in seconds. The player should have to buy these crystal holders, there's no reason why he should get an unlimted supply for free. They would not count toward any maximum arrow limit if we have one. It would just be nice on general principal to make the player aware of them and their purpose. My new thoughts on the contentious arrow issue are this - We should inlude both types of arrows, both types of arrow should be inlcuded as default on the buy/sell screen ,and you can choose to buy the mechanical version or the crystal version. The disadvantage of the crystal versions is that they are more expensive to buy, being natural and rare, while the mechanical versions are being knocked off production lines at the inventor's factories, so they're cheaper. The advantage of the crystal versions would be that they're far more potent than ther artificial counterparts. The fire arrows would do more damge, the gas arrows would knock a wider radius of people out more quicky, the moss would disperse over a wider area -I haven't thought of why the crystal water arrow would be better, since my gelatin arrow outperforms it in every way, but we could make the crystal have the gelatin properties (silent, less mess ect), and make the mechaniacl verison just a balloon filled with noisy water. This would make finding a crystal more exciting as well, since now you have something to compare them to - in Thief, a fire arrow was just a fire arrow like any other, but in TDM, finding a crystal firegem would be a big deal, since you know how expensive, rare and potent they are compared to the manufactured fire arrow you're currenly carrying. If it's a multimission, you should be be allowed to sell your discovered crystals if you want to, you shouldn't be forced to attatch them to your arrows. When you find a crystal you should be able to choose to attatch it to one of your crystal holder arrows if you have any, or keep it to sell, and it can be added to your loot total.

One of the things that we haven't seen yet in a Thief mission, in either of the 3 official games, is a proper outdoors mission. I'm talking country sneaking, a forest, a camp, perhaps a hamlet, perhaps a solitary ruin on the top of a hill. But with the sneaking really all going on outside. I always thought a mission where you have to sneak into some nomadic warlord's camp would be nice. Or the edges of a the camp of some large army. You cannot do this in T3Ed. My FM was originally set outside. Obviously I wanted to simulate the outside since T3Ed cannot handle huge open spaces. But even then in order to make it look like the outside you have to use some relatively large open spaces that make T3 choke. Original screen: http://www.thiefpetition.com/images/thief/towerbase.jpg See that draw distance behind the tower? It's a choker. So it's been completely redesigned and the entire structure altered to fit the constraints of the editor. My point? TDM has the potential to provide this untapped area for FM settings. Or so I understand from the way the editor works. And in such a setting arrows of a mechanical nature cannot be just found. Hence we would need crytstals. It's not just for pagan missions. I think this is pretty important but then it could just be my ideas about FMs. PS. Talking of arrows, check out the animation on this. Not bad, not amazing. - http://home.comcast.net/~ascottk/files/mov/T3RopeArrow.wmv

It was very nice, but not essential. On the flip side of the fence: If Thief 2 had instead used clockwork arrows and we were proposing crystal arrows for TDM, I'd say clockwork arrows were nice, but not essential. Regardless, I agree with Springheel that we should provide both. This way, if an FM author wanted to have a level focused on Pagans or has a lot of caverns and such, s/he could use crystals. If, on the other hand, it was a level based on mansions, clockwork and steam engines, then they would instead use the more mechanical/clockwork arrows. With this, I think it's a good compromise, and think it would actually be cool to be able to tailor your arrow supply for the type of level you're making so the player gets more wrapped up in the world s/he is playing in. Do you agree? EDIT: And this is in-line with the thinking of why some Thief levels feature rope arrows, while others have vine arrows. Same sort of thing.

Well, the decision was made long ago that we would have map-based graphics in the background. The clockwork mechanics have been done already in T2X and the original Thief. One of the things that will blow people away immediately about TDM is the superiour rendering and graphics, so best to hit them with it right away. As long as an AVI can be made with a decent resolution, I see no reason why we can't go with that. That gives us freedom to include all kinds of animations and moving bits...smoke belching from factory chimneys, signs blowing in the wind, ravens perching on eaves, clouds moving in front of the moon, etc. We could even include some people depending on the length of the loop...it might be nice to see a guard or two idling in front of a doorway.

I can't remember if this was discussed already or not, so thought I'd mention. In playing Thief 2, you'll notice ambient tracks are sometimes stacked upon each other as you progress through a level. For example, sometimes there's just one ambient track playing by itself and then when you reach a certain point, another ambient track gets stacked on top of that to make that one-layer ambient track become a two-layer ambient track. It's a nice, subtle effect to add nice richness and intrigue to areas. I don't know if that's how all the levels are, but it's a neat effect so as to not make the ambient music overwhelming, and it's also good for transitioning into different areas. For example, the first mission of Thief 2. (I'll speak for just one certain area of the level for the sake of simplicity.) * You'll be sneaking around on the first floor and hear only the background-hum track. No music, no bells, no nothing -- just the Thief 2 white noise we all know and love. I tried to recapture the 'feel' of this T2 background noise in my recent Ambient Track (DF) by having it play in the background during the entire track. It's the sound you hear by itself at the very beginning thru the rest of the track. * So that background white noise is all that's looping in Thief 2 as you sneak around on the first floor, for sake of argument. That is, until you make your way up a staircase to the 2nd floor. At this point, an additional ambient track is added to that background noise track. It's a 'glasswaves' swirl sort of sound -- subconsciously makes you wonder what's coming up. (I call it glasswaves because it's similar to the sound named 'glasswaves' on my keyboard.) It's a subtle enough sound that you don't really realize it was layered on the first track, but cool enough to make you wonder what's coming up. The cool thing about Thief sounds is that they don't give anything away. They're just eerily playing all the time. * At this point in my example, these are the only two ambient tracks playing in Thief 2. They're both very simple and non-obtrusive to gameplay. It's an ambience, not a pre-rendered music track with lots of fluctuations and sound interjections going on. * When the layers get stacked, the 1st track seems to be completely unaffected by the additional 2nd track. The 1st track just keeps playing without the loop re-setting or anything. In fact, if you go back down the stairs to the first floor, the 2nd track shuts off and leaves the 1st track playing as it was and has been. I like this approach and think we should be cognizant of this when thinking about creating The Dark Mod ambience files. I know some of us, maybe all, are already aware and maybe I'm wasting my time here, but I at least wanted to get this in writing. Instead of creating entire ambient musical pieces, we need to also focus on simple background ambient and eery loops to be layerable on top of each other like this. Things that will sound cool together when layered on each other. I've already heard some submissions that fit this bill nicely; but wanted all our sound gurus aware, as I assume we want to try to achieve similar things with TDM.

The same as we use for all other stuff in TDM. Drop it on the floor, activate the appropriate item on your inventory and frob it. How do you use a key? The same way. Select the key from the inventory and frob the door. For some maps we could provide a machine like the one that was already posted, but that shouldn't be neccessary. That's the same way they did it in Thief. Or if we ever make a more complex inventory, then we can use simple drag and drop interaction, but there is no urgent need for that.

But don't worry. I'm an advocate of using more physics in games and we have something, that may (or may not) be much more usefull for TDM gameplay.

You might not need to, if id open-source the D3 engine before TDM is released.