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You could define any situation in which the AI doesn't behave as intelligently as the player to be an exploitable one. That's means the entire game is exploitable, of course. On the one hand you're not happy with having an intellectual advantage over AI on ladders, and on the other you want to leave them open to exploit by leaving them at a huge disadvantage by having no range weapon. I think the AI need all the advantage they can get. THere's a difference between good AI and perfect AI. Perfect AI is impossible, and has never been created in a game. It's always open to exploit. I'm willing to trade some possible expolit by a small number of insignificant 'players', for a feature I want in the game. IF you want to play your game by luring AI to ladders and killing them, that's your problem. YOu can't blame us for giving you the ability to do so. That's like stabbing someone to death and them blaming the person who sold you the knife. If you can't exercise enogh self control to not pick exploits in the AI so you can cheat yourself, then you shouldn't be playing games. It's not getting around any limitation. I always wanted all lhe guards in Thief to have both range and melee weapons, and I want the same for TDM. Every AI that matters on a level is a guard. The rest are noncombatants who don't chase the thief anyway. The preists and mages have ranged spell attacks. And I'd like the undead to have the kind of attack the xombies in RtCW had, where they'd throw ghostly skulls at you which blacked out your screen, left you short of breath and drained your health. ATM, the xombies in Thief are a total waste of space. All combatant AI should have a range attack of some sort, so the player can't fuck them around by mantling or kiting them.

Uhhh, yummy! That animation is fantastic - much less wooden than some of the TDS ones. I must say as regards textures, the use of spec maps seems to be making all the difference in getting good texture out of the models. They have much more graphic depth to them than those in TDS - and indeed most others I've seen. It's plain that TDM is going to be a helluva lot better graphicswise than Deadly Shadows - never mind gameplaywise.

For me likewise. If I am in the mood for slaughter and mayhem, I will play an appropriately violent game such as UT, but most of the time I prefer strategy and flexing my brain as my means of completing a game. A bit of restriction can be a good thing, and there are some very compelling (IMO) reasons to not include many weapons for a stealth based thieving game: *It focusses the game on using stealth as the means of copleting the task. *It gives the game a bit more realism by not having the player carry an arsenal around hidden away in their back pocket. *It frees up development time and resources for other more specifically thief based aspects of the game. In my view, a mediaeval or victorian thief would carry the following items, and little more: A bag or sack for collecting loot. A set of lockpicks or similar tools. A rope and grappling hook (optional). A small knife, primarily for use as a tool, but could be used as a weapon in an emergency. A throwable device or devices used as a decoy, such as powder thown into an attackers eyes, or a smoke bomb. Maybe a flask of water and a small amount of food. Maybe, maybe, a small crossbow or blowpipe that launches tranquilising darts. Maybe a glass sphere or flask or two filled with a gas that renders people unconscious, for use in emergencies. Anything else would be superflous, and would be too much of an encumberance to bother with (for a real thief). If a thief is discovered, the thief will want to get away as fast as possible so the guard or whoever can't get a good look at them, and they won't stick around to get into fisticuffs. By eliminating superfluous weaponry, you can focus the stealth experience much more tightly, and it makes it much less work for FM authors to balance the game for one main method of completion than trying to cater for both the iron man tyoes and the ghoster types. If I were going to rob someones mansion, I would take the following: A small backpack, a small crowbar, a multitool or pocket knife, a set of lockicks, a small torch, and maybe a container of chloroform if I thought there was no other way to get past guards without immobilising them. The lighter you travel, the less noise you make, the less likely you are to be detected. It would be nice if TDM had some mechanism to penalise players who carry excessive weaponry by making them noisier and bulkier, if they absolutely insist on keeping all the silly weapons that Thief had, but I guess I'll have to make do with whatever is released and mod it to fit my needs...

You've already got rid of them by punishing violence when it is possible. TDM will never be an FPS where you can go around killing everyone willy nilly - if it were, it would have failed. So actually, you don't need to get rid of the people who like Thief gameplay - you're already making violence more difficult than in Thief 1/2, right? The only question is over people who use stealthy violence. They're not going to be put off by being forced to be stealthy about their violence, but they will if they're prevented from choosing how to tackle the mission. It's not "bloodthirsty FPS gamer" vs "ghosting Thief gamer." In other words, it's not all as clear cut as you make out.

It's not stupid to slice off the set of violent fans. I'd enjoy slicing them off. In fact, I'd like to be there to see th look on their stupid faces when they realised they didn't get any weapons in TDM and were forced to sneak around in the shadows like some sort of stealth game.... 'This sucks!' they'd say ' I'm off to play UT' - and good riddance to them.

Actually, crime-rates (at least in America) have been decreasing as videogames have gotten more violent. Of course, whether or not they're related is debatable. Surely the FM designer can choose whether or not to include a sword/bow/etc in their mission, so couldn't somebody make ODDity's non-violent dream-FM with the planned version of TDM? Actually, I rather like the idea of making it a complete pain to kill anybody, especially for city missions where it doesn't make sense for players to be able to go on killing sprees. But as long as it's up to the FM designer, there'll probably be missions for any given taste, right?

These are good concepts, but they look a little too high fantasy for our setting IMO. The second one has potential as an urban pagan. But in general, TDM characters have a look that is a mixture of late medieval mixed in with some victorian trappings. Some factions, like the mages, have a more high-fantasy look, but most characters--especially everyday types--don't. Try using historical costumes for reference, and mix and match the more interesting parts. Your environmental concepts do this and are excellent. I envisioned our prostitutes as looking more like this (very quick) sketch:

Well, look at it this way, there are a zillion and one FPS game out there in which to shoot people, so why waste a game like Thief or TDM by doing the same thing, when there are better gameplay alternatives.

Well, when TDM is released and I start making maps, I will be doing my darndest to make some nicely balanced missions that favour ghosters. I hope to make them staggeringly hard to ironman your way through, and while I won't be expecting the player to find every damn coin and candlestick in the mission to complete it, I will be expecting the player to be very cautious and observant. I will try to integrate most of the loot objectives into the story, so that if the player wants to go hunting for more loot they can, but there is no need for them to do so... I hope I will be able to deliver on that, but, being a perfectionist who tends to overwork things to death, my releases might be few and far between. Hell, I still haven't released any of my Unreal maps

Been tinkering with some ideas for a female thief. The same model could be used for NPC thief characters and for the female player model (the T2X guys are interested in using TDM for future Zaya missions). Two versions below, with scarf and without. I'm lukewarm about the concept, so feel free to provide suggestions.

What is the actual situation with respect to copyright ownership of TDM content? Do contributors assign their copyrights to an entity representing the mod (like with GNU tools) or do they retain copyright and grant an irrevocable distribution license to the mod team (like with the Linux kernel)?

When I said "Thief 4," I didn't mean a commercial version - that would be absurd, and would draw the legions of hell down on all our heads. However, I didn't realise that doing a fan campaign continuing the story would do the same. Likewise, I'm not suggesting that TDM be driven towards Thief 4 or Thief style - it's evident that it has the capability to produce something both quite Thief-like and quite different, and that a Thief 4 could be made nearly regardless of how the development goes. I guess I'm just not cynical enough about Eidos' IP.

IMO the idea is not SO absurd. When TDM is finished and Eidos would like to do a Thief 4 out of it, it would be a huge advantage for them. They only have the costs of the D3 license and teh campaign development time, as everything else is ready. IMO this is a big bonus and I bet it would be MUCH MUCH cheaper to develop it this way, then doing a complete new Thief 4. Of course they would also have to pay us a fee for it, but I guess this would be only a nominal fee and is still cheaper then making everything from scratch.

Has anyone on the Dark Mod team actually pitched the idea to Eidos? If you sell it right, they might be interested, and you guys might get new jobs out of it, you never know if you don't try. And they might be willing to fork out for a D3 license if they can be convinced they will make a bit of cash out of it... Then again, a large company like Eidos will probably funnel it though a dozen commitees and focus groups, and you would end up with a parody of your original idea, so maybe not such a good idea. That said, I would prefer if TDM reamined something quite distinct from Thief, with only a few allusions to the game which inspired it.

omg i just thought (why havent i heard anything about mages) are you going to put them in. i wish there where more mages in the thief games. but oh well. i alwas thought that the mages hammers and keepers where the stongest in the series. the mechinests where ok but they just dont have that feel. its all load mechines and stuff. dont get me wrong they where cool but not the best. i would like to see some cool mage's in TDM. that would add to the feel of the old game's but with one of the most powerfull games to date.

On a similar note, I hope TDM doesn't get bogged down in "option frenzy" whereby the player essentially chooses what game they're going to play. As far as I'm concerned, it would take far too long to evaluate all the possible choices, then ascertain which is best. Hopefully enough design decisions will be made by you lot, and then the FM makers. At the same time, I hope we either and up with a lot of campaigns, or individual missions mostly sticking to the similar bunches of settings. One thing I wouldn't want is for you to end up being required to get used to a whole new game for every single mission. Naturally, this wouldn't be a problem for a campaign, where it may as well be a whole other game, and it is worth investing time in learning everything required.

Of course they have science. They ARE the scientists. Other than both building robots, there is little similarity between TDM inventors and Thief Mechanists.

How so? Whether the arrow is fired from a crossbow, trailing a rope behind it, or if it is 'thrown', the physics requirements are the same. We might save a 'throwing' animation, but we probably wouldn't include one anyway, since you don't generally see your hands when you throw other objects in the game. Keep in mind we ARE planning to include a grappling hook eventually--if it is possible to code one. Even with a sophisticated engine like D3, it won't be easy to do. Of course, this comes down entirely to your own personal preference. The only reason not to accept the 'reality' of rope arrows is if you just don't like the taste. And judging from the reactions to TDS, you are in the minority on this one. There are far more people who are eager to see rope arrows in TDM.

Er...no it's not. Yeah, that term doesn't exist in TDM universe. There are lots of different names for the Inventor's Guild members. "Gearhead" "Engineer" "Mad Scientist" "Bot-Builders" "Hey You"

I am not going to argue semantics with you, since you are only picking the most literal and narrow definition of the word, but what I and the other "realism" proponents want is a self consistent gameworld that is the closest approximation possible to realism within the confines of current computer technology. I agree with you that self-consistency in the in-game reality is what makes for immersion, but I would prefer if we can manage a game that is self-consistent without resorting to magic or some other daft mumbo-jumbo to explain away a crude gameplay device like rope arrows and water arrows. Rope arrows in Thief did not feel consistent with the rest of the game for me, and were just plain silly IMO. Climbing gloves DID feel consistent with the rest of the Thief universe, and their merits are that they let you access areas you could not get to otherwise. And it should be noted that the Thief developers only included rope arrows because they couldn't get their preferred option, GRAPPLING HOOKS, to work properly. I would like a crossbow that can launch a grappling hook - it simplifies the mechanics and animations of doing grappling hooks by other methods, and is more probable in RL without resorting to magical explanations. Grappling hooks and crossbow = excellent Climbing gloves = good Vine arrows = OK Rope arrows = lame, should never have been in the original Thief, should definately not be in TDM (which as I understand it, is not Thief, or has that changed?)

Climbing gloves shouldn't even be necessary to climb a rough stone wall - any Thief worth his salt or any halfway competant rock climber can scale a rough stone wall easily, so It would be nice if certain textures could be made climbable, although it should be quite easy for FM authors to do this even if TDM doesn't support it out of the box...

Great work on the current texture updates (compression and elimination of redundancy!). At start of sync last night, my TDM folder was 666 Mb. Erm... After falling asleep with WinCVS running, a few hours later, ~280 Mb. :thumb: Looking forward to new additions!

I'm willing to bet that management/PR is going to ask that if you're going to use that banner at all, that you remove the "Thief" part. TDM is not Thief, and does not claim or condone direct association with it.

Not every group needs an official name. That's not very realistic. TDM 'mechanists' are just a guild of inventors, engineers, and scientists. They're probably most often called "inventors".

No worries mate, English is a bugger of a language to learn, even for the natives... I had to edit my last post three times to get rid of some silly typos Out of curiosity, what is your native language? I think all of your ideas are quite good, not being a coder I can't really comment on the feasibility of implementing them all, although I am curious as to how you see your idea of catching oil lamps from KO'd guards working. I like your suggestion regarding guards noticing and picking up out of place items. In Thief 1/2/3 you could drop an item softly or throw it, so I would assume that TDM will continue that tradition.