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Nice to meet you, Tyro. Great stuff. And welcome to The Dark Mod. I am already impressed by your enthusiasm. I'm the Art Division Leader, so we'll be working together, no doubt. Take some time to read through the different developer forums and bring yourself up to date with what we have already done. When you're ready for some assignments, just let me know. (and you'll find the average age here is fairly high...I'm 32)

That's what the IRC channel is there for. Details here: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=450

Eeek, I think there is some confusion here. I've pretty much ripped the guts out of T3 and the gem wasn't 2D. The Gem is a 3D object, just like the compass. It is simply skinned with a 2d texture. The texture will wrap around the gem, and in this way...the gem can be placed in any position we need it and then anchored there while the compass rotates around it. I've checked out the textures oDDity supplied and they should work perfectly. Just a quick shot of the skinned gem model. This is the T3 gem. I used the t3ui.ini to scale it up in size and turn the end towards the player slightly. It's a full 3d model. Just wanted to make sure there was no confusion there. That should help get things moving along. Another shot...angled up and exposing the edge of the gem. Since the t3hud files enabled scaling through the t3ui.ini I'm hoping that there is a similar way for us to do this in doom 3. Having to resize the gem and compass and export it each time we want to try a different size would be time consuming. I've tried the d3world forums but wasn't able to find anything about scaling ingame hud items. I'll send an email to id support.

The model is shown in this thread a few times: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=292 The actual model itself should be on the ftp site.

not yet. I'll do that tonight. there isn't any complicated stuff so I can do that easily in photoshop. I found some sitting animations of a marine. considering that our noble-men wont be as tall and muscular as a about 1.90 meter marine it will fit quite good.

What I did to use renderbump was make a low and high poly version of a model (obviously) put them in a folder models/mapobjects/object/testobject.lwo Then I wrote this shader and put it in the mapobjects material file: models\mapobjects\object\testobject { renderbump -size 256 256 -trace 0.03 -colorMap -aa 1 models\mapobjects\object\testobject_local.tga models\mapobjects\object\testobject_hp.lwo diffusemap models\mapobjects\object\testobject_d.tga bumpmap models\mapobjects\object\testobject_local.tga, specularmap models\mapobjects\object\testobject_s.tga } What I'm not sure of is where to put this shader, or what to call it at the top of the code. I read on the doom forums that you put the name of the surface of the low poly object u there, but i the material files the doom devs always write the path an the name of the object what I get when I run renderbump is this WARNING: Couldn't load image: testobject surface 0, shader testobject renderBump = (no action) 0.01 seconds for renderBump SO you write a .def fle as well? fr the object or for the map you put the object in?

Is there some special hoop I must jump through to actually see the textures in D3Ed? I have the textures (the old archive) expanded onto my drive. I can double click and view them externally just fine. I start up D3Ed with Doom3 +editor +set fs_game darkmod It starts up just fine, and the dark_mod texture branch shows up in the media tab just fine. Now, I've wondered why soooo many stock D3 textures would show up as just black, but I've read that "they are just leftover (somethings) that they left in there and didn't clean up." So I took the guy's word for it. Well, it's probably not correct, because I can't view (actually see) or use any of TDM textures. They're in the tree. They are recognized. And when I use them, I get black walls. What the hell is going on? Is there some crucial step I'm missing? By my estimation, far more than half of the stock D3 textures are empty/black, which means clearly something's bugged or set up wrong. I strongly doubt they left THAT much unused junk behind.......

Has ayone managed to get static models in-game, complete with normal maps? Normal maps generated by ZBrush don't seem to work properly in Doom, I think because they use tangent space instead of local space, the model I imported was 0,0,0 black everywhere except where the lights hit it. The Orb normal map program site seems to be down since all the links are broken, my lightwave notmal map plugin seems to have mysteriously stopped working, and I can get renderbunmp tool in Doom to cooperate either! :/ SO if anyone has generatd their own normal maps for an objects and it worked ok in-game, please spill the beans. Also on poly counts, it states somwher on the forums here that character models can be up to 7-8k or something, but I think that's way too many. The model I imported was only about 4k and my perfomace went way down, even though it was the only model in an empty room. All of the Doom models are very low res - that's the point of using normal maps in the first place..you don't need high res models.

You mean the finished game model? A long time I would suspect. Doing the high res model is only 10% of the workflow. I still have to trawl various websites and forums trying to get the information I need to work out how to get characters into the game, and no animations have even been started yet. Heh, I've only just perfected getting characters into UT2K3, and now I have to start all over again for Doom. Still, I've finished a lot of Nightblade work, I've only a couple more models to do for that, so I sould have a decent amount of time to devote to this.

I have no problem with an animated movie as part of the menu. It just means we would have to change the design again. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but I thought pak was talking about having a 'live' shot of a map behind the interface...AI wandering around just as they would in a game. Not a pre-recorded movie. Actually, the new design I'm considering DOES include a brief animated movie, kind of like the planet coming into view in the original D3 menu. I'll post more about the idea this weekend, once I get this GUI tutorial under my belt. It's on the Doom3World forums under scripting. Damn, can't remember the title offhand...something like GUI Tutorial #3. I'll post the url later when I can find it. Edit: here it is, NH: http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=3241

Yes. We will need this too. Do you have an idea how to do this? I noticed that we will need this because currently I can run through all the nice furniture, being Garrett The Masterghost.

check out this thread: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=10 there you can find the ftp-data.

oDDity: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=520

Well so there are scripted ones in it for specific effects - but the ones that aren't scripted are VERY good. Like the one Jay mentioned in some other thread - shoot one of the lights hanging by chains in Site 2 (I think it is) and it reacts bloody awesomely. And you just have to get to the part where you use the remote control metal claw to pick up and drop radioactive drums into a waste disposal - sorry for the language, but f*ck, I have never seen ANYTHING like this in any other game. If you tell the claw to lower, and it isn't precicely centered around the drum, then when the claws close, the ones on one side hit first, naturally, causing the claw to pick it up on an angle. Raise the claw, and it is actually carrying the drum in an akward way!! This stuff just can't be scripted! There are too many possibilities Regarding the AI, it is actually not even worth comparing Doom3 to Doom 1 and Doom 2. Those D1 & 2 monsters only ran directly toward you in a bee-line, wether there was a wall there or not. Their pathfinding was limited to sliding along a wall or edge if they happened to run into something along the way. Doom 3 is the real deal. Once an enemy is present, it will chase you anywhere, no matter how complex the path you run, no matter how far away (well, there is a distance limit, but you have that in all games). I have even been testing this myself with my own maps.

That's what I've always said. BTW, you asked, so I spoil it for you - YES, the scenery does change eventually. Well, the tension comes from that a monster can spawn or break out behind your back at any time, but what makes it scarey is that it looks so damn realistic. This game engine is so awesome. So awesome that they didn't even need to make a real game Heheh. Doom 3 is okay. It's not like the repetative battles are actually hard. I just played my way through with a frame rate that was 4-8 fps half of the time and 15-30 fps the other half of the time, and every battle can be played the same way as Doom 1 and 2. Each monster has a "best" way of killing it, that you soon learn: Imps - Wait till their fairly close, dodge the last fireball, and run right into their face and fire the shot gun. Can even be done easily with multiple enemies around. Etc. etc. I won't tell you my tactics for all the others, cause I'm not sure what youve' seen so far (so as not to spoil it), but they are all as fairly straight forward as that. And then the general tactics - which basically consist of - if there are multiple enemies, backtrack to a choke point and shoot them as they come through one by one. (The level designers obviously knew about this, so sometimes you open a door and find some enemy in your face that wasn't there before. It's usually just a soldier or imp, and their main weakness is a shotgun blast to the head. Works really well.) Or if stuck in a tight spot, run to the nearest corner and jump out and shoot them when their footsteps are loud enough. I don't know what exactly you liked more about Doom 1 and 2 over 3. They played exactly the same way as Doom 3, and a few slight scenery changes that were really just different textures. Everything still looked like the same old boxy graphics. Doom 3 just has more cooler features, like better graphics and physics. And when the scenery does change, it REALLY DOES change.

I wont buy it.

So, Tom, are you still with us? Haven't seen you post anywhere yet. Are you seeing the developer's forums now?

http://www.tpd.tno.nl/smartsite966.html that's the URL. but I found out that it actually isn't one huge picture. there is also a thread in the TTLG at Communtiy Chat. http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=91130&page=1

Anyone familiar with this team? I was wondering if we could recruit some people now that they seem like they're nearing completion. http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=91246

This may be applicable to this idea, I don't know: If you want to trigger the built-in animations just add a "target_ai_followalternatepath1" and Ctrl-k it with the character you want to animate. Then add a "path_anim" and give it a Key "anim" with a value of whatever anim you want like "cower" or "run" or whatever anims that character has. Select the character and give him a Key of "alt_path_1" with a Val of "path_anim_1" or whatever you named your path_anim. When you trigger the target_ai_followalternatepath1 with a trigger_once or you trigger it in a script, your character will perform that animation. If you're using this animation in a cinematic make sure you give all entities the Key/Val Cinematic/1. I was going to add this to my cinematic tutorial, but I'm too lazy.

I noticed this as well. It seem you can not reyize it after you skinned it. Don't know why. What you can try to do is to resize and press CTRL-A (I think this was it) to apply the changes. If it is the correct key then it should ask you to apply. I tried to import a ASE file and resize it, but somehow the model always stays the same size. I always kept the untriangulated mopdel for this purpose and did the skinning again. Of course in my case this was not so bad because I never tried to make it good looking, just to have it show up in the game. If we can't find a better solution I guess the best workflow to do it would be this. 1. Model the mesh. 2. Save the model in a new file and keep the original model you work on in a seperate file. 3. The new file is now triangualated. 4. Skin it wihout regard for look. 5. Import it into Doom 3 and see how it's size is. If the model is to big or to small you must start at 1 again, that's why you should copy it in a seperate file. Once the model is properly sized you can start on serious skinning because you wont change the mesh anymore. This is not really satisfying because it means, that you have to do the skinning everytime you need to change the mesh.

I think I wont hit that limit. If Audacity doesn't suffice I'll give it a try. But I don't think that I do much processing. Just converting some sounds or trim excessive silence.

Slow down, NH. See above post. We should be very careful about not letting our own enthusiasm dictate what we show the public. We could post something like this in our own public forums, but I wouldn't make it a public release, UNLESS it was combined with some other things, like mentioned above. In all seriousness, if we had the following: The bedroom map (in-game, with fire going), The ability for objects to vanish when frobbed At the very least, removing the D3 HUD and crosshairs THEN, I think it might be worth releasing a new video. But not until then. IMO, it's better to have people wondering what we're up to than it is to release things that make people (who know nothing about how hard things are) say, "THAT's all you've got so far??"

Okay, since it hasn't been done yet, I'll kick it off. First let me say, I assume this thread is to contain requests out of the ordinary, as stated by sparhawk at the TTLG forums: QUOTE I'm not talking of the standard features like buttons, switches, or similar stuff. Rather I'm thinking of things you might have wanted to implement in an FM but you couldn't because of limitations in the engine or in DromEd as opposed to the obvious, like rope arrows, swimming, etc. So here's a few ideas just to get things going. -random treasure spawns. An author would place a piece of optional treasure, and set a percentage chance that it will appear or not. -optional path nodes (although I think this might already be possible with Dromed). The AI can choose to ignore a node or go on a different, separate path altogether. -AI actions similar to NOLF2. I never played the game myself, but I'd heard they do things that are unexpected, at unexpected times. Many times I've played Thief and thought to myself, "why is that cook just pacing back and forth?" Clearly for gameplay, NOT realism. "Why would a guy just be standing here in a dark room, facing the wall, then turn to the fireplace, back to the wall, back to fireplace, etc?" Again, gameplay, not realism. I'd heard that in NOLF2, AI will often kick a can around, or fidget (already in Thief), or even leave patrol to go to the restroom. That sounds like a fantastic addition that might really lend some tension to the overall experience. -AI ladder climbing. Touchy subject, that, as it eliminates some safety and comfort in the game, but probably a good addition. Okay, there's a few for now. What ideas would you suggest?

LOL - but to be be honest I had the same thought. It looks really a bit like darth maul...maybe also because of the mouth (I'll try if I can change the mouth of the model a bit) I hope the UV-maps of our models wont be so streched and NOT mirrored !! Do you like the skin of the torso and the legs, or shall I change it ? It'd be great if Renz could send me his cryptmap, to test how it looks and feels ingame...