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BT, if you ever want/need more areas (like this from a concept sketch, or the two stairways) to inspire or be a working platform for new (awesome) texture creations like these, just say the word. Edit: @ Fingernail: heh, okay... I guess what I mean is, aside from whatever stuff I might find, feel free to toss out ideas, concept sketches, photos, etc. Working from the brain is too chaotic and clumsy for us non-artist types.

And if you're not too comfortable with UV mapping we do have a need for ingame texture artists as well. How are you at doing normalmaps?

The object looks good, but the texture looks like plastic. But I guess BT can fix this rather easily.

looks quite good to me but the stone texture looks a bit distorted at the lower outside wall.

Man, I can't belive how hype guided people can be. The (all I do is Flash ActionScript 2, which is not actuall programing), engine is not superior to any of the noteable engines of the current generation. I am no moder, and I am defenetlly not to be called a programer*, but I am a person who is very interested in technology, I am also a hobby site/game designer, and as one I am allways looking for ways to optimise my "products". I know that if i'll program a VB6 tettris game, and use graphics in a way which is not optimised, I will never be able to run the game on a Pentium 1, with 2 mb RAM, but I am able when I am done. This long paragraph, was here to say that optimisation is importent in order to achive a good product. And as far as I have seen Source is either not optimised as a whole, or just hasen't been used in such a way in any game that ran on it. Let's say this, DOOM 3 ran on my system** with no slowdown at all, I would gues taht I had a frame rate of about 30-35, I had all options on(in low quality, but shadows ware all on, as well as "special effects"), exept for resolution which was set to the minimum. Half-Life 2 ran on my system with a frame rate of about 25-30, with slowdowns every time I had more then 2 "characters on screen, I had all options off, resolutin was minimal. I had loading times of 30 secounds betwen levels in doom 3. The loading times in Half-Life 2 ware 1-2 minutes, and the "maps" in both games are the same size. I had the same expiriance with the other Source game out there, Vampire Bloodlines. The same preformence issues ware present through out several computers, every one belongs to diffrent users, and I don't mean that HL2 was unlayabe, I mean That DOOM 3 ran better. Now let's say that I would as a user look at the "stuff" I would get from each game. DOOM 3 has "Real time Shadows", what I as a user see on screen is an actuall visual effect of shadows in a pixel per pixel ratio. HL2 offers me as a user only "Real Time Lightning" it may not state so, and shadows may be present, but they are not real "Geometric" shdows. They are, in effect, projected on each "Polygon" of a model in the world, as far as a user can see. DOOM 3 has "normal mapping" used in game. HL2 does not. "Real mapping" is by far one of the best technologies develpoed ever. it gives us the ability, as we all know, to give textures the feel of 3D objects, I don't actually know the way of it's work, but as a user I can see it probabbly just controls the gamma/contrast that is applied to parts of a texture in any give situaltion. In the modern ara, you can't have a sneaking game with out shadows. It just adds to much, both graphically, as well as gameplay wise. Now we have the Havoc engine. Havoc was used better in HL2 it is true, but it is also present in DOOM 3. And is going to be used in a "similer" (well let's admit it will be a rip-off) way in the expention pack. So as far as Physics go, which are also importent in the kind of game the Dark Mod wishes to be, are included in TDE. Will someone please tell me what makes anyone belive that Source is superior to TDE, or even Unreal 2.5? So, as you can all understand I fully support the Dark team in thier wise choise, and I hope that they will make full use of TDE, so we can all enjoy a quality game. *I only use Flash ActionScript, which is really no programing language. **My specs are: 1.3 Ghz of CPU power; 256 RAM(ya I know this sucks, but I could still run and play DOOM 3 and HL2[not as good as DOOM 3 but even so], so ha!) and a Gforce 3 GPU. I base my viwes on the Demo versions. I am sorry for my poor writeing, I am not a native english speaker, I will fix the text when I get home, and get my word to work.

Cool, thanks for answering that concern. Seems like the frog is the best way to go then. I'll just be crouching in the shadows, working on my 3rd party "black painted sword" texture after we release the first version. Also, a small part of me wants to suggest replacing the loud shoes with cloth-wrapped moccasins or something, but I can deal with copying Thief's tap dancing shoes for sound FX / gameplay purposes.

OK. I thought that the lightsource has been painted into the texture itself.

yes, the light is faked, but the yellow color is constand all over the texture - the brighter parts are lit up, by a lightsource, that is placed in front of the window.

I still like the simplicity of this blue bar GIMG created a long time ago. I'm referring to the blue portion, not the tips. I like the tips you have better, Springheel. Here was GIMG's creation: For a health bar this should obviously be red, and there shouldn't be any really dark parts on the far right, but I think the center part would work. If any texture is added, then only add a little bit. I don't think it needs a lot. I don't think it needs to be a 3-D model either. EDIT: And in looking at the screenshots there, I admit I prefer the elongated style in T1/T2. *sigh*. Thanks for making the screens, Springheel. Unfortunately, I know Tyrot won't be too happy to hear me say this I think the gem could be squished into more of the style it was in T1/T2 and still have the perfectly circular compass (in perspective) rotating around the gem.

Well I'm certainly very eager to see what other things you have done. But the charge that gloves would make it easier is nonsense. Let us take Metroid PRime for an example. At one point you get heat goggles. Does that make it "easier"? No, because there are areas with no light and you have to use them there. Where there is light there is no need for them, except to search for hidden stuff. In fact, they make the game harder as the puzzles are more complex. This can be said of many in-game "tools". If you only allow climbing on certain textures (a la T3) you can tailor your level to be as freeform (in terms of climbin) or restrictive as you like. Not liking them is a totally different issue. And when you say "we" I hope you mean the public and not the devs because just imagine if LGS hadn't "liked" stealth. . . who are you making this for? Yourselves or the fans who want to make FMs? You campaign could leave out the climbable texture.

Don't think so. It can be just a texture. As well as the sides of it Then we just scale down the bar.

Made a new city wall-surface texture, hope you guys like it: http://www.dark-project.com/BlackThief/city_surface2.jpg http://www.dark-project.com/BlackThief/city_surface1.jpg

I think it should be possible. If I understand this process correctly..it just allows control over how sharp the shinyness of an objects texture is. This could allow for junk to be made to look much more dull and the loot to have a much clearer sheen. If I'm understanding correctly that is.

Not everything. But you can give me a quick overview, so I don't have to read everything just to know what it does. In my understanding it just adds a gloss to a texture. Similar to a lightmap. Right?

I think it's best to keep some colour and some texture in the gem even when it's at its maximum. It gets a little bit too bight though, It's almost like white hot molten rock at it's brightest - that would be a tad distracting having that at the bottom of the screen. On the other hand, the lighhtgem is only for noobs anyway, so maybe we should taunt them.

The arms look great, oDDIty. I love the texture of the clothing and I like what you've done with the bracers. I hope you're going to add the fingerless gloves at some point. On the topic of the bow, I think your second version is fine. I'm fairly ambivelant about ornamentation...I don't think our Thief is throwing his bow out after each mission, but we aren't going to see much of it up close anyway. As for the fur...the concept is neat, but again, will we actually *see* the bowstring during the animation?

Yeah, with some of the detailing removed, and at that size, it looks much better. One thing, Tyrot, can we see what it looks like with just the gem? Remember that players wil have an option to have that compass part not be visisble, so the gem needs to look good on it's own too. BT, what do you think? Can you come up with a nice, roughed-up metal texture for this?

I think it actually looks quite sexy. The texture might need to be altered slightly to rough up the metal but as far as the color goes, I think it looks great! I also think the angle in that mockup pic is damn near bang on as well. It's dark and stealthy looking. Lets do it folks. Lets get that sucker in there.

Sorry I was just getting worried. A simple rope with joints would be really good. Aside from what it might take for you to work out how to get all the naming joints thing working properly, the effort for actually modelling shouldn't be much (just a straight pole divided up into segments so it bends at the joints), with some flat brown texture so I can see it. It would be REALLY helpful. Spar says the rope arrow is the priority, so I hope someone can do a rope. Just a cylinder with joints (named properly though).

Make high poly for all objects. I can Uv and normal map them. Texture normal maps and geometry normal maps are two different things, and one is no substitute for the other. I'm modeling the player arms and bow right now, and I actually have two bump maps blended together on it, a normal map generated from the geometry and a grayscale heightmap generated from the textures. THis is a very useful thing D3 has given us, so we should use it. Especially for models with an amount of specularity, normals maps make quite a differece to how rounded and high poly they look.

It looks good, but I have to agree with Springheel, that it looks a bit sci-fi like ATM. Try another metal-texture

well if Bt is generating normalmaps with Ps than its useless..and so far i didnt hear anyone else wanting to texture my models.. but as i said if anyone needs high poly for a model i will make it..

Sure thing, Pak. Yep, those two pots in back, with a slightly different texture, would work well. The other pots are too modern, and the plants too tropical. I'll cross that one off the list.

As a random sidenote, the T3 video reminded me that when we texture our arrow model, we should probably use black or gray or dark red or blue... something dark for the fletching, as opposed to T3's day-glo green.

But textures should always be usable, since they are just images. Models are different because you have to render them. When you present a texture flat, it should be the same as you would apply to a surface ingame.