Search the Community

As I posted elsewhere, if it's magic, it can have any sound trapped inside. The sound of footsteps, of whistling, of a few words spoken, etc. It might be neat if the sound was randomly picked from a list each time the arrow was fired. And once the crystal is broken, the sound is gone. No resuse. I kind of like the idea of a magic noise arrow.

That is a very awesome design, but not quite in line with our design philosophy for the mod. I should really change my name to "The Minimalist" from New Horizon, but think "minimal" interface. If this thief were to really carry around a mystical light gem, I wonder if it would be some kind of rough cut stone laid into casing of some sort? Anyway, definately not shooting down what you did. It's gorgeous. Just trying to help fuel some other ideas. Okay, I just threw this together on top of Fingernails old test pic in about five minutes...but it might get the idea I had accross. Essentially just a crystal that rotates. The crystal would be angled inwards a bit so it actually points forward when you are facing north. The north end of the crystal would be pointy and the south end blunt. I didn't have time to do this so I just colored the north end a bluish green. I have another idea, but I won't get to work on that until later this evening. Thoughts?

Ok, so I thought these were supposed to come out at the same time. Where the heck is the SDK?

Yeah, maybe we should agree on how we want the arrows to look before anyone spends lots of time working on them? I think the noise arrow looks cool as well, but I also vote in favour of crystals for the elemental ones. I agree about the gas bombs too. If we have gas arrows, why do we also need bombs? We could go back to gas mines if we wanted, since they are different in gameplay.

hi, i just talked with rezniac about my model that i was about to texture. he said that i should rather add the details from the texture as real vertices in the model. well, thats where i do not know how. although i think i do not need to make the wood like look on the table plate by model because its flat, i need to know how i should fake it without a texture? or for example how do i make rough wood surface? a rusty metal, old leather etc. do i need surface modifiers or just much time and an eye till i get it right? i know for clothing surfaces just as banners, jackets, well everthing like that there is SimCloth. is there something like that for all the other surfaces to use for high poly models?

Well, I finally got my scanner to work so I thought I'd upload some concept artwork I've been working on the past week or so! Woot! Mainly just rough sketches, but hopefully helpful...? PS: Any feedback on the above is appreciated. Also, there's going to be a lot more time spent in creating lamps, lights, candles, candleholders, chairs, tables, wall patterns, stained glass windows, etc., then what was barely touched on here. Just didn't want anybody worrying. Side Note: I look at 'concept artwork' as general guidelines to help create the game. The museum sculpture stand image above, for instance, has a big magnet over it (to slowly lift the glass box when activated). This may or may not be something we want to include in the game -- it was just an idea. For example, our thief could have a goal that says "Figure out how to steal the Bafford Scultpure" or something, and our thief would then have to find a secret switch that lifts the glass enclosure up, revealing the sculpture. We may or may not want to do something like this. As well, in the concept artwork, the magnet looks like hell. I envision more care and detail going into the actual magnet if it were implemented, perhaps even hiding the fact that it's a magnet by making it look like a beautiful, ornate hood above the sculpture that provides light to the sculpture or something. So, you see, please just take my concept artwork as brainstorming sessions and possible ideas rather than an edict saying "We need to do it THIS way" or "I feel this way is the best." So, as more and more drawings come, take what you will from them for use in DarkMod. I just want them to be helpful! Cool?? Cool. PPS: The 'miscellaneous room' one was done with colored pencils. I know it's not the best clarity. Just wanted to do a rough room. I need to get myself a "digital pen" for my PC! Drawing with a mouse is kind've challenging, otherwise I'd do stuff more often on the PC.

I figured I'd go ahead and start doing some props. Already have a bed and a chair done with patches in Radiant (which I'm calling the Rgun props since they look alot like his stuff), and now I've started doing some stuff in Max. And this is it. It's the first time I've used Max in almost a year and a half, so I'm still a little rusty. I know the meshsmooth is a little overkill, but comeon...I wanted it to look cool for everybody. As far as models go it's simple as all getout. But it'll look fine ingame, which is what counts. Now I just need to skin it...

heyho, i heard that you need artist. well, i got some experience in 3dsmax and would be glad if i could help you. i registered in this forum as fjonan but never recieved an e-mail to finish the registration, can someone fix this? in time id be glad to show you some of my works but i havent loaded them up to some webspace, yet.

We could start sending out chain letters. "Dear Sir or Madam Today is your lucky day! When you woke up this morning I bet you didn't expect to recieve a GOOD LUCK LETTER in the mail today, did you? Oh, I'm sure you didn't. Most don't. But if you have belief in your heart and follow the 4 easy steps below then you can have all the FAME and FORTUNE you can handle. Here's what you need to do: 1. Make 10 copies of this letter 2. Insert a crisp 50 dollar bill into an envelope and forward it to The Dark Mod 2114 Mack Smith Street Seattle, Wahington 37404 3. Send the 10 copies of this letter to your closest friends and family 4. Wait for FAME and FORTUNE Those that followed these simple steps were repaid beyond their wildest dreams! A man in Texas sent this out to his 10 closest friends and recieved a BAR of GOLD from the SKY which was worth 10,000 DOLLARS! How easy could it be? Yes, friend, it truly is that easy. But the price of failure is equally as great. A stupid kid like you from West Virginia decided that chain letters were for chumps...CHUMPS...and threw it away without forwarding the letter OR the money! 2 days later he fell into a combine harvester and got his legs chewed off. Now his friends call him stumps....STUMPS! If he had just sent his letters he would be running through amber fields of grain holding on to his SKY GOLD! So what will it be, friend? Will you send your letter? Better decide soon, time is running out Sincerely -Fingernail" I think it could work.

Well, it sure sounds like you've got it in hand I certainly couldn't put anything close to those together in such a short period of time. I replayed a little of Moira's mansion to look at an AI feature the other night, and was suprised when I noticed a piano tune similar to the one you had in your first file. I stand by my tone 'feeling', but thats probably a minor tweak. Good stuff

The reason I am so excited about helping out with this project is because I love the Thief series its one of my favorite, I have played the first 2 several times! But I haven’t kept up with the series since then, just haven’t had the time to play many games, all work and studying to get in to the game industry. I would prefer not to post to some free art archives, like deviantart after carefully reading there user agarments, they can retain the rights to uploaded works. AKA it now belongs to them! I will have a host soon, and will try to display as much of my work there as is possible. Till then I would like to start on some Concept Sketches of Environments. Then after you approve of my ideas I will Model, Texture & Normal Map all the recourses needed for sed environment. (design before you implement right?) Then with the peaces of a map in hand I could design a level or 2 or 3 using the assets. To help me better understand what your project needs: Are adventurer(the Thief)’s desire for wealth leads him to loot Ancient Ruins and raid Dens of Evil Creatures. Or duss the hero have other motivations? Have areas already been decided on, or should I just make a place up? Do you have a story I should try to follow with my concepts? What creatures have an influence on this environment? Hum built it and why? Ext… If there is already a design in place pleas give me what information you think would be helpful in making concept for you as a test to prove my self. Thanks for giving me a chance to help with this project. Regards, Maus

Lies. I didn't make it up. I just know Thief 1 very well. There's a few conversations in T1 that relate to Hammers being very powerful long time ago in the city. No shoulder plates? and these are what? Try carrying a heavy hammer on your shoulder or swinging it from your shoulder. Chain mail isn't as good for such work. You need some metal shoulder plates to support it! More T1 concept art: (look at the thick plating around the neck, once again so you don't break your neck with the hammer) http://www.thief-thecircle.com/media/paint...darkposter2.jpg Thief 3 Hammerite concept art- (once again, heavy shoulder plating) http://208.49.149.120/Files/ThiefSeries/t3...hammer-safe.jpg There were no cloaks in game cause they were TOO LAZY to implement them, but there were cloaks in the T1 concept art.

(Ignore the blue thing) This just about the final "medium poly" version - it needs two belt buckles, and then it's done. The next step will be bumping it up to high poly - this is where I make the clothing look less painted on, give the mask thing some volume so it looks less like a hospital mask, make the hood look like wool instead of plastic, and so forth, as well as adding wrinkles, creases, and a lot more detail all over the place. In other words, this is the hard part. So, vote time. Do you guys want me to keep working on this, or should I pause on it, work on the "Honestly it's not a Hammerite" guy? Either is fine for me, so it's your preference that will guide my decision.

Right on, yeah I agree with all that was said. I'll try to get them to be smaller images later tonight or tomorrow, and have the images show up in the post instead of as links. Good idea! Not a problem. [uPDATE: Done.] I agree that the room is bland and I actually, honestly, kind've hate it. It looks better in-person, when standing way far away (LOL) -- actually kind've looks real. BUT (and this is a big BUT) it does lack A LOT of the dynamicism and moodiness we all know and love about Thief. Fortunately, I already realized this and won't be doing another room like that I think I did that room as almost a "study," if you will. I was using Thief 2 as a reference and was seeing how they did the panels on the wall, etc., though I know I erred on a couple things. When i look at that room though, I'm like 'borrrrring' I have a feeling the drawings will get better over time. I'm actually working on a different room scene right now that I think you might appreciate more when I'm done. There's more life and moodiness, in general, to it -- and it feels more Thief to me. I'm using PhotoShop and the coloring will be much better. Once I get a digital pen, I have a feeling you'll be seeing a lot more cooler things, too. Thanks for the feedback guys. Let's rock this thing!

I like what I see so far If you artist guys are using lots of reference material from the appropriate time periods, and making design desicions based on the Thief world that we want, I'm happy. Just as a suggestion - have you thought about adding bolts or screws to the logo, if you're having trouble putting a hammer with one other thing, some little things like bolts could give you more options to arrange things to look nice. After we come up with a design, we should read some "meaning" into it, eg, the cog surrounds the base of the hammer, to represent its power that spreads over everything... etc. so the Builders have more things to write about.

Ok... Link me to 1 place where password protection was compromised and people got in on oh so secret developer info. I guess the blog was made for the same reason huh? =P If you had that much time, maybe you could spend it on learning better HTML. Assuming you made the site.

Precisely. On the down side, I'm seriously gonna need reams more RAM before I'll be able to finish this. I only have 512 megs, and it's starting to stutter at only 25,000 polys. If I turn on the subdivision, it turns into a slideshow. Time to double my RAM.

I'd love to have translucent windows used. The windows in Doom 3 -- when you can look outside, for instance -- were pretty cool in that they weren't perfect. The glass was imperfect, with a warbled effect. Will come in handy to have this at our disposal for Thief's time and age.

I reckon with Fingernail's target platform suggestion, and Kappow's "low end" system, we (well, you guys, cause I don't have D3 just yet) could use the equivelant of the "show stats" feature and come up with some guidline figures to keep the complexity at, for people who are level editing. Good point Renzatic, if Doom 3 plays like Doom 2, with its hundreds of monsters at one time stuff, we should be able to make things look prettier than the original Doom3 levels in our Thief version.

Well, don't forget that you can turn off the shadows completely in Doom 3 for really low-end PCs.....gulp....that destroys much of Thief gameplay for you, it would end up like quick-lighting in DromEd. So we need to have a PC which can run the realtime shadows, which means probably a Pentium 2GHz at the low end and an Athlon 64 at the high end. Which approximately equates to a 128Mb Graphics card (Radeon or GeForce), for Medium to High detail. So if we aim for a PC like this: Pentium 4 2.5Ghz/Athlon XP equiv 128Mb Graphics card (Radeon 9800 or GeForce FX recommended) 256Mb of Ram (512Mb most definitely recommended) Some sort of sound, we like 5.1 surround. OpenGL....weeeee. Anyway, that's roughly what I expect the very average PC will be in 6 months/a years time.

Sweet! Thanks!! Actually, I had to add a hyphen at the very beginning of the text string you gave... and then it worked: "-com_allowConsole 1 +set r_fullscreen 0 +editor" I'll try to check out how you made the maps one of these days, too. I'm sure it won't bore me, but it might be a bit out of my brain's capacity to 'grasp' right now. I'm trying to learn ColdFusion, Flash, Dedit (for Tron 2.0) and other stuff at the same time. I might need to stick with just regular sketches for a while ;o) -Darkness_Falls-

Hrmmm.. good question.. heres the deal: I made the server for Team Chat. i.e. only for the team members to use so they could have one central place to talk in real time. The other thing is when we have meetings we don't want just anyone joining our room (even the password protection on IRC servers can be compromised). Lastly I had nothing better to do until the rest of the team was organized.

I have to be honest...I actually like the opaque ones better. I'm sure transluscent windows will be useful, but a lot of windows of the time period actually WERE pretty opaque.

I'm back from my trip to the castle with a bunch of photos. The 1st texture is already on the ftp: http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Textures/door2.jpg @renz I don't think we should downsize the textures, just that they fit easier. IMO there won't be any problems with huge high-res textures, cauze 1. our mod will take some time and people will have even better hardware than today 2. HD space also shouldn't be a problem - today almost everybody has more than 100gb HD.

another texture - this time a (IMHO) medieval door: http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Textures/wdn-door1.jpg