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Black cat have their own site, you don't need to go to the Thievery site. Check it: http://www.blackcatgames.com/ I think it is a better pointer than Thievery as TUT is one side of the Black Cat triad, and Alien Swarm did win Phase3 of the MSUR contest! In other news from my brain: I'm glad you guys have taking the line you have regarding copyright elements. The whole debacle with the Sapphire Scar is just disgusting. I can't believe they said it was disrespectful to use the SS2 name. Surely it is in homage. Twits. Beware the suits. Good luck.

I don't really use the ftp, DF, but thanks. Alexius, I disagree about the Hammerites having Roman influence. In the concept art the armour is decidedly late medieval, with full breastplates on both figures, and metal greaves and skirt on the other. Other than the colour and the presence of a tunic, I see nothing Roman about them. Since the Builders are metal workers, and technologically the most advanced group, it seems to make sense to me that their armour should be both advanced and full of heavy metal plates, rivets and the like. I was wavering back and forth about the shoulder plates. I thought adding them might be a little TOO much armour for basic temple guards. I will probably do a more heavily armoured version for the elite guards, however. This concept isn't set in stone. The logos are very helpful, thanks. I particularly like the idea of a hammer with a flame background, like the middle one. Fire would be right up there in Builder symbolism.

Wow, a man of many talents. Coming up with concepts for furniture by doing some research into the relevent time periods is something that needs to be done. I like the museum stand for that reason. The concept art for T3 involved a lot of dynamic sceans and good use of colour, that gave designers a lot to work from. In comparison, that shot of the room with the light on the wall is really bland, in terms of colours, archetecture, and overall feel. When the concept art was drawn with the camera at a really dramatic angle, you might think "well, the camera angle itself isnt' saying much - your viewpoint moves around all the time in the game", but what you really should be getting out of the image, is looking at it at a whole, and it gives you a feeling, and then you say "well, how can I somehow translate that feeling into the game, and give the player that feeling when they play the game?" I think that is the true power of concept art. We need something that says something new. Well not real new - we know what the Thief world is like - dark and moody, with brooding shadows and atmospheric lights, and ominous sillhouettes. But see how the concept art took that "theme" and gave it its own character? It's not easy but that's what I think we should aim for. A unique style of our own. I can see these sketches are just drafts, but they're a good start.

Heh, yeah, I don't normally use crappy speakers for my sound and music needs. I'm getting a new computer soon, and I wont bother to rig my things up again before I get it. I could post the sfx I've made for Thief2D though. Thief2D Music This is a little almost-done music thing for a movie or something. I'll put the sound effects on the FTP once I get a chance.

The artwork is pretty damn good, great for concept drawings. As for mapping it seems you've got a good grasp of how to design levels and looks like you're comfortable with the editor. The map itself seems pretty good overall, but it could do with some throwaway details and some subtle lighting to liven things up a bit, and it couldn't hurt to do some more work on the walls here and there to break up some monotony... I'd say you gots da skizills. I'll ask Fingernail if he thinks we could use another mapper at this point and see what he says.

I've setup an IRC server at 69.200.100.162 for all of us to use. If you want nick reservation e-mail me your nick and a password for it so there are no imposters. Enjoy and have fun. -Phil

Thanks guys! I think it has potential also!! I need to play through Thief 1 and 2 again soon to try and re-capture the feel of some of the aural delights they had. I'm sure you already did this, but while listening to my tracks, close your eyes and try to envision differen't scenes/moods/situations that could be happening. There are a few bits of sounds in there I've noticed, for example, that might work well for machinery -- especially when looped. The piano & strings music sound used in the 'Darkness_Falls-1.mp3' file (about :45 seconds into it) is very similar to the one used in the mansion level of TDS (the level where you could see lightning flashes from inside.) That's the only reason I did that. And, no! Honestly, I've never played Silent Hill. Does it use similar ambience? I watched a friend play a little bit of SH2 on the PlayStation2 many years ago, but I seriously don't remember what the music/ambience was like. I love working with audio, so I'd love to try and help out with the audio portion of things. PS: I've edited my original post to now have the revised URLs. Thanks Renzatic!!!!

Hello. To answer your question reagarding equipment: I'm using a PC, with a Terratec Aureon 7.1 Universe sound card. Cubase SX + VST instruments for music and yes, I also use Goldwave. You can probably upload the files to the Dark Mod FTP server, there is a thread about it where the passwords etc are. I should probably upload the SFX I've done for the Thief2D project there as well. And regarding your samples, some of it sounds good, though I really can't tell since I'm sitting with some really crappy speakers right now.

Excellent, NH! In comparing my Microsoft Word to the J.D. font on your screenshot, though, the spacing between characters seems to be closer in Word for some reason. Was this because of some of the issues you were having with character spacing that they're farther apart in your example? Regardless, good job on the minimalist project. I'll be sure to use it whenever I play TDS again. PS: I tried to download that Charleton zip file, but I get an error. ("Server returned an invalid or unrecognized response.")

Yup, that is a thief font. It's the original font used for letters, journals and books in the original games. It would be SWEET to use that in our mod. I just modified Thief 3 with the original fonts for my Minimalist project. The other original Thief font is called Carelton. It was used on the menu's and some other places in game. Carleton

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.

Don't use realtime render...go into the game for god's sake. Much less memory intensive.

Good use of visportals of course solves many a problem.

The big question is figuring out when to make these sacrifices and why. I'm intending on using a few more brushes than what we saw in Id's maps because Thief is a much slower game and can probably afford a slight framerate drop in comparison. We have this awesome engine at our disposal and all, so of course we should take advantage of it and do things we haven't seen in any Thief game to date....we just gotta use some common sense and think some stuff out. From what I've seen Doom 3 uses about 4000-7000 brushes per map, with usually about 200-400 on display in a single scene (an admittedly pulled-out-of-my-ass estimation) . I plan on using about that same amount of brushes, maybe a little more if the memory requirements aren't too high, and about at most 700 of em onscreen at once. Since the engine can handle that amount you don't have to worry about making any threadbare rooms to save on performance, but to be on the safe side I wouldn't go over that mark. For a quick example here...say you're in a bedroom that's made up of about 150 brushes...you could go ahead and throw a nice transluscent window in there and not worry about choking your graphics card...but if you're in a giant ass entryroom with a grand staircase I'd throw curtains over the windows to keep from drawing what's outside and adding to the burden. lol, kind of a longwinded and sorta preachy post just to say what everyone pretty much already knows, but I wanted to throw it out anyway just to show how I plan on doing the maps.

Your texture alignment is a little rough in some places, and the lighting could use some work, but other than that it's a damn good looking map. The props in particular are really slick.

Hey all - I knocked up a quick model of the wooden inlay trim thing. Unfortunately, in that fateful reformat I lost my Doom 3 install, and the CDs are home. I'll grab them this weekend, but for now I just exported the two ASE files for your use to generate normal maps. I attached it as a zip. There's a good tutorial on doing it at http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=5133 - it should be pretty obvious which of my files is which. WoodInlayLow.zip

In this case, when building, I'd make a really frosted glass texture, and then make a block with that texture and cut out the window holes, putting in a plane of frosted glass texture, rather than use that glass. Other than that, it's quite nice...a bit American Colonial, perhaps?

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.

Wow, great work. Once I'm finished up with my studying and side projects I'll really have to fire up the doom editor and learn how to use it. It looks like a hell of a lot of fun.

And Blackthief's door is now ingame. Could use some sharpening along the edges, and I still haven't done the normal for the wood section yet, but there it is.

If I had a whole suite of textures like this door I'd be able to whip up an awesome map in no time. But as it is, this is what I have done so far...as you can see I'm taking my time with it. The normalmapping process begins...slowly. I can also add in any other type of background so we can make multiple doors using this overlay. And yeah...I know...I took the handle out...I suck. Didn't wanna have to deal with it. Fingernail: It's not bad so far, but your scale is off. Your windows should be about the same size as the door, if not smaller. I have a fairly good roof texture in the package you could use in place of that brick floor...it was one of the few I couldn't get to work so you'll have to screw with it to get it ingame. Edit: Oh yeah! How could I forget my...GLOWY WINDOWS!!! I'm beginning to think that fireplace looks like crap, too.

Hey there, I see you already have a few artists signed up for the "DarkMod," but please let me know if you'd like me to assist in any way. I'd like to help out with the artwork, if possible. Here's my website, showcasing some of my artwork: <link removed> All the artwork is done free-hand (not tracing). Even though I was referencing original artwork on most of the examples, I can create my own stuff, too. To help explain the 1st drawing, that one was done with colored pencils. To help explain the 2nd picture, the following original drawing was provided to me first. I went into PhotoShop and enhanced it to create that 2nd pic on my site: <link removed> To help explain the 3rd picture shown, the following photo is where I got the original Mickey: <link removed> (I made the CGI-looking background free-hand with PhotoShop.) Also, I did the Flash animation at the top of my site completely on my own. All the graphics used in the animation are my own, created in PhotoShop CS. The sounds, on the other hand, actually came from the Tron 2.0 video game; ones that I particulary liked and wanted to use for my animation. I can help create any concept artwork or finalized artwork, such as for maps, characters, weapons or anything like that. I don't have any 3-D computer modeling experience, but I have PhotoShop CS which I'm very familiar with using. I've also worked quite a bit with "dEdit" (editing tool for Tron 2.0 game) and messed around in Blender a little, but not much. Here are a couple Thief "funnies" I did: "Deadly Shadows": <link removed> For the "Blue Arrows" Controversy: <link removed> I also have a Roland XP-50 keyboard that I might be able to help produce sound effects with, if needed. I think I'd be great at voice work, as well, but I don't have any special audio equipment so am not sure how that would be accomplished. Regardless, I just wanted to let you know I'm out here if you need any help. Thanks for your consideration! - Darkness_Falls

I've already got some sketches in the works for guard and builders...what we could really use are things like furniture, lights, mechanical sketches, architecture, etc.

So, are we going to use the same design-document for this one?

Apologies, but from your post... ...It didn't sound like you're quite as sure as you need to be. The SDK is not open source (GTK Radiant is not open source, only the GTK bit is) and GPL is the wrong license to use because of the reasons I have outlined above, and also because you can not link to closed source libraries (such as the Doom 3 engine) under the terms of the GPL. GPL is a wonderfull thing, but is is not the appropriate license for a Doom 3 mod (I mean that in a legal - you will open your self to cease and dessist notices from ID and the free software foundation if you do - kind of way). Sparhawk is on to a good thing to request clarification of copyright issues, but choosing the right license license requires a little care and attention. Good work so far, by the way. I'm looking forward to contributing some stuff to the project