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Well I can confirm that from personal experience. In Doom 3, every spider you see that comes from a vent, drops down from the celing, or breaks out through a panel, stuff like that, is all a scripted sequence. Pretty much anything that isn't walking on floor and dodging left and right and attcking you, is a scripted sequence. Yeah there was all that effort into that mod for just getting monsters to walk on walls. It may not have been easy, but they just may have done all the hard work for us

REally? It was hard to tell, they were all so blocky looking. Not their fault of course, the engine couldn't handle much more. Increased realsim in the models means people are instantly goign to recognise repeating models.

Linux is great, but I could never have my users at work switch from Windows to a graphical Linux enviorment. It would simply confuse 99% of them, it would require hours and hours of new courses - not to say that I would probably spend all day sitting on the support phone helping Linux dummies starting a Write application. Actually, I highly doubt we will ever move away from Windows. One thing is that our users would have a hard time adapt to the new system, another thing is that many applications and websites our users work with in the every day situation simply require IE 6.x and/or ActiveX. We've already had lots of problems with this since roughly 85-90% of our machine park is still running Windows NT (we're slowly progressing to XP these days). Let me just add that I hate all of the code developers programming for IE/ActiveX and other must-have-Windows script languages.

I try to be patient with religious people and as long as they leave me alone I leave them alone. But inside, I have to admit that its hard to think of them as fully competent adults with rational minds. I know this is a prejudice and I have taken steps to address these attitudes but when I hear that simple horseshit start to tumble out of their mouths I ususally pigeonhole the individual in the "mystical minded" kook-ball list.

Ahh, gotchya Yeah, I wouldn't be too concerned with oDDity's comments when he words things that way. Don't focus too much on the "my opinion is the best and your's sucks" aspect of his posts; try to instead read through the lines and just hear the underlying thought of what he's trying to convey. Wording things in a non-tactful way and belittling your opinion is just his way. Heh, I've grown to the point that it kind've makes me laugh in appreciation that he has the guts to speak his mind in such a non-tactful and unpopular way so much. It's hard or impossible to change someone's mind on something; especially oDDity's when he talks about something he strongly believes in. Don't let it get to you. That's just my advice. He's got a lot of knowledge on things. Look past what you may see as attacks and just hear what he has to say. Then take it or leave it, or comment on the underlying facts, rather than focus on the put-down sort of things. He normally tells people to chill out with regards to his posts. I interpret this to mean he's just speaking his mind, albeit in a very opinionated fashion, and that we shouldn't take them so personally.

How do you suggest that be accomplished? Making a movie/video-game/etc is often an expensive process. You say rich fatcats should be done away with, but what would be a good way to fund art without them? At least with the current model people have a choice about which art to fork over their hard-earned cash to support. Admittedly, I think that most players have poor taste. For example, I hate how most competitive FPS gamers prefer mindless reflex battles to strategy; I prefer to be killed by a camper any day rather than some twich-happy gamer jumping around like an olympic gymnist. ...but hey, if that sort of thing entertains so many people it can't be all bad. Just realize that during Shakespear's time, he was thought to be pandering to the penny-knaves, and producing mindless entertaining crap that catered to mass-markets rather than intellectual high-brow poetry and art. And now we see him entirely differently. Maybe a hundred years from now, Counterstrike and Halo will be seen the way Shakespear is. *shudder* Oh well... If that's the price to pay for having so many games to choose from (even if they're all clones of eachother), then so be it. So long as we don't outlaw people from writing their own games, I'll be happy.

The problem also lies with the mainstream audience that keeps forking over cash to see the same shit over and over like sheepish drones. I was hoping that the "slump" that the box office was encountering was going to continue hard, and give those corporate fat cats a message that the same old rehashed shit is now becoming worthless even to your simple minded mainstream audience.

What's important to me is what sounds good, not what is technically difficult. And I reiterate: most music - of all types - is shit. I agree, and I think the reason is related to why the majority of video games are shit. Important decisions are not made by the artists who create such things but rather by a boardroom full of suits who are looking at the bottom line and nothing else, who get paid a lot of money to worry about only the bottom line. Take modern movies for example, or television. Ever wonder why you see the same movie made, over and over and over and over again? The 400th edition of the "bad news bears" is out again with Billy Bob Thornton. For those with the pleasure of not knowing who the Bears are, they are an American cinema tradition, a simplistic tale of a crappy little league baseball team thats poor, outcast, from the wrong side of town. But this team turns it all around, with the right attitude and the willingness to sidestep rules (i.e. cheat) lo and behold the Bears emerge triumphant at the end of the movie! Of course, they have always emerged triumphant, at the end of the movie, in fact the fucking story hasnt changed since I watched the first goddamn version of the movie 20 years ago. Its an important American myth, the underdog struggling against the status quo and emerging triumphant due to pluck, personal responsibility, and yanking hard on one's own bootstraps. Why do we keep seeing the same story told over and over? I believe in part its because somewhere in Gollywood, a room of managers and money people decided that "Dang, this scripts been around for about 20 years! It must work, other wise why would it have been around this long?" It seems a safe bet, and when short term profits, pleasing stockholders, and keeping your job are your primary concerns safe bets are the way to go. Art under capitalism tends to become a commodity, like anything else. When something becomes a commodity, free wheeling notions like artisitic integrity, fuck even the notion of the product being art, go out the window.

You're having a laugh again, right? Bach was an extremely daring harmonist given the style he composed in. You just listen to his three and four part fugues. Too melodious = Yes, he was a die hard conservative, which makes the music he created all the more amazing, and the fact that he influenced just about every composer who lived after him. Das wohltemperierte klavier alone is enough to put him among the all time greats, never mind the thouisands of other pieces he wrote.

It would to some extent, but if it's a flashlight type concept it's not too hard to turn off quickly, whereas i like the idea of having to cast it away somewhere like Ihad to in many T2 FMs where you were given a lantern to carry around. We definietly need this. The part in the T2 manual didn't cut it - "start the first mission, you should only just be able to see the trees against the wall". We need a specific screen.

Wouldn't completely lighting up the player balance it being unlimited? Although it would be a complete pain to program, if guards could notice and investigate moving lightsources (or ones that aren't supposed to be there) that would also help balance it. The way I see it, is that a portable light-source increases a mapper's options for lighting, more than it increases a player's abilities. Heck, it could make life harder on the player because hiding loot in dark corners suddenly becomes a little bit more legitimate if the player has a light source. BTW... this seemed like a good place for the following request... Some games have a calibration picture by the gamma slider so you can play the game how its creators intended. Usually they say something like "You shouldn't be able to see the word 'dark' but you should be able to just barely read the word 'dim'." Could the DarkMod include something like that? Although stealth/gameplay and the light-gem should probably prevent maps from diverging too wildly, it's still not hard to imagine someone who always plays with the gamma up making darker maps, or someone who plays with it down making brighter maps, each person having done so under the assumption that the player will use a similar gamma.

It's not a reality simulator, yet people find they are immersed in the world more if they can "believe" what's going on. You need a happy medium. From what I know about the DarkMod team, I'm sure we will have that. Grappling hooks - definetly want to be aiming for that, but choosing a rope arrow instead and only being able to climb a rope arrow vertically with no swinging, is currently the same reason for us as I think it was for LGS - grappling hook physics would be insane to get right. Even if you got it behaving the way you wanted, there would be some amazing bugs to work out. If you guys like elegance, you'll be happy with what sophisticateZombie has done for our mantling It's awesome. Back on track, personally I think the personal light source should be unlimited, but possibly hard to refuel, or get going or something, to compensate for being unlimited. I want it to be unlimited so that i could make a mission that has a part like a cellar or underground cave and not have to put strange light sources in that take up resources and arent' very realistic. If it's limited, the player can always run out, making that part o fthe mission impossible to walk through and require a re-load. And if I put heaps of personal light source fuels in to compensate, I may as well make the personal light source unlimited anyway.

The simple solution to looking around while you are moving is to bind a key, say CTRL maybe, to a finction that enables you to look around while you are moving but doesn't let you turn. While you hold the key down, moving the mouse moves the view without affecting the direction the player is moving in, when you let go, you go back to the normal mouslook mode. A very simple, elegant solution IMO, and it should be quite trivial to code as far as I know. If you really wanted to you could use the turn keys as well while holding down the no-turn-look key, allowing for some pretty complex movement capability, although I can't see anyone doing that. Are you going to have the "body awareness" thing that TDS had, where you could look at your feet when you climbed a ladder etc? For me, it makes the game a bit more immersive, because I don't feel like I am invisible to myself, but I understand if it is difficult to code... Obviously it is very hard to give the player in a computer game anywhere near the same sense of awareness in a computer game as they would have in RL, but I really don't see how sillhouettes could be a problem if implemented well, provided they don't put too much of a drain on the CPU...

I'm not too sure about how these types of shoulder pads connect to the breastplate, but I just started animating them as if they were pretty loose. Not hard to fix if it's a problem. I've only really added their animation into the cough clip so far anyway (which I just updated btw)

I've never even animated a non bipedal character so I'm no expert but the walk cycle looks a bit odd to me. The head section looks totally stiff like it's moving forward by itself unaffacted by the legs. If you took out the ground beneath him it would look like it could be a flying spider animation as well heh. I think it's because there's no real weight bearing poses maybe? But I'm not sure how that'd work really since spiders dont have much weight and are really strong as well. But also, the two front legs look like they're mostly just sliding outward to the side. Like I said though, I don't know much about animating character with more than 2 legs, and I am certainly no expert on spider walks so I could be wrong about this all. Damn thinking about it now, animating something with 8 legs must be hard as hell. I think I remember liking the spider from lotr, but I have a horrible memory. Maybe a good idea to check it out though.

Blender is rather awkward to learn. If you are used to Maya I think it's easier, but anyway. All apps require a learning curve, but in case of Blender it is rather hard. This has improved though, since it went open source.

The hand movement in itchhead looks unnatural. He uses all fingers to scratch his had, which looks kind of weird. Normally when I scratch my head like this I would make like a fist (not fully but alsmost) and use only the index finger to scratch. The same happens on the first animation, brush_chest. The coughing looks really good! The casual stand is IMO the most natural looking. Perfect. I don't know about stretching. Something is wrong with it. At first I thought it may be to short, but then I tried it myself and the timing seems to be ok. But the camera movement interferes a bit with looking at the actual animation. Could be that it is just that. After watching it several times it may be that there is a small pause in it, but it is hard to tell with the camera. Apart from that it looks very natural as well. Glanceback is also great. I like especially the small pause before he fully turns around. I think we may need a full turn around as well there. So that he glances back, and when he doesn't note anything he will turn back, while when he sees something he would turn around full then.

I really don't think that knowing how much room your body takes up is that hard to figure out, you get a pretty good idea by observing how close you can get to wall before the collision stops you from going any further. Do you really ever look behind you while you are moving? That is not a smart thing to do, especially if you are in a strange dark place where you are trying to be stealthy. The sensible thief will of course stop moving before looking around. And not being able to tell exactly if you are 100% properly hidden or not is part of the fun - it makes it more challenging and exciting when every now and then you slip up and have to make a run for it, or quickly duck for cover before the AI goes to the next stage of alert... And naturally, a thief would prefer to rob a residence that is unoccupied, but you are wrong about about real life robberies - actual crime statistics show that they happen just as often when the occupents are down one end of the house having dinner or watching TV, and the thief is down the other end raiding the bedrooms etc (this is from an article I read in a magazine, with interviews with actual thieves - I'll try and track down the article if I can). Anyway, the FM author will give the player a reason for being in an occupied building - that is where the story kicks in - you might have to burgle a mansion that is guarded 24/7, and has live in servants etc, which is hardly uncommon for a wealthy residence, so that would not be at all unrealistic.

That's where wall flattening would actually help you realistically [ Edit: Also, hiding in alcoves on the side of a hallway, behind load bearing columns on the sides of the hallway, inside curtains on hallway windows, etc. Again, it's up to the FM author not to screw up the gameplay in their mission. If the author puts in a long, absolutely straight hallway with flat walls (nowhere to hide on the sides) and a brightly lit wall at the end, then yes, it would be hard to go down that hallway and remain unseen, just as it would be in RL. I think the original Thief's deliberately put darker areas at the edges of hallways also to kind've simulate the fact that you're less visible when you stick to the edges of the walls, even tho their engine wasn't up to calculating silhouettes. ]

Well, I guess if you have already put the hard yakka into making rope arrows, I can hardly begrudge you that I would like to see vine arrows if you are going to have rope arrows, they are marginally more realistic if you suppose they are magic vines that grow really fast... The climbing gloves in TDS allowed you to climb much too quickly, and you should run out of strength if you hang onto the wall too long, and fall off. That would balance it a bit more, so you didn't feel like you were cheating by using them. But I still liked the climbing gloves, perhaps it was the nostalgic reminder of my rockclimbing days, or maybe just because I could climb without rope arrows. It is a shame that the climbing gloves never really opened up a lot of areas - I tried climbing all over the place in TDS, only to encounter invisible barriers everywhere... shame they were implemented so poorly in TDS.

I've been having trouble with the buttons too, I couldnt figure out why I kept quoting the message above the one I wanted. Are the new buttons the reverse of the old? Ill summarize my post: Springheel, u asked what the point was if AIs and player could both see, I had two responses. Myself personally I would rather have a really dark map and the ability to see in the dark( or light my own way) and have AIs that could see in the dark as opposed to an abnormal amount or even presence of torches, at least in some settings. Two, those powers, more importantly the players, should have limitations, liabilities. Say an amulet of all-seeing is provided, it should only maybe be usable for short periods of time, or perhaps it drains your lifeforce slowly as you use it, a classic balance mechanism for magical tools/weapons. Strong advantages need to be balanced with a strong liability. Make it rare to find, expensive, dangerous, something. As to the discussion of the use of magic, it can be overdone and noone wants that, I would certainly enjoy an FM that was strictly tools and wits, no magic at all, but I enjoy the fantasy element that magic opens up just as much. Less is more, make magic expensive, dangerous, and hard to find for the player and use it as a rationale only when absolutely necessary to achieve a certain aim. P.S. I think the Emporer's lamp story is a myth, unless those vats were airtight and sterile, the fat molecules in the oil would have chemically degraded, no? Oxidation would have slowly "burnt" the oil away into other stuff. I think.

well not really - the trousers, the shirt, the vest, the shoulder-parts and the boots are all seperate objects in seperate layers. I actually don't know why I extruded the pouches, but it won't be hard to fix that. Regarding the small details, like bootlaces - does it matter, if the meshes intersect each other`? I know that game engines usually don't like intersecting meshes, so I wasn't sure how the render of lightwave will handle that.

I dont want NVGs either and the spooky colored Party-Pak torches are great sometimes but its hard to believe that EVERY abandoned castle, rotting mansion, defiled church, or ancient cave would have an obviously man-made light source like a torch burning away merrily for thousands of years until the Thief stops by. Are there no DARK places in the DarkMod? There has to be a magical way out. A potion of night vision, amulet of true vision, monocle of magnificent magnification, whatever. As for a sense of smell, its a great idea, and one sorely missing from the Thief universe. Goodness, none of the guards ever thought of hunting for a Thief with a dog? They got rats,cats,giant preying mantiss, and bats, but no mutts? "Benny, release the hounds!"

Spar implemented an awesome light gem which also looks at the falloff texture to get the value of how lit the Thief is, so even though the falloff is done with a texture and the actual light is hard edged, as far as the light gem is concerned the fall off is real Oh I see what you mean - you mean sillhouette instead of contrast right? Then the answer is yes. Guards won't see your dark form if you are in shadow but the background is bright (creating a sillhouette). You are in shadow and that's the end of it.

Well, perhaps magical torches? burn with a different flame colour for that eerie feeling. How about a lighter? I don't think it would be terribly hard for a hammerite or mechanist (or any other mechanically inclined individual) to create a lighter of sorts. They had the gas lamps in thief 2. Or you could make the lighter magical, though it wouldn't be much of a difference. Thinking about fire, would it be going too far to make a semi realistic fire system? where fire can spread (given fuel). I'd like to see missions where the player goes in to steal something and uses a fire as cover to escape or something like it. And it would be cool seeing fire arrows set the guards clothing alight and them running about screaming, trying to find water or something to put it out. or the player being traped in a burning building and needing to stumble his way through the flames and smoke to escape. The only problem is that if you were to make it realistic in terms of buildings burning down, well that obviously puts a huge strain on modeling a building, and could also unbalance the game with the player going pyromaniac on the mission. And IMO flames as currently rendered in games today are pretty crapily done, and from what i can tell a particle system that does fire justice would suck alot of cycles, so it would either chug or look like shit. Just for a bit of a giggle factor if the lights are out both the player and any human guards should have big trouble seeing and hitting each other, any sound should give the player (or the guards) position away (so guards try to be quiet as well). on the nightvision stuff, in Dungeons and Dragons there are a few things creatures/characters can have to improve their vision/detection: Low light vision - light is amplified. Dark vision - magical, can see in total darkness but only in greyscale. True seeing - magical, everything looks as though it's lit by candle light and there are no shadows, the characters eye's glow and no creature in line of sight can hide from them. Scent - obviously for creatures with a good sense of smell, ie dogs. but it could add that little bit extra to the game, like guard dogs, if you come close enough they will be able to smell you even if they can't see you and start seeking you out. Perhaps it could be possible to add those as something a mission maker can enable with specific magic items or on other creatures/guards/NPC's as default. ah shit i ranted again...