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In actual fact, the every n minutes would be relatively simple to introduce, since I believe a) Doom has timers and TDM will be implementing saving. Duh. Springheel, you completely ignored what I said about customisation: You only have 30 minutes of gaming time? Set it to 10 minute intervals, and I expect with all of these systems there will be a savegame that may be used when exiting. Like I and everyone else says, the system should suit different tastes. i.e. a system where you'd select from (for example:) Number of saves per mission: <number> (-1 for unlimited, 0 for none) OR Saves per <number> minutes Save game on mission change: <yes/no> Save game on exit: <yes/no> In fact the latter two probably needn't even be options, just do it. Some people want to limit these things with in-game enforcement. Think about it - you can select difficulty levels, and the highest difficulty on TMA was always "don't kill anyone." If you played Hard, you could choose not to kill people, but I'm sure you all chose expert for more than just the small increase in guard sensitivity, didn't you? This is just the same, except not tied to the difficulty specifically. If people want to abuse saving as we put it, then let them. They'll probably find a way around it if they want to, anyway. However, the people who would be tempted by unlimited saves but would like to play the game properly can enforce that with actual rules.

It's a piece by Barrios. http://208.49.149.118/floresta.mp3 This is played by John Williams. I have about 30 Cds of guitar music, just about most ever written for or transcribed to the guitar. Recuerdos de la Alhambra is not hard once you've worked out your tremelo technique, it was one of the few pieces I could play without any mistakes.

Ahhh, Recuerdos... A nice little song, that... Well, Fingernail, congrats on your new guitar, it really looks beautiful... And the clips are awesome as well - may I ask what microphone exactly did you use? It sounds quite good for a dynamic... I've got one classical at home, it's just a cheap 200 dollar yamaha, but I quite like it. It has a nice tone (not fantastic, but very good) and intonation is decent - I've played much pricier guitars with much worse intonation, actually. I wonder how is it to play on a 2500 dollar guitar though Like I said, those clips sound really good. Don't think I'd even try to learn those songs as of now. I'm a self taught guitarist, but I mostly play electric guitar (for 2 and a half years) and only occasionally pick up the classical, and even then I prefer to just make something up on my own. I also played piano in the music school for 4-5 years, but forgot most of it. It's been only recently that I began playing it again (only have a synthesizer, though). Currently I'm attending viol classes in the music school and DAMN, I used to think guitar was hard to play O_o Cool to see -and hear- fellow musicians on this board. Really great, TDM is in good hands

Exactly - it shouldn't be connected to the gameplay, that's the entire point of limiting saves in the first place- so the player can't chicken out and save before every hard part, while leaving it so the player doesn't have to play forever before being able to quit the game and do something esle. And the prolem of an autosave happening at an impossible place is not a problem at all, in the rare event that this does happen, the player can always go back to the previous autosave. The savepoints would stack up, which also solves the problem for people who like to have a bunch of saves throughout a misison so they can drop in at any point at a later date.

You guys are talking about this like it's never been done before!! Like I said, many many console games, dramatically non-linear (eg. huge 5 CD RPG epics), have been doing this for years. Eg. City Bank and Trust? Put one in the vault. Put one after every hard-to-get-past barrier. Every thief mission has them. There are plenty of appropriate places for save points, but I'm not going to elaborate. But in all honesty, if you haven't played such games, it's like me trying to explain red to a colour blind person. There is no way I can convince you it works. But I know it does because I've been playing those kinds of games for years.

Cool, will check those out! Based on this conversation, I hit my not-quite-local Guitar Store today (creative name, huh?) for the first time in a long time. Even bought strings. You see, back when I was heavily playing, every single day, in a band, all that crap, I was an old teenager. Since then, I've cooled down a lot, and at some points, actually taken a year or more away from instruments. Yes, it sucks, and I mean to correct it pronto (and have been doing so, recently). Anyway, point is, when I was younger, there was never any reason to touch the really expensive guitars - no money, so what's the point? Without mentioning that my local crappy shop would keep the expensive ones secured up to the wall, and you'd have to get assistance to try it, so it was always easier to just sit down and fiddle with the newest Satriani series Ibanez instead. Well, today, for the first time, I played a $4000 Martin (steel string, unfortunately - they had one lousy classical/nylon in the whole place ). Regardless - oh, dear lord. Long story short: yes, there is a very big difference. It's hard for that thing NOT to sound simply great. The intonation is perfect at every spot on the neck. Good thing my Takamine is still pretty good, or I'd be in for a largish purchase soon. Edit: Wow, I've only got a piece of each so far (56k) but these are excellent. Glad you chose familiar ones - that makes listening much easier and more pleasing. How long have you been classically trained? Edit2: Nice! At the risk of sounding too fanboi: Do you know Recuerdos de la Alhambra?

I suggest that if you die playing a character, that character is now dead and you don't get to play that game anymore - no restoring saves or anything. That'd make people be a lot more careful. Seriously, you guys put way too much emphasis on saving. We've heard a bunch of "solutions" to people CHOOSING to save "too much", and by-and-large these solutions are basically horrible abrogations of immersion. I don't want to be thinking "hmm, I've got just a few saves, should I save now or later?" I don't want to be thinking "damn, that was hard, I'd better find a save-point." A save-counter would be okay, but please don't ruin the experience for the rest of us just because YOU have no self-control or perspective. If you're going around restoring constantly rather than just when you die, you really ought to consider playing on an easier difficulty level, because obviously whatever you've got it set to is too tough for you to handle. I save a fair amount if I've been dying a lot, and otherwise rather rarely, and basically never restore unless I die. That whole "restoring to save ammo" is someone else's crutch and I don't want to have to wear it.

I'm on the last level of the last game all the way on hard mode and no saves cause I can't. "Mission Failed...." NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo o oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo o oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo FOR THE TAFFIN LOVE OF GOD NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooo o oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo o oooooooo! I think you get the point.

Thankfully for me, the ones I get often generally mess my vision, but not bad enough that I cant see, depth perception is rather shaky, and make my head feel like it has nails being driven in it. I only get sick on with the worst ones. Seeing double is a very odd experiance I can do my writing if I have notes beforehand to work from, and cad work helps me concentrate on something other than my own misery (Oh the melodrama) :lol: Seriously It helps me to have something I can do. Strangely enough one thing that actually helps me is watching static on TV, which is hard to do on new TV’s. My optician suggested its something about the shifting light and dark patterns effecting my eyes and brain. It helps a bit anyway. My doc argues with my optician over what gives me them. One is convinced it is the other fault. I tend to think it may be my eyes. I have congenital Browns syndrome, which means that my eyes don’t look in the same place, my right looks slightly down and to the left and the left looks slightly to the right, add to that in one eye I have perfect distance vision while the other is long sighted. Then I have differing colour recognition between eyes, and I have difficulty on occasion of differentiating red from yellow anyway, I have to think about it, when I was younger I couldn’t. Lets face it I’m strange

Ish, ghostability is also subjective. This is no different. You just have to look at all the games that use save points to see that they have them at specific points, right before a hard bit, etc. Supplying an approrpiate number of saves or placing save points appropriately is no different than placing guards or water arrows. It's the FM author's idea of what provides a good balance between challange and fun.

How hard would it be to implement ODE into the engine anyway? It can't be as simple as just slapping the code into the SDK, but how much effort would it take? Now that I think about it it'd probably require all the coding lying in the SDK to fit alongside the new physics engine...it'd be cool, but probably too much work for us to do alone.

Have you thought about allowing level designers to make "custom difficulties"? Not only allowing level designers to choose how many difficulty levels there are and what they're called, but also allowing them to create multiple controls that the player can select at the start of the level. For example, Inverted Manse renamed the difficulty levels to cut-purse, rogue and warrior if memory serves me right. Imagine if for Dark Mod, such a level could instead create a second control and call it "character class". This way, a player could choose both a difficulty and a character type. Maybe you could also allow check-boxes. For an undead mission, a level designer might by default have standard undead creatures but make a check-box called "realistic undead mode" (pardon the oxymoron), so at the mission breifing the player can turn it on/off. With it on, haunts couldn't be killed by backstabbing them, and ghosts could automatically sense the player if they're within 20 feet. (of course the mechanics of setting this up would be implemented in the level, or custom gamesys if Dark Mod has such a thing) You could use such controls to slightly alter the map to facilitate various playing styles/preferences that it would be hard to accommodate simultaneously. As another example, you could make a "ghosting" checkbox, and set up the Easy difficulty so it gives you some extra health-potions if the ghosting checkbox is off, and removes certain guards if it's turned on. Similarly, other difficulty levels might do different things based on the playing style chosen. You could make it so that such controls defaulted to whatever you chose the last time you saw them in the campaign. Just an idea I thought would be cool... I'm guessing you'd probably wait until v2 before considering it?

I like a challenge. I haven't killed anyone since my first playthrough of T2 when I got mad at the Mechanists in Trail of Blood and decided to switch from hard to expert simply so I could kill every single one of them. I've played thru T2X without KO'ing anyone so far. There is no coded in limitation that stops me from doing these things. I make up the rules, I follow the rules, it's a challenge, it's fun. How is that any different from telling yourself "I'm only going to save twice on this entire mission," and then following that rule? We can make killing and even KO'ing have realistic consequences in order to make the game more immersive and challenging. But we can't really have realistic consequences for saving, because saving is not realistic. Saving and loading are an abstract system that exists outside of the rest of the game that's trying to simulate life. Saves are not just for when you screw up either. A lot of the time in T2, AI get stuck on a wall or turning in circles, and the only way I've found to fix it and make the AI go back to their intended patrol paths is to save and load right then. It would be very frustrating if I couldn't do that.

I checked out ODE which is an open source physics engine. I think it is used in Stalker or some other upcoming high profile game. Even this physics engine can do this. It's not really much what is shown. Some blocks are falling and occasionally a wheel or barrel. All this is pretty slow movement anway so it is not that hard to do. I don't know if Havoc can do high speed physics as well, but I assume so. High speed physics is much harder to code because it creates much more problems. For example: Firing a bullet and let it ricochet correctly and then create such a cascading system. That would put a physics engine more to the test. As I understood D3 physics can do this, but it wouldn't correctly handle this scenario from this movie (maybe).

Saving constantly is not the same as god mode. Because the player still has to actively do his actions in order to get along. In God mode this is no longer true, because he simply doesn't need to care. I did some cheats for C64 games because they were to hard. I usualy only did the unlimited live feature because this requires me still to play the full game, only without restarting every five lives. While when I would createa god mode it owuld be quite different to play, because the gameplay can be totally ignored, which is not true for unlimited lives (or unlimited saves which is basically the same).

Yeah, it could be a bitch if there is only one objective, and it takes six hours to reach it... :lol: But hopefully FM authors have the sense to balance things like this out (assuming they are implemented, of course). A really large, hard map should have more save points, or more objectives (with save on completion) than a small, easy one. I personally like checkpoints, especially if they are done in a way that you don't notice when a checkpoint has been reached - in some games a small drop in framerate and an inconspicuous messages is the only clue you have that an autosave has occured. I would be really happy with not telling the player at all that the game has been saved, keep 'em on their toes I say! I think it is a good thing to give players the message, one way or another, that saving constantly is the same as using god mode or unlimited ammo, and is a form of cheating, and I think the default game setting for FMs should be for restricted saving only (and players have to go to some effort to unlock unlimited saves)...

so if you take that concept right to being able to save all the time, then the player is only tihnking about the small spans of time inbetween the very frequent times they save, so that's worse, and not a problem inherent with save points. Its a GOOD thing taht they focus on the points in tbetween, because the level designer will force them to experience those bits the way they were meant to be, rather than in mini, disjointed experiences caused by saving too frequently. That's pretty much it. When the FM author controls where and when you can save, you get the idea of how hard it's supposed to be in which area. With unlimited saves, anything can become easy. You effectively control the difficulty level! Totally my point, everytime I bring this topic up You find ways of doing things you wouldn't have realised before, and the exhilleration of acheiving things that way is much more rewarding. Buuuut as you guys can see, I don't get much support from the team on this topid What I really want is for this to be an optional feature, that can be turned on or off by the player. The FM author just provides the additional "save point" (or whatever) info, and if the option is turned off, its not used, you can save whenever you want. But I would eagerly leave it on, getting much more excitement playing a level the way the FM author intended

You're right so I took out my thing about ruining the save. I still don't like them though, cause then those certain points become save zones and players may think of only getting between them, and not pay attention in between. I'm probbaly gonna go with unlimited Saves on Easy, a fair number on Medium, a smaller number on Hard, a couple on Expert, and none on Advanced Reality. The player still gets to decide when and where to save.

IT's the guys who designed, built and textured the level plus the other guys who've work on water etc who've 'done it', not the Doom engine. Of course it's capable of a lot if you put a lot of hard work into it, the renderer is the best on the market.

Hey LLoyd, welcome aboard! I think, besides "swimable" water, a main goal of our player physics is to pick up items with something resembling the gravity gun or setting g_dragentity to 1 functionality, and also have some way of pushing/pulling items that are too big to pick up (aside from just walking into them). We decided that we want to have a "use" key, and this key will also physically interact with all physical items (idMovables). When one is too large/heavy to pick up, the item will not hilite when you look at it, but you'll be able to exert some force on it like a push or pull at the point where the center of your screen intersects the item. For things that are small/light enough to pick up, they do hilite when you look at them, and you can pick them up and "hold" them at arms length in front of you, then throw them and drop them. (We also have some plans for advanced manipulation, like rotating them about 2 axes to precisely place items, if possible). I think that's the main goal of player physics for now. We have done a lot of the groundwork done for "frobbing" or hiliting items when you look at them and having them respond to the use key. Someone will probably correct me on this, but I think the tasks involved in this system are: Interacting with Physical Items - Detect if the item is small/light enough to be picked up and held in front of the player (maybe take volume, and volume * density, and check if each are below some maximum) If idMovable is too large to pick up: - If the item is an idMovable, but too large to be picked up, call something like idPhysics::ApplyImpulse to push or pull the item right at the point where you're looking at it (for example, you could push over a heavy chair or statue by shoving it near the top) NOTE: I'm not sure exactly how we'll do pushing and pulling. There were some ideas like you can hold down the use key while looking at a large item, then walk around, and if you walk forwards it pushes the item at the point you're looking at, while walking backwards pulls the item toward you. NOTE 2: The force you apply to the item should have a realistic value for human strength. So no tossing around 500 lb statues. If you can pick up the item: -If it is able to be picked up, the item is held in front of you, and stuff like using weapons and other items are temporarily disabled. -The item should be able to collide with things in the world while you're holding it (I don't think this will take extra coding since this already happens when you use g_dragentity) -You should be able to throw the item (probably by pressing "use" key again) or drop the item (we'll have a "drop" key for this purpose). Dropping the item just lets it drop under the influence of gravity from whatever height you're holding it at. -Lower priority but we still want it if possible: Ability to rotate the item in front of you around two axis: the "gravity" axis (veritcal) and the axis going thru both the player's shoulders, but translated into the center of the item (ie, the "horizontal" axis). As you "drag" the item around with your mouseview, its rotational orientation should not change. Example: You knock over a vase by accident. You pick it up, rotate it until it's upright, angle the mouse down slowly to set it down again). -Recently we've been talking about the possibility of using the item as an improvised shield in combat. The item would have to be damagable, and get destroyed when the AI hits it. If the item is pretty hard to break, like a chunk of rock, we decided it should have some chance of falling out of your hands when the AI hits it, so you can't block with it indefinitely.

dear odd:) you are a hopeless case:) but i like you like this. Dont change:) for anyone... And there are so many things to hate...hating a movie?..Come on... it s nothing.. .hating a game can be..Because you are spending hours, and if the game bad executed it s making you suffer while you playing it.. . But "hating" a movie..... oh man... 2 hours of view.... Ahh wish i could hate just like you do...but hey....TEACH me Hating .. Teach me how to hate.. how do you expect "something" from a movie...How does it fail you..How do you feel yourself BAD because of a Movie released for everyone... I mean there are riddles in human mind i HAVE to know before dying...Why im just watching a movie and thinking about to hard work of artists and respect their devotion... How can i oversee things which is so certain ? Please teach me...to hate... Be my master. Do i have a hope ..ok i hate some games in some terms... Is it enough Or should i watch Fight Club over and over again till i Hate everything.... BEST (i can change i can changeeeeeeeeeeee.....)

dear oddity You are right ..yes ..in starwars world they could have crafted so much better storyline, twists etc. BUt this is not aim of Lucas i believe. Think He is rich, (he was rich before movie making) he has his own sound system (thx) he has his own special effect house, and he has his own digital camcorders (spesifically designed for him) .. I mean he established this industry in some level. And when you model a character you are modelling from your own mind and living and even hating style (which i like most:)) but i CANT judge your creations. This is how you see the life . Also im feeling so lucky whenever you release a model in Dark Mod everytime you are redefining "modelling". It s so good to see and follow your path. Because you are different. Your style is making you unique. I m not saying your way of modelling is the ONLY way of modelling. No but i Like your modelling way. ALso Lucas has his OWN filmmaking skills. Noone is saying he is master of writing or inventor of twisted climaxes. Noone shouldnt expect this qualities (actually his first movie was pretty rock on). And forgive me WHo the hell are we and saying ? he couldnt have done better. No .this is his art. He created this form of filmmaking. We have only two choices "like it" or "dont like it". That should be the way of watching movie. You are visiting a person mind's room. In that room there are MANY MANY thoughts( film ratings, budgets, agreements with the publishing company, potential target audience response, pleasing the hardcore fans and also add new bees to the storyline..) And it s pretty hard to Please everyone with just ONE movie. But from the reactions, boxoffice numbers he almost accomplished one impossible task. (and one personal note.."do it all by oneself" is a sickness that im suffering as well BEST

Nice effort, but the geometry in T2 is a bit dated these days - will look better if you use a bit more geometry to flesh out the detail. The textures look much beter with bump maps, but don't overdo the bump depth, and use higher res bump maps to iron out the pixellation a bit. I think with a bit of work, you can make some very good shaders out of the T2 set (remember they are copyright, so if you want to release your textures/map, you will have to make your own from scratch, or Eidos might get cranky with you..). Use a more subtle amount of blue in the window lighting - subtlety is the key to making things look realistic and immersive, if you use lights that are too saturated it will tend to look garish and unnatural. Try ading some grime layers to the textures in Photoshop/Paintshop, they will bring textures to life, it is the little scratches, scuffs, stains that you will find on things in RL (even brand new ones) that make your world look believable. Use decals and objects to fill out the detail, and you are on your way to something very good. I apologise if I seem overly critical.... I really like the idea of re-making old games with new game engine technology - the increase in graphical detail since T1/T2 were released is huge, and you could really make something special if you work hard at it. One of the ideas I have been messing around with is creating an installer program that can be used to extract resources like sounds, textures, movies etc from old games, add new content, and install as a total conversion for a next gen engine. that way you could make all of your new stuff to replace the old, then use the original content that is still OK, thereby circumventing copyright issues. Because each person will install using their own copy of the original game, no copyright material is being transferred illegally, and it also means download file sizes can be smaller. So the Dark Mod could, since the resource files in T2 are just .zip files with a different extension, use a program to extract sounds, text, etc to install original T2 content, and modders build re-makes of the level maps, textures and models, and voila! T2 remade with improved graphics and engine... Not being a programmer, I would have to find someone else to do the grunt work involved though... There was talk of the original Unreal game being remade with the Unreal 3 engine, I don't know if it will happen, but it would look impressive, I imagine. It is a pity that Valve stuffed up the Original Half -Life to Source engine conversion, all they changed was the physics and a couple of textures, most was the original content, so there was not really a noticeable improvement on the original.

I'm glad someone else appreciates the visual aspects of Lucas' works. Stunning digital landscapes in these latest three. Just think about it -- we're making a video game and surely you can see how much work they must put into their highly-detailed digital sets and designs! How hard are you working just to try and pull off a room with a couple doors, real lighting, hardwood floors and a few things animating? Look at how much action is going on in Lucas' films! Most of the time your mind doesn't even realize they're created on computers. Nothing short of amazing, if you think about it. Next time I watch it, I will pay more attention to the musical score. Every time I watch it, I will be able to focus on something new (besides the dialogue/acting) because there is so much going on that I can appreciate.

Thanks for explaining that, I assumed the worst only because in the past I've been on lists that treated newbies +hard+. Plus I've been trying to edit with a goddam skeleton program for the last week. Please note I certainly dont expect lightning service, you guys are too busy producing glorious miracles, but I thought I was getting the "treatment" for a bit.