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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

Yes, I can, but the more you copy armor, the obviouser it'll be. What's better is to use the same body shape to start, so I can build armor off of that - makes it much easier. For the record, I'm taking a little break today to do my comp sci project. Will work more tonight.

As soon as I'm up and running again I'm gonna start playing around with those concept drawings.

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.

Presumably you're making a sort of mid-poly version, which can be scaled up for the highpoly bumpmap reference, and down for the low-poly ingame mesh, right? Because the highpoly one can afford to have veins, seams, threads, buttons, creases, the whole caboodle of detail. So it's probably best to start in the middle, which is what is looks like you've done. Good work.

Rather than just making what comes to your inspiration, I'm going to start defining targets. Right now, we'll be working on a texture set for a Thief2/Overlook Manse feel - a house with wood, wallpaper, metal, stone, books etc. We are already a fair way there, but we need more flooring especially (wooden & shiny marble a requirement, as well as thick carpet). So carry on, but don't go crazy with some woodsie theme stuff. Next up, I reckon will be more city themed. But first: house textures.

3DS Max R6, using only Editable Polys. The only primitive I've used is a box to start off from. Hell yes for EPoly's cut and slice plane functionality.

Now he has a Bling Purse. Oh yeah. Added lotsa belt detail and so forth. About to start working on the face - wish me luck, friends.

It's not too late to start. If you wanna go ahead and help BT and I out I can tell you everything you need to know to get a basic working texture in place. I had never done any texturework before I started this mod, so it's not really a hard thing to get into. All it takes is patience, trial and error work (I went through 7 specular maps before I got one I was happy with for instance), and a good idea of how to apply depth with heightmaps and you're ready to go. And another test using the new trim is up. Still looks a little plain, need more detailing textures.

K, that's easily done..just gotta add bubbles. Hey Finger...speaking of textures on lights....have you been reading up on that? I haven't even tried looking for any tutorials since I mentioned it awhile back, have you found anything? I wanna start getting into them here soon.

Wow, great start on the house, Fingernail. We need to find a good roof texture. The windows look awesome, but I agree with Ren that they're a bit too big. I love the skyline in the background though, where did you get that? Ren: Your glowy windows look great. Are they supposed to act a light sources though? It looks like they should be casting some blue light around but it doesn't look like they are.

Obviously I've been interested in this mod from the start but since I'm involved in some other issues I've not made any comments. The screens you've show so far are very nice. I don't recognise anyone on the team from other mods or FMs except ModeTwo from TUT and NB. How experienced are you guys? And how are you finding it? My main query is - what will you do if we get the TDS editor? There will be a bit of a software conflict with people making FMs for TDS whilst you guys work on this. Given that you have stated that this will only be out next year at the earliest do you not think that many of your ideas will be overtaken? Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to bring a negative vibe - I'm just being realistic. I don't have Doom3 and won't get it until XMas at the earliest (as that is probably when I'll get my new gfx card). I have a NB/TDS map/FM in the works. It's really a SP FM but I can adapt it to NB MP. If the TDS editor is released I will make it for that 1st. But now I have an MP version designed I want to take to NB eventually anyway. And if there is no TDS editor then I'd love to make it for The Dark Mod as that is the only way the real atmosphere and plot will come out. Can someone explain the SDK/editor score with Doom3? What comes with it and what can you DL? And what are it's limitiation, what is it's scope?

lol, 1024x1024 is WAY overkill for most of the textures we work with. It'll look great for architectural textures, but really unnecessary for wood, surfaces, and trim. I need to start reading up on .dds files to see how to save some space.

I'd guess that any textures, noises, models and what-not created by these guys would be available to FM authors for T:DS also... Its an interesting prospect. T:DS obviously has quite a head start on the Doomed project. Sensible people might jump ship and focus resources there instead. Here's hoping that Eidos and Ion Storm make some kind of decision one way or the other soonish. Currently a level editor is supplied with Doom 3. Some simple mods are possible by hacking texture, model and other files. I could be wrong, but I think that the format for 3d models is the .md5 file type - which has been used by John Carmack and team for years and is well supported with utilities and file converters. ID have promissed to release the full software development kit shortly - which should allow for some pretty serious modding - similar in scope to the situation with Half Life and the Unreal games.

Wow...we really need to start digging up info on light materials. I just got through playing around with a few of them and, except for the frequency, I've caused it to put on an excellent lightning display. You could do so much with it and use only a minimal amount of resources. Want a shadowy silhouette of some trees swaying slowly in a breeze displayed on your windows ? Use a light material. The same could go for casting the same shadow on a wall opposite of a window during a lightning storm...have a tree cast a shadow when a bolt of lightning lights up the sky. You could even have clouds rolling slowly across your floors. There's so much potential here for awesomeness it's not even funny.

Umm. So. I just lost the file for this. I had no backups. Or rather, I had many backups, but only in one folder, so they all got nailed. Um. Yeah. I'm actually seriously in a terrible mood about this now - two or three weeks of work down the tubes. Will be taking a bit of a break before I guess I'll start it again. So.. yeah. If there's any really light 3D work you want done, I may be able to but that's probably it for a bit.

But it is not to soon to think about it. If we have already code to test then it is to late to set it up. At this time we should have a WORKING testenvironment and not only start to think about setting it up. And even if you have it up and running and don't use it for some time now. So what? We will know that it is there when we need it.

My system specs: AMD Athlong XP 2000+ 512MB DDR (Semi-soon to be updated to 1GB) Geforce 4 TI 4200 SB Live! Value Gentoo Linux running kernel 2.6.7 I can set up a mantis system with all the catagories and stuff if you provide me with a place to set this up. (I think mOdE might be willing to host it, i'll ask him when I see him.) But I think you guys should start building stuff first. It's too soon to set up a bug reporting system as of yet. Catagories should be something like, Gameplay, Map, Sound, GUI, Display.

Sounds like a plan to me! I'll start harassing people shortly.

A level design board would be great. Even though we've still got a bit to do before we reach the point where we start mapping hardcore, it'd still be good to throw around some ideas and have everyone comment on what's cool or not. I've already got a great idea for a map, and it'd be cool to have a good place to talk about it at.