Things that could be improved

[aidakeeley]

Good luck getting any two people to agree on what they should look like, how they should function, etc...

 

:laugh: :laugh:

:laugh: :laugh:

:laugh:

:laugh:

 

Ain't it the truth?

 

That BikeShed thing is becoming a freaking epidemic.

[Melan]

Ah, I thought there was one based on this early concept (all images except elemental are from The Dark Fate):

We also know these guys below will probably not make it (which is too bad, I would much rather have them than dogs):

 

What sort of nonhumans are still being planned? The wiki has a picture of a fire elemental (probably not the most complicated task to make)...

...and I found this among the concept shots - pretty blatant, but even if cut, the base (minus the silly spikes) might make a great Thief model:

 

Or is that confidential matter?

Edited July 12, 2010 by Melan

[jaxa]

I meant the entire cast... of bots

 

 

The changelog for 1.02 mentions that the "Lantern Bot AI was added." I haven't seen that used in a mission or any fresh images of it yet. I was also wondering if there were plans for other bots in the future, like the scout and sentry from TMA, and if they will have vocal sets.

[Melan]

The lanternbot is in there, and it looks mighty good. But just like haunts revenants, level builders haven't had the time yet to build the missions where they will make an appearance (except yet unreleased internal levels).

[Midnight]

The problem with steam beasts is that even in T2 a lot of people were split on whether they fit in the universe. I love the lantern bot, but I'm not so sure about steam beasts, at least how they were in T2. I'd definitely like to see the equivalent of watchers though. Even if they were simple cameras like the one in Cragscleft, maybe with a steam whistle for an alarm.

[Springheel]

Ah, I thought there was one based on this early concept (all images except elemental are from The Dark Fate):

 

That was something Oddity did before TDM. We don't have that model.

 

What sort of nonhumans are still being planned? The wiki has a picture of a fire elemental (probably not the most complicated task to make)...

 

The elemental is basically done, but we don't have the flying code right now. We also have a wolfbeast that just needs a little tweaking to get ready.

 

...and I found this among the concept shots - pretty blatant, but even if cut, the base (minus the silly spikes) might make a great Thief model:

 

That's a TDS shot.

[nbohr1more]

I know that a full-fledged festival/carnival would probably be out-of-reach but perhaps some fire jugglers, acrobats, etc to entertain Builders while you sneak by?

[Melan]

Springheel: thanks. Whoa, didn't know that assassin was from TDS - since I found it among TDM concepts, I automatically thought someone did a mockup for it. The more you know...Still, I would love to have a Thief AI in a similar mouse-grey outfit. Very fitting.

Edited July 12, 2010 by Melan

[LEGION]

That bot from Oddity is very beautiful. A texture like that would fit the spiderbot very well too. Now it looks too much like TMA. If you make bots/beasts, make them more dark and terrible please. That would fit more the TDM, because for me the world here is more serious and cruel than in that older Franchise. And Fire Elementals, I don´t think they fit in, sorry. (I just don´t like them) Maybe they could use more of a 'body' than just a flameball....

 

Just my opinion.

 

Is there somewhere a picture of the Lanternbot(or is it in fact the SpiderBot?)?

Edited July 12, 2010 by LEGION

[Serpentine]

That bot from Oddity is very beautiful. A texture like that would fit the spiderbot very well too. Now it looks too much like TMA. If you make bots/beasts, make them more dark and terrible please. That would fit more the TDM, because for me the world here is more serious and cruel than in that older Franchise. And Fire Elementals, I don´t think they fit in, sorry. (I just don´t like them) Maybe they could use more of a 'body' than just a flameball....

 

You can always re-skin the bot for a mission or something, the UV is pretty good (don't even think it uses any other materials) and given a little bit of time you could come up with some quite nifty skins and add some personality. As for the fire elemental, I think it's planned by Spring but not 100% sure.

[LEGION]

I don´t know if it worked before the update, but actually AI´s don´t have footstep-sounds for wood. Test it in Fidcals Test Trainer.

 

And I would like to know about the ability for guards to switch lights back on. (maybe, if they are already in the room they could wait five seconds before they do)

 

And I found out that guards are faster than the player! (before you might ask: I used the default settings for Player-speeds!) On Sons of Baltona Part I guards eventually kill me while running! That´s not good. The player should always be faster than guards (while running) because he wears not as much weight than them.

[Springheel]

The player should always be faster than guards

 

He is.

[LEGION]

In Sons of Baltona he is not, and that´s not due to changes I maybe made, that´s for sure. I´ll test in another map...

[Mr Lemony Fresh]

You know, if you want the player to move faster you can always change the DoomConfig.cfg file and set the run/crawl/walk speed. Since the majority of people are happy with it, you may as well just please yourself.

 

EDIT: OH, and you should also be aware that if you are looking back at the guard to see if he is catching up, you are running slower because people usually do if they are running backwards unless they want to trip up

Edited July 15, 2010 by Mr Lemony Fresh

[Mr Lemony Fresh]

I have an idea, what if you were able to wait for an enemy down below, then when they were beneath you, you could jump down ontop of them and klnock them out. And if you pick up some of the heavier objects like a rock, you can either knock them out or kill them depending on the size and what their wearing.

 

It wouldn't break the gameplay because the sound of falling on a guard with metal armour letting out perhaps a loud gasp and crashing to the ground could cause a disturbance if there are guards nearby, but be a good way to take out a solitary guard, and perhaps an accompany if you're fast.

 

Not sure if this has already been said, but I couldn't find anything searching with google.

[LEGION]

Hehe, actually this seems to be a problem with the Baltona-mission. Just played Return to the City by Melan and I was able to create a gap between me and them. About the same time I was killed in Sons of Baltona I. Although, I could create a gap they finally killed me and tonight I really had trouble blackjacking. Forgot that you have to aim this high. And guards cornering me let me wish of some stealth-moves to quickly overwhelm a guard. It´s not very Thief-like but who says our hero isn´t capable of such moves?

 

And I encountered the possibly worst ever created font (beside symbolic ones) to read. Really, dear well respected TDM-Team, please substitute this handwriting-font! I beg you, please! The most I wasn´t able to read. I really like readables but with this font it´s only frustrating. Please, change it!

[Mr Lemony Fresh]

I think that's up to the person who writes the readable (as far as I know)

[Tch]

It is, but people are still using it! The papers are called "readables", but this font is anything but.

[Melan]

It is more challenging to decipher than some other fonts, but that's sort of the point. Plus it can be gotten used to.

 

I haven't heard complaints about it before.

Edited July 16, 2010 by Melan

[Tch]

I have seen complaints about it before, on this forum.

[Sotha]

Font issue:

I'd say its no point in substituting anything.

 

There is a large collection of fonts for the mapper to select the ones he wants to use in his readable.

Many of them are really easy to read.

 

There aren't many difficult-to-read fonts there.

 

The font selection builds immersion as the mapper can give an indication of the 'personality' of the one writing the scroll. If the mapper wants to make a hastily scribbled note written by an unstable lunatic, it is good to have an 'unstable' font.

 

Substituting that to clear crisp easy-to-read font would remove mappers possibility to portray the lunatic via this handwriting. It is an art-thing really... Please do not decrease our currently available options.

 

Entirely different thing is the scenario where mapper writes many long readables with an 'unstable' font. At that case the mapper should accept that the player probably does not want to bother reading it fully. The mapper can easily select typewriterish looking clear fonts for everything but it breaks the immersion in my opinion.

[Fidcal]

Well you don't identify which readable it was so I can only guess it is the Everett font. http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Fonts_Screenshots#Everett

 

It is meant to be bad handwriting and mappers are advised to use it carefully and briefly. It would be tedious in a ten-page logbook of important clues but used in short amounts with nothing critical it is useful.

 

Note that in Thief we often see things like:

 

"I managed to reach the ledge but my candle is [text unreadable]" which is rather immersion-breaking. In Dark Mod we actually can have good text that becomes obscured, stained, faded, whatever.

 

An important point is that we cannot now remove the font anyway because it would break existing maps - ie, those readables would fail and even jam the inventory. If it were changed then the format might be broken and some words might get lost off the end of pages. Anyway, the mapper chose that existing font so we should respect their choice and not change it.

 

The best solution Legion is to search for lots of other similar but more readable TTF fonts that are not copyright, convert them to Dark Mod and contribute them. Then mappers will be more likely to choose your fonts. We can always use more fonts.

 

In Thief I think there was one basic font so it didn't seem out of place to see it used for all characters. In Dark Mod we have many but this creates a difficulty in large maps with lots of readables by different characters. I soon ran out of fonts in Heart and some of the characters shared the same handwriting. This is not satisfactory if the bishop has the same handwriting as the harlot. I kept a list of which handwriting each character used so one character didn't use different fonts and if any two characters had to share it was made as unnoticeable as possible.

 

So new fonts are always welcome. It was a hell of a lot of hard work searching and converting (especially since most needed further repair because of spacing errors) but we certainly could use more!

[Melan]

Since LEGION was referring to my map, the culprits could be:

Bamberg (heavy gothic)

 

ChrisHand (untidy scrawl)

 

and Everett (neat but energetic handwriting)

 

The trouble is, I chose them because they are great-looking and atmospheric fonts. I wouldn't want to replace them, because thematically, they fit the personalities who wrote the readables, plus like Fidcal, there was a need to differentiate NPCs. That matters. In Thief, which had two default readable fonts (one print and one more like - American! - handwriting), this was not and could not be an issue. The less said about TDS readables the better.

Edited July 16, 2010 by Melan

[LEGION]

I guess it´s the

 

ChrisHand Font.

But Melan should know. I meant Randalls confession what was really unreadable for me. And this really breaked my immersion, sorry. And there were complaints about the font in your Mission-thread, Melan. (before I wrote it)

I really like to have different fonts (I think Thief had two), and Fidcals explanations are ok, but where is the point making the whole text unreadable? Is it actually not possible to set only words in a different font?

 

Please mappers, be aware that there are a lot of non-enghlish Players here.

 

BTW, I often would love to translate things, but Doom3 doesn´t allow me to ALT-tab to a translation software and my textbook here is like crap, I never find the words in there I´m looking for. I know, I could run in window-mode, but that breaks my immersion too much, I hate this blue windows caption-bar.

 

edit: I see Melan just posted the fonts. OK, I respect you all as Artists (especially you, Melan, cause your map really is sort of Art!) and talking lately with 7upMan I got aware of an Realtime-text-viewer. I would like to have that to read the texts out of the game.

So, where do I get the tool and how do I got the texts?

 

I just opened the mission.pk4, but unlike Thief there seems to be nothing to 'read' in there. (without the readme´s of course)

 

I already have DarkRadiant installed (need to update, though), I guess I will have to use it...

[Fidcal]

It occurs to me maybe there are a few ways to provide an alternate text for use where needed.

 

One way would be to provide the text extracted from the xdata file and each readable saved eg, with a name that is the inventory name of the readable. This has to be unique to go in the inventory anyway. So before starting a mission any player who feels they wants this opens the pk4 in a zip program and extracts a folder called say readables. Within this is each readable with the inventory name so eg, lords_diary.txt. Downside is the player if playing full screen cannot easily get to that.

 

Another way is that the text is somehow sent to the console. Perhaps a script could do this.

 

Another way is that the mapper adds extra pages to the readable, perhaps with 2 or 3 blank in between with the same readable text but in a clear font.

 

Yet another way is when finished and beta tested the mapper copies the xdata file to another folder and using search and replace, changes all fonts to one clear font. The player has to extract this folder and rename it xdata. It should then overwrite the one in the pk4 (needs testing.)

 

There is possibly an even neater way. The player just simply changes the guis for the fonts he does not like! That way they all automatically get changed. Possibly I could create those guis and upload them somewhere if some standard could be agreed. The player then need only download a zip and extract it into his darkmod folder and job done. He has to accept he won't see original fonts and custom guis won't be changed.