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Darkmod: Inspiration thread


Bikerdude

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The daylight mission along with that market scene makes me think someone ought to make a TDM varient of Midday Escape. A daylight mission on a public street where running and hiding behind things is your only recourse, but there's only stationary archers, is an intense experience where every inch of progress feels good.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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No but damn I wish it was ;)

 

I was looking for some inspirational pictures for a project I'm working on and when I saw that I thought it would be perfect for TDM. The spiral staircases down to a bar/maybe Thieves den would make for a fun map I think :)

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This hurts my eyes :(

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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  • 4 weeks later...

Just remembered: "The Name of the Rose" (some of you might have read it, or at least seen the film starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater) also had the floor plan of the abbey it takes place, which is a good inspiration for an abbey based mission:

 

eco_rose04_abtei.jpg

 

My first result turned up the German version, but I am sure, you can also find the English one somewhere. The plan of the labyrinth in the library (A in the plan) can also be found. In the film it is quite 3D, but in the books, it actually is just a maze of rooms.

 

Another source for floor plans, I believe I might have, are the "Armorum Ardiaticum" of the book "Temples, Towers and Taverns" from the pen and paper RPG "Das schwarze Auge" ("The dark eye" in English). If I have a watermark free version of any of these two books, I will put it online. If it is watermarked (and since I did not buy it myself, but got it from a friend), I don't want to spread it. I have to check at home and write again, when Iknow more...

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In case people didn't know, Looking Glass explicitly mentioned Name of the Rose as one of the major inspirations for Thief: Dark Project, and in fact somewhere you can see a video of an early alpha tests set in a tower that's more or less directly taken from it. (I'm going to guess it ultimately became The Mage Towers level in Thief: Gold.)

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Yeah, the library looks like the center building in the mages level, which contained the library, too iirc.

 

Regarding the words in the image:

  • B: church
  • D: cloister (sort of a yard like in the assasination mission by Sotha)
  • H: main hall
  • J: bath house
  • K: hospital
  • M: pig shed
  • N: horse shed
  • R: workshop

A and F are latin words. Aedeficium means building and Dormitorium is the dormitory or dorter (The place where the people sleep).

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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I looked up the other books, I mentioned before. Skimming through the books, I saw, that the "Armorum Ardiaticum" contains mostly castles (and siege engines, that may not be as interesting for TDM), while the other one has more buildings like Taverns, living houses, mages' towers, etc. However, in the properties I found an "Owned by" tab, so I assume, that it actually is watermarked. Apart from that, the books are in German, so I don't know, how useful they would be for non-Germans. Of course, I can try to remove the watermark or try to copy only the pages with floor plans on them. Thoughts?

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If they are copyright-protected you should respect that. At least it should not be shown in a forum accessible to anyone.

 

EDIT: It (the dsa book) an actually be easely found via a google search, so people can download it there.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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Just recently started watching "Attack on Titan". It is more inspired by German timber-framework (not sure, if it is the right term it's "Fachwerk" in German), and thus I am not 100% sure, if the architecture fits the TDM setting, but it is also a good source for inspiration. Especially, because the city there is very crowded.

 

zfdJSgZ.jpg

 

Also, I noticed, that they use only a couple of buildings, that they copy and sometimes rotate to create the whole city. I noticed it first for the towers in the picture below. Afterwards, I checked the rest of the buildings and saw that they did there, as well. Modular building technique in another context...

 

attack-on-titan-3.jpg

Edited by Destined
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What one could do for TDM for an overview like that is create a couple of small building shells and use the SEED system to plant them like grass, up a sloping hillside down to the river, throw in a bunch of non-shadowcasting lights and tiny rising-smoke particles (actually I'd combine a bunch into one particle emitter)... that could look really cool. For sure we could make something that looks more natural than this.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Bunch of pictures incoming!!! These are all old Bulgarian Revival houses. Yes, when we jetty, we jetty hard! A city I live near actually has an Old Town where you can walk around streets like those and it's pretty fun. The interiors are great too but I'm not posting those cause I don't want you to steal all my inspiration secrets!

 

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Edited by Spooks

My FMs: The King of Diamonds (2016) | Visit my Mapbook thread sometimes! | Read my tutorial on Image-Based Lighting Workflows for TDM!

 

 

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Very nice! I think some of these will be an inspiration for a city mission, as soon as I finish my current WIP. But your post reminded me of an open air museum here in Germany, where they display old farm buildings. You can do a picture search for "freilandmuseum bad windsheim" for a couple of pictures.

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I do like the concept of haphazardly constructed top layers that hang out and are supported with random poles. Really makes it look organic and chaotic, like a city that wasn't really planned but was thrown together as it went.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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I've been slowly going through some of Chekhov's short stories. As good readables in video games are usually short (no, elder scrolls, I am not reading your 10 page story in the middle of this dungeon) I thought this article brings insightful points when it comes to writing readables:

 

Chekhov advanced the form of character creation from a romantic focus to what is now the modern character. Charles E. May, a modern critic of Chekhov, explains “the short story is too short to allow for the character to be created by the kind of dense and social interaction through duration typical of the novel”(May 2). Chekhov understood this, and therefore avoids depicting the minds of his characters, instead letting the characters’ mood or feeling communicate their inner state. Conrad Aiken, perhaps the first critic to comment on Chekhov’s characterization, says that if the reader finds that the characters have a strange way of “evaporating, it is because our view of them was never permitted for a moment to be external”(May 2). Aiken is suggesting that when reading Chekhov, we no longer view the character objectively, but begin to see them “only as infinitely fine and truthful sequences of mood”(Aiken, as cited in May 2). That mood then becomes subjective, and we are brought into the lives of the character, instead of simply observing those lives as a spectacle.

 

Now, a lot of readables you'd end up writing would be journals and such so yes, you will end up "depicting the minds of characters" but the takeaway is it shouldn't be done from an external, narrative voice.

My FMs: The King of Diamonds (2016) | Visit my Mapbook thread sometimes! | Read my tutorial on Image-Based Lighting Workflows for TDM!

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

It sounds as though there might be something relevant in here:

http://burglarsguide.com/
http://www.bldgblog.com/2016/04/the-burglars-guide-has-arrived/

It is a book about crime, policing, and the built environment, and how these forces mutually influence one another, from ancient Rome to contemporary Los Angeles, with a specific focus on the spatial peculiarities of breaking and entering.

Some things I'm repeatedly thinking about...

 

- louder scream when you're dying

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