Introductions and Intentions

[brethren]

Hey guys -

 

Thought I'd start up an initial thread where everyone can introduce themselves to the team and talk a little bit about what they want to accomplish here. Nothing fancy, just a few sentences is OK.

 

OK, so I'm brethren, been a Thief fan since the beginning, and have hung out on TTLG since around 2000 or so. I run the southquarter.com site, which used to do FM reviews until it got hacked a few years ago. Now I mostly just host FMs there for download. Always wanted to get into game editing, and have messed around with dromed quite a bit. I released one FM for Thief 2 for Yandros' SSR contest, titled "Through No Vault Of My Own." (under my then moniker of Brother Renault). All other dromed projects ended in, well, they ended. Could never get going on a larger level.

 

Anyway, for this project, I'm just hoping to keep things simple and get a mission out the door. I'm hoping to do a medium sized level, and keep the architecture relatively basic, as I tend to get overly ambitious and want to do all these crazy things. I'm kind of saving that for the next time. My mission will be a mansion mission, and all I know is that there's a wizard/magician living there, and I need to find his secret library and obtain some info. I'm hoping to throw in some characteristics from both of the Thief OMS "The Sword" and "The Mages Towers" to make things a bit more interesting.

 

That's it for now, let's hear it from you guys...

[ungoliant]

Alright, so I'm ungoliant. Never done any mapping/editing for any game ever, but TDM inspired me. Basically I've burned out on 2 missions already. Once was due to sheer size, and the other due to technical difficulty. After finishing up this (hopefully very small) mission, I'll start up on the larger map again. So I do have some DR experience, and I plan to utilize it here.

One of my first objectives is to make a tutorial video on how to construct some semi-advanced geometry, and post it up for you guys.

Oh ya, and I'm planning on making a subterranean FM. Starting in a cave, and who knows what it might intersect with from there?

[Neb]

I'm Neb, and I'm still really hungover from my birthday yesterday.

 

I've been experimenting with Dark Radiant on and off since TDM was released, and I've got a couple of missions that are unfinished because I was trying to be way too ambitious.

 

I haven't worked out the setting of my mission for this campaign (mostly because I'm not certain what the plot will be yet) but I'd like to make a simple indoor mission with well written readables, some well designed AI patrols, at least one rope arrow opportunity, a simple puzzle, and a memorable event.

 

This evening I'm exhausted, so I'll be back tomorrow to discuss things, and we can maybe start throwing around story ideas.

 

 

[jaxa]

Hi, I'm jaxa of limited TTLG and TDM forum fame. I've been a Thief fan for perhaps several years now and mostly a lurker until I joined TTLG in Feb 2009, and TDM in Apr 2010. What drew me to Thief, and later to TDM, was a love for the stealth gameplay, ambient music, the mixed setting of steampunk and magical elements, the awesome communities (900+ fan missions and counting), as well as some of the stunning FMs that have been made like Mission X, The Flying Age, Lord Alan's Factory, T2X, Dracula Reloaded, etc. Circa today, I've pretty much thrown all my chips in with the TDM community although it would still be great to see the TTLG community revitalized by Thief 4 and the OPDE.

 

I have no firm plans for what my mission will look like but while keeping it a manageable size I hope to integrate multiple areas (think sewers/town, manor/tunnel, tower/grounds). I'd like to play larger and more epic maps, although it is important to keep them well-populated (I think an early TDM mission explicitly failed at this, I'll get the name later). I'm not really interested in doing builders/zombies, but I might like to try out inventors/bots/alarms (I still can't believe nobody has used the steambot yet). If it's no trouble we should aim to include the latest features we can use, like ladies, werebeasts and SEED were a couple months ago. I expect we'll see 1.07 or 1.08 out before we release.

 

I have yet to complete a mapping tutorial but I have opened Dark Radiant and managed to create a rectangular room with a table, window (bad lighting though, or perhaps a bad practice), and a deactivated mine in it. Yuuuup. The mine was a real disappointment since I couldn't even suicide. I hope to develop other skills along the way, including modelling (in say, Blender or 3DS Max), and if anybody could hook me up with a beginner's program or tutorial for ambient music creation, I would try to produce new music as an afterthought/bonus (my previous attempts have fizzled). I have some programming experience (I mostly just do web design / scripting in my spare time now), so I'll be experimenting with scripting in my map. With scripting we can create that memorable event Neb is looking for (happy birthday).

 

Although I hope to complete my map over the summer, if the team has time overruns I will attempt to keep a steady schedule of like an hour a day or 5/week, if not more, until it's done. I'm not a huge fan of years-long hiatuses or project abandonment so here's my chance to not be a hypocrite!

[canetoad]

Canetoad here. Utter noob at mission building but can construct a good looking box in DR. My first Thief game, T3, came bundled with a graphics card six or seven years ago.....

 

I've been thinking about a mission for the last couple of days and have jotted down a few notes which may or may not be practical. I'd like to make an outdoors/tiny village mission; five or six huts and a pagan-type setting.

 

-Thief find himself in this village, needs to find a contact to help him on way

-All but one of the huts are inhabited by the enemy (or builders) in disguise

-From clues given, thief needs to work out who his contact is and/or disable the imposters

-Thief can then leave village and proceed to next part of campaign, possibly freeing captive real villagers as bonus objective

 

I figure this could slot into practically any storyline as a sort of bridging mission, ie getting from one scenario to another. I'd like to concentrate on clever clues and observation.

 

Great to meet you guys. Neb - happy birthday, the day and your liver can only get better!

[canetoad]

Just a thought - what are your locations and timezones? Could be handy to know if needing a reply or some advice in the middle of the night.

 

I'm Melbourne, Australia. GMT+10

[Neb]

I'm in the UK and it's summer, so I think it might be GMT+01 until October. It's 2:50 here right now.

[ungoliant]

Just a thought - what are your locations and timezones? Could be handy to know if needing a reply or some advice in the middle of the night.

 

I'm Melbourne, Australia. GMT+10

 

yeah i think some sort of chat interface would be great for this project, to just shoot the shit and exchange wild and crazy ideas / theories about mapping.

 

North Carolina USA, GMT -5

[jaxa]

Florida USA, GMT -5

[canetoad]

I've put up a quick and dirty chat page here:

 

http://www.usefulspace.net/noobprojectchat.html

 

No passwords or anything, nickname and connect. Nothing fancy.

[Neb]

I hope to develop other skills along the way, including modelling (in say, Blender or 3DS Max), and if anybody could hook me up with a beginner's program or tutorial for ambient music creation, I would try to produce new music as an afterthought/bonus (my previous attempts have fizzled).

 

3D modeling and music composition are full hobbies on their own, but great fun to know a bit about. I don't know about for beginners, but you could try out the (very lenient) free version of Podium and play with free synth plugins that you can find at kvraudio. Also, the great thing about ambient music is that you don't really need to know much about theory, just have a good sense of atmosphere.

[brethren]

Btw, I'm Milwaukee, WI - GMT -5

[Neb]

So, are there 5 of us, or was I right in thinking that someone called fllood is also on the project?

[Dussander]

Hey all,

 

I am a late comer to the project. I've been playing Thief for a long time now, I started with Thief 1 then moved on to Thief 2, I finished Thief 1 afterwards. I also play Thief 3 and I do like it. I've only just installed the Dark Mod, so I'm getting used to the mechanics and the way the missions look. I run a forum to allow authors to beta test their missions before they're released, accessible here: http://shalebridgecradle.co.uk/testing/index.php. Around 100 missions and campaigns have been tested there, including a modest few for TDM.

 

My building experience is very limited, I did a Dromed tutorial a long time ago and I made a very basic level for UT consisting of 2 rooms and a lot of spam weapons. But I've always felt like making a mission.

 

I've not thought about a setting yet, but I'm not going to be overambitious and I'll go for a smaller mission to start off with.

 

I am also from the UK, GMT+1

[brethren]

FYI to all, this is the team to date:

 

brethren

canetoad

dussander

fllood

jaxa

Neb

ungoliant

 

That's seven, I'm thinking we might want to stop here. Anymore and it might get to be a bit more than we can handle.

[fllood]

Hey I'm fllood, sry guys for chime in late. been some days off on vacation with no net access at all.

 

I got in touch to Thief with the Bafford demo '98 which came alongside a German PC magazine. I immediately was struck by that kind of unique briefing, the sounds, mood and revolutionary gameplay. Thief II did perfect this concept to me. I discovered ttlg and FM's and been registered on ttlg since 2002 (with my former nick until 2010 which I changed to be in synch with my TDM nick). Since I had played many outstanding FM's and always returned to Thief after having travelled other lands and shores inbetween: home is where the loot is I guess ;-) ... While I still have to catch up with a few of the high profiled Thief FM's (like ANIR, Melan's Night Watch or Seven Sisters) the FM that did impressed me most so far are the ones of Saturnine, Gaetane and Purah: dark, atmospheric FM-bliss with great ideas and mood.

 

I don't know why I never been tempted with mapping in dromed in the early FM years. Later on my interest grew to build an own FM. But I just wasn't tempted to dig into what felt to me a "yesterdays" technology of dromed. Until TDM came along. I decided to give DR a try and started learning mapping at the beginning of this year. And it's really much fun. That much I meanwhile do spend more time in DR than in playing FM's. Indeed I still have to catch up with half of the released TDM FMs. I haven't started a real map so far but did some "sandboxing" and playing around with some stuff and completed the A-Z tutorial resulting in that small A-Z"Thief's Den" map I spiced up playable for my young daughter. Good to see that she got sparked and "doll-housing" with DR meanwhile as well. maybe I can tempt her doing a few interiors for my map

 

I was about to start some map for real as Brethren's noob campaign Initiative came up. I'm tempted by the novices collaboration idea for I hope sharing ideas and helping each other within a noob setting will help everybody learn mapping techniques much better than anyone on it's own. Also I hope it help me to stay basic and not much carried away with advanced ideas or experimenting resulting in burnout or a discarded map.

 

I have not yet any precise idea how my map will be. I like to experiment with horizontal and vertical ways for the player to move (like you find in "Too Late"). The story and protagonist I had in mind for my map before the campaign came up won't fit in here. So I put it aside for later and will start thinking about some new ideas and concepts. For a campaign setting make it possible I might make my map quiet very non-linear in location and objectives. In that way a player has not to explore every room to finish the map (if the player for example find the room with the objective early on by chance). It would be uncool to miss half the map on a stand-alone single FM. But I think that's quiet OK and should be possible in a campaign. Also I might not include any loot objective at all. So in my map it might be up to the player how much loot he want to find to benefit from it in the shop for the next FM of the campaign. - That's something I didn't like in some OM's: regardless what the objectives say it just was "do explore all rooms"

Said that everything is open at this point so far...

 

My available DR and Online time is somewhat limited as for my job, RL and family. But I hope to be able to spend one evening per week for mapping on average during this team project. I do plan making a small map as a start. maybe extend it to medium if things go well. I intend to concentration on gameplay, light, sounds and mood (rather than sophisticated visual details). And may I be heretic to say I like the simple blocky geometry of the dark engine

I intend my map being mainly interior: either an old mansion, underground crypt, a secret builders place or similar. Maybe a spooky abandoned builders hospital reminiscent of "Silent Hill" or "Blackstone Chronicles"!? With a secret for the player to be found why it had been desolated. And some item from a former inhabitant or supervisor? guess in the end my map setting will depend what's possible with the stock TDM assets (unless any of you guess like to texture or model stuff for me). And what will fit the main story arc ...

 

It seam that I am the only non-native English speaker in the team. so well, I hope you'll be kind to my grammar and misspellings, if it take me some time for formulate an answer or if there will be language based misunderstandings

 

Looking forward to the experience with you guys!

Edited June 16, 2011 by fllood

[brethren]

Also I hope it help me to stay basic and not much carried away with advanced ideas or experimenting resulting in burnout or a discarded map.

 

Thanks for the reply fllood, glad we've got everyone on board now (and btw your English sounds fine to me). You make a good point above though, I found that the mission, which I just started, which was supposed to be simple and basic, has already started to get a little too ambitious. I'm thinking of just setting it aside for later and starting over in a much simpler fashion.

 

My point - maybe we should implement the limitation that all of our missions will be small, contest sized levels. Not sure how to quantify that, maybe say no more than 10-15 rooms, or say less than 30 minutes playing time. But it almost feels like we should do something to reign ourselves in so we don't all get carried away (which of course, is completely natural).

 

Besides, a campaign of 7-10 small missions sounds kind of cool, and will give us the opportunity to run the player through a bunch of varied environments and scenarios very quickly.

[ungoliant]

10-15 rooms can be a lot bigger than you think. Also, as few restrictions as possible would be great. considering the estimated time of 1 year to release the campaign, that should be more than enough time for everyone to get a mission complete at any skill level. If I manage to keep mine small (hopefully this time) I wouldn't anticipate using up more than 3-4 months.

[fllood]

10-15 rooms can be a lot bigger than you think. Also, as few restrictions as possible would be great. considering the estimated time of 1 year to release the campaign

I think 10-15 rooms sound not that bad to me considering the A-Z had 5. I would like to hear one of the senior mappers both for a rough suggestion for a good aim to a small and small-medium map regards room & entity count?

 

Thought we aim to a end of year / beginning 2012 release? did that change?

My estimate is we should expect roundabout 2 months for clue the FM in campaign format, balancing & polishing and beta-testing time. what is your guess?

[Dussander]

My partner and I have kind of decided to do an internal mission/building, most likely a small school or elite college, where we would try and find someone/some information/steal some artefact. I don't remember many missions in T2 which had a school, so I wouldn't mind making one where people would study, but not live (because I think that might be overambitious).

[brethren]

I've decided I'm going to try a "lost city" style mission. Always loved the original Lost City from The Dark Project, but more importantly, the 2nd mission from Eshaktaar's Broken Triad just had an incredibly profound effect on me as a gamer and Thief fan. I won't necessarily go as far as to say that it's the best Thief level ever created, but it just made me go "man, I really want to make something like that someday." (in addition to just "wow" and "holy shit").

[fllood]

@ Dussander

 

You might noticed that Melan adopted Atti's unfinished WIP that I he/she revealed is a large university/academic map. The following factions is what Atti has in mind study in Bridgeport Academy (that might be changed as Melan see fit though!).

 

----

 

In the deep of Bridgeport lies the Fangedbarrow Facility, an enclosed school of arts and science. Students work under 4 banners that is separated into two main 'factions':

 

The Tists: Are into artistical type of studies

 

Makers: theatre, painting,sculpting,music

Believers: theology, magic, alchemy

 

The Tects: Are into scientific type of studies

 

Engineers: geology, architecture, mechanics, electricity

Observers: astronomy/optics, chemistry/physics, math

 

...

 

----

 

It's up to you, but I think it would be great and really beneficial for TDM world lore if you and Melan might want to share ideas to build up a consistency regards setting a Bridegport academic background/factions.

[Dussander]

Cheers for that, I will definitely contact Melan.

 

My vision was to create a small college of sciences (something close to my heart) for a handful of priviledged students. I am hoping DR has some suitable characters who look like scientists as I didn't really see anyone in the start map.

[fllood]

Cheers for that, I will definitely contact Melan.

 

My vision was to create a small college of sciences (something close to my heart) for a handful of priviledged students. I am hoping DR has some suitable characters who look like scientists as I didn't really see anyone in the start map.

Gentleman Inventor should do as lector/teacher/mentor (see below) ... as for students, hmmm....

 

 

why are the embedded screens so crappy? do the forum heavy compress them automatically here?

Edited July 16, 2011 by fllood