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The End Is Nigh


Sir Taffsalot

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Indeed, it isn't really "that bad" yet. I think this is more about keeping it from getting "that bad".

 

I suppose in a way it is reassuring that there are mods that don't get as much activity as TDM does and are still "healthy", and compared to them we would seem rather whiny.

 

Still, it doesn't hurt to have this discussion.

Edited by Professor Paul1290
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I've just come from another forum where people were bitching about how most free games are just Quake clones. Users were complaining that these all focus on multiplayer over and over again.

 

My point is there is definitely a market for TDM: It is these types of people. They want a free game with SP (and lots of it). I think fifty missions fits the bill nicely. You're not gonna play through fifty+ missions in a weekend. :)

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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lost_soul: So, you recommended them to try TDM, yes? :D

 

Seriously, do you have a link to the place?

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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I've just come from another forum where people were bitching about how most free games are just Quake clones. Users were complaining that these all focus on multiplayer over and over again.

 

My point is there is definitely a market for TDM: It is these types of people. They want a free game with SP (and lots of it). I think fifty missions fits the bill nicely. You're not gonna play through fifty+ missions in a weekend. :)

 

That a great way to start promoting, i think i'm going to promote the mod in a few forums i know, it's the least i could do to help :)

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It is and it isn't. Right now, you still have all the Beginner's Contest maps unreleased. A huge amount of veteran talent is working on the Crucible of Omens campaign. Once the Beginner's Contest is over, unless one of the few veterans not working on Crucible decided to just churn out a mission, (since it would be quite unrealistic to expect people working on Crucible to also do a mission of their own), all you have available is the beginners, and the regulars. It's up to us to keep the fire going while the big boys work on their campaign! Let's see if we can't give them a nice surprise by making the "veteran mapper" group bigger than it was when they set off ;)

Edited by Xarg

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Yeah, as "elite" groups go, veteran mappers is easy to get into by... just releasing a few missions. ;)

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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Of course, if you don't mind, help yourself to a cup of tea, it's freshly brewed. I reckon I can crank out a Mandrasola before afternoon tea, possibly an Alberic's Curse before dinner ;)

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Let's see if we can't give them a nice surprise by making the "veteran mapper" group bigger than it was when they set off ;)

 

I really don't want to sound harsh, but in my opinion it needs a bit more than one released speed-built mission to count to the "veterans" :huh: (I speak for myself here too).

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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I really don't want to sound harsh, but in my opinion it needs a bit more than one released speed-built mission to count to the "veterans" :huh: (I speak for myself here too).

 

Depends. If someone like aluminum haste or a few others were to finally release any old crap FM, it would likely confirm veteran status, lol. maybe not so much for inexperienced folks.

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Wouldn't the "veteran" definition be earned the very instance when you know, nearly at all times, what you are doing when you are mapping. When you can handle the basics while you are asleep.

 

I remember mapping the alchemist and beleaguered fence... It was nearly constant trial-and-error as I did know how to do something and what would be the clever workflow for something.

 

The unifiying theme behind us 'veterans' is probably the fact that we know what is the best way to attain some mapping related goal and we know how to do it quickly, efficiently and without testing and testing. It is sort of a 'language' you know rather fluently.

 

Definition proposal: mapper 'veterans' are people who can speak fluently the language of dark radiant.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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The only major line I think worth distinguishing is someone that knows every necessary step it takes to make and release a quality working mission. That's why I think it's worth distinguishing someone that's actually released a mission from someone that's just aimlessly built stuff in DR. Other than that it's just a spectrum of knowing more things as you've done more things.

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 really don't want to sound harsh, but in my opinion it needs a bit more than one released speed-built mission to count to the "veterans" :huh: (I speak for myself here too).

 

Of course, but the campaign isn't going to be finished next month, so people who are beginners today have plenty of time to get another mission underway, possibly even released, before they're done.

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That's the plan, I personally think there's at least 1 more mission as a part 2, possibly a part 3, to my contest mission.

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Here’s my input as an ‘outsider’.

 

On a project like this you need to enjoy the work. If you do it for the plaudits you’re never going to be satisfied. The web is all about consuming, no one stops to say thank you. Even if someone does say thank you it’s a faceless person on the internet you’re never going to meet.

 

I don’t think you should worry too much about the people over at TTLG. It’s been 14 years since Thief came out – half my lifetime. If you’re still playing Thief after all this time it means you’re obsessed with Thief, you don’t care about the crap graphics, and nothing else is going to draw you away from it. The Dark Mod needs to appeal to a new audience who never played Thief.

 

I used to love Thief and Doom 3 but I’ve never downloaded and played the Dark Mod since the really early versions. Seven or six years ago the completed mod would have been a dream come true. But it’s been eight years since Doom 3 came out, and I’ve long since uninstalled it and lost the box. I haven’t played Thief in five years or so. The majority of those who were part of the Thief community back in 2004-05 will be in the same situation as me.

 

From what I can see you’ve done a great job on this mod. You’ve actually finished it, which takes enormous dedication, and the quality is sky high. But if you don’t have a large community of mappers beavering away now, it’s probably not going to happen, is it? Thief and Doom 3 are just going to get older and older.

 

If you still enjoy working on it, keep going. If you don’t, stop.

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From what I can see you’ve done a great job on this mod. You’ve actually finished it, which takes enormous dedication, and the quality is sky high. But if you don’t have a large community of mappers beavering away now, it’s probably not going to happen, is it? Thief and Doom 3 are just going to get older and older.

 

If you still enjoy working on it, keep going. If you don’t, stop.

 

Macsen! You still putting out at banquets? :P

 

That isn't necessary true as far as TDM is concerned. See, Thief 1 & 2 don't have the advantage of an open sourced engine. With it, you'll see improvements with technique and style, but after a point, you'll never see much in the way of improvements. Rather, just more stories. Not that this is a bad thing, quite the opposite. But it's a rather static environment.

 

TDM is an entirely different beast. Constantly evolving. What you're seeing now isn't necessarily what you'll be seeing two years from now. As long as one person is working on it, it's always alive, and always has the potential to grab an audience. It might go through some deep valleys on occasion, but there's always that potential.

 

But if there were one thing I were to criticize about TDM, it'd be it's ongoing slavish devotion to adhering to Thief. The TDM guys have improved upon the core concepts of the original games by quite a bit, but I feel that most people see it as a Thief alternative, rather than a new game, a new platform, in it's own right. This is TDM's greatest weakness, but also, weirdly enough, it's greatest strength.

 

Because, really, what's stopping you all from just going crazy with the concept, and coming up with your own thing entirely? Something greatly inspired by Thief, but not necessarily trying to recreate it as closely as legally possible?

 

This is your Thief-like mod. Why not try to recreate it as your own in its entirety? Not necessarily a new campaign (which would help, but that's a shitton of work), but at least your own setting, with your own hooks, and your own conspiracies and players? Why does it have to be medieval steampunk with vague Victorian undertones? Why now come up with your own mysterious settings? With all the great work you've all done readapting the core Thief factions into something similar, but rightly their own in most regards, imagine what you could do completely free of any restraints?

 

Why not go for broke?

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Why not go for broke?

 

I could see that working as a separate project, but at least for me personally...TDM is everything I could ever want it to be. The whole point of TDM was to deliver a Thief experience without stepping on any toes. Deadly shadows deviated too much from the feel of Thief for me, and I'm pretty sure that whatever they do with Thief 4 will be quite far from the essence of the first games too. The miracle of TDM is that despite the differences it still manages to feel more like the first two games than TDS ever did.

 

I guess my point is that nobody really wants to make a game like Thief anymore, they do go crazy and it misses the mark. I think we just wanted to make something as pure as we could.

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I'd love nothing more than to see some cool branch projects. I outlined a few myself... a scifi/cyberpunk branch, a ninja branch, an early modern branch, a Cold War branch (a la Deep Cover), a "wildlife" branch (where you were a predator hunting prey, or prey sneaking past predators)... Then gameplay branches, the multiplayer branch of course, a "Mirror's Edge" movement branch, an "economy sandbox sim" branch where you're in a living city and thieve to fund a criminal enterprise, buying warehouses and ships and muscle for trading contraband.

 

Sure, the sky is the limit, but I'm very conscious that the work involved isn't close to proportional to the payoff. Whereas the payoff for just making some damn good FMs with a few original twists to them is so much more proportional that it's almost compelling. That's the way these things work, which is fine because it feels good creating within a community than going too far out on your own path anyway, unless you just have such an obsessed vision you stick to your one thing (like the Dwarf Fortress guys), but then that's all you'll ever do.

 

Edit: If I were to push the boundaries of TDM, it'd be towards more story-telling FMs (although I would always keep gameplay), just my personal preference. I remember, I think it was Nietzsche that said (in Untimely Meditations), for really great art or acts of creation, it's not the audience that demands the art, that's not what should generate creation (that's how commercial products work). But for really inspiring works, it's the pure act of creation that inspires and creates an audience that didn't even know that's what they'd love. I like that idea. You, as an author, just have your inspiration and build from it... And if it's really inspired, it will create its own audience and they'll come to it. But you don't worry about catering to it. You should stay true to your inspiration and vision.

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, I would love to have a working, well-supported cyberpunk/tech conspiracy branch, and have a lot of ideas for that... but let's face it, time is finite, and editing is something that needs oodles of time. So you can only do a few of the ideas in your head. Maybe one day, someone will do it. But they would need to be a dedicated group who don't fall apart after the concept sketches/model stage, or when the first disagreements over design crop up ("do we want to steal shamelessly from Deus Ex or do we want to steal shamelessly from SS2" :D). And again, I think that's what emerges from an active, broad and dedicated community. In the first place, nothing but TTLG could have produced TDM.

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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I've just skimmed through this thread and many of the posts but basically I'm hearing discussion about should we be focusing on ttlg players?

 

The simple answer is no. If you look at TDS sales and the amount of users active on TTLG forums it's pretty easy to see that the thief series is not confined to TTLG, rather TTLG is attractive to it's members because of the type of community it is, not because of thief per-say.

 

If we wanted to get into the mainstream market to get more attention there would be a couple things we would need:

 

1) The engine to be free so no one needs a copy of D3

 

2) A clear user-voted dynamic library within the game for players to vote on and filter fan missions.

 

3) A campaign to convince new players that they should play the FMs.

 

These 3 things will set us up for success because we will have something big to promote and it will not be hindered by over complication of setup or the requirement to own D3. Once we had more fan-fair then our FM artists would be more motivated to get out more FMS.

 

Problem is however, these are 3 major goals which require a ton of man power and we all have lives outside of TDM. Recently mine has become so busy I can barely keep up on these forums.

 

Keep in mind if we consider the amount of work done in the campaign right now, the amount of maps would be above the average level this year already. But time is being sunk into that project which is awaiting completion before we let you all play it :)

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