Beta Mapping?

[toolman]

Have asked Renzatic, about becoming a beta mapper. He told me scurry here and post, so here I scurry.

 

Have become quite intrigued with level editing since t3d was released a couple of months ago. Very new to it all but enjoying it. What with all the headscratching and cursing. If there is any chance in having a pop at being a beta mapper for tDM I would very much like to take it up, being such a big thief fan.

 

Couple of screenshots on my wip with t3d..

 

http://img260.echo.cx/my.php?image=ghg7as.jpg

http://img125.echo.cx/my.php?image=ght9nd.jpg

 

 

Qualifications:

 

Currently in possession of one incredible haircut.

Breastfed Thief from the age of 87. Dark Project in the left one, Metal age in the right.

Enjoy shouting at things.

 

What say?

[Renzatic]

Not only does the map look really promising, but the custom textures are nice to boot. It also looks like you've made a few static meshes too...good stuff.

 

Looks great to me. I'll pass it by the rest and see what they say.

[sparhawk]

IMO there are no special conditions for beta mappers. The only thing that I would expect is that they don't grab it and go away.

 

There are some things you should be aware of though.

 

*) TDM is not finished yet. This means that you may have features missing which you may need. If this is a planned feature you may have to wait until we can implement it.

 

*) We try to plan the features and implement them, without changing them to much. This CAN happen though and this means that already working maps might brake if such a change occurs. We try to limit this and only release stuff that we consider as finished. So far this hasn't happend, but the possibillity exists.

 

*) If you learn new things it would be nice if you could post them for documentation or write tutorials, but this is not a strict requirement. Obviously it will help others and all can benefit from this.

 

*) Since TDM is not finished we don't want it to get distributed right now for various reasons. As a beta mapper you get early release versions, and in fact we already released a version to our first mapper. But because of the above limitations we don't want it to get out in public right now and get bad reputation for releasing "non working" stuff.

[Demigod]

So I wont be lonely for much longer?

Be careful though they stuffed me down in a cold, dark, damp cellar and wont let me out, or give me my dinner come to that. They told me it was so I could study the lighting but Im not so sure now

[gleeful]

greetings!

 

i'd love to beta-map for the Dark Mod.

 

i'm still fairly new to the whole mapping thing (started this march), but i spend a lot of time on it and progress is good.

 

here are some quite unfinished wip-shots of the map i'm currently working on:

 

http://img258.echo.cx/img258/648/dc10iz.jpg

 

http://img258.echo.cx/img258/9315/dc29lj.jpg

 

http://img258.echo.cx/img258/2584/dc33ml.jpg

 

http://img258.echo.cx/img258/7733/dc41vb.jpg

 

note: i only use a handful of textures and hardly any detail/furniture in these shots. this is not due to my weird sense of esthetics, but rather my working m.o. > basic architecture and lighting first, details and texturing later (when you know things are working as planned and no big changes are necessary).

 

apart from that i can only say that i've played Thief since The Dark Project came out back in the day and that stealth-games are my favourite genre. i'm sneaky.

 

i would definitely invest a lot of time on the beta-mapping and give you detailed feedback (should you want it).

 

kind regards

gleeful

[sparhawk]

If you want to create a mission, blocking out the map geometry is a good approach anyway, because this will certainly changed the least.

One thing that we hope for is, that beta mappers will at least finish a fully functional map. The idea is not only to get some feedback (which is of course an important part of it), but also to already have some playable maps available as soon as we can release TDM to the public.

 

Also keep in mind that you will not be part of the dev team, because we want to keep that seperated. The idea of the beta mapper is to have somebody who is using the tools just like users will use them once they are released. Therfore a beta mapper is not directly a team member (technically) because we want to prevent "mind pollution". If you are a dev you may approach something differently because you already know about something. Of course we are in close contact with the beta mappers so this is more a technical detail. TDM should be a black box to you and you don't need to have sepcific internal knowledge about the inner workings just to be able to use it (similar to Dromed).

[gleeful]

One thing that we hope for is, that beta mappers will at least finish a fully functional map.

 

Also keep in mind that you will not be part of the dev team, because we want to keep that seperated.

ad 1) that's my plan. as soon as i would get my greedy little fingers on a beta of the Dark Mod, i'd start making thief maps (simple ones at first, more sophisticated ones later).

 

ad 2) i'm well aware of that and happy with it as long as i get to enjoy the fruits of your hard labor.

 

kind regards

gleeful

[sparhawk]

Personally I have no objection. I put this to discussion to the team, so this will take a little until I get responses, but I don't really expect any objections. After all this is also motivating for us (at least for me) when I can see that somebody already puts to good use what we created the last months (even though it is not finished).

[Renzatic]

So I wont be lonely for much longer?

Yup, Demi...we're buying you a friend.

[Dram]

Be careful though they stuffed me down in a cold, dark, damp cellar and wont let me out, or give me my dinner come to that. They told me it was so I could study the lighting but Im not so sure now

WHAT?

 

GET BACK DOWN THERE DAMMIT!!!