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Thief Deadly Shadows level editor help please


mcmike1489

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When I click on the Thief 3 editor icon, I get this window that is searching for a file, but I don't know. It wants me to search for a vocabulary file or when I click on all files, and then I click cancel, nothing happens. I have Thief Deadly Shadows installed with the Sneaky Upgrade patch and the level editor installed, I followed directions, but now I'm lost. I hate to redo everything from scratch, but I guess whatever I did wrong, I need better instructions I guess.

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You're more likely to get answers to that in a Thief forum. http://www.ttlg.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=85

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mcmike - saw your post over at ttlg the other day.

You might like to try destroying everything and then following the instructions here:
http://www.shadowdarkkeep.com/files/komagtutt3.htm

which lists a very comprehensive guide for T3 mission editing.

Idk if Shadowdark is still around, but that one page is - use the wayback machine if you need to access anything 404'd.

 

Ok, iirc you're running the steam version, so you will need some adittional step to set-up.

 

For Steam, check this thread:
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144227

It basically says, "go set it up like in the link above, but with an additional step" - this might help pointing toward the "missing files".

 

 

voodoo47 on 24/7/2017 at 06:51
you seem to have a fundamental problem reading (and following) instructions ((http://steamcommunity.com/app/211740/discussions/0/2217311444342310228/) you are the same guy, I assume). lets hit ctrl+c and ctrl+v again;


As a last resort, T3 uses EAX3/4 sound, the support for which was dropped in Windows Vista.
Installing OpenAL, 3DSoundback or InDirectSound might help.

// though, tbh, I doubt that will help...

If all that fails - download The Dark Mod and Dark Radiant and then learn how to use that to make some TDM missions (a better use of your time, imho).

----

oh, as an after-thought - t3 editor and win10 don't like each other very much sometimes. can always install some vmware (eg, oracle) and use winxp or something.

Edited by teh_saccade
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Addionally, if you don't have the patience to reinstall and reconfigure or do something from scratch... perhaps considering the amount of ... stuff you'll have to contend with in creating an FM in something like T3 or TDM.

It's nothing like mapping in unity or cryengine - it's all from scratch, pretty much.

Have fun:P

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Oh ok, because I was referred here from http://www.ttlg.com from when I was getting help there, someone else told me to come here to get more help, but ok, thanks anyway.

That someone was me - I know that at least two (former) T3 mappers hang out here, so I thought they might spot his post. Two active people is two more than you'll find in the TTLG T3Ed subforum these days. (The few active mappers left don't seem to check the forum regularly.)

 

If all that fails - download The Dark Mod and Dark Radiant and then learn how to use that to make some TDM missions (a better use of your time, imho).

You're right - for a newcomer, taking up TDM objectively makes more sense. I've edited my reply to him on TTLG accordingly.
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Hey Snobel - No offense intended or to poach from ttlg - glad you didn't see it that way - thanks.

After checking:
http://thiefmissions.com/search.cgi?search=%2Bgame%3Dt3&sort=release#m

and noticing that the last T3 FM updated there was in 2013...:)
Don't reckon there's been a new T3 mission since 2015, maybe.

Seemed a rational course of action.


Regards.

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Hey Snobel - No offense intended or to poach from ttlg - glad you didn't see it that way - thanks.

Of course - I'm quite stealth game agnostic. :)

 

Don't reckon there's been a new T3 mission since 2015, maybe.

There's still one major T3 FM project going on, and there's Beleg Cúthalion's expansion of the Inn mission. Hopefully those will be finished but that's probably it for T3.

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Ok, guys, so I'm better off just getting help from the http://www.ttlg.com/...isplay.php?f=85 forums instead then.

 

Not that i'd want to poach you off TDS, but... did you consider doing missions for The Dark Mod? See, i always liked TDS, but, with the years, i more and more realized that the critic and issues people have with it, like the size of the maps, really have a point. TDM also has the more modern engine, and, as far as i understood it, is more flexible in terms of mission design as well. Frankly, if i'd be digging into mission making, TDM would surely be my first choice. Entirely up to you, of course, just thought i'd mention it anyway, i don't know how well you know TDM (if at all), or if you're even interested in it.

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I put countless hours and a lot of work to make a few things in TDS. Unfortunately, despite great dedication of people like Beleg or Snobel, it's hard to make anything when you're constantly fighting the engine. It wasn't made for modding, it was unnecessarily hard to make custom content for it. Not to mention getting help has been more and more difficult over the years.

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Nice one, Mike.

For certain you'll get a lot more help with learning FM design for TDM than with T3.

Here's a starting point: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=DarkRadiant - the forums are also searchable and there's the newbie's questions thread also. Maybe in editor's guild. I can't remember where it is...

Also check out Springheel's tutorial videos: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=DarkRadiant_Video_Tutorials

Also Fidcal et al's beginner's guide is a must: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php/A_-_Z_Beginner_Full_Guide_Start_Here!

 

/* oh... wait... You're saying "Despite TDM is probably a good idea and I'd receive more help and direction in using it and people might even play the levels I designed... Even though I probably won't get any help figuring out how to do anything [if I run into an issue with T3ed] - it never hurts to get [t3ed] working and [t3ed] shouldn't be that hard to figure out either"..?

I'm refraining from saying something about getting T2x working.

dw np... hope it works out for you. (but correct me if I misunderstood - I was dropped on my head a lot as a child, so have difficulty understanding things like accurate transmission of information via structured use of any type of lexical format requiring of logical, correct or grammatical syntax)
*/

Edited by teh_saccade
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Thank you! I actually have The Dark Mod installed on my computer already though, haha! I'm already ahead of the game. I just want to get T3Ed to work as well so I can edit and play fan missions on TDS like I can do on TDM, this be countless hours of playing nothing but Thief Deadly Shadows and The Dark Mod if you get what I mean.

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I just want to get T3Ed to work as well so I can edit and play fan missions on TDS like I can do on TDM

 

The thing is, you can't do that. Missions are packed in resource files (*.ibt), and this is a one-way operation. You need source files (*.unr map, *.tim meshes, *.dds textures, *.mlb materials, etc.) to be able to edit missions, and these aren't distributed in FM packages (as they'd double their sizes). Only TDM allows you to unzip .pk4 package and edit mission source files.

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For playing TDS missions, T3Ed is unnecessary and doesn't help.

For editing TDS missions, you need the source files as Judith says.

 

The only thing you can do by installing T3Ed is create new TDS missions, that almost nobody will bother to play, in a very limited and buggy engine where it is impossible to introduce custom models or textures without downloading the exact (obsolete) version of the proprietary modelling tools that TDS developers used.

 

It is up to you how you spend your time of course, and if you are absolutely in love with the TDS experience and have a burning desire to create missions for it, then you are free to do so. But most people on this (admittedly somewhat biased) forum would suggest that you are running up a blind alley by spending time on TDS at this point.

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You say T3Ed is buggy with glitches so I have to agree with you on that one too.

 

It's also horribly badly optimised, severely limited in the control and flexibility available to mappers, and above all, is 14-year-old proprietary abandonware that will never ever be fixed or updated.

 

Doom 3 itself is similarly dated of course, but it was a lot faster and more flexible even when it was released, and is now fully open source which means the community can improve its features and make sure it works on modern hardware.

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The only thing you can do by installing T3Ed is create new TDS missions, that almost nobody will bother to play, in a very limited and buggy engine where it is impossible to introduce custom models or textures without downloading the exact (obsolete) version of the proprietary modelling tools that TDS developers used.

 

Yup. If you want to create TDS mission based on original content – this stuff uses 256 or 512 px textures. It looks horrible today. John P's pack helps a bit, but not much. While graphic capabilities seem to scale with hardware a bit, actual process of making new content is a chore. You need 3dsmax 5.1, excactly this version, with some dev plugins included in the editor. This stuff doesn't work with win 7, so you'll need win XP on VM. The software itself is a horrible modeling tool, by any standards now, so it's only reasonable to use it as annoying middleware for exporting meshes and materials.

 

The editor itself isn't hard to use, because it's Unreal 2.x, but everything that lies underneath isn't. If you're good at creating maps and game content, I mean really good, you might even create something decent, at least visually impressive (I had several WIPs like that).

 

But, for almost everything you do, there's a tricky side or workaround or limit that you need to keep in mind. In essence, T3 doesn't let you make any mistakes during production. While the entity limit is twice as big as in TDM, it has this weird thing, where anything you place in the map, whether it's a brush, model or AI, "leaves a mark". You never get back all the entities used by properties of a thing you place in your map even if you delete it later. It basically means you can't learn or experiment, at least not in your main map. Even if you want to be like the pros and use brushes to prototype stuff and then replace it with static meshes, that entity thing makes it difficult. Also using BSP for anything else than carving out empty spaces is a problem, you'll encounter missing triangles and glitches every time you'll try to make something more complicated than a brush box.

 

As for static meshes, should be able to make much better models than in base game, but you'll have to deal with broken material options. You can have diffuse and normal textures, alphas, emissive maps, and cubemaps will work to some extent. There is no proper specular suport. If you haven't worked with speculars before, you have no idea how important that element is to a surface definition. It's a game-changer. If you take your time to experiment with major TDM material components (diffuse, specular, normal), you'll discover beautiful synergy that will make your surfaces look stunning, in both direct and ambient light. Making stylish shaders is a lot fun, and you don't even need complicated material definitions for that.

 

There are many more things like that, i.e. in TDS you can't even build too far away from 0,0,0, because for some reason shadows start to look weird. Never measured the actual distance, but I encountered that problem several times. Debugging scripts is a nightmare, at some point I placed a bell sound at every script stage to see whether it worked (imagine the headache when all bells rang, as everyting worked for a change). There's no way to know for sure why some solutions work, and some don't. That kind of applies to everything T3ED-related, so maybe I'll just leave it at that ;)

 

The biggest problem though is gameplay. It's not even about lack of water (I never cared much for that) or even rope arrows, although they can be a powerful player tool, if map is designed right. The biggest gameplay-related problem is player movement itself. It's supposed to be smooth, seamless, and fun. Floating Garrett bug, along with broken "body awareness" makes it a shadow of what it's supposed to be. Mantling is a game of chance. Because of the way body turns with the camera, you can't even walk and turn around on beams or ledges (they need to be wider than 32 or 48 units, which is insane). While I don't think Garrett's supposed to be an acrobat, in T3 he's almost a cripple.

Edited by Judith
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Wow, I never thought T3Ed would be so difficult to get it running compared to Dromed which is easy to get it working through T-Fix for Thief Gold or TafferPatcher for Thief 2, but T3Ed seems to have no updates to make it run without the flaws. How disappointing, Thief Deadly Shadows really does have it's limits when it comes to level editing and gameplay. I totally see the bigger picture now. Maybe, it's a good idea to switch over to TDM instead and just install the Thief Sneaky Upgrade patch just so the game is updated to it's latest patch and will reduce glitches and crashes.

Edited by mcmike1489
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While there's nothing wrong with liking and playing TDS (I still do that), making maps for it will end with frustration, disappointment, and a lot of your time wasted on everything but mapping.

 

+1.

 

Much as people hate on TDS over at TTLG, I actually did enjoy the game, even with its problems, and I felt that the mission designers and creatives did an excellent job considering the limitations of the engine (made even worse by the need to support the XBox).

 

But for actually making FMs, it's the engine that matters, not the skill of the original game's designers. The restrictions and limitations of the T3 engine were the reason I joined the Dark Mod back in whenever it was (2005?), and the mod was nowhere near ready at that time. Now that the mod is released, there is simply no contest.

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The issues with TDS editing are the reason TDM was made in the first place, for that matter.

I guess that's it's silver lining. (Some actual TDS levels weren't so bad either.)

 

But I'd agree that TDS FMs themselves are definitely worth playing and some of them are even fun!

And I think the struggle that mappers went through to pull FMs out of that abyss proves what a dedicated bunch we are for our favorite genre. :D

I have deep respect for every mapper that's ever built on any platform, whether TG, TMA, TDS, or TDM.

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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