Erm...whens It Coming?

[hellknight2005]

hi im in great suspense as to when we can have some playable content for TDM...*Smiles and waits*

[New Horizon]

hi im in great suspense as to when we can have some playable content for TDM...*Smiles and waits*

 

Oh...probably in another two years. This is a total conversion of the Doom 3 engine. These things take time.

[Dram]

i think that if the rate does'nt slow down it might be playable by the end of the year, though not fully tweaked/bugfixed/etc. It'd probably be only good enough for map making etc. But for the fully finished product i'd say about those 2 years as well, and then another 6 months-1 year for our campaign.

[sparhawk]

I think about the end of the year might be a good guess to have a playable version. As to first playable FMs, it depends on our mappers how fast they are. Fur fully featured campaigns it will take still longer, because they take more time, and of course playable doesn't mean bugfree.

[Fingernail]

Yeah, I mean, features-wise, it might be complete, and therefore releasable, but I can see us continuing to work on textures and models afterwards, unless things speed up hugely next year.

[oDDity]

You're going to code the very complex AI and stim response system needed for the game in less than 12 months are you?

Not a chance. Not even if you were working full time on it, never mind a few hours a week.

It's taken that long just to code the lightgem.

As NH says, 2 years is closer to the mark.

Still, that makes 3 years total developemt time, which is the average time any game is in development these days, and when you take into consideration that we're only working on it in our spare time with a small team and no money, we're actually doing a lot better than commercial developers who work full time with a large team and multi-million dollar budgets, and still take at least 3 years to make their fucking games.

[Fingernail]

I guess I really meant the toolset for people to start making stuff with it more publically, not the final playable version.

[sparhawk]

As I said, I meant playable, not completed. That is IMO reasonable within the next year.

[oDDity]

The AI has to be in a fairly complete state before you can call the game playable, otherwise you could already claim it is playable, since you can have the ai see you, chase you and attack you.

It's corrrect to say the game is curerently playable as a doom 3 mod, but it will not be playable as the dqrk mod for a long time yet.

[sparhawk]

I consider a map playable as soon as the AI can search for you, and of course the enviornment reacts to you as well (stim/response). Fighting is also needed, but IMO it is not essential to make a map playable. So going y this definition, maps are currently NOT playable, because at least two important parts are missing. Searching and Stim/Response.

[oDDity]

There's nothing people hate more than an unfinished game (apart from being stabbed and hacked to pieces)

I don't think there's much point in releasing it and saying 'there you go, it's not finished yet, but it's playable'

We're going to have to decide exactly what the finished game should comprise of, and what constitutes add-ons and extras after the finished game has been released.

That way when we release it, we can truthfully say it's the finished game, but there may be extras and add-ons to come.

That's very different from releasing an unfinished game and saying we'll finish the rest later.

Any mapper can already join, so I'm talking about a public release that people are expected to play.

[sparhawk]

I never said we should realease it in that state. Playable just means that we can broaden our test audienceup to a point where we have more then our closed circle of developers and beta mappers.

An official public release is, in my estimation, not to be expected before mid to end of next year.

[OrbWeaver]

I'd say the "finished game" would comprise all the necessary coding changes (apart from post-release bug fixes or minor patches) to create the experience.

 

Models and textures can be released in packages either before or after the main release, and can easily be integrated into existing partial maps, unlike updates to code which might required dramatic changes to be made.

[sparhawk]

To really have "the official release"the best thing would be to do our campaing, and when we release it, this is it.

[OrbWeaver]

What sort of state is the campaign in at the moment? Is it out of the picture for the time being, or will it be worked on in parallel with the toolset development?

[Springheel]

The campaign isn't--and shouldn't--be tied to the release of the toolset at all. We should get a fully working toolset out there before we do any serious work on the campaign--otherwise we're making all the other potential mappers out there wait for no reason.

[ZylonBane]

The existence of a campaign along with the release of the tools would serve an extremely valuable function-- establishing a baseline "style" for any future mods.

 

Yes, it's great that FM authors will be able to customize practically everything about their missions. But from the player's perspective, it's also great to be able to start a new FM with certain valid expectations about how the gameworld will function. Things like how visible torches make you, how much noise footsteps make, how fast guards run, that sort of thing. If elemental things like that vary wildly from mission to mission, it will just annoy and frustrate most people.

 

As Doug Church himself has said, "Thief is a game about territory. In each game the player and the AI have their safe zones, but to get to the player's goal they need to adjust that territory by changing the environment." Thus, to effectively influence the environment, players need to know the rules. Discovering the rules should be part of the learning curve for the game itself, not a challenge that every single FM poses.

 

That's why an introductory campaign would serve to lay the groundwork for what the "expected" rules are, and then let FMs deviate from that on a special-case basis instead of for every little thing. That's pretty much how things developed with Thief FMs, so it should work just as well here.

[Fingernail]

Yeah, there have been debates about this (the campaign). Springheel is one strongly opposed to starting it soon, others are more open - as you can see.

 

What happened was we argued a lot for a month or two about how the campaign should go, we couldn't decide on common things such as how much magic there should be, how much tech, etc. And after that, some felt that we'd be better off not arguing so much as it was starting to spill over into other things.

 

So the ideal thing would be if someone could create a universe that everyone'd follow - so as not to argue - but then, there's no guarantee that everyone would want to follow someone else's ideas, etc.

 

And part of that is because people haven't been drawn to this mod for the universe - they have been drawn here because of what they see in Thief, and because of the toolset idea. And people like different things about Thief, and want to each emphasise their own take on it.

[sparhawk]

Well, Spring is rather conservative. I maintained that we should define the rules for the TDM universe, because we create it, and what we do will have an influence on FM makers as well. If we leave it undefined, then we can get into problems later.

And the argument, that people will not follow our universe and therefore we don't even need to bother starting to define it, is plain and simple a cheap excuse. Of course there will some do their own stuff, but the majority will not.

[Springheel]

I'm fine with defining the setting in general terms...that's why I've been putting together the TDM 'Worldbook' of all our agreed-upon setting info. But defining the setting and working on all the things we have planned for the campaign (story, maps, special features, special models, voices, etc) are two different things.

 

The campaign is going to take a good year or two of solid work to complete...if we work on it now it pushes the release date of the mod back that much longer.

 

And before anyone else leaps on it, obviously having completed maps (including maps that demonstrate new features and interesting TDM setting info) are very useful and important, and we will certainly have those. That's why we have team mappers. The way things are going right now, we'll probably have a minimum of six completed maps when the toolset is released, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were twice that.

 

Things like how visible torches make you, how much noise footsteps make, how fast guards run, that sort of thing. If elemental things like that vary wildly from mission to mission, it will just annoy and frustrate most people.

 

Well, our intention is certainly that those kinds of things remain consistent, and we spend a lot of time and discussion on getting just the right values. Unfortunately we can't stop FM authors from changing those values if they really want to.

[OrbWeaver]

Six high-quality completed maps with a consistent storyline satisfies the criteria for a (small) campaign.

 

All it needs is for a writer or two to make sure that the maps fit into a larger story, rather than being a collection of unrelated fan missions.

[Springheel]

Why do they need to be forced together into a campaign? That stifles the unique creativity of the individual mapmakers for no reason. Individual missions are just as useful for demonstrating new settings and features.

[ZylonBane]

From the perspective of making FMs for Thief, the value of the OMs is that they defined both the mythology and the gameplay.

 

From the perspective of making FMs for TDM... well, let's be perfectly honest here-- the mythology of TDM is basically Thief with the serial numbers filed off. There's no need to establish it because in essence it's already established. So the pack-in campaign for TDM can treat plot as a secondary concern and concentrate on pure gameplay.

 

Someone mentioned how different people like different aspects of the Thief universe. Don't fight that... run with it. Do something like "The Dark Mod: Chronicles" where the campaign is just a collection of unrelated missions, perhaps presented in flashback format. That would give the mappers the freedom to do whatever themes they want, without concern for any overarching plot.

[Springheel]

We certainly might be able to tie the independent missions together in a loose narrative of some kind. That's a good idea.

 

We do plan on a serious, multi-mission campaign as well, however. That's the one that will need a great deal more time and energy.

[Fingernail]

Yeah, I thought maybe a Sin City style thing where there are several episodes that take place in the world, centered around different characters and situations, or something. Not so diverse, though.