3rd Person

[New Horizon]

Fp is immersive no doubt about it, but 3rd person can be as tense and more strategic, if you take something like Splinter Cell into account. I think I'm going to have to learn how to do this modding malarky and do some 3rd person stuff. I'd love a game with the scal of Oblivion, set in a huge medieval/Thief style city with loads of areas to explore, climb, break into etc. Imagine that one huge Mega City, different quarters, types of people, classes and such. Maybe you can case the areas during the day, then infiltrate at night.

 

It would take more than just a little modding, you're going to have to learn how to animate as well. As I said earlier, the player model won't be designed for third person play.

[Domarius]

I know what you mean about "seeing your character do things", it's cool in some ways, but all you do in Thief is sneak about, knock people out, run away from baddies, stack crates, and mantle ledges. Nothing really exciting to watch apart from the odd blackjacking sequence.

 

Enter the Matrix on the other hand, benifits much more, because the camera takes a side on view when you enter combat, where you can clearly see your position in realtion to everyone else in the melee, and you can direct your kicks and punches in the appropriate directions, see exactly what kinds of attacks the enemies are doing, and parry/block/dodge appropriately.

 

In the matrix example, I'm talking about individual limb movements, and where parry and dodge, etc are buttons you press in response, so this kind of view is really useful here.

 

In thief, the most dodging you're going to be doing is to avoid projectiles, so you actually dodge by moving yourself around, estimating distances, etc. and first person is more suited to that.

And the rest of the action (sneaking, crate stacking, etc) doesn't really benifit from 3rd person. You don't need to see what your body is doing when you're placing that crate, or blackjacking that guy - you need to see that your target is in the dead center of your screen, without having to compensate for the offset camera position, and the estimated size of the player model.

 

But that's just my opinion.

 

 

Also I don't yet understand what you mean by 3rd person being more strategic. I can see how it is in a RTS game, where you are a commander that needs to see everything at once, but in Thief you shouldn't be given that power to see around corners without moving. That's got to be the 8th deadly sin or something. Thou shalt not have 3rd person in a Thief game.

[cloud dew]

Hi all,

Arumakani, I think you will have to accept the fact that this mod is an FPS mod and it is going to be v dark and immersive.

 

However I don't believe you are likely to be playing it as you have already said you don't have Doom3 for the PC, and have seen it on the xbox.

 

This makes me ask the question, Why keep asking for developers here to explain what they are doing if your NOT going to be able to play the mod at all!

This will be a PC mod which requires the 'boring' doom3 game.

 

I myself can't wait to see it :cool:

[Arumakani]

By strategic, I mean you can plan your way forward, watch guard routines etc. I've been playing videogames etc since about 1983. However my first Thief game was Thief DS and this was after Splinter Cell whose the 3rd person camera is brilliant. I just got used to that type of play. I like Garrett and the adventures he takes part in more than Sc and Sam Fisher.

[ZylonBane]

By strategic, I mean you can plan your way forward, watch guard routines etc.

You can do that in first person just fine.

[demagogue]

The way I see it, it's all "strategy", but at different levels of grain ... On the First Person level, you have no more info than what the PC has, so decisionmaking is very immediate. For 3P, you have more info than the PC, so gameplay and decisionmaking is more "abstract" in charting out his activity (like you're radioing them in to the PC), to a God's Eye p.o.v. where you can see the whole world and plot on a very abstract scale knowing *many* global things that the PC could never know.

 

They can all be fun in their own way, but you have to admit they are each different paradigms, and run on a scale from immediacy to increasing abstractness .. so IMO it ultimately depends on what kind of "strategy" appeals to the way you like to think in games, or what mood you are in. Are you more in the mood for a boardgame kind of strategy, or paintball (or if I'm going to use an analogy, more like "gestapo", actually a game we used to play at night in the woods, like a nighttime, stealthy capture the flag)?

Edited May 11, 2006 by demagogue

[Arumakani]

cloud dew, I will be getting Doom3 for the dark mod. I just don't like Doom3 it's rubbish. I accept the fact that they're not going to do a 3rd person mode, I'm just suggesting it as a viable option. I will try to do a 3rd person mode myself then.

[Domarius]

By strategic, I mean you can plan your way forward, watch guard routines etc.

It's out of sheer curiosity I'd like to hear you elaborate on this statement a bit more and explain how this differs from first person view.

[Arumakani]

You have more of a view to say watch and avoid 2 guards whose guard routines are in fairly close proximity to each other. Have any of you watched the E3 footage of the playable level for Splinter Cell Double Agent?

[sparhawk]

Actually this "strategy" feels much tenser in FPS instead of 3rd. Simply for the reason, because if I want to watch two or more guards at the same time, I constantly have to move my view, just like I would do in real life. That gives me an impression as if I were really there, because I have to behave in a similar way.

3rd person is like watching a movie.

[New Horizon]

You have more of a view to say watch and avoid 2 guards whose guard routines are in fairly close proximity to each other. Have any of you watched the E3 footage of the playable level for Splinter Cell Double Agent?

 

In a game such as Thief, which was conceived and born as a First Person Sneaker, the fans consider third person cheating. When you consider that you can observe the guards in such a way, you can certainly see why. Third person reduced Thief to a game level, where the originals were a personal experience.

[Arumakani]

It's all personal preference. I do enjoy FP view, but enjoy the 3rd person more. It won't stop me from getting the Dark Mod though

[Ratty]

A 3rd person view wouldn't hurt anything if it were included (aside from the time it would take away from useful Darkmod work), but I would like to see it NOT included as a matter of petty principle. 3rd person ruined TDS and not having it Darkmod would make me feel smug. I'm sure the Darkmodsters have their own loftier motivations but I only want to hurt its feelings and make it feel bad.

[sparhawk]

Oh, thre will be 3rd person in TDM. Simply because we are not actively removing it. But it will not be supported either.

[Arumakani]

I'm in the UK and will be purchasing Doom3 for the PC. It's going fairly cheap at the moment.

 

A few questions:

 

1) Is the Doom3 editor included?

2) How do I go about creating a medieval/gothic world using it?

3) And is it possible to use the 3rd person view to actually create a game around with the option of 3rd and FP?

 

I'm a newbie at modding so just want to know, so forgive the ignorance if you guys know your stuff.

[sparhawk]

1) Is the Doom3 editor included?

 

Yes.

 

2) How do I go about creating a medieval/gothic world using it?

 

The game also features some Hell textures, which can be used for that. Otherwise you must either create your own textures or wait for TDM as this is one aspect of our mod. Another mod that has medvial style textures would be the Hexen mod which is also under development at the moment.

 

3) And is it possible to use the 3rd person view to actually create a game around with the option of 3rd and FP?

 

Doom 3 has first and 3rd person mode included. However, if you want to use a medievial setting you would have to create your own animations as the anims for D3 only include the marine model. This is also what we are doing at the moment.

[Arumakani]

Cheers SparHawk. You're the most helpful and understanding fellow here. You have to go into the editor and then do 3rd person animations? Can I mod the dark Mod after getting it to make the 3rd person?

Edited May 15, 2006 by Arumakani

[Gildoran]

The level editor that comes with D3 is just for editing levels, guis, articulated figures, etc (things specific to D3). External assets such as pictures, sounds, models and their animations need to be created/edited with external programs. In other words, to create a new character you'll probably need Lightwave, Maya, or Blender. (note: Blender is free)

 

TDM will have just enough 3rd person support to allow for reflections. When TDM is released, all sourcecode for it will be released too, allowing you to modify it however you want.

[sparhawk]

Cheers SparHawk. You're the most helpful and understanding fellow here.

 

I know.

 

You have to go into the editor and then do 3rd person animations? Can I mod the dark Mod after getting it to make the 3rd person?

 

As Gilderon said, you need a 3D app for this. Blender, Lightwave, Maya comes to mind, but you can also use other tools like Wings 3D or similar.

If you want to do this for the Dark Mod you don't have to because we already are doing this. Since the animations are also needed for the shadows, we most likely will do this as well. If you volunteer to help us, just say so, but you must provide some references so we can see how your work is.

 

3rd person is independent from the Dark Mod as this is mostly a issue of presentation.

[Arumakani]

Nah. It's not for taking part, it's just for my own fun to do it myself. So where can I obtain these things?

[Domarius]

You wont obtain Maya or 3DS anywhere legally for less than about $500 (not exactly sure), but Blender and Wings 3D are freely and leagally downloadable. Milkshape is probably better alround and costs an affordable $30 US

[sparhawk]

You wont obtain Maya or 3DS anywhere legally for less than about $500 (not exactly sure),

 

Not sure about 3DS, but for Maya you can easily add at minimum one zero depending on the licence.

 

but Blender and Wings 3D are freely and leagally downloadable. Milkshape is probably better alround and costs an affordable $30 US

 

Wings is also free? I thought it is shareware? Maybe I was confusing it with Milkshape.

[OrbWeaver]

Milkshape is probably better alround and costs an affordable $30 US

 

Milkshape better than Blender?

 

Why pay hard cash for a low-poly-only modeller when you can have a professional-quality high/low-poly modelling tool for absolutely goddamn nothing?

[Domarius]

If you've made any good models with Blender, then I'll give your opinion more weighting. Even then, I'll say that you wasted your time learning an esoteric interface when you could have learned something more mainstream which will benefit you in the long run when you upgrade to a more powerful modelling program.

[sparhawk]

If it is a waste of time it depends on what you want to do. If you want to do modelling and animation Blender is much better than Milkshape. As for good models in Blender. You can easily check out their site and look what people do with it.