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I've just played the demo. Finished it a couple of times, playing around with stuff.

 

My observations:

 

1. Even at this stage, it's all kinds of awesome. You guys have achieved something truly great here.

 

2. It runs well; I didn't encounter any noticeable performance problems, except in some quite specific cases and even then it's very playable. Specs: Core2Duo E6400 ; 2GB RAM ; 7900GTO Settings: 1152x864, 2xAA, no v-sync (with v-sync the framerate sometimes dips lower than I'd like, I don't know why really. On the other hand, isn't Doom 3 capped at 60 FPS? I get tearing in some areas)

 

3. You got the atmosphere down, totally. When I first got into that attic room I was all "OH man that's what it's all about!"

 

4. I, too, had to lower gamma for optimal experience. I have a Samsung 19" CRT and I found the sweetspot somewhere around 1.25. Not that this will help anyone much, but hey.

 

5. Rope arrows are perfect :D

 

Now, for the negatives/annoyances. Please, take this as my humble contribution to the development or this mod.

 

The most serious bug I've found so far has been the blank menu when hitting esc during playing. It happened only once, and I see you're aware of it already, but just so you know.

 

I won't say anything about AI because I don't think I can tell you anything new. It works well enough to enforce and enable stealthy playing style and that's enough for such an early state of things :)

 

The bow zoom takes a touch too long to kick in, I think.

 

Sometimes when you try to place an object onto something else, it will shoot off in random direction. Kinda weird. On the other hand, rotating objects is a GREAT feature.

 

Now, the movement speed. I see lots of people complaining about the player moving too slow; I have another theory...

I've always felt that the view/movement system in Thief 1/2 was about as close to perfection as it comes in first person games. It was definitely one of the things that contributed greatly to the feeling of "being there", interacting with the environment. Your current system does fall rather short -in terms of feel, mainly- compared to that of the looking glass games. It's precise and versatile, but I felt there was something missing, so I fired up Thief 2 and also Thievery UT and spent nearly half an hour basically just prancing around :D

I came to the conclusion that what's missing is a just right amount of vertical head bob (I've seen this suggested before in this thread), and a certain sense of inertia. It's somewhat hard to describe, especially since I'm not a native english speaker, but the acceleration and decceleration to and from different movement speeds feels incredibly organic in Thief, and so does the feeling of weight. The vertical view bob also feels very natural and conveys very well the taking of steps, jumping, etc. TDM is not yet quite there in that regard; it feels more "floaty", less natural, and also contributes to the feeling of slowness, IMO.

Then there's also the issue of the FOV; I don't know what FOV Thief used, but perhaps it would be best to use a similar amount (although you probably do, already) or less. The wider the FOV, the more distorted the proportions are as you know and the harder it becomes to judge sizes and distances. Perhaps that has something to do with it as well, I don't know.

Another thing that somewhat bothered me was the way you hold objects; it feels like you hold them very far from your "body" (again, might be an issue with FOV) and the way that crates, for instance, trail behind as you move your view doesn't feel right somehow; the idea is sound in principle, but the implementation is not quite ideal. My guess is that it's probably the way they suddenly accelerate and then move at a steady velocity until centered again that creates this impression.

Those things are probably placeholders, so I don't want to nag too much, I just wanted to contribute my opinion.

 

Aside from the aforementioned issues and the odd bug, it impressed the hell out of me. Be proud of what you're doing. Very proud :)

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As is at the moment, if you're close to a door and it opens it pushes the player around. Is that going to stay the same or will it be changed so they're like Thief where the door stops if you're in the way, or like Half Life where the doors swing straight through you?

That's a big one to me as well. In fact, its effect can be felt in the demo, in that the shutters can push you right off the ledge. I believe our aim is to change it to Thief's method (that is, door stops on player). Someone will correct me if not. ^_^

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I came to the conclusion that what's missing is a just right amount of vertical head bob (I've seen this suggested before in this thread), and a certain sense of inertia. It's somewhat hard to describe, especially since I'm not a native english speaker, but the acceleration and decceleration to and from different movement speeds feels incredibly organic in Thief, and so does the feeling of weight. The vertical view bob also feels very natural and conveys very well the taking of steps, jumping, etc. TDM is not yet quite there in that regard; it feels more "floaty", less natural, and also contributes to the feeling of slowness, IMO.

 

I was thinking about inertia in relation to AI animations. Currently there doesn't seem to be a transition from walking to a dead stop. I think part of the criticism about animations is the lack of transitions between animations. It looks unnatural when the city guard stops then starts walking again. The turning is something to look into too. Right now they just spin.

 

I know D3 has support transitional animations but implementing them is a different manner. That's something I can look into when I have time.

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Works fine with steam version of Doom3 for me.

 

I dont like the way the doors dont stop if the hit you, and actually move you backwards. The same for the window shutters, which on openning actually pushed me so far away from the windowsill i was standing on i felt that i was standing on nothing, hovering in space.

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This amuses me, because some (misguided) people were claiming at one point that TDM would never work as a Doom 3 mod since the shadows would all be pitch black. :laugh:

 

There is ambience in the level, so nothing is pitch black, but it shouldn't look grey or washed out either. Try tweaking your gamma and brightness settings.

 

I Lowered the gamma to around 1.0 and it actually doesnt look so bad now. As reported higher gamma made the shadows seem all washed out, but for me 1.0 gamma looks quite pretty :blush:

-Scope
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I was thinking about inertia in relation to AI animations. Currently there doesn't seem to be a transition from walking to a dead stop. I think part of the criticism about animations is the lack of transitions between animations. It looks unnatural when the city guard stops then starts walking again. The turning is something to look into too. Right now they just spin.

 

I know D3 has support transitional animations but implementing them is a different manner. That's something I can look into when I have time.

 

I honestly didn't even notice that about the AI animations. I guess I didn't pay much attention to them because I know they're far from being complete. Now that you mentioned it, I opened it again and I see what you mean, but it could be worse I think. Thievery has this same problem with AI.

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ok, my turn to chime in on the pre-beta release teaser:

Wow, just wow folks, you have realy nailed it! I understand there are a lot of things that need to be

polished, tweeked, finished, or just done in the first place and I really appreciate you all letting us

see your work in its naked, unfinished state (a trust not lightly taken).

 

the Water arrows are absolutely SUPERB. I love the swirling water in the bulbous head and being able to see the world filtering through the water a little is very cool. I am very impressed.

 

I loved that the pointy fence-top hurt me. has anyone gotten over it without damage? I think the best I

have done is a quick stab before I slip over to the other side.

 

I shot the guard in the street with a broadhead and it stuck to him. This seems natural except that

it appears only the tip is in him and therefore not a bad wound at all. is there any way that

in the future some code could be added so that the more damage is done to the guard the farther

in it sinks? I know nothing about coding but from appearences it looks like it could be done.

I would think all you'd have to do is destroy a portion of the arrow relative to the damage done

and it would appear that the arrow is driven further into the opponent. I wouldn't even care that I

could no longer harvest my spent arrows out of the guard's body as he walks by (this I found to be

rediculously funny but should probably go away if it can since it is weird. I yanked an arrow out

of his body and he didn't even notice, boy am I a good thief!). the arrow sticking out of the guard was

really cool looking until I had hidden long enough for him to go off alert and start patrolling again.

the arrows sticking out of his body should fall off or dissapear or something after he goes back to

unalerted state. I mean if you had an arrow sticking out of your face would you walk around calmly

just because it happened a half hour ago? I know this may not be practical or planned but it seems to

me that if it can be done it should be done.

 

I know everyone has said it but I really think your team cannot be praised enough for the job you

did on mantling. it works the way it should have worked in all thief games ever.

 

I could chatter on and on about all the small details but everyone else has said it already so I'll leave that alone and just congratulate and thank the whole team for doing the excellent work that has been done. I can't wait to see more.

Edited by nobody
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I mean if you had an arrow sticking out of your face would you walk around calmly

just because it happened a half hour ago?

 

Yeah, that's a known issue--arrows aren't supposed to stick into live AI, only dead ones. :)

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The demo is superb.

The only tiny remark, that I would do, concerns the characters head movements when walking.

They look around but they seem to be a little bit drunk with the head rolling around, don't they?

 

When do you think another map can be realeased? I really enjoyed that pre-demo:)

 

See you

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I loved that the pointy fence-top hurt me. has anyone gotten over it without damage? I think the best I

have done is a quick stab before I slip over to the other side.

It's possible to get by without any risk of damage from the spikes.

 

Hint:

thief's highway

(maybe spoiler if you've played T2)

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I've been reading this old thread, and there's this really funny discussion (probably very annoying at the time) about dynamic lighting with a, also very funny/annoying, dude.

 

"...light in Doom3 doesn't go around round objects as it does in TDS. All the Doom3 engine appears to do is push back whatever is revealed by light. Is that dynamic or grossly 2D?" (?!)

 

"YES IT'S DYNAMIC!!! REAL-TIME!! Whatever - The light is MOVING, not staying still, therefore, it's Dynamic!" LOL

 

"You're all good people." :laugh:

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I hope that mappers will be motivated to create another one pretty soon. I cannot wait!

 

It's not strictly a mapping department decision, it's a team decision and currently we have no plans to do that. The map was a tech demo and required a LOT of extra attention to get it released. Our goal now is to focus on improving and implementing the rest of the core AI features...and a huge list of things I can't even begin to list.

 

The community has an alpha release to work with now however, so lets see what they are able to come up with on their own. :) There will usually be someone here to help them if they get stuck.

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bind "k" "inventory_hotkey Compass"

bind "l" "inventory_use Lantern"

Very nice!! Using an object directly makes more sense to me in most cases anyway, since things like a flashbomb or a healthpotion have to be used mostly very fast. I guess I would replace nearly all inventoryhotkeys, by inventory_use. :) Could be nice for the picklocks too, if you stick to the T2 lockpicking system. You could by the way finally reveal something about your lockpicking system... :rolleyes: I really liked the one of TDS and in another discussion somebody also mentioned Oblivion's system, which was ok too, but we still know nothing about yours'!!

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First of all: Great game, keep up your awesome work!

 

I didn't have time to read the whole thread, so forgive me if someone mentioned this before:

 

I have this problem that the sky is somehow stuck to my view direction. If I move my mouse, the sky moves, too. For example, when I look only slightly upwards, the sky texture doesn't cover the whole sky: the center (?) of the sky texture is stuck to my view direction, so most of the sky is behind the buildings. When I look more upwards, the sky moves with it.

Pictures:

1

2

3

 

BTW you should integrate openal in the menu - sound is much better with it and good sound is important in games like this.

 

Edit: ATI X1950XT, Catalyst 8.1

Edited by cYmoZz
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Very nice!! Using an object directly makes more sense to me in most cases anyway, since things like a flashbomb or a healthpotion have to be used mostly very fast. I guess I would replace nearly all inventoryhotkeys, by inventory_use. :) Could be nice for the picklocks too, if you stick to the T2 lockpicking system. You could by the way finally reveal something about your lockpicking system... :rolleyes: I really liked the one of TDS and in another discussion somebody also mentioned Oblivion's system, which was ok too, but we still know nothing about yours'!!

 

What? Both of those systems were stupid and brainless, requiring no skill or judgement whatsoever. I remember with TDS I actually removed the entire HUD and still was able to easily pick the lock just using sound.

In Oblivion, I could pick the hardest lock in a few seconds every time with a security skill of 1.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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I have this problem that the sky is somehow stuck to my view direction. If I move my mouse, the sky moves, too.

Do you by any chance have the Resurrection of Evil D3 expansion pack? If so, you could test in there whether maps with sky portals have the same issue. Then we would know if it's a mod issue or a driver issue with all sky portals. Unfortunately D3 without the expansion pack didn't feature sky portals, so it's difficult for you to test them outside of TDM if you don't have the expansion pack.

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What? Both of those systems were stupid and brainless, requiring no skill or judgement whatsoever. I remember with TDS I actually removed the entire HUD and still was able to easily pick the lock just using sound.

In Oblivion, I could pick the hardest lock in a few seconds every time with a security skill of 1.

 

Even the illusion of being actively involved is generally better than simply waiting.

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Even the illusion of being actively involved is generally better than simply waiting.

 

i have to agree with that. waiting is not very fun. but t3 and oblivion system didn't had to be so easy too, just making something similar but harder is the way to go IMO :] slippier, noisier, longer, etc..

and personally, breaking lockpicks (oblivion) is just a bad idea. hell! if it was for the difficulty, why not just make it harder?

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Do you by any chance have the Resurrection of Evil D3 expansion pack? If so, you could test in there whether maps with sky portals have the same issue. Then we would know if it's a mod issue or a driver issue with all sky portals. Unfortunately D3 without the expansion pack didn't feature sky portals, so it's difficult for you to test them outside of TDM if you don't have the expansion pack.

 

Sry I dont have the expansion pack. I just deleted the config files in /base and /thiefs_den and it improved a little (sky texture didn't move much when I looked up/downwards, but it was still affected when I looked sidewards)

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What? Both of those systems were stupid and brainless, requiring no skill or judgement whatsoever. I remember with TDS I actually removed the entire HUD and still was able to easily pick the lock just using sound.

In Oblivion, I could pick the hardest lock in a few seconds every time with a security skill of 1.

I removed the hud myself and could easily pick them, but neither TDM nor TDS is a lockpicking simulator... :D So why make it ultra hard? After all it shall only create the illusion of picking a lock and for a masterthief, it should be fairly easy to pick a simple lock like that!! Wouldn't feel very thievy if you spent like 5 minutes on a lock! ;) I think the customized harder lockdifficulties in TDS-FMs were just right, although if too many of them were used over the whole level, the lockpicking process became rather annoying. But if it's that important to you, why not join a RL-lockpicking group, mostly found at universities (no joke, but still I want to humor you)? :-P

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