GREAT UPDATE!

[Unwanted Guest]

Wow, what progress! All of your work is so impressive! The sleep mode is great, and looks really smooth. I got a laugh as he got up, went to the end of the room, turned around and went back to bed - as if he got up just to turn the ringing alarm clock off! - I can relate to that! HAH. Little expecting him to pause a bit in the situp position from laying down - sort of like clearing his head..wiping the sleep from his eyes idea - but still is fantastic!

 

Love seeing the monthly updates, and am always waiting day after day ( in the mid of the following month) to see the next one - it's like another turn of a page in a great novel; - cant see what's going on next.

 

Rope swinging is cool, that should be a lot of fun, and cant wait to try out the lockpicks!

 

 

Hmm, I get a feeling someone is working on a mission somewhere with these new implements - I hope

 

THANKS for all the good work!! THis whole thing is going to turn out unbeleivably good!!

Edited March 26, 2009 by Unwanted Guest

[Springheel]

Thanks for the enthusiasm! It's always nice to hear positive feedback.

 

Hmm, I get a feeling someone is working on a mission somewhere with these new implements - I hope

 

There are at least six missions currently in development already--probably a few others I don't know about.

[Stormbringer951]

*Drool* Now I just gotta find my D3 disk....

[DeathStage_12]

...just...one...more....DromEd....missio

n....ugghh!

 

The learning curve is going to be frustrating, but the Dark Radiant interface is so much more user friendly and intuitive. I hope there are a few small missions to play by year's end.

Great work - Cheers!

<DS-12>

Edited March 27, 2009 by DeathStage_12

[demagogue]

There are at least six missions currently in development already--probably a few others I don't know about.

 

+1. Having just done the tutorial, I can't resist. Since I figured out it's possible to release something with what's already gone public, I thought it would be fun to get a (few?) contest-sized mission(s) while everybody's waiting. I'm mean I'm talking about like a 2-weeker.

I may need help on packaging it and a few other things, though.

Edited March 27, 2009 by demagogue

[Ishtvan]

+1. Having just done the tutorial, I can't resist. Since I figured out it's possible to release something with what's already gone public, I thought it would be fun to get a (few?) contest-sized mission(s) while everybody's waiting. I'm mean I'm talking about like a 2-weeker.

I may need help on packaging it and a few other things, though.

In that case, there may be a significant advantage in signing up to be a Beta Mapper. Fidcal just put together a "start pack" of template entities that is intended just for this purpose of quick-building contest-sized missions. There aren't any added obligations either, other than waiting for the full mod to download.

[Springheel]

Yeah, you've been a regular for how long now? Bite the bullet and *join us....*

[Mortem Desino]

OOOooooOOOOoooohh.....Joooiiin uuusss.....

[Crispy]

We are the Builders. Resistance is futile.

[demagogue]

Ok, ok, I guess you guys have a point. No sense in going it alone.

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=9104

[Diego]

LOL

 

I'm really happy to see thedarkmod v1.0 almost in the reach of our hands!

 

How's the publicity going? people should know about this!

[SplaTtzZ]

Yeah nice update! Can't believe you guys are at the stage where you're preparing to release a beta! It's been like 4 or so years now right? My memory's hazy; but congrats anyway!

 

Any chance we could get a video of the lock picking system in action? I'm dying to see what its like in-game

[Crispy]

Lockpicking is still being tweaked. I would not be surprised to see a public video of it in action at some point, just maybe not immediately.

 

I'm not sure a video would make much sense to the uninitiated, to be honest - it would be hard to figure out what's being done just by watching. But maybe if the video was accompanied with lockpicking instructions, then it would make some sense.

[SplaTtzZ]

Yeah something like a video tutorial would be pretty awesome! That is, if you guys had the time to do one of course I imagine its gonna be pretty hectic from now until a Beta release

[Springheel]

Any chance we could get a video of the lock picking system in action? I'm dying to see what its like in-game

 

Yeah, as I said in the TTLG thread, watching a video on lockpicking would look just like watching T2 (the handle would jiggle for a while and the door would open). It's what the player is actually doing that makes it interesting.

[DeathStage_12]

Very nice. It reminds me of Elder Scrolls Oblivion. The jerky AI in Thief was always something that damaged immersion a bit. This is such an improvement. Thank you.

-DS:12

[DeathStage_12]

I need some guidance on a graphics card. I tried to run Thief's Den and Tears of St. Lucia yesterday and consistently got 7 fps despite utilizing the performance tweaks. I suspect it's my graphics card. It ran Doom 3 at 50 fps, but I know that DM adds a lot of processing. So, firstly, looking at these specs, is it correct to assume it's the graphics card?:

 

Pentium 4 @ 3.2 GHz

1 GByte of RAM

running XP service pack 3

 

graphics card is...(don't laugh)...

Radeon X550

 

So, I need some guidance on graphics cards that run this mod well. My budget is quite slim - 2 kids, 1 salary!!! If there is one for less than $100, great, otherwise, I'll need to start selling my wheat penny collection. It is unlikely I will buy a card new, so basically the oldest, used card I can get that will run well at 1024 x 728.

Thanks so much,

-DS:12

[DeathStage_12]

...sorry, I hijacked the thread. I'll create as a new post.

 

-DS:12

[cYmoZz]

I'm looking forward to the next update - any chance that there is one coming soon?

Edited May 4, 2009 by cYmoZz

[Springheel]

I usually do one every month or so, so I'll probably get one up soon (that said, there's not as much to talk about in these final stages).

[Unwanted Guest]

I was wondering too, but was biting my tounge. I know these guys are busy.

 

Even if there is not much progress at this point, we still love to hear what little is going on. Whets our appetittes for the final product!

 

Thanks

 

Matt

[Fidcal]

It's tweaking, fine-tuning, fixing - stuff like that. We're not holding out on anything fantastically new. People are working on the usual things like refining blackjacking, animations, ladder climbing, impact sound alert levels. We're working as hard as ever but it's boring to report like 'we raised the alert level for a dropped crate on carpet at 5 paces from 0.15 to 0.166.' Then everything has to be discussed and agreed etc. A lot of this is really uh ... work and not fun.

[Midnight]

'we raised the alert level for a dropped crate on carpet at 5 paces from 0.15 to 0.166.'

 

Worst. Update. Ever!

 

Seriously though, if there isn't an update soon I'm going to start worrying that you're too busy with some kind of drastic major change, like re-doing the whole thing using the Quake II engine or something

[Springheel]

Here's a "direct from behind the scenes" example of the stuff we've been doing, as our programmers work on difficulty levels and combat:

 

For example, lets say at combat difficulty A, I want to set specific values in cvars 1, 2, 3... n. We could hard-code these specific values in the GUI, or maybe put them in other cvars and copy them over, but it might be nice to have them in a def file or dict somewhere and just load that entityDef in the SDK and copy over the values from there, e.g.

 

entityDef combat_difficulty_settings
{
  "diff1_name" "easy"
  "diff1_cv_tdm_melee_ai_damage_mult" "0.5"
  "diff1_cv_tdm_melee_ai_reaction_mult" "0.75"
// ...
  "diff2_name" "normal"
  "diff2_cv_tdm_melee_ai_damage_mult" "1"
  "diff2_cv_tdm_melee_ai_reaction_mult" "1.2"
}

 

And so on. In that example, the name of the cvar to change would be parsed from the key name after "cv_*", but there might be a better way to do it. Alternatively you could just have a different entityDef for each difficulty setting. Something along those lines where, given a category (combat) and a difficulty level, the cvars to change and the values to put in them are stored somewhere in a fairly easy to edit fashion.

 

As you can see, doesn't make great webpage reading.

[Mortem Desino]

Well, Springheel, I suppose you could include something about my recent breakthrough.