GlasWolf on 29/12/2005 at 04:42
Quote Posted by DreadLord
From which FM are this pics? Wow...it look somehow like the mechanist buildings of Thief 2 (except the hammer symbols ;) )
They're from Ziemansky's own (
http://thiefmissions.com/thief3/demos/SFM_zSchism_v4.zip) Schism: Impurities in the Mix.
242 on 29/12/2005 at 11:01
ascottk, so your improvements will be something like JohnP. Misc. Textures pack - we'll be able to replay TDS with the new stuff and textures? I mean it's not only for designers?
ascottk on 29/12/2005 at 17:32
Quote Posted by 242
ascottk, so your improvements will be something like JohnP. Misc. Textures pack - we'll be able to replay TDS with the new stuff and textures? I mean it's not only for designers?
That's what I'm going for. I may have to modify the OMs because there's some lighting flaws like shadows that suddenly end (shadow extrusion distances). The Old Quarter 3 map has a few of those flaws & some shadow casting could be enabled.
One thing I didn't like about t3 was the lack of steam punk technology (collectors & associated lights, those clicking monitoring boxes that were tucked into the walls seen in Bafford's) that was so prevalent in the first two games so I'd like to incorporate some more of that stuff too.
A big problem is map sizes once the new textures are used. I generated an ibt of one of the Stone Market maps & it was 100 megabytes more than the original! So I have to think of a clever way to use the original ibts BUT incorporate the new stuff. Another big problem is performance because I'm using uncompressed dds files for the normal mapped textures.
242 on 30/12/2005 at 00:55
That's great, do you use your own hi-res textures only for this project, or John's textures serve as your base? They are good, but I don't quite agree with some of his choices, like too prominent notches on some stones, or texture on some wood boards which looks like the wood structure is doubled with a little offset, not naturally looking.
Quote:
A big problem is map sizes once the new textures are used. I generated an ibt of one of the Stone Market maps & it was 100 megabytes more than the original!
Really? How John's textures pack manages to be only 30+ Mb then? And it includes plenty of textures..
ascottk on 30/12/2005 at 01:17
Quote Posted by 242
That's great, do you use your own hi-res textures only for this project, or John's textures serve as your base? They are good, but I don't quite agree with some of his choices, like too prominent notches on some stones, or texture on some wood boards which looks like the wood structure is doubled with a little offset, not naturally looking.
John P's textures were a starting point but there was a lot of textures he didn't do. I'm trying to get the textures to look more natural but there's an artistic twist I'm trying to get rid of :erg: The normal maps are getting lost with the specular masks so I'm trying to work around those too.
Quote:
How John's textures pack manages to be only 30+ Mb then? And it includes plenty of textures..
John P used a hex editor to rename the textures in the ibt files so the game would load the dds files. He altered the ibt files so he did not have to distribute them. And the uncompressed dds I've been using can be pretty big. Some are nearly 4 mb by themselves.
New Horizon on 30/12/2005 at 02:07
Quote Posted by ascottk
John P used a hex editor to rename the textures in the ibt files so the game would load the dds files. He altered the ibt files so he did not have to distribute them. And the uncompressed dds I've been using can be pretty big. Some are nearly 4 mb by themselves.
Ouch, that's huge.
We were running into that issue on Dark Mod as well. So we came up with a system to retain the best quality at the smallest size we could get things down to. Of course, we're using TGA and they can use 24 bit lossless compression. A 512 X 512 texture looks great and only weighs in at 700kb. We're keeping all the hires TGA's for a separate ultra download, after we release Dark Mod. A large number of them are 3 to 4 megs each.
jprobs on 31/12/2005 at 02:50
I am new to this board, but have been playing Thief since the first one was released.
Thief 1 was great, theif 2 blew it out of the water, and thief 3 felt like I was playing a Playstation game. I didn't like thief 3 much, but finished the game. I just hope the FMs for thief 3 are better that the original game was.
By the way, Thief is the ONLY computer game I play. Never have found anything to keep me interested as much as the Thief series.
And many thank go out to all of you who put so much time and effort into building the FMs, without you this game would have died years ago. And you keep me busy :)
Macsen on 4/1/2006 at 00:28
TDS was quite different in terms of mood and atmosphere. But then T2 was a big departure from T1.
It's hard to put my finger on what wasn't so great about TDS, but I think it lacked the smoothness of the other Thief games. In T1 and T2 you never had to think about your body beyond the view from your eyes and the weapon. In TDS it felt like you were navigating a giant stick insect.
I didn't like the blackjacking system either, and since that's what you're doing most of the time that is abig problem. The T2 system was perfect, it's beyond me why they'd want to change it.
I liked the Cradle but felt it was too modern, especially since it was supposed to be a very old building. The Clocktower was potentially my favourite mission in a game ever but the execution was rather poor, I'd like to make my own version in DromEd some day.
ZylonBane on 4/1/2006 at 00:41
Quote Posted by jprobs
By the way, Thief is the ONLY computer game I play. Never have found anything to keep me interested as much as the Thief series.
Hie thee to System Shock 2.
Macsen on 4/1/2006 at 01:13
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Hie thee to System Shock 2.
Never played that one, though I have some recollection of reading a walkthrough to the first System Shock in a very old magazine. Looked very futuristic, at the time.
