redleaf on 29/9/2006 at 08:12
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I also say it takes longer simply because we have a higher detail level to work to
That was clear in the screenshots I saw. I architecture and outdoors both look more sophisticated, even in the 'noobie' missions that got ditched.
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It's just the game has a load of inconvenient limitations for things you can do (and have a sensible frame rate on)
Can you be more specific about these limitations? Are there limitations in making a T3 Unreal mission that you don't have in T2 Dromed?
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things like not being able to (easily) add new textures/materials
That's too bad. One of the things I enjoy most about T2 fan missions are the wide range of environments that fans create using new textures, objects and ais.
Well, all the reasons I read here are very understandable. Especially this one:
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And because it takes even longer to make a TDS level than a DromEd there's a higher level of dropping out because of real-world issues.
Ziemanskye on 29/9/2006 at 10:13
Tried to use DromEd only once, and it cause me to have to reinstall windows (95 at the time), so I honestly don't know what you can do in that that you can't in T3Ed.
We can add new textures and static meshes, and even sounds, but none of that is anywhere near as easy as you would expect if you came to it from an UnrealEngine2 base, and because the editor was never really engineered for public release and the file formats are designed to load quickly into the Xbox memory limits rather than being small and easy to manipulate.
Effectively you have to have a copy of 3DStudio Max 5.1 to work with Deadly Shadows, and you have to have some competancy at using it. Illegal software with a steep learning curve because the file formats aren't understood, which becomes quite a huge barrier to creating missions for a lot of people. The good news is that people smarter than me are working on reverse engineering said formats so that they can be editted easier, but we don't know how long it's going to take before it really gets to being as accessible as people are now used to DromEd being.
It does however cut down on the number of FMs in development. Most people don't want more of the same after all, given the general levels of disappointment with TDS - which is kind of the final hurdle with making a level for it: the crowd here at ttlg can be vociferously hostile to any TDS projects.
redleaf on 30/9/2006 at 05:55
That was very clear on all points, thank you.
I'm surprised to learn about any hostility regarding TDS from fans. It is, after all, still Thief, and in spite of some disappointing aspects, it offered some very enjoyable gaming.
I toyed with the new engine a tiny bit before Komag's tut was complete, and found a lot to like in it. If the real world will only stop interfering, maybe I'll be able to complete my T2 fan mission some day (oh, yea) and go on to do some T3 building.
Within a year or two, I'll bet our more talented community members will succeed in making the new engine more interesting and accessible to mission builders. We have a great creative bunch here. Too bad we don't have Thief conventions like the Trekkies. Would be interesting to meet some of these folk.
sparhawk on 2/10/2006 at 20:23
Quote Posted by redleaf
Within a year or two, I'll bet our more talented community members will succeed in making the new engine more interesting and accessible to mission builders. We have a great creative bunch here.
I wouldn't hold my breath though. Judging from the T3 edigint forum, it's pretty much dead. Of course it might be that there are a bunch of people working in secret somewhere, but I doubt it. Major problem is, that the engine limitations are mostly hardcoded and can not be worked around without some nifty patches. And reverse engineering takes a lot of time which is better spent otherwise.
There is one project which tries to writen an open source engine for T1/T2 content which seems to progress rather fine. Of course the major problem there is that it only creates a loader and no editor, so what you may get is nicer graphics, but no expansion of the dromed limitations. Still quite interesting though, because it might allow people to run Thief on Linux natively, which I would really appreciate.
The other project is TDM which recreates a Thief style universe in the Doom 3 engine, but is also still under production, so it will take some time until it is finished. However, mapping levels already has started and can be done by interested people, because it also takes some time to learn the tools and map out the level itself, even without the Thiefstyle specific content.
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Too bad we don't have Thief conventions like the Trekkies. Would be interesting to meet some of these folk.
That would really be interesting. :)
Gestalt on 2/10/2006 at 21:07
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Of course it might be that there are a bunch of people working in secret somewhere, but I doubt it.
There is or was a mission pack project going on, which is where a lot of people seem to have disappeared to. I don't know how it's going though.
ascottk on 2/10/2006 at 21:59
Quote Posted by Gestalt
There is or was a mission pack project going on, which is where a lot of people seem to have disappeared to. I don't know how it's going though.
The Flesh Eaters' "The Cabal" t3ed community campaign project which was supposed to be done by June (RL issues & other projects keep us from working on it). It's going very slow :p For one the project lead (me, although I'm only a figure head ATM) is working on the Dark Mod. Not to say I didn't contribute, I created some textures and some custom AI for the project.
There's still a few mappers hanging around, nomad, Ziemanskye, oojackapivvy, Rantanko, GlasWolf, & a strange message from the thieveshighway.org forum from MrJay.
str8g8 was/is still creating concept art and there's a few still creating custom content for the project.
It'll get done when it'll get done :cool:
redleaf on 5/10/2006 at 09:50
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The other project is TDM which recreates a Thief style universe in the Doom 3 engine, but is also still under production, so it will take some time until it is finished. However, mapping levels already has started and can be done by interested people, because it also takes some time to learn the tools and map out the level itself, even without the Thiefstyle specific content.
Ziemanskye:
This is very interesting. Do any screenshots of these maps exist? Who is working on this and what type of work is being done? Are you able to convert Thief objects, models and textures for this engine or do have to recreate them from scratch?
Ziemanskye on 5/10/2006 at 10:57
Wrong guy to aim the question at - I'm not park of the DarkMod - but I might be able to answer anyway:
Check the (
www.darkmod.com) site, and it's forums out. It'll show who's doing what, and while the screenshots on the site were quite old last I looked, the forums have a lot of the BetaMapper's progress where you can see them messing around with the Doom3Edit.
Beyond that, if you have the source material and/or can decompile the old stuff, you can almost certainly move it across. It might be better to build new things though, to fit the new poly counts and material setups and (possibly) scale things need to be at.
sparhawk on 5/10/2006 at 11:27
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Ziemanskye:
This is very interesting. Do any screenshots of these maps exist?
Of course. :) (
www.thedarkmod.com)
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Who is working on this and what type of work is being done?
Me and many other people. We have a stable core team with about 10-15 people working on it.
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Are you able to convert Thief objects, models and textures for this engine or do have to recreate them from scratch?
You might be able to convert it. The question though is wether you want to do it. Thief 1/2 objects are pretty low res and done for a pretty old engine. Converting them wont make them any better. Also there is a legal issue to consider if you take the original content and convert it. Textures might work, but again, it is a different engine, and you woudn't be pleased. It's like sticking an engine from a successfull racing car from the 30ies into a racing car from 2006. You can imagine the results. So yes, we are doing it from scratch, and we already created about 600MB of content because of this. :)
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the BetaMapper's progress where you can see them messing around with the Doom3Edit.
Actually most of this stuff is no longer done with DoomEdit, but ratehr with DarkRadiant because we are also working on a special version of GTKRadiant to suit our requirements. Orbweaver is doing this and so far he did a really good job (
https://sourceforge.net/projects/darkradiant). and this is yet another advantage of TDM, because we get our own editor including source code to mess with it as much as we want/need. :)
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Beyond that, if you have the source material and/or can decompile the old stuff, you can almost certainly move it across. It might be better to build new things though, to fit the new poly counts and material setups and (possibly) scale things need to be at.
Exactly. :)
