Svperstar on 6/12/2013 at 11:38
Hello. I'm a long time Thief fan starting with the demo in 1998 and played Gathering at the Bar when it was first released.
I'm loving the new patches I just don't know any missions that require the NewDark exe. People said you could make massive cities an such without having to worry about the old limits.
So any missions come out that exploit the engine upgrades?
Thanks.
GORT on 6/12/2013 at 13:56
Well, I'm trying with both The Rebellion Of The Builder 2 and Unknown Treasure NDV. Quite a bit of my textures are taking advantage of the materials for shines and fake reflections. I'm definitely going over those old brush limits. So far, the one thing that I do have to watch out for is the cell limits (I just love using oodles of dodecahedron for cave structures). Unknown Treasure for v. 1.18 of Thief 2 was hitting the max brush limit. The one for v. 1.21 or higher has another section of the city that was introduced in The Rebellion Of The Builder 2.
Renault on 6/12/2013 at 15:46
The thing is, New Dark has only been out a little over a year, so while there are probably a lot of missions in the works, there haven't been that many actually released yet. Most of what we've seen is authors updating old missions and using some of the new lighting and graphical capabilities. Some of cardia1's, Ricebug's, and Sensut's missions come to mind.
Check this list to see what missions require New Dark:
(
http://www.ttlg.de/de/download/navigation/fm-download.php)
As far as the "massive cities" theory goes, something like that is very unlikely. From what I understand, while most of the brush limits were raised in dromed, the cell limit was not raised accordingly so, so there still will be limits as to what can be created.
Sensut on 6/12/2013 at 15:55
This will be far beyond the old limits, but only next year.
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darthsLair on 6/12/2013 at 16:08
Wow! That is fantastic Sensut! :cool:
Thor on 6/12/2013 at 17:11
Quote Posted by Brethren
As far as the "massive cities" theory goes, something like that is very unlikely. From what I understand, while most of the brush limits were raised in dromed, the cell limit was not raised accordingly so, so there still will be limits as to what can be created.
Hey, how about massively detailed cities? Like not making the entire City in one map and have some pretty simplistic detailing, but rather a small(ish), but richly detailed environment?
Yandros on 7/12/2013 at 00:10
With regards to city maps, one of the biggest things NewDark gives us is more polygons in view. This allows authors to add more details and have longer lines of sight with more buildings in view. With OldDark, authors had to take sometimes drastic measures to block views and build narrowly to avoid going over the poly limit.
The Drymian Codex, which was released by me, Random_Taffer and Tannar earlier this year, uses some NewDark features - high res textures, better particle FX, areas with different ambient light and fog, and lightmapped water.
Ricebug on 7/12/2013 at 12:43
My current project takes up quite a bit of real estate. One outdoor section is approximately 1024x1024x48. Didn't have any problems until I connected a small town to one side, which is about 512x256x48.
The framerate stuttered quite badly (I have a decent machine.) and final lighting took several hours to compile.
Polygons = 9,076; cells = 1,666.
Separating the two areas (using teleport traps to traverse) greatly relieved the problems.
Bottom Line: While ND is a lot more forgiving than OD, there are still some apparent no-no's when building a world.
Xorak on 8/12/2013 at 01:23
Quote Posted by Svperstar
I'm loving the new patches I just don't know any missions that require the NewDark exe. People said you could make massive cities an such without having to worry about the old limits.
Unfortunately you can't build massive cities in New Dark. FM designers are still essentially limited to the same overall scope and complexity of the mission.
I don't mean to toot my own horn, but my contest mission Zealot's Hollow uses many New Dark features (higher quality graphics would be the most visible one), and would be impossible to build or play in V1.8 Thief. But I don't know if it uses
all of NewDark's features. :p There are a hell of a lot of new features, and there's no way a player would even be aware of most of them. With the new mission I'm working on, I hope to utilize more features though.
