Tony Ayalew on 23/10/2008 at 16:23

---

Hi everyone,

Since I installed the T3 Editor, the loot glint doens't work anymore. It's simply not in the game anymore. Is this normal (or happened to any of you). I don't like this loot glint bug.

I hope someone can help me.

-Tony :ebil:
_____

New Horizon on 27/10/2008 at 18:20

---

It is not finished, that is why it does not yet feel...all of a piece. It's a pre-release 'beta' demo, of a toolkit. What more can we say to explain this? You're comparing a 'completed, published, multi-million dollar, studio game' to a 'zero-dollar, community, fan made project'? While flattering...it's hardly an equal comparison.

We know that there are issues with mantling onto smaller objects, we can eventually fix that. We're want to fix a lot of things that crop up in a project this big, but it takes a lot of coding hours. It also takes constructive feedback, and a willingness to help from the community. The majority of the community has been outstanding in that respect.



It's evidently about taste. We set out to revisit Thief 1 and 2...you seem to prefer Thief 3. That's your choice, but it doesn't change our direction.



Fidcals alpha demo was exactly what it was supposed to be. You're comparing it to what exactly? It was an 'alpha' release demo, so lets compare it to another alpha demo. Have you ever played the Doom 3 Alpha Demo that was leaked years ago? Thief's Den was far more polished and playable than that. For an alpha release, it was surprisingly functional. Try to keep things in perspective. You can't compare an alpha demo to a finished game and expect to be blown away. Be realistic.



We're very optimistic, and for good reason. Thiefs Den was an alpha demo with NO optimizations and NO tweaks. It was also game code that was frozen several months before release, so even then it was outdated. Saint Lucia, on the other hand, was taken much further. There were optimizations on the AI and lighting systems....with more yet to come. You WILL see better performance in Saint Lucia when you level the playing field, and set it up to the equivalent T3 settings, but don't expect it right out of the box. Everything has not been optimized yet.

By default, we shipped the demo with an enhanced ambient shader system to improve the look of default doom 3 ambient lights. It's taxing on performance, due to our limted code access at this time, and could not be done in the most efficient way. When D3 is open source, we will correct this and performance will return. Also, the way we have to deal with the light gem is taxing..I think I lose 10fps with it on my weak system..again, fixable when the source code is released.

Here is the deal guys, T3 out of the box is not TDM out of the box. We use larger textures in a lot of cases, and our default ambient system is more advanced. Standard ambient lighting in games is ‘flat lit, non-directional', ours is ‘non-directional' but has simulated depth...that affects performance on certain cards. That's just the reality of the extra calculations to provide the depth to ambient lit textures.

There are many choices to improve performance however, and if you want a ‘fair' apples to apples comparison of T3 and TDM, you need to take a few steps.. 1. Disable the enhanced ambient lighting by renaming interaction.vfp to interaction_whatever.vfp, and then use our fast ambient lighting optimization. Our fast ambient lighting replicates the system used in T3. 2. Set the doom 3 video settings to compress and downsize our textures to Thief 3 sizes. Doom 3 can do this on the fly. You will essentially be on a level playing field with T3.

I also knew the file size thing would also come up.

You're comparing Saint Lucia to an FM. It's not that easy, as it is more than a packaged FM. Since the mod is not released yet, we have to package large parts of the toolkit with the map. When the mod is released, people will only have download the content 'ONCE'. The only things that will be required for download will be custom content. Releasing a demo is not representative of releasing a Fan Mission. If we had released the full mod this week, and then released Saint Lucia 2 weeks from now, the total download size would be roughly 10.5 megs...a lot smaller than 400mb. There will be maps in the future with custom content of course, but for the most part...I imagine we will see maps in the beginning of no more than 10 to 50 megs. Anyone releasing maps using 'only' the toolset assets will see very small maps sizes.



You can do many things with our assets. I think the city slum sections look very dirty and decayed. You don't need to create all of your textures in a dirty fashion with this engine, much is done with decals in the editor...it's very flexible.

The Builders had been cleaning and restoring the church for the Arch Bishop's visit in this mission. There are readables which explain this. They've just hit paydirt with the statue, and they're pouring money into making the church look presentable.

I get the feeling that there are a few people who feel we're being heaped with undeserved recognition or something.

In just over 4 years, we have gone from the majority hating our work and doubting us, to the majority liking our work and believing in us. We have worked HARD for that respect. We didn't have the luxury of a completed, commercial Thief game to base our work on. We have clawed and struggled our way through the last 4 years and created our own tools. In fact, we have crafted two projects with our very own hands. The Mod code/assets, and the customized level editor Dark Radiant. Often, people don't seem to understand that Dark Radiant is a completely separate and full time project itself.

Our goal has never been to replace Thief...our goal is to GIVE the Thief community something they have always wanted, a toolset that will become completely open source. An open source alternative that will allow the community to maintain their own set of Thief styled tools for as long as they see fit to maintain it. You won't get that from the official publishers.

Most of us on the TDM team were highly enthusiastic about Deadly Shadows before it came out, so we're not 'haters'. I ran out and bought it on the day of release for goodness sake. We don't hold the originals as 'The Gold Standard' either, as we've tweaked and improved those mechanics where we saw opportunity to do so without harming gameplay. There is so much more to all of this than a simple us 'vs' them debate. It's tiring, and it's insulting. At the end of the day, Dark Mod will be released, so lets move on. People have begun embracing it, and building their own test missions with our demos. We can all make the community stronger...if we try.

Judith on 28/10/2008 at 08:45

---

Well, I played Tears recently and I think that the art direction is great, although textures with timbers are outdated these days, IMO, and should be replaced with simple static meshes.

The performance is ok, didn't experience any frame drops, only the loading time is a bit ridiculous (I got bigger FM in the works with 1024 textures only and when I use "generate IBT file" option it loads as long as Lucia). But I guess it's a technical thing to be fixed later. What I didn't like was the gameplay concept, especially in the beginning, but it's nothing related to technical progress the TDM team has made since Thief's den.

New Horizon on 28/10/2008 at 13:53

---

I wasn't being defensive. :) I was simply clarifying misinformation, and putting things in the proper perspective. As I said earlier, comparing an unfinished alpha demo to a completed commercial game is flattering, but unfair. I simply expect people who have themselves spent a few years designing a project to have a little more compassion and objectivity, especially for a project that has been essentially built from the ground up.

I'm uploading the T3EnhancED installer for you Beleg....but it will take some time, it's rather huge. Just around 700 megs. Should fit on a CD though.

New Horizon on 28/10/2008 at 19:14

---

Beleg. You will find a link in your PM's.