SubJeff on 8/5/2011 at 17:37
As cool as I think TDM already is I'm in agreement with ZylonBane here.
TDM needs a solid campaign built by the best. It needs it's own T2X to really get going. A campaign with an interesting plot, well designed missions and a baseline set of features (since the toolset will probably evolve whilst the campaign is being made) would spread the word and achieve the important task of setting up some solid canon.
Who would do it though?
nbohr1more on 8/5/2011 at 19:59
Right now, barring future developments, the best thing that anyone spreading the word about TDM can do is point the new players at Sotha's "Thomas Porter Series"
1) It's a 5 mission story arc
2) It has a lot of universal archetypes yet does not feel cliche
3) It has... humor
4) It has tension and horror
5) The plot-lines foreshadow the play style of the mission
Not to disparage other mission authors' story telling but sometimes the concepts proposed are obtuse and are way too expansive to properly elucidate the intended experience in the missions they build. I think these dry, complex, fictional social constructs from some of the authors are a natural outgrowth of the cool analytical player type who becomes a hard-core Thief ghoster. Sotha seems to be an author with more burners in his blood. More primal and alive.
So, to clarify here, if the concept is to have a compelling fiction to draw mood an inspiration from, it needs to be more hot-blooded to emotionally resonate. Then subsequent, dry and complex missions can coast on the emotional investment of the original experience. From what I gather the TDM team was presuming that the Thief games would be this original kernel of inspiration and that Thief players would think of TDM missions as a specialized branch of Thief FM's.
I do agree that this 3rd level relationship is a bit thin-soup though...
That's why I again, nominate Sotha's series as a place to draw the mood from. It has compelling characters, story arc, and game-play objectives.
Of course, I suppose it's a little strange that TDM initially "auditioned" mappers to join the team as "beta mappers" yet did not conscribe them to build missions for their campaign...
Who knows? Maybe they are "up to something" after all? :confused:
New Horizon on 8/5/2011 at 20:16
Yup, a lot of good points and I agree with them.
Yet I think from our perspective it's so very difficult to still have so much convincing to do after dedicating six years of our lives to this project. lol We did what we promised to do. We delivered the goods...a complete toolset. Mappers even managed to push out 30 + missions since release. Then to have the community say, "well, you still have to do this, this, this, and this before we'll even try your mod"...man, it really breaks a persons spirit. lol
We've made installing TDM itself pretty easy, aside from having to install D3 first, it's pretty much automated through the installer. Install Doom 3, create a darkmod folder inside the doom3 folder, place the tdm installer inside the darkmod folder...double click it and it does the rest. If there are any installation questions, we're just a forum away to answer them.
Springheel on 8/5/2011 at 20:30
Quote:
it's so very difficult to still have so much convincing to do after dedicating six years of our lives to this project.
Yep, all we have to do now is do what T2X did...that only took them 4 years, right? ;)
Boxsmith on 8/5/2011 at 20:52
4 years of dromed and not your fabulous editor (which I somehow can't fucking get to work :mad:).
The mod is quite young and already has 40 missions. Sotha (who iirc has no previous mapping experience) has managed to produce something like 5 absolutely excellent missions in under a year. A campaign doesn't seem like a totally ridiculous undertaking, imo.
If I may sneak in a request -- for some reason I can't alt-tab out of the game properly. The taskbar shows up but I can't actually access any application but TDM.
Flanders on 8/5/2011 at 21:45
Quote Posted by Boxsmith
4 years of dromed and not your fabulous editor (which I somehow can't fucking get to work :mad:).
Just ask us if you can't find it on the wiki.
Quote Posted by Boxsmith
If I may sneak in a request -- for some reason I can't alt-tab out of the game properly. The taskbar shows up but I can't actually access any application but TDM.
You can do that if you turn full screen mode off in the options menu. You'll need to restart the game though or bring up the console (ctr+alt+`) and enter
vid_restart. The second one is a lot faster.
Boxsmith on 8/5/2011 at 22:59
Thanks for the tip. :)
As for the editor -- maybe I'm doing something wrong, but the orthographic and 3D views take ages to update and sometimes don't seem to update at all. I think maybe I'm just doing something extremely wrong. Looks like (
http://i.imgur.com/Buyro.png) this.
Springheel on 8/5/2011 at 23:13
Quote:
Fortunately there's a single solution to all these problems, albeit a labor-intensive one-- A campaign.
It's worth mentioning that even when T2X came out, there was a vocal segment of the TTLG community who were quite critical (it didn't use Garrett, it had a hammer instead of a blackjack, etc). I even recall some people who said refused to play it at all. And T2X suffered from NONE of the problems ZB listed.
So a campaign is not a cure-all. Some people just aren't interested in new things, and that's fine. TDM keeps getting more and more fans, judging by the download statistics. But it doesn't have to be for everyone.
New Horizon on 8/5/2011 at 23:14
Quote Posted by Boxsmith
Thanks for the tip. :)
As for the editor -- maybe I'm doing something wrong, but the orthographic and 3D views take ages to update and sometimes don't seem to update at all. I think maybe I'm just doing something extremely wrong.
What OS are you on? If you have vista/win7 you could try edit > preferences > compatibility = 'disable desktop composition'....or edit > preferences> Orthoview and play with the settings in there.
Boxsmith on 8/5/2011 at 23:20
That did it! Thanks.
Too bad it makes windows a little bit uglier. I can live with that though.
