ascottk on 1/7/2009 at 20:13
I've been churning ideas & playing around with T3Ed & 3ds max & I think we could start another community project: Thief III Gold (unofficial)
Here's a list of things we could improve upon and add to:
* UI redesign (look below for S_Hole's classic main menu for inspiration)
[INDENT]* Replace main menu
* Classic debriefing movies that replace UI dialog if it's possible
* Traditional weapon load out
* Displaying if AI is unconscious or dead when carried (on wiki). Or traditional body carry icon if possible
* Get rid of atomic blue highlights
* Better frob highlight[/INDENT]
* Character tweaks
[INDENT]* Better animations. When the guards with swords were walking around in 1 & 2 they looked bored. In TDS the AI look proud & walked too upright and stiff.
* More realistic textures & less comical
* Classic meshes (AI meshes now are too generic). The guards in 1 & 2 had a characteristic sloping neck due to their chainmail. They also had funny looking helmets
* Bring back other classic creatures & AI[/INDENT]
* Gameplay tweaks (look towards the Minimalist Project for Inspiration)
[INDENT]* New weapons/tools?[/INDENT]
* Levels & maps
[INDENT]* Make the Inn into a proper introductory level
* Join the levels (or expand on the originals)
* Additional levels
* Replace OM meshes with classical meshes (ZS's collector, lamps & lightposts
* Better lighting
* Better textures & materials
* More weather effects[/INDENT]
* Player tweaks
[INDENT]* Better textures
* Better animations
* New mesh (I received a rough Garrett model with a cape a long time ago). Needs a lot of work though[/INDENT]
Here are some links to help
S_Hole's Main Menu:
(
http://gamma.nic.fi/~kermaah/tempo/exp/2/loopTop_01_engl_none_30.bik)
Inline Image:
http://gamma.nic.fi/~kermaah/tempo/exp/2/tiifmenu2.jpgTweak guide:
(
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=83801)
T3 Functionality Thread:
(
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95903)
_______________
Other things to think about:
* Having a grittier world
* Replayability
* More immersion
This could be a big project & we might be racing Thief 4 for release :laff:
jtr7 on 2/7/2009 at 00:03
Flux, with help on some level, was combining the levels, but they found out that sometimes two halves of one mission didn't line up, and/or the skyboxes were rotated, and there's the fact that the city sections were supposed to be spaced apart, not conjoined, so there are problems putting them side-by-side, rather than portalling from one to the other. So it's quite a chore, but if the person has enough patience to build or redo between the seams, then all power to them!
This would be cool if the right taffers can jump on it and stick with it!:thumb:
I would rather the focus was on making what's already there better, seamless, and smooth, before totally new stuff was made for it, not including the continued restoration of your rope arrows, and then swimmable water into the missions. The sewers wouldn't need swimmable water, for the most part, but manhole covers and drain covers need to be implemented, so then The City could have a complete infrastructure.
Glad you're back. I hope you can pursue these ideas!
ascottk on 2/7/2009 at 00:57
I haven't looked at Flux's combined city yet. I was going to check it out today but got sidetracked.
As for rope arrows/swimmable water, we don't need them as long as the gameplay is good. But I did make new rope meshes that are longer (the newest fbx importer works pretty well). I loaded a longer rigged mesh then imported the animation onto that so the rope animation is as long as the mesh.
The rope arrow mechanics have been screwy with me lately anyway. It'll spawn a straight rope before the animation will kick in which looks funky. The rope climbing animations I posted earlier won't kick in either. I'm still waiting on Massi's skinning tutorial so I could have a vine skin too.
I do have a few tips from working on the Dark Mod:
oDDity style of texturing
* Not too much saturation or things will look too cartoony
* He uses broad color strokes (with a lot of variations) along with photo textures
[INDENT]* Have a photo reference ready & pick colors from that[/INDENT]
* Brilliantly uses false shadows (not too much, just enough to accent the normal maps)
* Dirty & gritty. No "clean" textures.
* Excellent normal maps
[INDENT]*I'm not sure if max has it been with Maya 7's surface sampler you can import a makehuman model then use that has the high poly reference. Just match up the head meshes the apply the MH model to the low poly model. Or use ZBrush but I get weird results when using a triangulated mesh.
*oDD also combined several normal map pieces then joined them together
*Use different layers with different algorithms for normal maps then combine them. I.E. combine a normal map at the 9 sample setting, then use a prewitt 3x3 or 4 sample for the details[/INDENT]
* There was more but I can't remember them ATM
Modeling characters:
* Look into polygon flow/mesh topology. There's a great forum discussion on this but I can't find it now.
* Separate materials according to how the mesh is impacted (flesh, armor, etc.). I made the mistake in TDM of put a cloth material over armor (when you come down to it, the sword/arrow will hit armor even if cloth is covering it)
* Have a photo reference
That's it for now. It's hot where I am & I'm getting a little sweaty :sweat:
jtr7 on 2/7/2009 at 01:14
I'd like to see swimmable water so T3 looks like it takes place, not only in The City, but as part of any big city with an ocean and a big river, with canals, aqueducts, tributaries, drainage ditches, water wheels, swimming pools and large baths, wells, and sewer tunnels beneath the streets and in mechanical rooms of basements. A restoration of a complete infrastructure so it matches the first two-thirds of the trilogy. It just has to exist again, and not necessarily be a part of a puzzle.
I'd like to see the existence of rope arrows because they were there before, and provide gameplay that climbing gloves can't match.
For the glued missions and city sections, Beleg provided a link to one of Flux/Hanni13579's YouTube uploads in the thread you were looking at, and here's the eponymous one of that thread:
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCDA7QMotFk&feature=channel_page)
Wow, coincidentally it's Rantako's birthday today.
massimilianogoi on 2/7/2009 at 02:56
Quote Posted by jtr7
I'd like to see swimmable water so T3 looks like it takes place, not only in The City, but as part of any big city with an ocean and a big river, with canals, aqueducts, tributaries, drainage ditches, water wheels, swimming pools and large baths, wells, and sewer tunnels beneath the streets and in mechanical rooms of basements.
I am sorry to provide you this bad notice, but, at this state, what you ask here is impossible, and for two reasons:
1-) (and very hard to solve, I neither know if it's possible) The Garrett's number of animations cannot be augmented, since their name and referrment are embedded on hard code of the Thief3*.exe file. :tsktsk:
2-) At this state of things, we cannot have a different gravity level per room, since it seems it was disabled at the time, so we cannot create the tipical water contrast with the gravity (that it what permits you to float and/or swim). I've made a hell of tests here, and I was never able to fix it. Setting the Initial_HavokState to Havok_Flying means, in other words, inverting the gravity, so you'll have a gravity value of -9.82 m/s^2, and then the NPC would take a fast jump toward the sky, for after disappearing, if you haven't placed an invisible wall on the border of the volume brush that shows the skybox (the face painted with the BF characters).
jtr7 on 2/7/2009 at 03:02
Pretty disheartening, and requiring compensation elsewhere.
I never noticed, but does water even flow in TDS?
massimilianogoi on 2/7/2009 at 03:08
Quote Posted by jtr7
Pretty disheartening, and requiring compensation elsewhere.
Yeah! :tsktsk:
Quote Posted by jtr7
I never noticed, but does water even
flow in TDS?
No, they just swallows everything if they are death water, and if shallow water, they do nothing. This part of not implemented physical sucks.
Maybe we can do something studying if in unreal the physics are placed in some dll, and testing it in the Thief3Editor, but I'm very, very skeptical about this.
jtr7 on 2/7/2009 at 03:15
Thanks for the information.
str8g8 on 2/7/2009 at 11:45
This is a very ambitious project.
I would like to offer my help:
Quote:
* Classic debriefing movies that replace UI dialog if it's possible
If you can figure out how to do this I could easily create the movies ... when I finish the Cabal cutscenes of course :)
I could add that replacing the dodgy cutscenes (the ones captured from in-game) might be a good idea as well, I could use the soundtrack and just recreate the video in the classic style.
I particularly like the idea of modding the city to be more gritty and steam punk ... and I would love to help out with the textures for this. I suggest upping the res as well, as in most cases, current graphics cards would have no problem with that.
edit: also, love the classic menu screen, looks awesome, if it is possible to make this 3d? If so I would love to have a go at that...
Bulgarian_Taffer on 2/7/2009 at 13:00
I think this project is very ambitious. Don't forget the lesson when we developed Thief 2 Gold - the team broke up and it was left unfinished. You will need talented designers, programmers, video editors who are dedicated and won't give up.
