New Horizon on 20/2/2008 at 22:38
Quote Posted by Judith
Beleg, I don't see the point in releasing the new version of T3Enh. It's incompatible with the vanilla T3game install and editor, so if you're making your own FM with those tools you can be sure that almost noone will play it.
That's ridiculous. It's incompatible with the vanilla game install and editor because it's a stand alone, self installing editor. Aside from that, whatever differences exist between it and vanilla T3 should be able to be dealt with relatively easily. Don't T3 FM's use custom gamesys files and custom scripts? There shouldn't be that much preventing T3EnhancEd missions from being installed. If I ever get around to finishing it...sorry Beleg...we'll work out any issues then.
Quote Posted by Judith
4. There aren't many T3eders because big nice levels with nice visual quality require 3dsmax 5.1 - not higher not lower version, which is hard to get these days. Besides, this community consist of dromeders, who always worked with tons of brushes, not static meshes. Instead learning T3ed they decided to make their own Dark Mod Thief-inspired, Doom3-modified engine, which would be more similar to their building habits.
This is completely false! This attitude towards us really upsets me...and it's not even true. :( T3ED wasn't even known to exist when we started Dark Mod. We chose to create The Dark Mod because there was NO Thief 3 Editor and we wanted the community to be able to make next generation FM's. That was the original reason for creating Dark Mod. We were 6 or 7 months into production when T3Ed was released to the community...by surprise I might add. When the editor was released, we considered ending our project if the editor proved to be flexible enough to do all the things we wanted to do with it. Yes...we considered moving our project to T3Ed. Several of us tested the editor and came to the logical conclusion that we would have far more freedom sticking with the doom 3 engine ...instead of throwing away half a years work. T3Enhanced was the result of a lot of my testing...and while I was able to 'sort of' pull off some of the classic elements...there were far too many things locked down.
Anyway, I felt that needed to be rectified. The way you tell it...it makes it sound like we were in some sort of competition with T3ED. I think people need to be reminded that TDM was started well in advance of any public knowledge of an editor.
Flux on 20/2/2008 at 23:31
BadManiac, I'm going to echo what Judith said about the editor and using original meshes and its scripting system.
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Plenty of stuff available in the original game.
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No, of course you can use OM's resources to create your own mission, without any external application. That's how most of the available T3 missions were made. It's good to make such mission for a start, after that you'd probably want to make something based on your own resources.
Exactly agreed. I'm experimenting with re-skinning om's meshes, static meshes are always faster than bsp, as you're familiar with ut2004. Here, this is something of an experiment, made only with 3 static meshes from cave package.
Inline Image:
http://images.bittersense.com/meshtest.jpgAlso since you're familiar with ut2004 and assuming you still have a copy here is what I can suggest. If you find a way to import meshes into t3ed, here is also what you can do: Make house or even a full street out of bsp in t3ed, export it as brush and import it into ut2004. From there you can export as obj which max will read with a simple plugin. Then import back to t3ed. By this way you'll solve problems about scaling(because t3ed brush and what unreal exports as obj and tim will have same sizes and will even fit on the grid perfectly), and have much better framerates and much more detail.
Another point on what Beleg and I'm sure most others need. I have extra bandwith to spare and if someone with php knowledge can provide me some sort of "uploading" script, we can have web-page on our own to exchange meshes, textures or any other request t3ed mappers can/will want to utilize. I checked the available file hosting scripts, I'm not expert on this at all. All we need some sort of clean table layout, maybe similar to cheapmissions so that everyone can upload what ever they want to, to share or to request for turning into static mesh.
For example, I have ut2004, if anyone sends me a complex brushwork they did in t3ed, I can give back it as obj. Then someone else might export it to tim.
SubJeff on 21/2/2008 at 00:22
Quote Posted by New Horizon
The way you tell it...it makes it sound like we were in some sort of competition with T3ED. I think people need to be reminded that TDM was started well in advance of any public knowledge of an editor.
As one of the people running the thiefpetition website and campaign for the release of the T3ED I'd just like to corroborate this.
Judith on 21/2/2008 at 00:23
There's no competition, NH, T3ed is no match DarkMod at all. People inside this community worked with Dromed for a long time, that's the majority. DarkMod will be their editor of choice. And I don't really blame them, everyone likes sustaining their habits, rather than making something entirely different.
While your remark about chronology might be an interesting fact, it also doesn't really matter. You won't turn back time, there won't be a massive T3FM boom as people remember T3 as a cramped, crippled sequel to previous games, and they don't know that it can be changed within the editor. The major panic caused by the "limited properties issue" (neither that much limited, nor really an issue) didn't help here either. The general attitude towards T3ed is negative (or patronizing), and nothing will change that. "Darkmod is the future", period.
I just wish all the knowledge about this engine had been written down earlier, so I hadn't spent a few years on research what I can or cannot do (and I'm still not 100% sure). I'm doing it all for fun, I just feel alone in my struggle. This poor Flesh engine wasn't given enough credit and who knows what other secrets may we discover?
I guess it would be better if we get a good hacker instead ;)
sparhawk on 21/2/2008 at 12:26
I don't think that TDM has any impact on T3 editing. That's T3Eds fault completely on it's own.
Judith on 21/2/2008 at 13:16
Why so many DarkMod guys are coming when there's a disscussion about T3engine and it's pros/cons? It always makes me wonder... :sly:
The fault is both in T3ed, which may appear hard to learn (it isn't harder than any modern engine right now e.g. Unreal engine 3.0), and in people spreading false rumors about it, while they have little or no idea how much can be done with Flesh.
sparhawk on 21/2/2008 at 13:40
Quote Posted by Judith
Why so many DarkMod guys are coming when there's a disscussion about T3engine and it's pros/cons? It always makes me wonder... :sly:
Maybe because you present the discussion in such a provocative way? :devil:
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The fault is both in T3ed, which may appear hard to learn (it isn't harder than any modern engine right now e.g. Unreal engine 3.0), and in people spreading false rumors about it, while they have little or no idea how much can be done with Flesh.
Don't know about the "false rumor" bit, because most of that information was spread by people who actually tried to use it, and gave up in the course - not from TDM folks. ;) Even the postings from the original deverlopers of the engine were not THAT encouraging, so you might have a talk with them first. :p
Personally I get the impression that you want to see the glory in T3Ed and thus you shut your eyes to all it's shortcomings because you don't want it to be true. I'm sure that some of the shortcomings of it might be overcome by clever tricks and patiently digging into it, but most poeple don't seem to have this kind of dedication.
Beleg Cúthalion on 21/2/2008 at 14:18
Personally, until I see any glory in TDM, I will try to find it in T3Ed.
Both the polemics against TDS/T3Ed and the praises of TDM and even Thief 1/2 have become quite unexact lately. Don't know why anyone should pick on a person working on either side. Apparently both have enough to do.
Judith on 21/2/2008 at 14:23
There's nothing provocative in what I've written. Just don't give a damn about people's intentions, the only thing I care is result :sly:
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because most of that information was spread by people who actually tried to use it
And failed, because they didn't understand the principles of UEngine, or their PC was too slow to provide a stable platform for the editor (who had 1-1,5 gig of ram at the time of realease anyway). Some of them were Dromeders and/or TDM folks but it doesn't really matter. Most of those people barely seen the surface of what can be done with this engine. Yet they shouted loudly.
There won't be any glory for T3ed and I'm well aware of that, I just want to do justice to this engine, as it was treaten badly by the community. I'm not shutting my eyes, I'm fighting with those "shortcomings", patiently trying to constructing proofs that they don't exist, and succeeding :)
I don't expect such patience from anyone, but I don't have to. All those missing features can be recreated with this engine, using the modified gamesys, ini files, etc. but without making the editor and the game incompatible with vanilla T3 install. You can have tweaked G's movements, nice swimmable water as an actor class, ever rope arrows that Dromeders seem to be so obsessed about, though I'd like to see some constructive disscusion about using climbing gloves in FM's first (and proofs). This could become a kind of "T3ed starter pack" one day, who knows.
New Horizon on 21/2/2008 at 15:05
Quote Posted by Judith
...nice swimmable water as an actor class, ever rope arrows that Dromeders seem to be so obsessed about...
That statement is a bit misleading to someone who hasn't used T3Ed though because, unless something has drastically changed, those features aren't fully functioning in the truest sense of the word. There are some things that T3Ed does fairly well, the inventory keys, keyring and holy water arrow system I setup in T3EnhancEd were far more feature complete than rope arrows and swimmable water, but that was only because there was enough related scripting to hack it together.
Also, as I was touching on earlier, with the advances in Fan Mission loading...T3EnhancEd should be able to be used like any other fan mission. The proper loading tools simply weren't available when I packaged T3EnhancEd...that's why I said it was incompatible. So please, until we know for sure one way or the other...don't say that.
I'll do my best to get a copy to Beleg in the near future...though I'm not exactly inspired to work on T3Ed anymore. I spent well over a year fighting with T3 on The Minimalist Project, before the editor came out. I then dug into the editor to make Minimalist even tighter. I've dug into T3Ed pretty deep, so I have an appreciation for where you're coming from...but it's such an uphill battle with the thing. You put far more work into it than you get back in a lot of cases.
