Thief fan missions and campaigns

[TripJack]

And just having a fan community where bad opinions are not expressed is actually good. TTLG deserves its own place on the internet, because it's a good place to feel comfortable.

feeling comfortable is for old and/or sick people

bad opinions should be more useful to an author than good ones, if your work is dogshit and no one tells you about why and how it's dogshit then in all likelihood you are just going to keep making more dogshit

 

[Icewater]

Telling someone that their work is "dogshit" isn't criticism, it's just insulting.

Many sites have a culture of hyper-politeness, and as such, never is any criticism delivered for fear of rocking the boat but I feel like, in its haste to not be like that, the Codex often forgets that there's a real, live person on the other side.

Edit: There's also the fact that the 'dex has the tendency to adopt this "has flaws + isn't a Codex darling = shit" position.

 

[TripJack]

Telling someone that their work is "dogshit" isn't criticism

it is if you explain how and why it's dogshit

 

[Melan]

Anyway, to stay on message for the Vicious Hate Forum Full of Hate, I played The Crazy Priest, and here is my opinion:

• Thief 1's visuals and sound can still carry an otherwise bare-bones mission, and give it some credibility. It still has that power.
• Except for the church, this FM might as well have been procedurally generated.
  
• Not that much sneaking is involved.
  
• Some of the loot placement is clever, some of it is painfully commonplace, and some of it is utter bullshit that has no story or gameplay grounding (those gemstones!).
• I note that people, Bulgarian_Taffer included, are playing it with an "updated" texture pack which removes half the authenticity, and makes the low-poly look painfully obvious. Why? Why??!

I mean, honestly, I enjoyed it. But it is easy to see the problem with TTLG when the messages on the release thread basically amount to "Yay", "Fantabulous" and "Oooooh".

 

[SAlexandrov]

Hello, Melan.

You are right. I enjoyed making the exterior and the interior of the church. I loved playing around with the cylinder and the wedge. It was so cool. But then, you got it... The rest of the mission (except) the church is mostly several cubical buildings that were... um, copy-paste multibrushing... I think the problem here lies inside me, I just enjoy making churches. That's all. If you've played my other missions, I guess you've seen that most of them are yoo churchy...

As for the updated texture pack... I like it very much. Looks like Thief got a new life for me. After all, a game that's 17 years old... needs some updating, don't you think?

 

[Melan]

Why not make more churches and monasteries, then? Nothing wrong with that.

The updated textures are mostly fine on their own, but they don't fit with what you are doing. Thief 1 has its own cohesive look and feel, even though the textures are low-res, and some of them don't even tile properly (most of the Ruined family, for instance). But they fit the engine, and the environments created in it. The "update" clashes with the low-poly, low-object count scenes people build in Thief. Their high resolution draws attention to the simplicity of the geometry and the sparseness of the furnishing, making the scenes look artificial and unbalanced. You could create much more detailed scenes in Dromed where they looked all right (although there are still sensible limits), but you would have to give them much more detail, both in geometry and objects.

 

[Dev_Anj]

Played Geller's Pride a few days ago, and I waited to get a clear view of what I thought of it before posting here.

Download here, for those curious: http://thiefmissions.com/m/Gpride

Geller's Pride is pretty much a mission for Thief: Gold set up in the style of mansion missions with a huge exterior area like say Bafford's Manor or Ramirez's mansion. It has a huge city area, a sprawling sewer network under it, some side places to go, and the mansion itself.

I initially liked the idea of starting outside in a city section, where I was free to roam, but I quickly found that it was a bit bloated for my tastes. There were some odd places, like the one house where you break into the front room and can't go any further, and there wasn't much to actually do there, besides visiting one inn. I had the same problem with the sewers too, they seemed too huge and provided very little benefit. The fact that there is a key important for an Expert objective there just makes it worse.

Thankfully, the mission gets better at the mansion itself. The mansion has several ways of being infiltrated, and while it seems very well guarded, it's actually rather easy to get in. Inside, the design is surprisingly focused and compact. The aesthetics are a neat mix between the grand colours and stoic structures of Bafford's Manor, the spartan, utilitarian arrangement of Ramirez's mansion's rooms, and the floral designs and fragmented stained glass of Constantine's manor. The mansion also succeeds in giving the feeling of being a well guarded location without having incredibly tough AI placement. The guard density is for the most part alright, though there are some blind spots in the lower floors. The most problem I had was honestly with the marble hall at the ground floor, which had two guards patrolling it at regular intervals, but not much clues to identify when they were approaching.

The secret room is an abrupt change of pace, and so is the puzzle there, but they both give off the feel of being a completely different area from the rest of the environment, which makes it feel like a hidden area you're infiltrating, though the secret itself is hidden with a predictable sliding bookcase.

Geller's Pride is a mission that takes some risks, and has a few of them pay off, like the blend of several mansion's architecture stylings, the secret being different in tone from the rest of the level, and others which don't, like the placement of keys in long empty areas like sewers, locking out treasure behind a box that requires a lot of backtracking to open, and heavy lighting in the first floor rooms. Also, was there anything special about the alarms? There was a tip which said they were different from regular alarms, but they aren't.

I would say that this is a very engaging mission, and it even looks fine, which is surprising for a mission released in 2001.

Oh, and thanks for mentioning it in a thread in TTLG, Melan.

 

[Dev_Anj]

So a new mission came out for Thief 2 yesterday, called Rendezvous. How is it? Download here: http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144988&p=2277598&viewfull=1#post2277598

 

[Yandros]

I read the readme:

You've fallen in love with Vicky, the pretty waitress from the Blackwater Pub.
This evening she want to introduce you to her parents. This is a good sign!

...and nearly didn't bother even loading it up, but I'm glad I did, although at this point, I'd say it's a mixed bag. There were some decent puzzles initially, but I'm currently stuck in the ghost town and am going to have to look to the TTLG thread for a clue. The ghost town hasn't been very intuitive so far, and the mission in general suffers from incomplete translations - lots of item names are in German, and even worse many of the key readables in the ghost town (which have clues what to do next) appear to suffer the same problem. I have a goal to place 4 items in the right houses, but none of those items can be dropped and there are no objects in the houses which highlight as a drop target.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I tried it late last night. I'm not gonna say that this is my definite opinion, but so far where I am there it's just a series of puzzles, including a platforming section which feels out of place in Thief. And no critters, at least so far.

There's nothing wrong with it yet, but I wonder why the author chose Thief 2 for this project, as I don't see anything about this that couldn't be done in practically any other 3d engine.

From what I hear it gets better (read: more Thief-like) later on, so I'll give the benefit of the doubt for now.

 

[skacky]

Do you recognize this place?

Spoiler

 

[Icewater]

Yes, it's Doom 3. I know 'cuz I can't see shit.

That your new mission?

 

[Tzaero]

It looks like a mission that would fit into Hammerite Imperium.

 

[Dev_Anj]

I read the readme:

You've fallen in love with Vicky, the pretty waitress from the Blackwater Pub.
This evening she want to introduce you to her parents. This is a good sign!

...and nearly didn't bother even loading it up, but I'm glad I did, although at this point, I'd say it's a mixed bag.

Yeah, it never seems like Garrett would ever date anyone, or put them as a priority over his job and life. Sure, Basso's sister was mentioned in the Craigscleft, but it was really just to provide more of an objective than anything.

That brings up another question: has any fan mission author showed a romance between Garrett and another woman convincingly? Most of the missions involving a love interest haven't. There have been good missions where a love interest was involved, e.g: Strumdrang Peak, but I've yet to see a convincing portrayal of Garrett having a love interest.

Do you recognize this place?
....

No, is it the haunted cathedral from Thief: Gold? Are you using textures from the NecroAge pack? It looks like that.

Oh wait, is it Buckingham Palace that you're taking inspiration from for your next mission?

On another subject, why didn't you like the Thief: Gold HD mod?

 

[Yandros]

The most notable FM which involved a love interest is of course Calendra's Cistern. Frankly, I found it so out of character for Garrett (never mind the quasi-soft porn approach Purah took) that it rather ruined what was otherwise a great early masterpiece.

 

[Melan]

It looks like a mission that would fit into Hammerite Imperium.

My hunch as well.

That brings up another question: has any fan mission author showed a romance between Garrett and another woman convincingly?

Garrett has always seemed like the kind of person some women sleep with out of pity. Not very good relationship material. That, however, is not something most mission authors want to, or can depict in a convincing way.

[edit]Welcome, Yandros![/edit]

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Had a better look at "Vickie/Rendezvous". Garrett gets kidnapped and is forced to solve a series of puzzles in order to get on his date. The architecture is boring and bland most of the time, but sometimes a room looks nice or interesting, and the town later on is a nice cityscape.

The puzzles are at an interesting difficulty, you're not gonna solve them outright, but if you take the time to look around and examine the clues the solution will present itself.

Some design decisions, however, are questionable. There comes a room where you must 'type in' a code, which I believe is to be found by keeping your eyes open throughout the puzzle rooms. I only ever found 3 parts of the code, but the whole code is 5 codes. Still, I was given the complete code at the end and could solve the puzzle after some experimentation.

After the last puzzle room there comes the ghost town. Here Garrett must find 4 items to place in 4 homes and find the 4 names of the inhabitants. But in order to be able to do this, he must first mix a Decryption mixture to read the coded messages - because, reasons. This process is needlessly complex, I would have skipped the mixture requirement completely, gone for another approach instead, like using pure logic.

Another irritating design decision is the keys - there are five doors that need to be unlocked, and the keys need to be recovered - I say 'recovered' because most of them are in plain sight, hanging on the belts of the ghosts wandering around. However, you can't take the keys if the ghosts are alerted to your presence - something which is not conveyed to the player in any sense, shape or form. A pure case of trial and error, with no hints being given that you're on the right track. This is silly and completely pointless.

I said before that I questioned the usage of Thief 2 as the basis for this level/mod. I stand by those words, this all could have been done, tons better probably, using any other engine, as the specific that the Dark Engine brings are simply not used, except in one bizarre situation.

 

[skacky]

It looks like a mission that would fit into Hammerite Imperium.

My hunch as well.

And you're right.

Dev_Anj I don't like Thief Gold HD because it has no consideration for texture harmony and coherence. Almost everything looks completely out of place.

 

[JarlFrank]

Damnit skacky, that architecture is beautiful

 

[Unna Oertdottir]

Another irritating design decision is the keys - there are five doors that need to be unlocked, and they keys need to be recovered - I say 'recovered' because most of them are in plain sight, hanging on the belts of the ghosts wandering around. However, you can't take the keys if the ghosts are alerted to your presence - something which is not conveyed to the player in any sense, shape or form. A pure case of trial and error, with no hints being given that you're on the right track. This is silly and completely pointless.

Why don't you just sneak? You can get the keys that way easily. That's what Thief is about, btw. The authors won't include a sign for you: Attention, Unkillable Cat! Thievish gameplay ahead!

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Because at NO POINT up to this part in the mission is there even a requirement made to be stealthy, and the ghosts show NO REACTION to your presence, which strongly suggests that stealth is not a factor there either.

It's something you would have figured out for yourself if you had read my post to the end - that I question the usage of the Dark Engine in this mission as its specifics are simply not used, except in one bizarre situation. Namely, this one.

 

[Yandros]

I agree it was a dubious design decision. He specifically tells the player that the ghosts are not aggressive and may even help the player (or something to that effect), and then requires them not to be aware of you in order to nick their keys.

 

[Dev_Anj]

Another irritating design decision is the keys - there are five doors that need to be unlocked, and they keys need to be recovered - I say 'recovered' because most of them are in plain sight, hanging on the belts of the ghosts wandering around. However, you can't take the keys if the ghosts are alerted to your presence - something which is not conveyed to the player in any sense, shape or form. A pure case of trial and error, with no hints being given that you're on the right track. This is silly and completely pointless.

So it uses the infamous social stealth mechanics of the Dark Engine, where once an AI has seen you, you can't pickpocket things from it till it calms down, and it won't give any indication either. I always found it annoying, and it became a problem in otherwise promising looking missions like Cell 6 as well. I'm sure the mechanic can be used well, but it's just so counter intuitive.

 

[skacky]

Sharing moar just because I can. It's starting to take form.

Spoiler

So if you didn't guess it already I am combining The Harbor of Excalibrius (just the lighthouse part) with The Grand Cathedral of Saintly Cardinal Illastrius, both of which were Hammerite Imperium maps that were never completed. I have remade everything, nothing was lifted from the original levels except the textures. Everything you see here was remade as closely as possible, with added detail and changes to the city bit of course. The cathedral's spires are not exactly identical as well and feature entrances on the front rather than on the sides. I am also going to significantly alter the inside of the cathedral using St. Vitus as a blueprint.

 

[Dev_Anj]

Sure looks interesting. Any chance you could build on COSAS too? They did make the third map free for everyone.