/vr/ - Retro Games

>>4162227
At least Strange Bedfellows is easy and very short, while Casing the Joint is long and tedious all the way through. Besides that's the second time the game reuses a level (Ambush/Trace the Courier).

>>4162227
For whatever reason, I found every mission with pagans boring and annoying as fuck.

I don't have any strong opinions on the map reusem though. For Ambush/Trace the Courier, I felt that it helped flesh out the world. For Bedfellows, the reused part was just a marginal part of the full map anyways.

Casing the joint sucked because it was unfinished.

Seriously you can steal the masks in Casing and then have to re-steal them in masks. Plus the traps around the masks are really clearly unfinished by the devs and only half work.

The actual level is great tho. And the rest of the game is godtier so I give it a pass.

Whenever I feel the need to replay the series and start mastering my thieving skills I get reminded of all the good fms I still have to play. Curiosity for what's still unexplored wins this time.
What's your favorite fm? What kind of level do you usually look for?

>>4162227
>bloom
gross desu

>>4164764
I like the maps made by Gabor Lux/Melan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AF1rlZJ2nw).). I prefer city missions, as the role of Garrett as a burglar hits closer to home than the role as a tomb raider. Greenbay and Unwelcome Guest (hopefully without the HD textures) seem interesting.

I heard about a Thief 1/2 FM that used a hub system, what about that?
What textures do the lockpicks use?

casing the Joint/masks was shit but there was also ambush/courier and kidnap that reused maps. Ambush is good, but courier is one of the worst missions in the game. And kidnap was tedious as fuck too.

>>4164764

I like missions with thick atmosphere and surreal vibes, that take place in weird, exotic locations that are easy to get lost into (gems of provenance, shadow of doubt, ruins of originia). Bonus points if they use stock thief 1 textures and resources. . Despite their popularity, I don't really like city missions all that much.

>>4165786
Still have to play a lot by Melan, I mostly just beat his TDM fms. His care for details combined with that game's potential makes for the perfect maximum comfy skulking simulator.
Also that series of videos looks interesting. It must be the third time that I start a rare Thief stuff folder only to lose it all.

>>4165831
My man, TG based missions are the best. I'm not big on city missions either mostly because they tend to be dispersive. Not a bad thing, but when there's a big major objective and a lot of side stuff I feel like the mission lose its focus. City missions with well placed objectives around the map and a surreal tone are a different story though.

>>4166225
Make it a collective folder with rare Thief stuff? These threads lack a kind of community.
http://gambit.mit.edu/updates/audio/looking_glass_studios_podcast/

>>4162227
I suppose a lot of people hate Casing the Joint because they play on normal and it's hard to adjust to a mission where not only you can't kill anyone, but even blackjack or get spotted.
Still, even if you play on expert, this mission is kinda boring as it severly limits your actions. Can't do this, can't do that, sometimes guard notices you while you don't know about it and suddenly BAM, game over screen.
Only thing that bothered me in Thief 1 were missions that contained nothing but undaed (mixing like in Craigsleft Prison was okay). Sneaking around undead was strange as especially zombies were hard to read, and it's honestly not something that you'd expect having repeated over and over in that kind of game.

>>4166717
Undead levels wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that getting rid of zombies is so damn tedious. Holy water is limitted and it's usually hard to say if this is the right moment to get rid of noticeable number of zombies without feeling like you've wasted it. Flash bombs have to be detonaded really close to explode body instead of knocking them down. Fire arrows and mines feel like waste of resources, especially with Haunts and Apparitions around. And when you knock them down with sword, you never know if you won't be returning the same way and how big exactly is their revival radius that you have to avoid.

Are there any people here who want to make FMs, have no idea how and want to delve into the tutorial together?
https://nickdablin.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/absolute-beginners-guide-to-creating-a-thief-2-mission-part-one/

>>4166717
>>4166729
personally, I liked the undead missions the most.

the resource management makes them pass as legit survival horror. holy water isn't a big problem, since most of the levels had a holy water font somewhere.

>>4167574

You could also try making missions for the dark mod. The editor is a lot more user friendly than dromed.

>>4166446
Yeah, these threads come and go. Quite stealthy but it's a shame, there's a lot to talk about, although fms and level making aren't easy to use as a common ground, compared to the usual TG and T2. But I'm an ignorant when it comes to dromed, gathering resources together as you and >>4167574 suggest could be great.

>>4168243
Well, a lot of people share the wish of making their own FM, although the difficulty spike of Dromed and putting theory into practice puts a lot of people off.
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144469
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=131800
One other thing worth trying is that we play a FM each week and talk about it. Share experiences and critiques. What went right? What went wrong? Where can it be improved? DP vs MA debates are old.

bump

>>4168456
It would be great, especially since I never know where to look for a new mission to play. Just started the Rocksbourg series, which is literally the start of the chart, but I'm open to anything and I hope more people want to try this.
Where should we start? Still haven't touched anything by Skacky

>>4170356
W could (re)play everything from that chart and ask ourselves if they are that great and if they deserve to be recommended. Another thing we could try is playing FMs in a chronological order, to understand the context of and inspirations for later FMs. The first FM is Gathering At The Bar?

Is there anything I need to know about Thief 1 before buying it? Like, does the GoG version require TFix?

>>4171106
Tfix updates Thief Gold to NewDark 1.25. It seems that the GOG version includes NewDark 1.25 so Tfix isn't required for that part. Tfix also gives you the possibility to update textures and meshes to T2, but you're better off not doing that.

>>4171151
Thanks.

>>4162227
Strange Bedfellows was a mission that followed the story more than fulfilling gameplay elements. If you have to traverse a place that has nothing to steal, inserting loot would be contrived.

I honestly never recognised the criticism of map recycling as having a point. Casing the Joint was - as the name says - a ghosting mission where you're supposed to find the secret entrance to the third floor so that you can later on steal the precursor masks and cultivator. It has an entirely different feel to it than Masks. It's austere but tense. There's less security but the security is more menacing, and the stark atmosphere is nerve wracking.

Courier and Ambush deal with different parts of the City and different situations. One of them is just shadowing 2 people and the other one is a free-roaming escape operation with copious resources.

Crowning one better as the other is a pointless exercise imo. They're both 10/10 in their own way and with their own atmosphere.

>>4168456
>>4170356

I'd enjoy that. My problem up until now has been that I've liked very few FMs because they have the typical experimental/unfocused problems of non-professional art. I liked Fables of the Penitent Thief, Sturmdrang Peak, A Journey Into Underdark (the different classes were spectacular), Mystic Gems II, The Seven Sisters and Invitation to Castle Morgoth. Most other missions were so convoluted, long, incomprehensible that I quit them after a short while.

The thing that makes good game design is to make a level so difficult that the player has to engage with the game intelligently, but easy enough that you don't have to be the developer to beat it. A lot of FMs have no psychological flow.

>>4171343
>Casing the Joint/Masks
They are both exactly the same until the last floor.
I hate how thief 2 tries to force ghosting but not too much that players would get frustrated (framed, casing/masks). You end up with a mission that has wide as fuck hallways with plenty of carpet, few guards that are either completely static or follow the simplest of patrol routes, very basic lighting with vast amounts of darkness and too much equipment. The result is a bland and underwhelming mission that's just too easy for its own good.

>Courier and Ambush deal with different parts of the City
what
Courier is a boring as shit, sidescroller of a mission. Following the ai in scripted sequence for 20 minutes and then having the mission end is anything but fun.
Ambush is much better in comparison, but it still feels a tad too easy. And the city in thief 2 is nowhere near as atmospheric or mysterious as its thief 1 counterpart.

>They're both 10/10 in their own way and with their own atmosphere.
kek

kidnap is a bad map.
rehash of lost city with all the most interesting bits ripped out.
dumb, simple goal
loot is all sequestered to one section of the map
there's optional level requirements that are only available if make an effort to spend any long than ten minutes on the level

>>4171575
Yeah. People often say that Casing the Joint is the worst mission in Thief 2 but Kidnap takes the fucking cake as far as I'm concerned. I'd go as far as to say that it's by far the worst mission in the trilogy.

>>4171350
Some of them do feel like there's a concept for a whole campaign compressed in a single level. Sometimes it works, sometimes you have to "get" how the author wanted the mission to work, with external informations or by brute forcing through the level while running in circles. I usually like to solve them like puzzles this way but there's always a better way.
Sure, it's a matter of resources and time and what I like of it is how, by not being bond to a whole game, some pretty unique ideas can be applied to the Thief formula. Sometimes it's raw, sometimes it's perfectly rendered.

>>4171035
I like the chronological order idea. I've played some polished and atmospheric missions made way before recent but chaotic stuff I've stumbled upon. Seeing how the experimenting in level design, gameplay and story choices evolves could be interesting.
Tracing a story of relevant fms sounds hard though. At least, my only reference is the chart.

I really liked the first part of Precious Cargo and of course Life of the Party but those are like the only two missions I liked in T2. Shipping and receiving I always found tedious, kidnap is a boring rehash, trace the courier is a worse, longer version of assassins from t1 without the payoff of raiding a manor at the end of it. Trail of Blood I just found kinda boring. Eavesdropping you literally spend 5 mins leaning into a door. Soulforge is a gigantic backtrack fest. Casing and Masks being the same level right after one another is just blatant filler.

T1 on the other hand is filled with variety in every mission, mix and match of Gothic architecture and medieval steampunky themes, hammers vs zombies and demon worshipping crazy pagans etc. Is way cooler in theme than mechanists/robots vs dindunuffin pagans. Bonehoard, Haunted Cathedral, Return to the Cathedral, Song of the Caverns, Cragscleft, Assassins, The Sword, Undercover are all great and even the other maps I'd call good and fitting with the rest of the game with the exception of the thieves guild but everyone knows that one has issues anyway.

Actually just fucking baffles me that everyone thinks T2 is better than T1/TG simply because they didn't like the zombies in a game called Thief. "Waaaah, it's not thief" cries the thief 2 player playing the game that spawned the series and what defines what the content of the series should be. Only plebs honestly think T2 is better, the survival horror spooky tomb raiding D&D thief aspect of the series is one of its greatest strengths.

>>4171853
Oh I should add. First city bank and trust is a great mission as well. Credit where it's due. It's complex and expansive but not tedious and boring like some of the other T2 missions.

Really the problem lies in the fact that Thief 2 is like consistently mediocre with a few great maps mixed in. Thief 1 on the other hand is consistently good or even great with only a couple of mediocre or "bad" maps mixed in.

>>4171861
>>4171853
You forgot Framed, Ambush and Blackmail

Life of the Party>First City Bank and Trust>Shipping and Receiving>Framed>Blackmail>Sabotage at Soulforge>Eavesdropping>Precious Cargo>Trail of Blood>Running Interference>Masks>Ambush!>Trace the Courier>Casing The Joint>Kidnap

>>4171879
I didn't forget I just don't really care for them either way. Ambush is OK, Framed is kinda mediocre and unfinished, Blackmail is decent. Those 3 are in that middling area.

>>4171882

Life of the party is the most overrated mission in the series. Assassins did basically the same but much better.

>>4171903
says a lot about thief 2's levels doesn't it :^)

>>4171903
>most overrated mission in the series
Nope. That would be shalebridge cradle from babby's first Xbox stealth game.

>>4171642
Thiefmissions has a list of FMs sorted by date. Komag doesn't provide his cd's anymore, but Nexus Letum plays through that pack and could provide a play order.

>>4172245
taffersparadise is up to date

>>4172245
Wew, I'm surprised this CD thing had been going on for years without a side download alternative. Or a list. Well, maybe Komag always had one and I wouldn't know.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXnnrkAa1EyElUHmY186ZzN8XPcFd84cb
If I got this right, this is just a small portion of the whole thing, but it looks like a good start if we were to search for the roots of the whole fm deal.
I like the possibilities this game still gives, Between Klatremus' supreme ghosting and Nexus' mission, there's always something to do.

>>4171035
Gathering At The Bar got mentioned in an old issue of PC gamer.
http://scans.roushimsx.com/PCGamer_2000_08_pg126.jpg

GORT released Rebellion of the Builder 2

>>4171916

I think the Cradle was pretty decent, it just seemed great because it was surrounded by so much awful.

Oh hey, if any of you folks are programmers and want a project to poke at, OpenDarkEngine was nicely designed and got far enough along to load and display levels before its author kind of burned out:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/opde/
http://github.com/volca02/openDarkEngine

>>4175991
It's decent but people seem to think that it is capable of saving the whole game from mediocrity, when it's not.

Deadly Shadows is an irredeemable pile of consolized garbage.
>Garrett can't swim (levels are too tiny to have meaningful swimming passageways with currents, probably, so they just scrapped it altogether)
>Garrett has no rope arrows, instead replaced with linear gameplay climbing gloves (levels too tiny, again, meaning the climbing/vertical aspect had to be minimized)
>there are loading screens splitting up levels and the city hub literally everywhere, the same fate that DX:IW suffered
>the engine fucking sucks ass for Thief apart from the cool lighting
>the movement sucks ass, it's built around third-person without any forward leaning
>loot glint is retarded
>difficulty levels barely do anything except up the loot requirement, expert doesn't even mean you're not allowed to kill guards, just civilians/servants
>the reputation system makes no sense (steal holy artifacts from the hammers or kill the pagans' literal god but they're willing to forgive you for killing some bugs or shooting some bricks, and somehow allow you to balance alliances with both despite them being enemies)
>it's buggy as shit, way more gamebreaking bugs and way less polish than T1 or T2, even for all T2's unfinishedness in levels
>it's checkpoints/autosaves based and doesn't have quick saving/quick loading so when the movement inevitably fucks up and you get stuck in a falling animation bug while being on the floor and can't move/jump out of it you have to restart the whole level (thing that actually happened).

The Cradle has some pretty heavy atmosphere which is kinda cool but Thief 1's horror levels were way better overall.

>>4176128
Actually now that I've posted this I think my last point was probably wrong but it's hard to remember. Can you quicksave/quickload in TDS? It's been a while since I've played it. All I remember about that situation was the bug that made me lose 30 minutes of progress which literally might mean I just neglected to quicksave rather than the feature being absent. Either way the physics bugs that make the game literally unplayable are fucking total aids and not something you'd encounter in classic Thief.

To describe it better. It's the big where if you fall and hit the ground after jumping but the game doesn't realize you hit the ground you are stuck sliding and unable to jump again unless you manage to move out of it and fall off an edge onto another floor. It happened to me on one of the pagan levels where I jumped and got stuck inbetween some beams/floorboards or something and I just couldn't get out for the life of me. It was such a horrible experience on my first playthrough I've just never wanted to revisit it.

>>4176145
>Either way the physics bugs that make the game literally unplayable are fucking total aids and not something you'd encounter in classic Thief.

Yeah, the physics bugs in classic Thief are either hilarious or terrifying. Like a zombie shooting way across the level and suddenly being right up in your face.

I seem to recall there was a quicksave for Deadly Shadows, but I've mostly blotted it form memory because so much of it was terrible. The storyline was fine, IMO, but god, that terrible engine. Pretty much everything else you've said was dead on, can confirm.
Oh yeah, and that lousy Thieves' Highway being like three roofs and a pair of planks over a street was so fucking weak compared to the Thief 2 Demo.

Oh shit I might have to play the Thief 2 Demo again.

>>4176270
Wasn't the demo just the city part of Life of the Party?

>>4176270
https://youtu.be/FVK0LVKLDa8

At around 20 seconds in this video is my favorite classic thief physics bug (he leans into the zombie and it shoots him up into the air). Also loved bunny hopping in T1. TDS on the other hand I remember nothing but frustration.

>>4176342

It's the city part of Life of the Party, yes, but it's expanded and differs along the way. They basically cut the latter part of Life of the Party and used the extra space to make the city part bigger and better, to show off the game.

I've played the shit out of the better horror FM's, and some of them make me want a good mansion FM for 2.
What's the best one-off mansion FM. Horror in it is a bonus.

>>4171903
> Assassins did basically the same but much better

Ramirez's mansion had lame design and the first half becomes tedious to replay once you've tried every difficulty.

The Burrick pit was a really cute trick to play on players' psychologies.

>>4176342
Is there a playable version without the new textures and items?

>>4176465

I gotta disagree, Assassins is maybe my favourite video game level of all time... but it's all down to my own experiences in it.

Almost every time I play that level it's a different experience, it's all down to the weird emergent gameplay that happens in Thief; where if you so much as make a single sound at the wrong moment it can trigger a cockup cascade that you have to just go with.

Some of my favourite moments ever playing a game come from that one level alone. Yet only I have had those moments cause I fucked up at the wrong moment and had to think on my feet, sometimes I get away, sometimes I don't.

For other players (like you) maybe they've always breezed through that level and never thought much of it.

>>4176367
>What's the best one-off mansion FM. Horror in it is a bonus.
I think ominous bequest is still the best after all these years. Also try rowena's curse, conspiracies in the dark, memoirs of a dead god, the den.
I don't like most of the usually recommended horror missions. Most of these rely heavily on jump scares and scripted sequences that feel cheap or gimmicks. I think the best horror mission is broadsword of sheol

>>4176487
It looks like the one on moddb has the original textures available, you just have to rename a directory.

>>4176923
But anon, those ARE the "usually recommended horror missions."

>>4177053

Those are mansion missions mostly. The usually recommended horror missions would be rose cottage, deceptive perceptions, a better tomorrow, etc. Just because it has undead in it does not make it horror

>>4177069
You tell me how Rowena's Curse and The Den aren't horror. Even the TTLG forums classify them as horror before anything else.

>>4176547
Agreed, by far my favorite level.
>starting objectives throw you for a loop
>guards take different paths each playthrough
>the atmosphere of the city in thief 1
>the multitude of entrances and open ended design of the mansion
>the dark atmosphere of the mansion
>burricks
>DUNNO, TOSS EM INTO A WELL OR SOMETHING

>>4167596
This. Other missions where you can just blackjack everybody leaves you with a boring, empty labyrinth to explore. The actual need to manage your resources in down in the bonehoard make it the best mission in my eyes.

>>4177812
They had BJ immune guards in T2, but there were only like 4 in the whole game. And I think 2 of them were those guys on the sub that were also gas immune. I understand that it would be really frustrating if every single guard were immune to it, but they should be much more common.

>>4177810
> open ended design of the mansion

it's a damn square. Stop making Ramirez's mansion out to be some titan of level design compared to all the other mansion levels in the series.

>>4176012
Isn't this entirely obsolete because of NewDark?

>>4178303
iirc, it's one of very few missions where Garrett doesn't already have a master plan of exactly which entrance you're supposed to use.

it's also one of remarkably few missions that aren't corridor based.

>>4179058

NewDark fixes some of the problems that an engine rewrite could address, sure, but it's still just a binary patch for the old code.
A new engine increases portability and allows for all kinds of other stuff. Improving the physics, better lighting, adding new engine features, etc. There's a lot of stuff that could be done with a Dark Engine clone.

>>4176940
>you just have to rename a directory.
please spoonfeed me.

>>4179084
>Rename the "hires" folder to something else to go full retro (warning, some of those original resources really are alpha, so be prepared to meet AIs with no noses and similar).

>>4179273
thanks, anon.

Speaking of the demo: is it just me, or do master Willey's guards win more often in the demo?

I reloaded the skirmish four times so far, and every time, Willey's guards won without a single casualty. In the full game, I've seen them both get killed by Van Vernon's guards. In the demo, one of them got hit by two arrows at best.

Am I just imagining things here? Or do Willey's guards somehow have a bigger advantage in the demo?

>>4178303
It's an open ended square. 4 entrances (6 if you count the back courtyard), 3 floors, 4 staircases (5 if you count secrets), secret corridors adjoining rooms, etc.

It's just a well designed little mansion. Admittedly the open design actually makes the level a pushover for experienced players but the first time around it's fun as hell.

>>4179404
Maybe you're forced to take a particular path? How does the fight go your playthrough of Life Of The Party and how do you get around the guards afterwards?

TDP has a lot of missions apt for describing one's sex life

>Strange bedfellows
>The Sword
>Down in the Bonehoard
>Undercover

>>4179498
>Escape!

>>4179498
OP's sex life

>Ambush!
>Receiving
>Trail of Blood

>>4179531
epic

>>4179537

>>4179498
>tfw I'll never go this fast into the Maw of Chaos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIaBkx3PVUU

>>4179531
>Blackmail

>>4179498
>>4179531
>eavesdropping
>ambush
>kidnap
>life of the party

>>4176012
I second d this, if only for the possibility of multiplayer and other engine additions.

>>4180876
There's already a sort of working thief multiplayer.

>>4181072

Sort of working is only sort of acceptable, though.

Gathering at the Bar doesn't fool around , and I was expecting the exact opposite. Any difficulty above normal takes the blackjack away, which forces ghosting in a cramped place full of guards, full of electric lights and no rope arrows either. Maybe I only have to find them.

>>4181072
Yeah, I've played it. It's not really that great. Nowhere near practical.

>>4181072
I have no idea how a thief multiplayer would even work out

>>4179498
>robbing the cradle

>>4181138
It's better than waiting for someone to stop by and program an entire multiplayer mode.

>>4183518
Coop, like Among Two Storms by Haplo, thiefs can communicate with each other with a mechanist communication device, as seen in COSAS Mission X.
1 thief has to steal something and the rest of the players, the guards, have to protect something.

>>4183537
>It's better than waiting for someone to stop by and program an entire multiplayer mode.

I don't know, I'd say that no game is better than bad game.

>>4181149
Where did you enter and why?

>>4183643
The room with the hole looked like the most inviting (a door that led the corridor and the hole for the generator), although it's not the only one with an unlocked window Funnily enough I skipped the one with the chest and the sleeping guy, it looked too important to be a possible way to enter. Guess I overestimated it.
That guy's AI has a curious priority that makes him run for the gong whatever you do to wake him up so, if knocked out, he runs to give the alarm and then faints heroically. I wonder if it works if he gets stabbed too. More than an NPC have a similar scripted action, I didn't see that often playing other fms.
Being able to climb through the ducts felt refreshing too (and explained the absence of rope arrows), little additions to the usual gameplay are always welcome even when they're not easy to discover.

fuck me.

>>4184320
SPOOKED

>>4184336
i forgot the second floor had crawling zombies. when i went up the steep path i saw the zombie and tried to stay in the shadows, but i think he already saw me. this level is already scary, and when he started running toward me i paused when he got up right in my face and quit the game. that's enough for tonight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCipnmKq-aU

>>4184383
Zombies are really slow, if you're not cornered you can easily outrun them or even run past them. Just wait for the actual running agitating skeletons for the real thrill.

>>4184390

Great, that's me not sleeping tonight.

>>4184452
RUN MOTHERFUCKER

>>4184452
I remember someone mentioning this is a great character to spook players. Imagine instead if he ran bolting at you after shooting water arrows at it. They should've placed this thing with you like the beginning in Unreal where the lights come off and you need to face a soldier with a glow stick on the ground.

>>4184463
Gems of provenance?

HUP

Whatever happened to these guys after the end of Thief 2?

I mean, their suits should have kept them safe from the gas, shouldn't it? Will they return to normal again if the masks are removed?

IMPORTANT

http://www.strawpoll.me/13687756

>>4184975
Well, there seem to be two kinds of Servant.

I noticed recently that the Servants in Sabotage at Soulforge, whom I presume to be forcefully converted Mechanists, have blood seeping out from under their masks. I expect they'd die without the apparatus. They'd still be organic, so I don't see why they would survive the Necromutox.

The other servants lacked blood, so I guess the process was lessed rushed for them. IIRC, there's a book in Soulforge that describes a Mechanist talking to Karras (who at this point is a recluse within his private chambers). Karras is frustrated that there are no new prisoners to convert into servants, he angrily demands of his follower where he could get more, then he seems to realize he could convert his Mechanists. Pretty spooky.

>>4185015

Yeah with all this Thief talk why does no one talk about Thief Team Racing. Best Cart-racer of it's time in my opinion

>>4185084
I downloaded it and got it working after forever. I couldn't figure out how to use weapons though, the readme was pretty poorly written

>>4185015
why would anyone like Constantine? he's just some boring fat dude who turns into some generic fantasy monster. his mansion was pretty cool (the first time around, that is: the pagan missions all sucked), but that's it.

also, why aren't any of the notable nobles (i.e. Bafford, Ramirez, Willey, Van Vernon etc) on the list?

>>4185106
I always liked how the series starts with a neutral evil character, who wants to change how the world works instead of bring ruin onto it. Sure, he's as nuts as Karras, but his plan isn't all around egoistical. The part of the dark project about bringing back an age of fear and dreams always struck me as somewhat romantic.
This said, Karras is undoubtely better characterized than the rest of the bunch, thanks to what he says and writes and the fact that the main point of TMA is to discover the truth about the Mechanists one mission at a time. Constantine expresses his views only through that readable iirc, which is way less impressive.

>>4185015
>bow upgrade

Oh man, that takes me back.

>>4185164
for me, Constantine just seemed like a generic villain.

Karras was more interesting. he gives the impression of an autistic manchild (reinforced by his lisp) with a deeply rooted misanthropy and obsession with cleanliness. his narcissism is taken to extreme levels when he actually makes the voice recordings of the robots himself, so that he can hear them praise him in his own voice. the most bizarre thing is that he somehow managed to gather a huge sect of people who worship him and are ready to die for him.

in any case, Karras' childlike autism has a certain charm to it.

>>4185193
>for me, Constantine just seemed like a generic villain.

Nigga he's the devil.

>>4185228
so are a lot of video game villains

>>4185241

That ain't his fault.

>>4185247
no, it's the narrative's fault.

if you only play thief 1, the story is pretty bland by itself. as great as the game is, the story certainly isn't the strongest point.

the cool thing about the t1 story is how it foreshadows the events in thief 2 (i.e. you collect precursor masks for Gervasius from the lost city, later to be used as servant masks by the mechanists. the design is seen already in the lost city mission in t1)

>>4185193
>the most bizarre thing is that he somehow managed to gather a huge sect of people who worship him and are ready to die for him

That's the best part. The whole Mechanist cult is built around being a better version of the Hammerites, something made to surpass humanity itself.It sounds convincing, powerful, but by reading between the lines you can clearly see how he's setting himself up as a god and everyone's buying it. Pratically a successful manchildren, yeah. I like that one scripture where he meets the Builder and he says he's ready to die with the rest of humanity, and the Builder is like "Nah man, you stay with me."
For how he's central in a lot of levels, through a lot of elements, I see him as a perfect villain for a stealth game, where you have to explore and study the enviroment, while the other two just sort of appear. out of nowhere I like Constantine because he fits the overall TDP atsmosphere in general, where everything is grey and still undefined, and a lot of levels surprise you by changing the rules of the game (mostly story-wise, sure). Still, you're right, he mainly appears as a chaotic bad guy and that's it.

>>4185252
I should probably clarify that I was talking about the overarching narrative here.

even though the great narrative felt a bit bland in t1, there were still a lot of smaller stories that were told pretty well. there's the lore for Bafford and Ramirez, for example, as well as the relationship between them. a lot of it is told through letters and conversations, but it's also integrated into the level design: a lot of their personalities can be read through the architecture in their respective mansions.

this is, in my opinion, an example of great storytelling. it's details like that that really stand out in the first game.

>>4184975
Don't you remember sabotage at soulforge? All of the servants were recalled using the guiding beacon to explode Karras. The rust gas came from inside the servants so any protection the masks provide is pointless.

>>4185270
the gas came from a device installed into the masks. when the gas was deployed, it exited the masks from the mouths. there's no reason to believe that the gas ever came into contact with the servants themselves.

if the servants could survive walking around with said gas-containing device there, I can't see why they would get affected after the ges had been distributed.

>>4185281
Recall "eavesdropping", wherein Karras has a beggar stand next to a servant and initiates the reaction. Truart remarks that "it consumes them" and that "they are gone" once the demonstration finishes.

>>4185321
I just listened to the conversation again, and it seems you're right. I could have sworn that they brought in two people.

>>4183923
Wew the sleeping guy runs for the gong even if killed. Really an unsung hero.
Another interesting thing that this mission does is making you play as a thief who's part of some unspecified organization or guild instead of our usual taffer. I don't know if I played enough fms to say this but it's rare to find a mission where you're not Garrett. An unexperienced rogue, some cult follower or some sort robin hood like figure are more neutral mcs than a decontextualized Garrett. I reckon that it's easier to immediately picture him when thinking about Thief though. It's still funny how the first (one of the firsts?) fm connected to TDP plot without including Garrett in it.

>let down by its overempathis on the undead and some loopy level designs
what did PC Gamer mean by this?

>>4185448
I played on Normal. On a later date (When it's night and I'm not tired) I'll try Hard with no blackjacking. The rope arrows made it easy to access the roof and the gallery. Is it possible on Normal to climb through the toilets? Who could have imagined people would eventually try to create a whole campaign revolving around The Circle.

Looking at Taffers Paradise the FMs up to Gathering At The Bar were:
Guardhouse 1 - 1999.06.03
Down We Go! - 1999.06.03
Poor Lord Bafford - 1999.06.04
The Deceptive Sceptre - 1999.06.11
A Noble Death - 1999.06.11
Shadow Business - 1999.06.11
Escape: The Bear Pits - 1999.06.13
Gathering At The Bar - 1999.06.14

>>4186038

They hedged on the whole stealth thing by putting a bunch of "fight the undead" levels, and some of those later levels (Into the Maw) are pretty screwy. It's a common opinion that Thief 1 needed more sneaking around bonking guards type levels, because those parts are pretty sweet.

>>4186089
into the maw felt like a 3d platformer, complete with a "surfing/skating" segment and everything.

still, for me, the undead part of the game felt just right. many games trivialise undead by turning them into weak cannonfodder, but in thief, they actually made them threatening and genuinely terrifying.

>>4186061
>Is it possible on Normal to climb through the toilets?

Yes, and only in normal. From the sewers, you can shoot a rope arrow through the first floor toilet but to get directly to the exposition floor you have to use both arrows. From the outside you can simply stack crates to get on the stone building's cornice and then jump through the open window of the exposition room.
In expert/impossible any entrance is pretty much a good way to start, since you have to explore the whole building to get everything you need, and it's all up to personal preference and feel. Only exception the attic, since it drops you right where a lot of guards patrol, up and down the stairs.
Armed with some patience I'll play it again on impossible to get the four rings and open the doors of the buildings around the inn. I always appreciate a level about a small portion of the City, with a central building where you objective is and some small details around, useless for your missions but there nonetheless.

>>4186114
Not to mention that stealth is the most effective way to deal with them. They may give the idea that they need to be disposed of because no blackjack works on them but, on the contrary, they teach you to just sneak past you enemies when the fight is uneven.

what HAS garrett built?

>>4186827

A long running series of games, with about two good ones. Not bad, all things considered. Compare to what Bubbsy has built.

>>4186827
vast wealth
stealth equipment

>>4187118
>vast wealth
then why does he always have trouble paying his rents?

>>4186827

I dunno about building anything but he always managed to pay his rent on time

>>4186827

Real talk - if you were a commoner in The City, would you have signed up to become a Mechanist? Would you dedicate your life to the study of Mathematics and Engineering, to build a world of perfect machinery?

Would you forego masturbation and sex, since the flesh is sinful and unclean?

>>4187132
bad economy

>>4187160
>Karras taunts Garrett
>Garrett fucks him up by building something
Pottery.

In hindsight he's really the good kind of hero. He believes in his way of doing things but when the time comes he does what's right, may it be that it's only to still have a city to rob.

>>4187205
garrett's just the chosen one who doesn't want to be the chosen one, but yet he always finds himself in the hero's shoes by the end of the story.

>>4187167
b-but there's cute girls in the mechanist ranks

>>4187625
they only worship karras, so it's not worth it. if you join for the girls, you're better off joining the city watch.

joining the watch should also make you safe from getting SERVANT'd. I don't think a single watch member dies in the game, unless the player kills them. meanwhile, the mechanists get killed all the time. they get killed by pagans and haunts, and in the end, they also get SERVANT'd by their own beloved leader.

also:
>posess the technology and strength in numbers to completely steamroll every last undead out of the city, all with little to no losses
>still can't pass through a small graveyard because the mere thought of the supernatural makes you piss yourself in mortal fear

>>4187649
b-but there's a cute girl in charge of the city watch after Truart and Hagan got axed

>>4187205
i would consider him neutral good. he doesn't really give a shit about either side but does things to stop humanity from crumbling down.

>>4187657
Mosley is best girl. Framed and Blackmail best days of my life.

>>4187665
Garrett's a hero, but he's still also a thief and does not hesitate to steal from people who actually need the money.

IIRC some business went under in thief 2 directly because of Garrett, and they weren't even an illegitimate one.
And if you want to include Deadly Shadows, there's the matter of the Sea Captain's blind widow.
He's neutral at best.

>>4187649
>you'll never get a love tap

>>4187675
And what's funny is that she's grateful if you don't steal the inheritance, even if you empty the whole mansion in the process. At least you have a choice.

How do I make this Garrett skin texture more like the Garrett from Thief The Dark Project/Gold?
It looks he has a dark blue/purple tunic. The tunic has two vertical lines. Maybe with a dark grey sweater and a pair of pants in the same colour underneath. Silver belt buckle. Brown armbands. Brown gloves or darkblue gloves with a black patch on it. No mechanical eye. How should I do it? I have GIMP.

http://www.taffersparadise.co.uk/screengrabs/painting/boxart/tg-boxart.jpg
http://www.taffersparadise.co.uk/screengrabs/painting/thief1paintings/t1-hammertower.jpg
http://www.taffersparadise.co.uk/screengrabs/painting/thief1paintings/t1-cutscene-sword.jpg
https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/thief/images/0/04/TG_CS06_07.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20080505164915

I just got stuck on the Disorientation FM.

Was I supposed to find something that helped me progress in the keeper library? And what am I supposed to do with the machinery?

>inb4 git gud

>>4188338
The Keeper's library is just a secret area, some loot in it and it becomes a challenge if you go down to the ground floor, since going back to the bridge is no joke. Once you got everything in there there's not anything else to do if not playing psychic fencing with the invisible NPC.
The machinery you mean is a series of valves/levers in the sewers? I don't quite remember if that's in the mission but if you mean that, it's a puzzle with the solution inside the room. Garrett's voice line should be helpful: those valves are misleading.

>>4188360
More than a puzzle, I think a key is hidden there, but for what I remember the key led to the Keepers' library. I should really replay this but I'm in the middle of another T2 FM.

are scouting orbs useful?

>>4188420
In very specific situations. I used them to determine the patrol route of some enemies where the only other possibility was going blind and by trial and error. They can save mostly you if you're going for a "realistic" kind of playstyle. I guess that having enough patience or saving a lot makes them completely useless.

>>4188360
How do you get to the ground floor? Are there any readables there?

HUP

>I can't take this anymore, this is absolutely ridiculous, everytime I turn around there's incompetence, incompetence in every act that I see performed except by myself, while I can't do it all by myself

>>4189315
Crates and a well places rope arrow (or more? I'm pretty sure it's too high for a single arrow). iirc you can't mantle over the fence so you have to jump over it and grab the rope. And yeah, I think that the readables are quite interesting, hidden among the other books too. Really wish I could replay that part instantly to help you out.
Beside this, do you have a problem with getting to the main objective?

>>4189465
Hammerites are too pure for this world, but Benny is the purest.

>>4162227
Thief 2 is the best thief.
Also the commubity has a shitload of fann missions. Some of them are really topshelf. Check cheapthiefmissions.com

>>4189490
>*sees body*
>A-are you alright? No, no, of course you're not alright. Sorry!

>>4189501

>Thief 2 is the best thief.
'no'

>>4189490
>Hammerites are too pure for this world, but Benny is the purest.
hammerites are assholes.

Finally found the four rings for the secret room in Gathering at the bar. Considering the mission's history, being the prototype before the dromed's release, I can see why it's so surprisingly polished under certain aspects (the briefing, the story told by the readables), although I don't know how much it was added in time and how the mission played in 1999.
Some of the guards' positioning is hard to predict, and I think it's because they patrol through the whole building. Sometimes some areas are completely empty, sometimes you need some serious crackerjack timing to move around. Not a real flaw but it's unusual.
Two of them are really nonsensical though, the hammerite priest that runs to get to the other side of his room and the guard that rushes to get out of the sceptre's room and does the same when coming back from his patrol route. For too long I tried to understand what I did wrong to trigger them, while they just like to jog a little in the middle of the night.
On the other hand, I really liked the whole deal with the generator guard. Pretty clever, although I'm not sure if the generator has any use if not luring him there.
This mission probably spoiled me, compared to what's coming next, but I'm still in.

Played on expert. Turtling comes in handy with all that marble. The priest is tricky. It's partially guesswork. Get in, get the expensive wine and retreat back into the corner. When he has his back turned, go stand behind him and try to get the loot from the table. Then I went out through the door while he ran off to the window. How did you do it? The AI of the guard in the room with the scepter gets triggered when you walk. Figured I shoot an moss arrow near the desk to create a safe spot in the dark. How did you do it?
What's coming next?

Anyone able to give a rundown of the plots of first three games and the main characters motivations in like a few paragraphs. Mechanists were just Hammerite split off sect or what?

>>4190413
backstory
>long ago the trickster did a bunch of bad shit
>he was cast out/killed/whatever by the master builder. Who is essentially a combination of Jesus and Prometheus
>from the builder and the trickster, two factions, the hammers and the pagans are created
>there's also the keepers, who are fags who "maintain the balance"
>garrett, as a wee lad is inducted into the keepers, gains access to their stealth skills and secrets and he's also the chosen one.

>thief 1
>trickster comes back, tricks garrett into giving him a mystical device called "The Eye", which I guess basically amplifies his mystic powers, so he can kill manfools for kicks. There's also Viktoria who was probably his GF or something.
>garrett helps the hammers eventually stop him

>thief 2
>since the last game, an organized city watch came into being and the power of the hammers has waned and given birth to a splinter faction called the Mechanists, founded by former hammerite Karras
>Karras is basically Droopy Dog and Hitler, hates everyone, especially plants
>Uses the city watch and Mechanists to his ends, eventually planning to wipe out all living things in the name of the builder
>Garrett wit the help of Viktoria from the last game stops him and she dies.

>DS
>focuses on the Keepers, their magic runs out
>This is because (iirc) of a witch named Gamall who I guess wants power
>garrett has the option to join a faction to help fight her and at the end

>>4190365
I avoided him by stepping right behind the door. In the side of the room with the painting there's enough shadow and he's too focused on his run to notice anything. Still he can fuck you up by coming back with the usual hurry while you're in the middle of the room, but it's all really situational.
It's neat how there's certain things that I'm learning only by playing fms. Through the main series I walked on marble floor with the minimum speed, against a wall and with the sword in hand. I used this mission to try to go as fast as I could on tiles without making a mess, and the big exposition room, with both light and dark zones, was a good practice ground. I'm finally getting a hold of my movement possibilities.
Also I did the same with the priest the first time, coming from the hole room, but you'll have a easier time robbing him by entering through the fireplace. You can following out of the bedroom and keep staying behind him in the next one: he only faces the door or the side opposite to the wine shelf. You can go back to the fireplace before he does or wait for him to do it and leave through the door. Risky but with less back and forth.

>What's coming next?
Everything that comes after this mission: Guardhouse if we play dromed only levels too (never did that), or Poor lord Bafford. While this one was made to test the very idea of fm, I don't know about the others so it's possible that we'll play some pretty raw stuff. But I'm always up for some Thief and this historical study.

>>4190491
Nice rundown, thanks.

It's quite a rich universe. I wonder if living in it would actually be comfy, I suppose you wouldn't want to be a beggar or a guard, but if you had a middle class existence, was a merchant or something. Would the background presence of undead and magic really bother you?

Did anyone else actually like the combat/zombie levels in Thief? I thought they were kind of spooky and a good break from the stealth heavy levels. Although the combat would be helped if there was better engine support for it.

>>4191143
>You will never be an entry-rank guard in the Thief universe
>You will never spend sundown to sunup patrolling up and down the same corridors
>You will never pull up a chair and idly sharpen your sword and adjust your bowstrings
>You will never sit around drinking ale and playing cardgames with your buddies, hoping the Lieutenant doesn't poke his head in
>You will never apologize to your wife for being away all night and asleep all day, but it's the only work you could find
>You will never remind yourself you're doing it for your wife and your baby child every time you tie your boots to go do it again

This is why you should never kill guards. They're just trying to survive, like Garrett

>>4191169
even when I played on normal, the only humans I ever killed was the occasional mechanist, which is somewhat justified since they plan on destroying humanity. the others are just ordinary people.

>>4191164
>it's another "undead necessitates combat" post

>>4191068
Poor Lord Bafford is blocky and horizontal, apart from that weird contraption at the end. The place with all his loot is just a square room, marble floor and two guard. Not anything fancy. Not a whole lot of cosmetic details in general it seems. Considering it's a country home I expected a lot more trees outside. Simple map design.

Any of you guys have the Underworld alpha?

I wanna try it.

T1
>you work for and then destroy a literal pagan god, complete with metal fucking pagan scriptures being read before every mission and a traitorous femme fatale

T2
>you spend half the game fucking about, reading about how a huge pathetic nerd virgin with a massive lisp is butthurt because his hammerite friends didn't like him, then the cool femme fatale from the first game turns into a literal tree and thwards said virgin's plans

Obviously T1 is better, but I like both.

it always bothered how despite being set only a couple years apart, thief 2 looks like it takes place several hundred years after thief 1

>>4192691
the ending of thief 1 foreshadows that the world is entering a new age, namely the metal age. there's also the rapid technological progression that the mechanists brought about.

I preferred the pre-metal age setting of the first game. the city had a very organic and mystical feel to it, and the plot with the pagans was essentally a man vs nature narrative. the metal age setting in thief 2 felt more like the late 19th century, except with modern day technology. the plot with the mechanists as villains felt like it had a somewhat environmentalist subtext to it, which stood in sharp contrast to the story of the first game, where you were essentially a champion of human civilisation.

Why is there no proper Thief 4? This is mindboggling to me, it's not like the core design is hard to replicate. Fans have been doing it for years in custom missions, for fucks sake. And the immersive sim genre has been resurrected with moderate success, so what gives?

>>4192719
Do you mean that in a "why has no one made a good successor to thief" or in a "why was the thief 4 we actually got so fucking awful" way?

>>4192730
>"why has no one made a good successor to thief"
This more than anything else. I know that there's a fan engine of sorts that mimics T1 and T2 but it runs abysmally and I find that it's more of a hobby project instead of a proper successor.

I imagine that there's a number of reasons for why Thiaf was bad, corporate meddling and a complete misunderstanding of the franchise on the side of the developers being two of them.

>>4192747
>hobby project instead of a proper successor.
This is probably the answer. Modders are usually just hobbyists working with already present material and there's not really dedicated devs to making a Thief successor from the ground up other than the Dishonored and Dark Mod people.

>>4192747
>I know that there's a fan engine of sorts that mimics T1 and T2 but it runs abysmally and I find that it's more of a hobby project instead of a proper successor.

Yeah, I imagine you mean The Dark Mod. It's neat, but it feels very different. The best hope for a fan-made "Thief 4" that feels right would be that Open Dark Engine thing mentioned upthread, but unless some budding game engine developers crawl out of the woodwork, it's not happening.

>>4192781
>>4192789
>but unless some budding game engine developers crawl out of the woodwork, it's not happening
What about people and developers like Arkane? With all of the jerking off over Looking Glass and straight up referencing them in Prey (although obviously the influence of the genre can be felt back as far as Dishonored 1, or Arx Fatalis if you want to go hardcore further) I bet there's quite a few people in-house interested in reviving Garett.

We live at a time where even people like Ice Pick Lodge or Nigoro can ask for hundreds of thousands on kickstarter and actually meet that goal twice over in a span of a relatively short amount of time, and as I've said - all you really need for a proper Thief-esque title is just to copy what works.

Which is why it's so insane that the series is effectively dead, spiritually or not. Even Commandos 2 continues in spirit thanks to Shadow Tactics, and that wasn't even a year ago.

>>4192830

Yeah, but then you're not really getting a new Thief game, you're getting some indie kickstarter "spiritual successor" and it may or may not have any similarity to Thief.

how are fire arrows not restricted weapons only for military use?
They're rockets that can be fire from bows.

How often do you forget that it's possible to destroy some doors in these games?

>>4192913

You know they're illegal, right? You buy them from a fence/supplier. Or else you make them from the appropriate elemental crystals using secret taffer tricks or something.
I bet the pagans are responsible

Or maybe those darn mages

>>4192709
I think the themes were simpler than that. Just a basic story of chaos (pagans) vs. order (hammerites), with the moral of the story being that you need a bit of both or shit goes sideways. It's why Garrett makes a good neutral character.

>>4193063

What is really interesting is that the Pagans, Hammers and Keepers, the three major factions, are all extremely altruistic, they all work for the betterment of something else, be it nature, society or their Gods.

Garret, on the other hand, is the only force that is completely selfish in his nature. Because of a lack of an ideological lens which distorts everything, Garret is the only person who is capable of saving the world and does so thrice. He brings order to things by utilising chaos (stealing things), and he reconciles the two because he's not driven by some kind of greater goal of bringing either order or chaos.

Ironically enough, it's his almost sociopathic personality and egoism that is capable of fixing a crises or imbalance. Garret could very well be some kind of Ubermensch. His existence is beyond good and evil, or petty ideology and moral systems, because all he cares for is himself.

The idea that "the world being destroyed sucks because I live there" is the only rational and truly neutral philosophy to have. Wanting to save or improve the world hurts it, but wanting to save yourself guarantees the world's safety, because one is apart of the world.

Garret is an archetypical nietzschean hero, copy paste from film noir and cyberpunk.

>>4193092

>>4193092
so garrett has no spooks?

>>4193125

Nope, just haunts.

>>4193129
which are worse?

>>4185252
>>4185267
Lore isn't narrative though.

The story of Thief 1 isn't bland. The characters aren't as conflicted or complex as in a drama, but that's not the point.

Constantine/the Trickster isn't a generic, bland villain. He doesn't just want to watch the world burn; he's a deity of nature that wants to reclaim his power. He believes that humans need the darkness outside the firesides of their camps, that they need the unbridled wilderness of nature to motivate them and keep them in check. Modern civilisation, modern life has imprisoned humans. So he has some motivation akin to Ganon in Windwaker, even though THAT character was characterised way, way less.

>>4187205
>>4187619
>>4187665
>>4187675

Garrett's either True Neutral or Chaotic Neutral. He *is* the balanced one. He steals from the poor and the rich alike, and the biggest reason why Garrett saves the City repeatedly is self-interest. He committs no sacrifice, no act of selflessness. And the reason why he becomes the One True Keeper in Thief 3 is because that self-interest has kept him balanced. He isn't lead astray by hypocritical notions of altruism, or the presumption of the cheap misprisions of the Keepers. He steals indiscriminately, he saves indiscriminately, he disdains indiscriminately.

>>4194301
basically he wanted to just remove they Builder's element of Order from the world.
A trickster god seeking to reimpose the chaos of the natural world.

Mechanist bullies not so tough after getting haunted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22ssSgNj-OY

New Thief in modern engine with classic gameplay, Stephen Russell, PC only no console babby pandering loot glint nonsense when?

>>4194747
Maybe a bit in Underwold Ascendant.

If they actually make it good, the alpha is not promising.

>>4194747
never

>>4194775
To be fair I'd settle for a remake of the originals in a newer engine with dynamic lighting, ragdolls, etc. Kind of like Black Mesa for Half Life. Dark Mod is excellent in many ways but suffers from lack of original IP and narrative-driven campaign.

>>4194792
Speaking of dynamic lighting, this might pique your interest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbZZ95hAKX8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jrEgdbRmGA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2LNYU3vGhM

It's just a shame that whatever code is being showcased in these videos never saw the light of day.

>>4194816
I suppose it was to be part of the mysterious Corvo patch, but never made it.

Its quite incredible how elastic the engine is, way ahead of its time.

>>4176342
>>4176356
Actually Thief 2 demo contains Angelwatch as well or at least part of it.

>>4196004
Not only does it contain Angelwatch, but it also does a better job at presenting it.

Going past the greenhouse and approching the tower from the front made it seem much more impressive and breathtaking. Actually climbing the facade and entering directly into the ballroom was really fun, as well.

Would Benny make a good imageboard moderator?

>>4196378
he would probably feel bad about banning people.

>tfw no game that's a combo of Thief and Deus Ex

>>4196441
you mean, like a Deus Ex with horror elements? or a Thief with character progression?

>>4196452
Deus Ex with more complex and radiant levels. Greater emphasis on exploration and stealth.

Thief with an espionage tone, a nice spectrum of weapons and ability to talk with people and help them.

I dunno.

What was her problem?

Going to play the first Thief soon, anything I should consider going in?

>>4197439
Don't install any of the optional stuff from TFix for an experience close to vanilla.

>>4197439
The Bear Pits

>>4197451
>>4197453
I have Thief Gold, should I use GoldToDark? or is Gold definitive

>>4198305
Gold is good. One may argue that the levels added aren't the best but it's nothing tragic.

>>4197439

Thief 1's tutorial is good but doesn't mention anything about the blackjack or water arrows. The blackjack and water arrows are literally the most useful things you have.

The control setup in thief 1 is weird, it was just before wasd became standard. In Tfix they fix this but I would recommend loading an alternative control scheme; probably Thief 2's default controls. Plus make sure to bind creep (or speed toggle or whatever) somewhere - probably ctrl.

Make sure you have good speakers or really decent headphones. Thief makes use of the best sound engine ever in games, and it's important to the gameplay. You can figure out where a guard is by just listening for his footsteps.

Save often. Bind quicksaves to the numpad or somewhere.

Changing the difficulty will change your objectives. So quite often a level on normal will be a completely different experience on expert.

>>4198305

Gold is a mixed bag. It includes 3 new levels, one huge new secret area in one of the levels and a small handful of changes to other levels.

It's kinda half good changes, half bad changes.

The first two new levels, downwind thieves guild and mage towers are probably the worst levels in the game. Thieves guild gets the most ire as it's sandwiched between my two favourite levels. The addition of mages to the lost city was a mistake, but is only a small part of a massive level - so whatever.

On the other other hand the last new level 'Song of the Caverns' might be the best goddamn level in the game and the secret area in Constantine's mansion (if you can find it) is incredible.

Was he the most unlikable character in the series?

Not only does he betray the citizens he's supposed to protect by selling them to the mechanists, but he also takes merits himself with modernising the watch, while all he did was leeching off the success of the mechanists.

>>4198453

I can't hate him. He's responsible for my favourite moment ever in gaming.

First time I played Thief 2, I fucking hate the sheriff; he's making my life a complete misery.

So I'm up to Blackmail, I've got the evidence against him and I've just started to get really good at Thief's stealth - y'know I'm trying to ghost levels at this point, sometimes unsuccessfully and I always have the blackjack equipped. I'm trying to keep as many people alive and conscious as possible, not for any moral reasons, just to present a good challenge when breaking out.

So I start breaking into his mansion when I see a ledge. I mantle over it and I find a small graveyard. It's his whole family, his father, his wife, his kid; all dead. It's weird, any other video game would have some extra items or weapons or a power-up or something. But it's just a graveyard.

Then something weird catches my eye, it's a shovel and next to it is a recently dug up hole. There's nothing in the hole but it's the perfect size for another coffin...

I move on. Break into Truart's mansion proper, trying not to alert or even knock out anyone. Then just before I get to Truart I hear the guards yelling, Truart's been murdered.

I sneak past the last few guards and get to Truart's body. Complete my last few objectives and break out.

And I'm just about to leave when I come across this little graveyard again. I look into the hole. To my right if I walk another 10 feet I can exit the level. To my left is Truart's mansion. Something just feels wrong about me leaving it like this. I need to get the body. I need to give him some sort of burial. The game isn't telling me to this. Just something inside me told me to...

I don't get that reaction from any other game - even Deus Ex... I happily burn kids alive in that game... but something was different this time...

Continued...

>>4198484

So I break back in and immediately everything goes wrong and 20 guards are chasing me yelling made-up swear words. I'm out of flashbombs and I can't get away. It's like a fucking Benny Hill sketch at this point.

Finally I make it up to Truart's room, grab the body and the guards are seconds away from me. Now in Thief we all know that carrying around a body makes Garrett move slower. So I'm fucked at this point.

I go out a door to the balcony. Behind me, 4 or 5 guards are gaining on me. In front of me the other door to the balcony opens and 4 or 5 more guards come charging towards me.

So I take I leap of faith and jump off the roof. Somehow, miraculously, I survive with only 1 health point left. Still the guards have started firing arrow at me at this point, so as quickly as I can possibly go, Truart slung over my shoulder I escape across the courtyard and back towards the graveyard.

Finally I'm there and I drop Truart in the hole. It feels right somehow, my conscious is clear.

Then something funny happens.

There's a little ding and the game says Objective Complete.

What?

I check the Objectives and there it is.

Bonus Objective Complete: Settle the Score.

My whole weird moral quandary had been a part of the game's design the whole goddamn time...

It's weird, I don't give a fuck about people most of the time in real life - certainly not in a video game...

Is it possible to make Undercover an enjoyable level? I hate knocking out every guard, but the level is so restrictive and you're forced to set off the alarm anyway.

>>4198543
iirc, your cover gets blown as soon as someone notices that some loot is missing or a forbidden door is open. I guess that makes undercover a pretty hard level to ghost.

>>4198431
What difficulty do you recommend? I like challenging games but not if the difficulty settings are just arbitrary bullshit sliders like damage scaling.

>>4198441
>Gold is a mixed bag.
GoldToDark it is, then

>>4198836
I installed GoldToDark and then TFix, which fixed the crashing I was getting in the menu, but I didn't realize that even unchecking all of the options while installing it might have left me with modded content.

I just want the vanilla game with bugfixes

what do

>>4198836
>What difficulty do you recommend? I like challenging games but not if the difficulty settings are just arbitrary bullshit sliders like damage scaling.

Well, you're in luck. Changing the difficulty in Thief doesn't do that. Instead it increases the percentage of loot you have to get, adds restrictions against killing people, moves items to different places making things harder to find/do, and in several instances, opens or closes sections of the map depending on which of the three settings you've got.
The difficulty settings actually add replayability, IMO. You get a different experience on each setting, which is one more reason the Looking Glass Thief games are my favorite games ever.

>>4198913
Well to be fair you also have less health, which is a sort of damage scaling, but it does all the other cool shit too. Also makes the ai senses more sensitive

>>4199027
>you also have less health

Oh yeah, I forgot about that, and the AI sensitivity thing. Must mean it's about time to dust off my old discs and reinstall.

>>4198884
Installed it and through the small amount of research I've done, Garrett's monologue is not in the original game?


What the fuck is this shit and why can't I just get bug fixes without any modded content? Help

>>4198514
This cant be true.

>>4199468

Apparently, it is.

>>4199314

Doesnt the Steam version and GOG version already comes patched with TFIX ?

>>4199510
Only Thief Gold, I want to play The Dark Project. I'm just trying to make sure I have a mostly vanilla experience without dealing with bullshit like cutscenes not playing properly and crashes when running it with more than 1 core. Just going to play with GoldToDark and TFix for now I guess, but I'm irritated that I can't know if what I'm getting is actually vanilla content or not.

>>4199545
It feels silly that'd you'd be so concerned with vanilla content when you haven't even played either gold or dark project to begin with to even be able to tell the difference between the two.

Especially taking into consideration with the trouble you are apparently having

>>4199545
Well if want pure purism.


But Gold has a great level in it, and the only other change is a enemy swap in one level. Thats it. And you can just bypass the levels you dont want to play.


Although I understand why you want it, there should exist an easy play with all the improvement of Tfix Thief TDP.

>>4199501

Holy Shit, I am actually blown away by this, all these fucking years. The first mind blown was finding the secret in The Sword in 2009.

And that level also has a big spot in my heart, I remember being paranoid that the killer was still around the mansion that I took hours just searching the place.

>>4199554
I just like playing the original version of a game first. It'd be like seeing the 1997 Special Edition of Star Wars when you intended to see the theatrical version.

>>4199561

Seems legit to me.

Nevermind I'm an idiot who didn't realize TFix Lite existed. Everything is working now. Time to steal things.

>>4199590

Go, man, go!

>>4198441
Thieves' Guild is notoriously confusing and not very well designed with how the main objectives of the mission on Expert are hidden from the player but the Mage Towers is nowhere near as bad.

Song of the Caverns is one of the best levels in the game, Mage Towers I would call good or decent at least, I would definitely not call Mage Towers bad. It's very big and open and involves a lot of running but I always find myself immersed in the environment and the lore of the area because of how fantastical it is. The map is incredibly underrated when people bring it up.

>>4199724
I've always defended that Mage Tower's central building is actually pretty decent despite how small it is and how little time you actually need to spend in it.

Thieve's Guild has a part that can trap you indefinitely. Which really hurts it even more in my opinions.

>>4199731
You can "softlock" the game in the Thieves' Guild and have to restart the mission?

My main frustrations with it are the poor level design compared to the other levels, the guard patrol routes and the poor objective placement which don't give the player enough hints as to where they are IIRC (silver bracelet hiding place and the main objective behind the banner).

>>4199757
>You can "softlock" the game in the Thieves' Guild and have to restart the mission?
I'm fairly certain. There's a basin with one of the metal doors that you need to open remotely. If the door isn't open you can't get out of it because there's no ladders, you can't mantle out and there's nothing present that a rope arrow will latch onto.

>>4199776
Don't remember that at all and I've played it a bunch of times desu but that's interesting. Didn't think that sort of thing was in any official Thief level, usually the design philosophy of the game gives you a ton of options.

>>4199783
I mean, I could be mistaken and didn't see a way out myself.
Though given that the level is know for not being so good...

>>4199791
The "poor level design" complaint usually comes from how tight and narrow a lot of the corridors are with samey textures and confusing areas. Makes the level feel like a maze that you have to backtrack through and getting lost is a lot easier than in other levels.

>>4198836

You can change the difficulty at the start of every level. I would probably recommend starting on normal (the easiest difficulty) and just see what you like.

It's not really arbitrary bullshit that they change either - I think you have less health on expert but that's about it...

Most levels add different objectives that an radically change the level, plus on the Expert you can't kill anyone. It actually makes the game a whole lot more challenging but it adds so much replayability.

>>4192418
Yeah, for sure it's not pretty. The very specific tiles corridors makes it look like there's nothing else to make those segments hard to surpass, and only if you're ghosting: every guard could be easily taken down since they all patrol the hallways alone.
A block that reveals itself as a larger building never makes a good impression, for some reason, but I guess that there will be more weird design choices along the way. Gameplay-wise too: missions based on combat and who knows what else. Still, there's hope.
I liked the idea of stripping down a Bafford's property again. It seems that he's the protagonist of an handful of fms for some reason. It may be because in TDP his was the only mission where Garrett robs someone just because, without any ulterior motives. The usual rich guy that always tries to be smarter than thieves.

>>4199731
The problem with Mage Towers is that the level is basically linear. You HAVE to follow the order of
>water tower
>earth tower
>air tower
>fire tower
And the towers themselves are completely linear.
The only thing the level has going for it are the grandiose architecture and the atmosphere.

>>4200498
Yeah I guess that's true, which goes against the design philosophy present in a lot of the other levels. But at the same time there is a certain value to having a few levels be this way with the investigative nature of the objectives. Having to search to find out which tower you can get in first, why you can get in it (lock is broken because the tower got fucked), which tower contains which keys, why keys and stuff were moved around everywhere. It's like a big detective story the first time you play it and have no idea what's going on - you have to overhear the guards and mages and read all the scrolls and books to put together the information you need to locate and retrieve the talisman.

Is there any FM out there which is like an alternate version of song of the caverns which takes place entirely underground inside cave systems and temples filled with traps full of craymen and shit to get the water talisman? Always thought it'd be a neat idea for a FM. Kinda like a more claustrophobic lost city.

I was playing the Truart estate mission earlier and I think my quicksave file got fucked. Whenever I try to load it the game crashes. Did anyone else have this problem?

>>4201237

Yeah, it's a known problem that the Dark Engine occasionally borks a save. Try to make regular save at points along the way, rather than rely on just the quicksave slot.

>>4201307
Fuck, I used to save only when I suspected I might quicksave myself into a corner (which wasn't that uncommon but I could still lose a lot of progress). Thanks anyway.

>>4200410
There's a secret passageway in the bedroom with the servant. You have to destroy the banner to reveal the shortcut. How can the guard see me through the banner? Does it have something to do with the properties of the banner or the AI of the guard? I believe NamelessVoice once released a script that allows you to shove the banner aside.

Tomorrow I'm going to start with Nick's tutorial, again

>>4201307
not him but, I can't even load or save anymore

Do you think Garrett would feel guilty over killing someone, or do you think that his "no kill" policy is simply for professional pride?

>>4201540

I always figured it was a bit of both.

>>4201540
hard to tell. he did tell Cutty that he'd kill him if he wasn't already dying, but that might just have been edgy banter.

it's also possible that killing someone is a line Garrett simply doesn't want to cross. that's not necessrily the same thing as feeling guilty about killing or being morally averse towards killing.

>>4201558
>>4201540
What about Karras?

>>4201307
This shit is buggy as fuck, I just replayed up to the part were it had gotten corrupted and now I have two save files corrupted (quick save slot is still loading though) and I'm getting bugs like not being able to draw my sword/arrows/blackjack and my moss arrows spreading through all the avaiable floor space (just the models though, it doesn't actually make the floor silent).

>>4201558
>>4201540
I think it's possible that he avoids killing because dead people means angry family members and even angrier police which makes him job harder.

>>4201572
Karras had it coming no matter which way you look at it. And I don't think that Garrett's morals would be strong enough to spare him, regardless.

>>4201558
>>4201540
Killing someone tends to bring A LOT more heat down on you than just general thievery and stealing. If Garrett went into Bafford's and just murdered everyone and made off with the scepter the investigation into what happened would turn him into a Jack The Ripper style character for the people in The City.

>>4201583

What the hell? That is not right, anon. A corrupt save file once in a blue moon is normal for the Dark Engine, what you've got happening there is definitely not. Something's wrong.

>>4201583
Either you're game is absolutely fucked or there's something wrong with your RAM

>>4201597
>>4201590
>>4201583

Send help

Reinstall the game and the most up to date version of Tafferpatcher?

>>4201572
there was no other way, since Soulforge already had all the equipment needed to control the servants, and since the only possible command was to attract them there.

I guess Garrett could have followed Karras' suggestion to find all individual servants and deactivate their rust gas devices, but that would be a lot of work in one night, and prone to failure.

>>4201540

Both?

>>4201381
I think it's on the banner but I can't be sure; I don't remember a lot of secret passages that end up in an exposed area, not with a banner at the end. But I think it's the banner being transparent in the eyes of the AI. Weirdly enough it's hard to find something about it. Could it be that it's up to who's placing the banner? Considering the torch right in the middle of the passageway it looks more like a trap than a shortcut, and on both sides there's an npc waiting for you. I should probably start with that tutorial just to learn how to test certain things by myself.
I don't remember if that script was integrated in some fm or if TDM had something similar. The most useful shit really, cutting down banners feels almost worse than leaving bodies around.

>>4201034
That mission where the steal the Craymen King's crown in DS is like that, no?

Does anyone have that chart of Thief fan missions? Trying to recall a horror mission that was listed on it.

>>4203174

This one?

>>4203276
Perfect, thank you.

>>4198514
>yelling made-up swear words

Hello there, Yahtzee.
https://youtu.be/BQqcFtvFtno?t=1m43s

>>4197241

Insufficient Garret dickings.

>>4203436
>undead levels in T1 were a mistake, andthe almost total absence of undeads in T2 is a good thing
exactly HOW widespread is this meme?

it's not like undead levels were somehow less "sneaky" than the normal mansion levels. quite the contrary, since non-blackjackable enemies actually encouraged sneaking.

>>4203471

They may have not been as sneaky, but they were much less thiefy. It was a bit of a bait and switch when you bring home a game called Thief and you just start to get into climbing around mansions and stealing loot, when the game suddenly says "okay, that's all over now, now we're fighting evil."

I mean, I love the plot of Thief 1, but a couple more "rob some dudes" levels at the start would not have gone amiss.

Is my game broken or is this game just getting weird as shit

Judging by the rest of this mansion I assume the latter

>>4203471
You could easely run past them.

>>4203547
yeah, assuming you know the map. for all you know, you might be running into a dead end or a locked door. throw in a few haunts, and it gets more complicated.

when are they gonna bring me my dinner thats what I wanna know when are they gonna bring me my dinner when are they gonna bring me my dinner thats what I wanna know when are they gonna bring me my dinner when are they gonna bring me my dinner thats what I wanna know when are they gonna bring me my dinner when are they gonna bring me my dinner thats what I wanna know when are they gonna bring me my dinner

Sometimes I get stuck in walking speed when using Speed Toggle, does anyone know why?

>>4203642

Sounds like a keyboard thing to me. Try mapping to a the toggle to a different key and see if it still happens.

>>4201641
I tried that but it's still fucked. Reinstalling on C: instead of C:\Program files x86 and installing T2tool helped but I'm still getting very frequent crashed and arrows spawning in the air/not being able to equip my shit.

>>4204070

Run a memtest, anon. It sounds like you've got a bad stick of ram.

>>4203629
geeee it's awful cold out here tonight I just wish I had a better coat this one has got holes in the sleeves and holes in my elbows and the wind just whistles through cause the dang fastener's all busted apart

>>4204070
I had the same problem with System Shock 2 a few days ago. It was on a fresh install of newdark. Haven't messed around with it since but it's not just you.

>>4204076
Just solved it. Had to restart the level again because the save file was made in another version.

>>4203503
The latter. You'll find out why the mansion is so weird and reality/physics defying when you properly get to know its owner later.

>>4203153
>Craymen King
Aren't those like creature from the black lagoon type dudes that literally just walk and communicate upright and not at all like monsters/beasts at all? But yeah I guess something a bit like that level except not in a shit game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6oksHXolY4

What the fuck? I had no idea these things even existed and I've played T2 a bunch of times. They're literally just the rumblers from System Shock 2 but with a tree skin.

Jesus christ how horrifying.

>>4204684

You never ran into those things before? I hit them on my very first playthrough. Scary motherfuckers.

>>4204684
It's (thankfully) possible to avoid them completely.

I wonder what Viktoria's relation to them is, other than the pagan connection. I mean, she also has tree bark skin, and her arms turn into branches when she fights.

>>4203056
Gotta admit though that this level almost does something that I don't see often: a main objective hard to grab. Usually the hard part is getting there, but I love it when part of the challenge is stealing your relic in a very complex situation. It was a fantastic moment when I first saw Constantine's sword floating up there and I realized I had no idea how to get it it was an incredible moment.
Now in this FM's case you can just gas arrow the two guards, with the second not even realizing that the first one dropped to the ground, but luckily there's always ghosting as a pocket artificial difficulty increase.
It worked as a redeeming quality for the Kurshok Crown too. Having the kurshoks notice that the crown disappeared just added to the moment, although I don't remember if it made things harder.

>>4162227
Exactly how do helmeted guards work in T2?

I just knocked two of them out in Blackmail. Were they actually ordinary guards with the helmet model, or is it possible to balckjack them from the front?

New mission for T2:
Vault Chronicles
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148170

The undead sound effects are so annoying that I want to die

kill me

>>4205906
personally I've always liked them. the first time I heard them, I was really spooked. to this day, I still find them very eery and unsettling.

how would you prefer that the zombies sounded?

>>4197241


What a shitty Victoria.

Gimme goth vic everyday to whip my ass.

>>4206160
bark skin viktoria is best viktoria.

>>4206175
I bet her vagina smells like eucalyptus oil.

Garrett is a fag if he didnt smash that.

>>4206180
>Garrett is a fag if he didnt smash that.
that could get a bit complicated.

>>4196441
I thought deus ex was supposed to be thief+system shock

>>4206326

Yeah, and he want a game that adds another helping of Thief to Deus Ex.

And I can see that, because Deus Ex's stealth gameplay is good, but not as good as it could have been.

>>4205909
The noises they make remind me of the disgusting sounds that come from old fat guys in the doctor's waiting room or in line at Wal-Mart

I play games to get away from that

Up until The Haunted Cathedral I thought this game might be one of the best I've ever played but now I've lost almost all desire to play it.

>>4206750

Too spooky for you?

>>4206782
I was just getting annoyed by my own ineptitude, wandering around in circles. I figured out where to find the torc though and experienced the most tense moments I've ever felt in a video game. This game is actually incredible.

>>4206824

Oh hell yeah...

After reading this thread I was inspired to reboot it...

Lord Bafford's mansion, on Expert of course. Damn near ghost my way through the entire level. Then just as I'm about to get the sceptre... I jump too short of a rug and land on the tiles with a massive THUD.

And quickly everything goes tits up and I'm running for my life through the mansion before I get killed...

I can never get tired of these two games...

Should I play with tweaks or not? How does the AI tweak affect gameplay?

>>4206943
I think it's just the character models. for an authentic experience, I wouldn't install them.

>>4207012
ah thanks. the wording made it seem like there are two components, and you need to install the ai mod to install the model mod. but I'm super tired so I dunno. I think I'll do as you say and save the tweaks for my second playthrough.

>>4206943

Although it is worth noting that Tfix actually does change the AI from the original game - changing the guards AI to run under Thief 2's AI. And that does lead to a very different game experience at some points - not an entirely different game but still...

If you want the full authentic experience look for something called Tfix Light. It might not bother you though... you might not even be able to notice the difference.

>>4203547
>>4203471

We've been through this topic in countless threads.

There has never been a decent argument other than taste as to why undead levels in Thief 1 were bad.

It is true that you *could* run past the zombies, if you know the map well enough and know where the objectives are. Hell, sooner or later you will run out of equipment and will be forced to run away from zombies if you're caught.

The undead levels gave Thief 1 its extra dose of stealth challenge and its distinct steampunk fantasy vibe. I'll reiterate: Thief is like a solo thief/burglar/rogue DnD campaign. You steal from catacombs and castles alike, executing great heists on the living, the dead, and the deified alike.

Thief 2 by comparison is a much easier, more casual game. I was a young boy when I played these games and Thief 1 took me like at least a year to beat, while Thief 2 I beat in a week. The major reasons why Thief 2 is easier are: You have almost double your original health, there's much more starting equipment, there's much more equipment in the levels and there's no other difficult enemy other than the children of karras.

If you blasted out all your ammo and tools on the undead in Return to the Cathedral, you had to git gud at stealth, because running away from a Haunt isn't easy, and alerted zombies will keep everything alerted in the area. Unless you are a jaded veteran of Thief or video games in general, you'll have to put in some more effort to beat the game.

>>4207053
while I agree with most of the things you said, I still think that the mechanist environments retained a lot of these features.

I mean, the mechanist architecture can be seen as the very definition of "evil architecture". they are hostile to life itself, and depending on how you choose to deal with the iron beasts, you might end up using up a lot of precious resources.

this hostility peaks at soulforge itself, where the last remnants of humanity, namely the mechanists themselves, disappears as they are turned into masked servants. furthermore, the whole level is a vast landscape of cold metal and stone. in the beginning, you get a slight feeling of safety and familiarity from the trees viktoria planted and the architecture of the old hammerite church, but as you progress, the level becomes increasingly alien and lifeless.

what I'm getting at is that the mechanist architecture makes their levels thouroughly unpleasant places to visit. some people have remarked that the horror elements of T1 are gone in T2, but in my opinion, the mechanist levels are horrifying on a purely existential level, especially when the tragic fates of the servants are taken into account.

>>4207039
>Tfix Light
this is the same thing as checking off all things no? from reading the thread Tfix light was just to save download space or for people with very slow download speed.

Impressive game though. I love games where it's preferable to walk and listen to your environments. The distinct floor noises makes it easier to pinpoint guard locations and slowing down is necessary for a bunch of reasons. Also the random muttering of the guards and the occasional paranoid comments are heart attack inducing.

>>4207075

No. At least not the last time I downloaded it - which was a few years ago. The AI for the human enemies is mildly different to the original release - the original game's AI is much more reactive to certain sounds.

>>4207084
>NewDark works (quite) a bit differently than the original (T1) Dark engine, so, when playing T1/TG, there are small differences here and there (whether you install NewDark via TFix or manually). TFix tries to correct those (basically making the maps and gamesys more NewDark friendly), but making ALL things work EXACTLY like in the original Dark engine is rather impossible. therefore, if you want a 100% authentic, ABSOLUTELY true to the original experience, TFix (NewDark) is probably not a good choice for you. TFix (NewDark) is for those who "just want to play nicely, with as little hassle as possible". if you are one of those who can't live without rope death bug, or complain that "burrick's little toe now bends in a 45° angle instead of 40°", I suggest you try the Legacy executables - you can install them on the TFix mod screen (no support though, use them if you must, but don't come here crying if something does not work as you would like it to), or build a dedicated legacy pc for retro gaming (I can help out with that, as I own several of those).

Thank you, I reread it and saw this. I'll install tfixlight. I've beaten the first level a couple of times and now so atleast I'll have a better understanding of some of the changes made.

>>4207095

It's mostly just the human guard AI - some of the tweaks in full Tfix are actually great... It's just that swapping the guard AI to Thief 2's AI does change levels where you are sneaking past guards a fair bit.

>>4207075
As someone else playing for the first time, I got TFix Lite and it seems to be different than the full version with everything unchecked. Would recommend Lite.

I'm currently playing through Thief 2 for the first time and I'm not sure if I like it better than Thief 1. I liked the undead/lost city levels in Thief 1 for their atmosphere, but I feel like they don't have much replay value. Walking around in circles on the cathedral levels while shitting myself at the sound of chains or running from zombies in the bonehoard were very thrilling and spooky experiences, but if I play these levels now I'll know where to go, know that I can farm fire arrows and just fuck everything up, I'll know I can use flash bombs to kill haunts, etc.

Thief 2 does feel easier though. I'm one level after Angelwatch and I feel like the only challenging level up to now was the bank level.

kek what's this guys deal?

>>4208208
to this day, I'm still unsure as to whether it was some kind of mechanical or magical trap, or if it was actually an undead.

>>4208272
I must have reloaded the save a dozen times just to get a better idea of what just happened. I had my sword up walking very slowly unsure of what kind of enemy he was. Honestly him blowing up into a puff of smoke and his skull moving very slowly towards me was just so unexpected that I found it comical. Bizarre for sure.

Are they chasing you together without fighting each other? How nice

>>4208354
A Thief is no ones friend

>>4208354
zombie is dishonorable maggot who ate his buddy out of hunger the moment I hid into the shadows.

Never trust undead scum.

>>4208208

>>4208347
Cragscleft has such amazing level design that I would kill to see a modern representation of it.

The slow ascent from the depths into the loud bizarre factory of Catholic Mechanics, the slow crawl in dark shadows amidst the anguished of prisoners in the jail, and the relative comfiness but too much bright and insecure barracks of the high priests.

and the final escape.

Fuck LGS struck gold, fuck Half Life the game that changed everything in the late 90s was Thief. It sold me that games could be more.

The Deceptive Scepter ended the epic Bafford saga (for now) in a messy way but I knew what I was getting into. Some legitimate fencing is always welcome and it even introduced a theme that I knew it was coming, assassinations. The main game never featured it (haunts excluded) since it's not what Thief is about, but it stays an opportunity for who wants to change the rules so I'm happy to put the sword to a good use.
Since it was short I've already played the next fm, A Noble Death, which asks you again to kill someone, this time in a proper level and for a dumb reason. But the background isn't important, the "proper" part is debatable. Tiles everywhere are one of those things that makes you want to burst in a rampage as opposed to do things stealthly. It's a shame, because I've found the manor well designed and the guards' positioning and patrols made things interesting enough. Still, not impossible to ghost through it, you can even hide the body under the bed for the spooky bonus. The audio is all kind of fucked.
Also first hidden switch found in one of these fms. A little detail, a big moment.

>>4209298
>, fuck Half Life the game that changed everything
I really think people overstate HL's effect on the industry, other FPS that came out at the same time like Quake 2 and SiN weren't really that different.
Besides, Thief is a stealth game, which was still niche in the 90's would have much of an impact on FPS

Read somewhere that I should be able to crash both doors and my enemies by just running into them like a human bullet if I increase Garrett's speed through dromed's commands. It worked with doors but no enemy crushing. A shame, but high speed wallrunning and footdrifting were satisfying experiences in any case.

>>4207070
I will not deny that the level design and the architecture are outstanding in Thief 2. I don't take issue with Thief 2 at all, only at the hypocritical criticism levied at the original game.

Though I would posit that what makes the Trickster's flourishing vegetation eerie is that it's a perversion of life. It seems to be a vivid, nourishing enviroment but it's undeniably deadly. Life is rich and death is swift there. It's in the Pagan rhetoric: Almost everything has to do with life blossoming and being harvested. They talk about blood, bones, skin, flesh, extremeties, nature taking back what is hers. It's sort of a perversion of life. And going back to myths like that of the Medusa, Victoria ripping out Garrett's eye in her nymph form is an extreme example of women - who give life - making men conscious, showing their inadequacies and removing them from life. Not until Garrett receives his "reward" from her does he fully realise the extent to which nature has fooled him.

Anyway, does anyone else remember this as one of the best twist reveals in gaming? When Garrett got the million-gold-piece-heist from Constantine I was highly sceptical, but the apprehension only raised the suspense for me when the twist finally happened.

>>4209298
This is the thing about Thief 1's map design and the engine it runs on. It allows for these fucking massively expansive areas with tons of verticality and progression though floors/levels of the same map without loading screens. It means that in Cragscleft you can have stuff like the waterway that you generally use to escape into the mines with Basso's body as well as other huge vertical descents like the start of the Lost City (going from street level to a huge way underground, and it actually feels like you've gone a huge way underground). Same shit goes for Strange Bedfellows and Into the Maw of Chaos. Thief 2 did the same sort of thing with Life of the Party and Precious Cargo most notably.

Deadly Shadows being an Xbox console game with loading screens every 20 meters severely stunted this aspect of the level design. Everything feels flat and if there is any verticality it's a toss up on whether you can actually explore it because the Climbing Gloves are fucking shit compared to Rope Arrows. I haven't played it in a while but one that sticks out to me is that the Sunken Citadel from a gameplay perspective seems to be at like sewer level under the city or something, there's no huge descent down to it like there absolutely would have been if it was on the Dark engine.

>>4210184
Oh yeah no doubt no side is innocent, since nature gives us everything and is mother to all sure, but can also be murderous, stifle its own life with decadence, smothering forests full of poison and chaos.

Thats why the Hammers are also such a great made up religion, the builder is a meta hero of order, the side of humanity that orders nature, creates gardens and cities, but also has the negatives of pollution and destruction.

Also I dont quite remember but the builder also seems to have a sacrifice motif, promethean like quality that somehow when he was alive not all people took him seriously but when shit turned into zombie apocalypse he saved humanity.

And yeah the twist is one of the best in gaming.

>>4210279
>Same shit goes for Strange Bedfellows and Into the Maw of Chaos.
Oh and obviously Bonehoard is a shining example of this too, I somehow forgot to mention.

>>4210279
I know I'm going off topic here, but is DS worth playing at all? are the events there canon in the Thief universe (read: written by the same writer)?

I've never gotten to it, and I want to know if I'm missing out.

>>4210402
Deadly Shadows is the synthesis of the preceding two games. Not gameplay-wise, but storywise. For all the grievances levied at the game, I have to say that I enjoyed it as much as I did the other games. The visuals and the soundtrack are top notch, and the game is much story-heavier. It's the best ending to any trilogy of games I've ever seen.

>>4210419

I'd agree that the story was excellent, it's just the gameplay that's shit on a shingle.
Oh look, here's the Thieves' Highway! It's three roofs and a plank over a street!
LOADING ZONE
You can't have rope arrows, but here are some climbing gloves. You can only use them on certain walls, and this is one of like five in the entire game! Try it out!
LOADING ZONE
Don't go near the water, it'll kill you!
LOADING ZONE

>>4210439
sounds like a nu-fps made for consoles firsthand.

>>4210446

Yeah, the compromises they made to fit it in the Xbox's memory were pretty bad. Also rope arrows are apparently a bitch to get right, because a lot of fan projects over the years have stalled out trying to get them to work in various engines. Using an off-the-shelf engine and then trying to hack rope arrows on top is difficult, and they just cut them to stay under budget I guess.
A shame, really. It had potential.

>>4209632
Hey man, tell me what you're going to play beforehand so I can keep up! Currently at the 'Lighting' part of Nicks tutorial.
The Deceptive Scepter is linear. Diving into the first river is a trap. I couldn't get out. I can see other brushes through the sky hack texture. Jump 'n' slash. Meh.
At the start of A Noble Death I can see Ishy tried to stick a note to a wall with a knife. Letter falls to the ground. Maybe he needed a wooden surface. How do you do that? In essence, A Noble Death is a block with several levels. The ceiling varies in height. Not a whole lot of decoration. The two holes in the wall that allow you to observe the guests are hidden behind a painting. How are they transparent from 1 side and solid from the other? The servant makes it impossible to ghost. When did that become the standard for a FM?
Both levels allow you to kill. It allows the player to distance himself from Garrett. On the other hand, you are not playing a thief anymore, are you?
Shadow Business is next. More blocks and this one has screwed up lightning.

>No! Plumsie taker! Givin' them backsies!

Why is Thief music so good?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0P9tePJXBg

>>4210834
idk man you tell me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v488mGDbSxk

>>4210834
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xhLYmklbZo

>>4210903
It's like they tried to be as generic as they could.

>>4210586
The servant can be avoided if you take the tiles hallway and completely forget about the kitchen. The two guards that patrol it leave a gap in which you can silently get through the corridor and enter the dining room. It's well-lighted and directly in front of the guards room, but it's not a problem if you close the door fast.

>When did that become the standard for a FM?
You mean building a level around ghosting or the opposite?

Like I said for Gathering, I like the idea of FMs as a way to explore more narrative possibilities and, as a possible result, gameplay possibilities too. For now these missions are still in a way bound to TDP, they reference its characters, creatures and places, or even brief dialogues (I'm hyped for The Bear Pits). It's natural, the world of Thief was still mysterious and contained. For a while it's gonna be all about these details that connect one mission to the main game but it's not bad, even more if it's carefree and senseless like in this case, with Garrett stealing a golden skull worth one or two sandwiches. I'm still surprised that FMs as a whole started with a character that isn't Garrett and I hope to see something similar again.

To Shadow Business then. I also tried the two FMs we chose to skip, Guardhouse and Down We Go. The first is simple and easy, without prase or blame. The latter is the new bottom after the one that Deceptive Scepter set.
Well, at least I've learned that loading them through dromed wasn't an impossible challenge.

I nearly finished the lightning part of Nicks tutorial, but when I go in-game to test it out, the ceiling of the passageway in the middle is black. When I walk under it a part of it turns into the wood texture. When I adjust the gamma it disappears again. What am I doing wrong?

And now it's alright.
._?

Has anyone ever figured out how do sucessfully parry enemy swings in T1 and T2?
I could never master it so I demapped it from the controls and played both games without ever blocking.
But it would be neat to do a swordfight playthrough after all that ghosting.

>>4212485
>>4212042
>>4212026
Are you having this problem in Dromed game mode? It uses very cheap lightmap rendering by default to minimalize compilation times.

>>4210439
>>4210446
>>4210467

I don't believe it has much to do with just the Xbox. Remember: the year is 2004 and this is somewhat standard for the video game industry at the time. Smaller areas, more tightly designed. Deus Ex Invisible War was like this, Half Life 2 was (slightly) like this, Vampire: Bloodlines was definitely like this.

I won't argue that DS level design was better, I'll only make a case for it not being atrocious despite being a departue from the original gameplay. The body awareness movement *can* be awkward, but so was the movement in the original at times. Jumping was a somewhat frustrating exercise, and getting off ladders or jumping towards ledges and being able to climb was most definitely a science in and of itself. Not to mention that the rope arrows were hard to cling on to at times as well.

I got the game shortly after it came out. Having played Half Life 2 and being annoyed with the 5 minute loading times between levels (somewhat slower computer) I was kind of mentally prepared for this. I think the worst part was that by the second level you could tell that each mission was divided into two segments, making them predictable.

The City areas have a great atmosphere and lots of shit to do and explore, like collecting elemental crystals, doing shit for the factions, stealing randomised/daily/day specific loot... It's not like the original but it was still great. What kept me going was the sheer atmosphere of the game and the plot that rapidly gained momentum, finally heading towards some narrative resolution that would explain the preceding games.

Nowadays it's still a stark departure from the original huge-as-fuck levels, but the loading times should present 0 problem other than interrupting gameplay, breaking the psychological flow. Which is a genuine flaw to take issue with. It was kind of a shitty habit of the early 2000s though.Is anyone in the thread who has some technical knowledge as to why many games did that shit back then?

>>4212579
It's as simple as this: You hit the parry button, going into the default stance, and then, when an enemy attacks you move the mouse into the direction that he is attacking from.

Guard is attacking so that he would hit your left side, so you move the mouse left in the parry stance, if he attacks from above striking at your head, you move the mouse up in parry stance. Etc.

Now go forth my child, and parry like you have never parried before.

>>4212662
>I don't believe it has much to do with just the Xbox

Yes It was, its the same problem as today, memory limitation because of the engines.
Sure however if the graphics and geometry were simpler the maps would be larger.

It dawned the worst era for videogames ever.

Look when people shit on DS its not because they are fucking purists, its because the difference is plain to see. I liked it as well, but defend it? No I will not.

>>4171916
Plebeian. The entire design of the level is stunning. I shat my pants without there even being any enemies in the first half. The second half excels because it has enemies that fighting against, especially on higher difficulties, is suicidal because they take so much damn punishment.

And what if people played it on PC and not the Xbox?

>>4212674
Well, why were there so many PC exclusive games like Vampire: Bloodlines that had the same problem? It also had small hubs and long loading times between level segments. It's never been ported to a console. And even if you ran it on PC, unless you had a high-end PC, loading shit took ages. It seems much more likely that the technology in general couldn't provide quality and quantity at the time.

>>4212669
Can you parry zombies and spiders?

>>4212705

Because of the more demanding engines and the many times demands from publishers for possible later porting to consoles.

Also on Bloodlines its a game riddled with development problems because of the source engine, read on it. Do you forget how incredible the first Farcry game was on PC?

There was a clear and obvious dumbing down because of the consoles, and Iam not trashing consoles here, its the truth, pc was on a dark age.

>>4212705
>>4212709
Source Engine games still take forever to load.
Fucking HL2 is the longest game to load that I have on my pc and it's like 12 years old.

>>4212705

Different engines -- apples and oranges, anon.

The Unreal engine that T:DS was on should have been able to load larger levels than what we got. In fact early modders took a couple of the official levels and spliced them together, and they ran -- they just took more ram to hold than the xbox had available. (As I recall, you couldn't do this with every level as some of them were too big for the engine to hold them unsplit, but if it weren't for the console port we would have had larger levels with fewer loading zones)

>>4212627
Yes, I was using Dromed game mode. I loaded my level again and the problem hasn't returned. Part 5 of the tutorial tomorrow.

>>4212730
Yeah the only good thing going on for the current gen of consoles, is that you can have half way decent graphics and with more memory much bigger expansive levels.

But those early 00s times were hell for PC, considering what the late 90s gave us.

>>4212707
Yep.

>>4212709
>>4212730

Still, it seems like it makes barely any difference. I played the game on PC back in the day, and despite the PC being more powerful it still took a tedious length of time before the levels loaded up. If the PC was capable of much more than the XBox, why did it still take so long to load the levels on a much more powerful device? If the problem is that the console hardware can't compute that much data, why does the allegedly more powerful machine still take a comparable length of time to load the levels as well?

>>4212917
>If the PC was capable of much more than the XBox

Are you trolling us anon?

Do you know the term "Port" as in console port, and why are you conflating load times, which are longer mostly because of texture files being loaded instead of the level geometry?

>>4211974
Behind the servant is a golden pot. How do I get there without being spotted? Throw a sugar pot in the corner so the servant investigate the crates and be as swift as the wind. Yes, building a level around ghosting or at least keeping it in mind when designing a FM.

I talked about the lighting bugs before. Apparently Blutch used the quick lighting and didn't build the final version with the optimal lighting. In some places it works in the favour of the mission. It creates dark atmosphere. Challenging mission. Lots of turtling and sneaking around guards at a hair's breadth. Two guards that will stand up when knocked out. Barely managed with the water and rope arrows. I didn't use the other arrows. Really fun FM!

>>4211974
Behind the servant is a golden pot. How do I get there without being spotted? Throw a sugar pot in the corner so the servant investigates the crates. When he's halfway there run as fast as you can and get back to the dining room.
Yes, building a level around ghosting or at least keeping it in mind when making a FM.

I talked about the lighting bugs before. Apparently Blutch used the quick lighting and didn't build the final version with the optimal lighting. In some places it works in the favour of the mission. It creates dark atmosphere. Challenging mission. Lots of turtling and sneaking around guards at a hair's breadth. Two guards that will stand up when knocked out. Barely managed with the water and rope arrows. I didn't use the other arrows. Really fun FM!

>>4212917
PC could handle bigger maps easy, Xbox couldn't. Take our word for it.

In case (You) missed it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLUm-k1liOs

>>4213048
I guess it depends on when the concept of ghosting was born then. Sure, the whole TDP is almost completely ghostable (I think the part where you grab The Eye is the only exception?), and it's in the nature of stealth itself being at its best if no one sees you, after all - like with other genres, the great challenge is about taking the main features of the game to the extreme. We've already noticed how it was up to the author of an FM to decide if Garrett would face unavoidable dangers. After ghosting became a thing, I guess (and I don't know precisely when, the official rules are from 2003 but they surely spawned from years of seeing it as the "hard mode") to include it or not in the mission became a more formal choice I suppose. But yeah, it probably has always been a thing, maybe without a name. Even Gathering, the protoFM, forced ghosting on the higher difficulties. We'll see how the thing evolves mission by mission.

Even if I like to ghost it's not a big deal when I have to break these rules for a greater good. I liked the whole deal with the bedroom guard in Shadow Business, and how I had to deal with him to solve more than one problem: getting in there and being able to use the gong to lure the other two guards out of the little guardhouse and get the key they protected. Using a gas arrow to knock him out without him noticing me did the trick, and I think there's only one in the whole mission. A problem that can't be solved with the usual keys or switches; in this case the arrow was the key. It's true that there was no hint about the key being in a guard's chest, but it was also the only place I completely avoided until that moment.
Like you were saying more npcs do that thing that the mage does in Gathering, in which going for the alarm has the priority over death iteself. A bit annoying, I wonder if it's a choice or something that both authors couldn't avoid. But I can't complain, trying to outsmart it was part of the fun.

>>4215124
>I don't know precisely when

You could dig through the old TTLG forums, I remember ghosting being a conduct well before 2003.

I didn't hear what Brother Murus said and now I can't find him. I put the bodies of Renault and the other guy in the graves, did I break some sequence of events? I want to fucking die.

>just finish Endless Rain fm with 4106/4500 loot, took me a few hours
>take off headphones
>hear rain outside my window
>pull up the blinds
>it's 7am and it's light out
>stick head out window into the rain
comfy desu

I tried to open Thief Objective Wizard and I got this. What do I do? Put the files in System32?

I tried to open Thief Objective Wizard (v1.02) and I got this. What do I do? richt32.ocx should not be outdated?

Nobody warned me about the haunts in the bear pits.

>>4216659
R Soul made a new program that does what TOW does but is more up to date. Think it's called Goal Master. Look it up on TTLG.

>>4217217
Downloaded it, but I don't know how wise it is to deviate from Nicks tutorial.

>>4217370
It's almost the same program, really.

>>4216909
haunts huh

>>4217465
They were something to see.

>>4215124
Ghosting should only be a mission objective if it makes sense plot-wise. When you track the Free Traders in Thief2X, going undetected by the Free Traders is essential to the plot. There's narrative sense that overrides gameplay imperatives.

Otherwise, ghosting is an optional, alternative gameplay style. Fun to do, but in no way is it intended or designed to be the main playstyle. Garrett is Batman, essentially, he prepares an arsenal of contingency and escape tools, mines, flashbombs, arrows of all sorts, blackjack, sword andsoforth. The game is designed around letting the player spend a resource in order to incapacitate or escape a guard. Most Ghosting LPs you see online are horrible. It's some overdesigned 5 hour Fanmission where someone just savescums through the level to be a "Ghoster". The trick lies in never savescumming during a Ghost playthrough and that's tricky. Ghosting regularly is a boring playthrough, like playing Doom without using weapons.

>>4217820
Ghosting is just for the cool factor of "they never knew he was here".

But I agree. My Garrett turned into D&D rogue in dungeon missions, and I liked to not save scum and live with alerts and knocked guards. best way to paly.

Because when you get good at thief it kind becomes really easy. You start getting a sense for the game and blackjacking everything with no regard.

For a first time Thief 2 playthrough, should I install just Patch 1.25 or add the Resource and Missions Patches?

So I'm playing Chalice of Souls FM (specifically the second map in it) for TG and I'm really feeling tons and tons of Thi4f vibes here. As fucking awful as that game is, yes, I did play through it once.

If I didn't know any better I'd say skacky and the other dudes decided to take the Brothel/Keeper Compound idea from Thi4f and make an actually good level out of it in TG. Pic related is really similar to the Keeper Compound in Thi4f.

>>4218187
Looks great.

I did not yet have the courage to play thief 4 and probably never will. Not even to test it, would never do it to another game, buts its thief man.

I need a Thief fix, either black parade, or Underworld ascendant actually being good which I have my doubts.

Is Thief 2's brightness lower than Thief 1's by default? Setting the gamma to what I had it set to in the first game makes things way too dark.

>>4218259
Also why are the map colors all messed up?

>>4218367
Thief 2 is casualized to show where you are on the map by highlighting the room you're in.

>>4218373
I thought the first game had this too? But I'm referring to the actual graphics looking broken

>>4218383
>I thought the first game had this too?

It does, he's memeing.

Your map does look a little off, but it's been a long time since I played T2, so you'll have to wait for somebody who's played it more recently to help.

How does Thief 2 look without texture filtering?

>>4218532
Both games get blocky shadows but I think something about the colored lighting makes T2 look worse. I play Gold without texture filtering and 2 with, personally.

>>4218187
That's exactly what they did. They took the original premise as it sounded interesting to them.

>>4218373
>>4218367
Doesn't the map in T2 show you where you currently are as well as where you've been?

>>4219220
Yes, it does.

>>4210419
Well said. I felt gameplay took a slight drop in quality but the storytelling was still fantastic and wrapped up a great trilogy.

Most trilogies don't accomplish not blowing the story on the 3rd attempt. But i felt as if the story was completely finished in a sensible fashion that fit perfectly with the others.

the keepers being the final enemy was necessary, and Garrett discovering a young prodigy like he was discovered himself was a great ending

>>4219801

Yep, T:DS was a great story saddled to some crappy gameplay.

>>4218636
Wish both games could be played without filtering and blocky shadows.

This era of low poly games like Hexen and Quake look amazing at high resolutions and no filtering.

>>4219825

Welp, then we're back to this: >>4176012

But unless some programmer bro steps up to the plate, it ain't happening.

>>4218187
>>4216106
This guy again.

So I've been on a streak recently after never playing any FMs for Thief (apart from Thief 2X ages ago which I recall enjoying a lot, it had a lot of hype around it), starting by playing a bunch of Thief Gold FMs as pictured here. Used the "So you want to play some fucking Thief" (https://desu-usergeneratedcontent.xyz/vr/image/1456/09/1456095399293.jpg)) pic as a guide to just mass download most of this stuff (was surprised to not see Chalice of Souls on there at all, happened to find it looking at skacky's other works, pic is out of date I guess?)

Let me tell you the quality of that pic/guide varies heavily, at least with T1/TG FMs, I imagine it might be that way because there aren't many good TG FMs compared to T2 and some of those that are included in the image are just token TG FMs? Obviously I'm not sure about this yet because as I mentioned I haven't played any T2 FMs yet except T2X but I feel like the upgraded engine, items and features would probably take most of the talent.

Maps that Skacky was involved with are usually fucking god tier or at least great tier but the others for TG are very hit or miss (which could very likely be due to their age/primitiveness). This pic I have them sorted from latest played top to bottom as well as having my own tags as general reminders/mini-review points + star ratings ofc for anyone interested. TOOT & CC being the two latest played and my two least favorite so far, which kinda bums me out.

The ones in blue at the bottom are the ones from the image I haven't got to yet, any good things in store for me there? I plan to move on to T2 FMs afterwards but I might take a break immediately after this marathon I've been doing.

VERY much looking forward to The Black Parade by Skacky whenever that comes out in the year 2025.

>>4218187 (You)
>>4216106
This guy again.

So I've been on a streak recently after never playing any FMs for Thief (apart from Thief 2X ages ago which I recall enjoying a lot, it had a lot of hype around it), starting by playing a bunch of Thief Gold FMs as pictured here. Used the "So you want to play some fucking Thief" (https://desu-usergeneratedcontent.xyz/vr/image/1456/09/1456095399293.jpg)) pic as a guide to just mass download most of this stuff (was surprised to not see Chalice of Souls on there at all, happened to find it looking at skacky's other works, pic is out of date I guess?)

Let me tell you the quality of that pic/guide varies heavily, at least with T1/TG FMs, I imagine it might be that way because there aren't many good TG FMs compared to T2 and some of those that are included in the image are just token TG FMs? Obviously I'm not sure about this yet because as I mentioned I haven't played any T2 FMs yet except T2X but I feel like the upgraded engine, items and features would probably take most of the talent.

Maps that Skacky was involved with are usually fucking god tier or at least great tier but the others for TG are very hit or miss (which could very likely be due to their age/primitiveness). This pic I have them sorted from latest played top to bottom as well as having my own tags as general reminders/mini-review points + star ratings ofc for anyone interested. TOOTV & CC being the two latest played and my two least favorite so far, which kinda bums me out.

The ones in blue at the bottom are the ones from the image I haven't got to yet, any good things in store for me there? I plan to move on to T2 FMs afterwards but I might take a break immediately after this marathon I've been doing.

VERY much looking forward to The Black Parade by Skacky whenever that comes out in the year 2025.

>>4218187
>>4216106
This guy again.

So I've been on a streak recently after never playing any FMs for Thief (apart from Thief 2X ages ago which I recall enjoying a lot, it had a lot of hype around it), starting by playing a bunch of Thief Gold FMs as pictured here. Used the "So you want to play some fucking Thief" (https://desu-usergeneratedcontent.xyz/vr/image/1456/09/1456095399293.jpg)) pic as a guide to just mass download most of this stuff (was surprised to not see Chalice of Souls on there at all, happened to find it looking at skacky's other works, pic is out of date I guess?)

Let me tell you the quality of that pic/guide varies heavily, at least with T1/TG FMs, I imagine it might be that way because there aren't many good TG FMs compared to T2 and some of those that are included in the image are just token TG FMs? Obviously I'm not sure about this yet because as I mentioned I haven't played any T2 FMs yet except T2X but I feel like the upgraded engine, items and features would probably take most of the talent.

Maps that Skacky was involved with are usually fucking god tier or at least great tier but the others for TG are very hit or miss (which could very likely be due to their age/primitiveness). This pic I have them sorted from latest played top to bottom as well as having my own tags as general reminders/mini-review points + star ratings ofc for anyone interested. TOOTV & CC being the two latest played and my two least favorite so far, which kinda bums me out.

The ones in blue at the bottom are the ones from the image I haven't got to yet, any good things in store for me there? I plan to move on to T2 FMs afterwards but I might take a break immediately after this marathon I've been doing.

VERY much looking forward to The Black Parade by Skacky whenever that comes out in the year 2025.

>>4219843
You know, for Thief Iam willing to learn programming.

>>4220717
If you can look past Augustine's Revenge's crude visuals and flimsy pretext of a story, it's an excellent mission that keeps on delivering.
Gems of Provenance has this TG-weird vibe that no one has managed to recapture. It's amazing.
Returning a Favor is great but short.
Shadow of Doubt is fantastic but pretty rough at times.
The Hand of Glory is a great, OM-like mission.

It's hard to admit but I really can't wrap my head around the Bear Pits, at least for what regards the loot. I'm short of 50 and I think I went into every possible room. Thought i probably missed a spot but then I checked the total loot and it's 850, a bit more than the 500 required. Is there some secret area full of gold?

>>4221646
Nevermind, there were two overlapping gold bottles near the drunk guard that I didn't notice, I'm used to them drinking cheap stuff.
Still, it's 550 out of 850. Got three rope arrows from a chest but I don't think they have a use anywhere in the mission.

I do not like the Bear Pits. Trouble with getting my bearings. Am I in a bar? A castle? A dungeon? Outer space? Where is the logic in how the building is constructed? AI is odd. I had this weird sound bug when I jumped, the sound of a corpse/unconscious body hitting the floor. Not all torches can always be doused. Some are not placed against the wall, but hovering in the sky with weird particle effects. When some banners are cut it sounds like flesh. Lot of bugs.

Wrichards commented on a couple of playthroughs:
wow great to see these levels played again. I made this level in about a day after the editor was released, understand we had almost zero documentation on how to do anything, so imagine me doing a 24 hour marathon learning and such, anyway, I think you saw my learing curve here everywhere. the rugs were origional on the floor but over several generations they seem to have lifted a bit, also back then understand the computers were primative, I did this on a 15" single monitor, each complile took about 2+ hours. then the internet was NOT was it is now, it took about 3 hours to email a file so TTLG was hard hit to download lookat play and respond to us quickly, so we just built and moved on rather than refine old levels.. anyway I would really like to play these old levels again.. I tryed to register on your site but the cappua thing wont let me :( I would LOVE to see my Oblivion level played, it had so much stuff going on, but sadly I pushed the limits of the editor and game back then and the level broke, I should have broke it up into 3 missions but oh well, no one knew how big we could build .. anyway would LOVE to hear from you plz email me.. Wrichards

thanks for reviewing this after all these years.. this was made in 1 day after the editor was released, so please understand I/we knew nothing, so alot of things unlabled mismatched etc.. but then again it was made to be played MUCh darker ;0 thanks again for playing this great to watch others play. so please forgive all the glitches, also noted after recently watching my missions played with modern computers, things have changed things moved removed etc. alota things I noticed were working perfectly back then are not working now, must be due to migration from a 15 year old program lol :) anyway fun fun to watch... :) these missions were made to be played much more slowly, but modern players have alot more experince with stealth games than we did then, so its funny to watch this like its played on turbo :)

the double thing, was due to when it was compiling sometimes it would dbl things. i was very hard to build fast due to the fact it took several hours to compile, now its a literal flash lol, anyway this was a learning level for me, had to figure everything out, from brushes -/+ to textures to sounds on and on, but it was fun... the following levels tower and oblivion show a better progression to better levels. I wish i had some of my final levels, steam punk pirates and full fleshed out.. sadly i gave up on modern incarnations of Thief,,, after thief2 the direction was WAY WAY off. i cant even bring myself to see that thief 4 looks like. remember it was J.Romeros company that brought down TTLG.... dont get me even started on Specter!


About the odd sound when I jumped, ykcaks said:
That's just a footstep bug, basically you emit guards' footsteps. I had this bug several times during game mode with Dromed but never during regular play, and it's apparently only affecting certain 'areas'. I don't know what's the cause though, but it's certainly creepy. :p

All beginnings are rough.

>>4218008
This is why I prioritise sneaking by and formulate a contingency for emergencies.

Did you know that if a civilian in Bafford's Manor spots you, like the one in the kitchen, they run to the front gate, and inform the guards who just laugh their warning off? That was one of my first experiences with the game. I only had it because I played the game straight : Sneak by, blackjack if you must, toss flashbombs etc. if you get caught.

>>4219801
>>4219819
The gameplay was fine for that age of gaming. I had no complaints playing it.

The Keepers were necessarily the antagonists - they tried to invisibly guide the fate of the City, and they lost their balance, being corrupt and inactive. Garrett's self-interest and interest in self-preservation lead him to action, to seek out the truly evil elements and remove them. That is why him becoming the One True Keeper is not cheesy, but necessary and deserved. He was the only one with no attachment to Glyphs.