/vr/ - Retro Games

robots were a mistake

That said, 1/Gold and 2 are both among the best games ever made. Also arguably the best atmosphere of any games ever. And possibly the best sound design on top of that.

Anyone tried the Thief 2 Co-op mod?

Share your favorite fan missions and experiences :)

Who was in the wrong here?

>>4336050
van vernon's guards couldn't handle the banter, even when they were the ones who started by shitting on willey.

>>4335890
Rose cottage, l've shat in my pants

>>4336172
Just the running footsteps part I assume?

>>4336050
*yawn*

>>4324998
First off, a collection of notes. Blocky brushes. Ireland misses the opportunity to allow the player to enter the living quarters with a rope arrow. The drawn map is even wrong in one place. It misses a crossroad, or whatever you call it? Liked the workshop. Ireland was inventive with the brushes. Being able to interact with the apparatus was fun and creates immersion. Found a servant with his head stuck in the ceiling, occasionally walking on his bed. Whenever the mage in the courtyard casts his spells, I see a small red ball appear above him in the sky? The turning cog in the cellars adds a difficulty: not being able to hear footsteps.d

I'll play it on a harder difficulty later. That time trying to minimize my blackouts and try to see if I can find multiple approaches in the first part of the mission.

>>4336193
Those fuckers

There once was a taffer named Garrett
He couldn't be caught or arrested
Stole things for a guy
Then lost his own eye
Then killed an old god because fuck it

>>4335883
which maps would you personally recommend to someone?

>>4336172

>Rose cottage
meme fm

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

why are mechanists so weak?

bearpits huh?

>>4336614
not op, but def:
Caledra's cistern for first thief and caledra's legacy for 2nd

Conspiracies in the dark, also amaaazing. i played citd first and i thought FM's cant get better than this, but then...

Ominous bequest gold! this is a MUST, this mission blew me away.
Broken triad, continuation of ominous bequest, also great, especially first mission.

if you wanna try something different, focused on puzzles, try the temple of the tides, rly fun.

also for first game, Augustine's revenge, good one.

aaand, if you dont know, there is a fan made continuation of thief 2 called t2x, main character is someone else, but its pretty much a whole big campaign of missions with a story, cutscenes etc. def worth playing.

>>4337172
>a fan made continuation

It's actually a prequel spinoff. You play as a foreign woman, and the last mission takes place at the same time as Blackmail in Thief 2.

>>4337313
oh, yeah my mistake, been a while. if i remember correctly, there is a plot with main t2 villain before mechanists split from hammerites

>>4337172

>Broken triad
The author got really carried away with the fucking puzzles in this mission. They are well done and all, but it turns what would otherwise a nice cityscape into a completely linear mission with only one "correct" way to do things. Ominous bequest struck a much better balance in that regard.

>Augustine's revenge
I don't like this one. It's completely linear from beginning to end, and the overall architecture and design is so plain and barren it borders on the abstract.

>>4337469
that's interesting observations.
Im a fan of puzzles so they didnt bothered me at all, i enjoyed it.
I still rly enjoyed walkin around the city in broken triad and finding out stuff and solving all on my own, its hard to see it as linear if you dont rly know what to do. but when i think about it after finishing it, yes, because how the story is layered, it seems linear after all.
Its not linear in a sence you are walkin a corridor, but you must complete some things in order and can get stuck if you dont perform a specific set actions, true.

>>4337469
That's what I like about the architecture in Augustine's Revenge. And it's linear insofar as there's a general direction to go in, but no more so than something like Life of the Party.

What are some /comfy/ FMs?

i fucking love the dark engine's physics, shame it'll never be free software

>>4338875
I'd love to see a project like OpenMW or GemRB gain traction for the Dark Engine

i was going through a bunch of FMs for awhile, calendera's cistern, which was okay, it had a few cool parts towards the end but some of the objectives were annoying and not to mention the voice acting, then i played between these dark walls which was amazing, the writing was really good and it was really cool to be able to complete the whole mission from the rooftops. then finally i played sepulcher of sinstral and holy shit man that was great map, it took me a long time because i had to draw maps, especially of the maze area, not to mention trying to figure out the torch puzzle. It's cool to see that kind of device used in a game like thief where it mostly relies on how little sound you make and how quietly yet acrobatically that you do it, to have a puzzle that is more difficult that the other puzzles presented in the game. i downloaded a bunch more and am looking forward to this october where i can hide in the darkness as did garret and adventure through all the new missions. Wow what an amazing game, who would have though that something this good could be made even better and is still great now

>>4338859
A Thief's Holiday 2004. It's a Christmas scavenger hunt.

>>4339786
what was that skeleton's deal, anyway? is it related to the undead, or was it a hammerite trap?

it almost seems to mark the border between the undead area and the hammerite area, and it's facing toward the undead area. it would make sense that it's a hammerite trap.

>>4339792
Who knows. It's just standard LGS environmental storytelling.

>this DESTROYS the butthurt undead-hater

Name one more likable Thief character.

Protip: you can't

>>4340157
UP UP THE ROPE YOU GO
WHY DO YOU MOVE SO SLOOOOOOW

>>4339853

>>4336228
I'm gonna try it again too. Because of the problem (if really it's a problem) I wrote about in my post, the one about half of the mission not being part of the mission, I felt like I completely consumed the FM just by playing it once. On the other hand, though, I really enjoyed how the level looked and played and now that some time passed I definitely want to take another look at it.
The noise in the cellars was a pretty clever addition. Zones that alternate a state of danger and one where you can move freely, are an always welcome rarity. That part in TDS with lightning briefly nullifying the shadows in which you're used to hide comes to mind, although it was the opposite: this time the danger phase, the noise, is the norm and the brief break from it is the window of opportunity.
The hammer of healing was neat too. I suppose that if one goes for the aggressive route this is a FM with a lot of damage to be taken, but in general it's always nice to have a safe zone, needed or not, like holy water baisins. Beside this, I was happy to confirm that it actually healed me. It's not often that you find something completely new while taffing around.
Gonna check the mage and his faulty magic. I also noticed how the magma well actually contains water under the lethal layer you can see from the outside.
This dude definitely had problems sleeping. Probably caused by him being on the upper part of the bulk bed? I doubt it could be possible for him to get down from it if not forced in some way.

>>4335890
The only one I've really bothered with is Calendra's Cistern.

Has anyone ever tried to redo the Thief 2X CGI cutscenes in the traditional Thief style?

>>4340502
Why would anyone do that? Besides, nobody in the Thief community knows or is willing to make cutscenes like that.

>>4340692
>why would anyone do that?
I always felt that the CGI cutscenes lacked a lot of the atmosphere of the originals
Imagine how good the Kedar servant transformation would be with the traditional animation

>>4340692
The COSAS team knew, but they are gone and it was a lot of work. They used a greenscreen.

>>4340692
>nobody in the Thief community knows or is willing to make cutscenes like that.

I know how to do that. I've used some clips on my older Thief Youtube videos.

>>4340904
What sort of process is involved?

>>4335850
Is The Dark Mod talk allowed ITT or is that not retro?
If allowed, pls recommend missions

>>4341674
You use Adobe After Effects. You create layers of graphics that you can then animate with parallax, blurring or zooming. With characters you film against a greenscreen and make them into black silhouettes. It's actually really simple. The hard part is the hand painted art itself.

>>4341719
There isn't that much taffer discussion anyway so I doubt anyone will object. Plus Doom3 is 14 years old and Dark Mod began development a long time ago, so it's basically /vr/

https://vocaroo.com/i/s1owDwf9tiUH

>>4339670
that sounds hilarious

I love everything related to hammerites
https://soundcloud.com/user-708459437/hm3a0mu2wav
https://soundcloud.com/user-708459437/hm1a0mu3wav

Best SMS sound you can get for your retro phone
https://soundcloud.com/user-708459437/picklootwav

>>4341901
Back in 1998 there was an official LGS Thief theme for Windows 98. There was a unique soundbite where Garrett says: "Just what the world needs. More e-mail."

Black Parade

W H E N
H
E
N

>Fight me, sneaksie coward!

Hey, I'm going down to the bear pits tomorrow, ya wanna go with?

>>4341976
Indeed, I believe so.

How do you get better at fighting?

>>4342054
You're playing the wrong game

>>4342054
To practice against your partner, enter the cobbled sparring area. Keep sparring, if you wish. When you are done, leave the sparring area.

>>4342091
I understand exactly what you're saying, but I'd still like to know if there are ways to play this game effectively from a more offense based approach.

>>4340502

Why would you?

>>4340698

They made their own atmosphere. It was it's own self-contained story anyhow. I really wasn't too invested in the Kedar character but the levels and overall atmosphere of the game still keep me playing today.

I would love to see another project like that come along. And actual campaign that has coherent storytelling and level design, not the backtrack-solipsistic-convoluted maze dogshit you get in almost every FM.

this fucking autist again

>>4342130
>thief stealth game
>offense

>>4342169
The Black Parade is just that.

>>4341976
Heh, couldn't pay me enough.

>>4341976
COULDN'T PINCH MY NIPPLES HARD ENOUGH

>>4342054
Blocking fast can do the trick, since in the moment the animation starts, if you're swinging the sword in the right direction, the block is active. You can even spam it against fast combos and get away with it, but it's more satisfying than pratical. The main problem are the weird angles most enemies can attack from, it can get hard to predict them if you're too close to them.
Spacing is essential and if there's enough space to keep on moving even haunts can be outplayed easily. Moving out of an enemy's range (most of sword attacks don't go very far I think) and charging your attacks from there avoids the risk of exposing yourself while attacking. Useful to line them up when there's more than one. Since you want fights to end as soon as possible it's convenient to land overheads while they're in their recovery animation, stagger them, charge another overhead and so on. Block when they're going for fast attacks and always land your attacks if you don't want to suffer the same fate.
You can also move around some of them while attacking but, notable examples like the burricks aside, most enemies can turn pretty fast and again their weird angles can really do miracles.
I suppose that with the right timing you can win against guards in proper duels, but in the long run it can only get too risky. Leading the dance it's your best bet if you want to be consistently on the offense. Just don't get surrounded or stuck in a corner.

>>4342054
>Going into combat in Thief

>>4342705
looks like H3H3

How can you play this game at such high gamma?
This trivializes the game and kills the atmosphere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnVy1SLbQmo

>>4342958
I always play Thief on a CRT, so a higher gamma is necessary to keep it from being pitch black

>>4342254
Looks cool anon i'll add map that to playlist.

>>4342054
Circle strafe around to backside. Works on literally everything. Combat in Thief is a joke when you know how to do it.

>>4335883
hey, this one is different! is this one new?

>>4342705
Hammerites scared the shit out of me when I got the full game in 1998 when I was 10 years old. I didn't realize until recently that the only characters in the original game that had rigged necks and animated heads were the Hammerites. When attacking you they stare you down with that horrifying expression of pure hatred.

Oh, and nice going LGS for putting the mission with the rotting zombies, giant spider, skeleton throwing his head and towering sledge zealots as the second one in the game. The only comfy thing in Cragscleft is the kitchen area.

>>4344148

Last two rows are new I think

>>4344421

Zombies do that too. Sometimes when you knock them down with the sword they stare at you while on the floor. It's creepy as fuck

>>4344653
>Zombies do that too.

I haven't noticed that. I know it's something that always happens in Resident Evil 2, when a zombie is lying on the ground waiting to grab your ankles.

>>4339786

>>4344658

>>4344050
>Circle strafe around to backside

What's the recommended technique for doing this effectively?

>>4344653
Ever since I ran away from them in those mines they left quite the lasting impression on me due to how their head moved. Funny how a slow and not really dangerous enemy, unnervingly noisy but clunky too, gained all this spookyness thanks to a single realistic detail.

Has any game ever had deeper thievery simulation/role-playing in it?

>>4344050
Jesus, I don't know what convinced me of the exact opposite while writing my post, if you can get behind anyone you can indeed fuck them up flawlessly. Taking a couple of jumpy hammerites as a sample maybe wasn't the brightest idea but not even them are able to turn around properly.

>>4345007
Dishonored came close, but like with all Arkane's attempts to redo LGS games it fell short imo.

>>4345135
I thought Dishonored was closer to Deus Ex in its design than Thief. More of an action game than a stealth game.

Prey is better than System Shock 2
no meme
not retro

>>4345436
SS1 > Prey > SS2

We'll be lucky if the actual Shock 3 is as good as Prey.

Honestly I was expecting more from T2X. Everyone hyped it up a lot but it turned out to be really fanfictiony, and there weren't even any extra objectives on expert difficulty aside from a few minor exceptions. At least the train level was well done.

>>4345950
>Everyone hyped it up a lot but it turned out to be really fanfictiony
That's why I can't stand most SS2 fan missions either.

>>4345950
I haven't played T2X since the week it was released, whenever that was. Fucking years ago.

Yet, I still have fond memories of the maps in that fan mission pack, some of them are really well designed and memorable. As someone who has marathoned a shitload of T1 & T2 fan missions recently I probably couldn't tell you what half of them were even about but I still remember the train level, the hammerite church level, the pirate cove level(?), the undead graveyard level and the haunted house(?) level in T2X.

Is there a reason to NOT play these games on expert?

>>4346562
To make Trace the Courier shorter :^)

>>4346562
Down in the Bonehoard changes significantly on different difficulties. Expert is a set of a few big challenges with a handful of high value loot items. Normal however is a huge scavenger hunt for numerous lower value items. Everyone loves getting loot, and on Normal difficulty there's a lot of that.

>>4346118
The Hammerite church level is legit one of the best fan missions ever made. It's just a plus that it's part of a huge campaign. It's one of the few missions where the atmosphere is so well crafted that you can almost feel how cold it is outside.

RECEIVE THY POUNDING

>>4346562
>Playing Thi4f (I know, shut up)
>First mission in, his sidekick kills a guard
>Tells her something like "A real thief leaves everything but the loot."

So there you go, even Garrett himself would want you to play on Expert.

>>4347805
The dialogue in the game is retarded all the way from the start. Firstly, nuGarrett rhetorically asks: "Afterall, when did I ever pay for anything" -the answer to which is "All the time". Then as sidekick Whatsherface kills a guard nuGarrett says "I don't kill without thought or good reason" and she responds something like "So it's okay when you do it" -immediately after he just said the exact opposite.

It's like the entire game was made from the ground up to an audience of mouthbreathers. Things make sense as long as you don't think about them. So they don't need to make sense because the players aren't expected to think.

>even Garrett himself would want you to play on Expert.
uhhh... if I recall correctly, not only does Expert mode not give you any kill restrictions, it also doesn't mandate any theft. Even more evidence that it's not "Garrett" we're dealing with here. Probably the smelly impostor from Deadly Shadows.

>>4347805
I should play Thief 4 just because Thief is one of the only games I would preserve after a cataclysm.

But Iam afraid I might get ptsd.

I played Prey and liked its SS formula, great game even if a bit too close to Bioshock which I hate, but after playing Dishonored and the sequel I understand why Raphael left Arkane.

Harvey Smith is a hipster of the highest degree and should be on something like Ubisoft, all style no substance to the fucking game.

Although hearing Russel as Corvo was really nice.

>>4348094
>Hire Russel to voice Corvo
>Give him shitty dialogue inside an already boring uninspired story
bravo Arkane

>>4348119
I say Arkane without Raphael is pretty much dead. So fuck it.

I hope Ascendant delivers but Iam having doubts.

>>4348094
>great game even if a bit too close to Bioshock which I hate
When I heard Prey was supposed to be like System Shock, I expected a BioShock clone at best, but it turned out far better than BioShock and even SS2. Comparing it to BioShock is kind of insulting desu senpai

>>4348313
>even SS2
I agree, but you might want to be careful saying that. SS2 fans would have your head for saying that. I personally think SS1 is the best, but I agree 100% that Prey is better than SS2.

Any FMs set in awoiaf?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPFbA8Qmths
;_;

>>4348389

>>4348389
They were too pure for this cruel world.

Did ambient sounds actually cover the noise you made in these games?

>>4348518
I don't think so
That's one of the few things modern tech could fix about Thief, along with recognizing footsteps (there could be situations where there's no way footsteps should be suspicious, like hearing them in another room that they know is occupied)

>>4348528
There are definitely some ways that the stealth could have been more realistic, but it all works out well enough that I don't think any of it is inadequate.

>it's another "get 8000 loot's worth of random cups" FM
>it's another "key item hidden in obscure location" FM

>>4348870
>it's another "find tiny lever behind random piece of furniture in a dark corner of an otherwise uninteresting room" FM
I blame Casing for inspiring people to do this shit.

>>4335883
Quite underwhelming compared to the doom one

>>4348915
Casing is consistent and gives you reason to look for switches in specific places. The designer of the mansion was probably autistic and couldn't deviate from a specific formula. Your main culprit is the dreaded Thieves Guild.

-Every door is locked. You need to get into the basement. The only way to the basement is a chute IN THE ATTIC
-To get to the key you need, you need to find a key that's not carried by the person who's supposed to have it. It's between some books on a shelf.
-They key you need is hidden behind a false wall panel. At least it's obvious.
-To get to the final location you have to open a gate. There are no levers anywhere. You need to dive into a random cistern and emerge in a sealed room to find the lever.
-The final objective is hidden behind banners. At least you can frob through them and you don't need to destroy them and leave evidence.
-BUT WAIT. What about your general loot objective? Well. It's ridiculously high, and everything is low value and hidden. Good luck!

>>4349161
Thieves' Guild on a first playthrough is hell but once you know where everything is it becomes an interesting challenge. It definitely had some part in the autism/luck-based progression of certain fan missions that that guy mentions (hidden tiny levers behind furniture in dark rooms).

The banners thing, I don't even give a fuck about the whole "leaving evidence" shit, that's for autistic ghosters so who really cares, it's just that on a first playthrough slashing banners is not really something you think (or at least I thought) to do. The silver bracelet objective is also autistically hidden in that tiny safe under the fireplace and took me as long to find as the box behind the banner. My first playthrough of Thieves' Guild was probably like 4 hours long and I think I hit up a guide after the first 3 hours, very frustrating.

A lot of fan missions I play nowadays I find myself accidentally stumbling through them after coming across a tiny hidden switch that I absolutely would have missed if it wasn't for pure luck and would have to end up checking the related ttlg thread for similar queries (no shortage of those!), this really is the main thing holding back most fan missions from being as good as (most) of the OMs (Thieves' Guild & Casing obviously omitted for the reasons above), they're made by extreme Thief autists that leave no pixel of a room unfrobbed, this means that fan missions themselves are extremely hard to get into to begin with and a hostile environment for people fresh out of the main games. You don't really get used to the autistic pixel hunts until you've played like 10 missions that involve them and it's just luck of the draw which fan missions you start with.

It's why the Thief FMs recommendations lists we have suffer some contention, it's meant to be for people getting into FMs but it's a main point of frustration when over half of the missions have this shit in it and might turn people off of them straight away.

>>4348926
I've played most of those and I can say that some of them are mediocre/bordering on terrible and there are better ones that aren't even in there. The ones for Thief 1 specifically are a point of bother for me as I have played every single Thief 1 mission listed in either of the lists now and am not very deep into the Thief 2 FM library yet.

A lot of the Thief 1 ones there seem to either be there because of some personal bias from the author of the image, the author of the image wanting to fill it out with as many Thief 1 FMs as possible to match up to Thief 2's wide array shown or the author of the image just being a major autist that actually found Shadow of Doubt fun (lol it's listed as "difficult").

>>4336228
The priest behavior is surely weird but I must admit my ignorance: can they usually cancel their spells? I ran around the courtyard for a while while he played target practice and I think some of his attacks just didn't materialize,
He's either a failed mage or something was up with that area, considering the little flame that appeaars above the building. For a moment I thought that the missing projectiles appeared elsewhere in the same way but I think that only when the hammer is properly fired towards the player the flame appears in the sky.
Seeing him doing all the gestures to cast his spell with no results, with the fire in his hands just dying out, is a funny scene at least.

I can't say I'm gonna get emotionally invested while saving The Cure in the next mission but I'll do my best.

Has anyone actually cracked the vault in the Inverted Manse FM? I remember playing it a long time ago and I couldn't get even close to discovering the whole combination.

I really liked the idea of Thief. I would even argue it was a great game.

But I couldn't play them because of shit like OP pic. I also vaguely remember a giant spider or something.

All that supernatural/anachronistic shit ruined my interest.

>>4349448
>shit like OP pic
You were too pussy to play it, you mean?

>>4349448
>anachronistic

That's a deliberate design decision. LGS wanted an unique setting. Not just "medieval" or "fantasy". It's a one of a kind medieval steampunk noir fantasy setting with an equal mix of magic and technology. In one place you have elementalist wizards throwing fireballs, in the other you have office cubicle mazes with water coolers, and both are actually inside stone brick castles with stained glass windows.

The craziest thing is that most of that interesting stuff in the base lore was designed by Ken Levine.

>>4349529
not the guy you responding to, but I also think that T2 went too far with the technology and the fin-de-siecle styled environments.

I preferred the setting in the original game. sure, there was a lot of technology, especially in the hammerite missions, but it was a lot more discrete than in T2. T1 also had the most interesting mix of supernatural elements and sophisticated technology. and it all made sense lorewise. I liked how the city itself saw steady technological progress (steam engines), yet was dragged down by its long history. it's full of dark alleys and archaic architecture. it's overpopulated and overexploited to the degree where public space practically doesn't exist anymore. it's constantly besieged by nature (e.g. the trickster), and loses entire neighbourhoods to undead, without it affecting the overall balance/health of the rest of the city. it's full of mysteries (i.e. the lost city and bonehoard).

having all of these themes made the city in T1 an interesting place. the city in T2 is much more boring in comparison. all the mysteries are gone, and the story consists to 90% of drama between nobles you don't give a shit about, while the remaining 10% are about the hollywood-villain tier mechanists and their unpretentiously evil master plan. the dark alleys are scrapped in favour of clean, grid-based streets (as seen in Ambush and LotP). zombies practically don't exist anymore, and the few that are still in the game can be avoided completely.

the magic is simply gone in T2.

>>4349598
I'm not sure if it was a deliberate design choice or not but there is a thematic way of looking at things. The first game is about chaos, the second is about order. Incidentally what you mentioned regarding the first game is more chaotic, and the things in the second game are more ordered. Mystery is one of Thief's most interesting qualities. Ergo since there is always more mystery to chaos and the first game has more of that, it has more mystery and is therefore more interesting.

Also it's just my opinion but I don't think the street layout of the Wayside Market district in Ambush is any less intricate and sprawling than Hightowne in Assassins. In Dayport it surely is, but I always chalked it up to it being a newer district, with elaborate highrise apartment blocks instead of random architecture haphazardly built next to and on top of other buildings like in the older sections of the City.

By the way, speaking about the order and chaos of architecture, Thief Gold has four central mission locations that are very symmetrical and deliberately so. Bafford's manor, Ramirez' manor, opera house and hammerite temple. The equivalent number for Thief II is just three. Rumford's manor, Truart's manor and Gervaisius' manor.

>>4349746
well I never played gold, so I can't speak for the opera house. for the other locations, it made sense for them to be symmetrical. plus, even though the buildings themselves were symmetrical, they were located in otherwise very chaotic and assymetrical neighbourhoods.

as for the market district in Ambush, I still find it very ordered compared to the district in Assassins. first of all, all the streets are open-air, and show up on the map. there are a few underpasses, but they still show up as roads on the map. all the buildings have north-south-west-east orientations. there is a clear division into freely standing "blocks".

meanwhile, in the district in Assassins, it felt like the majority of the streets consisted of dark underpasses. the buildings are so crowded that they invade the streets. the city is organic, and constantly changing. exploring it almost feels like crawling through a giant anthill. because of this, there's no "block structure", no named streets, and maybe most notably, no real map. the map looks like something garrett scribbled together himself, and it only takes a small portion of the passages into account. unlike in Ambush, there are also diagonally placed buildings.

another interesting thing is the contrast between the district in Assassins and the sealed section in The Haunted Cathedral. despite being ruined and abandoned for fifty years, the sealed section is far more well ordered than the Assassins district, if you can look past the rubble and the ruins. all the streets have names. there are almost no underpasses. furthermore, they had a remarkably good infrastructure, with wide roads and a well organised electrical grid. to top it all, the district even has an official map.

>>4349814
>>4349814
pt. 2

this is in my opinion interactive storytelling at its finest. it suggests a clear difference in housing and construction policies between the two different time periods. the older sealed section, last maintained under the rule of one of the previous barons, is well planned, has good infrastructure. a strong central government is suggested.

in contrast to this, the "newer" district in Assassins has a much more "liberal" character. there is no apparent planning at all. no regulations to keep people from invading the streets with their sprawling buildings. the rapid and constant changes to the city make it impossible to keep an official map, which is why you have to resort a hastily hand drawn map. the new rule is clearly more firendly toward the private sector than the previous one. in my opinion, this apparent change in government is all in tune with the hammerite's remark that the new baron is more "greedy" than the previous one, and has neglected his responsibilities.

>>4349814
>>4349821
I guess I see your point. I don't really have much to comment back. The main thing about the Thief 2 atmosphere that I dislike compared to 1 is that the pitch black night sky with a few tiny twinkling stars made the night much colder and menacing. In a noir setting, sunrise should always be forever away. You don't get that feeling in Thief 2 where there's always that slight glare in the horizon. The constant presence of heavy cloud cover also creates warmth because cloudy nights are always warmer.

The technical limitation of Thief 1 which prevents colored lightmaps also contributes to the coldness of the world, but I can't fault Thief 2 for giving color to flame based light sources. Win some, lose some.

>>4350112
>The technical limitation of Thief 1 which prevents colored lightmaps also contributes to the coldness of the world, but I can't fault Thief 2 for giving color to flame based light sources. Win some, lose some.
Are light colours stored in the gamesys? If so, it shouldn't be too hard to change

>>4350171
You can modify the LightColor param in the gamesys, but it will only affect lights created after this change. You'd have to manually edit all the lights to desaturate them.

http://www.lytha.com/thief/survey/index.html

>players who hate undead missions tend to be younger
>players who hate undead missions tend to be less educated
>players who hate undead missions tend to play on normal
>players who hate undead missions commented that Return to the Cathedral was "too difficult", that Bonehoard had "too depressing music", and that "too much time was needed" to finish The Haunted Cathedral

>>4350234
I wish LGS didn't listen to these polls before making Thief 2.

>>4349405
When a priest is spellcasting and a fellow hammerite walks through his line of vision, He stops. The priest doesn't want to hurt his friend.

About that turning cog in the cellar. It makes a awful lot of noise when turned on. When you have to move during that fase, part of your judgement is clouded. You can't clearly hear where the hammerites walk. The cog is so loud I can barely hear myself jumping on marble. Could you hear your own footsteps? The hammerites however have very good hearing. They can clearly notice when I'm jumping behind them on a stone floor and I think they should not be able to hear that. Their AI does not take the interference of sounds in account? Such a mechanic could work in favour of the player. The turning cog should also function as a tool to mask my footsteps on marble. Both I and the hammerites should be deaf in that instance and we both have to rely on our eyes. I wish there was someone who has a fair amount of knowledge about Dromed on this board/site to explain these technical details.

>>4350234
>"too depressing music"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u27wbsUojlo
The horn of Quintus made me fall in love with undead levels

>>4350234
The negative comments on The Sword are hilarious.

>>4350289
>The guards have no real personality. Too few NPC - NPC interactions.
I actually agree on this one. I would have loved to know more about the guards' relationship to Constantine. Were they involved with the pagans, or were they just hired guards?

They do have the exact same gear as the apebeasts, which could suggest that they're indeed apebeasts who have assumed human form.

>>4350234
How would you answer the survey? For me:
13 - A Keeper's Training
12 - Strange Bedfellows
11 - Escape!
10 - Into the Maw of Chaos
9 - The Haunted Cathedral
8 - Undercover
7 - The Lost City
6 - Lord Bafford's Manor
5 - Assassins
4 - Return to the Cathedral
3 - Break from Cragscleft Prison
2 - Down in the Bonehoard
1 - The Sword

>>4350234
Real talk, this is just an impressive amount of autism.

>>4350307
>13
A Keeper's Training

>12
Into the Maw

>11
Bedfellows

>10
Escape

>9
The Sword

>8
The Lost City

>7
Undercover

>6
Cragscleft

>5
Lord Bafford

>4
Assassins

>3
The Haunted Cathedral

>2
Return to the Cathedral

>1
Bonehoard

>>4350307
Same guy, now that I think about it more, I'd move The Haunted Cathedral to 6 and shift 7-6 up one

>>4350234
>http://www.lytha.com

Oh shit. I just remembered. Is she still alive? I heard she got some kinda throat cancer or something and that's why she stopped making Youtube videos. Couldn't talk.

>>4350307
13. A Keeper's Training
12. Strange Bedfellows
11. Undercover
10. Into the Maw of Chaos
9. Escape!
8. The Lost City
7. Return to the Cathedral
6. Lord Bafford's Manor
5. Down in the Bonehoard
4. Assassins
3. The Sword
2. The Haunted Cathedral
1. Break From Cragscleft Prison

negative comments of bafford's manor:
>'Can't kill on Expert.'
>'I don't quite remember this mission except it is too easy. I played Normal.'

>>4350301
I always assumed they are apebeasts disguise as men, I mean come on look at the ripped clothes of the apebeasts.
>>4350234
I was never in that camp I loved the undead missions, but I will admit I was one of the faggots who wanted more mansion heists in 2.

But when you grow up you suddenly realize the masterpiece that the first game is, and how the mix of D&D rogue to Indiana Jones works really well with the "normal " missions.

Nevertheless I think its kind exaggerated to say Thief 2 didnt have mystery, it could have been more but missions like Truarts mansion are gems.

>>4350246
>When a priest is spellcasting and a fellow hammerite walks through his line of vision, He stops. The priest doesn't want to hurt his friend.

Never noticed it before but now that I pay attention he even has an animation when he lowers his arms midspell. He definitely has a steady aim as long as he's alone and starts cancelling his spells when other hammers are around, but I wonder how that works. Proximity? If that's the case, I think he can consider only one ally at once, ending up shooting one of his comrades right in front of him while thinking that the ohter one was safe.
I'd like to study more his behavior, hammers are interesting to fight, but after a while of that crazy rodeo I got four hammers running with me, not counting our sharpshooter, the party was getting a little too crazy for a monastery. At least I managed to get one hammer on the statue's pedestal and for some reason he felt trapped there, unable to climb down, calmly standing there like a sentinel.

It's a shame about the cog's noise not being a two way thing. I guess in that sense it's a sort of trap. Despite it being something we never saw in Thief, I too wondered if all that noise was an invite to run, despite losing the ability of hearing what kind of sound I was making. Turns out the hammerites were used to all the noise.
Tweaking the AI's perception of sound in a particular way sound hard if not impossible. Maybe completely nullify it, but I don't even know if the deaf guy we met in the Library was actually deaf or just stuck in his sleeping state until something (attacking him) changed it.
Could the AI actually hear something that isn't Garrett or an enemy NPC?

>>4350503
Ironically enough being curious about the sound just expanded the fireball mystery. I was experimenting with how enemies perceive their enemies when not facing them in the Creature Clash FM when I noticed that even there a flaming sphere appeared in the sky when hammerite priests attack. It happens with fire mages' fire too while water mages' have a smaller blue sphere. All the other projectiles don't have a projection floating in the sky. Upon starting a magic turf war I even managed to make the two effects overlap.
I'll try tand see if this happens in an OM with the right conditions.

why is this allowed

>>4350472
i thought its other way around, he turned these sobs into monkeys

>>4351556
Yeah, the apemen are retarded but the guards are average intelligence, suggesting they were men to start.

>>4351581
the ape beasts weren't all that dumb. they just spoke the the pagan tongue, which made them seem dumber.

remember that victoria didn't speak pagan tongue until she revealed herself as a pagan. it's possible that it's the same for the ape beasts.

>>4336050
>that gamma

>>4350234
>Bonehard and THC so low
Fuck everyone accepting this

>>4345950
>Honestly I was expecting more from T2X. Everyone hyped it up a lot but it turned out to be really fanfictiony
Pretty much

>>4351604
Fair points. Maybe they were apemen all along.

>>4351524

>>4351524
>>4351772
The only acceptable HD texture pack is the one for TDS to remedy the Xbox 64mb memory mudxtures. The one that also removes Garrett's eye glow and scar

>>4350390
Brainlets ruined Thief 2.

>>4350307
13. Training
12. Escape!
11. Into the Maw of Chaos
X. The Thieves' Guild
10. Strange Bedfellows
9. Undercover
8. The Lost City
7. Lord Bafford's Manor
6. The Haunted Cathedral
X. The Mage Towers
5. The Sword
4. Assassins
3. Return to the Cathedral
2. Break from Cragscleft Prison
X. Song of the Caverns
1. Down in the Bonehoard

>>4349430
I checked the ttlg thread for the code and found it out of curiosity when I was playing through it (only checked it at the end, though), just for curiosity's sake. It has what is effectively a rocket launcher inside IIRC. Basically 10 fire arrows but they make explosions as strong/powerful as the sunburst devices in T1/T2, they are literally shaped like rockets and you shoot them from your bow.

>>4351951
Is this the fabled bow upgrade?

>>4351972
Inverted Manse goes a bit beyond the Bow Upgrade. You get arrow upgrades to broadheads and water arrows. Razortooths do extra damage against haunts and you can also get holy water arrows that actually have holy water inside a glass container instead of being crystals dipped in holy water. Then there's the sword that glows in the dark and has some saint's bloodstain on it, making it explode zombies. Then instead of a blackjack you get some holy war gauntlets that let you karate chop undead.

Now that I think about it, Inverted Manse is more exterminatus hereticus than a Thief fan mission. It's less burglary and more PURGE

>>4350307
I wanted to post my list just to put Thieves' Guild in the last place behind the training mission, but then I realized that the poll was about TDP and not Thief Gold.

>>4350503
Both proximity and line of sight? The priest runs after you if you are far away. If you are in a certain distance, he spellcasts. I don't think he considers if it's a fellow brother. It also happens when you run and hide behind the pillars and the hammer statue. If the line is between him and you is interrupted, the priest stops. He sidewalks and tries again.
It's a shame really that the priest is so careless in his spellcasting. When he launches his hammer, he doesn't care who is hit. At the same time, the hammerites don't care they could get hit. Nobody comments on the friendly fire, only that that someone is hurt. They don't blame themselves. Additionally, they run after you like headless chickens and they have very limited mobility. They can't climb, jump or swim. Maybe you could create a singular AI with NPCs as his playing pieces, instead of NPCs with each their own AI. He wants to kill you and preserve itself. It could allow for spontaneous traps and interceptions. Should NPCs be given more mobility? How does that influence the player in his risk calculation?

>>4352065
What other tools could you introduce?

http://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/downloads/
How popular was Thief in Japan? I know there were some Japanese FMs.

>>4352518
>What other tools could you introduce?

wat

>>4350307

13 - A Keeper's Training
12 - Escape!
11 - Into the Maw of Chaos
10 - Strange Bedfellows
9 - Undercover
8 - Return to the Cathedral
7 - The Haunted Cathedral
6 - Assassins
5 - The Lost City
4 - Lord Bafford's Manor
3 - Down in the Bonehoard
2 - Break from Cragscleft Prison
1 - The Sword

Death's Cold Embrace is out! http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148371

>>4352518

I didnt even knew it was a thing there in Japan.

Then again I know they have a very small but strong pc community since the Japanese market will never deliver a fps like Thief or a Civilization or Cities Skylines game.

>>4352939

>820 mb
I'll pass. I've had enough of those overhyped meme campaigns from ttlg this year

>>4353160
Oh do fuck off with your "meme" adjective.

>>4353280

do you like "shitty" better?

>>4353286
At least shitty is more descriptive than meme. And no, that campaign isn't shitty.

>>4352536
You see certain FMs introducing new tools for the player to use. Inverted Manse creates new arrows. Thief 2X has a elemental crystal that allows you to switch between arrows. CoSaS mission x has a blackjack that can be poisoned. So, what other tools could you create for the player to use? Another arrow? A medieval optiwand? A third lockpick? How would you introduce the use of it to the player? Would it be a gimmick or integral to the game?

>>4353506
Once I had this idea for elemental recombination arrows that blend two elements and create a new arrow.

-Water+Fire = Fuel arrow. - Splatters a certain radius with puddles of flammable liquid that can be ignited, resulting a brief firestorm that can for example take out a large number of undead.
-Water+Earth = Cushion arrow - when shot to the ground it creates a large soft tuffet of moss. The player can then drop for a great distance without damage, and the moss deflates and disintegrates after use. However guards will be alerted if they see an unused one.
-Water+Air = Mist arrow - creates a thick cloud of mist that enemies can't see through, like a smoke bomb. Cloud expands and dissapates from impact. Flames around the impact point close by get extinguished.
-Earth+Air = Dust arrow - creates a brief dust storm that partially blinds guards and slows down or disables iron beasts. Affected npcs remain impared for the rest of the mission.
-Fire+Earth = Lava arrow - lays down a patch of hot lava that can block a corridor to stop pursuit. Shouldn't be used against fire shadows or flying enemies. Lava cools down and solidifies after a while. Violently explodes if used on water.
-Fire+Air = Sunburst arrow - basically a tactical nuclear missile. Every living or unliving thing directly exposed to the detonation not behind solid cover is instantly vaporized including the player.

FYI there's a new 10 MISSION FM CAMPAIGN that was just released. http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148371

>>4353750
protip: Always save after the briefing cutscenes. They're done with in-engine camvators (like the first body of the many scene in SS2) instead of using video files, probably because they didn't have a 2d artist for cutscenes. That's fine but the problem is they're unskippable so if you die you'll have to watch it again.

>>4353957
Has someone figured out how to take mouse control away from the player during ingame cutscenes? That's something even LGS couldn't do when making SS2.

>>4353981
Apparently, since there's no mouse control in these ones. I remember some other, older snowy FM with cutscenes where you couldn't move the mouse either. I think it was 7th Crystal.

>>4353998
7th crystal did have mouse control in cutscenes. I specifically remember the dev complain about the engine limitation. Unless that was in the Berenstein universe. I think locked mouse ingame is a NewDark feature, since it was literally impossible to lock the mouse without the engine source code. Hell, even with the source code LGS couldn't do it in 1999.

camvators are NEVER fun to watch

if you had to do an exposition dump and couldn't afford cutscenes, plain text is a much better way to go.

The thing about Thief-style briefing videos is that they're actually really easy to make. It's all just b&w painted backgrounds (or traced screenshots) that are panned, zoomed and crossfaded using After Effects. I think the hardest part is transcoding the videos into that weird obsolete format that Thief uses.

PLEASE BE WARNED

A MISGUIDED SOUL

>>4354430
ALL SHOULD HEAR THE WORDS OF KARRAS

>>4353750
>mission 1
>enter the cellar
OOOH MAMA LUIGI

>>4353740
would be neat

>>4353981
I've played mission four from the new FM and the mouse isn't locked. Fenphoenix does some voice acting?

>>4354809
So Fen is still alive

>>4355114
isn't he still doing a SotS playthrough?

>>4354809
>>4355114
>>4355365
Do people actually like Fen? Seems to go over the lolsorandumb line a bit too much for me, also has a cringey habit of referencing My Little Pony constantly.

I prefer watching maximum autism Klatremus supreme ghost attempts.

>>4355807
I like Fen; I think he's a great member of the Thief community and puts a friendly face on it for newcomers
I do, however, fucking hate watching him; I can't watch more than 3 like minutes of any given playthrough

>>4355807
Excuse me for shilling but if you want a nice ironman middle ground between "official" ghosting and normal gameplay, with no annoying facecam or commentary or savescumming, I've done the whole trilogy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLICW04REQY&list=PLmqYHnLFUbaKJXcbqGHL8Uni_ufiJy-sP

I've ghosted Alien: Isolation too for some taffing reason i dunno

>>4353750
Someone please tell how the FUCKING HELL are you supposed to enter the cocksucking tavern unnoticed.

>>4355857
When are you going to play FMs?

>>4355931
What mission? What tavern?

>>4355961
Trickter's tail on the first mission

>>4355962
Played on Normal, entered through the front door and nobody bat an eye.
Can you explain your problem in more detail?

>>4355962
>>4355964
Ok,I got it now. What a frustrating ordeal.
Someone else is gonna end up banging their head on the wall because of this so this is how you do it; second floor of the next-door lamp shop has a hidden air-duct you need to access with a rope arrow that leads to the second floor of the pub.

>>4355961
I just can't decide what to do. I'd really like to do Gathering at The Inn but the ghosting in that mission is so difficult and unpredictable that it isn't really compatible with ironman ghosting.

>>4356027
What parts of the FM cause problems?
Call it an attempt at ironman ghosting? Professional criminals make mistakes and it would be interesting to see how you deal with mistakes.

>>4356581
>Professional criminals make mistakes

Well yeah I suppose, considering that we're talking about the beginner spy Dante and not the master thief Garrett.

>>4355964
>Played on Normal

You shouldn't be doing that.

>>4356765
FMs can pull nasty tricks on you regarding difficulty.

I'd love the fuck out of the series if I didn't get easily spooked.

Honestly I was disappointed in thief. When I thought I was going to get a game about burgling castles and instead I'm fighting zombies, ghosts and robot spider shit.

I just wanted to rob Earls and fuck their daughters.

>>4356949
thief 2 is that

it's still possible to avoid most monsters though

>>4356949
I'll never understand why people have such problems with those levels, as if break-ins are all a Thief can do. Tomb raiding and crypt plundering are impoertant parts of a comprehensive thieving experience.

>>4356949
in the original thief, there were 5 normal mundane missions, 3 undead missions, and 3 pagan missions.

there's no reason to complain about there not being enough mundane missions, since there are more of those than any other kind.

>>4356949
Thief didn't know what it was trying to be at first. Here's the short version:

LGS wanted to make a simulation-based (not RPG) medieval fantasy game where there are all the relevant systems for playing as any type of character. Warrior, mage and thief. Any player could familiarize themselves with any or all of these disciplines and determine exactly their way of playing without any artificial restrictions like skill points or attributes.

The story would have been a dark inversal of the Kights of the Round Table legend where King Arthur was a corrupt dictator and Mordred was the good guy. The knights of camelot were some crazy nasguls or something. Ken Levine came up with all sorts of nice unique themes for the world and details in the overall lore.

The project proved to be way too ambitious for such a small team, and what happened was that only a handful of systems became realized. Dark Camelot was scrapped but those parts were kept for a new project. The Dark Project. The systems that worked the best were the stealth based AI and overall movement and control systems. The oldest relic of Camelot is the swordfighting mechanics. Dark Project became basically a D&D rogue simulator, where a thief would plunder castles and dungeons, and would face knights, monsters and undead. Ken Levine's story ideas made it into Dark Project. Most notably the religious zealots known as the Hammerites and their cult focusing on building and technology. Despite all of the old combat mechanics and supernatural themes the game ended up being a superb thief simulator instead of a full-on D&D themed game, so they gave it the name "Thief" and demoted their working title "Dark Project" to be its subtitle. One of the last additions to the story was a hamfisted inclusion of that subtitle in Constantine's notes regarding his plans for The Eye. ie. "Ellie, it looks like we truly are the Last of Us"

It wasn't until Thief 2 that LGS realized that they have the perfect stealth game.

>>4356949
See >>4350234

>>4356754
Even a master thief makes mistakes.

>>4358158
I was going to respond that the trilogy never acknowledges Garrett having made any mistakes in his stealthy professionalism. But iirc there are wanted posters of him in Deadly Shadows that list theft and assault. The Hammerites know he stole the air talisman. The Watch knows he clobbered the cops at the Crippled Burrick. Other than that there is no evidence of him having been caught stealing or assaulting anyone, and his official criminal record reflects that and nothing more. All the other mistakes are the player's failings and assumed non-canon.

>>4357036
>It wasn't until Thief 2 that LGS realized that they have the perfect stealth game.
Nope, it's just that Thief was basically Doug Church's "le auteur" game, and the others "caught up" (more like trivialized and mainstreamed the concept) to it only after it was released (you will find the phrase "the game miraculously came together in the very last weeks before release, I dunno how or why" in pretty much any LGS-employee interview about Thief, other than Doug's). He was the only person on the team with any sort of "big picture", concerning this particular game, all the other ones' opinions are based on bits, scraps and pieces.

Also, watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uQEBSgf_cU

>>4358201
Losing his eye is a pretty big mistake.

>>4359150
Greed is a helluva drug

Has there ever been a more atmospheric game than Thief 1/Gold or Thief 2?

>>4359383
S.T.A.L.K.E.R may not be more atmospheric but it's close

>>4359150
Technically he stole that back

How do I git gud at Thief? I love stealth games, I played the recent one of PS3 and loved it, but when I bought the old ones and played I was dreadful at it. Do I just need to be more patient? Trying to wrangle kb+m probably didn't help.

>>4359420
Learn to lean. That's something the new games don't have and is essential to T1/2 gameplay. A deep lean can get you two steps closer to a guard without any noise, without using it you are so much easier to detect.

>>4359420
>play on expert
>use the blackjack to knock out enemies if you really have to
>the sword will make you more visible to enemies so it's best to never leave it equipped
>the light bar is your best friend
>lean is actually useful unlike most games
>if you go into combat at any point you're playing it wrong
>garrett really enjoys his tap shoes because any surface that isn't carpet is sounds like a gunshot every step

>Strumdrang's Peak
>end mission 3
This is why I don't fucking trust women

>>4359424
>>4359568
I think I'll reinstall them are give it another go.

>>4359383
Silent Hill 2

>>4359420
Trial and error. THINK about what you're doing. For all the limits to the AI, by and large the way things work is logical and makes sense.

Are there any good thief modding tutorials?

The modding must've changed quite a bit afted the discovery of the source code and subsequent engine patching.

>>4360251
I don't know if they're out of data now but I remember these being good
https://nickdablin.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/absolute-beginners-guide-to-creating-a-thief-2-mission-part-one/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFIcXS4qx4E

and some more:
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=131800

>>4359420
Patience is definitely the key. Most of the difficulty comes from the level itself, some are packed with guards, some are a bit chaotic. I like to save at the start of certain part of a mission, a new floor or a certain zone, as a sort of checkpoint, and see if I can get to know it, use it as a ground for learning and solve it like some sort of puzzle.
Try to memorize the timing of guards' patrols and find the right moment to move, get rid of the ones you can safely dispose of to create a safe room or two. Knocking out most of them can take some time but it could be the solution if your problem at first is orienting yourself in the level. Pretty soon the game will put a limit to it with monsters, but there's enough space to learn in the first two missions.
As much as I like to complete those zones I save before flawlessly, part of the fun comes from fixing your mistakes while playing. Garrett is resourceful and faster than it looks, after all.

Why do all of John D's fan missions have literal fucking mountains of text in them. Every readable scroll, book, paper, etc. is like 5-20 pages long of wordswordswords. Has the guy never heard of "less is more"?

>>4360358
>>Might I inquire about the fundamental rationale of this particular custom mission content author referred to as John D having produced and released custom mission content that puzzlingly frequently includes text documents of meandering, dare I say verbose quantities of unnecessary expository data, sometimes reaching a downright tiresome count of five to twenty pages? I do have to rhetorically postulate the query: "Has this author familiarized themselves with the popular and useful writing technique philosophy know as "Quality is preferrable to quantity"?"

He might be using a verbose text converter

>>4356949
>>4356954
>>4356967
>>4357036

Thief is in a fantasy setting. In the 80s/90s this equated to fantastical shit like robbing the undead and the gods. Down in the Bonehoard is basically a DnD quest that you do as a solo rogue.


Why is it that so many people expect the most boring, predictable fulfillment of a premise when they hear a title?

Thief - HURR DURR WHY IZ I NOT JUST STEALING FROM PEOPLE

Tomb Raider

> why am i not just raiding tombs lol, fucking dumb

Nomenclature for fictional and creative games differs from naming simulation games for Christ's sake.

It's the true mark of a brainlet when someone says they only liked the mansion/city human missions in Thief and that Thief 2 is the better game.

Thief 2 is fucking boring to replay compared to Thief 1. Thief 1 achives a much higher amount of gameplay variety that keeps things interesting constantly. I've probably replayed Thief 1's campaign like 4-5 times but Thief 2's only twice (and any further attempts had me just dropping it half way through because it's boring). Thief 2 has a lot of good fan missions though.

>>4360480
Literally the opposite for me.

>>4360473
I agree. The biggest problem with only robbing from castles and mansions is the lack of challenge variety. Castles can have guardsmen, archers, locks, security systems and nosy servants who will alert the guards. Tombs and ruins can have undead, animals, environmental hazards, ghosts, archaic unpickable locking mechanisms and deadly traps. (Yes, Th4if. Normal poor housing for peasants do not have pressure plates and spear launchers.) In hell there can be demons and lava. In a city setting there are civilians, public areas, rooftops and sewers.

Garrett can handle anything, and different types of locations allow the game to have various different types of AI that warrant different approaches and pose different challenges.

>>4360486

brainlet

I like Thief 1 and Thief 2 equally but for different reasons. Sue me you turbocucks.

"I shall spy thee 'ere long, thief."

>>4360232
>>4360301
Seems like good advice, thanks.

You've heard of elf on a shelf, now get ready for

Where did Garrett lose Constantine's Sword between the events of Thief 1 & Thief 2? Surely he wouldn't sell it on because its powers perfectly suited his profession.

>>4360597
Maybe he tossed it when he left The Maw. And its power isn't really all that great anyway. All it does is be invisible when Garrett wants to stay hidden, and how often does he have to draw his sword in the presence of hostiles while trying to stay hidden in the shadows?

>He doesn't use the objective completed/secret found soundfile as his alert for text messages

https://youtu.be/FUUX2181BvM?t=305 5:05 if you need a reminder.

>>4360597
I like to think that getting rid of it's part of him being sick of anything related to prophecies, destiny and saving the world. He doesn't want (at least until TDS) to be anything else other than a thief, a true neutral, tied to nothing. He's that kind of character that starts every new adventure back at his status quo, rent to pay, wanted and all. So if there's no plot reason behind that, I think it's just part of Garrett and Thief.
Some changes are unavoidable, sure. It's interesting how his new eye fits T2's style and story while a magical sword left behind is part of the lost world of mysteries of TDP.

>>4360597
He sold it cause he wanted money

>>4360480
T1 had more diversity between missions.

the human missions included three mansion missions with unique architecture and guards with different uniforms, as well as two hammerite missions with their own distinct feel. the three undead and three pagan missions both provided a welcome break from the human missions. lastly, there's the lost city mission, where you only encountered "natural" enemies.

then there's T2, where almost all missions are generic mechanist missions, with the same boring voice acting ("I hearken onto thy fearful heart, thump-thump") and the same boring robots ("I have seen- I do not know") over and over again. missions like Receiving and Party featured guards in many different uniforms, but they all felt generic and were seldomly woven into the plot.

in short: T1 - diverse, you meet all kinds of factions (bafford's guards, ramirez' guards, constantine's guards, the hammerites) and monsters (undead, pagan, burricks, elementals). T2 - homogeneous, you almost exclusively meet mechanists, save for a few generic guards, burricks are extinct, undeads and pagans have a very small presence.

>>4360597
The sword lost its magic after the demise of Constantine.

Just got done with the L'Arsene FM series by Gaetene.

Part 1 -
It's bad. It's very poorly made from an architectural/level design point of view. It's full of scripted sequences. It's mazelike. It's a keyhunt with gated progression to each area but is also a constant backtrackfest. It's also a mission that has no map to look at when you're lost, nice! Full of fucking autistic frustrations with progression. It's also Engrish as fuck but that's to be expected cuz the guy who made it is French and the translation does not come through very well.

Part 2 (Emilie Victor) -
More autistic luck-based progression. The architecture and such looks a little better this time around. Constantly looking for keys to open locked doors and then having to find more keys to open locked doors. It's pretty ridiculous and strange thematically which is kinda hard to follow. Took forever to finish because of how confusing it was.

Part 3 (Korrigans) -
Actually liked it quite a bit. It still has all the hallmarks of a Gaetene mission with the autistic luck-based progression going on (extremely well hidden tiny switches and keys, strange expectations of the player to find out ways to do certain things/get to places/enter areas, etc.) and all that shit is obviously confusing and frustrating. On the plus side though, the architecture & level design has got a lot better, the Korrigans (Goblin/Halfling things) themselves are pretty mystical and interesting (not to mention funny) and I enjoyed their inclusion and the ""lore"" surrounding them.

>>4360835
Part 4 (The Den) -
It's good in concept but it amps the autistic luck-based progresion up to 11 and is filled with puzzles on top of all of the other keyhunting and tiny hidden switches (not to mention a bunch of non-switch switches that show up frequently). You have to have extreme levels of autism to make it through this mission without consulting the ttlg thread for at least some of it (something that was common for me for the rest of the series). It does look the best of the bunch though, Gaetene finally figured out how to make rooms in the dark engine that aren't just squares with one texture covering the floor, walls and ceiling. The fresh horror that are the giant stone sentinels are pretty cool but not as charming as the Korrigans were. The Engrish has finally been completely eradicated by this point also, as it had been shedding off with each entry of L'Arsene since the first one previously.

None of these missions are really all that great, though. They range from downright bad (Part 1) to mediocre (Part 2) and then finally decent/serviceable bordering on good (Parts 3 & 4). They are all HUGE and take a long time to play through, too. So this means each of these feelings extends out between 1.5-3 hours (or like 4 hours if you're stubborn enough to pixel hunt everything without looking at a ttlg thread with someone saying "oh in this dark room with tons of furniture there is a 1 pixel switch under the sofa that you are required to find without any hints whatsoever if you want to progress and finish the mission, can't believe you didn't figure that out on your own I thought it was obvious", which seems to be an obsession of the author's (and many others).

>>4351656
what a cheater

>>4350301
I always thought the apebeasts were rat men upon playing T1 for the first time (and afterwards, until learning they were meant to be apes).

I think it's because of the dark engine's low poly heads making their faces stick out in the center because of how triangular it is. When I think of apes/monkeys I associate their appearances with round heads & faces.

>>4360915
Actually, I guess this is why they changed how they look so much between T1 & T2. In T2 they look more like your standard bigfoot type large ape humanoid.

>>4360924
incidentally, it wasn't until T2 that they explicitly turned the apebeasts into retarded simpletons. in T1, they didn't have any conversations, but they had their ordinary voice acting, which sounded pretty normal.

then, in T2, they had conversations like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbCa-tcarjo

>tfw you trick creatures into fighting each other and it doesn't count as a kill

>>4361375
>mfw you run and throw the hammerite sledges at people and it doesn't count as kills

>>4356949
You're a thief, you don't fuck earl's daughters, you steal their virginities

>>4352518
>Should NPCs be given more mobility? How does that influence the player in his risk calculation?
I think they should. Having them stop in front of an obstacle any human could overcome not only makes for some surreal situations where a ladder turns into the ultimate weapon, but it makes things easy where a challenge would fit perfectly. If you had to consider more routes guards could take when, for example, looking for you, more parts of the level would become possibly unsafe. Their usually linear behavior would become unpredictable to a certain level. They could take shortcuts, like climbing over a waist high ledge, when certain that they're looking for someone and not simply following a sound. They would still lack the player's agility so it wouldn't make an escape harder than the usual, but the player would know that making a mistake could change the rules of the game at their disadvantage.

Sorry for the delay with the FMs, technical problems. Bloodflowers anyway didn't add anything to what we've already said, a small first mission made for fun. I'm starting to think that they use tiles so much because it's the only way to make a floor look aesthetically pleasing, fitting for a noble's house. First example of a mission clearly influenced by the author's passion for something, this time in quite the unambiguous way. I like how unrelated the source is to Thief nonetheless, I hope to see FMs being the connection between two words again soon.
I also have a thing for revealing myself only when it's the moment to escape and this one forces it, I can say I had my satisfaction.
Depending on your attachement to the Cure, you can also choose if get rid of Lord Polydor for good in an act of vengeance or leave him be. A first FM with serious choices in it.

>>4360837
Did enjoy these changes to the paintings in Part 4 after you grab the key, by the way. It's a neat detail.

>>4340157

Drunk Benny

>>4361835
Hell, he doesn't even need to be drunk...but that DOES put him irrevocably at the top.

>>4360480
>>4360723
I really like thief 2, but I do agree that it lacked variety compared to 1. I always wished they could've continued the dark fantasy aspect of 1 instead going full steampunk.

>>4346562
Speedrunning

>>4362993

speedrunning on anything but expert is still kind of lame

>>4363023
Try speedrunning a level like Bonehoard without dying, even on Normal.

>>4363036
When you need to climb ladders or ropes, slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

There's a new FM for Thief 2, Nosferatu, by Sensut (Dracula and Bathory series, among others). It has what is most probably the most realistic-looking castle in an FM, it's super impressive and the atmosphere is top notch (the mission makes use of Popol Vuh's theme from Herzog's bizarro version).

It's an overall pretty good mission, though the loot objective on Expert is pretty steep. Definitely recommended if you're in the mood for a rather tense mission.

>>4363246
Thanks for the reminder. I never played any of Sensut's other missions, are they good?

>>4363246
looks pretty cool. is it toaster friendly?

>>4363282
The Dracula series is a bit hit and miss. It's overall good but sometimes plagued by obscure progression. It's not as polished as his more recent missions.
Bathory is overall fantastic and well worth a playthrough. It has some of the best castles in Thief and is overall very memorable. It is a lot more polished and almost never suffers from obscure progression.

Sensut also made other missions like Better Off Dead (pretty nice), Being Thief (cool mission) and Being Thief 2: Exile (pretty damn impressive Life of the Party-like mission, if maybe a bit too big for its own sake) and Cryptic Realms (don't really remember this one).

>>4363305
The exterior castle views can cause slowdowns but overall it isn't too taxing.

>>4363313
Come to think of it I did try Cryptic Realms but never got far into it. I wish I got a Halloween vacation instead of a Thanksgiving one, I have so many spooky FMs to go through.

>>4363246
Thief is the game that keeps remind me that you really need a robust engine and no need for crazy graphics to make something.

Fucking hell I want modern Thief and this crazy community that keeps on going to make FMs forever.

Fuck Dishonored and Hitman.

>>4361490
There's a demo mission that demonstrates a NPC jumping over a gap and climbing a ladder, but the animation was shoddy and I can't recall if changes were made to the AI.
I like the story behind Bloodflowers. Change a couple of names and expand the level, and you have yourself a decent thief mission. A minstrel wants revenge on his patron.
>The lead singer, Robert Smith, gave me the creeps, he reminded me too much of the haunts back at that old hammerite cathedral.
ahahaha

>>4363349
The biggest challenge with making AI perform things like climbing ladders or jumping on furniture lies with animations. Saying animating NPCs in Thief is a chore would be a hell of an understatement.

>>4363359
Any tutorials available?

>>4363359
Its the only thing I think holding back these masterpieces. even back then character models looked bad.

They look better in SS2 because you have more robots and shit but still.

Although I remember being impressed with the mocap, still the sound was so good its amazing how in Thief the sound fleshed the guards and other characters better than their actual triangular shitty textured face.

this board in a nutshell

https://youtu.be/2dHzo8BpWW8

>>4363387
>Hey, I'm going to play Thi4f tomorrow. Ya wanna come with?
>T-uh! Couldn't pay me enough!
>Whaaat? You soft-belly! The thief have got these new stealth skills with slow-time. Last time I was playing, (almost laughing) there was a real murder spree.
>Nah, nah! It makes me sick! When I was a kid--
>Huh! Surprised you're even in this job.... (Falsetto) 'Oo the blood, it just turns my poor tummy!'
>Shut up, you taffer! You want Stealth? You should've played it years ago! Tell ya...the thief then? They were something to see. That thief, they didn't need no slow-time and melee-takedowns, and upgrades, and all those gimmicks you straps to 'em now!
>No slow-time? What'd they do? Just swing at each other?
>Huh! Naaah! The thieves back then, they had skills to not be seen at all! And manual combat!
>Thieves? Yer taffing me! They look pretty mangy harmless, long as they're not using auto-aim.
>That's why I can't stand the games now! You don't know what you've missed. They just don't make thieves like they used to....
>Whoa.... sneaky thieves. Woulda liked to see that....

>>4363348
>Fuck Dishonored and Hitman.

Dishonored is fine. It's just too easy and some of the systems it revolves around are too simple, namely the stealth mechanics. Many parts of the game's design are directly based off of the LGS design philosophy. It's kind of a one trick pony, but it's a pretty good trick.

And Hitman... so far from my understanding only the first and fifth games suck, and the third game is basically a remake of the first one except it isn't shit. Blood Money is fantastic and I've heard that the newest episodic one would be good if it worked on Nvidia hardware. My PC which can run D44M on high @100fps and Alien:Isolation on Ultra @200fps can't make HITMAN™ reach 30fps on the lowest minimum of the low settings on the simplest scene. It has to be some kind of a conspiracy where AMD paid IO to handicap the game for their competitors.

>>4363443
I mean keeping it simple and about art style. Arkane cant make Arx Fatalis again, especially now. And other offers just fail to understand how simple good ambient sound makes a game better.

For example I love how atmosphere and ambient is so important in the Soul games and they re fucking action rpgs, no obtrusive music and good level design are good enough to immerse you.

>>4363475
That was one of Dishonored's problems. Sound. Especially footstep sounds. There's no reason why the footsteps should be that quiet. I mean sure, the overpowered leaning mechanic means that you don't even need to use the x-ray vision as a substitute to listening, but listening would have been a better mechanic on top of which everything else could have been built.

But surprisingly there is a stealth game where foostep sounds are handled worse. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. Yeah, that game with the brilliant noise cover mechanic. The game relies so heavily on its noise-meter that the actual audio volume is totally fucked up. There is almost no difference between what you hear when Sam is sneaking very quietly and when he's running very loudly, but the enemies can't detect the former and will instantly home in on the latter.

I dont understand why no one can remade the classic mission of t2 with more architecture, objects, guards, generic npc and stuff, and but not last forced use of your gear, I mean in life of party I've never used an arrow and shit

>>4363505
Cause people would rather work on their own projects than remake stuff. Why don't you do it yourself?

>>4363505
that reminds me. OC Unity shenanigans

>>4363505
>fan remakes
no thanks

>>4335850
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPqwDGXxLhU

what do you guys think?

Do you think Looking Glass would be a good developer of they were still alive

>>4363895
like any good 90's PC dev, they would've sold out to some shit publisher and they'd design games around consoles

>>4363518
Not him but Dromed is a mess, half life editor is much easier

>>4363904
Literally Ion Storm as the main "successor" to LGS with Invisible War & Deadly Shadows.

>>4363568
One of the best youtube gaming "documentary-style" videos out there, and sadly the guy never made any more because he only gave a shit about Thief.

It's literally at a higher level than stuff like Ross's Game Dungeon.

>playing Rocksbourg for the first time
>every time you open a readable there is blaring loud piano music playing that is extremely distracting
>have to take off my headphones to read every time
Please tell me this isn't in Part 2 & 3.

>>4364495
personally I liked it. it helped set the mood.

I hated the keyhunts and tiny meme levers, though.

>>4364495
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU6cT88Por4

>>4364521
Just finished it... you weren't kidding. What a fucking meme the keyhunting is in this map. I just about scoured every part of it but couldn't find shit, just locked doors. I just immediately gave up and checked the ttlg thread and lo and behold the two keys are in places where you would literally never ever find them. But it gets worse!

After that, there are more keys, a few of them I found just by being thorough and checking around, but I couldn't find the last key (which I learned to be the cellar key) or Namez's statuette. So I checked the ttlg thread, and a guy said in the burned out mansion "look up" for the statuette, so I did. I saw a hole in the ceiling.

But I didn't have a rope arrow, are there even rope arrows on this level? Or is does this part require finding a tiny meme lever like you mentioned? What I did was grab a piece of the broken statue below and put it on the rafters below me, then (NewDark) mantle my way up through the hole in the ceiling to get the statuette.

And the last key? Lo and behold - it's a key that is literally not even visible to you and you have to just right click the floor under the beams to find it! Now that's some great level design.

This mission takes autistic luck-based progression to the next level. Why on Earth is this mission so highly praised? The spook with the big zombie is pretty damn effective (very Silent Hill-esque), and the mission does look nice visually but it does not make up for how shit the actual gameplay/progression is otherwise. Pixel hunting for keys that you can't see that aren't (or only very lightly) hinted at doesn't engage your brain, it's basically a mission that was made to be played with a guide or foreknowledge of these retarded gameplay issues.

Give it to me straight, does Rocksbourg 2 & 3 improve in this regard and become less of an autistic pixel hunt or do those elements carry over and I should expect to fall back on a guide/the ttlg thread with some frequency?

>>4364534
And yeah, I can see where a lot of the inspiration for the mission comes from. But the first few seconds of that SH3 track repeating over and over at a very loud volume unironically made it really hard to concentrate on reading the texts - hence the headphone removal.

>>4364673
mission two is actually very good. it has a friendly "hub" that you return to a few times during the course of the mission, as well as some hostile areas featuring guards and mechanists, as well as some undead. the guards in the friendly area are pretty tolerant, so you don't have to be autistic about not letting them notice open doors or missing loot.

>>4364673

Rocksbourg 2 does a lot of the same shit. I never tried 3 but everyone says it's the best one of the bunch. Unfortunately, those first two missions left such a terrible impression on me that I don't think I'm ever playing anything by that author again.
I'm pretty tolerant to fms that pull bullshit like that, but Rocksbourg just takes it too far. Rocksbourg 1 alone took me about a half a dozen attempts over a 10 year period to finish because I kept dropping it.
I can't see the appeal of these missions. Even the art style that's so praised I found ugly

>>4353750
This took 13 years to make?
Heavy reuse of city map.
Would Garrett ever get this heavily involved in family matters?
The evil wizard came out of nowhere

>>4364782
It's a fan mission staple for Garrett to be completely out of character and caring about random people he doesn't even know.

>>4364673
Rocksbourg was highly praised because the style and atmosphere were (and still are) pretty unique and it was one of the most ambitious missions at the time. Today it is quite meh, though, and it also was one of the first missions by that author (so it's naturally full of mistakes). That said, Rocksbourg 2 is *much* better in every aspect and doesn't suffer from shit pixel hunting as much as the first mission. You still need to find two small things to progress, though, but they're visible unlike the key you mentioned.

Rocksbourg 3 is much, much better than the other two. It is one of the best fan missions out there and I absolutely recommend it. It has none of the pixel hunting crap that plagued the previous missions and, while it is essentially a big keyhunt, it's never annoying and the atmosphere and layout really keep you on your toes.

>>4364736
>Unfortunately, those first two missions left such a terrible impression on me that I don't think I'm ever playing anything by that author again.
That's too bad because his subsequent missions are much better. Greenbay, A Better Tomorrow, Double or Quits and especially Dirty Money are great, especially the latter which is of exceptional quality for a mission made in 72 hours and is perhaps one of the very best Thief Gold missions out there.

>>4364782
It was started by different authors and later picked up by others. I do agree that the story is pathetically awful, but I loved the general atmosphere and did enjoy the original* missions.
*not the city rehashes though, these were boring.

>>4363528
You know I think the Thief community is strong enough to one day pick up an Engine and remake the entire first two games?

Using the same sounds and staying true to the Thief vision and aesthetic but just updating the graphics.

>>4363895

If Doug and Neurath were in along with some Levine, just dont let him touch the game itself. And that faggot who works at Bethesda is out they would be okay.

You want to know what would LGS be just look at Irrational and Arkane, during the 10 years of darkness after the golden age of the late 90s and early 00s ( even for consoles).

Devs had to bring money with gimped console development.

>>4365227
Thief is perfectly fine how it is and does not need a remake. Let alone a shitty fan one.

>>4365227
Theres no reason to make this while this exist

http://www.moddb.com/mods/thief-gold-hd-texture-mod

>>4365261
my fucking eyes

>>4365261
Why would anyone add complex and realistic vegetation in an engine that doesn't even support terrain? Must look really fancy when you have all that grass growing out of pyramid-shaped hills with singular textures.

>>4365227
There's zero need for that. The only thing Thief needs is the cells limit to be higher than 32760.

>>4365261
Don't post that shit.

>>4365227
There's no point in a remake and in fact, it won't happen regardless. Some guy on TTLG already attempted to make an Unreal 4 remaster of Thief: TDP but that shit got taken down instantly cause of Squeenix copyright issues. So there, it's not happening.

I just played through T2X for the first time, and I must say I had some mixed feelings about it.

first of all: I really liked the level design. every mission had some kind of novelty to it. I especially liked the mission where you first travelled to Sunnyport. most missions were also open ended to a large degree. there were lots of nice details, like the guards typing in a code to open a gate.

now, what I DON'T like are the aesthetics. the mission briefing artwork felt fan-fictiony and lacking in quality. the CGI cutscenes looked pretty bad and didn't contribute very much to the experience - the standard VA+mission briefing artwork model would have done the job better. the undead missions were gaudy as fuck with all the coloured lighting and clichéd "horror music".

another thing I don't like is the forced edginess. the main character's personality just doesn't add up properly. garrett was a fairly realistic character: he's greedy and has no pretense about "doing the right thing", but he still has some lines he won't cross, like killing people. the girl in T2X (I forgot her name) is the polar opposite: not only does she happily kill anyone (even civilians on expert), she also acts incredibly self righteous about it, as if she thinks she makes the world a better place by killing people. in this regard, she's not that different from a standard action game protagonist. then there's the fact that they turned the blackjack into a fucking hammer. I guess it's supposed to be some kind of attempt at humour, but for me, it's immersion breaking. the only explanation that the hammer doesn't kill or permanently disable people is that the campaign follows some weird home alone-esque physics, and that's already enough to turn the game into a farce.

>>4365280
>focusing on negatives
check older screenshots that actually maters

>>4365374
That's interesting, usually people praise the briefing art (myself included). I agree with your criticism of Zaya. I don't like her much precisely because of her attitude.

>>4350234
This is why you don't let the plebeians and the mob rule. Bonehoard, in retrospect, is one of the best if not the best mission in Thief. I love the atmosphere of robbing a DnD style tomb full of the undead by yourself.

>>4365374

If you expected a non-profit fan project to in some form not be fan-fictiony, then what did you expect?

Zaya's a pretty edgy character, granted. Outside of the briefing that rarely gets in the way of the top notch level design, plot and gameplay. The new models and items - for an amateur, fan project - look great and fit into the game nicely.

I liked the colouration of the Undead levels. Dark purple and dark green especially. There's no need for every undead mission to be a drab nightmare of grey and black. Some areas are affected by magic, prompting arcane colourings in the area from a design standpoint.

Where Dead Men Lie is one of my favourite moments in T2X. Since T2 lacked the undead almost entirely this was the perfect send-off and synthesis of the Dark Project and the Metal Age. Great shit.

Zaya is just a vessel to even have a story - Malak is the mentor and trickster archetype at the same time, a decent twist in my esteem. I never got too invested in Kedar, but bringing the Free Traders down and unraveling what happened to him was fun.

The point about the Knockout-Hammer is incredibly pedantic and nitpicky. The idea that such a meaningless change bothers you that much does not speak for you. Getting a Blackjack to the head is no fun either, or would you like to try getting bashed in the head by one as well? On the other hand a vast part of the Thief community seems to be totally fine that NewDark turns the Blackjack into a big black fucking dildo.

And another point: A lot of fanmissions that get regular praise make Garrett into an outright assassin, a romantic rogue or otherwise blatantly miswritten character that he is not in the main game, yet no one cares about that in any capacity.

Thief2X should be judged by its main aspect: The level design and gameplay, which is flawless, and a great addition to T2. The plot is just a vessel to get you relatively loosely from location A to B.

>>4365313
Let me dream and forget the rights are in squeenix.

>>4365450

this post is so reddit it hurts

>>4365450
>Thief2X should be judged by its main aspect: The level design and gameplay, which is flawless, and a great addition to T2. The plot is just a vessel to get you relatively loosely from location A to B.
well I agree about that. that's why I had an overall positive opinion. that's also why I made sure to make clear that it was the visual aspect that bothered me.

as for the undead missions: what I liked about the undead missions in T1 was that they all had this dignified and solemn feel to them. the colours are toned down except for a few stained windows and some hammerite banners. the music isn't explicitly "creepy", but instead more moody and solemn. the music in bonehoard is a perfect example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u27wbsUojlo

the undead missions in T2X stand in sharp contrast to what I just described. there's no dignity to them at all. instead, it's the generic "fantasy fire" in all colours of the rainbow. there's generic "creepy" music. in short, I just found them gaudy compared to the undead missions in T1.

>>4365450
Thats not how you criticize something anon.

You see if you create an excellent cake ( level design on top of Thief gameplay), and then vomit over it with a shit plot , "atmosphere", and MC you dont get something good.

You get 5\10.

>>4365552
The atmosphere in T2X is just fine. The only issues I have with it are that the levels are usually too small, the game is far too easy and the plot is meh. Other than that it's a more than fine fan expansion.

>>4365589
>far too easy

When I made my Ironman Ghost videos of T2X I don't remember it being trivial. I distinctly remember having to restart Grand Hotel several times, each session failing after 40 minutes. I can't remember what I got caught by. Maybe I've repressed it.

Sure, whenever the game forces you to stay undetected with the penalty of game over, it has to be relatively easy because it's a normal difficulty objective. Those missions are deliberately designed to have an easy way through, for example the recon mission to the pirate base. All of the AI encounters are placed in easy positions or with easy patrols.

>>4365675
The Grand Hotel and The Cure are the hardest (and best, imo) levels in the game, there's no contest here. Into the Fray can be difficult mostly because of how random it can get. The rest, however, is seriously super easy.

>>4363349
A lot of FMs revolve around types of missions we've already know, but the dark fantasy genre, or fantasy in general, offers a lot of unexplored possibilities, sometimes subtle or simple. I'm all for the magical part of T1, but I can see why someone would prefer a castle over the dungeon they're crawling in. The pace of the game lets you focus on the details of every room, even when they're not necessary, like those paintings we've seen so many times. Even a simple manor like the first one becomes an immersive experience, taken away, for some, by crypts and cathedrals. Thief has a great potential when it's about narrating through the enviroment. Details can give life to a simple concept like the request of a minstrel.

Talking about tropes, Uninvited Guests will be the first of the kind "Your place has been invaded, salvage what you can", the salvageable being The Eye itself. That trinket was just waiting to appear at some point (unless it was in another mission and I've already forgot it).

Anyone playing spooky FMs to celebrate Halloween?

Has anyone found a way of elegantly fixing the issues with pressure plates in NewDark without forcing vsync to run the game at 60fps?

Basically: When you are above 60fps (I play at 144fps to match my monitor's refresh rate) everything works fine and looks fine except for one thing: Pressure plates on maps for puzzles where you place shit on them to open a door do not work as intended. To make the physics with them work you need a framerate of 60 or lower.

There are two ways to "fix" this and one workaround I've been using. The first way to fix it is to simply cap your fps in Thief @ 60fps, which makes the game feel less responsive and just worse (obviously back in the day you would never have exceeded this but I've been using a 144hz monitor for years now so the slower image on the screen is extremely jarring for me).

The second is to find the line in the NewDark config file to simulate physics as if the game was at 60fps, in theory this would be perfect but it doesn't work out quite as well as it should - the game becomes extremely choppy and feels very bad to move and jump around in if you're playing at 120-144fps with physics simulated at 60fps.

The workaround I've been using is simply finding a way to temporarily lower your framerate when you have a pressure plate weighed down while you are playing usually at 144fps. To this you can just spam quicksave around 10 times per pressure plate since the extremely minor stutter when you quicksave is equivalent to lowering your fps massively for a split second. I imagine you can also make some sort of macro/bind to be able to toggle to and from lower framerate while in-game whether using nvidia/amd vsync or possibly binding it in NewDark configs itself.

Obviously this is is less than perfect - if the pressure plates aren't the obvious solution or are hidden then you are not going to find them since running over them and trial & erroring over things in a room at a higher fps isn't going to lower them. Any ideas?

>>4365481

And your post is better in what way?

>>4365485
>>4365552


Here's the problem with both of these posts: It is exactly how you criticise a fan-made game that is provided freely and done in people's spare time.

The plot is okay. It's not great, but neither it is as vomit-inducing horrible. It's relatively stock standard with a passable betrayer-revealed twist.

If you want to profess how much you are great at criticising something and how bad someone else is, you should learn to incorporate some nuance into your critique.

Now for the post about the atmosphere of the undead levels: Partially that's up to your taste, and in a very big way its the difference between a professional team of game developers being paid for their job and being geniusses and pioneers in their field. Sure I prefer Bonehoard over anything in T2X. But I also account for the difference in professionalism in making these two entities.

Perhaps it's because T2X has the make-up of a professionally made game as compared to most Fanmissions, giving them the Underdog-bonus.

Also that cake analogy

> food analogies

but also, the analogy should be constructed in proportion of the elements criticised. The MC only features really in the briefings and the odd sentence spoken during gameplay. That's like complaining about the tiny amount of sprinkles on the cake being not to your liking, and the plot as a vessel for the gameplay would be a dirty wooden plate instead of a silver platter.

>>4363246

Here's a good comparison to what makes FMs like this annoying in comparison to T2X: I started up Nosferatu, got the items at the derelict camp, read the journal. I read that you need to get silver arrows from the Tower near the road, but every door in the area was locked and there was no key to be found except on the belt of the Werewolf which I could not pickpocket. That makes me drop a mission faster than hot garbage. It's already got all the hallmarks of bad design in making it a key hunt .

>>4366808
I agree that the key not being pickpocketable is unorthodox, but would you really pickpocket a fucking werewolf? Also, the mission isn't that much of a keyhunt and I had virtually no issues to finish it. It's pretty simple and straightforward.

>>4366808
>nosferatu

I tried it based on that recommendation. It plays like a point and click adventure and very little like thief. The castle was gorgeous and had a very interesting layout, except that most of it was just for show since very few doors in the mission were actually accessible. I dropped it like 30 minutes in. So yeah, it felt like a waste of a good map.

>>4366851

>but would you really pickpocket a fucking werewolf?
Yes.

>>4364673
Back again. Just finished Rocksbourg 2. More of the same, really.

Cool atmosphere, kinda spooky (not as much as the giant zombie demon in Rocksbourg 1 though), very detailed and looks nice, the disparity between the safe area and the unsafe area is a cool thing to incorporate into a mission (though the AI bugged out a bit in the safe area for me and I had to knock out a few alerted guards right in front of the starting area, upon returning to it later with Ramy's body).

Speaking of the body fetch quests. Wasn't really a fan of the gigantic trek you have to make with Keeper Ramy's unconscious body, I'm going to guess that I somehow missed a shortcut? At least Keeper Lucius's corpse was easy to get to where it needed to go thanks to the teleporters.

But again, DrK lets everyone down with retarded tiny meme lever/glyph pixel hunting to access crucial areas (2 of the secret areas too, and on Expert you need to access at least one of those secret areas to meet the loot requirement, I think). It wasn't as bad as Rocksbourg 1 in the pixel hunting retardation but it's still pretty much unplayable without consulting the ttlg thread as far as I could tell.

Why are people so obsessed with keyhunts and tiny switches?

I'm loving it so far, but I honestly don't know if I can handle the suspense much longer. I'm not the only living person in the castle, am I?

>>4367034
Is the architecture based on a real world castle? The layout looks pretty damn realistic. There's a 12th century castle a lot like that close to where I live

>>4367015
>Why are people so obsessed with keyhunts and tiny switches?

Because they believe that's what makes missions interesting.

>>4367015

I found the abundance of locked doors that take forever to pick even more infuriating than the pixel hunting for keys and switches. I don't think I've played any other fm that is as bad as rocksbourg in that regard.

>>4367148
That's true. Every locked door or footlocker takes a long-ass time to lockpick.

But I personally have played a lot of fan missions which are just as bad in that regard so I kinda just tune it out at this point.

lockpicking is only excusable if the lock in question is close to a patrolled route, as this builds up suspense and gives you an actual challenge. having pickable locks in unguarded areas is pointless, since just holding down a button for a few seconds hardly gives you a sense of accomplishment.

also, unless there is a lore reason not to, every lock should have a key, and every patrolling guard should at least have the key he needs to leave the section of the mansion that he's patrolling.

>>4367265
I agree entirely on point 1 but your second point not so much. There are plenty of gameplay-serving reasons to not have a million keys scattered around everywhere on every guard.

1. Being overwhelmed by the sight of seeing a key for literally every locked door in a mission but having trouble finding the 1 key you need to open the door that you can't open with a lockpick would make keyhunts way more frustrating than they are already.

2. That as well as the sheer amount of inventory slots a separate key for each locked door would take - I've played fan missions where I've ended a mission with literally like 12 different (also badly labeled) keys in my inventory that I had to cycle through to find the right one to open a door every time I got to a locked door, it's not fun.

If Thief 1 & 2 had a keyring system built-in like the CoSaS missions do then it might nullify my 2nd point, but it would also still just overwhelm the player with keys they don't need when they're looking for one they do need.

>>4367310
I don't like the keyring system because it simply erases the need to cycle through keys. Frantically trying to find the right key to lock a door behind you as you're being chased by a guard never gets old.

Did anyone play these for the first time recently?
I just finished the Thieves guild mission and the game is a blast. (Fuck that gem in the fire tho)
The bonehoard was quite amazing for me, even tho I got lost a lot I still figured everything out and that felt sooo good at last.
Playing on hard.

>>4367310
>>4367319


Look at how the OMs do it. In Assassins there's 2 keys: One for the courtyard, and one for the cellar. They have different colours and names. Easily distinguishable.

A lot of FMs like Rocksbourg take similar looking keys, found in the same area with a plethora of locked doors where none of them work. It's completely counter-intuitive. You don't have guards guarding a certain section of a building that have access keys for an entirely different part of that complex. It might be more secure, but how they fuck are they going to guard in those conditions?

>>4367578

Its your first time playing Thief?

I am envious.

>>4367578
i have

>>4367578
>Someone had a blast playing Thieves Guild

Are you even human?

>>4368919
no that's actually the weakest I've played. I had a blast until then, and managed to get through it. Feel kinda ashamed for looking up the gem, but fuck going through all that for even more hours.
Everything else I made it on my own. That's why the bonehoard was so rewarding

>>4368475
Assassins was really memorable. More so that I alerted everyone so there were guards on the streets while getting out. At some point they cornered me so I jumped into some water and turned up someplace close to the exit, felt really movie-like. Goddamn I need to play this game some more

>>4368919
I also liked Thieves Guild but I'm not directionally challenged like everyone who seems to hate it. It's too hard for where it falls in the map progression, I'll admit that.

>>4369083
Oh, that's not my problem with it. In fact the vague maps and the importance of proper navigation in Thief are what gave me supreme sense of direction in games. The Guild is just ten tastes of taffed up. It's got glitched AI with superman nightvision, several secrets that are mandatory main objectives, randomized patrol paths in well lit areas with electric lights, unavoidable blackjacking, unreachable loot, unreachable pickpockets, broken NewDark lightmaps and gajillions of tiny low value loot items rather than fewer more expensive ones. It's not challenging, it's challenged.

The most ridiculous thing hits you right in the very beginning of the mission. If you don't want to clobber the poor chef girl on the head, you have to run after the gangsters to the restaurant front entrance, sneak yourself through the door before they lock it and get it. But because the chef has supernatural eyesight, you'll never get past the kitchen door and out of the restaurant area by simply sneaking. You'll have to climb a table and jump over the kitchen doorway to the shadow of the fireplace to avoid her godlike gaze.

>>4367015
Beat Rocksbourg 3 now and damn I was not expecting this setting. It's like a mixture between the Thieves' Guild and The Mage Towers all in some spooky underground Keeper-style complex.

I was thinking throughout the whole thing that the guardian demon zombies guarding some doors in the North Star complex made the spookyness of the demon zombie encounter in Rocksbourg 1 a lot less effective in retrospect, it kinda cheapened the effect and made these things less scary. That is, until I got to the Dark Zone, jesus christ that place had me shitting my pants.

Unfortunately the mission involves a series of fetch quests which are like 5x as big as the RTTC fetch quest, that coupled with some more glyph/lever hunting and a standard keyhunt on top of it is pretty zzzz.

The atmosphere is cool, the level design is cool (though quite mazelike and confusing at times, especially without a map), the demon zombies are genuinely frightening, but the mission has a lot of pacing issues and drags on way too long for its own good.

But even with all of the above said, it's still a less frustrating/autistic luck-reliant experience than Rocksbourg 1 & 2, though I much prefer the city setting in 1 & 2 to the Keeper-style Soul complexes in 3.

>>4369083
I like it, it just seems half finished for me.

If LGS had the time made fan mission authors have I wonder what sort of changes the regular thief 1\2 missions would have. But I am perfectly fine with the mages tower and song of the caverns, although I do agree the original Thief 1 mission story structure is more tight.

>>4369923
Idk, I think TDP feels really unfinished with Undercover having 2 talismans in the exact same place. It's not as bad in The Lost City where the talismans are split up into two separate places that make sense but the addition of Song of the Caverns & The Mage Towers really improves T1 for me.

Thieves' Guild is kinda like a filler mission before the main plot starts and the game might be better off without it. If the Thieves' Guild was a fan mission instead of an OM then it would probably be highly praised for its autistic pixel hunts.

>>4369976
It some things I dislike like in Gold the Mages appearing in the Lost City, the mission loses the charm the original had where you really felt disconnected from the real world.

>>4369982
Yeah, considering that when the Keepers lock something with a special key, it's not just a mechanical lock but a glyph seal. Only keepers should be able to get in there. Anyone can get in the city once Garrett unlocks it, but the mages are in there already, which kinda trivializes the special locking mechanism that the keepers put in place.

...not to mention how annoying some of the NPC placements are. The place is infested with unavoidable knockouts. In the original you just had to deal with a few stray crays, elementals and environmental hazards. It's a mission that didn't need humans and adding them made it worse.

>>4369976
IMO if there was like a 'Thief: The Final Cut", I'd do it where there's no Guild or Mage Towers, with the Fire and Water talismans in The Lost City, the Earth talisman under the opera house, and the air talisman in the Hammerite cathedral
You get the best Gold mission without breaking the pacing too bad

>>4369179
Maybe I'm crazy but I don't remember ANY of that shit.

>>4370332
It's okay. Repression takes away the pain.

>>4370367
Not him, but Thieves Guild is kind of borked in NewDark since there is a huge lighting discrepancy compared to its OldDark version, for whatever reason. It's very noticeable in the restaurant. I think this may have been fixed recently though.

>>4370509
i think i'm using the latest version and guards are still completely retarded

>>4370643
I'm >>4370332 and I'm using the standard Thief Gold disc on my Windows 98 pc and I'm still not encountering these issues. So I'm crazy but not about this.

>>4336614
Skacky's missions (except the unseen) and sepulchre of the sinistral are must-plays for thief gold

>>4372517
>except the unseen

why's that? It's like the only mission where he tried something different. Even if the invisible monster was somewhat annoying, I'd rather play that than another city mission.

>>4370013
You could come with some contrived reason, like I think the Hand Mages didnt get all the background they needed, and like the Keepers they had their eyes on Garrett and followed him into the Lost city.

But I wish somebody made a Thief gold with no mages there.

>>4337172
Calendra's Cistern is overrated as fuck just because of the technology it involves despite the age of it, but Calendra's Legacy is genuinely one of the most amazing T2 FMs of all time.

>>4372465
Memes aside this is just another reason why Thief would never work today. Garrett is as close to true neutral as a character in a video game gets, he does jobs purely for his own monetary gain.

Thi4f misunderstood this and turned Garrote into batman who is edgy for the sake of being edgy who steals because he's a kleptomaniac that was born to steal or some shit.

It's awful but at least it's not a game about Garrett stealing from nobles because of drumpf. Though an argument could be made that Thief 2 involved some of this with the whole City Watch / Mechanists beating on the Pagans element.

>>4372810
What the fuck kind of statement is that? You can't say that with a straight face with a mission as savagely stupid like Midnight at Murkbell.

>>4372840

>shitting on Midnight at Murkbell

>>4372840
What's wrong with Midnight at Murkbell?

>>4372843
>Almost no equipment at the start for stupid reasons.
>Timed objective (about 10 mins), in a HUGE city. Good luck on your first playthrough.
>You're free to explore the great cityscape after you do it, but you still have no equipment.
>You can go back to your room but once you take your equipment, a horde of undead spawn because reasons.
>You can get your equipment but not trigger the undead event by exploiting the map, but if you KO humans and if they die later, it fails the mission.
>You naturally can't kill humans, which is fine, but you can kill the undead. Too bad one of them is considered a human and fails the mission when you kill it.
>The only way to enjoy the mission is to know it by heart and rush to Kharras Drahg.

Midnight at Murkbell is the textbook example of how not to design your mission. The other two are great, and Calendra's Cistern is even better, but Midnight at Murkbell is total crap and a huge waste of a fantastic cityscape.

>>4372860
>Almost no equipment at the start for stupid reasons.
>You're free to explore the great cityscape after you do it, but you still have no equipment.
>You can go back to your room but once you take your equipment, a horde of undead spawn because reasons.
Intended gameplay limitations that work quite well. You can explore everything without much danger but without your equipment - this is called a trade off. If you want to explore stuff with your equipment you must encounter the dangers of the mission.
>le "stupid reasons"

>Timed objective (about 10 mins), in a HUGE city. Good luck on your first playthrough.
I played this for the first time recently and did not have this issue. The map screen actually gives you a directly drawn route from the meeting at the pub to the church and if you actually use your map & compass and aren't directionally-retarded it's easy to get there on time on your first try. My first try took like 7 or 8 minutes but I learned from the Klatremus playthrough that I watched after it that you actually get like 12 or 13 minutes.

>You can get your equipment but not trigger the undead event by exploiting the map, but if you KO humans and if they die later, it fails the mission.
Complaining about an exploit that wasn't intended making the mission perform badly (knockouts that are not meant to be able to happen resulting in people dying while knocked out).

>You naturally can't kill humans, which is fine, but you can kill the undead. Too bad one of them is considered a human and fails the mission when you kill it.
Which one is that? Is it a common problem? Is it clearly intended by the author to fail the mission or just an accident?

>The only way to enjoy the mission is to know it by heart and rush to Kharras Drahg.
I played it for the frist time recently and I enjoyed it very much, didn't use a guide or anything and got Kharras Drahg about half way through the undead segment.

>>4372860
>Timed objective (about 10 mins), in a HUGE city. Good luck on your first playthrough.

You have a dotted line on the map telling you exactly how to reach the cathedral. But yeah, I wasn't expecting an actual timed objective the first I played it.

>You're free to explore the great cityscape after you do it, but you still have no equipment.
>You can go back to your room but once you take your equipment, a horde of undead spawn because reasons.

These are counter intuitive and probably very frustrating for a first playthrough, but work much better on repeated playthroughs. I normally hate ghosting but this mission makes challenging and fun.

>Too bad one of them is considered a human and fails the mission when you kill it.
And it takes a million hits to kill, plus its semi invisible and slow as shit.

>The only way to enjoy the mission is to know it by heart
I kinda agree. It gets much better on repeated playthroughs and I don't think it's as terrible as you make it seem.

>and rush to Kharras Drahg.
Is that the dagger or the amulet? I found the dagger incredibly annoying to use, so I mostly got by with the rest of the equipment.

>>4372884
>Intended gameplay limitations that work quite well. You can explore everything without much danger but without your equipment - this is called a trade off. If you want to explore stuff with your equipment you must encounter the dangers of the mission.
I hate limitations like that and I don't think they work well. First they're out of character for Garrett and second they make the mission a fucking chore.

>I played this for the first time recently and did not have this issue. The map screen actually gives you a directly drawn route from the meeting at the pub to the church and if you actually use your map & compass and aren't directionally-retarded it's easy to get there on time on your first try. My first try took like 7 or 8 minutes but I learned from the Klatremus playthrough that I watched after it that you actually get like 12 or 13 minutes.
Thank you I'm not directionally retarded (I'm one of the few people who really enjoy Thieves' Guild), but it is still stupid as fuck to have a timed objective so short in a map this big, especially when it's directly at the start.

>Complaining about an exploit that wasn't intended making the mission perform badly (knockouts that are not meant to be able to happen resulting in people dying while knocked out).
I complain about that because not giving equipment was stupid.

>Which one is that? Is it a common problem? Is it clearly intended by the author to fail the mission or just an accident?
>And it takes a million hits to kill, plus its semi invisible and slow as shit.
Kharras Drahg gives you HP when you stab something. Since it has a million HP I used it to replenish health, and when he died the mission was lost. And yes it's clearly intentional.

>I played it for the frist time recently and I enjoyed it very much, didn't use a guide or anything and got Kharras Drahg about half way through the undead segment.
I find it extremely weird how you can say Calendra's Cistern is shit when it's far better in every way.

>>4372895
Is that the dagger or the amulet? I found the dagger incredibly annoying to use, so I mostly got by with the rest of the equipment.
It's the dagger. It makes you less visible when you have it out.

>You naturally can't kill humans, which is fine, but you can kill the undead. Too bad one of them is considered a human and fails the mission when you kill it.
Is that the beast from another dimension you sometimes bump into?

Never played any Thief games but heard good thing over the years, I imagine you're some sort of Thief and have objectives like Hitman?

>>4374542
Pretty much, except instead of assassinating people you're typically after a significant piece of loot or two. It has a similar setup where you choose your equipment and get dropped into a large open-ended level. There's even one level where you use a disguise which is sort of like Hitman except more janky.

>>4365947
How does the hideout of Garrett look like?
I imagined it a lot smaller and temporary.

>>4375471
I like the usual depiction too: a small apartment in the heart of the City that serves well a thief and his lifestyle. TDP never really shows the player this safe place, always keeping Garrett out in the streets, and it works pretty well.
This one is like a mix between a noble's house and an underground dungeon. Feels like the former was readapted into the latter, or viceversa. It's hard to imagine what was the original intention but it's harder to picture Garrett living in a comfortable place in general.
Considering he hides the Eye there, the misssion probably takes places after TDP and at the time there was no story after that, no hint about Garrett's future.

>>4372895
The dagger is annoying to use because it's shorter than a regular sword and it makes zombies explode. The combination of having to stand closer and the explosive targets makes sure that you always have a 50% chance of dying from the explosion when you kill something. I guess that's one way to encourage stealth over violence amirite?

The biggest gripe I have with the mission is that one cop carrying a lantern whose illumination has infinite range. You could be a kilometer away and the tiniest glimmer from that lantern takes your light gem from black to white instantly.

>>4372614
but his city missions are the best city missions

>>4372840
>>4372860
>>4372884

This is exactly right though. Both Calendra missions suck ass. Both plot-wise and from a level-design standpoint.

my only problem with Midnight at Murkbell is the lolsorandumb humour and mercedes' cringy dialogue.

the level design is great, and forces the player to stay on edge throughout the entire mission. the first part is a great cinematic buildup with no real danger, and the time limit prevents the first time player from exploring too much of the city before the real mission starts. spawning the undead in the end prevents the player from being lulled into a sense of safety just because he got his gear back.

I've been trying to find a fan mission that I played a long time ago but can't remember the name of. I want to say it's T1 but at this point I'm not entirely sure. It's a city/rooftop mission and the only part I can clearly remember is that in one part of the city there is a square with a tall, mossy green tower in the center; at the bottom of the tower is a crayman and I think a connection to some underwater passage/caves maybe?

I liked the joke about the guy that got a fish shoved up his butt

>>4378119
I think that's Augustine's Revenge.

>>4375471
I always imagine comfy small attic bedrooms with access to the Thieves highway in case of emergency.

>>4378141
I thought it was too but I still have the FM installed from when I first played Augustine's Revenge and it doesn't seem to be.

>>4378119
>>4378141
>>4378161
It's definitely Augustine's Revenge, I remember that vividly.

>>4378161
There's clearly a tower with a Crayman in a series of tunnels below that tower in Augustine's Revenge, though. Perhaps there's another mission like that but I don't know it.

>>4378176
>>4378179
You're right, started a fresh game instead of loading the old save and going in a circle. Somehow I was completely missing a set of stairs.

>>4377106
>>4378148
Yet the Downwind Thieves Guild operates from a single place beneath the Overlord's Fancy.

>>4378243
On a side note I really love how The City is portrayed in this mission, but I just checked and the only other of this author's missions I've played is Nigel's Hidden Treasure, which I thought was pretty bad.

>>4378257

I didn't like augustine revenge but I thought three crowns was okay.

>>4378254
Well, they're a guild after all, powerful enough to afford a hq and not being raided weekly. Working alone Garrett has to constantly watch his back and stay on the move if he feels the heat around the corner.
The contrast between two opposite kinds of rogue is what makes me partially like that mission.

Im playing through Thief 1 right now and I'm stuck in the level where you need to steal the sapphire vase
I have a feeling that its one of two things; either I just suck with maps, or this is a level everyone considers annoying

>>4378310
What level?

name of level.

>>4378310
Where are you stuck? The maps are actually super accurate even if they lack captions. It's also important to carefully listen to the conversations.

>>4378315
>>4378334
it was the guild one, a lot of the sewer maps dont seem to be accurate, but I literally just found out where i need to be going

>>4378357
It's actually the one generally considered bad then, don't blame yourself too much

I'm playing the (first?) haunted cathedral mission in tdp. Got the main objectives, looking for the loot and the Serpentine choc (something like that).
Will I just wander around aimlessly for hours?

>>4378526
This mission has some notoriously hard to find loot. You need to really look around. The Serpentyle Torc is worth quite a lot (around 300 iirc). You need to look for a wooden door close not too far from the drawbridge.

>Start FM
>First thing you have to do is mantle through a small, waist high window that might be not even be mantleable in NewDark.

>>4378727
Don't you mean "not mantleable without NewDark"? The original engine's mantling code is flawed and won't let players mantle into low spaces or over narrow walls. NewDark fixed that.

Anything I should know of my first playthough of Thief 1?

Mods,Setting,Difficulty?

>>4379539
-Install TFix
-Rebind controls
-Play Normal first, skip Hard, then play Expert

-Black lightgem indicator light means that enemies can almost bump into you without noticing you
-Yellow lightgem indicator light means that enemies can't see you standing in a distance but might see you move
-Red lightgem indicator light means that even standing still in a distance may alert an enemy

-Carpet and moss are totally quiet (can't hear even jumping)
-Grass and sand are very quiet (jumping does not alert, running is inaudible)
-Wood and stone are moderately quiet (jumping alerts enemies, running doesn't alert unaware enemies)
-Shallow water is loud (running alerts nearby enemies)
-Metal is very loud (even walking alerts enemies)
-Marble tiles and gravel are extremely loud (sneaking while crouched wakes up dormant gods in the neighboring universe)
-Opening or closing doors is moderately quiet (unaware enemies are not alerted, aware ones are alerted)

-Mumbling and whistling guards are unaware. Quiet ones are alert and listening in for any disturbances until they hear something or conclude that there is nothing
-When destroying zombies with holy water or fire arrows, always aim at the waist
-Do not throw flashbombs. Use the drop key to drop them
-Crouch when coming down from an elevated platform. You can gently slide off, not only making the landing silent but also decreasing the distance and possibly preventing fall damage

>>4379539
>>4379558

To add to what this guy said:
I would recommend loading Thief 2's default contols and adding 'creep' (though I think in Thief 1 it's labelled as 'speed toggle' or something) to ctrl. With this scheme W is for walking which is incredibly useful in Thief.

The difficulties drastically change the gameplay, Plutonia is quite right though that you should start on Normal until you get the hang of the game. Gist is:
Normal: You can kill anyone (although killing is generally still more difficult and messier than ghosting or knocking out guards), in most levels you don't have to find any loot, early levels end once the main objective is found/complete (meaning you don't have to break out of whereever you've broken into, typically will have one main objective (steal the sceptre, steal the horn, steal the sword), a few paths will be blocked and a few areas will be added.

Hard: You can no longer kill servants, innocent civilians or bystanders - just guards - killing one will result in a game over, you now have to find a certain amount of loot in a level (not too much though and you will find most of it along the way), even in early levels you have to break out of whereever you've broken into to, levels typically have one extra objective to complete, sometimes this will unlock extra routes/areas in levels, guards go on longer patrol routes.

Expert: No killing anyone (save the undead) - killing results in game over, you now have to find a fair amount of loot (sometimes a frustrating amount), typically a third objective will have to be completed on top of the other objectives from Normal and Hard, guards go on even longer patrol routes, you have less health.


Play with headphones or a good speaker setup, Thief relies on positional audio, the guards can hear your every movement but you can hear them back. The sound design works so well you can tell which direction an incoming guard is coming from, how far away he is, what surface he is walking on,
(cont)

>>4379584
(cont)
It's so good that you can actually pinpoint the exact whereabouts of anyone coming near you. But, you have to be careful of every move you make, every surface you walk on, what speed you walk on them, whether you're in shadow or light. It can be quite overwhelming at first but when you get used to it, every other stealth game pales in comparison.

The most useful item is the blackjack, this will knock out unaware guards in a single hit.
Next most useful is the bow; regular arrows are really only useful against monsters or for hitting buttons from a distance. Water arrows are most useful, able to snuff out a torch or candle and give Garrett some much-needed darkness. They can also clean up blood stains (guards will notice blood-stains if left in a well-lit area).
Next most useful are Moss arrows; can be used on load surfaces to muffle Garrett's footsteps (it makes them silent). It's possible to go through the game without using them but they can be a real life-saver.
Fire arrows are useful against the undead and can be used to relight torches in a few puzzles in the game. However they will bathe you in light when used so use sparingly.
Gas arrows are rare and only appear late in the game but will knock out any enemy whether alerted or not. Don't be too close when you fire it though.

>>4379592

The sword may seem useless but there's a little more to it. Basically Thief was originally going to be a sword and sorcery RPG, but the sword fighting proved too clunky with mouselook... However that unintuitive sword fighting system stayed in the game. You can sword-fight in Thief, it's just insanely clunky and bafflingly obtuse and you have hardly any health... but it is possible.

Flashbombs are the best item in your inventory, use one to stun alerted enemies for a few seconds, in which they can be knocked out. Don't stand too close when throwing them as you can be blinded too.

>>4379597
Random tips here:

-Activated landmines can be deactivated by very carefully and slowly approaching them while holding out your lockpick. Once in range you can deactivate the mine with the pick.
-Moss and water arrows fly in an arc, affected by gravity. Fire and gas arrows are weightless and fly straight, so you'll have to aim directly and centering your target on the top of the bow sight.
-Ghosts and Hammerite haunts are not immune to conventional damage, ie. arrows and the sword
-You can collect back a rope arrow at the same time as you're jumping off the rope, allowing you to keep all your rope arrows through the mission
-"Down in The Bonehoard" is entirely different depending on the difficulty setting you've chosen. Normal has lots of easy to reach tiny loot, Expert has few hard to reach giant loot
-Locust swarms can be scared away with water arrows shot in the ground under them. It may take a couple.
-The 4 elements crystallize in concentrated areas, so you can find crystals for your arrows. Water crystals can be found in water, moss crystals are found in damp places with mold or grass, fire crystals appear in hot places and air crystals are found high up or where there's wind or steam
-Bunnyhopping can get you up to speeds that will kill you if you hit an obstacle

I've been thinking about making a dumb taffing around video about Thief and Thief 2 where I'm showcasing all kinds of weird glitches. The question is... how the hell does keyholing work? I've played these games for almost 20 years and haven't even accidentally reproduced anything close to that.

The one glitch I have to showcase is the good ol' NPC parachute or whatever it's called.

>>4379747
>Activated landmines can be deactivated by very carefully and slowly approaching them while holding out your lockpick. Once in range you can deactivate the mine with the pick.
This only works in Thief 2.

>>4380142
Keyholing doesn't really work in NewDark. You have to walk up to a door and get flush with the left or the right of its frame, then lean into it (forward or left if you're to the left, right if you're to the right). After a while your head should get through the door and you should be able to interact with what's behind. It's pretty useful if you want to speedrun The Mage Towers since you can keyhole the fire tower escape door and frob the lever, thus skipping all the other elemental towers. Some doors don't allow keyholing. Wooden doors in particular are impossible to lean into iirc.

A good area to practice keyholing is at the very start of the training mission in T1/G. It's pretty easy to do it.

It's also possible to keyhole the Talisman portcullises in Undercover but it's much harder to do. It involves the use of a rope arrow, getting stuck in a small carved brush and reading a papyrus to "reset" Garrett's position.

>>4380167
>This only works in Thief 2.

Hmm...weird. I seem to recall being able to defuse the mine in the Haunted Cathedral weapon shop but it could be that I'm just from another universe.