kano

Yeah Wine is a really impressive bit of work. I probably wouldn't have switched if I didn't get to keep my favorite retro games that I still play, like Thief.

@Skaruts: That's why you encrypt stuff.

Yeah if you are using Windows 7 I would at the very least continue to do so until the last moment, when support ends. They were forced by market pressure to extend both Windows 98 and Windows XP support. And if enough people stay on Windows 7, we can make it happen again.

The only two reasons I used Windows was because it was what I was taught in school as a kid and it ran my video games. But now that I am older, video games are less important to me. I wouldn't say that I outgrew them, because I don't really believe that and I still enjoy playing older games (which luckily do almost always work on Linux). It's just that I'm not into modern ones, because they mostly suck ass. From the mandatory spyware they come wrapped in, to the lack of fan-mod/level support, I can just pick them up for $5 from the used bin on a console, as that's all they're worth to me. The upsides of doing this are that I don't have to deal with Windows and I don't have to worry about what proprietary software houses are doing to my computer. I'm really happy that AMD has improved their Linux drivers significantly. It used to be that NVidia was the only choice for graphics on Linux. But now we actually do have a choice. Back in the days of Windows XP, I started teaching myself Linux as a side project, after experiencing Microsoft's product activation malware. I knew that in time, the tyranny on Windows would only get worse, so I needed to come up with an exit strategy sooner than later. Microsoft's self-admitted wilful deception of users with GWX and foisting of bloatware onto customers that they never asked for because of business deals with third parties (Whose computer is this anyway?) has proven me right. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/241587-microsoft-finally-admits-malware-style-get-windows-10-upgrade-campaign-went-far https://www.howtogeek.com/342871/hey-microsoft-stop-installing-apps-on-my-pc-without-asking/

My favorite track has to be "twins". Sounds creepy and also awesome. I can imagine listening to it in a dark place.

If you want projected shadows, just enter g_showplayershadow 1 into the console. It doesn't look that great because our protagonist's arms float at a strange angle, since he's not animated from the waste up...

What I want to know is, when I can pull a "scorpion", peg an AI from the shadows with a rope arrow, and then drag it to my current location.

IMO The textures are still holding up nicely, but it would be cool if whoever made props like the vases could spit out higher poly versions of the models and then just plop them into the game. (don't know if it is actually that easy)

They need to migrate to a COW file system, where undoing a change that damaged the system takes less than 2 seconds. They do have a COW file system, ReFS, but you're not allowed to use it for Windows, only for data.

There are already flashmines and explosive mines that the player drops along a guard's patrol route. (aren't there gas mines too?) Anyway, sticking these things to walls would serve little purpose, as guards don't generally walk on the walls, since they're not aliens.

Some BIOS update utilities work in Windows. You just know that at some point this is going to bite somebody in the ass. If you interrupt a BIOS flash, don't expect the computer to start ever again. Only a question of how long before some user gets nailed by this.

Yeah I don't see a reason to lock this thread, as we are all adults here, and we can carry on a mature discussion and respect each other. I do miss having Bikerdude around though.

It amazes me the amount of trouble people are willing to go through to fight to decide how their computer behaves, which is of course their genuine right, but is slowly being stolen away from them bit by bit by large corporations. Supporting companies like Microsoft only makes the problem worse, which is why I will no longer do so.

Makes me think of blackjacking sleeping AI's in Thief 1 and 2. They would spring to a standing position and then fall down. ha ha ha The cheapest way to implement this is to only spawn in a new AI if the player knocked out an existing one and the player isn't around to see a new one spawn in. You can just spawn it on the path finding area, so that it doesn't teleport into solid geometry and drop dead immediately. You could probably implement this into your FMs easily enough.

I do miss the days of starting deathmatches on the streets in Thief 3. The AI's would respawn. So all you would do is, get one faction that hates you to chase you to another faction that hates the first, and then climb up somewhere where they couldn't reach or see you, and watch the fun! And when one character lost the fight, another would come a minute or so later and take his place. And of course the loud sounds of shouting and combat attracted everyone in the vicinity. I did this in Thief 1 as a kid too. I just had to see what would happen if I introduced the hammerites to the zombies. Even though the graphics in Thief 1/2 are so primitive, the guards have the best combat animations! The guards don't actually fight very well though; they are very vulnerable to circle strafing. If you circle around and pelt them with small attacks, the Thief 1 and 2 guards can't keep up with you! Useful if you ever decide to do a space marine play-through of those two games.

Probably not. The thing is that Thief 1 and 2 were pretty far from what you get with mainstream games today. And publishers only care about money. And to make money, they must appeal to the mainstream. So any new Thief game that comes out will be Thief in name only. For the record, I might have bought and played Thief 4 if it wasn't like every game today and didn't require some online service like Steam in order to play. I wouldn't have paid full price for it, given the lack of fan mission editing tools and even a dedicated jump key, but I would have picked it up on sale. But as long as publishers believe they know better than me what I want from a product, (how about a Linux version too?) I'll continue not giving them money. Maybe I'll get a used copy for the console for $5 some day... Maybe.

And the great thing about gas arrows is that they can knock out multiple AI's, just get them all clustered together first.

Jumping directly to OpenGL 4.6 would obsolete many players' hardware. And you can already do amazing stuff with 3.3, just take a look at Blender Eevee, as that's what it uses.

With shadow maps enabled, in general FPS is great. But in some locations, such as the first doorway you go through in "A House of Locked Secrets" they kill FPS, especially when you look at the ground. Video card is a GTX770-4GB, soft shadows is set to high, and shadow map resolution is at 1024, single pass off. This doesn't happen with stencil shadows.

Brilliant!

Yeah the water reflected like that in the original game. But I don't remember the surface looking quite so detailed.