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ttlg - stuck in the past...


Bikerdude

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There are a few over there, of course that like it, the response I will admit is low at times. But if we quit posting, that is almost like giving in. I'd still post, and still let the community know there are missions released when they come out. Personally, I'm burned out on Thief. The Black Frog testing will be it for me for awhile. DrK is who I will test for next, that could be awhile. TDM is what I prefer, and where I am now. To each his own. I still like Thief and always will, I guess we all need a break from time to time.

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We definately should always post there when a new mission or new mod versions comes out. I think, as tdm improves, people will slowly start to migrate to our side eventually. This will probably be enhanced if T4 is rejected by the community. All we gotta tell ttlg people is that we are still here and we have a kickass mod, which, in time, will be superior to T1&2 in visuals, AI, versatility, gameplay and atmosphere.

 

I'd say that if we hada few more Great T1/T2 FM Author to make a mission for tdm and the mission was hyped well and good, the pressure for people to try tdm will be drastically increased.

 

I've got generally positive remarks for my missions, but the threads are usually not very long lived. I interpret this, like BA said, that there are a few TDM fans there, the others seem uninterested.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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I see quite a lot of value in TTLG, and think the occasional sniping and bad blood is really unfortunate. Not "we should all sit down and sing kumbayah" unfortunate, but unfortunate because it turns creative communities off of each other. I believe TDM's reception has been damaged by the smear campaigns run by a few posters over there, but also because of the (mostly incorrect) perception that TDM fans wish to "do away with old outdated Thief". Which is foolish, because technical issues aside, creative expression is creative expression no matter where it manifests. But if people perceive you are attacking their source of fun, they will rightfully consider you an asshole.

 

That said, the main problem isn't that Thief fans aren't trying and playing TDM in sufficient numbers; it seems to me that people are generally drifting away from Thief and Thief-style games. It has been said a lot of times, and we could say interest in FMs and FM production was cyclical (there was actually a pretty neat sinus curve to them -- yes, I did the Excel spreadsheet, trendline and all) - but this time, it's probably for real. We are seeing less and less missions being released, and also less people commenting on them. The What are you working on? thread is fairly silent as well aside from a few large projects (e.g. LarryG's keeper mission pack, Yandros' DCE, The Watcher's project and some more).

 

The TDM presence on TTLG is almost certainly beneficial, though; except it should not be the only forum to post stuff on. A continuous Moddb presence, or a regularly updated front page would be a major thing.

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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What about to remake some popular T1/T2/T3 FMs? I suppose, any OM cannot be remaked in TDM due to copyright issues.

That wouldn't be very practical due to the drastically different editing paradigms. You could maybe write a "converter", but there would still be a lot of work to do to make the results look good and the different assets would not translate well. You would probably have to put almost as much effort into the conversion work as into a completely new creation... and in that case, why not do the new thing?

 

I have thought of rebuilding my smallest mission, Prowler of the Dark (after all, it is set right before Return to the City; in Prowler, you break into the opposite half of the Builder complex you loot in RttC), but I just didn't have the proper textures (particularly metal, machinery and some pagan stuff) to do a halfway convincing job. Maybe I will do it one day... but again, why not build something new instead?

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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Well, my point about remaking T1/T2/T3 FMs in TDM is to let gamers to compare them. For example, let's take, say, Deceptive Perception 1, a relatively small FM. Would it be hard to remake it in TDM? I'm not sure (because I'm not a mapper at all), but I hope it wouldn't. Then, if someone would make this job, people would compare the original FM and its new version, and who knows - maybe they would understand that TDM is way more powerful then T1/T2/T3.

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I believe TDM's reception has been damaged by the smear campaigns run by a few posters over there, but also because of the (mostly incorrect) perception that TDM fans wish to "do away with old outdated Thief". Which is foolish, because technical issues aside, creative expression is creative expression no matter where it manifests. But if people perceive you are attacking their source of fun, they will rightfully consider you an asshole....

The TDM presence on TTLG is almost certainly beneficial, though...

This is my impression as well.

 

To be frank all that Thief versus TDM grow weary. and certainly won't rise a positive attitude.

As it is all pro/con ttlg talk.

To each his own. Communities always have a mixed bag of people, opinions, preferences ...

This hobby is about having fun, not to proselytize ;)

 

Posting on ttlg (and any other place) let people know what's up with TDM and it's FM's. And that's good! don't expect much response there though - people catching up and really do like TDM will register and feeback at this forum. and this make sense. why should they do on ttlg? :D

"To rush is without doubt the most important enemy of joy" ~ Thieves Saying

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Actually, here is something that has bothered me about the whole thing: TDM is the TTLG game. Made by people from TTLG, custom-tailored for the no-compromises hardcore preferences of TTLG, which, as Robert Yang has noted on his blog, is not the best way to appeal to the broadest demographic. That people may actually end up rejecting it on mostly superficial grounds is - I don't know. Out of left field? Or just monumentally ironic? :huh:

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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Well, there is almost none active members registered after 2008. Most of them are registered circa 2000 which makes them familiar with thief series about 10 YEARS. For them, it's inevitable to be bored of thief concept. T3 should have gained new members to community but it couldn't. If T4 will be a failure too, both ttlg and tdm community are going to be as dead as a dodo.

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That said, the main problem isn't that Thief fans aren't trying and playing TDM in sufficient numbers; it seems to me that people are generally drifting away from Thief and Thief-style games.

 

If T4 will be a failure too, both ttlg and tdm community are going to be as dead as a dodo.

 

Hm.. Is it casual gaming then? Our generation was used to 'intelligent' games which required some dedication and learning. The new generation plays dumbed down console games and is not interested in games which require a longer attention span? Crude generalizations, sure, but the trend is real.

 

Will these casual gamer people mature up into gamers who want something else what the gaming industry gives them and therefore forms communities to make games of their own.. Or is this type of communities the last remnants of the first gaming generations, soon to be wiped out to make room for the new, simpler, form of gaming entertainment?

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Will these casual gamer people mature up into gamers who want something else what the gaming industry gives them and therefore forms communities to make games of their own.. Or is this type of communities the last remnants of the first gaming generations, soon to be wiped out to make room for the new, simpler, form of gaming entertainment?

 

I wasn't mature when I met Thief series, so it's not totally releated with being mature. What makes thief players different is conditions of it's time. Remember our old computers. They were slow, we had to wait patiently. They were hard to code, we had to learn dedicatedly. But now computers are fast, more easy to code which reflects to games & gamers. I don't want to believe we are the last remnants of the first gaming generations but it seems that we are.

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When I started gaming, there were no personal computers in the home where I lived. We had Atari 2600, Colecovision, Intellivison. Consoles that did little more than push little blocks around the screen. lol I still have that old Atari and all the games I owned for it. Doesn't work anymore, sadly.

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Thanks for the link Melan, really interesting read!

 

If T4 will be a failure too, both ttlg and tdm community are going to be as dead as a dodo.

;-) I read the same doomsday thoughts back in the days of T3 on ttlg ;)

 

Don't worry, as long as enough people love, play and map for a game associated communities will exist regardless of their bodycount. Naturally both a T4 success or failure will have some impact to T2 FM's. And failure probably raise interest for TDM because if that happens TDM will be the only true stealth game with a (comparatively) modern engine existing.

 

Hm.. Is it casual gaming then?

One major difference to the "golden age" of TTLG games also is the huge impact of the internet since. It made live much more fast paced and did shorten the attention span of new generation gamers a lot with the next entertainment fix just one mouse-click away (also true for things outside gaming) ...

Edited by fllood

"To rush is without doubt the most important enemy of joy" ~ Thieves Saying

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I think some of it may come down to the first impressions. The first release or two of the mod was not as polished as it is today, and that was an unavoidable reality. We had to release sooner than later in order to get the player feedback needed to pull things into sharper focus.

 

It may seem like we're not listening to player feedback all the time, but the truth is that we have a long list of things we want to get finished, and not enough people to do it. Perhaps it looks like we don't care but that couldn't be further from the truth, we care very much.

 

I hope the upcoming 1.05 release will inspire TTLG players to give the mod another shot when they see we've addressed issues with blackjacking and the AI behavior.

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I personally wouldn't stop posting there. Yes, some folks seem to ignore the mod, but we've been seeing more newbies around here as of late. That is a good thing. A wile back, somebody asked for a mission similar to Bonehord. I steered him in the direction of Flakebridge Monastery and he thoroughly enjoyed it, writing a review of the mod and all. I still believe TDM will go through the balloon effect, where the more assets and missions are available for it, the more attention it will get. The more bugs that are fixed and the more performance tweaks will draw people in too.

 

Also, account registration dates cannot be used to determine how long someone has been a fan of/known about Thief. I didn't register until 2008, but I desperately tried to get Thief 1 to work smoothly on a Pentium 166 with 32 megs of RAM, Win95, and a 2 MB video card.

 

I wonder too about TDM... perhaps a lot of people on TTLG just don't have the hardware to play it well? It would be cool if there was a survey of what machines Thief players use. Given the trend away from PC gaming, I'll bet a lot of people don't bother to upgrade the computer as long as it does the necessary things (web browsing, paper writing, music playing, and of course Thief!).

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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First impressions was fine

 

Clearly, not everyone thought that way though. :) As good as the first releases were, I think many couldn't look beyond the loose threads...and it coloured their perception. I'm guilty of doing that from time to time, but I try to keep an open mind.

 

I think dark mod team should release at least one big and good quality mission with mod back in 2009...

 

We could do that and more with extra hands. :)

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Let's remember that we're all serious Thief fans, that's the main thing. :) And TTLG is like the Thief fan HQ, and it's ok for some fans to prefer the Thief game engines for use in Thief fan missions vs using TDM. But considering that TDM is custom made for allowing the ultimate Thief fan missions to be created, I think many will eventually give it a try and appreciate it's qualities. :)

 

I was thinking, it would be great to have an official re-make of Thief and Thief II, keeping the excellent stories and gameplay that we know and love the same, but just update the graphics and guard AI using the DOOM IV engine or maybe the latest version of the Crysis 2 engine. Sort of like the ultimate Thief Gold versions; Thief Platinum. :)

Edited by Dunedain
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I was thinking, it would be great to have an official re-make of Thief and Thief II, keeping the excellent stories and gameplay that we know and love the same, but just update the graphics and guard AI using the DOOM IV engine or maybe the latest version of the Crysis 2 engine. Sort of like the ultimate Thief Gold versions; Thief Platinum. :)

 

and no surprise in it.

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Let's remember that we're all serious Thief fans, that's the main thing. And TTLG is like the Thief fan HQ, and it's ok for some fans to prefer the Thief game engines for use in Thief fan missions vs using TDM. But considering that TDM is custom made for allowing the ultimate Thief fan missions to be created, I think many will eventually give it a try and appreciate it's qualities.

 

Totally agree !

 

I was thinking, it would be great to have an official re-make of Thief and Thief II, keeping the excellent stories and gameplay that we know and love the same, but just update the graphics and guard AI using the DOOM IV engine or maybe the latest version of the Crysis 2 engine. Sort of like the ultimate Thief Gold versions; Thief Platinum.

 

facepalm

 

 

Proceed with caution!

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