Ombrenuit

Frankly, this doesn't belong in a thief game, and I haven't seen typed dialogue in a game, an rpg, or anything of the sort outside of a mmorpg in the past decade. It is completely unnecessary. If you wish to have dialogue then you might employ the morrowind system or the baldur's gate system by choosing replies etc. Typed dialogue would take too much (the code searching for keywords) work for it to be worthwhile when you can simply do otherwise. Typed dialogue came from the era of muds when people had to type commands do actions. Oh wait, we have controls to perform actions . Do what you wish.

Really? This whole time I thought it was a pokemon.

Ohio isn't that great, I might add

Dram I agree to an extent. Cooperation over the internet could be fun, granted, but I think only if you were playing with one other person. This would be stealing in a linear, cinematic environment against the enemy AI that would make it interesting. Each player could begin at two separate entrance points to break into the castle, to cooperate among several puzzles to get the gold, such as mechanisms that can be used at one player's end to give the other player access to an off-limits area. Guards could be more densely populated so that players would have to work together to get passed them. As one player distracts, the other leaps in to grab the gold, and then watches as the attracted guards run into a trap the two thieves created together. I can already think of an interesting puzzle, a room that is a labyrinth in pitch darkness, yet the room above it is an observation deck. One player in the observation deck can see where the walls are because at their tops they have diamonds that glint that the player on the ground floor cannot see. The player in the observation deck must guide the player blindly through the labyrinth past the few guards (they could be revenants, it could be a set of catacombs) so that he can reach the end of the room to see the only torch lit behind one wall and a ladder. Climbing up that ladder and following the lines of diamonds across the tops of the wall could finish off the puzzle. Players might in this instance start with only a sword and a few broad heads, and may acquire various equipment throughout their sections of the castle (their meeting being about halfway through the mission) and being able to send each other that equipment to get past goals via chutes. This way the player in the lower halls of the castle might be able to acquire moss arrows to shoot a "bridge" across the ballroom floor and reach a door that can only be opened with a key sent down from the master bedroom to the ballroom below, all this without a dense population of patrolling guards around the ballroom area forcing the players to use their wits, not their brawn, to get them through the obstacles. A two player mission could be very interesting Dram, and if someone decides to make a cooperative mode for two players, I think it could be a lot of fun. This all assumes as well that the players can communicate with one another via text or mics.

I actually never took into accountability the fact that the ideas could be implemented by the user, I guess that shows my dependency . One thing about these is the fact that they can only really be effectively used in a campaign. The reason being is that it has to be something that the player encounters and is made aware of early on in the mission cycle, and once they reach some of the later levels, they will be on their toes about traps. It's part of the reward theory of game design, but if implemented in only one random level, the player can't really stumble on it and effectivly learn from the experience for use later because that knowledge would only have benefited him if he had seen it in a mission prior. Although my favorite out of the traps is the trapped chest and I believe would be the best to implement in my own missions because of its simplicity; notification by the different sound it emits when picking it. If these traps, however, were standardized for example, in the dark mod campaign itself, this is a double edged sword. These traps would probably find their way into every mission imaginable, overused, and overdone enough to drive the player mad.

I realize this is essentially stealing the idea from games such as Dungeons and Dragons and the like, but I'm curious of what you all would think of this type of game play mechanic adding a little more to the formula. In games such as this, the rogue takes on a role that involves disarming traps for his party. He has the ability to detect traps which become marked on the map, either on a stretch of floor that when walked upon springs blades, or flame, or ice, and the like or the same deal except on an object. Yes, there have been traps in the thief universe in terms of puzzles, but I think this could present a much simpler type of trap. For a trap indicator there are many options for a good rogue. Perhaps the floor around the one that is trapped sounds slightly different, warning the perceptive player that he may be in danger. Perhaps it would be textured differently or have a glint to it of some sort? Trapped items may do the same. However, this "trap" wouldn't do anything more then to deal damage of some sort to the player, restricting the wary player's movements across a floor if they try to avoid the trap, and keeping the player on his toes about grabbing all the gold in sight if he sees that it has a shine differently then others. Grabbing the gold would spring the trap if left armed. In the case of a chest, perhaps the player might be alerted that the chest is trapped simply because the lockpicking sounds (clickety clackety) just sound hollow, different, distant. They might know that after they lockpick the chest, they may want to open it from the side as to not spring the trap on their person, but upon thin air, safe from harm. Disarming the trap could perhaps take a more unrealistic route and just require you to use your lock picks to "magically" find where the lock on the track is on the floor or the object and disarm it. Another route for disarming could be throwing an object that would spring it a safe distant away from ye. This may have been discussed before and if so, I apologize, but it could add some flavor to some missions if used correctly (sparingly enough not to make the player overly cautious, but a few well avoided traps would reward the player for his cleverness). Thoughts?

And has someone also mentioned the enormity such a an undertaking would entail? It would be an IMMENSE feat to accomplish, a lot of manpower, and many resources. Then again, I'd like to mention that co-opping a mission would only work on a mission designed specifically for two players to interact, and because the Dark Mod is single player focused, would it really be anymore fun to play a mission designed for one person with two people? Oh you could take out twice as many guards--oh wait, how much fun would that be .

I knew it! You gave yourself away when you decided to leave your Ninja Glasses at home this morning. You're the only one without.

Ok, so my friends acknowledge that I'm into Thief. It didn't come to a surprise to any of them when one of my best mentioned that he found a book that I might want to check out, Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief, and it peaked my interest. It's the biography of a real life jewel thief in the 60s through early 80s, and quite the tale. Bill Mason isn't exactly what you would call the archetypical thief, he's a family man and a real estate agent with just an unusual hobby. This is to say he wasn't exactly a career criminal, and he didn't exactly need the jewels either. He did it for the adrenaline rush, the challenge, and the problem solving; and I can't stress enough how exciting some of these heists were. He has some class too. He never once resorts to violence, although he gets shot in one heist. He thinks of every possibility and robs people when their away at dinner most often. He gets the goods by climbing a rope from a sixteen story building to get to someone's balcony more than once, and no one suspects anything when they see him climbing a rope in his back yard with his kids hanging off of him. He's actually a pretty normal guy, and you'll be amazed sometimes at how lucky he gets. The doors that are left unlocked, alarms unset, how the jewels are almost always where you'd expect them to be (in the bedside drawer)--it's an interesting social commentary through a thief's eyes that evokes much of the feelings I think we all get when we play Thief ourselves. Sometimes it's hard to get your head around the fact that these were real people getting their diamonds stolen, and that these people were really hurt. The authorship is nicely written, sarcastic, and a bit cynical, but it's still hard to feel a bit bad for some of the people he was robbing, although they were celebrities. He shows some remorse later on, but the toll on his family, friends, (especially his kids and his wife) really destroyed much of his life, and for what? A hobby? That isn't to say that I grew to hate the man--he has a lot of charisma, but that isn't to say that he was any robin hood. But why, you ask, isn't this "confession" used to prosecute him? Well, in America we have a system that says that someone can't be tried for the same crime twice, and plus, many of these crimes he got immunity for. His statute of limitations ran out, so he's free to spill the beans on all his heists, worth $35 million in jewels. I read it all within a week. It's quite the thrill and quite the life that I would suggest to anyone interested in picking up a good read. You will go through it quick, and his antics are pretty entertaining (some I'm dying to mention, but are just too good to spoil). I also like how he continually keeps things in perspective with his actual life, and yes, he was arrested, multiple times. You can't be a jewel thief these days, but this is the next best thing. Pick up this book.

DopeFish, what reason is there to add new weapons? Really, how exciting could they be? Don't add new tools and weapons if they don't add anything to the game really. In Thief 2x I never used any of the newly added weapons, and I won't use them anytime in the future; they served no purpose (other than the being able to make an ice bridge, which I agree, had some neglected puzzle potential) other then some experimentation, which got dull after a while. If they are getting superfluous (The regular Thief arrows pretty much cover the board; you don't need more then one fire arrow/more then one sword. The player will just pick the best of the two and leave it at that.) The only possible reason for a player to add his or her own weapons other then give their own flavor to the mission (which personally, I think is, like I said, superfluous) is to add them for new puzzle skill elements, which would definitly be interesting if used correctly. Creativity should be used in designing dynamic levels, puzzles, stories, and gameplay, not wasted on modeling a new sword. A Noisemaker arrow is sufficient in its use already--there is absolutely no reason to add rocks to accomplish the same end unless there was no noisemaker arrow to begin with. To me thief was about stealth, and there is no challenge if you play by dispatching all the guards--you do not need more ways to do this. It's just futile.

For interest, another picture of the castle I presented in the first post.

For the first picture, does it really have to be a dynamic lights? After all, couldn't they be static lights like in the thief games?

I agree to an extent--although this seems more like politics than anything else. Grand Theft Auto Vice City for me was the most overrated game I've ever played. Although my opinion, the physics were awful, you can't run and shoot at the same time, and the missions were reptitive. I never could bring myself to finish it; I never did have that much fun. However, after the Hot Coffee fiasco, it seems to me that most developers are going to try to distance themselves as far away from the reckage as possible so they arn't fingered by certain angry senators. In a sense they are presenting the media that despite the exceptions, the video game industry is respectable. However, even if this is a result of politics, I still agree that we have moved past the era where games need to be mindless, but where to draw the line exactly is up for debate. Is Resident Evil 4 mindless violence? A disgrace to the industry? Where do you draw the line?

I think it's self explanatory. This is what Thief 3 would have been like had it not been for the Xbox, which inevitably curved some of the more creative ideas. So, The Dark Mod will inevitably finish some of Ion Storm's more creative works, notably extensive use of the Rat Pro arrow in many areas. I do seem to remember someone mentioning the thief gaining a chainsaw arrow from the Inventor's guild about halfway through the campaign.

I was planning a mission for the Dark Mod featuring a castle that exists in the real world, namely France. However, when I first saw this photograph I felt I needed to share it with you all, and why not make a thread for these sorts of moody photographs? It would be great for mission inspiration I would think and a bit of fun too. Here is mine:

I understand that graphics, especially water effects, arn't everything; it was merely a point of interest. We're all still pleased by the Dark Project regardless of its graphical shortcomings. But, I think we need to consider that games are much like women, and it helps us get into the mood much more if we don't have something ugly to play with.

Heh, ya thats right, I'm already packing my bags now.

I understood that the Dark Mod had water, otherwise I wouldn't have considered it . It's just that my main concern is that it won't look nice. In Thief, of course the graphics of the day were limiting, it was frankly ugly. My concern is that water won't be attractive, and I'm sure the Doom 3 can do much with it, but it is still a slight anxiety of mine. It is a good point with the footprints though. However, I do think the droplets would be a novel concept, and the water that drips doesn't have to alert guards.

Maximus, I think anyone here can tell you its possible. When it comes to game design etc., the sky is almost always the limit, but resources and labor are not unlimited. I doubt there are many who would go through the trouble of customizing your mission for you , but I can't speak for another's genorosity. Just, from my experience, if you can't do it yourself, don't get your hopes up

I didn't quite know where to post this, but I figured that because it had to do with nature, I might as well return it to my old thread. An idea, I've designed a mission based on Chenonceau, a castle built over a river almost like a bridge. I've been thinking of water as a result because of its central role in the mission. First off, may I ask if there has been some design of water to be used in the Doom 3 engine? Will it look nice? Next, I just wanted to propose something very simple that would, I think, immerse the player a little more. After the player pulls himself out of the water, droplets of water drip off his cloak for about a minute afterword. As the player looks down he can see them dripping wherever he is, and of course, he has dripping footprints. Perhaps a guard can be suspicious if he sees the water (or the footprints) in a place it doesn't belong, such as a mansion? It's simple, but I actually think it could be one of those little things that draws you in.

Welcome to commerticialism, if it's a square wheel that sells, why reinvent it? They are so afraid to innovate because there are such high stakes now on the industry (as the next gen games will cost millions to make), they can hardly afford a commertial failure, and if they can why take the risk? The companies that lose sight also lose the reason they were making games in the first place; it's a sad time.

For me it was Battlefield Earth...look it up if you havn't heard of it; it's god awful. However, I have this gut feeling that Doom the movie is going to be up there on the worst movies ever list.

I agree with Unskilled Laborer. I think their ideologies should not be approached from a "Opposites" perspective, but they should have their own cultures and customs beyond just the fact that they seem to disagree.

All MMOs are a grind, that is how the genre is defined. I thought World of Warcraft would be different, but only the first twenty levels were any fun for me, after level forty it became a long grind where you were essentially forced to find a group (and to find a good group was near impossible in the later levels, at least on Illidan). It would take 2 minutes to kill one enemy for the same experience it would to kill an enemy at level twenty (which would take 5 seconds at that time). It just got frustrating and I felt like I was doing nothing but watching my character attack and attack and attack. The quests got less creative as the game went on (Go kill 5 murlocs level 10, 20, 30, 40...), and the standard (Collect 5 turtle steaks for me), when they have a .01% drop rate. I even got a plugin that would tell me how much time I played (on that character, 180 hours), and divide it into the activities I was doing. 50% of the time was spent traveling, and frankly, after spending 90 hours nearly four strait days walking around the world in that game...hey I want those three days back! Ya, so you have to know what you are getting into with those games, and personally, I find them to get boring real quick when the leveling slows down

oDDity has a point, and I never enjoyed Dungeon Seige. I did, however, fall in love with the simplicity of Diablo II online, and I also loved Baldurs Gate 2 (I did not like NWN...by the second part of the game I wanted to put a drill to my head if I had to clean out another cave). However, BG2 and Diablo 2 are two completely different games, one being an RPG and Diablo 2...you arn't roleplaying, and if anything it is closer to an action/strategy game then an RPG, minus the addictive nature of item collecting. Diablo 2 was only fun for its online quality, and I don't think anyone could really get much enjoyment out of the single player portion (well, I know I never did).