Macsen

You don't have to 'like it' but whingeing on a message board isn't going to solve anything. You have to take action! When Gandhi was thrown off a train in South Africa did he log on to the Dark Mod forum and complain? No! If you're unhappy with the state of the world, you either need to change the world or change your place in it. Why do you complain at all anyway, Mr Nihilist? If you were really a nihilist you'd be stoic and accept the world as it was because that's the only way it could ever be under the rules of cause and effect. Looks like you're trying to have it both ways. You don't want to have to take responsibility for your own actions but you want other people to take responsibility for theirs.

I must say I agree with the woman, I'm tired of this constant whingeing about how crap our lives are. Your lives aren't crap, and anyone who thinks so should be booted into a time machine to experience a sorry existance in any other century - or better yet have to leave the USA/Europe and see how hard it is for other people in comparison. I'm not an USA lover, there's plenty wrong with the place BUT it's without a doubt the best evil empire we've had ruling over us in the history of man. Yes life there is unfair but it's unfair everywhere else too, stop complaining.

You only need two words translated: ¡Pare, ladrón! Arrêtez, voleur! Stoppen Sie, Dieb! Arrestisi, ladro! Pare, ladrão! Atal, leidr! And so on... But will it be possible to translate the menu screen?

The page already exists.

I'm sure they could add that 'baby' picture into the Dark Mod as an in-joke. If you look through an Inventor's Guild microscope maybe.

A thread for all kinds of awesome steampunkery to inspire the Dark Mod Team. Just to draw your attention to this man's awesome Steampunk Costume! His steampunk device is amazing. Some kind of mad steampunk elephant.

Yes but the country Dram comes from only started a few years ago so he can be forgiven for getting his history jumbled up.

No. What secret objective? Well if you start putting in 20th century architecture you might as well go the whole hog and put in guns and stuff... but that wouldn't be very Thief-like.

Glad there's no art deco. It's OK in its place... its place isn't the dark mod. Ah! There's a piano in the room where you kill the final boss. If you kill him and frob the piano at the same time it plays Toccata and Fugue in D minor and a message pops up saying something like 'You like being dramatic, don't you?' It's those little details that make an FM great.

Omnious Bequest was the best thief FM in my opinion. I enjoyed killing the final boss while playing Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor on the piano. While on the subject on 20th century architecture and the like in Thief... I wonder what the Dark Mod team's stance is on the Art Deco architecture of the mechanists? It was in Thief II, but this period of architecture is 1920s and 30s, so I presume it's not going to be in the Dark Mod? I hope so because it looked completely out of place...

Yes, that's the kind of mission structure I was considering. But rather than having a time limit on your actions you'd simply have to find a way of getting the two together. For instance you'd find a readable saying 'When thou want to meet, leave a rose upon my desk' or something, and then of course you'd have to do the same on the other side before the first person has become bored of waiting and left. I'm still not a fan of the idea of having to drag a big clunky camera around, however. I want the player to be like a paparazzi, grabbing whatever shots are available in the heat of the moment rather than having to set everything up beforehand.

What I meant is 'you might as well pinch it' is that creating an objective where you simply have to approach an inanimate object to take a picture isn't much different from an objective where you have to steal something. The difference with taking a photograph of people who move about is that there are more factors to take into account than a mission where you just steal something. You a have to take into account your location, how you're going to get the two together in the same shot, how you're going to get them facing away from you so that they don't see the flash, how you're going to get out of the location you've put yourself in, and so on... I think there's more scope for replaying a mission and trying different ways to get the shot you need, than if you were taking a picture of an inanimate object. Why not just get him to pain the portrait at his house? We all know artists paint to a romantic ideal rather than the idiosyncratic facial features of the person in question so it won't matter.

I don't think the internal workings of the camera matters that much. Since there are great steampunk robots stomping around this world and all. I'd prefer the photo to be of a person or, better yet but probably harder to code, persons rather than a solitary object. If you just have to stand in front of something solitary and take a picture of it you might as well steal it, but having to take an oppertunity to photograph someone who's on the move makes things more dynamic. I like Maximius' idea of having to break back in to the inventors shop to develop the photos however, and the shop being on higher alert because the camera is gone.

I don't have an internet connection at my flat where my fastest PC is kept so can't download the latest Dark Mod stuff. I have internet at my house where I spend weekends but the PC is too slow to run Doom 3. I'm doing what I can with the stuff I have though and am currently building a copy of a local castle, but that's more out of interest in the castle than for a Dark Mod mission. I'm not asking anyone else to build this mission for me, but there's no point for me to keep the idea to myself while I'm unable to build missions.

Canada is deploying the troops! Looks like Norway and Denmark are also getting involved. And the US, because you can't have a war without them under the Crazy Neo-con Act 1981. It's only a matter of time until some eskimos claim the oil as their own though.

Those pesky Russians and Canadians are launching their bids for oil that is only available because of global warming which is caused by people using too much oil. Canada has hockey sticks, Russia has vodka to keep them warm. Who will be the least incompetent in battle? Could the Arctic be the battleground* of the future rather than the Middle East? How many penguins must die to satisfy their lust for black gold?** * or battlemush. ** none, for they reside in the south.

I dunno, you could carry all kinds of pylons and antenna around in the last mission of Thief II and no one had a problem with that. Most cameras from that era could fold up retty small anyway... OR you could have the camera as an item you have to hoist around just as you would a KO'd guard or cadaver. You could also transport it around the mission on a dumb-waiter and the like. I'm not that keen on the mechanical eye idea. It goes far beyond Steampunk...

It's a pun on the fact that the thief keeps himself in the darkness. I thought that was pretty obvious.

I like that idea, but that might stop the player being able to look at the photos afterwards. And it would make it impossible to capture people on the move. Also the player might be short of patience if he has to wait for the camera for a few minutes. Perhaps to add an element of that tension the player would have to set the camera down like you said and play around with a few knobs and whistles before it is set to take the picture. A bit like the lockpicking mini-game from Thief 3?

I'd considered this before but was reminded of the possibility by Bioshock. The idea is for a mission where you have to break into a building but, rather than stealing something, you have to take a picture of a person or item with an old 17th century camera. Perhaps you'd have to take an incriminating photo of a lord and lady having an affair so you can blackmail them later. Or maybe take photos of the security around a vault and sell it to a thieves guild. The catch is that the camera also uses a flash which will alert any one in the area that you're there. A handheld camera that takes flash pictures would be a bit anachronistic, but I think it would be quite fun trying to get to the best vantage point to take the picture, and trying not to be seen doing it. The obvious name for such a mission would be 'Camera Obscura'! Lot me know wat you think of the idea. And any ideas as to wether this would be possible or not? (BTW, before the mod team panics again, I'm not saying you should be adding this function as part of the core package)

Be that as it may it doesn't mean map makers will also choose to 'stay away' from thief 3. Personally I think most of the game's problems were simple enough to sort out and that there's some good concepts there to 'inspire' mission designers, even if they were poorly executed. Regarding horror missions, I still thinks there's something to be said for 'steampunk-woo', which hasn't really been explored in any of the thief games. Exploring the links between mechanists that bring robots to life to necromancers which re-animate corpses. There's a good theme for a mission there somewhere I think, which could draw some inspiration from the Cradle.

Haha, sorry, I know I've rattled you with the suggestion of having to make more content. 'But we've already covered centuries 5-19!' you cry. But it'll be interesting to see in mission makers create their own assets to go with a Cradle like mission. I think the medieval horror of missions such as Return to the Cathedral and the jittery, modern type of horror found in the Cradle fall into two different categories. There's as much difference as there is between hammer horror films and modern fare like Saw. You can't just slap a 'woo' stamp on both, there's more to horror than that.

What I'm really asking is, just as people now say 'I'm gonna do a Hammerite mission', or 'I'm gonna do a Pagan mission, 'rooftop mission', 'mansion mission', 'street mission', and so on... will people be saying 'I'm going to do a Cradle mission'? Most Thief FMs are easily sorted into a particular genre, based on examples from the first two titles. I just wonder if we're going to see a Cradle-style mission genre or are people going to leave it alone because they consider its setting un-thief-like, or consider it a one-off that's too good to do a second time.

Hmmm... I thought the mission had many unique assets that set in apart from the others - the 'puppet' AI, 20th century style electric lamps, equipment, textures and decor, and so on. It was all much more recent compared to the medieval feel of the rest of the game, it wouldn't have been out of place in a modern set game like Silent Hill. I was just wondering if the mission would have given people a taste for more 'modern' style missions, rather than the medieval and steampunk locations of Thief I and II.

I just saw that Deadly Shadows made it quite far up PC Gamer's 100 top games of all time list. Judging from the bit of text included, because of the Cradle mission. Despite being a great mission it was a somewhat radical departure from the other missions in the trilogy. Do you think that kind of mission will be popular with people making levels for the Dark Mod? Should TDM cater for that kind of mission with textures, AI and stuff that fit the setting? Or was the Cradle just a one-off that didn't really fit within the Thief universe, and we'll see people go back to more traditional medieval woo?