TazmanianDevil

Yeah, I thought the sky, along with the sun, the moon, stars, clouds...well...everything you normally find in the sky...was one of the coolest things about Morrowind including the fact that you could sit and literally watch the moon rotate through the sky.

Really? Why is that cheating? It seems to me that for any surface that doesn't actually break (like leaves and twigs), you should be able to move slowly enough that you don't make any sound (that anyone would hear). I generally find myself doing the w w w thing on tile or metal. Otherwise, there's no way to cross those surfaces without making a huge amount of noise. Shouldn't I be able to cross them without making any noise by going really slow (which is what w w w would be)?

This reminds me of the first time I played Might and Magic VI <spoilers if you care>. It's a game all about dragons and wizards, swords and armor where you try to win the approval to visit the Oracle. But suddenly at the end of the game, you discover the Oracle is a computer, you find yourself on an alien space ship, armed with blaster rifles (but still wearing plate mail for protection) fighting automated robots in an attempt to find a "Control Cube" you have to return to the Oracle. That was the most bizarre and dumbass twist I've ever seen in a game. They even did it again in the sequel.

Indeed. Universal entropy (that and Thief: Deadly Shadows) is destroying our galaxy and must be countered by a most excellent Thief mod .

I just saw this and I can't stop laughing. That's pretty funny. Don't forget the whinning sound you get when you turn the headlights on.

Cough, gasp, weeze...<passes out>...<comes to>...wow, those really knocked me out! Awesome!

I agree. I thought the objectives in TDS were boring. "Find 90% of the loot and 3 of the whoopity-frigin-do special items". I prefer to have objectives with a more concrete feel and less of an "automatically generated because you're playing a game" feeling. I think "Find 2000 in loot, 200 in gems, super painting X, chalice Y and artificact Z" is much more interesting. I also missed having secrets and I really loved that sound you get when you find them. I can't remember if you guys have said this before, but will your toolset and your FM have secrets?

Being startled by being hit be something isn't necessarily a bad thing. If I slightly kick something and a box falls on me, I might freak out but I'd probably quickly realize that I was the cause after which I'd probably be more cautious. So maybe instead of a full alert, you could trigger just a heightened alert. And perhaps, you can decide that you were the cause if the object that hit you was close to you. I don't know how easy it is to determine the original location of an object before it starts moving. I would definitely prefer no reaction over the guard totally freaking out though and starting to look for me. That's like a dog chasing it's tail.

That would be cool to watch.

I like the elemental arrows as well and they don't necessarily seem completely unrealistic either. I can picture someone actually creating arrows that have tips filled with water, gas or an explosive. The moss arrows however do seem rather unrealistic to me and I'll grant that it would be hard to put enough water into something on the end of your arrow that could put out a torch but hey, they're "magic" arrows right? I mean, why else would you find moss arrows growing out of the ground and water arrows floating in pools of water and of course gas arrows that just float in the air?

Aaaa, this thread is on fire, put it out, put it out! You're right, but we're playing a game, not real life. You are entitled to your opinion, but my preference would be to have specific loot goals that are a function of the total loot in the game. I completely disagree. I think finding loot is a critical element of the game. If you took out the loot, then you've taken away most of the purpose of the game. There are missions where your goals are to just pick up some amount of loot and you aren't necessarily there for anything specific. If you took all the loot away, you'd just be wandering around in the shadows for no good reason. I have no complaint about the game having lots of difficulty settings and for people to be able to do what they want. I think IS wanted to do that in TDS, but didn't get around to it. I for one, do not like ghosting or time limits in anything more than a level or two.

I want to run into guards and have to sneak around and do the normal thief things. Having a game that's nothing but a loot hunt would be boring, but I don't want to have to do the same thing a dozen times because I can't find that last piece of loot. I totally love the thief games and I played all of them on the highest difficulty setting (which is why it takes so long to find enough loot) which definitely means that you have to be sneaky so you can get up behind the guards to wack 'em. I remember it took me 2 hours on one of the TDP missions after I'd knocked out all of the guards to find the last special item I had to find. It would have taken a lot longer if I had to constantly avoid the guards and that would get old after a while. I however, am not a big fan of ghosting. I don't mind having one or two levels where it's a requirement, but I personally wouldn't want to play the whole game that way.

I was wondering if you guys were planning on adding any role playing elements into either your FM or add support in your tools. I am a big RPG fan and I don't want to see a Thief RPG, but I think it would be cool to add a few RPG elements. I really liked TDS where you gained a few extra abilities over the course of the game and I really liked the idea of joining factions with some optional tasks you could accomplish for them (although I thought the implementation was a bit weak and I wish they'd have taken it farther). I certainly wouldn't want to see something like experience points added to the game. I'm just curious what the thoughts and opinions are on this for the other folks here. What do you guys think about the TDS features?

I personally enjoy this part of the game. I like knocking out everyone in the level and then spend the remainder of the level hunting for all the loot. If the loot objectives are high enough that it takes a significant amount of time and very careful hunting to find it, then I don't want to have to constantly worry about running into guards. If it didn't, I might get frustrated quicker and decide to either cheat or lower the difficulty setting (nah...I'd never do that :lol: ).

Oh yeah! I like it!

You should have two characters in your FM whose initials are E. and I.S. and who screw something up, thus prompting the quote: "Dear S., The job was incomplete. E. and I.S. manged to fuck up an unfuckupable task and now they shall have to pay the price. - T.D."

I'll second that. I'm a programmer myself (although not for games) and I've met people who get paid to write code and who suck at it. I have all the confidence that if I wanted to write something for fun, then I could do a good job at it, follow reasonable design and development principles and treat it just like something I was getting paid to do. The one difference I do see between being paid and not being paid is that if you're being paid to do something, then you're likely to finish it. Even if you get bored with your work, you're probably still going to do it because you want money. If you lose interest or get bored with a hobby, you'll just stop. On the other hand, if you're really excited about doing something, then that can have a better impact on your work than whether or not you're getting paid. So, for you brave TDM souls, it's no money, but hopefully this fan's appreciation will help keep you going :-). I for one am more excited about TDM than any FMs made with the TDS editor.

That would be an interesting challenge. I wonder if the TDS editor has any inherent level size limitations. There's no way you could redo the previous thief games and come out with missions as small as those in TDS (unless you came up with good places to insert loading zones), but perhaps if you're not targeting the maps for the XBox then you may have fewer restrictions.

And then he got to act it out himself in the Return of the King (Extended Edition).

I kind of agree with oDDity actually. From what I see in Dark Mod, I don't really care about a TDS editor given that the Dark Mod tools on top of the Doom 3 engine would be significantly better in terms of gameplay potential and engine performance. I can't know that for a fact, but I am willing to believe. Of course, we are going to have to wait a long time for Dark Mod to finish and a TDS editor could probably be released sooner, but I'm a patient person.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/02/10/news_6118364.html Well, I guess that answers the question about them releasing a TDS editor. It's all up to DarkMod now :-).

Dram, I understand your point and if I knew I was going into a situation that had a bunch of monsters or beasts, then I might very well want to have a sword. In that case, I'm expecting to encounter heavy fighting resistance. I would expect that to be the exception though. Most of the time, as a thief, I would want to be sneaking through museums and mansions, not climbing trees wading through bushes. As for killing spiders and such, I always used my bow for that because I never wanted to get close enough to them to be able to use my sword.

This was exactly why I liked the lock picking in TDS. I found that the combination of fear of getting caught and the manual dexterity and skill required to open the lock was very exhilerating. I often found that when I was in a hurry, it would take me longer to pick the lock because I would start fumbling around and that would just increase the tension. In my opinion, I disagree. I would find it less satisfying if I could extract the contents of a safe or break into a security office without having to pick some sort of lock, even if I'd already dispatched all of the guards. Perhaps you don't lock the internal doors in your house, but thief isn't about typical houses. We are creeping through mansions and museums and polic stations and places like that were I would expect a lot of things to be locked. I would expect rooms and offices to be locked in a large building. I don't think I quite understand your point. I whole heartedly agree. I thought it sucked in TDS that very few of the doors required keys. I guess I understand that lock picking lots of doors is boring because what's the point in having them locked if they don't really prevent unauthorized thieves from getting through. I prefer having to cycle through keys, but I wouldn't say that you don't have any idea which is which. If you pick pocket a key off the guards watching the front door, then that key will probably open the front door. If you find a key in a desk in an office, then it's likely to unlock something in that office. So, I guess I'm saying that I wouldn't want ever key to look exactly the same. I liked in T2 (and was it in T1 too) where you had keys with different colors and identical keys were groups together in a pile. You could sort of tell the difference between the keys although you really didn't know what they did until you tried them.

I can't help it, but I have to throw my opinion on swords into the ring. I more or less agree with oDDity although I don't think I would unhappy if a sword was the only weapon used in the game. My style of gameplay is all stealth and no combat so I never used my sword to attack anything anyway. If I've got a weapon I never use, that doesn't really bother me. That said, I always did find it odd and seemingly out of place that Garrett walked around with a sword instead of a dagger. A sword seems to imply that you expect to encounter heavy resistance that would require fighting skills, but a thief hopes never to be caught. If you are caught, then as oDDity mentions, something like a flash grenade would seem like a more likely tool for a thief to use to escape. A sword would also seem to be rather inconvienient to carry around if you're trying to slip through small spaces or climb over walls. As a thief, I'd be worried about knocking stuff over with it or clanking it on things (of course this whole idea kind of goes out the window when you think about your thief dragging around a sword, a bow, a pile of grenades, 300 lbs of art work, 1000 pieces of gold, candle sticks, books, potions, rope, etc.). A sword seems more appropriate in the hands of a knight and not a thief. As for a dagger. I was bothered by the idea that the dagger was introduced in TDS as a means to dispatch your enemies. I like Garrett's philosophy which generally involves not killing people, but a knife doesn't have to have killing as its only purpose. A knife or dagger would be much more effective than a sword at cutting someones purse strings from their belt. You could use it to cut ropes or tear pictures out of their frames. If you want to make noise, flip it around and use the butt of the dagger to pound on the doors or whatever else it is you wish to bash. A dagger is something I would expect a thief to carry. If I want to bust something open and not worry about noise, I would expect a thief to use what's on hand like a chair or maybe grab a sword hanging over the fireplace. But, we're not playing Garrett anymore, so we could decide that our thief has no scruples and will kill anything that moves. In that case, I still think such a thief would more likely choose to backstab people with a knife than carry around a sword. So, I would rather play a thief game with a dagger I don't use to kill people than with a sword I don't use to kill people. But, this is all just my opinion and I respect anyone who wants to disagree.

Unless I missed it, I don't see any discussions around here on lock picking. I was wondering what thought you guys have to put into how lock picking should be handled. Is it going to be one of those things customizable by FM authors or are you going to pick a technique and build that into your toolset? I enjoyed the lock picking of TDS, especially after I turned off the lock picking HUD. That made it kind of challenging and made it feel a little more like really picking a lock. Are you planning on something similar? And what do you guys think about keys? Are players going to be able to cycle through their keys to find the right one, or is it going to be like TDS where the door unlocks automatically if you have the key (I didn't like that)? Perhaps the player can choose which method they want. Can you relock doors? I hope that all the locks won't appear in the middle of the doors a la TDS, but that's probably something that can be up to the FM author.