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Outlooker

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Everything posted by Outlooker

  1. Thermal problem. You must open up (or have it someone done for you) the laptop and check/clean it. It may be bad or misapplied thermal conductive paste; careful remove it and reapply a good one, it's cheap. Also, fan or air ducts often have problems with dust, sometimes stuck insects or such things. It depends of the construction/engeneering of those if they stay free of dustballs or if they clog iver time. Most clog more or less. I clean my desktop pc once a year: Blow air through it and the fans and cooling surfaces - this usually induces a HUGE dustcloud. Try to clean everything as good from dust and other stuff as possible; but don't rub (buildup of static electricity may/will kill your ICs), better use no vacuum cleaner (they can spin up air fans and induce demaging voltage). With practice, it can be dine in a few minutes. After you cleaned the mess out, the PC will not only run cooler, but also more quiet, because fans can operate with less rpm when obstractions and "dust isolation" is gone.
  2. Dark Messiah of Might and Magic has an fully developed stealth system - even rope arrows are there, and not just for decoration. If you invest experience points in the "thief"-tree you stay relatively weak but can outsneak almost all enemies. There is even a credit to the original Thief games in form of a "G" in the collar of the best armor set for stealth. You can steal and pickpocket. A lot of enemies must be killed to advance, though - but you can also do this by backstabbing, you do not to have to "fight" most enemies. I highly recommend this game to anyone of you, for it is generally of very high quality, replayability and even rewards clever thinking and observation here and there.
  3. JTR7: Of course I respect your opinion, but I personally can't be so serious about it like you are. T4 is what it is, many important aspects are already known to us and we might hate them, but we can't change anything about it. Such a big game is in reality simply done with just one single aspect in mind: Maximum sales. Of all T4 potential buyers, serious Thief fans are what - 0,2% of potential buyers? The very same things that would make us happy would IMPLODE the sales numbers. I confess I like quite a few things about T4 _graphics_ alone - the artwork/style seems nice enough, the level of detail very interesting. Most people here will play it some day even when it's even worse than many here thought - some for 50 bucks on day 1, others for 5 bucks a couple of years later. We like Thief, that's why we're here. Springheel: "Star Wars Episode 1." Well, raping good things has kind of become the norm - I personally was very disappointed with Indiana Jones 4. Sadly, not much will change about it, because all of these bland sequels made big money. If T4 is REALLY total trash, that is, unplayable/terrible, it flies into the trashcan. It would be a little sad, but I don't care so much at all - DM and the gifted people that make it possible is where it's at. T4 is just a financial adventure of some company, even when it would be mighty fine - it has a end. DM will grow and evolve - and it's already damn good. Relax a bit, guys. We can't change a thing with T4. Humble suggestion: Direct the energy that fuel this thread into making DM even better. That's where the sure and real reward is.
  4. Almost ***40 pages*** of people asuring each other how bad Thief is. I, for one, will be quite happy when I can playtest it in about eight weeks. And so will most of you. It will be a "AAA" title with all its heavy shortcomings, but a starved man is delighted with a McDonalds in sight. What's the worst to happen, anyway? We know it is definitely far from perfect from our perspective, but damn, there WILL be _some_ fun to have with it - at least one playthrough should be enjoyable. T3 was not much different in this regard. It's been a tenth century that any official Thief game has been made - to be honest, I would even play it (once) if G. had a gun and funny hat.
  5. I just think that would be fit right in here + is interesting enough: "Here, we describe a new acoustic cryptanalysis key extraction attack, applicable to GnuPG's current implementation of RSA. The attack can extract full 4096-bit RSA decryption keys from laptop computers (of various models), within an hour, using the sound generated by the computer during the decryption of some chosen ciphertexts. We experimentally demonstrate that such attacks can be carried out, using either a plain mobile phone placed next to the computer, or a more sensitive microphone placed 4 meters away." Brought to you by crafty Jews, as it so often is: http://tau.ac.il/~tromer/acoustic/
  6. How about coming back for "Thief" - that is stealing? Let the common context theme be a "shopping street"-interpretation. There are many ways to do this; you have upmarket posh ones of the rich in a big city; medium or small town ones the thief my just be passing through; every shop can be made special is some way, by architecture, loot, secrets, ministory, access, guard level or traps. Some may design bubbly street life, which is to be avoided, or be of the more quiet kind. You can have a tavern, a hotel, a small bank, carpenters, black smith ... Don't model a "city hub" as such ... just the core of the shpping street, with nothing more than maybe a small back alley for "backside"-access to the shops here and there. Just for the point of entering the shops there may be a bit of roof- or sewers-gameplay. It could be interpreted as Venice- or Dutch-like setup, making canals and boats/merchant-/store-ships a major part. Some of the gameplay could be made so that one has to transfer bigger loot to a horse-drawn "collection wagon" - and avoiding guards/people in the process. The wagon could go down the street, following the thiefs nightly work. This setting could be made quite interesting - a lot of interesting ideas and imaginative mission design could be brought together by a common theme.
  7. Just because one cannot imagine something means not that someone else is regularly doing the same. I know of a guy who likes to hack and is good at it. So he looked at regular hard drives and researched how they work. He found ICs with a couple of quite powerful CPUs and microcontrollers, flash and enough RAM to run even computational taxing stuff. He even succeeded in running Linux on the hard drive alone (to make that clear for the technically less educated here: He run it on the hard drives controller itself, not on any PC connected to the hard drive in any way). With this kind of low level access alone about anything is possible - surrepticiously. And there are many more fully grown microcontrollers in a modern PC... Then, theres those old rumors that on US made CPUs there are tiny hidden RF subsystems that listen for a specific carrier/code and brick or at least crash them when they receive it - this would make much sense for national security, just fly a jet with usual jammer (configured for the specific RF/Code) in the area and deny an enemy all computing. Audio/ultrasonic comm is definitely possible - it's just what modems did, just at somewhat higher frequencies. There is even almost ready-to-use code for that in sourceforge. Practically it depends on the specs of the inbuilt mic and speaker - but people here tried it and most combos in PCs/Tablets/Smartphones are capable of this. They tried 16 to 24 kHz, the higher you go, the less combos work, but at least some even work better at the higher frequencies, they tried it even with a glass window in between and it still worked quite good. The main point is, that real capable attackers (state level) will use deliberately placed "bugs" and backdoors in hardware anyway - you can more easily access and screen software, but checking multi-million+ - tranistor-chips is only possible with "arcane" equipment (SEMs, Ion Beam Microscopes,... ) and even then it's a lenghty and difficult process. The US-military want's to use no abroad-built ICs in the future at all, for the reason it's nightmarishly difficult to detect even halfway clever hidden "extra" functionality in ICs. For our own more practical reasons modern BIOS->UEFI is a major headache, because its a tiny full computer in itself, with CPU(s), networking, RAM and flash. One main problem: There is no real write protection for this anymore - in older days you had a jumper that write protected the BIOS, which was quite safe. Today, about anything and anyone can write to it and run code on it. Very stealthy persistent Trojans/Boot Kits have already come this way - they don't show up in main computer RAM or on HD, modifying no perceivable data - but run along and analyze/send data somewhere. EDIT: If someone is more interested; I just talked with a friend about it, and here's someone else that has documented how to run Linux on a HD: http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack
  8. Maybe the most dire flaw of this "Thief" is simply a lack of class. It shows in the game mechanics and - most strinkingly - in the writing, dialogue and story. T1+2 were, in some very serious, twisted kind quite classy. Even the swearing was not uncouth. T4 seems like a production of technically talented proles for an audience of proles. Which kind of makes much sense, because they are the biggest consumer group, and of course T4 has to make max. money for Eidos. Even the story seems to majorly involve working class problems and "social injustice", if I interpret the teaser videos correctly. Maybe the game director has some kind of chip on his shoulder.
  9. I think a morality - as itself - is not existing at all. There are only interests - and around those interests "morality" is constructed. There are different levels of interests - as are different kinds of moralities: biological: It feels wrong to kill or harm your parents, children or brothers (=interest: success/survival/spreading of your genes) (instinct-based morals) individual: People have belief systems - like old people or young parents should be granted more advantages, or rich people should pay more taxes to support poor people etc. (Marx :"Existence determines consciousness.") - People see the world usually - at least somewhat unconsciously - from their very own subjective standpoint. It is very common for people to confuse their own perspective and experiences with a superior "morality" position - but again, this "morality", at its base, comes from self-interest ("WeAreThe99% vs. Wall Street, Old vs. Young, Rich vs. Poor, GIfted vs. Dumb,...) societal : The most modern - and most dynamically changing - morals. Stuff like religion or state dictated morals (Nazi morals vs. Communist States morals, Patriotism (USA, Nazi Germany) or - even disconnected from religion - sex (like more or less extreme feminism, gay pride,allowed promiscuity level,...). Those serve interests of groups of people who try to shape society by imposing morals to further their (more or less hidden) interests. "Morality" and "Interests" are siamese twins. I would even say that in some sense - morality is nothing else than propaganda for interests. Nietzsche called one kind of morality "Slave Morality" - Slaves were teached to discern "good" and "evil". Masters, on the other hand, were teached to discern "good" and "bad". http://en.wikipedia....3slave_morality Morality, as the problem of "good" or "evil", are totally subjective-, time-, place-, circumstances- etc.-dependent. The accusation of being "immoral" usually comes from someone whose interests are threatened.
  10. Just asking, because, well, it seems quick and easy for me as an amateur: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oie1ZXWceqM
  11. This guy seems quite capable: http://darkfate.org/...ing/screenshots This pic feels especially cosy and atmospheric:
  12. There may be more interesting possibilities with a drugging option - not just killing or rendering unconscious: -induce fleeing behavior (flees from everyone, fear poison) -induce aggressive behavior (attack everyone) -induce impaired sight or hearing (additional stealth option, maybe accomplished as a deafening poison applied to the guards food for a autumn-y mission with heavy fog) -induce weakness (drops weapon, slows down) -induce tiredness (not unconsciousness; more subtle - victim gets just real tired, scans for empty bed and enters that nice bedding animation; normal sleep (awakable on sound)). -induce loose bowels (vitcim scuttles off to nearby loo and stays there, making occasional funny noises) -induce shape shifting (guard<->spider - for the more magick-y, esoteric missions) -induce fear of light or darkness (victim wants to stay in or out of the light) -induce mating behaviour (victim follows nearest woman around) -induce over-motivation (amphetamine-like: victim follows normal patrols, but is always running - possibly useful for a thief in having reduced waiting times for movement possibility in guards patrol scheme)
  13. To my great dismay I have not the time (and therefore ability) to start mapping myself - I hope it will change in a couple of years when I retire or at least can reduce workload somewhat. But often do I ponder the thought of what kind of mission I would like to craft, had I opportunity and skill. So, I came up with some ideas, I'd like to humbly share; maybe they inspire others. The heist ist done;the mission is all about escape - with your beloved filled loot sack. The rich ruler of the city (now with considerable less net worth) alarms the police force that swarmed out and is searching the city in force all over town, blocking traffic/chokepoints, you witnessing searchings and arrests of suspect citizens, police breaking doors, much chaos; you navigate the city/parks/sewers/rooftops escaping to the countryside, or leaving by ship, or by boat down the river; it's all about escaping, favorably unrecognized and unnoticed. Complications one encounters may be scripted events like a house on fire, multiple guards/city watch zeroing on your suspected position, hiding in a crate on a carriage (and watching city scenes through a hole while escaping some distance with the moving carriage), police lighting "search lights" (fireplaces/big torches in town for nightly situational awareness). Gentlman thief in high society. Drug the wine/food of a high society party/ball by sneaking into the kitchen and adding sedatives to food; later, when all are sleeping, get the jewelry off the guests, hide it outside or in a delivery packet and join the sleeping to act unsuspicious. Ghosting probably. Gentlemen thief; high society wears jewelry, but it is usually hidden cleverly at home, not only locked. So, a thief has a hard time finding the most valuable stuff; this particular educated and experimenting, innovating thief, however, uses city watch forensic technology for his purpose: By inconspicuously applying a transparent/invisible fluorescence-paint/powder during a party to the valuables of the nobles, he marks them; later at night, when they have hidden their valuables at home, he sneaks into their dwellings and, by assistance of a blacklight/UV-lamp from the inventors guild he scans the rooms for rubbed off UV-paint, indicating the hiding spaces of the hidden treasure. Distraction can be a thiefs most valuable tool: The security of a rich bank is broken by causing an undead outbreak; while the guards are distracted/away/battling/scared/not patroling/hiding, the thief has a chance to enter and empty the main vault. Distraction II: Rich Lords wedding/birthday etc.: Big fireworks - at night, nobles, neatly sitting on benches or something like that as an audience, watching the show. Intense light on darkness adapted eyes causes temporal blindness - and the thief knows not only that, he also knows/arranged it so, that he knows the background orchestra music plan, which is linked in action to thefireworks, in effect making him knowing in advance when the individual bright fireworks are fired: By using this effect, directly after a fireworks firing, he can navigate almost freely and unseen for some seconds in the darkness, helping himself to the jewelry/valuables of the guests (he closes his eyes just before fireworks goes off because he knows the timing from the orchestra plan). (Later, escaping riding a "warhead"-less fireworks rocket - just kidding, but maybe a prepared zipline?) By day a guard, at night a thief: During day, your wander around as a guard, inconspicuously preparing for your nightly action: Hide tools, open/weaken locks, windows; placing thin climbing rope on an outside wall, copying/manipulating guard orders/patroling plans, adding absolute alcohol to the night guards wine (perception impaired), mapping the grounds, placing crates to climb later on, placing crates/other stuff in such a way that security cameras/guard posts etc. have a slightly blocked way of view, allowing specific undetected movement later at night; photographing/sketching loot items, to produce dummy copies/replacement items, so the nightly theft will not be noticed soon; sabotaging infrastructure (water, electric, heating,food stocks, privy,...), so repairs are needed, weakening security/ allowing distraction/allowing entry. Uncommon scenario: The map will almost be empty of NPCs, maybe only containing one single NPC, but this is an assassine: You have to escape/navigate the map, knowing there is only one adversary, hiding in a dark spot,waiting for you, listening and watching for you ... maybe with a bow, maybe with a sword, maybe on a rooftop, maybe he has set traps (mines..watch your step) ... he uses the shadow as you do, and he wants you dead. Could be a scenario of escape from a heist from a king, making his bodyguard/assassine hunt you. Replay value low due to known hiding spot, but 1st playthrough could be very tense and atmospheric. Ransom/Hostage: Stealing a living (sleeping) person can be more tricky and interesting than stealing dead stuff. You have to be carefull with the hostages health, and are hindered in mobility/climbing prowess/visibility/speed. Hide the body, clear the way, preceed; repeat. In effect, you have to scout ahead, and find ssafe hiding spots for you - and the hostage. Assassination plots: Bringing yourself in position for a good shot with the bow; setting an explosive under a bed, bringing poison, stab a sleeping noble - and escaping - possible clearing your planned escpape path beforehand. Could be combined with a distraction like fireworks (bomb), setting fire to another building, realeasing something (undead, spiders, wolves,...). Could be made more intersting by making the assassination itself difficult: Target wears armor/helmet and uses weapons and is located in a brightly-lit open space, maybe a throne room, guards... Using blade or bow may be difficult, so setting traps (mines) beforehand and bait/lure the target to move towards them (sound arrows?) to kill him. Escape route/entering route of alarmed guards/barracksentrances could be mined beforehand for better escape, too. Rescuing someone from a prison, a hostage, your fence, family member ... Basically like getting out an body, but this time a conscious one; making the NPC following you, and by frobbing making him standing still or follwoing you again, effectively navigating him to safety. For added complexity he could carry big loot that you "aquire" during your escape, or emitting tips or funny comments, mabye giving "fire support" with a bow in specific locations.
  14. They have to deliver _some_ good elements of the game - after all they have the advantages that come with a couple dozen million $ budget, multi-year development time, experienced developers and artists, motion-capturing, all the stuff and time and brains one can get for money. Beholding it from a more more general, not Thief-fan-centric worldview it might as well become a "good" game, commercially successful with modern visuals and "entertaining" gameplay. But real Thief means quite difficult stealth, avoiding mass murder, having to be careful and somewhat thinking and skillful - or you die quickly. And for deep immersion one needs a minimum of intrusive user interface blinkings and a maximum of believable in-gameplay-world-hints and -complexity - overhearing conversations, judging NPC behaviour - not registering health bars, experience counters (HEADSHOT +90EXP) or awareness meters floating above guards helmets. This, however, is not mass market friendly - most of the very successful games were those with modern, impressive graphics, carefully dosed violence/brutality, simple gameplay (mostly needing quick point and click reflexes) - Call of Duty, Battlefield, and the others- those brought in _billions_. For a mass audience it has to be simple, forgiving, violent and entertaining. Therefore, a "good" Thief game in our sense would be failing to sell many copies, because "we" are a tiny market. The market dictates this to be a contraption one might call Battlethief.
  15. So, while moving around you see Garretts hands. This should mean he is either sleepwalking or has caught a bad case of zombiefication. Or his character changed from the last games and he is now constantly longing to strangle somebody. Maybe he is just looking forward to stealing things. Either way, I think it's weird. Edit: HAHA, experience counter for headshots, bullet time for aiming infight arrows. I think I know enough, then.
  16. More new images (are those really _screenshots_? If yes, then at least "wow" for the amount of detail they put in this). Bonus: Find Garrett (He is in all images, in the last one I'm still searching). Source:http://www.darkfate.ru/forum/index.php?topic=4428
  17. Mhm... from http://www.darkfate.ru/news
  18. Well, the common security sensitive lightswitch is usually well protected. Attacking the evil lightsource directly, especially from afar and silently without much suspicious tell-tale-signs like broken glass and a rock nearby might be more elegant. Also, the CO2 laser in the vid is weak (powered by "neon transformer") and "deactivation time" so is high; I posted because I'm currently into CO2 lasers, because a friend of mine bought a cheap chinese CNC CO2 laser cutter/engraver - the laser tube in that thing is easily replaced (it wears out with time), so we decided to get it out and try to laser stuff "free handed". It's a 40W tube, about 0,8m in length, requiring a high voltage power source (a box the size of a PC power supply). The point is, you can easily operate the whole setup with a battery/power supply from a backpack. Beam divergence without any optics right out of the tube is nicely low, in 10m distance you get a pea-sized white hot spot on concrete in about two seconds. There happen to be some interesting vids in youtube, search for "co2 laser" and you will find some hobbyists demonstrating their co2 lasers while burning paper, wood, plastics - and glass. And if you have a lightweight portable setup that silently and remotely makes tiny holes in glass, you have a viable modern age water arrow. Just saying.
  19. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJCxvGWeRDM No noise, no traces left, just a lightbulb going dead the supposedly normal way of wear/tear/burning out. So, inspect your defective lightbulbs closely when you replace them, they might just indicate modern age Garrett activity.
  20. Good Mission so far, I liked it. Some loot was nicely hidden that I almost missed (those old crates trick still gets me, I seem to be a slow learner in that regard, won't forget about that in the future,ha!). Other loot seemed too hard to get - like the goblet in the sewers - in such a spacious map I won't look at every squarefoot this closely. I feel the map is a bit too large for its content - I found myself running around uselessly a lot, mostly because there were few hints where to go next to progress - I often took the wrong direction. Also it felt a bit empty here and there - wide open spaces, long distances to run sneak and not so much to see or do. Had you made the map half its current size it may have been better. The city streets felt a bit rectangular and empty/clean - but tolerable, if one imagines them as an upper class part of town. "Pale breasts" and her 20 best minutes was ... amusing, if somewhat unexpected. But most strangely, it seemed in good place, people would have such literature, but I think they would hide it a bit, not letting it laying around prominently. Nevertheless, thank you for a good time!
  21. Not so extremely important, yet significantly important stuff: on 2,5er harddisks; they're cheap, small and hold now up to 1TB/piece or so; backup the same stuff on three of them and package tight+safe: One at home in a small fire-proof safe (they can be bought cheaply); 2nd one at grandparents house, 3rd one with friends. Really crucial stuff is transferred to Mdiscs ( http://millenniata.com/m-disc/ ) : They outlast every other optical backup medium outh there; a m-disc capable writer is only about 20 euros and the media themselves are also acceptably priced. MDiscs hold just 4,7GB now, but can be read on all usual DVD drives. Here, too, I have one copy at home in the firesafe, the other two are stored with friends or relatives. Some online cloud storage service is also used for stuff that I need regularly and which is not security crucial. If you really have to encrypt, do it right: Paranoid use of three different progs with different passwords in series, do crypto-operations only in a dedicated machine/laptop without net-connection and a live-CD (have harddisk,or ssd, WLAN/Bluetooth-modules removed,if possible run on battery(TEMPEST)), and check for hardware keyloggers regularly or better hide/lock up the crypto machine. Use long passwords(30+), and write them down so you not forget them: of course, no password fully written down anywhere (you could brak them up in like 5 pieces, write them in small print in books/magazines/letters whatever; have copies of them, also breaken up in individual pieces and unrecognizable as passwords stored out-house (if robbers/thieves/police raid you and take your stuff, you need copies of data AND passwords). I have long passwords (100+) engraved in a stainless steel plate, hidden in a hidden stone, for example. This may be seen as overly strange or paranoid, but no fire, war, thief etc. will get them and they rest safe. I could wirte more on security, but I doubt you need all that paranoia. Hopefully, we keep a more or less free world.
  22. A.Creed was a major dissapointment with me. Visually very nice, but gameplay, atmosphere and general story was very mass-audience-like. I found it becoming boring trying it out for a couple of minutes. The closest thing to thief with a classic fantasy-setting for me was playing ---Dark Messia of Might and Magic--- skilled as a thief. The game is great - one of the very best I ever tried. Also thieflike : -backstab, -steal keys from girdles, -use bows, -hide in/use shadows, -your are not forced to kill most enemies - sneaking by will do without losing exp, -there is a nightvision spell (Garrets mech. eye, remember?), -you can set traps, -THERE ARE ACTUAL ROPE ARROWS FOR CLIMBING, -spiders and zombies of course, -exploring, -almost as good mantling as in TDM, -the game even has Thief/Garrett-Hints (in the top set of armor for thieves), -secret passages (Thief-like), -hidden loot (also Thief-like), -Edit: LOCKPICKING, forgot about that On top of that: Great graphics (be sure to have a card capable of HDR,also great implementation of shadows), excellent combat system (you can kick butt, literally [sneak to enemy, kick him in the behind-off a ledge,for example]), nice general art direction (beautyfully craftet and diverse maps) and quite OK story. Strongly recommended. I would even say - given you love Thief, TDM etc. you will also love DMoMM.
  23. Just to make sure you don't miss it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8zQ7trMrXA http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=139546
  24. Judging from the 1st screenshots, I feared a blocky, relatively empty and boring mission. Well, I was wrong! There are certainly lots of right angles and a lack of ... organic structures and grime, sometimes it did look a little empty and not-lived in - but this was swiftly forgotten when I was actually playing. You certainly know how to fit the elements of an enjoyable mission together! For a beginner mission it seems very remarkable to me that your map, while overall to me "only" being good, lacks not much, at least I didn't notice anything major. Also, the extra effort going in a nice briefing/debriefing made the mission feel much more meaningful (it's always so much nicer to be gently carried into/out of the thief feeling than to be just "thrown" in a mission like in cold water). In my opinion, your basic skill level is already quite good - I hope for much in your future, more refined, missions! Thank you for an hour of good thieving fun.
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