bob_arctor

It would be nice if Thief Gold and II were remade so XP could run them flawlessly. As for Vista, I bet no Dark Engine games will run. :...( And my "Yawn" comment was to indicate that you should have wound down the silly arguments as it's not the place.

Yawn. If I wanted these kind of debates I'd go to... dunno... Gamespot forums or something.

Skee. Skee. Urm... Nope. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skee ?? Ah! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skee_ball Oh that! Yeah we have that in England. No idea what we call it.

Especially with the 3rd person camera. The demo was a tutorial though, apparently the real thing is very freeform. But I'm not buying it until they release a better demo proving how it works. I never quite get on with Hitman. Thief is just so much better I suppose.

I loaded up my first TDS FM today to see how it was going, seeing as I am bored of vanilla TDS so returned to TII Fms, but wondered what I could be missing. By chance my first FM I chose was The Bridge. Mostly because I thought of the Iain Banks book of that name, and bridges are cool. And The Bridge is cool. Wow. Amazing stuff. Brickwork! Yay! It seems really big. It seems like the City. It seems like Thief II. It's ace. Dunno if other TDS FMs are that good, but if they are do you think you are in trouble? With the Minimalist project installed to give a great HUD and really rock-solid AI (Way better than TII on expert. Every door opened makes them say "did I hear something" and wander over. And no more standing 10 metres away under a light but unseen), and some better maps than Ion Storm's OMs TDS could be shaping up... Mind you I'm still annoyed at the non-water, and the fact shooting an broadhead arrow into a wall makes no noise, meaning you can't distract the guards... Seriously: Everyone should play the Bridge TDS FM. It's great. But will it spell the end for TDM????? Plus there is the ever dependable TII FM community, still going after all these years and doing interesting stuff. Will you be able to drag people away from their precious TII? [devils advocate here to generate discussion]

Dram. I'm gunna kill you. No really. I will come round your place and kill you dead. JOKE!111one!!!!2!!

So what's a "kee" then?

A ball being hit? What the classic sound? Wow. I love that sound, and I was happy when they used it in TDS.

Why did I say it was a fast HUD bar? I meant simple. How odd. Yes a simple tiny bar moving between 4/5 settings. Anyhow I don't see why everyone is so opposed to it. What key would you bind as lean-forward and lean backward then? I'm saying using shift as a lean modifier would be good. However that means there is not enough room for walk and sneak. How, we have a region of the keyboard which is very much in demand. We have a mousewheel that is less so, and eliminates the need to hold modifier keys with your little finger. So I think it provides a more comfy elegant and intuitive way of changing speed that gives more control (more options of speed). Including maybe a speed which makes almost no sound but is really slow. And what is the alternative? Making players tap w so their feet don't touch the ground like in TII? That surely shows there was a lack of control in player movement, that they we had to use that exploit. So the expert player will learn which speeds to use to be silent to guards at varying distances and surfaces.

Well even just with 4 speeds (really slow sneak, a normalish sneak, walk and ran perhaps? A sprint?) it is easier than the whole 2 key modifier thing. And you'd just have a HUD element showing even something as fast as a bar with a bit in the middle moving from left (slow) to right (fast). I'd be pretty obvious what it was as the feedback would be immediate: "I'm going slow!". I think it's an elegant solution. Plus it frees up a key for a lean modifier.

"Why should we show this? If you can't remember which keys you are currently holding, then you should probably go and see a doctor. smile.gif" Urm. You have in games something called a default control set up. What games do you play where all the keys are initially unbound? And generally people use these keys as they can't be bothered to change them if the defaults work. So maybe you could have a lean modifier in your default key setup. "crouch/stand/lean" You don't need a stand key. Just have toggle crouch. I don't think an analogue position system would help really. A crouch toggle and a lean toggle would do. It would feel strange initially to go "shift left" to lean left, but you'd get used to it. What is far more important is the possibility of a mouse-wheel based speed selection. Having a walk and a sneak modifier key like TII is rubbish.

Yeah but if there is usuable candlesticks for knockout then the mapper will leave them about anyhow and so the non-ghostable map can still be done. And then you can play "Scrounger" where you enter a building using only the tools in the building. Which I would like to try for fun, if the objects were only believable ones, e.g. the iron candlestick.

Well I think he means the default ones. And not toggle but a modifier key. And certainly my TII forward lean is shift-w. The idea is good. And I like standing on tip toes and leaning in all 4 directions. How do you show the play what they are doing though? A little man in the corner who is crouching or standing on tip-toes?

Any chance of links where Randy thingy says all this? Is it Gamasutra or somewhere?

Get Thief Gold. Songs of the Caverns is the best level ever. It is AMAZING. The sound. The graphics. Plus Gold adds more human missions (a lot of them are non-human) and tidies up other missions. Plus you get more wierdness in the mansion you've heard of. Plus: Cragscleft.

Urrm. Well it's not that much to ask of TDM seeing as they say they're doing great AI, the Doom3 engine was a much better engine than the crappy mangled one TDS used, and the fact they have already make some great resources judging by the screens. They are right on track. I say I am bored of TII... well I loaded up my gaming non net connected PC after that post to see if I had TDS installed, I was considering giving an FM a go, having never seen a TDS FM. But I didn't. So I loaded up TII, it had a smugglers FM, forget the name. It was like returning to an old friend. So perfect. The rain, the fog, the brick, the puddles, the dirt, the dark, the noises. TDS was sterile by comparison.

Well I have stopped playing classic Thief FMs for the moment. I'm just quite bored of them. Bored of the engine and AI. Played it so much. I only play FMs for the exploration and architecture and individual stuff on each map (stories etc) but I don't like the majority of FM puzzles, making it quite hard to find an FM I like. I didn't like 7th Crystal for example. Maybe if someone releases something amazing (No downloadable sequel to Gathering at the Inn yet...) I'll start again. And as for TDS, I just can't stand the engine. It's so slow. It runs absolutely terribly on any computer it seems. I like the AI, except for the fact you have to tweak it using the minimalist project to get any fun out of it. I don't like the leaning. I don't like a lot of the textures and art resources. So hopefully TDM will have better art resources (more like TII), better AI even than TDS, and a lovely well running engine.

Well. As long as forward-lean-and-jump-in-the-dark is gone. And leaning better be good. It's unbelievable how many games get it wrong. Often its like rotating horizontally about the navel. That is to say, good for bugger all. Deus Ex and the Dark Engine games got it right. I can't think of any other game which pulled it off well that I can think of.

I like the sound of object usage. It'd be fun to able to drop all your items at the mission loadout screen and then take on a masion using only what is in there. Especially as there is candle snuffing isn't there? So some darkness is achievable that way.

Surely a surprise KO objective would come up in the briefing? E.g., "I have to knock out the priest and put him in the woman's bed". I still can't decide what's best, myself.

Yeah that sounds fine intially... I don't know whether that's an problem to RPing ghosters though.... It might be a bit silly to have this bag lying about. Oddity would rather the equipment disappeared for good. You could always restart a mission if you were stupid enough to throw away too much though. It's only probably half an hour of play. I'm thinking more in terms of arrows. As Spar says any puzzle involving arrows should have an arrow of the sort needed lying about. Hence if I want to drop my fire arrows and never see them again because I want to be right stealthy and not have to resort to that, could I? I don't know about blackjack and sword though. That's a bit extreme, to bin those. Maybe you could have a buying screen where you could sell arrows and blackjacks and swords and stuff? And buy other things? Maybe you could even have it as a money challenge: who can complete the mission with the least value equipment possible. I'm torn myself, don't know what'd be best. Just thinking of ideas. I'm not a developer though so I don't have to make hard decisions.

Maybe just have a really obvious "DROP" button or you drag the weapon into the "DROP" bit... make sure it's obvious on the loading up screen. Can't be that bad. I'm sure you can make it work okay, just to shut Oddity up.... No but seriously it'd be nice to clear out the inventory of things you don't want. I would be very happy with that. I.e. non-vital fire arrows that are not used for a puzzle. I'm not ever going to use that! Or something like that.

Ok well maybe I was wrong about Mandarin. I just think that it's an uphill struggle, and unnecessary for quite a lot of business as the Chinese middle classes are determined to learn English or make their kids learn it, which is why the UK private schools and 6th forms have a lot of Chinese. Let's face it the number of cognates and latin/greek root words are going to be a lot less in Chinese... 4000 kanji is necessary to get by in Japenese daily life. I can't remember where I picked up this figure, might have been from the Japenese lessons I had. Hirigana is not actually used for much in terms of nouns. Often they have a kanji charecter then 2 hirigana after. Romaji and English are used... but you still need Kanji. And it's a bitch in my opinion. I like katakana as it's used for western words... but again you can't get by on that alone. Also: It's worth learning French if you want to go to France, as often the French don't speak any English, or so little it is too hard to try and speak English. Although this depends where you go. In Brittany you don't have to use French... but why'd you want to go there? It's full of English people.

Urm what about holidays and stuff? Spending your free time in another country? To be honest, people always say "nowadays we should all learn Mandarin!"... Well that's rubbish. Because we probably can't. It's hard enough for us to learn French or German, riddled with cognates. Chinese is worse than Japenese (which needs the knowledge of 4000 symbols, or kanji to get by in daily life) as it is not phonetic, has no alphabet to speak of, and is 100% alien. You'll never get good enough to have a conversation, may as well not try. The Chinese are enterprising enough to learn English anyway, loads of Chinese kids at private schools and 6th form colleges.

@ Oddity: Urm well French people are pretty crap at English, which is nice, 'cos when you go over there you get to speak and hear the language. I like France you see, so it is worth it to learn the language. Mind you I'd hate to not know English these days, it'd be rubbish seeing how pervasive the anglo-saxon (UK and USA) culture is, and considering the current economic state of europe. So yeah it is realistic to say English is important. Though it's still good to learn other languages, can make you appreciate your own for a start. @ Order Mutated beyond recognition? And other languages haven't? Interesting that you think French is uglier than Dutch, the consensus is that Dutch is horrible and gutteral. I haven't heard it beyond a few words myself. Colonisation doesn't really have much to do with it these days, it's more who is the superpower, economically and culturally. Which is the USA. So that's only one colony. All the others, like the French ones, now don't make much difference, and are losing their Frenchness anyway. I don't think unless the Dutch happened to form a colony that became as big as America much would be different.