Dunedain

sxotty: I'm not sure what you're talking about, other than giving a bit more power to the video card slot (but you still need extra external power connectors conected to the card for all the high-end video cards anyhow, so who cares), there's nothing I can think of that PCI-E does that AGP doesn't do for a single high-end video card. Perhaps you are referring to an ability to swap textures in to the video card from main memory faster than AGP? But we all know that doing that will always cause a performance hit, you simply must have enough RAM on the video card to handle the textures for the game you want to play or it will hurt performance unacceptably for serious game playing. So that's a non-issue, too. And neither of those things has anything to do with performance, which is what matters and is what I was talking about in my post above. So what are these performance advantages to PCI-E over AGP 8X you are talking about?

AGP 8X has more than enough bandwidth for even the fastest video card. The only reason they went to PCI-Express was so you could do SLI. Which is fine, but nVidia should not have stopped making AGP video cards suddenly like that. It's ridiculous, I got a top-of-the-line system just before the first PCI-E systems came out, and then immediately nVidia stops releasing new AGP video cards, even though it wouldn't hurt the performance of the video cards at all to use AGP 8X, and would force anyone with an AGP system to get a new motherboard for no good reason?? nVidia needs smacked hard for that, what a rip-off. They should definitely release an AGP version of the 7800 GTX.

New Horizon: Don't forget, when thinking about guards spotting you in Thief, you have to factor in Garrett's special training with the Keepers. This gives him an ability to hide in shadows that defies ordinary explanation. So what would be a "realistic" chance for you or me trying to hide in the shadows being spotted by guards is not the same as the chance a guard has to spot Garrett doing the same thing. By the way, the Minimalist Project is just great! It made Thief III much more like Thief I and Thief II, as it should be. In fact, I only played Thief III after the Minimalist Project came out, because I wanted to experience it like Thief I and II, with as many of the silly things Ion stuck in there (which I read about extensively before it came out) removed as possible. It made the Thief III gameplay much truer to Thief I and Thief II, thanks! I'm looking forward to The Dark Mod carrying on that fine tradition.

Actually, I really like Garrett. A brilliant master thief, but also really good in a fight, if need be. He has style and class, looks great striding across and brooding upon the rooftops of the city with his flowing cloak (they should have kept that accurate in the Thief III in-game model), and an almost super human ability to disappear in shadows, by virtue of his Keeper training. And he even has a good sense of humor about the situations he finds himself in. It's kind of like James Bond, fans never tire of seeing the latest crisis he must handle, the latest dire circumstance he must escape from. It's a wonderful adventure that never ends. I think many Thief fans feel the same way about Garrett. They always want to see what his latest adventure will be, the difficult stealthy entrances into forbidden places, the clever techniques to outwit his foes, stealing the valuable item/s, the daring escapes... Ah, great stuff!

Yeah, it could also be used to give players with the skill and ingenuity a way to get past some guards or a dangerous area of the level that they would otherwise have to deal with more directly. Or to give players a neat place to stand at to get a really spectacular view of the surrounding area. A reward for being observant. By the way, that was cool how you found those guards on that roof.

As sparhawk pointed out, there is a huge difference between actually exploring a level for real and activating console cheat commands and floating through the walls and such. That would be zero fun. I actually accomplished these things as Garrett, from his perspective within the Thief world, and my reward was overcoming the difficult tasks and enjoying the splendid views. And I think the LG guys would actually like to know that their levels are so well crafted that a player would want to take the effort in the middle of a mission to explore them and look at them for long periods of time from different locations just for their aesthetic beauty, even as loot and danger beckons him in other parts of the level. Anyhow, to each his own play style.

Well, I just finished reading this interesting and quite long thread. There have been some intriguing points made. First off, I want to say that I'm very psyched up about this mod! Thief fans are in desperate need of a set of tools that will allow creation of elaborate Thief fan missions that are authentic to Thief: The Dark Project and Thief II: The Metal Age and that has great graphics to boot, and this mod will make that fully possible. Excellent work, guys! I wanted to comment on the whole save-game issue. Springheel made a good point on a particular subject in a couple of his posts. I, too, like to explore levels in Thief very much. Get on top of things, or climb rope arrows and just admire the architecture from different perspectives, sometimes I'll sit by a window in Thief III (a.k.a. T:DS) just to enjoy the super cool stained glass church windows and watch the moonlight pour in through the window in shades of blue and gray as the dust particles dance in it's light. Or see if I can climb high on a ledge or battlement just so I can take in the view of the surrounding buildings with their lit windows and interesting roofs or perhaps the city skyline in the distance. Ahh, I love doing stuff like that. In Thief II, for example, I was in a Hammerite or Mechanist cathedral and there was this brass or bronze angel sticking out high in the air from the wall on one end of the main cathedral chapel and there was a balcony not too far from it. And I wondered if I could shoot a rope arrow at the right distance into one of the ceiling beams so that I could leap from the balcony railing and barely grab the bottom of the rope as I fell at a downward and forward angle. And then climb back up the rope and jump off at the top of the rope, up near the ceiling, and then fall far enough forward that I could get onto the top of the angel. Well, after some tries, it worked! I was just barely able to make it onto the angel. It was cool to look around the large hall and enjoy the view from an angle not really intended for the player to be looking from. It was a challenging jump and it was fun to see that I could make it. But if there were limited saves forced in the game, I would never have risked such a thing so likely to get me killed if I missed my jump. Or dared to waste one of my few valuable saves that I might really need later in the mission on such a trivial thing. But that would also greatly lessen my enjoyment of the levels in the game, if I couldn't take such risks for things not important to the mission, but that I really like to do. Since restricted numbers of saves per level/mission will always be an option only, and never forced, it's really not an issue. But I just wanted to point out that Springheel is right when he says there are reasons for wanting unlimited numbers of saves during a mission, even on expert difficulty, that have nothing to do with making the mission easier to complete, but are related strictly to the enjoyment of exploring the level and getting into interesting, and sometimes difficult and dangerous to reach, locations in or on the buildings. Anyhow, I can't wait to see authentic Thief fan missions in the DOOM III engine. They are going to look spectacular!