ZylonBane

Those are the sort of concepts the belong in a sprawling RPG, not a mission-based game.

Dur, because allowing the player to drop essential equipment like the blackjack makes it entirely too easy for the player to screw himself. "Oops, dropped my blackjack down a bottomless pit!" It's the same reason why quest items default to undroppable. Dropping weapons is something that only makes sense in games where they consume inventory space (Deus Ex, SS2, etc). When the only space an item occupies is a hotkey, there's no practical reason to ever want to get rid of it. And in case you're thinking, "What about keys and food and stuff! They don't take space!"... that's true, but they're all lumped into a single pile that you can only access by scrolling through one item at a time, so being able to cull that pile is essential.

You mean the fireworks arrows?

The classic noise arrows definitely bounce a bit. It's easy to see because of that concentric-ring trail they emit.

I'm going to assume you meant to say "hazard suit" and "Gordon" here.

Oh dear, are we going to have to explain the concept of "time zones" now?

Nah, struggling non-native speakers don't say things like, "is the person in question qualified to make that determination". But then, in the very same paragraph we have "I do hope the words larger the your I.Q", which is borderline gibberish. My vote is for alcohol.

Actually, at this point I'm going to retract my "idiot" interpretation and throw my full support behind Ombrenuit's "under the influence" theory. It would explain, for example, how he managed to lose the ability to parse personal pronouns between his fourth and fifth posts.

He's saying you're an idiot.

Gosh bob, thank heavens the Dark Mod team has you around to let them know that low frame rates are bad.

This is a ridiculous idea. When you quench a flame with water, it goes out pretty much instantly.

In T1/2, lockpicking begins IMMEDIATELY. You're proposing an annoying time delay before anything happens. That would be teh suck.

Oh hell no. A frob should be instant action. Just pull out a damn water arrow and shoot the thing.

I'd just like to cite the previous two posts as perfect examples of why obnoxious people shouldn't design interfaces.

Alas, it was. Maybe one day you'll work up to "humorous".

It burns. It burns like fanfic.

"Do you think that's OS9 you're breathing?"

That is a Bad Idea, because it makes it entirely too easy to accidentally waste a consumable resource.

Yes, how dare they not add needless complexity to the interface!

Wow, if only there were a thread halfway down the page discussing this very subject... http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=1532

From the perspective of making FMs for Thief, the value of the OMs is that they defined both the mythology and the gameplay. From the perspective of making FMs for TDM... well, let's be perfectly honest here-- the mythology of TDM is basically Thief with the serial numbers filed off. There's no need to establish it because in essence it's already established. So the pack-in campaign for TDM can treat plot as a secondary concern and concentrate on pure gameplay. Someone mentioned how different people like different aspects of the Thief universe. Don't fight that... run with it. Do something like "The Dark Mod: Chronicles" where the campaign is just a collection of unrelated missions, perhaps presented in flashback format. That would give the mappers the freedom to do whatever themes they want, without concern for any overarching plot.

The existence of a campaign along with the release of the tools would serve an extremely valuable function-- establishing a baseline "style" for any future mods. Yes, it's great that FM authors will be able to customize practically everything about their missions. But from the player's perspective, it's also great to be able to start a new FM with certain valid expectations about how the gameworld will function. Things like how visible torches make you, how much noise footsteps make, how fast guards run, that sort of thing. If elemental things like that vary wildly from mission to mission, it will just annoy and frustrate most people. As Doug Church himself has said, "Thief is a game about territory. In each game the player and the AI have their safe zones, but to get to the player's goal they need to adjust that territory by changing the environment." Thus, to effectively influence the environment, players need to know the rules. Discovering the rules should be part of the learning curve for the game itself, not a challenge that every single FM poses. That's why an introductory campaign would serve to lay the groundwork for what the "expected" rules are, and then let FMs deviate from that on a special-case basis instead of for every little thing. That's pretty much how things developed with Thief FMs, so it should work just as well here.

If I'm understanding what they said correctly, they aren't talking about having an actual meter on the screen (god help us). They're talking about "heavy" blackjack blows, much like the heavy sword swings in Classic Thief, which you get by holding the attack button for an extra second or so. And it's not just an extra boring step-- by requiring more time to ready a heavy blackjack swing, it slightly narrows the attack window on your target and forces the player to think a little more tactically.

ActiveDesktop is the perfect way to instantly tell if you're dealing with a N00B's computer. If you want to use a non-BMP picture as a wallpaper, just drag-drop it onto the IE icon, then set as wallpaper.

Oh yeah, but what about meteor showers, eh? It's not Thief without meteor showers! And oobleck!