demagogue

Haha! Well, it is a fan site ... we have to have something to bitch about since that's what fans do, and otherwise things would get boring pretty fast. Yeah maybe it's mostly an act, but what the fuck, why not... At this point, though, my optimism is wavering and probably they will end up being lackluster, forgettable additions to the corpus. But they don't have to be. Just because a genre is an old one doesn't mean fresh stuff can't come around and shake things up on occassion ... this is just one more opportunity to try to get a rise out of people. There are only so many chances you get to do that in a year or so, but it's still in the cards that the chance may be blown.

I was going to voice some concern about the self-appointed managers of the restoration project that were coming forward, but it seems New Horizon beat me to it in the TTLG thread. (I just today polished off some of my part of the Chain Project right next to nicked's part and ... hmmmf, it doesn't bode well, although in fairness his last FM was quite good, polished and fun, although then again he only registered at TTLG in Jan 2006.) I'm glad he (NH) brought it up the way he did, though. One thing, nicked seems to intend to canvass ideas from the general public and whatever dromeder comes forward to say s/he wants to help. His forum is already public and attracting trolls and what is probably worse: fans (or god knows where these people may come from...) whose enthusiasm for doing something for Thief might outweigh their better-judgment for FM making, which was the achilles heel to T2X I thought ... and while ok for a totally fan-driven project, there should really be higher standards set for this project, which touches on canon material. I mean, it would really be ashame if it's going to be as open as he is suggesting; I think he's overestimating the faith that "if it sucks we'll just keep working on it until it's good." Once a mediocre dromeder gets invested in their work, or the "group think" of very open projects sets in, it might not be such an easy thing to pull off. I think in retrospect Digi might have avoided the possibility that this could go sour by contacting a few veteran dromeders before he made the public announcement, so a team would already have been on hand right from the beginning. I hope the NH side carries the day here. It's not just about being a "newbie", it's about demonstrating a long-standing commitment to community before taking the liberty to take its rights. Or maybe that's not the right way to say it. A better way to phrase it, maybe, is that things are just happening too fast here when there should be a much longer, community wide discussion about what we should do with these missions, than for just a few newish dromeders to suddenly come out of the woodworks and start building on them the *next* day after they are released (I mean, I'd count myself in that category as well). The way he speaks it's as if he and his newly minted team pounded out the entire game plan not more than a day after release. Here's crossing our fingers that a little more modesty, patience and discussion prevails.

And it's sort of cool to be able to open the .mis files in dromed, hit info_window, and see LGS developers names that we recognize. Also, a way to carry the torch of LGS's memory. I hope whatever team decides to restore them takes it seriously, though. They shouldn't be amaturish.

Haha Virtual reality and alter egos are things of our generation (or at least of MMO players) that just seem unbridgable over the gap with our parents or those otherwise out of the loop -- there's just nothing from their world that can serve as any kind of analogy. It seems perfectly natural to me as well, because the whole idea of all gaming is that you are adopting a persona, a player character, as an avatar, and taking on a very foreign persona is just part of that. I haven't lived with my parents in a long time, but even if I did, they are so far out of the loop by now that there'd be no point in even trying to catch them up to speed.

I'm almost certain you are talking about Adventure, which is the first IF and was also making the rounds on Arpanet (early military version of the internet) in the period you're talking about. From wikipaedia for interactive fiction:

@Ombrenuit You can play them (The Pawn and Guild of Thieves) on both the Amiga emulator and C64 emulator. Both emulators are very easy to find online and set up, as are both games for both systems; Google is your friend here. Amiga has much better graphics (relatively speaking here! NB, The Pawn and Guild of Thieves have "graphics" in that the text is accompanies often by a picture of the room you're in, sometimes nice for atmosphere, but not necessary to the game at all, which is entirely text based) C64 is how most everyone played it originally, so it has the nostolgia factor, maybe not so important to you. Also, setting things up is a little easier and more user friendly for the C64 emulator than the Amiga, so since the graphics don't matter so much it maybe worth just sticking with the C64. But then again if the graphics are there, may as well go for the best. It's a personal preference thing, anyway. I agree these two are the best choice for trying out IF, though. A lot of people like Infocom, which was very prolific and over a wide range of themes (zork and Hitchhiker's Guide), but Magnetic Scrolls (makers of Pawn and GoTs) were the best in my book; only a few games but all of them quality and you can feel how much love they poured into them.

victoly! \o/

YES!!! God, I loved Guild of Thieves (and its prequel even more, The Pawn). Man, it was Thief before Thief ... it had you looting the castle/manor with the guards, the temple, the crypt, the bank, the cemetary ... it was hilarious, a great set up and story (being watched by the Master Thieves while you apply for the Guild by stealing everything in the region), and the puzzles were logical and tiered (for lack of a better term, e.g., went from easy to harder over the course of the game, so it gives you a learning curve). And best of all ... lots of stealing stuff. The back of the game read: Why buy this game when you can steal it? This and the Pawn were hands down the best IF games ever in my opinion. It is a text adventure (IF) with graphics, but I think you shouldn't knock it just because it's IF, at least in this case (or unless you just really hate IF). But if you like Thief, you should really give it a shot, I think, since it really is uncanny at places, being a medieval thieving game after all. If time and initiative are on my side, I hope to remake this as faithfully as possible as my first TDM FM (I mentioned this months ago: clicky). So you might wait for that and get the same experience in FPS-adventure style.

Oh, I'm surprised I forgot to mention that when you asked the direct question. I've been playing these games for years using Dosbox, right down to Space Quest 1. Note that in some cases you may still need MoSlow (to slow the processing down, esp for pre-1990 games) and something to emulate an old soundblaster (VSound? I forget the name just now), even using Dosbox.

Yeah, I did this very fast and wasn't really paying close attention at all. I can now see it's the trunk of a car with buildings being reflected on it. When I first saw it I didn't know what it was on first glance so just clicked as fast as possible, taking the advice to just gut-call it when in doubt. When I said it was an airplane, I was looking only at the thumbnail, and even then not very closely, where it looks a little like an airplane wing in the background ... but not close up.

Yeah, it sounds so much like Quest for Glory. By the way, QfG1 was the first game I remember playing that featured breaking into someone's house and sneaking around like a thief to steal something. I loved that thrill and was one of the first things I thought about like 8 years later when Thief came out.

8:10. I was just about to push CG for the car too, for largely the same reason: the bricks didn't have any realistic caulk or dirt between them and were just too clean, but then I saw one little weed poking out from a groove so hit real at the last second. The airplane also threw me off because I didn't really know what I was looking at and just guessed 50/50.

This is quite the tongue-twister. I tried to say it aloud three times fast and it took me a while.

Ever think about publically archiving the team forums when everything is finished? Just to see its genesis. It'd probably be valuable to see these debates years down the road when future people revisit certain ideas. Anyway, another question for after it's done.

Yes, of course.

This isn't a request by any means, this is just thinking aloud. There was an old (2004?) press release re-posted recently that if they did make Thief 4, it wouldn't be medieval but in a different time and setting, and some people balked. But at the same time I think there is untapped potential here as well. I remembered that one of my favorite Contest Missions was Thief Noir, which had a 1930s-1950s flavor which I thought was cool, and there are parts about thief gameplay that could really fit well in a more modern setting... I particularly thought about like pre-WWI London (or like some synthesis of 1880s-1950s, the City 200 years on), like Jack the Ripper turf, or Sherlock Holmes style badguys, and the PC is more like a cat-burglar, wall climbing and jumping, and the watch are like old school bobbies with nightsticks and in an emergency maybe have a small pistol (maybe they go for tackling and handcuffing the PC, not sure?), and tommie guns might make an appearance, and gangsters, and the PC still has lockpicks, a grappling hook (effectively just like a rope arrow), maybe a swtichblade for an emergency, no gun, and still the blackjack of course. Not sure about working vehicles, but maybe just models. Mostly stylistic differences, I wouldn't want to change the gameplay, but new objects and AI. Not sure how flexible the toolset will be to add this kind of stuff, sounds like a lot of work. But anyway I was just thinking aloud about how it'd be cool to have the ability with TDM to start adapting thief gameplay to a variety of different periods and settings once the core gameplay is under wraps; at least the potential is there. I mean, if work grew on trees, it'd be cool to have a Jack the Ripper thief, Noir thief, contemporary thief, SS2 period thief (ZB already brought this last one up in TTLG using dromed, but TDM seems the way to go IMO), etc. At this point, though, I'm just thinking aloud about it, putting it on the table to deal with much later, "After Dm Is Done" as the topic says.

Maybe they're trying to oust the competition so they'll have a monopoly on Thief fandom...

I don't want to laugh but the situation seems kind of absurdly funny... With all the tards they have floating around TTLG why on earth would they want to pick on Komag? I'm sure it has to be temporary. I mean for god's sake they let Blue Haze back in (under the awful name Beauty Man) after he'd gone through 8 altnicks and a monthly spamming ritual. And everybody knows you and your site are one of the backbones of the community. I agree, they just like laying down the law sometimes; so I guess take it in stride. Vent a little here about how ungrateful they are, and realize that most people in the community are going to be on your side. Also, at least now you are in good company with ?Noid, Oddity and ZB ... the last of whom iirc, to give you an idea of just how arbitrary the whole thing is, was temp-banned recently (apparently by one of the "softy" mods; not hard to guess which one) only to be made moderator for a day while he was banned! (for April Fool's, although it might have been as soon as he came back.) Also, I never got the feeling people, David or GBM, hated you ... CommChat can be harsh to everyone, just part of its culture; you really have to stick to your guns and take things in stride if you actually find it fun to post/read there. And it may just be a personality thing; I've found it's more about the conversation and having fun with a topic than what's really "right", so there's no use trying to be too reasonable (of which apparently I am guilty a little too often for my own good) ... so maybe you just went in with the wrong expectations. Anyway, if you want we can start a "Free Komag" campaign for you over there. I'll make the t-shirt.

Komag selling the Dark Project. Say it ain't so.

They're not posting, though. I agree it's the trailer. I wonder how much exposure this is getting outside the Thief community. Do you guys have a feel for that?

Well, a lot of it may be subliminal but contributes to an overall impression, even though you couldn't put it into words. So I don't think it was "wasted". But anyway, all of these sorts of issues seem to be exactly the sort of thing you want to bring up near the *end* of the process, to tweak and polish and smooth everything out. Nothing really to worry about at this point, it seems (although probably still worth putting on the table for future refrence).

Wow, that was back in the day when they really meant them to be "Penitentiaries", that is, rooms to isolate a criminal so he could reflect on his sin and do penitence to God.

For what it's worth, my thinking is if a mapper wanted something like this, he should trigger it himself. Because it's really about design features that are at the mapper's discretion, which is what I thought Spar's more general point was. So there might be doors that a guard isn't *supposed* to be able to unlock. E.g., if he's running after the PC in new territory, like a strange house and gets locked in and tries to return to his old path after a while, or even if it's on his normal patrol route but he's like a city watch that goes through technically private property, it'd be strange to hear him say "why doesn't this lock work?" because it's not a lock he should be able to unlock. But if a door is on a guard's home turf, and his key gets stolen, it seems like a mapper could use scripts to custom trigger a bark to cover this kind of situation, and more appropriately, to say things like "damn, where'd my key go." (if he didn't see it get taken); "who's been taffing with the locks" (also, if he didn't see the door get locked), and even be careful enough to trigger different barks or cancel them if he *did* see what happened and just generally tweak it to be appropriate, and that could still be cool. The more general point here I think is that, people make suggestions all the time around here that seem so map-specific that it'd really be better to let mappers custom put them in (because in the right situation they really could be cool), than for the team to assume them in all maps for the toolset, which can only lead to absurd, out-of-context results.

I have to admit I was a little skeptical of the dragging, but watching it in action looks so intuitive. It's sort of what I'd feel like I'd want to do in that situation, to stay crouched low, and just pull a body into a corner. (Although I still hope shoulder-carrying is in).

It was a touching video, more than I expected it to be. The sneaking thief on the ledge, the first k.o., a few of the arrow take-outs and guards falling down stairs, over a bannister, in a pool with a splash. Pretty fun to watch and caught the spirit of classic gameplay quite well, I thought. The loot ching especially brought back fond memories. A few things seemed a little jerky, but as you said above, it seems those things will get tweaked towards the end; so I'm not really worried about it. You can see some of the need for a little more texture appropriateness and variety. Pretty much 3 sets showed off here (warehouse, mansion and cathedral; the cave was just one texture it seemed, although I like how it was bump mapped). I can also see a number of things that you've already updated on that didn't make it into the vid, e.g., the on-screen readable. I also recognized some of those rooms from the screenshots. I liked how it told a little story, ending with a sunken cathedral ... pretty cool. "Broken Glass" is a nice tribute in a number of ways, sort of a bitter-sweet name, actually. Anyway, all around a great release this time around. It was definately worth the wait.