SneaksieDave

"Accept things because that's the way they are, stupid."

Well, consider me surprised. Between the horrible dialog and voice acting, the nausea inducing animation-locked movement, the on-rails cramped and tiny levels, the butchering of characterizations (Basso the gruff Brooklynite?) and style in general (FINISH HIM!), the hand-holding (every UI element carrot on a stick, upgrades (??), and indicators galore), the annoying twat sidekick (which admittedly disappears early, if I'm not mistaken; hope she's dead, though I'm sure she's not; oh, soap opera sigh...), the very strong emphasis on "show me" rather than "explore and discover" (that was a key point of the originals!), the thrusting of NuGarrett into our faces in contrast to the first games where he was us instead of someone we were simply observing, the bugs (AI, stability, etc), the poor sound implementation, the general "Me too!" dumbed-down design philosophy and consolization of it, the lack of future FMs, and much more (many have a far better grasp of the development and take more interest in it than I do; you can find entire lists, FFS; this is just off the top of my head from a few LP's and reading), I'm really surprised that Thief fans are enjoying Thiaf. Not annoyed, as I'm not really interested beyond Let's Play and what it means for the legacy of Thief; it's not Thief as I know it, and I hope it doesn't fragment and dilute the Thief and TDM editing communities worse than they already are. Just surprised.

Unholy shit, what is with all of those "upgrades" in the video link above? Did EM not realize that the "bow upgrade" gag was mockery? How clueless are these guys? What happened to achieving success in Thief based on your skill and experience, rather than purchased upgrades? WTF? *HEAD EXPLODES* Edit: Did that seriously say "FINISH HIM"?? (1:18) *HEAD EXPLODES AGAIN; FATALITY*

They clearly aren't above aligning themselves with the modding community (which has absolutely nothing to do with their game) as a last-second attempt to drum up interest in their product. It's a pretty safe bet that any teasing that they might release an editor if the game sells well enough is delivered with the same intention.

I've only watched a handful of Let's Plays, and that's what I'll be sticking with going forward. For me, they've clearly and undoubtedly missed the point of Thief. The gameplay is hand-held and misses engaging the player's mind; just follow the path and click the glowy things. The dialog and characterizations are embarrassing. Considering the parent company, it's no surprise that there's so much cinematic showiness going on, rather than gameplay. I could go on and on but it's not really worth the time. Why is gaming evolving this way? We're a smart species. More developers SHOULD be making games for MIT grads. It's why we signed on with them in the first place. Challenge our minds; don't insult us. Greed kills. Press 'X' to Flush.

I'd certainly say the contest is a last-minute effort to drum up interest in their game among the community that has spent more than 15 years with Thief. That doesn't mean it's all bad or all good in terms of intention, and in fact it seems a little desperate, but in the end, their game will stand, or not, on its own two legs, independent of the Thief series and TDM. I have a feeling it will sell enough that they'll be justified in the eyes of the publisher. Early videos with over a million hits (and thousands of likes) suggest it, as does the reception of DX:HR. Many of the 15+ year players might not like it at all, though (from video previews, I currently have no interest in it), but there will be a ton of console players wanting their first bite of it. What confuses and bugs me a little about this contest, though, is the premise of it. It's nice to acknowledge modders of T1,2, and 3 and TDM (although it's not needed -- the community has accomplished far more for Thief than they have or ever will). It's great to stir up activity in the modding scene (if it succeeds in doing that). However, I feel it's very strange to use modding of a game that's 15 years old (with free copies handed out of the game that is not even the one most edited -- T2 holds that distinction), to drum up interest in their new game which will be for a different audience and almost definitely will not include a level editor and likely will not be very mod-able. Has that policy changed recently? Or might the contest help them to decide whether or not they officially support editing of Thief 4? If there's been any word on it, I don't know it. It can only help their cause in the end, I'd say. Those interested will still buy the game and DLC regardless of FMs, and FMs are what kept Thief so hot for so long. It'll be interesting to see where this goes, whether it prompts the release of editing tools, or whether it's just an attempt to align themselves and their game with successful modding communities.

Great! Thanks.

Okay, see if this link works. If I didn't forget anything, that should repro the EAX(4) demo on suitably-equipped PCs. https://www.dropbox....i8i/eaxdemo.zip For anyone else downloading, just unzip it to your darkmod folder and bring down the console (ctrl-alt-~), then the command is "map eaxdemo" (no quotes).

Tried this out today and it still works with 2.0, so that's good news. I had to track down the EFX file first, but after that, no probs. I did notice that the links at the start of this thread are dead, though. I can re-upload the package if we have somewhere stable/reliable/official to put it? Just ~100kb zipped. Edit: Hm, first I think the map needs to be 2.0'ified...

Yup, that works! Thanks. Now if only it displayed what page I'm on...

Thanks and it's really nice to see so many great people still around! After trying this out last night and confirming (looks like a pretty small effect, but maybe I didn't see it at its worst) I've put this up on the tracker for completeness/anality. I categorized it high priority, but anyone please correct if necessary. I'm late to the show! http://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=3571

The video had me laughing. It's taken a lot -- stripping away community editing, changing gameplay, making a mockery of a beloved series, etc., etc. -- but the folks behind THIAF have turned me away completely (from a starting point that already wasn't optimistic). The perplexing thing is, I don't really care anymore. We have great games already that meet the need, and I don't need that consolized nonsense. The Thief source is out and The Dark Mod is standalone! I'll watch as the THIAF situation develops for the sake of curiosity, but it's not the game for me. I had enough of messy failed attempts falling short in T3. The devs are missing it on way too many points. Oh, they'll make more money with THIAF than Thief ever made, that's guaranteed. And that's the most important thing, right? Of course it is. Makes you wonder if they "got" (let alone played) the originals at all. Thank the Builder for TDM and the original Thief games.

I see that there's a mobile view for the forum. It appears to work great (good use of space, fast) but for one thing, but maybe I'm just missing it. Is there a way to "Jump To Page"? If you go to full view, the usual method is there, where you click "Page 3" or whatever and enter "17" and hit go. But this doesn't seem to exist in mobile, and it's unrealistic to page through threads with 17 pages every time. Anyone know?

Bummer, but at least there are workarounds. I'll be grabbing the new release to see how problematic it is. Last I'm running is 1.6.1 which AFAIR doesn't suffer from it, or my workflow avoids it. I'm rusty, not sure. Definitely should go up on the tracker IMO.

Hey all.. Congrats to all on the 2.0 release of TDM! Massive effort and it looks great. Hearing the news got me wanting to maybe do some mapping. Is there any further update on this very troubling issue? A new DR was just released but it doesn't seem to mention it. Is this issue (the remaining one) on the tracker? If it's not, it's a lot less likely to get noticed and fixed.

Holy.... are you kidding me? This is freaking incredible, Arcturus! Truly a beauty to behold.

Yep they've got it for $10 Sounds good to me, just don't want to run into Unforeseen Circumstances. So the specific questions about gog.com service above still hold for anyone in-the-know. I think in MW I am only up to the 4th(?) prophecy, or whatever they call it. I think it was getting allegiance of all the clans. Sounds a lot like Wheel of Time now that I think about it. Don't know if I'll ever be able to finish, and it makes me feel a bit bad to leave games behind while picking up new ones. Hell I still have >800 T2 missions to play.

Haven't read this thread before just now. Game looks pretty impressive and right up my alley. I'm already wanting to rebuild some areas from W2 in DarkRadiant for fun and challenge. I'm considering jumping in and buying The Witcher (1) on GoG.com. Anyone know any problems with using that site? I've read it's no DRM, but do I have to use any software from them for the download (other than the game of course )? I'm meaning like Steam. Does it have to validate my games every time I want to play? Does it download-as-installed, or download an ISO or an installer, and installation is separate? I ask because I'd like to download in a VM, but install on a separate machine. One of these days I have to finish Gothic. And start Gothic 2. And finish STALKER. And finish Morrowind...

And there it is. (not that it was rocket science or anything; plain simple inevitability). The drug dealer analogy fits nicely, imo. Reasonable advertising is preferable to subscription charges (thus the "(or worse)" from my original quote).

Do you mean that the popup menu is coming up every time you right-click drag to move the ortho view? Is that an SVN build? I am not having repro here with the 1.6.1 release. I think greebo said he's on vacation about a week, iirc.

Yes! (don't know for sure it will still boot up though; it's in a box somewhere) (and it can all be virtualized anyway so there's little point)

Just popping in... and see some things never change, do they? Well in response to whatever I'm being called down for here: the current system (which I didn't design) was a stepping stone to improvement. That "first go" was an attempt at an automatic faked radiosity system (again, not designed by me). It works okay, not great, but the way it was originally laid out (not by me) was that ambient lighting grew brighter as you approached local lights. That is backwards; your pupils should be dilating as you enter brighter light, so it looked completely wrong. Conversely when in dark areas, it provided basically no radiosity, making the feature pointless on the very topic it was supposed to address -- giving you partial vision in the dark and a more realistic look. Some setting about crossing zones or not, it's a limitation in the system -- either it works completely wrong, or... it works completely wrong (in a different way). The hope was it would be an improvement over having no system. I don't favor it. What I argued at length for (check the threads for verbal ping-pong -- as will probably break out here too unless I limit my responses to this one) was for a system with ambient light entities linked to local lights, where the system controls the ambient light levels via the local light levels. Extinguish the local light, and the ambient light drops (not to zero). Ignite the local light, and the ambient light grows brighter. With multiple linkage: extinguish one local light of three total, and the ambient drops by about 1/3. You get the idea. It's not exactly Crytek but it would make a nice controllable automatic fake radiosity. That said, this can already be done in TDM (trigger an ambient entity with a local entity and it works, but only single linkages!), but it's not automatic. That's it. That system was never implemented in favor of other features no one requested but I agree that no one is under contract here, and people should work on what they want to. I simply thought lighting was more essential to TDM's gameplay and look. For my own personal mission(s) (if I ever get around to finishing), I'm debating not using the zone info stuff and instead just using the native D3 ambients linked to locals. (That's assuming support for dynamic linked ambient-locals doesn't come to be for TDM.)

Just wanted to say really quick that all of your shots are simply awesome. Very exciting! This is exactly the kind of stuff I've always wanted to do but don't think I have the mettle to do so.

Well, enjoy it while you can. All of these "wow! new! great!" sites get you hooked, and then slowly make incremental changes to "support the site" (make money) at the detriment of usability (the reason you went there in the first place). Then everyone stops using it (imageshack) and someone else takes over for their moment in the sun. It's like... the "internet website cycle of life." Think of any of your favorite news or weather sites, gaming or sports sites, music sites, hosting sites, etc. They all eventually succumb to the advertising (or worse) monster. Face it: no one's doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. And the same will happen to this one. *gauntlet thrown*