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A less permanent solution would be to use black electrical tape instead The brightness of it kind've bothered me at first, but got used to it a mission or two into it.

While having various factions and groups certainly adds depth to gameplay, why does the DarkMod have to copy Thief so blatantly? Especially since the T3 editor has been released. Personally I am more interested in a generic thief-style engine that lets FM authors create their own settings, whether that is a thief like mediaeval world, a futuristic scif world, modern day big city, feudal Japan or ancient Rome - get the mechanics of the gameplay going, basic characters that can be easily reskinned by FM authors (I don't have 3DsMax, nor can I afford it, so that kind of modelling is out of the question for me unless someone has any suggestions on budget modelling software!). So if you want to make a mission that sticks closely to the Thief series, with Hammerites, Pagans, Keepers etc, go for it, but also try to think outside the square and create something new and a bit different. You don't HAVE to copy Thief exactly!

I want to set up a loot system that gives diminishing returns on loot - the more loot you stuff into your bag, the more likely you are to be noticed, and the slower and noisier you will be. That way the player has to make a choice between getting enough loot to make the mission worthwhile financially, and getting greedy and getting chaught. If you think about crime statistics, most burglaries involve small items that are easisly fenced - jewelery, cash, small electrical goods, cds, dvds and so on, and real thieves don't carry lots of gear around (certainly not a quiver full of sundry magical arrows, a bow, numerous flash bombs, potions etc), that way they can hide in plain sight just as easily as in the shadows. Modern thieves carry things like screwdrivers, lockpicks, maybe a crowbar, pliars and wire cutters (usually a multitool or pocket knife with all of thes attatchments is enough) . they often dress as tradesmen so their toolkit doesn't seem odd. I think random unpredictable things like floorboards creaking unexpectedly add immensly to gameplay, to me having a visual clue is almost cheating - I want the thief to have to adapt to events outside their control. Like I said, I like a challenge, and this might not be for everyone... My point is, I want to play missions where the deciding factor is the skill and cunning of the player in as realistic a world as current computers can create, not the arsenal he/she carries - if you want that play Doom

We are currently refining our own new loot system for the campaign we'll be releasing. The player will be able to choose between the new loot system or stick to the old Thief inspired one. The new system will involve limits on how much loot you can take from a level, you will not magically know the value of the loot you're taking until you end the mission and sell it, so you have to apprasie loot and be judicious about what you steal, and there will be no enforced loot requrements tacked on to the end of the real objectives. (apart from special loot items) As always with these new ideas some team members are for it and some are against. I made a thread arguing for the broafhead arrows to be removed, since they are simply a ye olde snyper ryfle. THey are no good against undead in this game, so I see no purpose for them. Their main purpose would be to snipe unaware guards while you sit in the shadows. Our thief is small, so I also proposed limits on how long he can carry a body. Rather like the way you can only hold the bow sting drawn for so long before you automatically get tired and let go, the same should be true for carrying bodies. THis will add to gameplay since you'll have to make sure you knock people out near good hiding spots unless you want to spend half an hour picking them up and dropping them again to get there. IF there are no good hiding spots - well you'll eother have to sneak past instead or knock him out and leave him int he open, hoping he isn't spotted. Your choice. We'd be lynched if we left out rope arrows, but I've also proposed grappling hooks. Nearly everyone here hated the climbing gloves in TDS, including myself. I'm generally like realism, but not at any cost. If it can be worked into the game well, then it's always the best option for me. JHowever, realism cannot always be worked into game play very well.

I downloaded it from thief-universe with a download manager and it worked really fine. always around 128kb/s which is my max. downloadspeed. I'm now at the 3rd mission. ghosting everything on difficulty hard and it's quite fun however I hope the missions will get more difficult later - it's quite uncommon that I can find about 90% of the total loot when ghosting, when you consider that I even had to leave some stuff, because I didn't want to break any windows....

Just visiting the great outdoors! :lol: BTW-did anybody notice in the mission pack the dead marine outside that had bare arms instead of pressure suit sleeves? All that attention to detail and they miss out on one simple thing!

You know you want a mission involving a wagon trail or builder train or something... That'd add another element of challenge - actually getting onto a moving vehicle! Perhaps from a horse or something... I think perhaps my imagination's running away.

Ah, I loved the first mission. I never knew if the sequel was available yet or not. Thanks for the heads up (Not that I will get time to play it anytime soon)

There should be no invisible potions on the grounds that only a total idiot would build a seciton into a mission that required the use of them. Invisible potions are the antithesis of this game. LGS had some bad ideas as well you know.

Don't be an idiot, any normal person could hold his breath for at least a minute underwater, and that can be increased with training. A minute gives plenty of scope for traveling, and frantically trying to find somewhere to come up and breath towards the end of that minute is much more stressful that swigging your stupid fucking magic potion. Unlress some auther is thinking of setting his entire fucking mission at the bottom of the ocean, there's no need for breath potions in a game like this, they're just another pathetic hangover from Thief, which wouldn't have been though of otherwise.

Really i dont have much experiance... but i have been meesing around with doomedit here and there and have been a long time dromed maper without any reall story line and without any clear idea of what do make a mission about i have been using the editors just to create when i am bord. you know just have nothin i think that i could do better if only i could get good theme going... mostly i have done lots of nothing... i have been messing around with this but never have a clear vision.. just maybe i try this or that and see what it looks like then format (computer gets messed up) my hard drive and loose all my work and then start all over... so i guess i have some experiance but i never really finished anything... want to with this project how do i send a sample map

If you want to create a mission, blocking out the map geometry is a good approach anyway, because this will certainly changed the least. One thing that we hope for is, that beta mappers will at least finish a fully functional map. The idea is not only to get some feedback (which is of course an important part of it), but also to already have some playable maps available as soon as we can release TDM to the public. Also keep in mind that you will not be part of the dev team, because we want to keep that seperated. The idea of the beta mapper is to have somebody who is using the tools just like users will use them once they are released. Therfore a beta mapper is not directly a team member (technically) because we want to prevent "mind pollution". If you are a dev you may approach something differently because you already know about something. Of course we are in close contact with the beta mappers so this is more a technical detail. TDM should be a black box to you and you don't need to have sepcific internal knowledge about the inner workings just to be able to use it (similar to Dromed).

Well, there can be other scenarios. A pagan territory in a run down section of the city. A mission where some secret transaction is about to take place in a ruined mansion and the player must prevent it. The place is sealed of with guards even though this place is assumed to be long abandoned. That's just two scenarios that come to my mind when I don't really think even about particular settings.

There wasn't a single mission in any of the three Thief games with paper walls or tents, so I wouldn't recommend spending any time at all on this. We can't create *everything* a FM author could conceivably want to include. Cutting banners down like T2 I'm all for, though a canned animation is fine there as you said.

Well... An ideal situation would be to include different types of bows, and you could then choose which one you'd like to use before a mission. I don't know how much work this is, but it surely won't hurt the gameplay.

...and yet (continuing on from my last post) I'm still openminded to these things, and Fingernail made it sound fun. But once it gets used, everyone will use it, and it won't be a surprise anymore. We'd just have to trust FM authors to use it very sparingly. No doubt we'd develop another "I don't play X" missions group of players, where they won't touch a mission that has guns in it, much like some dont like undead missions.

The oDD comment: "What? Unpassable? HA! I only made all doors unpickable, and the whole map was in the day and the loot requirement was only 1999435942624363460979879347 and you did'nt need those health potions, arrows, or even clothes. Sword? HA! why? It would be used for killing. Come on, my mission is easy..."

This creature has turned up in a few of my nighmares. He floats along slowly a few feet above the floor, wearing that crazy Inca mask. I don't know what is behind the mask, and I don't want to either! I thought he might turn up in the pagan mission somehow. I call him 'The Carrot Man'.

So basically no squad tactics whatsoever anymore... that sucks The only way I could personally do well in many of the situations in GR (without restarting the mission all the time ) was to use one team as a fire element and the other team as a manuever element and do the whole "bounding overwatch" thing. Guess I would have hated GR2 then if it took all that away.

That's true oDD. But as an example, my mod for Thievery has the option of failing the mission if you get seen (a thing all iron men love) and let me tell you that i have a pass rate of 1 pass to 20 fails and i'm not exactly a newbie either. I've played T1,2,3 and Thievery, etc. I know how to sneak but sometimes you just make a mistake (like accidentally press jump instead of crouch...). I do too search out very hard games and enjoy a good challenge, but sometimes i do feel like a little bit of an easier ride.

I'd just like to point out that in T1-T2, there were MANY ways to accomplish a mission. So it's been done before, it can be done again. It does not require more work or planning, it just requires good FM design and mapping skills. It takes more work to make maps with rooms that are not all cubes too.

Macsen is working on the plot of the campaign, which is actually far, far off. We won't be doing anything more than the introductory mission until the toolset is complete, which is at least a year away. We have an internal milestone coming up at the end of the month that we're well on our way towards meeting.

We can use plants in a mansion mission as well, but IMO most of the stuff you requested will not fit in with the milestone. Since our modelers are already quite busy this should be postponed.

Of course they make sense as a general rule on hardest - they give the game the ultimate difficulty. What's the point having a hardset setting which isn't the hardest because you're free to take as long as you want to complete the mission?

The Revenants are the skeletons in Doom that fire homing missiles. That looks great oDDity. I'm working of the St Attica mission now so thanks for the shot of inspiration. I'll work in the idea about the Haunts being drowned in chains. Remember to have red mist spewing from their mouths when they spot you... aiie!