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This is something I started back when I thought I'd work on some mission briefing art this summer. Realizing now how far away the campaign really is, I'm not going to be doing anything of the sort for some time. Thought I'd post the portrait anyway. Maybe it could inspire someone to come up with a name.

I second Oddity's opinion on this matter. CoD's single player element was utterly abysmal, (besides the eye candy) without any shred of integrity or realism. My particular beef was with the enemy AI, which played more like Serious Sam (without any of the latter's fun); rushing over walls and running blindly towards their doom. It really did feel like I was in a hollywood movie. It seems to be the trend now in game development to 'dumb' down the amount of things a player is able to do within a game besides point and click to shoot down hordes of stupid enemies. Games now focus more on graphics and eye candy than storyline or player interactivity. We're no longer designing games for 'MIT Graduates' as the saying goes. Dev's no longer seem to want to entertain us players with a decent plot, or with proper player interactivity. I long for the game that truly allows players to influence the plot and shape their own story within a game. I'm not talking about Deus Ex 2, where you could simply choose a different mission at the end of the game to unlock some retarded CG sequence; yeah thats real interaction with the plot right there I want to feel that every decision I make within an open-ended game really affects the world and the story my charcter undertakes. That is True interaction; which is why I look forward to Oblivion myself. Whilst it won't be the ultimate gameplay experience, at least the Bethesda Dev's seem to do know what they're doing, and are taking a step in the right direction.

I interested make mission for DARKMOD! I am not professional radiant user, but i have few editing skills. I not realy like d3 emty space logic i think, unreal and dromed solid space logic is better. I think how resizing the size of rooms, especialy windows dificultest than dromed and unrealed. Spite the Radiant using more confortable than dromed, Too!!!! I more like thief lightmapped lightning, doom3 realtime lightning looks for me too hardware eater, and dificult to use. No problem, i could optimize!! I very like vertex editing in radiant. This function wonderful. Comparable with dromed, radiant fast, and confortable! My best fm: Cop in the shadow This looks like average quality fm, but very optimized, most places the polycount 150-70 And not more than 220!!! The optimisation steal my time, this cause how my fm not a biggest quality! I spend many energy make good look lightning, and good scarry feeling!! Some screenshoots: http://thiefmissions.com/shots.cgi?m=CopInTheShadow2

That works in a campaign, but not a series of unconnected FMs. There's no way to know what order the player is going through them, or to stop the player from killing the Detective in one mission only to have him slip you lockpicks in the next.

Thief 1/2 has become my standard too, with the exception of Ground Control and Homeworld, ( I know, Sierra) but they are mooch-o immersive. But they are such different genres anyway. For FPS, its Thief. Drakon, your list is identical to my own. I just replayed Red Fracture for the cool weapons, the only really good part of the game. The AI layouts were stinky, it was like they had all been waiting for you to arrive the entire game. BG1 was pretty fun, NWN was dull,the Planescape mod thingy was pretty bland too. And I though all the Diablos were crappy. With DarkMod, I want to make scenes that will haunt the player (mongst other things). Not necessarily gory, but dark, spooky, ALIEN shit that makes you forget you are sitting at your desk. Not space alien, but weird. Id like to develop recurring characters, in different FMs you meet them as opponents, allies, and sometimes even just cameos. I wrote something about this at TTLG. A vampire character, one that works with, against, and sometimes along the Thief. Think of the immersion, if you play an FM against a powerful undead badass, the battle is unresolved, then two, three FMs later you bump into him/her/it again, just for a brief moment on the rooftops. The vampire greets you with a laugh and reminds you of some petty detail from the last mission, then is gone for three more FMs. Course, it doesnt have to be an undead thing, a Detective from the Hammerlikes, sometimes after the Thief, sometimes calling for assistance. Little details can be used to create a web of memories around a character that build depth. You help the Detective out one night, save his ass, and ten FMs later he slips you a lockpick set while you sit in the pen. Add a few character models, a few good scripted scenes (D3s cutscenes are pretty damn cool), and you have yourself a little character development, which pays off big time. That being said, I dont want tons of flash, simple, dark, direct scenes with compelling dialog (hopefully). If I can get a little Lovecraft feel in my FMs, mmm, thats good stuff. Come to think of it, those ancient statues in Thief 1/2, the figure with the squid head, is none other than Cthulu. Hai, Cthulu!!! Hai Yog-Shothoth!!! If someone wanted to look into such a project Fingernail after a well deserved rest, they would have my eternal gratitude for one. I dont think the fact the NB exists, bless its soul, should stop anyone from making yet another game. Make seventeen if we can, cause no one else is making good games anymore.

Now that you (and obscurus, drat him) mention it, DarkMod would seem the perfect candidate for such a mod of a mod. Lets see: Two teams, maybe more, of like 2 or 3 thieves each. Different kinds of thief sub-classes, taken from the old games and FMs. Assassins, strong, deadly, fast, good for guarding teams back and striking out at other teams, not the best at safecracking or spotting traps, highest level of health, sets booby traps, best shots with bow/arrow,maybe give them a garrote to lasso guards from on high? Boxmen, the safecracker, opens doors really fast, spots traps and alarms, can maybe even disable some mechanical devices to turn off lights or trash mechs w/o using weapons. (Imagine a boxman sneaking up behind a Tank-Bot and gently sliding a lockpick into a small hole and Pfzzzt! Something besides hitting the damn grate with a water-arrow, THAT was a little weak frankly.) Boxmen are a little slower than other thieves, all that equiptment, but doughty in a fight Thieves, all around thief ala Garrett, a nice "filler outer" class for a team, not as deadly as assassin but still powerful, not as skilled as the boxman but still capable of doing his jobs, a good choice for maps that dont have super tough enemies or super tough safes/vaults/security systems. If the climbing gloves were ever brought into the mod, maybe that would be this classes claim to fame. Assassins and boxmen are too big to climb with gloves, but rope arrows/grappling hooks would be open to all. And one possible addition: Thief-sorcerer:physically weakest of the four classes, cannot use climbing gloves, runs fast enough but useless in a melee, however can use a number of spells, maybe healing, blinding, sleep, wind (to extinguish flames), turn undead, fire ball, reveal traps, make popcorn, whatever. Problem is, you can only pick a limited number of spells to study before the mission and when you use a spell it takes a bit of time before you can use it again. Choose wisely. (And maybe this class would get a familiar, Ive been dreaming of giving the Thief a rat companion that he is magically bonded with and making maps where you have to play both characters to complete) All the classes can ultimately do what the others do, so you may be able to finish a map full of enemies with a boxman and a sorcerer if you are really careful but it would be tough. The sorcerer still carries lockpicks, but he is slow with them. An assassin can still detect a trap, but it takes a lot longer and he misses some occasionally. Now as to the AI. The undead and monsters are one thing, but guards are a different story. When a guard is alerted by one team, and then sounds an alarm, ALL teams are in hot water. The security goes nutz and stays at alert the rest of the game. No easy KOs with these guys, and a fight is a bad idea unless you have at least one assassin to back you up with muscle. So its in everyone's best interest to avoid alerting the guards. If you knock one out, hide the body well, and know that eventually the guard will be missed anyway so your time is limited now. (Course, the other team doesnt know that, do they?) Best to avoid KOs and fights if possible, or save them until absolutely necessary. This could lead to some fun little kinks in gameplay. Say for instance your team is falling behind, you've lost your team mates, you know that your opposing team has probably reached the vault or treasure room ahead of you and is working on the lock right now. So what can you do? Well, its really risky, cause you could get nailed too, but you could alert a guard to your presence. Let him chase you past the other team at work, a priority list in the AIs would make the guard stop and attack/raise hell with the team about to hit the loot. Or just alert him and let the general alarm make it hell for the opposing team to get out. Cause if they all get nailed, you can flash bulb the guards, grab the sack, and make it out the window yourself. Or a team could go "all assassin", let the opposing team do the hard work, then whack em as they leave. Ok, thats enough daydreaming, what do youse all think? Oo, nightblade looks really cool, what is the status of this little gem?

Actually I quite enjoyed HL2. Lots of variety in terms of mission levels.

We can also make a mini map as a menu. The player could go through the main door to enter the mission. Down in the cellar where all the options are stored, in the living room there are the selections for missions, etc. You get the idea. If the ways are short and simple this wouldn't be bothersome to use and may look rather nice.

The way I proposed it is that the FM author can put the support for such a thing if he or she wants. If the support isn't there, and you go to enable the option, it will be greyed out, showing that there is no support for it in this mission.

I did enjoy the Shalebridge Cradle level, probalby the most tense Thief mission IMO - that and the Haunted Cathedral in T:1... I like games that have good replay value, and ones that make it very hard to take in the whole thing in one sitting have that... I'm still finding new things in Deus Ex.. As much as I like realism and immersion, it is still a computer game, and I don't really wan't to die or get arrested for burglary, that is why I play games like thief instead of actually going out and robbing someone's house in RL... I wan't it to be very realistic and challenging, but in spite of that, save games are a necessary evil, provided they are not abused, and do not provide an avenue for players to play half-arsedly. I wouldn't mind if there was only one Quicksave, it at least means you can't go back five saves ago because you used one to many water arrows.... I saved fairly infrequently during Thief1/2 mainly because I sometimesy got stuck in geometry, and in T:3 because it crashed occasionally, not because I died (although that did happen on occasion :lol: ). Other than that, I saved whenever I completed an objective, and that is about it... I have played it a couple of times without saving, and it is certainly doable, provided you have enough time on your hands. As much as you might not want it to be, saves are part of the game - immersive or not they have an effect on how you play the game... While save games might be an abstract concept to the universe within the game, they are part of the game itself, and the reason I am for limited, author defined saves has little to do with immersion or realism, it is because it is part of the challenge of the game, to see how far you can get without needing to reload. Just for the Record, I am Pro Savegames, provided there aren't to many of them, but I am Anti unlimited saves

Sounds good. Let me know when you need the graphics files...I have them all saved at 1280x1024 with the buttons on separate layers for easy access. The "New Mission" menu will be a different design than this one so don't worry about that yet. Just stick to the main menu and the options menus for now. I'll get you the Load/Save menu and Purchase Screen in a bit.

I played Thief 1, gold and 2 without saving (no saving, nothing. NOTHING), it was fun. really fun. especialy on expert. replaying after i died was so boring, i dont know about you guys but once ive played it once, i know the bloody thing back to front and inside out.... problem is, now that ive done that, playing Thief at all is SO simple, as long as your patient. Even thief 3 is too easy, well easy enough, even though the AI are so much smarter. Anyone love the cradle mission as much as i do?

That's fine. I was just saying how for me, it doesn't. I like FishFace's post better though because he said why he didn't like it. But anyway, I daresay there should be no need to "hunt" for save points in a properly designed mission. I was just saying how it wouldn't bother me. *sigh* another extreme... I'm just looking for something more challenging than unlimited saves, something set by the author for me to overcome. I suppose limited saves could work... if the author set the limit.

For me, certainly, savepoint hunting would suck. It makes the player think "I must find somewhere to save," not "I must find somewhere to catch my breath." While the player is thinking "out-of-game" he is not immersed. Unlimited saves you may use without thinking - perhaps what should be imposed is a number of reloads, after which you have to restart the mission? An idea worth tossing around; it completely wipes out the possibility of reloading for the wrong reasons, allows saves in appropriate places and therefore minimal tedium when dying, and yet does not interfere with immersion. Coupled with only being able to save with low light-gem values whilst still, this could be quite effective. I expect I'll never budge from believing save points to be a bad idea, encouraging linearity or being used too frequently, but if you want to offer a choice, I expect people will use it. I don't agree with forcing anything, though.

That sounds ok, but if my understanding of how it would be implemented is correct it might have issues. I guess the area of a wall/floor would have a rather strong loss characteristic to it. would you make the area sound characteristics dynamic? The funky part is where you have an open door the walls are 1 foot thick stone and a dude in the other room, without some sort of pathing system the sound would be nullified even though the person could quite clearly hear through an open door. But i agree with the ray tracing problem, it is similar to path finding. but how about sound nodes instead? Basically at key sound refraction points eg doorways open windows etc... you place a node, it will act like a proxy for the first emanation point of the sound by picking up sound intensity and re broadcasting it. it's a hell of alot simpler than ray tracing around obstacles and is much faster as well. the only drawback is that mission authors have to place the node in the toolset (unless you made it automatic some how). if you implemented the node system you could also alter the ai to go to the emanation point if it's what it is hearing from and go hunting from there.

Thanks for excluding me from your argument Pyrian. This thread is getting a little exhausing and it's probably going to get to the point where people will join in without reading everything that's been said, and all my posts would be for nothing. On that note, this thread needs to be summarised into main arguments for each side if we still need to debate this as a game option (or options, since some people are arguing for different solutions). That sounds like my games - I only died in Calendra's Legacy twice, on the hardest mission of the campaign. I was still placing my self-imposed save points for tension etc. Remember, my suggestion is just an extension of what I'm doing there, but the AUTHOR get to place the save points because they have the best idea of where they should go. FishFace is also in that list - he's for limited saves, but not for save points. I wonder if he's read my recent posts here though. Oh and Gildoran, for putting our point of view out there so well. Bhruic, are you opposed to save-limiting if it were an option you could turn on and off, and was off by default? That's the way I feel too, but I'm all for it being an option, even if it means it might be largly ignored initially. I'm hoping that it would slowly catch on through experimentation and word of mouth. I'm pretty sure it was Gaam Saav or something similar. Totally agree. I wish we could see more of this. Back then it made me squirm at first, but then I realised what it offered in return in terms of tension. People were playing password save games and battery backup save games on consoles for years, and no one complained. And RPG's are the kinds of games that you spend hours on doing non-linear things, such as travelling from place to place, fighting hoards of enemies. Running to the nearest town to save, and being forced to quit the dungeon and start again if they had to stop playing, was not that much of an inconvenience. That's why I think my idea is good. Anyone can turn save points on or off (off by default, majority rules) so just like the gamma setting, its up to the player to dicipline themselves. I just want the author to have the option to describe the challenge in the form of save points, same as they describe different levels of challenge in the easy setting or the hard setting. That wasn't a good example of your personal preferences, because I don't think that seperates you from the rest of us in any way That example could be avoided by good level design. Don't have jumping puzzles (jumping sucks in all video games, except maybe platformers), and put saving points in decent places, like right before a hard bit.

I never said saving = cheating. What I said was in essence, incremental saving + random trial and error = looking up a level walkthrough, which is a form of cheating. I have never played a game that has limited savegame capacity, where I then thought it was a bad experience because there were restrictions on how often I saved. It might have been a bad experience for other unrelated reasons, but then I still felt it was a good thing for my experience that I could not save wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I like it when the game designer has made it clear that the player is expected to make a certain amount of progress in the game without dying before they earn the right of saving their progress. Thus, I am in favour of a save game system that completely (or almost completely) removes all control of saving from the player, and puts saving in the level designer's hands by way of autosaves of some form. Actually, this is how most console games work, and the people who play these, and a lot more people play consoles by the way, obviously don't all think it is a bad experience because of it (although I guess you could argue that sales of game walkthroughs indicates that a lot of players lack the patience and persistence to see things through, or that there are a lot of badly designed games out there)... The old "you can't tell people what to do, they won't play it, it makes for a bad experience" arguments are not borne out by reality - many people really don't mind, and many actually enjoy it when the burden of figuring out when to save is taken off their shoulders. I think one of the reasons people become addicted to quicksaving etc, is because they have no idea where to save, because the designer has left it completely open, and start saving everywhere out of nervousness, and this soon develops into a full blown quicksave abuse problem. They then get so used to this that it becomes a shock when they play a game that makes it very clear they have to earn their saves, and like many of you posting on this thread, become apoplectic at the suggestion that they should have to earn their saves.... And by the way, while you might think that, as a player of a game, that , in reality, very little is is up to you: the designer decides what geometry defines where you can walk, the designer decides what AI to place and where, the designer decides how much loot is in the mission, the designer decides what the game interface will be, the designer decides what kind of savegame system will be there. You as a player only have the freedom to do what the designer has allowed you to have, and the only way around that is to cheat, either by turning the gamma up, turning on god mode, looking up a walkthrough, hacking the game files, opening up the editor.... And yes I know this argument is moot, because TDM will make it optional etc, but that still doesn't mean that people who go to the trouble of taking days, months out of their lives to craft a finely tuned gaming work of art, don't have a right to say how it should be played. When I make a level, I wan't the player to know that saving anywhere other than where I let them by default is not part of the game, and I would prefer to do that by disabling a few features by default. It would still be optional what people do: they can still quicksave with gay abandon if they want, but they have to enable that option in the same way they would enable god mode or any other non-default option that makes gaming easier, or would spoil the intent of the author's design... Quicksaves etc should be optional, yes, but not the default option. Sure some people will always cheat or play in a way that is not in the spirit of the game, but there is nothing wrong with making it a bit less convenient to do so... Is that so unreasonable? How long before this thread is closed? Damn it is getting long!

If not much easier... If you wan't to go on an exploratory tour of a mission, to see the sights etc, few things could be as convenient as god mode (add in noclip and you are on a roll!). God mode, BTW, was primarily implemented for level designers, to enable them to play through the map quickly as part of the level testing process. Very convenient, much more so than saving and reloading I would have thought... But again, a convenience that makes for pretty lame gameplay.

Well, I'm not suggesting that you have no saves at all - you can still up and leave any time you feel like - you just wouldn't be able to use the save systems to make a mockery of the game. Oh, yes, I know almost no one else here agrees with me... Maybe oDDity and Domarius, up to a point... Then why wouldn't you prefer autosaves or objective saves? Then you wouldn't have to think about it at all (and I am talking about autosaves that can only be triggered once in the game, so you can't go running back through them and saving again, and they are placed so thet you won't have much risk of the save being a dud). I'm not saying you don't get a few save slots, but so far, no one has presented a good argument as to why they need unlimited capacity to save every four feet in the game... Which is why I have been pushing for lots of random things in game design, and making levels that are nigh on impossible to see in their entirety in one play of the game - that way it WILL be different every time you played it. One of the biggest flaws with thief was that you could easily knock out all of the guards in each mission, and then explore the map at your leisure. It is better IMO to have a map that makes the player make choices about which pathways they will choose, and making players commit to a path that automatically means they miss out on other paths - they can do it a different way the next time they play the game. And I clearly don't think a save system needs to be so convenient as a quicksave key - convenience is a double edged sword, and is not all it is cracked up to be. Take the stairs, not the elevator - it might not be as convenient, but it is better for your health. Rubbish. I am only punishing those who couldn't be bothered playing the game properly, ie, stealthily, carefully, quietly, intelligently. If you plan your aproach to the game properly, and play smart, you will not experience any reloading drudgery (OK you might if the game crashes, but lets say that for most people this isn't a big problem). So if you aren't having fun, you are probably doing something wrong or playing like a lame duck... Making the out of game interface more challenging?! If you find having a few save slots or autosaves challenging, god help you when you are playing Thief! And I suppose quicksaving compulsively has something to do with the in game experience? Well it kinda does, but not in a good way... You realise it is optional. I realise it is optional. But there are a huge number of people playing games out there not realising that quicksaving your way to victory is lame, and they might actually discover a whole new type of fun if they are forced to play the game using their brains, rather than using the quicksave key and brute trial and error and luck to get to the end... Did I mention I was a dictatorial totalitarian bastard?

I don't think that's true of well designed missions. If you need to get somewhere, and it's hard, you will need to do it, and if you find the easiest way, good on you for being smart. You can load another save game later if you want to experiment. And if something is really hard and you're just curious, a good mission will reward you for exploring.

Considering when I played Quake 2 it took me quite long to get until the end, despite having unlimited saves. If I had only limited saves it wouldn't have made the game more interesting, insgtead it would become more frustrating. I simply wouldn't have bothered to play it until the end. So much for unlimited saves are not usefull. As a gamedesigner I would prefer for many people to see my game through instead of only a few elitists bunch. After all, why spending an effort to create content until then end if only 1% will ever see it? It depends on the type of games though, because there are certainly games which are more interesting without saving, but I don't think that this is the case for TDM . It is doing exactly that. There is no such thing as "play it the way it is meant to be". A game should provide fun for the player. How he comes to his fun is up to the player and not for the designer. The designer only provides the framework. This would be like saying: "Lord Of The Rings will not appear on DVD because the way it is meant to be seen is on a theater screen. The effects wont work on a TV and therefore nobody needs to see it there." Of course it is a much weaker experience on a TV than in the theater, but if I have the choice between seing it on a TV with lesser experience than in the theater, or seeing it not at all, I would still opt for seeing it on TV. It's MY choice. Same argument for swapping memory to disk. It is blody slow so nobody needs it. But considering that you need to run this application slow or not at all, it's better to run it slow. There is no such thing as All Or Nothing in the real world, and therefore it is simply sutpid to request to play a game "as it was meant to be" from everybody. I played D3 ONLY with god mode because it was so boring, but I still wanted to see what it offers in terms of capabillities. So you see, there is already a reason why I needed the godmode. Currently I play Guild Wars. You can not save on a mission because it is an online game and your state is only saved in between when you are in a city. Since I usually play alone (which is NOT the way it is meant to be) I have a hard time in some maps. Fortunately they provided bots which I can take with me, which are better than nothing. Now considering that GW is an online game and is meant to be played with a party, why did they bother to include bots at all? The way it is meant to be played is with other human players at your side, and AI is only for monsters. Apparently the devs were a bit more considerate then some here. Back to saving. I was trying to beat a map "Ruins of Samera" (or something like that) and I went in this map 20 times for sure. Believe me. It didn't make the game more interesting having to enter the same map again and again just because I can't save. After going in for the third time it simply becomes boring. You know the way around the map, you know what the AI will say at each point because the messages are script triggered and you even know where the monsters are at each point. So what does not being able to save achieve? Well I have to learn every detail of the map more than I want to. I have to learn all the locations of the monsters, because every time I get a bit farther, I will see a few new monsters. If I die I have to see the same map again and again. After entering the map several times it doesn't get more exciting to get through, quite on the contrary it becomes just boring because contrary to real live, everything is the same every time. That is what no saving achieves.

Well, I was thinking along the lines of something where the player can safely walk the streets throughout the game, as long as they don't get caught doing anything naughty and unlawful, although guards will be suspicous of your appearance, and if you stay in their view too long, they will come and check you out. But as soon as the player strays off the streets and onto the rooftops, into buildings etc, they are fair game... And I am planning to have levels where there are no, or very few, fake doors - every door in the game can be opened, but you have to find keys for a lot of them, coz the lockpicks won't work on all of them. And load zones would help by letting me finish one section of the city at a time, so people can see what I'm up to, and give me feedback etc before I start working on other parts of the city. The aim is that you will be able to trek for miles across the city, but it will be worthwhile because you can indulge in thiefy action just about anywhere, and you wont be forced to start a mission at one end of the city and then go back to the other when you have finished. I might find that I have to scale down the size of the map(s) in favour of detail though, so it might end up being smaller than I want, we will see.... Detail always wins out for me over size...

I think the largest map someone has been able to compile was about 5 square miles or so. In Doom Units that's like...uh...alot. You have to think about how feisable it is to do a map like that, though. While the engine could support one that's 4 times the size of a T2 city section, you'd have to have massive amounts of ram to even begin to something that size. Unless you want a mission no one can enjoy for another 5 years or so, I'd design it in smaller chunks.

I'm not for autosaves. And this is worse than unlimited saves how? For one thing, at least now they have to go to the effort of physically moving there, instead of relying on their best friend the quick-save key. More to the point, the main problem with saving whenever you want is oversaving in a new hard bit to make it easier. Once you've been there, done that, it doesnt''matter as much. When you are in a whole different part of the mission, nowhere near that save point, it won't matter that you could go back there, because it would be a dumb idea - too far away and bad to back track in the middle of some super hard mansion or heavily guarded floor. Non-linear is just not an issue. You've earned that save point so you can save every time you pass by if you want. The main thing is to not be able to save in certain situations. Yeah, what is with that? Can "save points" be put in the "discuss later" thread now or what?

That. The author can say when you deserve to save, and what parts you have to slog through without the luxury of saving. Saving becomes a reward for accomplishing something really hard to do. We all know there are missions that are "totally non-linear", but this has nothing to do with having or not having save points. Every mission has places that must be broken into, objectives that must be acheived, and precious items that must be obtained some how. Each time you acheive such a point, you definietly deserve to save. An example of other points along the way could include either side of a particularly well-guarded hallway. But it doesn't end there by any means. There are plenty of other creative ways to place save points in a rewarding manner.