ttlg - stuck in the past...

[fxdwg]

Tell this to the MacOS or Linux users... who have a working D3 installation - but can't get T1 or T2 to run (or don't even own it Btw, where do all the younger people buy T1 or T2?

 

 

 

From Amazon.com, currently $13.51 for a collection of Thief 1, Thief 2, and Thief 3:

 

http://www.amazon.co...N8EF6H1K25JYV6Q

[Fidcal]

What is interesting is it is still worth stocking - they can still sell Thief. They can still make a profit from Thief even after all these years. I wonder if Doom3 will be available 12 or 13 years after its first launch.

 

But it occurs to me that many users won't be able to get T1 & 2 to run on Vista and 7 without help.

[stumpy]

thief 1 gold and thief 3 can still be bought from the eidos store, but not thief 2.

[Baddcog]

Thief Series, along with Doom3 are on Steam.

 

While you have to be connected to the internet to use anything through Steam, I see no reason why they'd stop sellling them now. They don't have to produce discs, distribute them... All digital Baby!

 

(And I think they only pay a percent sold, so it doesn't even cost anything on their part.

[LaffyTaffer]

Thief Series, along with Doom3 are on Steam.

 

Only TDS is available on steam, the first 2 sadly aren't.

[Baddcog]

Ah, I never actually checked. They have a forum for the entire series so I assumed...

[jaxa]

Thinking of getting Thief Gold.

[BrokenArts]

It's worth its weight in gold. If you like zombies, the undead, more magic, this one is for you. Lot of people prefer Thief gold to T2, though T2 is great for FM's. There is a FM for Soulforge, *Soulforge revisited, * I just could not stomach the mission, the story was not bad, but having to revisit that mission again, I just couldn't do it. I hated Soulforge.

[SubTonic]

I, for one, think TDM is a huge step in the right direction for the stealth genre as a whole. I've been routinely disappointed by how unpolished and lazy modern stealth games tend to be, the only one really standing out to me with good qualities being Chaos Theory.

 

Just a few days ago, someone over at the Bethesda forums posted about this mod, and me, being the Thief nut I am, pursued it with both excitement and hesitation. See, whenever I think of an old game's mechanics being re-imagined in an entirely different engine by modders, I immediately assume it will be nowhere close to the excellence of the original material.

 

I was wrong. TDM brings back everything I loved about Thief plus more. Sure, it ain't perfect, but I love what I see. My heart would break if I saw this mod die out in the coming years. The stealth genre needs this kind of passion. I'm tired of full-screen filters and "Might as well just shoot everything up" stealth games.

 

Unfortunately, TDM is also kind of my last chance at enjoying Thief again. Okay, I do really like DS, despite its shortcomings, but I cannot for the life of me get T1 or T2 running. I've tried everything: The patches, the compatibility settings, changing display settings...Bah. Thank god for TDM.

 

I may even develop my own FM's with the toolset, but I'll admit that I'm quite the newbie to that kind of work. However, this is the type of stuff I'm planning on making a career out of someday and I've got to start somewhere - why not working with something I truly love?

 

Anyway, if anybody could point me in the right direction to begin my map developing without confusing the crap out of me, I'd much appreciate it. All I need is a good starting tutorial. I've checked the wiki, but the topics seem rather jumbled around and I have no idea where to begin.

Edited April 25, 2011 by SubTonic

[Springheel]

Thanks for the kind words.

 

Try this mapping guide; it's exactly what you need: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=A_-_Z_Beginner_Full_Guide_Start_Here!

[SubTonic]

Thanks a ton. I'll probably run through the available missions first, then begin work on my own. It'll help to see how others design theirs, anyway. I might get some ideas.

[Dunedain]

I think Garrett is a major issue, I'm sure many prefer to play as Garrett on another of his many amazing adventures. But it's really not a problem for TDM at all.

 

Yes, the team had to nominally change some names and such to prevent problems with the mod being released, but Thief fans are under no such restrictions. They can easily put any story text they like into their fan missions and specifically identify the thief in the missions as Garrett, and any cathedrals in the missions as Hammerite cathedrals, and so on.

 

This mod if for making Thief fan missions, and so certainly one can make all the missions one wants with Garrett in them, and any other story elements from the Thief games. And, of course, a mission can feature another character, as well. So Thief fans can feel free to make full use of TDM to make super cool actual Thief fan missions with any and all Thief characters in them that they wish to include.

[demagogue]

TDM brings back everything I loved about Thief plus more. Sure, it ain't perfect, but I love what I see. My heart would break if I saw this mod die out in the coming years. The stealth genre needs this kind of passion. I'm tired of full-screen filters and "Might as well just shoot everything up" stealth games.

 

Those of us that have gotten attached to this mod have a very strong sense of loyalty and spirit for it. I hope it gets a ton more players, of course, but there will be a strong core group that's going to stick with it for a long time.

[ungoliant]

I may even develop my own FM's with the toolset, but I'll admit that I'm quite the newbie to that kind of work. However, this is the type of stuff I'm planning on making a career out of someday and I've got to start somewhere - why not working with something I truly love?

 

I started the exact same way. When I got to the TDM forums I'd never actually tried my hand with any game editing (didn't know how), but the sheer awesomeness of the mod inspired me to start learning with mapping basics provided by the community and move on from there. Hell when i got here last year i didn't even know what "worldspawn" or a "normal map" was, lol.

[Baal]

Yes, the team had to nominally change some names and such to prevent problems with the mod being released, but Thief fans are under no such restrictions. They can easily put any story text they like into their fan missions and specifically identify the thief in the missions as Garrett, and any cathedrals in the missions as Hammerite cathedrals, and so on.

Speaking as a player, I absolutely don't want Garrett or anything straight out of Thief in the mod. The Dark Mods world might be very similar to Thiefs but it shouldn't be a blatant copy. That's never very interessting.

[Fidcal]

Remember though that making a Thief FM with anything other than Thief assets will always be a breach of copyright and so illegal. It would have to be done privately and it's unlikely that ttlg would accept any posts or links about it.

[New Horizon]

This mod if for making Thief fan missions, and so certainly one can make all the missions one wants with Garrett in them, and any other story elements from the Thief games. And, of course, a mission can feature another character, as well. So Thief fans can feel free to make full use of TDM to make super cool actual Thief fan missions with any and all Thief characters in them that they wish to include.

 

This mod is for making "Thief Inspired" fan missions. We ask missions authors not to use Garrett, or other clearly Thief related names out of respect for the owners of the Thief property.

 

Mappers can use those names if they wish, but we would be unable to host them on our official TDM servers as official missions.

[gnartsch]

Talking about the Thief series:

better get this one : "Thief - The COPMPLETE Collection" from Amazon.

For 9.95$ you get : Thief GOLD, Thief 2 & Thief 3

 

 

OK, back to the initial topic.

I don't think the people at ttlg are stuck in the past.

And maybe there are multiple reasons why TDM does not seem to get so much feedback.

 

 

Personally I started playing TDM last year, but I had to give up at some point.

My 5 year old system would offer me about 10-15 FPS at 640x480 in general.

But I had some heavy problems with slow graphics, delayed response, corrupted savegames (on missions where the framerate would go down to 1-3 fps sometimes), etc.

I just could not stand it any longer after having played ~20 missions.

Honestly : you can't expect people to buy a new system just in order to play TDM.

 

Right now I have a new system and I WILL be back to TDM soon !

I gave it a test already : a constant 55-60 FPS at 1600x1200 without any optimization.

Yeah, that looks much better.

 

 

Another reason might be that there are people around in TDM, that do not stop yelling:

>>TDM is the best ever ! Drop that Thief - sh*t ! We are the future !!! Death to everybody not on our side <<

 

STOP THAT !

This is just sooo annoying !

[Shadowhide]

Another reason might be that there are people around in TDM, that do not stop yelling:

>>TDM is the best ever ! Drop that Thief - sh*t ! We are the future !!! Death to everybody not on our side <<

 

STOP THAT !

This is just sooo annoying !

+100000000

[Springheel]

Another reason might be that there are people around in TDM, that do not stop yelling:

>>TDM is the best ever ! Drop that Thief - sh*t ! We are the future !!! Death to everybody not on our side <<

 

If people want to judge a product (and entire community) based on the actions of one or two idiots, there's not much we can do about that.

[New Horizon]

Another reason might be that there are people around in TDM, that do not stop yelling:

>>TDM is the best ever ! Drop that Thief - sh*t ! We are the future !!! Death to everybody not on our side <<

 

STOP THAT !

This is just sooo annoying !

 

Officially, we have never endorsed or promoted such opinions. We have always promoted TDM as an option / extension for Thief inspired gameplay. There are some rather opinionated TDM fans who feel the need to attack the old games, but that is not how we feel at all. We love the original games, otherwise we would never have created TDM in the first place.

[Hogwash]

It needn't be an either/or proposition. You can run Thief 1-3 alongside TDM and enjoy fan missions for all of these without the universe imploding. The two communities have more in common than not and it's a love of Thief and the gameplay it provides that keeps us playing OMs and FMs right up to now.

 

What I would like to see is TDM pick up enough steam, if it hasn't already, to become self-sufficient in as much as anybody with no interest in the official games would have enough TDM missions being released to keep them engaged, and the community would have enough activity so that the forums are busy, contests are held with a healthy mix of entrants, full campaigns and mini-campaigns are made over the years, and enough new blood is brought in to replace the rate of die-off from members that leave. It would be nice to go over to TTLG's FM forum and see as many releases for TDM as for T2, with lots of different people playing and commenting on them.

 

Of course, what has been seen already is definitely encouraging and perhaps it's a little early to be getting pessimistic.

[Dunedain]

Oh yes, I understand if certain fan missions can't be hosted on the official site and so on. It's like Counter-Strike. If fans make a custom multi-player level that has a Coke sign on a billboard in the level, then that level couldn't be hosted on the official Counter-Strike web site as part of, say, a pack of fan levels for CS that Valve endorses for download. But it's a fan-made custom level that's very popular and that anyone can download and play from various places, and no one really cares.

Edited April 25, 2011 by Dunedain

[Dunedain]

Oops.

Edited April 25, 2011 by Dunedain

[Melan]

This weekend, I caught up on some Thief FMs I missed (including Vagabond, the amazing sequel to Nostalgia - how did I ever forget about that?!) and also replayed my own (who doesn't do that every now and then? ); and now, I'm doing some editing work on the beta of my mission. I don't see the two positions as mutually incompatible.