TDM Setting

[SiyahParsomen]

lol I can't believe myself to miss that similarity since I'm living in Istanbul. Even bridge numbers are same. Looks like I'm the official darkmod taffer now.

[Glyph Seeker]

Springheel! Is there any chance you could upload a higher res version of your lovely map? Some of your images on the wiki seem to have been shrunk down a bit.

[Springheel]

I shrunk them down on purpose, actually, so that they don't have a lot of detail. They're supposed to give a vague overview, but still give mappers the freedom to do what they like.

[demagogue]

lol I can't believe myself to miss that similarity since I'm living in Istanbul. Even bridge numbers are same. Looks like I'm the official darkmod taffer now.

 

Funny for me too. I was thinking *something* about Bridgeport keeps reminding me of Istanbul, and you saw me just give my theory (Always was fascinated by it since I took a Middle Eastern history course and its story was one of my favorites)... Now I see one reason was staring me right in the face with that map.

[Glyph Seeker]

I shrunk them down on purpose, actually, so that they don't have a lot of detail. They're supposed to give a vague overview, but still give mappers the freedom to do what they like.

 

Ah! Seems obvious, now! Of course - that malleability is what I crave - so I don't feel "locked in" to a singular vision of the city.

 

I'd like to imagine that one of the bridges is as dense as the original London Bridge...

 

 

Imagine thieving your way along that!

[Fidcal]

hehe - imagine visportalling that lot. Maybe with a river skybox.

 

btw if you zoom in on those lollipop balloons in the foreground you can see faces so I guess they are heads on pikes.

[Sotha]

hehe - imagine visportalling that lot. Maybe with a river skybox.

 

I think that would be really easy to visportal if the player is not allowed to access rooftops. Some of the buildings would protrude over the bridge and touch the skybox to compartmentalize it into a nice well performing sections. This would allow the player to fall of the bridge too.

 

Would be a cool map concept, that...

[Fidcal]

Yes, be a good choice in a horizontal structure contest.

 

Makes me wonder why the world is not full of horizontally extended bridges actually, almost covering rivers, where real estate is at a premium. At least in the past, not now.

[Glyph Seeker]

Yes, be a good choice in a horizontal structure contest.

 

Makes me wonder why the world is not full of horizontally extended bridges actually, almost covering rivers, where real estate is at a premium. At least in the past, not now.

 

Yes they are heads on spikes! Us English do love our heads on spikes - can't get enough of 'em!

 

The main reason that such a bridge didn't get rebuilt was because it was a titanic, deadly fire hazard - with thousands of people dying on it in one incident. =-P

 

In addition because the foundations were so large and low - it got in the way of larger vessels moving up and down the Thames - which was of course a problem for traders!

 

Man now I'm looking up more odds and ends - I've lived in Birmingham and Liverpool which are industrial cities - and most of the cool stuff is gone but sometimes in England you get wonderful glimpses of the narrow streets and the canals which were the lifeblood of them years before the railways existed.

[Glyph Seeker]

Perhaps more relevant to Bridgeport than the canals - the subterranean rivers which might run through it and find exhaust in the Flooded Quarter:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subterranean_rivers_of_London

 

I've been quite fascinated by the idea of all this irrepressible water pushing through the veins of a huge city.

 

 

Anyway, maybe I should make my own thread for all these preoccupations! x-D

 

Sorry, Sotha.

[Springheel]

Wow, I love that idea!

[Melan]

Ah! Seems obvious, now! Of course - that malleability is what I crave - so I don't feel "locked in" to a singular vision of the city.

 

I'd like to imagine that one of the bridges is as dense as the original London Bridge...

...

Imagine thieving your way along that!

You can, sort of, in a very good TDS mission.

 

Also, check out this thread with inspiring pictures (there are already some about Old London); and of course, post your own!

[Glyph Seeker]

Oh wow, thanks Melan - I am going to post a very careful Off Topic to ask for help in digging up the main campaigns / levels which inspire from the first three Thief games as I've not played ANY of them at all - and feel I'm missing out on some good ideas and level design! I didn't even know anyone made TDS levels until I came here. (Honestly I think it's a brilliant game only let down by the Xbox having a tiny 64mb of total RAM)

 

You've already dug up a lot of great British Victorian / Squalour pictures there I see!

[Shadowhide]

visit ttlg

 

you should play :

 

Calendra cistern(T1)

 

Calendra Legacy(T2)

 

Seventh crystal (T2)

 

Events in Highrock (T1)

 

Night in Rocksbourg (T2)

 

Every Melan's mission (for T1 and T2)

 

Dracula (T2)

 

Elizabeth Bathory (T2)

 

Hammerite Imperium (T2)

 

T2X (T2)

 

Seven Sisters (T2)

 

Night Watch (T2)

 

Conspiracies in the Dark (T2)

 

and lot more awesome missions for both games

 

 

[Glyph Seeker]

Thanks, Shadowhide - I think T2X is the most ambitious one I remember reading about years ago - but I might try some of the non-campaign maps first to get back into the flow of the engine.

 

@Springheel

 

Hey, did Belchers or Fire Elementals ever get any AI love? Or were they so hated by old school thieves (As Burricks and in the Lost City) that they got thrown into the Recycle bin? =-P

[Springheel]

We did create a belcher model way back (there are pics floating around) but the quality was not very good and was eventually scrapped. Since then there's been a common view (that I share) that belcher/burricks are so iconic to Thief that we shouldn't copy them, and should instead come up with our own animal AI.

 

Fire elementals, on the other hand, are a common fantasy staple. I actually made a good-looking fire elemental that was about 80% working at one point. The only sticky point was that we don't have any code for flying AI, so it just hovered 3 feet off the ground. Fly code exists in D3 but needs to be ported over and tweaked for our use, and it has never been a priority.

[Glyph Seeker]

We did create a belcher model way back (there are pics floating around) but the quality was not very good and was eventually scrapped. Since then there's been a common view (that I share) that belcher/burricks are so iconic to Thief that we shouldn't copy them, and should instead come up with our own animal AI.

 

Fire elementals, on the other hand, are a common fantasy staple. I actually made a good-looking fire elemental that was about 80% working at one point. The only sticky point was that we don't have any code for flying AI, so it just hovered 3 feet off the ground. Fly code exists in D3 but needs to be ported over and tweaked for our use, and it has never been a priority.

 

Yeah, I remember seeing a Belcher model, and one of the signs in the FMs for a pub has a Belcher in it. But you are right, as opposed to the undead or werewolves which are staples and already in TDM, the bipedal vomiting lizard monster is a little bit too specific to Thief! =-P

 

Aww, that's a real shame about the elementals... I honestly thought you'd just get it to "walk" - I don't rememer the Thief ones flying very high above the ground and thought they didn't "fly" as such. I am ready to be wrong, though!

 

One of things I was terrified of in Thief was the fire elemental which appears in human form. I thought I was fighting them in Badcog's Vertical FM, and in Sotha's but they were all merely undead who were /on fire/. Has anyone modified an in game humanoid like that so it can only be killed by water arrows? I've played almost every FM and haven't encountered any "spirit" creatures or apparaitions like that yet.

[stumpy]

Fire elementals in thief dont fly, there origin is on the floor and their body is a variable offset from that origin, so they would randomly move up and down in the positive z axis. They also had a 90 degree visual zone, so they could not see you behind them, but they were not restricted by liquids their origin would slide across the surface of water making it look as thou they could fly, or the code considered the water surface to be another solid they could go across. You could only kill them with water arrows via the waterstim, and fire arrows would heal them via a firestim.

 

You could have salamanders, big hot skinned lizards, myths about them are probably associated with gila monsters and komodo dragons although gila monsters have a poisonous bite and komodo dragons saliva contain nasty bugs that will also kill you, thats if the komodo dragon doesn't rip your body to shreds first.

[Glyph Seeker]

Fire elementals in thief dont fly, there origin is on the floor and their body is a variable offset from that origin, so they would randomly move up and down in the positive z axis. They also had a 90 degree visual zone, so they could not see you behind them, but they were not restricted by liquids their origin would slide across the surface of water making it look as thou they could fly, or the code considered the water surface to be another solid they could go across. You could only kill them with water arrows via the waterstim, and fire arrows would heal them via a firestim.

 

You could have salamanders, big hot skinned lizards, myths about them are probably associated with gila monsters and komodo dragons although gila monsters have a poisonous bite and komodo dragons saliva contain nasty bugs that will also kill you, thats if the komodo dragon doesn't rip your body to shreds first.

 

Hrrm. I wonder if we could re use the "pinky" demon animation for such a monster - in the same way that the werewolves just reuse the "imp" animations from Doom 3.

 

That would be a pretty cool monster archetype to have lurking underground!

 

And thanks for your answer about elementals! I was sure I couldn't remember them truly "flying" in the original games - but it would be really great if they did fly, like the cacodemons do - so they could chase you or cut you off in ways that normal AI can't.