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Status of TTLG


brethren

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So, has anyone heard anything about what's up with TTLG? The board is dead slow, responses can take several minutes to submit and the admins are all apparently MIA. Gingerbread Man just quit. David, Digi, Saam - these guys are nowhere to be found and haven't been seen in months for the most part. It almost seems like they're just letting the board slip away until users stop coming. Seems kind of weird. If it's a money thing, they had no problem getting donations when they asked a few years back, so I don't know why they wouldn't just ask now.

 

It's kind of a shame, the Thief and GenGaming forums are still fairly active. Hate to see the place just disappear.

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There is a thread on TTLG about it. Anyway this is the OT forum, so no reason not to talk about it here too.

 

As this forum shows, it doesn't take *that* much to run a forum as long as you have a few admins that can do the job. There's more to worry about the user base, but smaller forums everywhere are seeing their numbers tank or are having some kind of fear about the future, not just us and TTLG. People are either on social media for the personal stuff, or moving to the mega-forums where everything is impersonal just to post random stuff. And the "community forums" in the middle are kind of getting squeezed on both sides. But I still think there will always be a place for community forums for the people that are really connected to them, so they won't just die I don't think. There's just something to be said for investing yourself with a group of like-minded people that have interesting things to post that you want to read. It keeps people coming back.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Will Saam remember?

 

Some goodly soul kindly edited a post I made in Thief Gen where I accidentally used a rude word in relation to the suitability of the Windows Operating System as a consumer OS - so someone must still be awake.

 

TTLG stopped being interesting a few years ago as far as I can tell. Though that might be me. The FM kids still seem to be as splendid as ever, but TTLG never really seemed to want to celebrate that fact - so the people being interesting, creative and innovative end up lurking somewhere beneath BioShock and wherever it is that Koki and Dethtoll are being hysterical drama-queens over Gears of War.

 

Shame though, there's been a whole bunch of good people pass through there over the years.

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Forums have their life cycles, and TTLG has been around for an Internet eternity. In 1999, there was no Youtube, no Google, no Facebook and no Wikipedia. A lot of the net was still about Geocities pages and even Usenet and mailing lists. Is it a surprise that what seems like an age later, peoples' preferences change and they start to drift away?

 

It also plays a part that TTLG is founded on a love for games which are less prominent nowadays - when Thief, SS2 and DX1 were coming out, it was easy to imagine the future would be like that but even richer. That didn't happen. Games sell a shitload more today than they used to, but the broadened customer base is way more casual (not necessarily dumber, although the marketing people sure believe that). Very few games target the kind of audience we have on TTLG or even here. Even promising games Thief IV and DX:HR and Dishonored have to sell to a player base much, much broader than Looking Glass did in 1999. With today's technologies and costs and management model, Looking Glass wouldn't have gone bankrupt, it would never have been funded in the first place.

 

So, people getting older, games getting different, we are left with fan missions. But even fan-created content like that is narrowing in its audience, especially with the increasing complexity of toolsets you need to knock out a good level. Modelling. High-production-values assets. Megatextures. As people close to TDM, we may be losing sight of something, namely that our mod is not the tech of the future - and thank God for that, because then we would have all of six or seven missions, by semi-professional people polishing their portfolios for the industry. A large part of TTLG still subsists on fan missions, but the same things apply to FM creators as everyone else. TDM could have given them a tremendous shot in the arm, but the people who like this mod tend to be discussing it here, for better or worse. TDM fan mission threads on TTLG tend to have two or three "oh that's cool" or "downloading" type replies, and that's that. And when the mod comes up in more general discussion, there is always someone around to question its legitimacy.

 

To summarise, the world that has created TTLG does not exist any longer, and TTLG is feeling the consequences. Which is unfortunate, because it is still one of my favourite places on the net.

Edited by Melan
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Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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Yeah I was thinking that TDM hit just right about that spot where you can put in the most up-to-date assets, algorithms & mechanics if you want to put in the work, but you don't have to be semi-professional to make a good level (a la Rage, and the gameplay still disappoints) and it's still easy for a newbie to put something good together, which is a classic thing. And of course the gameplay is totally from the past era and doesn't pander like *every* game does these days, including the ones from our former benefactors (Irrational, Arkane, etc).

 

So in a sense that makes TDM (and us) quite possibly the last of its kind, and thank goodness we have it now (and it's open-source & able to still grow). I'm not sure if people were looking at it that way in 2005, but that's how it seems to have turned out.

 

And, to keep things in perspective, I think it puts us in a very special corner in cyberspace, kind of the last best hope of carrying on that original vision from the mid to late 90s. Yes we & TTLG may be beleaguered, but dammit we're the inheritors of one of the greatest contributions to culture & "the new storytelling" of our times. Let's not forget that!

 

Edit: It's not strange for me to think like that though. My avatar is Andre Breton. The Surrealists were a small beleaguered group too, but that didn't stop them being one of the most powerful cultural forces of their time. The true value of a creative work is measured by the inspiration of its vision to people that recognize it, not how much money you pour into it or how many oblivious automatons it panders to in the market.

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What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Yup, that's how it is.

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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Biker - that's confusing, what do you mean by that? It's up to the users to give TDM stuff respect or interest, not the TTLG admins. Digi was the one who started the "What are you working on Now-Dark Mod Edition?" thread after all. I'm continually surprised how little activity there is in any TDM thread that's started, but that's hardly the mods or admins fault.

 

Anyway, any arguments about whether TTLG is past it's prime or is "cool" anymore are missing the point - which was that there doesn't seem to be anyone running or admining the board these days. That's all I was trying to say. Any site honoring games of the past is going to decline in popularity over time, that's pretty obvious.

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Maybe they're all too exhausted busily trying to trump each other on who can have the biggest freak-out over the Thi4f logo? Or who can be the most outraged by the surely inevitable and undeniable demise and ruination of all that is holy what with the utterance of "more than just stealth"?

 

Hope. That's just optimistic hope.

 

No. It's denial. This is no coincidence.

 

We all realize what this cruel "more than just stealth" has wrought: a mess of slit wrists from sea to shining sea.

 

The Core! The betrayal! The Canon! The evil! Our Precious! Fiddled with!

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brethren: The two issues are strongly related.

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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I've never been a member in that forum, so I dunno about anything.

 

If TTLG diminishes due to administration failure, can TDM forums be an actual net winner?

People from TTLG would migrate here as this is the last best hope for thief-like stealth gaming (all alone in the night)? More people becoming forum regulars might even mean a few people trying DR out... and things usually lead to another, pleasant, things. ;)

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Definitely I think the broad molasses that is Fan Missions and the people who make and play them deserve a home that works. It's not obvious that the TDM Fora should serve that function (I think trying to brand all FMs as belonging to the Dark Mod might be seen as kinda bolshie) or that there's some benefit in it - but while it would be a shame for TTLG to whither and die - it'd be an actual genuine tragedy if it took the FM community down with it.

 

I got a bit concerned about the state of things at TTLG (and southquater was looking down and out too) a while back and registered thieveshighway.net (which is currently a very half arsed shitty blog site that I've not bothered with and neither should you) with the thought that I could re-learn my webby skills and roll out a community portally thing if there was need - but at the same time I'm hugely reluctant to do anything about it and start pushing something under people's noses because I neither want to kick TTLG (which I have a great deal of affection for) while it's down or start doing things that might be divisive. Absolutely the best solution would be for TTLG to sort its shit out. But as much as I love the place and everyone who's got anything to do with it - they've consistently positioned TTLG as a fan site for occasional mainstream games rather than a portal for hobby makers - who as Demagogue points out kinda have a claim to being (certainly the most prolific makers) where it's at.

 

Whatever happens certainly TDM should think of itself as a vital organ when it comes to the whole Fan Mission thang and be right in there and calling shots.

 

--edit -- Also, I do notice that TDM missions have threads here and at TTLG and I wonder what's going on with that and whether the audience is big enough to support threads in multiple places (by which I mean would TDM stuff get more attention if it was there rather than here).

Edited by jay pettitt
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Biker - that's confusing, what do you mean by that? I'm continually surprised how little activity there is in any TDM thread that's started, but that's hardly the mods or admins fault.

Youv'e answered your own question, your comment is exactly what im referring to. We post mission releases over there and we get maybe a handful of responses to said threads..

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Well he was talking like you meant it was the mod's & admin's place to promote TDM, and they already did what they could formally (we got back into the FM forum). But Biker's point was more like: for a community, it only really flies when everybody is participating and doing their part to show support no matter how small. Just little things like posting appreciation or playing an FM and giving a good comment go a long way.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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