Is tdm capable of recreating the whole thief mission?

[manusiatidakbiasa]

This is a question based on curiosity.

Is it possible to recreate whole mission from all thieves games?

If so, how good it performance will be?

Which thief game would be most possible to do?

 

This is a hipothetical question. I won't do and strongly advise people to avoid doing it.

It's just that I recently play Thief 2 and it's level is very big and

my old computer already struggles from playing tdm mission over 50MB size.

[grayman]

It's a moot point, since we can't reproduce Thief missions because that would be copyright infringement.

[lost_soul]

People around here don't want to see original levels remade, and I agree. It is much nicer to see new and original concepts. Otherwise, you end up with a lot of rehashes of the same map over and over again. (how many times have I played a q3dm6 or "facing worlds" rehash in some other game?)

 

Don't worry, TDM can handle large missions. Some of them are friggin huge, like St. Alban's Cathedral and Lords and Legacy.

 

There's a catch though -- there always is. Parts of the level have to be "sectioned off" so that they don't all render at the same time. This means having a massive streat with 28 people walking it and a bunch of houses where you can see in all of the windows is out of the question. There are no "load times" during the missions. Basically, there are hidden switches placed around that turn on and off sections of the level to speed things up.

 

My personal question... Did they use this method in older games? Quake, Lithtech, Unreal, etc.

Edited September 6, 2013 by lost_soul

[manusiatidakbiasa]

I know. I too don't wish to see original levels remaded. I'd rather play anything really new.

I think lost_soul answer my curiosity. So basically TDM is able to handle very big level, but it has to be devided into parts

that can be switched off when it's not needed? That's actually very neat feature.

 

I must say I'm impressed

[Obsttorte]

My personal question... Did they use this method in older games? Quake, Lithtech, Unreal, etc.

I think so. I guess even the old Thief games did that, although you don't had to set visportals for that purpose.

[Melan]

Thief had a hard 1024 polygon render limit. Anything below that was technically fine, although higher values would lag on weaker PCs of that generation (the T1 design docs generally recommended staying below 4-500 polys). TDM (which can handle hundreds of thousands of polygons) renders things with visportals, which is a different method that poses different design challenges - although the practical result is the same: it is preferred to build convoluted maps with a lot of twists and turns since that blocks off long views. You can build huge, open, complex maps, and it will run... very-very badly. I have made this mistake before.

 

Now, as for recreating Thief's levels... how about this?

 

 

This is a test map created by Komag, and it contains the simple remakes of

• Assassins
  
• Lord Bafford's Manor
  
• Undercover
  
• Song of the Caverns
  
• The Haunted Cathedral
  
• Return to Cathedral
  

So there is the response to your question.

 

Of course, it is somewhat more tricky: TDM maps should have more detailed environments than Thief, and there are limits on the number of functional entities you can have in one map (like AI or moveable objects). Also, the engine loads in the textures the map uses, and having a lot of them can increase loading times and produce a crash on weaker PCs due to insufficient memory. Does that mean you couldn't make a map like Assassins or The Haunted Cathedral in TDM? Not at all. It only means maps like that have not been released so far - although some of the campaign maps being worked on are on that scale.

[SirGen]

@Melan Is Komag unable to share these masterpieces due to copyright? I would love to replay some old Thief levels with TDM engine.

Edited September 6, 2013 by SirGen

[Melan]

Correct; that is the problem. It is unlikely to be ever released.

[Sir Taffsalot]

It looks like komag put a lot of time and effort into that. What a shame we cant release it.

 

Can't we just change any references of "Hammers" to "Builders" and change the name of the missions? Eg;

• Assassins = Contract Killers
  
• The Haunted Cathedral = The spooky Big Church
  

Edited September 6, 2013 by Sir Taffsalot

[chakkman]

I guess they'd play a little different anyway, due to the different movement in TDM, and the additional stuff like manipulating objects and so. I don't have a problem to get back to Thief 1/2/3 to play these mission. But then, graphics are sort of secondary for me. What counts for me is the atmosphere, and the old Thief games still offer loads of that.

Edited September 6, 2013 by chk772

[New Horizon]

I don't think the missions are playable, but rather just the buildings and landscape replicated. You can take a walk through them, that kind of thing.

[demagogue]

There's a video walkthru of them somewhere if you search