Level design lessons from Thief: the Dark Project

[Melan]

As fan missions have become their own thing somewhere around 2003-2004, they started to develop their own design standards, many of them subtly different from the original games. This is fine, but sometimes, you have to go back to the roots and see how they did things. Here are a few impressions about the original, pre-Gold Thief based on my recent end-of-the-year replay, which I have found insightful as a fan mission author:

• Loot placement: Loot amounts are fairly conservative. The 2-3000 you can find is usually all over a huge, sprawling mission, often hidden in challenging locations, some very obscure (I have found loot on this playthrough I never discovered before). There is little "trash loot", like random little coin stacks you have to sweep up from five cupboards and chests. The pieces you find are usually impressive on their own. Hidden loot involves interesting gameplay, from climbing to spotting things against a busy background texture to the proverbial nooks and crannies - but almost always, placed intelligently to form mini-puzzles.
• Focused readables: very few readables are longer than three or four pages. Most are one or two, and communicate their ideas efficiently, although also with great flavour. No audiolog syndrome is present.
• Formal variety: architecture, although extremely low-detail by modern standards, is full of interesting experiments. Realism takes a backseat to things like the Bonehoard's multi-leveled 3d maze, Escape's crisscrossing tunnels, or the mind-melting Sara Verrilli levels (The Sword, Strange Bedfellows, The Maw of Chaos). But even a comparatively mundane mission like Bafford is full of intriguing non-cubical places, or cubes broken up into smaller discrete areas. As a result, there is little repetition, and mission areas are distinct and identifiable, with bold shapes to compensate for the lack of detail. The environments are often suggestive or even symbolic instead of descriptive. In The Haunted Cathedral (the sealed quarter), most houses are just odd shapes that suggest crumbling architecture without going into the details.
• Heavy guard: some areas are guarded so heavily that getting through is simply not a sane option. Bafford's front door is not only lit up like a Christmas tree and guarded by a guards/archer combo, it then opens into a murder gallery that'll alert the whole house if you manage to get in somehow.
• Varied thievery: the game tries to offer objectives going beyond stealing and hiding in the shadows. You break people out of a prison, leave coins on a grave out of superstition, have to hightail it to your home turf to avoid getting caught, and infiltrate the Hammerite church in the clothes of a novice. At one time, you have to manufacture stuff in a foundry. The missions play differently not just because of their environments, but because they encompass a much broader range of thievy activities than we tend to get from fan missions.
• Fantasy: there are bold detours from gritty steampunk "realism" into Lewis Carrol-on-acid fantasy landscapes. But even the less fantastic missions have an element of whimsy. Ramirez has a burrick pen under his house. The Hammerite prison is built atop haunted mines and a factory. There are a lot of interesting, odd beasts in the missions!
• Garrett is not yet a master thief. He is an aspiring thief who starts to gain a reputation through the game, attracting increasingly more dangerous enemies and clients, but he is not yet a legendary figure. There is an element of uncertainty, and you are constantly made aware that only player skill can compensate for Garrett's vulnerabilities. Your victories are hard-won, and feel earned. There is a constant element of exploiting loopholes, not just sneaking in and getting out.

[Goldwell]

Great read Melan, very insightful!

 

I agree with pretty much everything there especially the varied thievery part. It's always great having to do custom objectives even if its go and fetch this or place this item here etc because it breaks up the gameplay and can introduce some great unforgettable moments.

 

Hopefully 2016 will bring some more missions like that

[demagogue]

I think it's relevant to note the pecking order of priorities. Popular & official word is TDP's first focus was the story arc, and other elements built off that. TMA's focus was varied sneaking scenarios and gameplay. And TDS's focus was varied environments. You can tell from the character of each game how the pieces fell together I think, e.g., in how the meetings went when they were actually scripting out each mission. They were more deliberately engineered maybe. FMs tend to be more organically & sometimes haphazardly grown off a few ideas.

 

I guess the punchline there is, even though the focus changed, you could tell the games were created with a lot of thought put into their focus. There were reasons things were put together, not just thrown together, and it makes the missions really stand out.

[Anderson]

Well written Melan.

[Bienie]

The Dark Project had a certain magic that I haven't seen in any games since. Thanks for trying to explain it in mapping terms! I hope I can recapture that in some form in mission/s of my own!

[SeriousToni]

Wow that was really good to read. I loved how you described the elements on concrete examples and how you took us to a nostalgic recapture of some really exciting events back in the day of The Dark Project. Thank you very much for that!

 

Hopefully more people can give their two cents on this topic, since I really find it interesting to get you guys thoughts on this.

[Moonbo]

In looking at the Thief games (and TDP in particular), it’s amazing to me how much world building they were able to do with relatively few assets and low-rez textures. I think they pulled it off due to:

Information Rich Assets - while most textures/assets in Thief are functional (brick, carpet,etc). There exists a category of asset (statues, paintings, glass windows, banners, carvings, tombs) which are information rich. They’re not generic, but specific and match to the lore and setting of that part of world (such as the paintings showing the Trickster being banished by the Master Builder, or the images on Hammer tombs). The statues for example had a lot of info carved into them, whether it's hammer iconography or the presence of keys in the keeper statues. Just by looking at these you could tell a lot about the people who lived or had lived in these places. It’s honestly something that's missing from The Dark Mod (though understandable so as not to pigeon-hole mappers).

Narrative consistency - the art assets blended with the readables, dialogue, AI skins, and other world building devices. The AI would use and talk about the things represented in the art assets which lent them authenticity.

Location variety - As Melan mentioned, things switched up as you moved through geographic space. Even in the City environments you had stony/dark exteriors, and rich colorful interiors. Also the texture/information "set" changed with physical locations. So the Lost City was very different from the Haunted Cathedral, which was very different from the City. This variety not only helped keep the player’s interest, but it also created a much larger world in the player’s mind which stretched far beyond the rooms they were walking through.

A small aside, but AAA games tend do the above quite poorly because it takes so long to build modern high quality assets that the focus is on a consistent art direction (which makes pretty stuff that looks well together) rather than on art design that supports the narrative.

Anyways, just my two cents :-).

Edited January 4, 2016 by Moonbo

[Epifire]

Great points indeed. Work vs the worth is a big thing in loot too. When in so many modern games hide easy loot under the stairway it just isn't that satisfying. Things that made you think to attain the bling. Like that climb from the balcony to the wall, to grab a painting in the Great Room that requires you to mind your footwork. Or a certain amount of spelunking and trap avoidance that proves you an exceptional jumper.

 

And good lord I so dearly miss the mission that's not the mission you thought it was at all. To explain more, Thief on so many occasions launched you into a mission that you gave you an in depth briefing and made you confident. Then it deviated quickly off the start, and every move afterward becomes a desperate act to improvise. I miss when I wasn't sure of the content or where the mission was going. In short, predictability kills a stealth game.

[Springheel]

And good lord I so dearly miss the mission that's not the mission you thought it was at all. To explain more, Thief on so many occasions launched you into a mission that you gave you an in depth briefing and made you confident. Then it deviated quickly off the start, and every move afterward becomes a desperate act to improvise. I miss when I wasn't sure of the content or where the mission was going. In short, predictability kills a stealth game.

 

 

Just to show how opinions can differ, I feel completely the opposite. I generally dislike missions that set me up to expect a certain experience and then become an entirely different kind of game. I like the kind of missions where I DO know what to expect, so that I can plan my equipment and strategy accordingly. This is especially important in stealth games, IMO, where accurate information is a lot more valuable than FPS where you can just shoot your way out of anything.

[Destined]

I see your point, but storywise I find it more interesting, when you have a twist in it and it is not just the linear red line you would expect. Of course, the map author would have to keep in mind, that the player has planned for a different situation and set the resulting situation accordingly. A "your flashbombs are useless, because you fell into a dungeon and have to avoid traps as the only challenge" is as frustrating as a "you have planned to avoid guards, but now you get trapped by script and need flashbombs to survive". But reassigning the use of equipment can be very challenging and interesting (e.g. you thought you would need water arrows for torches, but now you have to fight off mechanist walkers with them. You can avoid both, if need be, but you can still use your equipment, just in a different way).

[demagogue]

It's two different styles of gameplay. I guess I'm an affirmative-action oriented democrat on this. I think there should be a good balance between different (legit) styles of gameplay and tone, and when I've had too much of one, I'd like to see some of the other side represented.

 

A spectrum between tightly planned missions vs open exploration story fests is an example where I'd like to see a balance of both sides. Another example, or maybe related, is traditional stealth/thieving vs alt, experimental, or straight-up adventure gameplay.

[Obsttorte]

I feel like Springheel. Stealth games are tactical games imho, so planning your way is really important. A nice little twist in a mission can be a good thing story-wise, but it is not something that is good per se. It really depends on how it gets used.

[SeriousToni]

A nice little twist in a mission can be a good thing story-wise, but it is not something that is good per se. It really depends on how it gets used.

 

Like when Cutty died in the Cragscleft Prison for all of a sudden? I was sad and annoyed both when that happened to him

Or the other guy, was it Basso the Boxman? You should flee with him together on expert but (I guess since the AI doesn't have the ability to do that) you had to carry him out back the whole way instead!! Oh man, I love that game!

[Nico A.]

As fan missions have become their own thing somewhere around 2003-2004, they started to develop their own design standards, many of them subtly different from the original games. This is fine, but sometimes, you have to go back to the roots and see how they did things.

Agree whole-heartedly to every point in this list.