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Thief Universe FM Release Stats (updated for 2016)


Goldwell

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Who published a Thief 2 fan mission in 1999? Isn't that before the game was released?

A very sneaky modder? :D

Edited by lowenz
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Who published a Thief 2 fan mission in 1999? Isn't that before the game was released?

 

http://www.thiefmissions.com lists two T2 missions released in 1999:

 

Circle of Strain by Markus "Mokkis" Lappalainen 1999.08.10 and

Gathering at the Bar by Toni "Trimfect" Hollming 1999.06.10

 

You have to check the box "Use Original Release Date" when you search for it.

No idea how they got their missions done so early. Only they will know :huh:

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They weren't T2 FMs. They were TG FMs. And Trimfect made Gathering at the Bar even before that with the help of the devs as a testcase which convinced LGS that fans could make FMs and to release the editor with TG. It deserves the title of the first true FM, although a few contest FMs got released a bit earlier, but they were thrown together.

 

Sorry, I got my wires crossed. Digital Nightfall made the T2 conversion of Gathering at the Bar. I think he was also in partnership with the devs (remember he was the admin of the original LGS fan site) to get the editor early as another kind of proof of concept.

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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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http://www.thiefmissions.com lists two T2 missions released in 1999:

 

Circle of Strain by Markus "Mokkis" Lappalainen 1999.08.10 and

Gathering at the Bar by Toni "Trimfect" Hollming 1999.06.10

 

You have to check the box "Use Original Release Date" when you search for it.

No idea how they got their missions done so early. Only they will know :huh:

 

Hum.... there's a problem somewhere...

The released dates (up) are for T1, Circle of Strain for T2 has been released in 2004, the same for Gathering at the Bar.

First fm for T2 was "The Bath House", 2000/05/06.

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Haha, you don't know the T2 community. The simple answer (in my understanding) is they understand dromed and are held off by the learning curve to learn a new editor to do the same job, and on top of that they lose the connection to the game world, some I think still have in mind the early, more buggy days, and some think TDM is this outside thing that's not part of their community. But I really think a lot of T2 mappers are genuinely interested in TDM, but just are intimidated by the learning curve and happy with what they're doing in their own very supportive T2 mapping circle they have.

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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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dromed is making maps by carving out the world from solid, while darkradiant is adding to the void.

 

also dromed is a limited area starts at a 1000 units,(1000 x 1000 x 1000) while darkradiant is a very large area. 131072 x 131072 x 131072

 

so if you did maps for half-life/quake/half-life2 then you would find it easy to move to darkradiant

 

while dromed is more like making maps in unreal/unreal 2 (without the need to make a special brush to do the carving/adding)

Edited by stumpy
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Dromed has a kind of cool method. You can put overlapping solid and air brushes in an order to make different shapes. But ultimately TDM can do the same thing with the cut tool, and most importantly in TDM you can control the portalization, which is the key to performance.

 

Not that you all didn't already know that.

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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while dromed is more like making maps in unreal/unreal 2 (without the need to make a special brush to do the carving/adding)

Interesting. I do a little bit of Bloodlines mapping, which uses the Source engine and thus is probably similar to DarkRadiant. Is Unreal 3/4 and Unity editing similar to DromEd in comparison?

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The latest versions of Unreal allow you to make both additive or subtractive levels. Most modern games made using Unreal select additive because brushwork is really only used to block out levels or for things like triggers, with actual 3D models being used for most of the level geometry. Unity has no way to create brushwork and you build levels out of imported models (though there is a terrain system). You can buy an additive brushwork program for Unity called ProBuilder which will be very familiar to anyone whose worked with Hammer/DarkRadiant, though it's not a "pure" brush system but more a dynamic primitive modelling program, so it has its differences.

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...with actual 3D models being used for most of the level geometry.

How does this work? Is this done inside the map editor or externally using Blender or similar? Is the map editor only used to combine the geometry models with other models, lights, entities and scripts?

Edited by wesp5
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Yep, the modelling is done externally in a 3D modelling program and imported into the engine, with the editor used to place the pieces and add in scripts/material shaders/lighting/etc.

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But you should walk having internal dignity. Be a wonderful person who can dance pleasantly to the rhythm of the universe.

-Sun Myung Moon

 

My work blog: gfleisher.blogspot.com

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It is also (mostly) how modular building works in TDM.

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Doom 3 itself was largely made of models. The evangelization of brush-based mapping was a holdover from

Quake culture and a popular community request rather than something that id Software was pushing internally IMHO.

 

Part of the magic of Doom 3 is "simulating geometry via normal maps". If you limit this to tiled normal maps,

you aren't taking advantage of the savings in geometry in the renderer. Unfortunately, there are currently no

tools to take editor geometry and turn it into normal map data without an intermediary conversion and the

act of converting basically means you are modeling anyway (though in a more limited fashion).

 

Hmm... I guess if you really want model based normals but want the sealing and flexibility of brushes you might

be able to:

 

1) Create detail brushwork

 

2) Export as ASE mesh and delete

 

3) Create lowpoly brush version

 

4) Also export that as an ASE mesh (do not delete)

 

5) Bake normals with steps 2 to 4 assets

 

6) Import low-poly ASE with new (high poly based) normal map

 

7) Texture paste from mode (step 6) to brushwork (step 3)

 

Lots of hokey-pokey though. And you could just set the model to "inline 1" to get

the most of the advantages of a brush other than flexible edit options.

 

Interesting how a lot of this topic verges on the use-case for Megatexture. That was the solution to

allowing textures and normals to "span brush regions" rather than be locked to the UV of the brush they

were pasted on. Same goes for lightmapping. Megatexture was a multifaceted answer to the gripes about the current

"brush zoo" issues (too many draw calls, asset duplication, too laborious, etc).

Too bad it's only a solution that people with server farms can use (practically speaking).

 

Still, the more mappers that take advantage of modular techniques, the better looking and performing missions will become

and we are now on the verge of having a sizeable library of the needed assets for that approach ( v2.05!!!).

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Perhaps not many people see it, but what we have is actually a very good compromise between a brush-based and a modelling-based editing paradigm. id Tech 4 is right at the point where you can use either approach reasonably comfortably, and without major sacrifices in graphics, performance or gameplay. While brushwork can be fiddly to work with and look crude, models can result in an uniform look - you can see the building blocks and the seams between them even in very well-designed games like Dishonored 2. id Tech 4 lets you build environments which take the best of both worlds.

 

(And of course, Dromed has its own draws, with a very "deep" flexibility after you get past the initial learning curve. It also has an iconic look that is going to be increasingly less "dated" and more "stylised" in the eyes of players.)

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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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  • 1 month later...

I'm a bit late to the party here, but thought I'd share this link. It's a brief history of Dromed, and was part of the petition site (created by Subjective Effect) when the TTLG community was trying to get the Thief 3 editor released. The page is full of errors and I always wanted to fix it and keep it up for posterity's sake, but you can still read the text.

 

http://www.southquarter.com/thiefpetition/dromed.php

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Not for lack of trying, though. I remember when Ion Storm were still talking about giant free-roaming city missions for Thief 3 (this was very early), people were full of ideas they wanted to realise when it released. I even told myself I'd try my hand at making one, years before I even tried Dromed - although my brother dabbled in it, and made Everyone's First Haunt-filled Cathedral Mission (would have been a solid 2/10 if it ever got released).

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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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FWIW, for a very long time I believed the community should support Thief3 and make fan missions to discover its true potential. There's something I always liked in this awkward renderer, the bloom, weird material behavior and whatnot. But, making tech demos is rather easy. Fully-fledged missions, definitely not.

Edited by Judith
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I think the thought back then was that the official levels for Thief 3 were small because of the limitations of the xbox's memory. But when it when it came down to making FMs exclusively on PC, those limitations would go out the window, and we'd get all these gigantic levels, rivaling or exceeding the first 2 games.

 

Also, you could see how superior Thief 2 FMs were, even back then, over the original OMs. I think everyone thought that same jump could be made with Thief 3 FMs.

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Generally official missions cater to the lowest common denominator for large corporate games. Fan missions always push the envelope of what is possible and how intuitive and creative the game can actually become. I salute the thief Community as well as the Doom community for keeping the fire burning for so long and helping the game stay fresh with future Generations.

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