Thief: The Dark Project Remastered by Nightdive

[Arcturus]

[chakkman]

On 7/7/2026 at 7:10 PM, chakkman said:

One thing that is definitely better in Quake 1 is the soundtrack.

As we talked about: There's new mission fodder for Quake 1, another official campaign by Machine Games (yay!): 

 

Edited August 6 by chakkman

[Arcturus]

[jaxa]

Have immersive sims gone too far?

[Arcturus]

[Arcturus]

So apparently all those features have been added in an unofficial patch v1.29:

• Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows (PCSS)
• Normal mapping
• Parallax Occlusion Mapping (POM)
• Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)
• Dynamic environment mapping
• Soft particles
• Materials: normal map, height map (for POM), specular map: intensity, glossiness, environment reflection, self-illumination
• Water: normal map, environment reflection, incidence alpha, air-to-water refraction
• Volumetric effects: fog, light volumes, underwater light shafts
• Underwater distance blur
• Post-processing
• Light streaks (star)
• Luminance adaptation
• Hardware-rendered loadout in Thief
• Alternative object highlight (outline) in Thief
• Experimental / hack
• Player shadow
• AI awareness of player shadow

[datiswous]

I guess Thief could start implementing TDM's textures..

[I.C.H.I.]

This reminds of the DarkPlaces engine. At first people were very enthusiastic about all its features but later they realized that all this gloss simply kills the artistic appeal and unique look of the original Quake. And then someone made Quakespasm and it became the standard for all new mods. Same story about Doom. Remember that abomination called Doomsday and especially all the graphics mods for it? Ugh... That was something else.

So I wonder how long it will take for a new fork of The Dark Engine to appear that would be much more strict about changing the vanilla experience.

[jaxa]

I'm pretty sure you don't need a fork to turn off or ignore all the NewDark changes.

I'm interested to see if GOG uses NewDark v1.29, and if the remaster adopts NewDark at all (if that was answered earlier, I forgot).

[Baal]

Quote

1.29 Notes
----------
This is a maintenance patch that acts as a hotfix for 1.28 and introduces a few additional features.
See list below. Consider all prior versions obsolete and do not use them any more.

I am sceptical about the renderer features, but the fact that NewDark is still being maintained and not abandonded is great.

[Baal]

1 hour ago, I.C.H.I. said:

So I wonder how long it will take for a new fork of The Dark Engine to appear that would be much more strict about changing the vanilla experience.

Unfortunately it's not really possible to just fork NewDark. It's not open source and has to be developed in secret. How would you even get the source?

[chakkman]

9 minutes ago, Baal said:

Unfortunately it's not really possible to just fork NewDark. It's not open source and has to be developed in secret. How would you even get the source?

Looks like at least some other Frenchies have access to it: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152974

[New Horizon]

1 hour ago, Baal said:

Unfortunately it's not really possible to just fork NewDark. It's not open source and has to be developed in secret. How would you even get the source?

The initial source leak from years ago is still out there.  Stands to reason that someone else could figure out how to compile it and make their own version not based on NewDark.

[Bikerdude]

4 hours ago, Arcturus said:

So apparently all those features have been added in an unofficial patch v1.29:

• Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows (PCSS)
• Dynamic environment mapping
• Water: normal map, environment reflection, incidence alpha, air-to-water refraction
• Volumetric effects: fog, light volumes, underwater light shafts
• Underwater distance blur
• Post-processing
• Light streaks (star)
• Luminance adaptation
• Hardware-rendered loadout in Thief
• Alternative object highlight (outline) in Thief
• Player shadow
• AI awareness of player shadow

I dont think TDM has some or most of these.. 

[Arcturus]

[Baal]

10 hours ago, New Horizon said:

The initial source leak from years ago is still out there.  Stands to reason that someone else could figure out how to compile it and make their own version not based on NewDark.

But that means everybody would have to start from scratch, and couldn't build on the previous work done on NewDark. Which is probably a lot by now. Not that we know.

[revelator]

yeah the render work alone would be a big project. was updated to use a dx9 renderer from the old dx7.

that is not to say that it could not be improved but it would be a massive undertaking.

the leak is also rather hard to build i only managed to build parts of it .

[revelator]

seems there is a new version of newdark out https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153456

version 1.29 the hwtl version supports shadowmaps postprocessing effects (bloom etc) and other nifty stuff.

this one done by le corbeau himself. the hwtl version gets rather spooky with dynamic shadowmaps on .

EDIT: ah just noticed it was posted earlier lol.

[taffernicus]

Let's see if the remastered version will bring further improvements. 

I’m going to run a test of version 1.29 on the integrated GPU of an older processor to see if it’ll quickly throw in the towel / wave a white flag when it comes to running this; as it happens, I have a few old laptops and PCs (Intel 6th to 7th generation).

It's so sad that all of my Sandy Bridge and Haswell laptops are broken 

I’ll try it on TBP as a testbed and with hwtl version obviously.

If I’m not too busy, I’ll post an update in the few weeks (2 weeks max).

Edited September 17 by taffernicus

[taffernicus]

I won’t test it with my current rdna2 setup because the answer is already obvious. rdna 3 and 4 will find it EZ 

If I’m not mistaken, I saw a comment on r/thief earlier where someone tested it on an RTX 5080 GPU and already experienced FPS drops at TBP.

 

Basically, I was serious when I went overboard recommending a spec upgrade on thief discord channel —it’s a hunch. People will always think of this as a lightweight game, though

Edited September 17 by taffernicus

[JackFarmer]

On 9/15/2026 at 10:13 PM, Bikerdude said:

I dont think TDM has some or most of these.. 

Player shadow with AI awareness. 

[JackFarmer]

 

[chakkman]

Can't tell why, but, something with those shadows feels off. They seem exaggerated.

[revelator]

yeah needs some polish they are a bit over the top. also enemies get tipped off by them, even the ones they should not be able to see .

lets hope le corbeau decides to stick to it and fixes it.

[SeriousToni]

I like how you can tell visually how someone is just coming around the corner. Maybe we will get something like these shadows in the thief remaster too?