Tdm - Thief 4?

[FishFace]

A conversation over on TTLG about the ending to T3 got me thinking about whether TDM could be the platform in which an actual T4 could be developed. Do you think this is possible, bearing in mind The Dark Mod itself, IP issues and "canon" issues with other players. Certainly, by putting T4 into the hands of the players, having a good mix of "let's take this genre to another level," and "TDP is the only Thief" developers, it could be a winner of a project.

 

Obviously it's premature to do anything without TDM actually being finished, and it'd be f*** loads of work, but T2X effectively managed it. In order for it to be an actual Thief 4, it would have to be consistent with the gameworld presented to us by 1 to 3. To give it a chance of being considered canon by the players, and to avoid getting shot down for heresy, I wonder whether it would be possible to scrounge any of the LGS devs' spare time for it.

 

For all I know this has already been suggested millions of times, but it's something I think would be possible and something I think could be successful. At this point, a list of names is way premature, but opinions would be good.

 

In case it looked that way, I have no wish to run a project such as this.

[oDDity]

No way, Eidos, or whoever owns the rights to Thief, would never allow it.

[Springheel]

Not a chance in hell.

[oDDity]

Unless you want to buy the licence from them of course. I don't have $500,000- 1,000,000 lying around, even if it were selling that cheap.

[New Horizon]

Someone would surely be threatened with a lawsuit fatter than Aunt Margaret.

[oDDity]

AND of course, even if we did buy it and wanted to make our money back by selling the resulting game, we'd have to fork out another load of dosh for a licence from id for the Doom engine.

[obscurus]

Has anyone on the Dark Mod team actually pitched the idea to Eidos? If you sell it right, they might be interested, and you guys might get new jobs out of it, you never know if you don't try. And they might be willing to fork out for a D3 license if they can be convinced they will make a bit of cash out of it... Then again, a large company like Eidos will probably funnel it though a dozen commitees and focus groups, and you would end up with a parody of your original idea, so maybe not such a good idea.

 

That said, I would prefer if TDM reamined something quite distinct from Thief, with only a few allusions to the game which inspired it.

[Springheel]

Come on...do you seriously think Eidos would pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars for the D3 license so they can hand the project over to an untested group of amateurs hoping that in three or four years they *might* create a product that sells enough copies to recoup their investment?

 

Contacting Eidos about anything related to the mod is about as beneficial as taking a hammer to our collective nuts.

[New Horizon]

I wouldn't want to work under the iron hand of Eidos. Who wants to be owned?

[sparhawk]

IMO the idea is not SO absurd. When TDM is finished and Eidos would like to do a Thief 4 out of it, it would be a huge advantage for them. They only have the costs of the D3 license and teh campaign development time, as everything else is ready. IMO this is a big bonus and I bet it would be MUCH MUCH cheaper to develop it this way, then doing a complete new Thief 4. Of course they would also have to pay us a fee for it, but I guess this would be only a nominal fee and is still cheaper then making everything from scratch.

[FishFace]

When I said "Thief 4," I didn't mean a commercial version - that would be absurd, and would draw the legions of hell down on all our heads. However, I didn't realise that doing a fan campaign continuing the story would do the same. Likewise, I'm not suggesting that TDM be driven towards Thief 4 or Thief style - it's evident that it has the capability to produce something both quite Thief-like and quite different, and that a Thief 4 could be made nearly regardless of how the development goes. I guess I'm just not cynical enough about Eidos' IP.

[OrbWeaver]

IMO the idea is not SO absurd. When TDM is finished and Eidos would like to do a Thief 4 out of it, it would be a huge advantage for them. They only have the costs of the D3 license and teh campaign development time, as everything else is ready. IMO this is a big bonus and I bet it would be MUCH MUCH cheaper to develop it this way, then doing a complete new Thief 4. Of course they would also have to pay us a fee for it, but I guess this would be only a nominal fee and is still cheaper then making everything from scratch.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

What is the actual situation with respect to copyright ownership of TDM content? Do contributors assign their copyrights to an entity representing the mod (like with GNU tools) or do they retain copyright and grant an irrevocable distribution license to the mod team (like with the Linux kernel)?

[obscurus]

Come on...do you seriously think Eidos would pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars for the D3 license so they can hand the project over to an untested group of amateurs  hoping that in three or four years they *might* create a product that sells enough copies to recoup their investment?

 

Contacting Eidos about anything related to the mod is about as beneficial as taking a hammer to our collective nuts.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

No idea, really, but Valve took up a number of mods for Half-Life and made them into commercial games eg Counter Strike, so there is a precedent for this sort of thing. I think once you have a fully fledged mod out, with some decent missions, you might pique someone's interest in Eidos, and they might say "hey you have something here that would only take a bit more work to put out a sequel to Thief 3, you have a clear fanbase, we will pay for the D3 licence and we will pay you to keep on developing... remember, Eidos went to the expense of buying a licence for the Unreal Engine, which is only marginally cheaper than D3 (I think it costs around US $300K), and then decided to completely rewrite the rendering engine, sound engine etc. Buying an engine licence is a trivial expense for a company like Eidos, provided they see a way to make their money back, and when you have a mod with a popular fan base already built up, they might be able to be convinved that it is worth their while...

 

Anyway, what do you have to lose by trying?

[god_is_my_goldfish]

Anyway, what do you have to lose by trying?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Everything, why would eidos keep on an amateur team of programmers, modellers, and artists when they can just give that work to one of thier other aready-on-the-payroll teams? Remember, it was Eidos's desire to "consolidate" that closed Ion Storm.

 

Also, why in god's name would you want to have to pay for using the Dark Mod?, because that's what would happen if Eidos "bought" it.