OMG, the Hills!

[haotichen]

Guys I gotta tell you, 5 minutes ago I was sleeping as a rock (it's the middle of the night around here, cold as heck, and I nearly broke my foot when I kicked the table rushing to the computer in the dark) when suddenly I suppose I was struck with an insight or maybe an epiphany because I awoke for no perceivable reason but with this only thought glowing brightly in my mind: got to have Lampfire Hills for the Darkmod! You do remember Purah's great TDS/Gold mission do ya now? With its breathtaking atmosphere, the mysterious keyhole in the kitchen of your very own house and the secrets hidden within the small town you could sneak through? I tell you, the atmosphere was so great you could just stay hidden somewhere in the small town without doing anything and enjoy the cozy emotion... Man I pray someone converts it for the Darkmod as soon as the tools are ready! Come to think of it, there are two more masterpieces from Purah, praised be his name, that deserve to be immortalized: Calendra's Cistern, and Calendra's Legacy. Anyone that do not know what am I talking about is at a great loss and has my sympathies. (Hint: install Thief Gold and Metal Age, get to The Keep and enlighten yourself!) Soo... please calm my anxiety? Anyone with the skills willing to take on this great quest when time comes? Is such a conversion possible at all?

[HappyCheeze]

Making missions take a lot of time, and its enough trying to make our own. aren't Purah's missions supposed to be huge?

 

We're all kind of busy working on our own projects and testing things. But maybe someone else, who shares your ambition could help you make this a reality.

 

TDM 1.0 Is our priority right now.

[haotichen]

Making missions take a lot of time, aren't Purah's missions supposed to be huge?

 

We're all kind of busy working on our own projects and testing things. But maybe someone else, who shares your ambition could help you make this a reality.

 

Yeah... well I didn't mean it that way. I'm sure you guys are up to your ears in work, indeed what I meant was that I hope that when the complete Darkmod is released someone will do it. I was overexcited so I just blurted it all out, sorry. Thanks for the kind words though

[HappyCheeze]

If I made it sound like I was dropping a hammer over your idea, I didn't mean to .

 

I think it would be a lot of fun to remake the classics.

[Crispy]

I think it would be a lot of fun to remake the classics.

With the original author's permission, of course.

 

There are issues with porting things over directly due to the mismatch in universes (Thief universe != TDM universe) and assets. There's also an argument that it would be better (for TDM's survival and for Thief fans) to create new classics rather than try to copy old ones. Obviously none of this should stop someone making a best attempt, should they so desire.

[haotichen]

If I made it sound like I was dropping a hammer over your idea, I didn't mean to .

 

I think it would be a lot of fun to remake the classics.

 

Not at all! In fact you've told me that it's actually possible and I'm sure it will happen at some point, maybe even Purah himself will do the deed.

[haotichen]

With the original author's permission, of course.

 

There are issues with porting things over directly due to the mismatch in universes (Thief universe != TDM universe) and assets. There's also an argument that it would be better (for TDM's survival and for Thief fans) to create new classics rather than try to copy old ones. Obviously none of this should stop someone making a best attempt, should they so desire.

 

I so need to finally learn some DarkRadiant!

[New Horizon]

I so need to finally learn some DarkRadiant!

 

Download it, get to the wiki, and start doing the tutorial.

 

Porting any thief mission would require rebuilding it by hand in Dark Radiant. There is really no easy way to port it since Dromed is a subtractive engine and Doom 3 is additive.

[haotichen]

Download it, get to the wiki, and start doing the tutorial.

 

Porting any thief mission would require rebuilding it by hand in Dark Radiant. There is really no easy way to port it since Dromed is a subtractive engine and Doom 3 is additive.

 

I just might. I've never been too good at modding - I lack the imagination, but converting may work. In the meantime if someone with the skills finds the idea appealing please let me know! As for now, good night

Edited January 13, 2009 by haotichen

[Baddcog]

Not at all! In fact you've told me that it's actually possible and I'm sure it will happen at some point, maybe even Purah himself will do the deed.

 

Well, he did stop making thief missions when he got hired to work on Arx Fatalis, then Dark Messiah...

 

hmm, go back to game making for free when it's your career. Then do something as boring as rehash something you've alread done.

 

Sorry to burst your bubble, I don't think it'll ever happen. Anyone who makes missions has their own ideas too, nothing like a good long winded yearlong session of plagarism to make an artist feel good about themselves.

[haotichen]

Well, he did stop making thief missions when he got hired to work on Arx Fatalis, then Dark Messiah...

 

hmm, go back to game making for free when it's your career. Then do something as boring as rehash something you've alread done.

 

Sorry to burst your bubble, I don't think it'll ever happen. Anyone who makes missions has their own ideas too, nothing like a good long winded yearlong session of plagarism to make an artist feel good about themselves.

 

Didn't know that. I was just hoping to see his great ideas combined with the power of the Doom3 engine. Oh well...

[demagogue]

Then do something as boring as rehash something you've alread done.

 

It's funny that right after you wrote this, this got posted over at TTLG.

 

I guess rehashing old work wasn't so boring to Purah after all.

[Baddcog]

Well, that was just to tie the city areas of those missions together. Probably took an hour, not 6 months/a year to redo.

[STiFU]

Well I am sure there will be very nice city missions for TDM later and as far as I can tell from the screenshots, there already apears to be one in the works.

 

While I must say, that there were many astonishing City-FMs for the previous thief titles. I am still trying to remember my favorite, but I seem to have forgotten its name. I think it was the second part of the L'Arsene series "Emilie Victor", but I haven't installed thief 2 currently to verify the thesis and I also couldn't find any screenshots anywhere. Is there even one site that still shows the fms with nice screenshots?

 

Quick sidenote: I just googled "thief mission screenshot" and on the second page was an entry saying "The Dark Mod (Thief for Linux) › Forum › ubuntuusers.de" ... Maybe someone should tell the betamapper responsible for that post, that TDM is not Thief! :-P

Edited January 15, 2009 by STiFU

[demagogue]

Clearing has a site with screenshots from most FMs

http://darkfate.ru/?show=files/fan-missions/Thief2

 

Unfortunately, the index page for them only lists up to the letter F, and is missing a lot (Emilie Victor being one it's missing). But I think if you manually type in the FM name you can still get to its page. I don't know why he hasn't fixed that yet!

 

Emilie Victor is one of my favorite FMs, but it's more of a mansion mission than a City mission. Gaetane's 3rd mission, The Den, had more city-scape.

Edited January 15, 2009 by demagogue

[haotichen]

It's funny that right after you wrote this, this got posted over at TTLG.

 

I guess rehashing old work wasn't so boring to Purah after all.

 

 

Well I'll be. Funny coincidence.

[STiFU]

Yeah, I probably mixed it up a little bit, but I did remember that the whole L'Arsene series was excellent and especially the den. It could also be that I am thinking about one mission in the t2x campaign. Gonna have to look into that when I finally get some time to play again...

[Komag]

After porting some very large sections of Thief Gold missions to Dark Mod for some testing and comparison purposes, I have some insight on the matter.

 

It's a lot of work for one thing. It's also not an exact science, since the editors work so very differently. You sort of have to round some of the conversion numbers, make things fit, fudge things here and there so that they'll round more evenly in the new editor, etc. And then after all that you have an extremely blocky architecture which can be acceptable in some places but not in many others.

 

Here is a video I made (we were testing the run speed settings), through an area of "The Haunted Cathedral" in Thief Gold and remade to scale in Dark Mod:

http://www.shadowdarkkeep.com/files/runspeedwide.wmv (1280x480, 14.5MB, 57sec)

[swordbreaker]

jesus the map is huge! It seems like it requires hard work to remade thief maps to DM. But it will be waste to cancel, after remading this much remade.

[Crispy]

To be clear, cloning Thief OMs in TDM and then distributing them would be a violation of copyright laws. I do not recommend it. The only reason Komag partially built those levels was to establish empirically how fast Thief's run speed was as compared to TDM, and various other parameters, for the purposes of tweaking TDM parameters.

 

FMs are another matter - for that you just need the permission of the FM author, provided you don't use anything from Thief (assets, unique names, plots, characters, etc.) in your remake.

 

(We could clone OMs if we got permission from Eidos*, but do you see that ever happening? Yeah, right. )

 

* Assuming Eidos now holds the copyright over the entire Thief series, which I believe it does.

[New Horizon]

jesus the map is huge! It seems like it requires hard work to remade thief maps to DM. But it will be waste to cancel, after remading this much remade.

 

You are completely misunderstanding. We are not remaking the original missions, they have nothing to do with what we're doing. Komag only did this as a test, they will not be released officially.

[HappyCheeze]

Basically, if an older T/T2 mission gets remade, it will in no way be affialiated with TDM, nor will TDM release one.

[swordbreaker]

hmm my bad. I though that it wouldn't be illegal matter unless you make profit from it. But if it violates the rights, you are totally right.

 

Besides, I know that you are not interested in remading thief maps-missions this is why I was suprised.

[HappyCheeze]

I think its interesting, but a.) we're already working on other things right now, b.) The T/T2 missions are on an older engine, so a lot of the geometry in there is blocky and it would be tough trying to remake that into a newer engine. We'd have to rethink how things would look on the doom 3 engine as opposed to how they look on the dark engine.

 

I think remaking classics are a cool thing and it can work. Check out this mod. They're remaking the original Half-life singleplayer campaign, but with the updated source engine. Now there was a game called Half-life source, but that was basically a cut and paste and made a lot of fans feel ripped off. So the black mesa source guys, are totally rethinking the campaign through, but with a newer look for the the new engine.

[Springheel]

I think its interesting, but a.) we're already working on other things right now, b.) The T/T2 missions are on an older engine,

 

If your use of the term "we" is to refer to a group of independent mappers, that's fine. If you are instead speaking for the Dark Mod development team (as it appears), then neither of those reasons have any relevance. The reason the development team will not be reproducing original T1/2 missions is because the copyright is owned by Eidos. End of story.