Thief series catch-all

It's pretty game breaking, but you can take a lot of liberties with running away. You're a lot more agile than any enemy in the game.

Something they changed in Thief 2 is that you can still knockout active guards with the blackjack if you get behind them. I was really good at that because I only played on Expert and it wouldn't allow you to kill anyone. In Thief 1 if you get spotted you can only run away or just keep thwacking them until they start to run away, THEN knock them out.

They really took the 'god, we hate zombies' criticisms to heart, and hardly used them at all in T2. You were almost purely a thief in that game, stealing from people, rather than being an adventurer, stealing from the dead.

The graphics are crude, but with the various fixes, they can be made at least semi-reasonable, and the underlying games remain a great deal of fun. These titles still have that ability to absorb you into them completely, to the point where you're not seeing the graphics as anything other than reality anymore, crude or not. Play either title for thirty minutes, and you're just there, creeping around and stealing stuff, not playing a computer game.

I highly recommend the community mod campaign for Thief 2. I forget the name but it is fantastic and changes a lot of the game mechanics. Less gadgets and more magic. You can change water arrows into ice arrows, fire them into water and make ice platforms to stand on and stuff like that, it's cool!

I just finished the first mission in Thief 1 and missed over 300 gold worth of loot. HOW. I seem to remember a secret room somewhere but I only found one so far.

Tamren wrote:

I highly recommend the community mod campaign for Thief 2. I forget the name but it is fantastic and changes a lot of the game mechanics. Less gadgets and more magic. You can change water arrows into ice arrows, fire them into water and make ice platforms to stand on and stuff like that, it's cool!

I just finished the first mission in Thief 1 and missed over 300 gold worth of loot. HOW. I seem to remember a secret room somewhere but I only found one so far.

T2X: Shadows of the Metal Age?

I played this a fair bit a couple of systems and several years ago, but never finished it. I tried to get it working with the Steam version of Thief 2 recently but had no luck.

What I played was great though, nearly equal to the vanilla Looking Glass experience in terms of atmosphere and level design. Plus a female protagonist!

In T2X, the voice acting is a little weak in spots, but it's actually a bit amusing, because the voices aren't terrible, and you can tell that it's the people doing the levels, rather than professional actors. The actress voicing Zaya, the protagonist, is substantially better. She's not quite pro-quality, but solid. Basically, you can tell they're all talented amateurs, but I thought that improved the overall feel, rather than detracting.

The levels themselves are excellent, as good or better than anything Looking Glass did. They're not bloody huge in the same way, but they're large, clever, well-designed, and assembled with real care and craftsmanship.

Overall, I'd call it every bit as good, technically, as the main game, and probably 2/3 as good in terms of story and immersion level. For a bunch of Internet hobbyists working for free, it is a remarkable achievement.

They even made mission cutscenes in the same style as Thief 2. Quite impressive.

The train level? The snowy cathedral? Yeah. Not quite as memorable as "Life of the Party" (I mean that literally: I've had Angelwatch show up in dreams) but pretty awesome what they managed to pull off, given the tech limits. We can easily surpass them technically now, but as concepts they still rank pretty high in atmosphere.

And I'd argue that the harder-to-kill zombies and haunts are actually a major source of interest. In a game that is about exploring and controlling space, enemies that are difficult or impossible to kill keep you from easily suborning the space they patrol, maintaining the challenge for longer. For me, hiding in the dark felt empowering even though there were things I couldn't kill. I actually think more games should have enemies that you can't kill, only run away from, given sufficient other ways to circumvent the obstacle they pose.

I liked the zombies. They were truly scary in a "oh f*ck I can't kill them!" kind of way.

Gremlin wrote:

And I'd argue that the harder-to-kill zombies and haunts are actually a major source of interest. In a game that is about exploring and controlling space, enemies that are difficult or impossible to kill keep you from easily suborning the space they patrol, maintaining the challenge for longer. For me, hiding in the dark felt empowering even though there were things I couldn't kill. I actually think more games should have enemies that you can't kill, only run away from, given sufficient other ways to circumvent the obstacle they pose.

+1 Well said.

I loved the zombie levels, Down in the Bonehoard was an excellent level, felt like Indiana Jones as interpreted by H.P. Lovecraft, very cool stuff.

The zombies were still in Thief 2, and I actually kind of liked that you only stumbled across them now and then in levels not focused specifically on highlighting them, it actually made finding them more scary because there was less context for them being there.

If I'm wandering around the basement of some rich guy's mansion, find an old boarded up crypt and hear faint groaning and gurgling inside, I feel like I've discovered something interesting and terrifying!

Spoiler:

I'm going to regret that last paragraph...

Shadows of the Metal age has plenty of undead! It has one mission that takes you deep into an underground tomb. And soon afterwards a mission to a haunted zombie filled hospital.

... that was when I chickened out >_>

Aww man, I really should put the effort into getting that working through Steam. I don't like that I've never finished it when it's almost a canon entry to the series at this point. I just don't have the patience for spending more than 5-10 minutes getting things working anymore.

There are also a whole bunch of other very excellent fan missions. That is, people are still making missions for Thief 2! Not to mention the Dark Mod is up to version 1.07, and they're working towards making it standalone.

And Shock2. T2 is probably more important as you say for the modding. Kind of a shame I've played through them all recently (and they all work fine with community fixes) as I wouldn't mind seeing what's changed.

Out of freaking nowhere, a new version of Thief, 1.19, apparently made by a fan, has been released. That's a Metafilter post with all the necessary links. There's some speculation in-thread that it may be from an incident awhile ago, when apparently the full sources of Thief 1 and 2 were found on a hard drive being sold used.

Many, many improvements; it now works much more like a modern Windows game. The improvements to the level creator are particularly impressive. Modders have gone off sideways, because it increases poly limits from 1,024 to over 20,000, allows high-resolution textures, and has a much-improved lighting engine.

Oh, and AIs now breathe from their heads instead of their middles, so a guard in waist-deep water won't drown anymore.

edit: Oh! I was just thinking about Thief, but there's also a new version of System Shock 2.

Gremlin wrote:

And I'd argue that the harder-to-kill zombies and haunts are actually a major source of interest. In a game that is about exploring and controlling space, enemies that are difficult or impossible to kill keep you from easily suborning the space they patrol, maintaining the challenge for longer. For me, hiding in the dark felt empowering even though there were things I couldn't kill. I actually think more games should have enemies that you can't kill, only run away from, given sufficient other ways to circumvent the obstacle they pose.

PoP Warrior Within was the most fun to play because of the Dahaka, an unkillable beast that you can only run from, not confront.

Ah, a blast from the past! I love the Thief community!

I'm going to the bear pits tomorrow, wanna come with?

GOG just put the Thief series on sale, $4 each. $12 for all three!

I pulled the trigger on Thief Gold today. I'm looking forward to this!

Are there any mods you folks would recommend? I'm all for an authentic experience in terms of gameplay and story, but a modern resolution would be lovely. I am running Windows 7 64 Bit - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 SE - 1920 x 1080 native resolution. The game options provide no higher than a 800 x 600 resolution choice. Boo! Hiss!

I also encountered an error while attempting to launch the game for a second time.

Resolution in cam.cfg does not match that given in ddfix.ini

There is a brilliant write up by Malor on this very thread (page two) about a modern installation. It is dated 2009. Is it still a relevant guide? I also came across this link from a quick google search relating to a TFix for Thief Gold.

Chaotic Clown wrote:

There is a brilliant write up by Malor on this very thread (page two) about a modern installation. It is dated 2009. Is it still a relevant guide? I also came across this link from a quick google search relating to a TFix for Thief Gold.

Yup, Malor's post and that TTLG link are the exact steps you want to get TG running in widescreen at a modern resolution, and have an otherwise authentic experience. Enjoy!

The guide is still relevant. If you do everything on the page and it's still not looking right, make a post here. Chances are one of us has had that problem at some point too. And please, play it in total darkness with headphones.

The version of Thief 1 and 2 on Steam have the widescreen patch installed already. You just need to go into the right config files and set the resolution you want.

I tried to alter the necessary values (without patching anything), but I had problems when altering the resolution in cam.cfg and dfix.dll where-in the game would crash upon selecting to begin the training mission. Perhaps 1920 x 1080 is not supported out of the box, so to speak. Moving on to the guide provided by Malor I encountered an error when attempting to open the DDFix file. It was something regarding administrative rights on Vista. I have no idea where that came from as I run Windows 7, with administrative rights on (where applicable). My heart sank as I started to feel the dread of failure, where others so easily succeed in regard to this subject (of bringing older titles up to speed on modern machines) I decided to give this TFix (found within that TTLG link) a whirl.

Download - Save As - Direct to Thief Gold Folder - Install - Finish - Play

The game loaded in my native resolution with improved textures, and the controls had been overhauled with more inutitive keybindings. Brilliant! I ventured into the options screen to check everything, and the only alteration I found necessary was to include a key for 'walk' as moving forward with 'run' while crouched is not as silent.

I am so happy to be playing this game. It has pushed in ahead of finishing Rage and making a start on The Walking Dead!

Awesome, CC! I'm so glad you got it up and running. Let us know what you think of the Bonehoard.

I just completed Lord Bafford's Manor. I was in the zone for 1 hour, and 17 minutes. I loved every second! I pickpocketed every available key. There wasn't a drop of blood spilt by my hands, although there are a few bruised noggins from the blackjack. Not too many, though. I prefered to eliminate certain torches with water arrows, stayed in the shadows, moved slowly, and travelled with the guards (a few feet behind) after checking out patrol patterns. I read a few books along the way. I finished with around 900 gold. And I found a secret escape route to the streets to swiften my departure after collecting the sceptre. Fantastic!

The level was huge, by modern day standards. It was refreshing. The lack of handholding and an old school map really add to the experience.

So far, so good!

Next mission is a doozie, hope you aren't afraid of the dark

He thinks Bafford's Manor is huge teehee!

One bit of advice, since you are already going the non-lethal route: pick the hardest difficulty if you want to see every area of the game. Some games reward you with bonus points for playing on Expert, but Thief gives you extra areas within the mission to explore. It's very rewarding.

Edit: double post tee hee hee!

I completed the first mission on hard. Expert sounded a little intimidating, but additional exploration is a tough one to pass up. Is there much (if any) difference in enemy numbers and density on expert? What about their level of detection and damage output?