I wrote a thing about the first level of The Dark Project, which I played for the first time last Saturday:
I find myself enamoured by Dark Project’s chunky walls, which feel more solid than the elaborate trickery we use today. Here there are no invisible collision volumes warding us away from some bit of twenty-thousand polygon street junk, placed more to afford realistic screenshots than to produce an actual physical environment. There are no normal maps to create the illusion of depth along its brick walls even if, in truth, they are flat. Dark Project’s walls are walls. You can touch them.
I wrote a thing about the first level of The Dark Project, which I played for the first time last Saturday:
I find myself enamoured by Dark Project’s chunky walls, which feel more solid than the elaborate trickery we use today. Here there are no invisible collision volumes warding us away from some bit of twenty-thousand polygon street junk, placed more to afford realistic screenshots than to produce an actual physical environment. There are no normal maps to create the illusion of depth along its brick walls even if, in truth, they are flat. Dark Project’s walls are walls. You can touch them.
An under-appreciated feature of the art style/engine limitations/deliberate attempts at simulation in Looking Glass Studio's games.
Oho, now this sounds like a thing I'll need to try at some point:
Thief 3 "Gold" (fan patch)
The Gold pack has a few other fixes, pasted below, and in time hopes to include the likes of briefing videos, hand-drawn maps and improved movement for Garrett, but right now its Public Beta Test is focused on ironing out its own bugs.
Main features at the moment include...
- No loading zones or blue fog in all nine proper missions (excl. the Inn tutorial)
- Re-designed transition zones (as faithful to the game as possible)
- Various fixes of broken/incomplete patrols, missing shadow-casting, un-ghostable AI positions
- Fixed Keeper enforcers, especially on HARD/EXPERT
- Reduced ambient fog
- Removed transition zone symbol from hand-drawn maps
- From the Sneaky Upgrade side the game was tweaked to allow slightly larger maps (content-wise) which was necessary for the Cradle and Museum maps
The biggest one obviously being the stitching together of the fragmented level maps into full size versions. Nice!
It sounds like Thief: The Movie is in development, from the same guys who made the movie version of Hitman, starring Tim Olyphant, 7 years ago.
I guess we can expect this movie to also suck?
Running Man wrote:It sounds like Thief: The Movie is in development, from the same guys who made the movie version of Hitman, starring Tim Olyphant, 7 years ago.
I guess we can expect this movie to also suck?
That's unfair. Square-Enix and Eidos have a rich history of making super good movie adaptations of games.
But the challenge with video game movies is bridging the gap between what’s interesting to play and what’s interesting to watch.
That about sums it up. Thief has some good stories—which, crucially, are not exclusive to the cutscenes—but they are icing on the gameplay cake. And that metaphorical cake would be less exciting to watch for 90 minutes than a literal cake (assuming the literal cake wasn't covered in black fondant and hidden behind a pillar in a pitch black room).
To make the best of a bad idea, I'd at least wish this movie to be rotoscoped animation (though I think Rustmonkey is now defunct), but that will never happen. Instead I will expect Some Guy Who Looks Like Jason Statham But Costs Much Less, to star in A Movie That Will Never Leave Development Hell.
ClockworkHouse wrote:Quintin_Stone wrote:Running Man wrote:It sounds like Thief: The Movie is in development, from the same guys who made the movie version of Hitman, starring Tim Olyphant, 7 years ago.
I guess we can expect this movie to also suck?
That's unfair. Square-Enix and Eidos have a rich history of making super good movie adaptations of games.
This is just what Keanu Reeves' career needs to put him back on the A list.
"Whoa. I'm inside at last."
You can write a movie that tells good stories set in the Thief-verse, but they're not about Garrett. Thief works because the player acts out Garrett's story, makes him as greedy or daring or altruistic as the player fancies, reads their own motivations into Garrett's reluctance, cowers in the corner or strides across the rooftops themselves. Think when you hear the haunt that it is you that it stalks, your only company your snarky inner monologue.
There are stories in the City that can be told; even stories about thieves. But they're different stories.
That said, if they make a film version of The Dark Project I'll watch it. Multiple times.
I think Shalebridge Cradle could work in a movie.
Malor have you replayed it with the no zoning mod? The mission is even scarier.
That said, how the hell would they convey that experience on film...
No, I just read about that today, I missed pyxistyx's post back in May. Next replay, I'll be sure to grab that mod, but I went through it just a few months ago.
Can the Steam versions of TG/TMA be modded (DDfix, widescreen) as easily as the GOG versions? Can GOG saves be used in the Steam versions?
Why am I considering buying the Steam versions when I already have them on GOG—it's not like they support Steamplay or something. Someone talk me back from the cliff. Or over it. Either way.
Can the Steam versions of TG/TMA be modded (DDfix, widescreen) as easily as the GOG versions? Can GOG saves be used in the Steam versions?
Why am I considering buying the Steam versions when I already have them on GOG—it's not like they support Steamplay or something. Someone talk me back from the cliff. Or over it. Either way.
Why are you buying a game twice for the same platform?
Gravey wrote:Can the Steam versions of TG/TMA be modded (DDfix, widescreen) as easily as the GOG versions? Can GOG saves be used in the Steam versions?
Why am I considering buying the Steam versions when I already have them on GOG—it's not like they support Steamplay or something. Someone talk me back from the cliff. Or over it. Either way.
Why are you buying a game twice for the same platform?
Twice?
TDP/TG :video card pack-in, Mastertronic DVD, GOG
TMA: Mastertronic DVD, GOG
TDS: PC DVD, Xbox, Xbox*, Mastertronic DVD, GOG
I don't know! Because they're on sale? Because Steam will log my hours? Because if Looking Glass/Ion Storm get more sales, we'll get a Thief 4 someday?
*I don't know what happened there.
Because if Looking Glass/Ion Storm get more sales, we'll get a Thief 4 someday?
You are a beautiful troll, Gravey.
Well since you people only want to question my purchasing decisions, I had to look up the answers myself. The Internet says Yes to mods and Yes to saves.
Gravey wrote:Because if Looking Glass/Ion Storm get more sales, we'll get a Thief 4 someday?
You are a beautiful troll, Gravey.
I can only be me!
I was able to mod up the Steam version of Deadly Shadows pretty easily, just be sure to turn off updates of course.
Not what you asked, but still. My Thief:Gold and T:MA are GOG versions. Gotta admit, Thief 4 would be pretty badass. Maybe someday.
That's still good to know for the T3 Gold patch. Thanks!
I could never get T2X working in Windows 7 at all sadly, which is bummer, I never did complete it.
Some of the original Thief developers at OtherSide Entertainment have livestreamed their playthrough of Thief, while they discuss it: http://www.twitch.tv/otherside_entertainment/b/626537355
(Introductions are at about 7 minutes into the recording, and the audio issues are fixed and the level started for real at 18 minutes.)
Very cool, thanks for the link.
ARISE THREAD
OK this thread was active in February, so not so much thread necromancy, but hey. Continuing the pattern.
I just kicked off a play-through of Thief Gold. I have only played about 3 levels of the first Thief before, and none of the following games, so I have a lot of shame to make up for.
For this run, I am using:
* The latest TFix (1.22) - fixes and NewDark engine
* The Thief Enhancement Pack 2 - higher res models/textures
* NecroAge - hires texture pack
Setup was as easy as running one installer (TFix's) and extracting two (large) individual files into the game's root folder (the latest config file from TFix is "aware" of EP2 and NecroAge, so no config editing required to load them). Please so far. Screenshots to come when I take something good.
I'm more aligned with playing old games how they were created, but I watched some comparison videos of the EP and me gusta it looks proper at 1080p.
So what's the difference between EP, NecroAge, and HDmod? Why did you forego the latter? They all say they offer better textures for TDP/TG/TMA, so why would I pick this, that, or the other one?
I'm more aligned with playing old games how they were created, but I watched some comparison videos of the EP and me gusta it looks proper at 1080p.
So what's the difference between EP, NecroAge, and HDmod? Why did you forego the latter? They all say they offer better textures for TDP/TG/TMA, so why would I pick this, that, or the other one?
I can't answer that very well, as it is not fully clear to me. I mostly chose this setup because (a) NecroAge looked pretty nice, and (b) the fact that the new TFix's mod_path defaults to including a load order for this setup (Thief1+NecroAge+EP2) indicated to me that the two packs work complimentary and are "supported" in this load order, ie. I could expect it to Just Work.
My vague understanding is that EP2 includes updated models and textures, and that both NecroAge and HDmod replace more/other textures. Both projects state that they work with EP2, but HDmod's page warns against using in conjunction with NecroAge. NecroAge's README states something similar.
Using just TFix and EP2 is probably going to result in the most "vanilla-like" high res texture update. NecroAge can (to my understanding) be easily "toggled" on and off by just moving the NecroAge.crf file in and out of the game's root folder.
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