quote:

When you have a character as complex as Garrett, finding a position to put him in and seeing how he reacts.

Xander77 posted:

It may be that I don't really care about the game series as a whole, but everyone who put a lot of effort into conveying how terrible a sequel this is (Bobbin aside) are really, really poo poo at it.
"Here are some links and quotes to prove how terrible this game is. How do they do that? It's up to you to find out".

Brainamp posted:

Nah, it's been roughly complete for a while. It only recently took the step up from being a mod. Looking forward to seeing the missions. Never got far myself cause the lockpicking just plain stumped me for some reason.

Zuzie posted:

That said, I also wonder if these mods added brand new elements that weren't present in Thief 1 and 2, such as new factions to steal from, or other things.

anilEhilated posted:

Devoted, too. I don't think I'll ever forget LADY VAN VERNON'S SHOUTY GUARDSMAN.

The Protagonist posted:

Thanks for this! So far I've tried out everything except the No Honor mission which I couldn't find among the main darkmod fm downloads page. Is there another good source?

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

I, um, pointed out the bank mission when I showed off the Stonemarket map. So yes, yes I have it.

Hymirvetr posted:

I couldn't tell from the videos, but is the sound engine and directional sound still as broken as it was at the games release?

JesusGeorge posted:

Prenton posted:

Regarding your death: you're seemingly more vulnerable from behind, as according to a loading tip "Don't turn your back to the guards, they'll run you through!"

How this mechanic squares with the earlier loading tip I read of "Remember - you're a thief, running away is always an option!" or somesuch, I don't know. Perhaps I'm meant to power-moonwalk my way to safely in an emergency.

me from ~7 months ago posted:

In Thi4f news, I had a chance to play the Bank DLC and now I'm actually kind of mad the main campaign didn't have stuff like this except bigger. They knew how to make a Thief level! They knew!

So like, because there were no loading screens until you got to the vault, we know that the Thi4f engine can at least render an area the size of the first two floors of that bank (and the surrounding areas) at the same time.

Knowing that and without touching a single low level mechanic (which I still say are quite good), I can mentally design a p good Thi4f level:

Then just stack two more floors on top of the existing two. Have the doors to the stairs up, the openable 4th story window (with a rope arrow point just outside, but one right above a guard and a dog), and entrance to the ventilation shaft connecting the 2nd and 3rd floors trigger load screens.

(As an aside, if those stupid jimmy window/crawl through narrow passages with identical beams always leaning left sequences are to mask loading times, why are there still real loading screens? I promise you, I can watch a progress bar.)

On the 3rd floor have a series of offices. To give the player a reason to come up here instead of heading straight for the vault, lets say the lock boxes in the vault requires 2 keys: the clients and the bank presidents. Each account manager has a copy of the client key, (or their most recent client if its implausible that each account manager only has one client). Maybe one manager has the key in a vault in his office, another manager has a note to the bank secretary that he lost the key while taking a walk outside (the DLC bank had a nicely rendered bank exterior and you were there all of 10 seconds), and another bank manager suspects the guards are rifling through his stuff so he's keeps his key hidden somewhere in the bank. Also there are guards and those security cameras all along these hallways. (Also why do those security cameras never appear in the main campaign? Maybe because nuGarrett never breaks into anywhere that would warrant such security, which is depressing in and of itself.)

The president's office and his secretary's office are up on the 4th floor. The president's key is heavily trapped, and there's a stationary guard in the hallway (it always bothered me that there are these good, viable distraction mechanics in the game, but the way the patrols in the main campaign are set up, its almost never a good idea to use them). The key itself is hidden behind one of those painting switches, which again I maintain were cool.

The secretary's office would have that maintenance note about the vault that was previously inexplicably located in a broom closet.

If we have to attach this to the main story somehow (ugh) just put a MacGuffin in one of those the lockboxes. This DLC was touted as a homage to TMA's bank level, so that would have been appropriate.

But the point of this thought experiment is to again demontrate my point that I feel all the low level mechanics are solid, and if we only had bigger, and better thought out places to use those mechanics this would have been a very good game. I think the hardest of the hard core thief fans (like the ones who still hate Deadly Shadows) still wouldn't have been happy, but I think had the levels designed as they had above, it would have been both a good Thief game and would have been more successful with the mainstream audience SE is courting. I mean doesn't the fact that the heist movie genre is a thing mean there's a market for this sort of thing?

Night10194 posted:

It doesn't actually earn anything it tries to run as a story point, does it? If you're going to make Garret guilty about Erin or whatever you might actually show some prior relationship to establish it, let her hang around a little, and show them being comfortable around one another instead of bickering and yelling and stealing from each other, goddamnit.

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

You know, I agree with you that the brothel is a nice change of pace in terms of level design, but I have to take points away because the sound work for this level is especially abysmal. When I was on that partition and accidentally kicked a vase, the crash was muted because I was standing too close to the far edge. The far edge of a foot-wide stone wall, mind you. Then there's the TTG sounding like he's talking to Madam Xiao-Xiao through a closed door instead of face-to-face, and when I was in the madam's office everything I did to the wall with the safe on it sounded like it was on the far side of the wall instead of immediately in front of me. I've mentioned before that the sound design is sloppy at best in Thi4f, but the brothel is the first place that really shows off the kinds of shortcuts the developers used.

Stephane Roy, Thief's Producer posted:

The environments don’t seem overly large, so why are there so many loading screens in a game?

The richness of the art and audio, which support this story-driven game, contributed to the streaming needs. Audio is super important in a game like Thief, and we wanted to provide strong ambiance and an immersive experience for the players. The environments are not overly large, but most loaded sections are a playground of over 100 meters by 100 meters without any loading, where you can experience a seamless gameplay. Part of this justification also goes with the production's desires of placing the player in a very rich, but also distinct environment in term of assets and textures. Thief is a game of light and shadow, cat and mouse gameplay – to ensure that we were having the higher definition in term of shadows, we used pre-processed data (baked lightmaps) that were unique from one area to the other.

The creative team on the project wanted to change a lot of these numbers to enhance the experience, so our technical team needed to come up with dedicated streaming zones to handle the swap from one area to another, where they felt that it would also support the pacing of the gameplay experience. We needed to have these loading zones in there in order to create the rich, immersive environment you see in the game.

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

I'm digging this up from page 4 because I've finally gotten around to practicing "The Transaction" and I have to say the unavoidable boss fight is fairly easy if you go and do the optional objective first. On the other hand, the folks in the release thread who said that a certain monster only has 1 hit point are drat liars, at least when you're playing on Expert in the current Dark Mod build. My only real problem at this point is that I'm missing around 500 loot and I'm pretty sure I've found all the secrets, including the bookseller's basement. I know guard belt pouches are worth 50 a pop, but that would still be a lot of guards I didn't rob...

WFGuy posted:

Speaking of things Thief 4 got wrong, I love that they didn't even bother to look up MIT's lockpicking guide over the course of about five minutes to figure out how the pins work. The upper half now magically magnetises to the top when it's been slid into place! Amazing!

Gantolandon posted:

Every time a revolution is portrayed in the media, the underlying message I'd that they are not that different from the people they fight. It's considered edgy and mature, as opposed to childish and naive anti-authoritarianism. If you believe it cannot be more hamfisted than in Thiaf, look at Bioshock Infinite where the revolutionaries murder children and people wearing glasses.