Thief fan missions and campaigns

[Arrowgrab]

Why is that horrible game in a Thief collection?

You can clearly see the bookcase is crooked and tilting; you need that stuff to prop it up.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Terra has released an update to Night of the Red Moon. I checked it out in Dromed and it is indeed fully snapped even at grid 10. However there is tons of garbage in the ZIP file - 25MB in Thumbs.db files, 2 copies of all the LGS schema files which are unnecessary, a large PSD file, and unnecessarily huge mesh textures (2048x2048 for a skin? really? but at least they're DDS). I could probably shave 30-40MB off the ZIP file size just by cleaning it up, but I think instead I'll write a tutorial on how to streamline and minimize your mission ZIPs and post it in The Editor's Guild.

The above post may be from 2016, but I just spent an hour going through all of my Thief 1+2 FMs and only removing the largest Thumbs.db files.

I've recovered close to 200 Mb of space, and more than half of that comes from Terra's most recent missions.

I'm guessing *.psd files and pspbrwse.jbf can also be safely removed, right?

 

[JarlFrank]

If the DarkEngine with NewDark can't read .psd files as textures, then yes, they're leftover work-in-progress texture files that can safely go.

 

[Yandros]

UC: Yes those can both be safely removed.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Update on my cleaning efforts: After identifying and purging a few commonplace needless files, I regained almost 400 Mb of space from within my Thief archive. I was surprised where I found some of these 'squatter files' - were it not for the fact that the author of such classics as "Bad Debts" and "Disorientation" has retired from T1/T2 FMs, I'd give them a stern lecture on how to clean up their zip-files.

Then I thought about testing all those zip-files and got about 1700 errors thrown in my face. Fortunately I could re-download or re-zip most of the troublemakers, but to my surprise even some of the downloaded FMs returned errors in a second testing run, and flat-out refused to run despite all my efforts. :/ Considering my archive is based on KOMAG's DVDs and then downloads from various FM sites, and that at least one of the dead zip-files was from 2001, I think it may be time for a massive overhaul of the Fan Mission archives in general, not just on my end.

Then I sat down for a long spell and went through every single FM (800+) in my archive and purged duplicates, foreign language FMs and many "Hold my beer while I DromEd this!"-type of FMs that I have no interest in keeping around. That brought the number to about 775 and total reclaimed space to a gigabyte, but there are a few missions in there I'm itching to get rid of... SoulTear's "Keeper of Infinity" missions, for example. Combined they take up a gigabyte of space which I frankly think can be spent on something more worthwhile.

But on the upside I found a few more FMs I've never played and look promising, so I'll be giving those a go.

Finally... DrKubiac we're now three months away from the 10th anniversary of the release of "A Night In Rocksbourg 3". Time flies when we're taffing about. Don't you think it's time to get ANIR 0 out the door soon?

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I've been working to get my Thief install and my FM collection (close to 300, including Thief Gold & Thief 2) organized but in a different way than UC. Fixing the last of the technical issues I had with framerate drops I'm ready to rock and ROLL! One more thing I'd like to do is get my positional EAX audio working correctly with both games. Thief Gold sounds a little echoy using the regular OpenAL dlls. In the meantime, I did have time for a good short fan mission or two. Kurhhan's Forgotten Tomb for T2 was solid and atmospheric, while the much older Shadow Moon, also for T2, was pretty decent using no original content (it's the smallest fan mission in my archive at only just over a MB).

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I used to have two sets of FM folders - one with a "dump" of every FM I could get my hands on (within reason - see previous post) and then one with my favorite ones. Common sense showed me that it was better to merge the two and just keep a text file of my favorite FMs handy. That alone saves me 8 Gb of space.

Meanwhile I had a quick taff around in a FM I couldn't remember or recognize: "A Lucky Hand". Once again Garrett finds himself with no equipment in jail. Once again he must recover his gear and wreak havoc upon the town that imprisoned him. Once again he learns of a lucrative plot and tries to gain all the spoils himself. Once again the number of objectives grows and grows. Once again Garrett's inventory fills with strange items. Once again Audiolog Syndrome rears its ugly head. "Once again" pretty much describes this FM perfectly, there's no new ground being treaded here. The town layout is a little weird as every house is in a neat square walled off by really high walls, and then suddenly there's a huge manor that ignores the standard layout. I had to abandon the playthrough near the end, where a laundry list of ingredients for a spell suddenly appears, and I realize that one of the ingredients involves killing a common variety pest with flashbombs, yet despite all my efforts I could never accomplish that and I had run out of flashbombs many saves ago. So hang on to those flashbombs if you tackle this FM.

What mostly caught my attention about this FM is the size of it - 360 Mb. A quick glance in the zip-file revealed the culprit to be the soundtrack, as two of the tunes used in the game (in .wav format) add up to 100 Mb. Question: What happens if a music file referenced by a FM isn't available? Does it simply not play, or does an error message crash everything?

 

[Jazz_]

Shit got real:

I'm still trying to understand how to get to the other part of the city in this FM.

 

[SCO]

That looks familiar. Is it a Rowena mission, The Tower?

 

[Melan]

It's The Seven Sisters, Night One.

 

[Jazz_]

So to get to the other side of the town I had to use a rope arrow on a metal surface, I thought rope arrows only worked on wood.

 

[SCO]

I've rarely seen a Rowena mission where you have only one path. I recommend looking harder.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

 

[Unkillable Cat]

So I gave "A Short Night's Work" another chance, and this time I got past the terrible start.

Yes, it sure does pick up afterwards, with a tight and twisting cityscape that sends Garrett to all kinds of places. It's fun to play for most of the time.

But the problem is that the mission is unfinished; it's still in beta for all I care. There are things that need to be fixed and others that need to be polished. Like how I completed the "return to the start" objective first, therefore having the mission end in the midst of clearing out a large vault of loot. Or how I could reach several places with no way back. Or how passages were only loops for guards to patrol through, and had nothing in them whatsoever. Or how some areas were unreachable on purpose. Or how some doors were unfrobbable just for spite.

This one could easily become an all-time classic, if the author would put it back on the drawing board and finish it!

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Played and completed another short FM, this one for Thief Gold. Mr. Melan's Prowler in the Dark. Enjoyed it very much and it introduced me to a Dark Engine mechanic I don't recall needing in any of the OMs though it's been so long since I played them that I don't remember - jumping from one ledge to another and needing to mantle up on the ledge you jump to. Very tricky. I'm still not adept at certain things I should be adept at doing in Thief 1 & 2. One thing that bugged me is that I wanted to play without the candle mod that allows you to light/douse candles because it can be a major cheat if the author didn't intend for it. Even though I specifically deselected this mod when installing the TFix_1.25d patch, it still allowed interactive candles. I wonder what's up with that.

 

[Yandros]

Unkillable Cat - Couple of quick responses to your posts. If a sound file is missing, no sound plays, and Dark trudges on. Also, Melan is no longer retired from Dromed. :D He's working on an entry in the T1 20th Anniversary contest. \O/

 

[Melan]

Played and completed another short FM, this one for Thief Gold. Mr. Melan's Prowler in the Dark. Enjoyed it very much and it introduced me to a Dark Engine mechanic I don't recall needing in any of the OMs though it's been so long since I played them that I don't remember - jumping from one ledge to another and needing to mantle up on the ledge you jump to. Very tricky. I'm still not adept at certain things I should be adept at doing in Thief 1 & 2. One thing that bugged me is that I wanted to play without the candle mod that allows you to light/douse candles because it can be a major cheat if the author didn't intend for it. Even though I specifically deselected this mod when installing the TFix_1.25d patch, it still allowed interactive candles. I wonder what's up with that.

Prowler does have interactive candles by default.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Played and completed another short FM, this one for Thief Gold. Mr. Melan's Prowler in the Dark. Enjoyed it very much and it introduced me to a Dark Engine mechanic I don't recall needing in any of the OMs though it's been so long since I played them that I don't remember - jumping from one ledge to another and needing to mantle up on the ledge you jump to. Very tricky. I'm still not adept at certain things I should be adept at doing in Thief 1 & 2. One thing that bugged me is that I wanted to play without the candle mod that allows you to light/douse candles because it can be a major cheat if the author didn't intend for it. Even though I specifically deselected this mod when installing the TFix_1.25d patch, it still allowed interactive candles. I wonder what's up with that.

Prowler does have interactive candles by default.

Haha, looks like I was chasing my tail there trying to get rid of those damn interactive candles when all along they were intended to be there. Thanks for the info

 

[Squadafroinx]

Just so you know, thanks to Firemage TBP will feature ton and ton of unique gameplay quirk like trying to stop a corpse from reassembling (if you were fool enough to kill it in the first place )

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Finally got around to playing that one TG mission I had left lying around - "Robert's Painting". Garrett is hired to steal a painting from a rich nobleman who owns a sizeable mansion in town.

The town in question looks like a standard city layout as expected of a Thief 1/Gold mission - but looks can be deceiving. I spent two hours mucking about in this mission, constantly finding new places with more loot to grab, to the point that I had beaten the loot objective before even setting foot in the mansion. After cleaning that out all the way to the roof I figured I must only be missing about 100-200 loot at the most. Nope, 800 loot left to go.

This FM is PACKED with well-hidden loot. This is the author's first FM, and he's taking lessons from skacky. There's nothing really wrong here, but I had problems with some shadows as they didn't allow me to hide in them.

Highly recommended, and hopefully a taste of things to come in 2018.

 

[Icewater]

Just so you know, thanks to Firemage TBP will feature ton and ton of unique gameplay quirk like trying to stop a corpse from reassembling (if you were fool enough to kill it in the first place )

That's awesome. The video is so dark I can barely see anything, though.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

They say that if you're going to get heavily into playing Thief FMs you should start with the older ones then work yourself up to the latest and the greatest. Well, I played L'arsene (2003) and while an admirable attempt at non-linear gameplay, I did NOT enjoy myself. My philosophy in enjoyable gameplay is simple: NEVER release anything that literally at least 90% of players will need a walkthrough to complete. L'arsene is a complete mess in that regard. Reading the old topic on the Thief forum for it, it seems that the vast majority of players got stumped in at least two areas (the same two areas, mind ya) because the author made some serious blunders, which I'm willing to forgive since this was their first FM and they went on to make several other highly regarded FMs, one of which seems to be a classic among Thief FM fans (The Black Frog). But there was clearly talent on display in L'arsene, and there was one secret area that I stumbled upon that I quite enjoyed (and of course I would stumble upon every secret in the game since I was busy chasing my tail hitting those areas mentioned above and making ZERO progress in the FM for what seemed like fucking hours!) - I found a classic old-style whorehouse with red carpets, red walls, red drapes, red lights, red bedding, red EVERYTHING, presided over by a single, rather strapping woman who offered to show me a good time. "Fuck, yeah!" I thought, since Garrett seems to be of a passionate nature. So I tried to frob her girl-goodies, and, failing that, tried to initiate conversation, and failing THAT ( I pressed every button, fingered every trigger I could find, nothing worked), my lady of the whorehouse became greatly offended and proceeded to beat me to death with her bare hands. It was the ONLY fun I had in this damn FM

I like the idea of new things never before seen in NewDark being done in the upcoming The Black Parade. Looking forward to it, boys.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I also felt that L'Arsene was rough around the edges, yes. Don't let that stop you from playing the other FMs in the series, "Emilie Victor", "The Korrigans" and "The Den". Actually, you're reminding me that I haven't played those in a great many years, so a revisit might be in order.

As for "get heavily into playing Thief FMs" - it's a Catch 22 situation. The only reason you'd want to get into playing Thief FMs is because they were recommended to you, and the recommendations tend to start with the best of them. But if you start to heavily invest in Thief FMs, you'll be spoiled by having played the best of them first.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Regarding that video above, yes, it was a little dark but I still could see it though I didn't watch all of it since I want to see it fresh in the released FM. A nice idea, brilliantly done, of course, in the recent Zelda: Breath of the Wild where the various skeletal undead you come across need to be dispatched by destroying the skull after an initial dismemberment with your weapon as the skull tries to reintegrate with its headless body. You guys are making Thief extra fun. Best community of fan authors out there, IMO

 

[JarlFrank]

I also felt that L'Arsene was rough around the edges, yes. Don't let that stop you from playing the other FMs in the series, "Emilie Victor", "The Korrigans" and "The Den". Actually, you're reminding me that I haven't played those in a great many years, so a revisit might be in order.

As for "get heavily into playing Thief FMs" - it's a Catch 22 situation. The only reason you'd want to get into playing Thief FMs is because they were recommended to you, and the recommendations tend to start with the best of them. But if you start to heavily invest in Thief FMs, you'll be spoiled by having played the best of them first.

I actually found Emilie Victor to be even more obtuse sometimes than L'Arsene. Didn't like either L'Arsene or Emilie Victor too much, they both had way too much scripting that could be broken and things that had to be done exactly the way the author intended, like some old Sierra adventure game. I got stuck in Emilie Victor because I apparently needed some doll which I didn't have and couldn't go back to fetch it because at some point, a small hidden door I went through had closed behind me. There was no indication that I would need this item, but then when you need it it's too late to go back and fetch it if you missed it. Not good game design.