Thief fan missions and campaigns

[Curratum]

Has anyone gone to test the 20th anniv submissions and single out the ones that don't look like ass and play well?

 

[Baardhaas]

Just played through 'Making a profit'.

The good:
-unique voice acting (and pretty decent too)
-nice combination of a city-map with a manor, cathedral and caves/crypts. this mission does it all
-some complex/unexpected AI routes
-lots of little secrets and stuff to explore (which I ultimately didn't bother to find all because the mission takes a bit longer than its entertainment value allows)
-decent story with Garret being motivated by money and not out of the good of his heart.

The bad:
-Shadows weren't always corresponding with the lightgem, I often was visible in places I expected to be in the dark. The cut-off was quite sharp to. I little step forward or backward could make the difference between invisible and fully lit.
-The mission drags on longer than it should. You can see the twist/additional objective at the end coming from a mile away. Yet despite knowing the conclusion, you still have to play through it.

don't read if you haven't played it yet

Having to drag that dude around a second time didn't help either

Conclusion:
Excellent mission, haven't played any of the others yet but if I were to rate this one, I'd give it at least an 8 out of 10.

my stats

Expert difficulty
2 hours, 38 minutes and 51 seconds
2231 out of 3264 loot
9 out of 24 secrets(!)

edit: added another point about the shadows

 

[cowking]

How do you improve audio in Thief or in games in general? I used to use some Razer utility which enhanced positional audio, is there any other magic?

I recently discovered there's a way to improve the OpenAL sound option. Might be relevant with so many new fms about.

1.) go here, scroll down to download the latest windows binaries.

2.) place bin/win32/soft_oal.dll into c:\Windows/SysWOW64 folder

3.) place bin/win64/soft_oal.dll into c:\Windows/System32 folder

4.) open cam_ext.cfg in your thief folder, search for "snd_oal_device" and remove the ";" before the line start

5.) change "snd_oal_device Generic Software" to "snd_oal_device OpenAL Soft"

6.) switch to OpenAL in game if you aren't already using it (you should now be able to enable EAX if you couldn't before)

7.) OPTIONAL: with the download comes a config tool you can use to enable high quality mode, the decoder presets required are inside the presets folder, you should make sure "snd_speaker_config" is also set properly in cam_ext.cfg.

8.) OPTIONAL: you can see which devices you can use with the snd_oal_device line in your thief/THIEF.log file if you want to use something other than OpenAL Soft. I found my creative device made sounds bleed horribly and 'Generic Hardware' only became available after enabling thief in creative's Alchemy app. Still prefer OpenAL Soft though.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Question: I'm taffing through the contest entries and one of them has a crippling bug, to the point that I'm strongly considering dropping the FM and moving on rather than put up with it. Which do you think is more fair, to leave the FM unrated and hope it'll get fixed someday, or cook up a rating based on my impressions so far?

 

[Melan]

Hard to say without specifying which mission and what kind of bug you are talking about.

 

[cowking]

Question: I'm taffing through the contest entries and one of them has a crippling bug, to the point that I'm strongly considering dropping the FM and moving on rather than put up with it. Which do you think is more fair, to leave the FM unrated and hope it'll get fixed someday, or cook up a rating based on my impressions so far?

Are you using TFix 1.26a?

 

[DrKubiac]

Sounds like Haplo's fm, which has a game breaking bug if you don't have the right newdark update. If it's another mission, then as Melan said it's hard to tell.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I decided to take the middle road - I'll shelf the FM for now and wrap up the remaining ones first.

And I am using the very latest version of TFix.

 

[JarlFrank]

Has anyone gone to test the 20th anniv submissions and single out the ones that don't look like ass and play well?

They're all at least decent, and the mediocre ones are short and quick to get over with.

Quick reviews of the ones I played through up to now:


An Enigmatic Treasure with a Recondite Discovery

This one is pure GORTness, but compared to his previous releases it's actually a little more forgiving. Tons of guards on the street, including some that can't be KO'd, lots of marble in the opera and the mage guild. It's not an easy mission, especially if you want to ghost. The amount of marble gave me some real stress, man. But the mission does some interesting things, like the way you enter the mage guild, or the little teleporter puzzle to get a secret in the guild. It's very diverse, too, with city streets, an opera house, a mage guild, and a warehouse to explore. Overall an enjoyable mission, but it's not an easy one. The difficulty level is pretty high in some places. But there's no outright trolling like in most of GORT's FMs, at least!

Rated it 7/10 in my DarkLoader comment section.

Dewinder Manor

Decent little beginner mission, but nothing special. It's a generic blocky mansion, but it doesn't do anything particularly wrong like many other beginner missions do. The highlight of this is all the downwinder/dewdrop memes. Fun enough to warrant a playthrough.

Rated it 5.5/10.
decent,mission

Madness Of Wolfgang Handspiegel

This is also a beginner mission, but while its atmosphere is better than Dewinder Manor's, it makes more beginner mistakes than that one. Tons of marble at the start, and you have to look for hidden switches in order to progress. Not particularly great in the gameplay department. It's got an interesting Constantine's Manor style to it, though, and some of the weirder parts of it look pretty good. The author certainly has potential.

Rated it 5/10.

Rose Garden

This is the good shit. It's made by Melan so you know it's got quality. But what threw me off intially was how linear this mission is at the start. Unlike most of Melan's FMs, here you don't get to free roam through an open city but need to find the path that leads you forward. It opens up later on as you unlock previously locked gates, and there's still plenty of exploration in the city, a couple of side areas to explore, and a really cool easter egg to discover. The atmosphere is top notch, the final goal of the mission is quite unique (haven't really seen this done before in this way), excellent mission in every way. Also, it's long. Took me 3 and a half hours to get through it.

Rated it 8.5/10.

Shadow Play

Small city and mansion mission with an excellent atmosphere and beautiful architecture. Nothing unique or special, just a really really solid city+mansion that's competently made. Absolutely recommended, classic Thief experience.

Rated it 8/10.

The Sound of a Burrick in a Room

My favorite of the ones I played. This one is gigantic. Huge interconnected city, large mansion and Hammerite church to break into - both of which are large enough to be missions of their own - and plenty of verticality, rope arrow action, rooftop exploration, etc. What's not to love? This has to be one of the largest Thief FMs I've ever played. If you like city missions, play this. It's absolutely excellent.

Rated it 10/10.


Slowly making my way through the other contest missions. Haven't encountered a real dud yet.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I've played all of the FMs JarlFrank mentions except the last one, and I generally agree with his sentiments, though I give GORT's mission a lower rating.

In addition, short reviews of some of the smaller FMs:

"Mother Redcaps' Last Request" is so similar to "DeWinder Manor" that if you've played one there's almost no need to play the other.

"Order of the Dew" is probably the smallest one of them all, but a tightly-packed one with a surprisingly high production value. Break into a secret society club beneath a bar. Considering it was put together in 12 days it's quite the accomplishment.

"The Lost City of Gazing Glass" is made by the same author as "Madness of Wolfgang Handspiegel" except it's a tomb raiding affair. Sadly the quality is about the same.

"Lord G" is my lowest-rated FM so far, mainly due to it being unfinished since the submission time ran out. Still gave me a good laugh after I scared off all the nobles in this mansion heist and found them in the strangest places...

JarlFrank has still a couple of large ones coming up, including one that did the unthinkable for me: Earned top marks. And it seems like both of us have yet to play the one everyone's truly raving about...

 

[Icewater]

To me it's a weird question, because most missions that people describe as being "like Thief 1" these days are usually more "like a skacky mission" - i.e. city missions with exaggeratedly proportioned architecture and lots of verticality.

As cowking said, I think they mean "like Thief 1" wrt a dark, Gothic atmosphere and not the layout. OM layouts are pretty basic now when compared to the best FMs and I think those FMs mostly represent a straight improvement over the OMs in that way.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Station to Station is a featureless maze which was withdrawn from the competition.

I checked the TTLG thread and took a look at this for myself.

Wow.

Someone is trying to out-Gort GORT.

It's exactly as described: A featureless maze. With unescapable deathtraps. And no compass. The author hails from 4chan, so that should say something.

Also, I took a look at "Sound of a Burrick in a Room". It's a really good cityscape mission. But it's not the biggest FM I've played. Hell, it's not even the biggest FM in the contest.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Seems me and another user on TTLG reached the same conclusion in roughly the same time: Every single member of Team Feuillade (the taffers behind "The Black Parade" megacampaign announced for T1 two years ago) submitted a mission for the anniversary contest. This can be seen by at least three missions ("Song of a Burrick in a Room", "Lost Among the Forsaken" and "Whistling of the Gears") being all large, sprawling cityscape missions that share the same lore background, which is the one of The Black Parade.

I don't know why they're doing this... but I'm glad they are. Besides the obvious message of 'play these FMs' my only other suggestion is to play "Whistling of the Gears" before "Lost Among the Forsaken". It'll help with the background lore to know what a Scrapper is.

 

[Murderer’s thumb]

The thief threads on /vr/ are a decent place for conversation. Schlock posted his screenshots of his Work in Progress over there. Some newcomers to Dromed talked in those threads too. As the first comments were posted I started to work on a self reflection, more elaborate compared to the one included with the FM, explaining what went wrong, why it went wrong and how to prevent it. I don't know if I should keep it to myself or show it to people.

If you have any questions, I would like to answer them.

 

[JarlFrank]

Also, I took a look at "Sound of a Burrick in a Room". It's a really good cityscape mission. But it's not the biggest FM I've played. Hell, it's not even the biggest FM in the contest.

It may not be the biggest in pure size, but it's the biggest I've ever played when it comes to actual content. It's densely packed with stuff to discover and sections of it feel like they're seperate missions in themselves.

Fun fact: this FM actually hit both the brush and the object limit of NewDark. Something like Keeper of the Prophecies might have much larger maps in sheer size, but they contain many empty areas. This one doesn't.

 

[marbleman]

Also, I took a look at "Sound of a Burrick in a Room". It's a really good cityscape mission. But it's not the biggest FM I've played. Hell, it's not even the biggest FM in the contest.

Having played them all, I'm really curious what you think the biggest one is then. I don't think any other contest mission beats "Sound of a Burrick" in sheer size.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Looking back I'll admit the possibility that I may be wrong on my size statement, but I was thinking of "Lost Among the Forsaken". The reason for that is quite simple, progress through areas in LAtF is much slower than in "Sound of a Burrick" (for various reasons), therefore it feels much larger than it really is. It is big though.

Speaking of Sound of a Burrick... has anyone found the magpie nest that noble was complaining about? I couldn't even find his house, let alone a nest that could be nearby.

Murderer’s thumb Welcome, and thanks for delurking. My first question would probably be something along the lines of "What the taff were you thinking?" but as I found the readable had a look in the FM file I have a clearer picture already. The basic idea you had isn't a bad one, it just needed to be fleshed out. Make the maze feel like a sewer, instead of the other way around.

 

[DrKubiac]

Welcome Murderer's thumb.
I'd suggest you share your elaborate self reflection. Not only would it be interesting, but it would solve some misunderstandings about your choices. Heavy use of multibrushes which could be qualified as plagiarism, a layout which looks like a troll job more than anything else... It's probably not what you were going for, so your self reflection would let you come clean in front of the community.

Can we find the readable in the mission ? If people could read it right at the beginning, you wouldn't have gotten so much flak on TTLG. I know I didn't find it anyway.

 

[Murderer’s thumb]

The "fleshing out" bit was something I kept struggling with throughout. When to trust your own creativity? I just kept thinking that those other guys were better. Based on the reactions I now see where things could have been made clearer to the player on where to go and what to do.

Yes, DrKubiac, I suppose that is how it has to be, how scary it may be. I'm still struggling writing the plagiarism bit, because I can't remember it all too well. I didn't keep a log of what decisions I made on each day and why I made them. Would it be possible to have someone proofread it? I can create a paste on pastebin.

The readable is unreachable. It is hidden behind closed gates that can't be opened and it lies at the bottom of a deep hole. You will have to go to: Books/English/acknowledgment

 

[Yandros]

Unkillable Cat - There are several magpie nests and they can all be found.

 

[Murderer’s thumb]

*When to trust your own creativity? I just kept thinking that those other guys were better. How to top them?

 

[Baardhaas]

*When to trust your own creativity? I just kept thinking that those other guys were better. How to top them?

Well, if you wanted to top them but considered them to be better, then why did you bother in the first place? Surely you didn't think you'd impress anyone by taking a few chunks of other people's missions and add a maze to it?

Look, it sounds to me you just wanted to try your hand a creating a thief mission and mucked about with Dromed a bit. Something I want to do my self for quite some time now but have been putting off because creating something good seems like a lot of work. I don't understand why you submitted your mission for the contest though.

edit: welcome to the codex btw and have the decency to open your profile so it can be spammed if deemed neccessary.

 

[JarlFrank]

*When to trust your own creativity? I just kept thinking that those other guys were better. How to top them?

Maybe you don't need to top them. Try to create your own thing instead. When I made my FM Shoes and Dresses for the novice contest back in 2016, I knew I wouldn't top the classics, so instead I did my own thing. Some silly humor, lesbian foot fetish erotica ( ), a weird mage area, small city and two manors. It ended up being a decent enough FM with a personality of its own. Sure, it's nowhere near the masterpieces other authors have created, but it's a decent first effort and you can recognize the author's personal touch in it.

There's no need to top the other guys. Just try to make an FM of your own, that expresses what you like about Thief, and has your own ideas in it. Offer us something new and unique.

 

[nicked]

Some of my thoughts on the missions I've played thus far:

Order of the Dew - a very short, but well-made mission. Despite being small, it rewards exploration, and has multiple routes to your goal. Just wish it lasted longer than 15 minutes.

Lord G - feels very unfinished, has some game-breaking bugs. Nice-looking mansion exterior, but it needs about a year more development time, and a hefty dose of testing.

Downtowne Funk - would be easily identifiable as a Yandros mission even if it had been submitted anonymously. A mostly well-made small city mission that tries, to a certain degree of success, to feel like a natural extension of one of the original missions. The reliance on some original LGS areas means that some areas feel better quality than others, and it's also one of the easiest of the missions I've played. Nonetheless, good fun with an interesting story and a lot of hidden loot.

Making a Profit - this one gets my award for the mission I most wanted to like, but couldn't quite get on with. It's enormous, to the point that the scale feels off, and to compound that, it's full of gameplay that feels like a slog - many long lockpicks, an objective where you have to lug a body around, and you are sometimes left directionless, which is painful in a mission of this size. At it's core, there's an interesting, well-written (if predictable) story, with some good voice-acted cutscenes and fun progression of objectives, and it has some nifty puzzles. But it badly needs the fat trimming.

Darkness Walk with Us! - it's a Haplo mission so I knew what to expect going in - a tightly designed, fun, well-paced puzzler, and this mission didn't disappoint. The architecture is workmanlike, but the structure and pacing, the way the mission gradually expands its scope, and the puzzles which are balanced to usually make you feel clever without becoming stuck for long, makes this one probably the most pure fun I've had with any of these contest missions.

The Madness of Wolfgang Handspiegel - definitely feels like a small/beginner mission. It's very small, and relies on a linear sequence of find-the-key, find-the-hidden-switch mechanics. The few rooms that are there are nicely made, but there needs to be more of it, and less linear.

Heart and Soul - fun and atmospheric, the main issue I had with this one is that there's not much pacing or guidance given to the player, so you find yourself running around a large, mazelike environment, hoping you stumble on what to do next. It kinda reminded me of Hexen in that way. Some fun new undead creatures and lots of secret passages make it good fun to explore, even if you are completely lost!

Lost Among the Forsaken - probably the heaviest use of custom resources I've seen so far in the contest, but they don't go to waste. This one is beautiful, and the way the environment is constructed in 3D space is mindbogglingly complex. That is really my only criticism - it's easy to get lost due to the sheer complexity of it. The atmosphere is top-notch, the story elements are integrated well and serve to bolster the atmosphere without distracting from it, and all in all, it's probably the best "old quarter" style mission I've played.

An Enigmatic Treasure with a Recondite Discovery - some of the environments look really nice, but the mission seems built to too large a scale, there's little reward for exploration and there's a lot of pointless dead ends. The writing is prosaic at best, and could do with a lot of proofreading. The biggest problem with this one is the unforgiving difficulty - swathes of marble floors, no consideration of shadow placement, souped-up enemies. It's hard without being a challenge, it just feels unfair. The only one I've actually given up on so far.

Dewinder Manor - as others have said, this mission is basically a beginner-level mansion heist, doubling as a complex forum injoke. For what it is, it's not at all bad, and a fun way to kill half an hour.

In & Out - a mission that starts simple, and expands into multiple underground layers that serve as a Greatest Hits tour of Thief 1 environments. The story is essentially just a barebones excuse for this downward jaunt, but the ride is well worth it, as the gameplay shines. The readme said the mission should be ghostable, so I gave it a try, and it was some of the most fun I've had trying to ghost a Thief mission. Highly recommended.

Mother Redcap's Last Request - another basic/beginner mission with simplistic, empty architecture and a play-time of under half an hour. But, as with Dewinder Manor, it doesn't do anything wrong design-wise, it's just simple. The story is well-told and relatively original, and it's good fun while it lasts.

Rose Garden - might catch some flak for this, but I really didn't get on with this mission at all. It has atmosphere in spades, and a huge amount of places to explore. But it's overwhelming. It is surprisingly linear in some ways - despite being an enormous city mission, it's actually extremely difficult to navigate effectively, with often one, labyrinthine route to get to an area. There are scores of doors, ventshafts and the like that don't lead anywhere, some of them only accessible by tricky climbing, which makes exploration feel less rewarding than it should. There are tons of extremely well-written texts, but most of them go into your inventory, meaning I have no idea if they're vital to progress or not, so by the end, it was taking me a good minute to scroll through my inventory. Maybe I'm just not clever enough for this mission, but I constantly felt like I was missing things because there were obscure clues that I didn't understand. The enormous size of the level, coupled with the often very difficult climbs needed to just get around meant that I spent most of my time with this mission feeling lost and frustrated. The plot was well-written, but by the time I reached the end, I'd basically forgotten what I was doing and why. I have no doubt many others will love this mission, but I barely had the brain-power or patience required to finish it.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm done with all but two FMs, and I'm halfway through one of those. I agree with everything nicked said. Especially about "Rose Garden". In addition I came across the bug Melan described over at TTLG where you can't drop picked up objects and arrows just stay stuck in mid-air. While easily fixable there's simply no way in hell I'm gonna play such a large and complex FM where I need to quit and restart the game before reloading a save. But since Melan currently suffers from Post-Traumatic DromED Disorder my hopes of this getting fixed any time soon are mighty slim. A pity.

And don't get me started on "An Enigmatic Treasure with a Recondite Discovery". It's crawling with bad game design decisions and purposeful trolling. Let the player beware!

And for those wondering, "Lost Among the Forsaken" is the mission I spent eight hours sneaking through (real time, not in-game time) and left me exhausted afterwards. It's not just beautiful and well-crafted architecturally, but also in terms of game design. I won't spoil anything here, but the way some common game design elements are normally applied to a game/FM, and then seeing how they're applied in LAtF... the author really thought this through. But to give you an idea of what to expect - there's a bit early on where you enter the Sealed Quarter proper and are standing on an elevated position. Use the opportunity to take a good look around... but also take a good listen. If you were filled with the same sense of dread that I felt there, you're gonna love this FM. For the contest I give it the full 30 points and declare it my Winner's Pick.