Thief fan missions and campaigns

[Darth Slaughter]

I finally started playing Thief FMs again after several months. Two FMs went through the wringer: "Lady Lomat's Flute" is a very short, very basic mansion raid-mission. To be honest it felt like something out of the first days of DromED, very blocky and large open spaces. Still, it's fun for a short romp and good for beginners.

Then there was "Resonance". This is of much higher quality, even though the area used is smaller than that in the previous mission. Basso has been kidnapped and you have to spring him. The catch? Ghosting is required on the toughest difficulty setting, AND you have to recover 10 badges from the guards present. There's a lot of frantic sneaking and hiding involved in this one, and the level design allows for some flexibility in how to solve the objectives. There's really nothing wrong with this one, highly recommended.

Now to look into this '10 rooms' competition thing...

I suffered through Lost in the far edges... terribly difficult, that sometimes it looks broken...

 

[Melan]

I downloaded them yesterday, and except for The Serpentine Amulet (a neat, although often silly Thief 1 FM), they did not make a good impression.

• The Cave Artifact: Simplistic architecture, badly lit, random items and opponents plonked down willy-nilly.
• Anybody... home?: Modern-day mission. Meh.
  
• Hammered: Apocalyptic heavy metal Thief. May be interesting for people who want that kind of thing, but...
  
• Lost in the Far Edges: Looks good, sounds good, gave up in frustration due to falling to my death about 40 times after the first room. I may be bad at twitch, but not that bad.

I'd just like to play something that's about a thief thieving in a corrupt and dark city, or raiding some tombs, or breaking into a Hammerite smelting facility.

 

[skacky]

I didn't like them very much either except The Serpentine Amulet, which was a rather solid mission but felt a bit empty and lifeless (not enough AIs), and the readables could use some more work.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I have to agree with you guys, the '10 rooms' missions aren't that hot. I tried "Hammered" which had a German intro for some reason, but otherwise was a basic enter-castle-and-steal-stuff mission. It just didn't interest me in any way.

Then I tried "Anyone...home?" and got fed up by the puzzles with the obscure solutions. Need a key? Try smashing the immobile skeleton in the closet! Yeah, that sounds like the logical thing to do! Fucktards...

I might have missed some FM releases in the last few months, maybe I should dig through the TLLG threads and see what I can find.

 

[Baron Dupek]

My first try with FM was first part of The Lady Lotti Saga named Coterie of Smokers.
Started, make few steps into countryard with about 10 guards (saw no way to sneak past) and said nope.

I should start that mission in pyramid (that I saw on Phoenix channel) instead of this. Or some treasure hunt mission. Or Kings and Queens in T3. Or git back to the TDM campaign...

 

[JarlFrank]

My first try with FM was first part of The Lady Lotti Saga named Coterie of Smokers.
Started, make few steps into countryard with about 10 guards (saw no way to sneak past) and said nope.

But it's actually a pretty damn good mission.

 

[Baron Dupek]

But it's actually a pretty damn good mission.

Yeah, I feel it too.
I just got these nope moment sometimes, only to come back and finish it later.

 

[Melan]

On the other hand,

I just played The Unseen, a Thief 1 fan mission, and this time it was made by skacky. Terror and disempowerment in an Ultima Underworld-like setting (is it Arx? never played Arx). This is how a properly dark Thief mission looks like - you can just barely see your surroundings, but the strategically placed lights are enough to get by, and the darkness is part of the challenge/experience. Where it isn't dark, it is pretty. There are shades of sperry's mindbreakingly scary fan mission in some spots; elsewhere, it presents a truly mysterious underworld. Loot-hunting was pleasant, with enough valuable objects to find if you just look around the environment a bit. The puzzles which let you progress are logical; I had some trouble finding

Spoiler

two secret switches,

but otherwise, it is is mostly about navigating your hostile environment and making sure you don't bump into some unholy terror.

There are some players who will never like this kind of mission, but it properly recaptures Thief's original horror, which is a rare feat.

 

[skacky]

Yeah it's very inspired by Arx Fatalis, it even uses several sounds. Glad you enjoyed it.
After I'm done with my city mission for TG I'll most probably be working on a very dark and very creepy catacomb mission (with a little city bit before you reach the subterranean necropolis).

 

[Unkillable Cat]

It's looking kinda dry for me in the FM department. I think it may be finally time for me to...

install the Dark Mod.

*ominous thunder*

 

[Azazel]

I've been working through Broken Triad and have to say it kinda falls flat after Ominous Bequest. While it features fantastic level design, a decent story, and a really unique setting for the second mission, the way the objectives are handled is just completely nonsensical to the point where it's almost impossible to figure out how to progress without opening the walkthrough at least once. I suspect that the pretty non-linear level layouts just don't play nice with how rigidly you need to "Get X to access Y" with Skyrim-after-a-6-month-hiatus syndrome when it comes to guidance on where to find things.

I want to like this FM, but it frustrates me, and in places feels like the author is mocking me.

 

[JarlFrank]

I've been working through Broken Triad and have to say it kinda falls flat after Ominous Bequest. While it features fantastic level design, a decent story, and a really unique setting for the second mission, the way the objectives are handled is just completely nonsensical to the point where it's almost impossible to figure out how to progress without opening the walkthrough at least once. I suspect that the pretty non-linear level layouts just don't play nice with how rigidly you need to "Get X to access Y" with Skyrim-after-a-6-month-hiatus syndrome when it comes to guidance on where to find things.

I want to like this FM, but it frustrates me, and in places feels like the author is mocking me.

Yeah some of the items you had to get were slightly obscure, like that candle you had to get lit and then get it out without exiting through the water by using that teleport thingie.

Overall it was a really really awesome mission though and I probably even preferred it to Ominous Bequest, despite the puzzles.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I found a list of upcoming FMs, and after narrowing it down to the titles that caught my eye and can be expected to be released this year, I ended up with:

# GORT's "Unknown Treasure" revamp for NewDark.
# "Being Thief 2", this promises to be a Thieves's Highway mission on a massive scale.
# Speaking of Thieves's Highway, another FM by a high-quality author is in the works, simply called "Rooftops".
# "Breaking The Stone" by the guy who made "Resonance" that I mentioned a few posts ago. Two-mission FM.
# "Death's Cold Embrace" seems like a large project, a 4-parter FM with a big story attached.
# "Bane III", the final part in what was a nice little pair of FMs from some years ago.

Of course, skacky has something in the works.

I wonder which of these will be the first one released?

 

[skacky]

There's also the second part to the Darkstone Gem which looks amazing.
I've been playing several FMs lately:

- The Varyx Obelisk (TG): Pretty interesting but it looks like NewDark broke it at some point, I can't get out of the water talisman area.
- Hammer and Garrett (TG): A mission by JIS featuring incoherent locales but killer architecture and atmosphere. It doesn't look finished since there's almost no loot at all and I've been stuck.
- Elevator Mission T2 (T2): A campaign by JIS and it's a mixed bag. Some missions are great (the submarine base and the manor in particular, the former being one of the very best Mechanist missions imho) but some are incredibly dull and boring.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

JIS... that's the Japanese guy, right? I never got into his missions for some reason.

 

[skacky]

Yeah that's him. His missions are really weird as hell.
Not to be a cocktease but I'm currently beta-testing Being Thief II by Sensut and it's everything you'd expect from a huge rooftop mission. It is HUGE, and I'm not exaggerating. Life of the Party is a dwarf in comparison, and there's tons and tons of objectives that will take you all around the district. I'm more than two hours in and I finally broke into the place where the main objective is located.

 

[JarlFrank]

I have never tried any Thief FMs before, so I'm pretty new to the whole process of playing them.

For now, I just installed T2X into my Thief 2 folder. I assume running it is as simple as installing Tafferpatcher in the T2X directory and running the NewDark executable? I'm using Wine, and running t2x.exe directly does nothing.

EDIT: Extracting t2_v121.zip into the T2X folder lets me see the T2X menu, but the game immediately crashes.

EDIT2: Fixed it by extracting the fix located here and launching T2X as an FM using NewDark's built-in FM loader. I wish the T2X installer on the original website was pre-packaged with this.

Check this: www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140845

Also I just recommended some FMs to someone recently here to get started with:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...u-wasting-time-on.50372/page-180#post-3189331

And for loading FMs I still use good old DarkLoader

 

[Darth Slaughter]

I normally use garrettloader, because I find it easier to track which FMs I played and the readme of FM on the frontpage really helps me remind about a FM I played long ago that I may have forgotten, when I played and when I downloaded. I know garrettloader can leave traces of uninstalled FMs, but the TTLG forums gives thte instructions to revert back to a clean installation of the original missions.

I don't know if dark loader or the FM selector has similar issues, or features.

 

[JarlFrank]

DarkLoader lets you mark completed missions and even leave comments about them (I rate their quality there - bad, meh, okay, good, great) and it never had any issues for me when switching FMs. It also shows the readme of the FM.

 

[Melan]

The Widow’s Ire by StinkyKitty

This two-mission pack is Thief from before fan demand turned it into a Victorian burglary simulation. It digs into the depths of the Bonehoard, The Sword and Cragscleft Prison to bring you the older, more menacing, and most of all weirder game that’s just not there after The Dark Project, and can be seen only very rarely in fan missions. In short, this is a surreal underground mission about exploring dangerous, vast and screwed up places which don't make conventional sense, but you might see them in strange dreams.

The graphics are simple, but effective. There is usually little light, and the few details of the architecture do the job well enough. Good shadows, memorable images. The plot is simple, but what really matters is the gameplay, which is challenging and very enjoyable. It never feels like the mission is cheating you, since the loot is hidden cleverly but logically; and it is mostly the same with finding your way to progress, or just to get to more loot and interesting secret areas. Instead of illogical and hard to find secret switches, most everything is hidden by cleverly designed architecture. The same goes for movement-related challenges, or stealth: it is all carefully made and tested to be hard but doable, with a lot of variety in the places you will visit and situations you get to experience. It is classic, gameplay-oriented level design, more concerned about giving you interesting ways to test your abilities than making strict sense.

The sheer size of the missions gives back some of the feeling of being deep down in the underworld, or lost somewhere beyond the kind of places normal people should be going. This is really something, because so few missions do it well, and because while these two are inspired by obvious influences from the original missions, they manage to recreate their feel without straightforward copying.

So, this is the bee’s knees - play it and hope for a sequel!

(and thanks to JarlFrank for bringing it to my attention)

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I played it briefly upon release, didn't get far enough to get an impression, but JarlFrank's recommendation made me try again. Now I feel like I've fallen down the rabbit hole and that there's no going back - and I've LOVED every moment of it. I've yet to revisit it for a total playthrough, but at least I have something to look forward to.

It's giving me a little of that Ruins of Originia vibe; you think it's about to end, then it takes a sharp turn and you're in a whole new area.

 

[Tzaero]

The sheer size of the missions gives back some of the feeling of being deep down in the underworld, or lost somewhere beyond the kind of places normal people should be going.

Last year's The Unseen for the 64 competition was another moody underworld mission, which I had the pleasure of playing at one in the morning.
skacky you oughta try your hand at another underworld in future.

 

[skacky]

The Widow's Ire is definitely one of the best recent missions, and it's built like it could have been released back in 1999. It's really something.
Tzaero I've put my city mission on hold for the moment (stupid compilation bug) and I'm working on a victorian mansion for T2 right now (I always wanted to make one for some reason), but I definitely want to make another underworld-type mission in the future, some kind of mish-mash between Bonehoard/Sepulchre of the Sinistral/Broadsword of Sheol and deep Arx-like caves with hidden areas.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

OK, spent 3 hours or so playing Widow's Ire. This is truly something, it just goes on and on and on...

Playing on Expert gives you a steep loot count that will be hard to meet. I myself am 400 short of the loot amount and am about to have another go through the mines.

The exit from the first mission is at the top of a tower of sorts, and looks like a vertical drop barred by a metal grate. But the mission won't complete until you meet the loot count.

As for the shop at the start: I recommend buying ALL the water arrows.

Now for some questions:

# I restarted the mission once because I missed an area at the start, and in that playthrough I found some fruit, but I haven't found them in my second playthrough. Any hints as to where they are?
# As for extra loot, one readable mentions a diamond cog or something similar being stored until a replacement arrives, anyone know where that is?

 

[Melan]

The diamond cog is clever (and the point where I fell in love with the mission).

Spoiler

There is an area in the ?workshop? (the early part of the mission) where you drop down into water, and emerge in a small machine room with stairs leading up. There is a nook where you can climb up that leads you to the gear.