Thief fan missions and campaigns

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

This unfinished set of videos might help too.

 

[nicked]

I'm glad people find my tutorial useful! Warmed my heart to be credited for it in a few of the contest missions!

 

[marbleman]

I'm not even gonna comment:

 

[DrKubiac]

Only plebs shit on Midnight in Murkbell

Sure it has a couple flaws but it's an all time classic that ages rather well. Purah's choices with textures gave it a unique look and atmosphere, and most of them are so good they still work well to this day.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Coughs loudly

 

[Icewater]

Midnight in Murkbell is amazing. Fuck the haters.

 

[SlyFoxx]

Purah pushed the limits with CL. He raised the bar and effected every mission after. No it wasn't perfect but it was groundbreaking in every way. I just wished I had taken the job to do Garrett's voice for it. I was doing Frobber's "Keeper of the Prophecies" at the same time and didn't want to short change Purah so I told him I couldn't do it. Turns out I could have easily done both but Lonestar did a good job as usual so alls well that ends well.

 

[Jazz_]

I'm honestly not feeling the entries in the 20th Thief Anniversary, there hasn't been one FM that wowed me yet (even ''Lost Among the Forsaken'' was kinda meh imo, but then again I don't like undead/zombie/horror-themed missions usually). I still have to finish most of them but not a single mission captivated me to where I HAVE to finish it like Marbleman's Cracks in the Glass, Rowena's Curse/The Tower, Skacky's missions, Death Cold Embrace, etc.

I thought it was just Thief-related weariness but I fired up two small FMs (''Autumn in Lampfire Hills'' and ''All For A Night Sleep'') and enjoyed them, maybe I'm just tired of FMs that are too big at the moment.

Other FMs I've been playing recently: I'm almost done with the second mission of ''Black Frog'' and I honestly don't get the high praise for this FM, the town in the first mission is nice I guess but there is hardly any gameplay, and the mansion heist in the second mission bored me, the layout is quite boring imo. I hope it gets better in the third mission.
I have finished ''Rowena's Curse'' recently and loved it thoroughly, and it's from like 2003? crazy, it doesn't feel like an old FM at all, especially compared with a few old FMs I have played that really show their age.
FMs I started that I still need to finish are ''Godbreaker'', ''The Seventh Sister'' and ''Morbid Curiosity''.

 

[Mechs Delight]

Wow, I'm shocked you didn't like "Lost Among the Forsaken" (I'm normally not an undead mission fan either, but this one was so atmospheric and innovative) and the second mission of "Black Frog." (one of the best mansion/heist missions ever in my view)

 

[Aholf Ditler]

Finished the Dracula and Bathory thief 2 fan mission campaigns:

Verdict:
incredibly hard, many typos, a few bugs, a annoying tendency to activate hotspots only in a sequence of some sort (kinda like against the spirit of thief no?), Huge HUGE missions, as pretty as the darkengine can get (with Enhancement pack installed).
Trying to ghost these, while it's possible to have no "real" detection, i doubt it is possible to have 0 alerts. Master thieves only, or master lean-forward exploiters. Very very hard to find secrets - not all of them little one inch levers too.

I've tried to ghost it (and failed) but sometimes couldn't even resist boiking someone on the head because they were on the way - the mission(s) is simply too large. I've reached the conclusion that i prefer when a mission doesn't even give me a sword or a blackjack (or their like). The most heartpounding thief experience i had was in seven sisters when i ghosted a crypt corridor full of patrolling haunts, and haunt spotters that turned around with these tiny itsy-bitsy shadows on the edges of the sarcophagus. I didn't have a sword (due to my own fault) and tried it anyway. Walking in full light behind a haunt when his buddy is about to turn and making a little jump to avoid the water and getting to the shadow just in time :

I love all the missions from the author Sensut, i recent finish Nosferatu, and for me is a one of the best fan missions that exists, is completely atmosferic and inmersive.

 

[Jazz_]

This painting looks very Thief-y:

 

[index.php]

 

[Jazz_]

^ Pretty cool.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I recently decided to get into this Thief FM thingie. Not sure why i waited so long, since Thief is one of my favored games of all time, but i guess i'm a retard. Just downloaded them ALL from this site:

http://www.taffersparadise.co.uk/thief3missions.html

Planning of going through all of them at least once. I'm doing it for Doom and Quake, so i'm used to this kind of autism, but i have a few questions.

First of all, i need to know a couple of things about the set up. For both Thief 1 and Thief 2, i downloaded TFix and TafferPatcher respectively.

What i'm trying to do here is achieve a way in which i can play all the FMs without hassle, just install and load. Graphics improvements do not interest me. Noticed for instance that TFix installs a bunch of graphical enhancement to bring the game in line with Thief 2. Not sure i want any of those, but at the same i'm not sure they are needed for FMs and stuff like that. I'm not anal about my purism, i just like consistency more than anything else.

One thing i WOULD like is improvements to the AI and the difficulty. TFix says it adds some AI stuff, but after playing around with the game bit i'm not seeing anything different. The AI is basically as easy to cheat as always, and i can just dash blackjack my way across everything. I then tried installing something called Ultimate Difficulty Mod, but i think they went overboard with that one. I loaded a custom map and since the game starts with you dropping from up high it begun with all the guards alerted already, and i couldn't even knock out one of them, no matter how slowly i crawled. I'm not trying to make the game impossible, just need a boost from the default difficulty.

This is for Thief 1 i still haven't looked what's available for Thief 2.

 

[DrKubiac]

There is an alternative to the classic Tfix called Tfix lite. It installs the latest version of newdark and nothing else, no graphic enhancement whatsoever. Maybe it fixes a couple bugs, I don't remember, but the game is supposed to remain vanilla as much as possible.

The Ultimate Difficulty Mod was made for the base game. In theory it works as well with FMs, however most FM authors design their missions with the original difficulty in mind, so there are obviously some compatibility or design issues to be expected.
Other than this, I'm not aware of any difficulty mod. You'll find out that a few well designed FMs offer a fair challenge with the AIs anyway.

You will need a FM loader to play FMs without causing issues with your install. There are a few of them out there : Garrettloader, Darkloader and NewDarkloader, FMSel... Try whichever one suits you, NewDarkloader and FMSel are the most up to date I think.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

To achieve your primary goal you should use FMSel, which comes with the NewDark patch and is included in TFix and Tafferpatcher. (Just add the '-fm' parameter after the .exe in the shortcut.) This installs each FM in such a manner that you can just select it from a list, click "Play FM" and off you go. No need to uninstall one FM to be able to install another.

To complete a Thief (1 or 2) installation however, you'll need to install some .dlls needed to convert audio files as FMs get installed, this is a one-time affair and IIRC neither TFix nor Tafferpatcher do this, or at best only one of them does. At the very least they instruct you on how to do this. Some further scripts (or enhancement options) may be required for some FMs, make sure to check the readme for each FM (if available).

As for AI improvements, I've learned to do without them. I also tried the Ultimate Difficulty Mod some years ago, but I recall new problems arising from that, especially when playing FMs as some of them tamper with the critter AI on their own, and sadly they rarely bother to notify users when they do so. Also, many FMs are designed with the default AI in mind and will break badly if something like the UDM is added.

Finally, many of the FMs available are not worth your time at all. I'm talking about joke FMs, Crap Contest entries and such. But since you're undertaking this journey, play them in chronological order. That way you can experience the evolution of FM design.

See you next year.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I did that with Doom and Quake. I'm actually half-way through the entire quake addicted site, and i've played all the maps, even the ones rated the lowest. My autism knows no bounds, but it's mostly because i'm just loading them casually. Just a map there or a wad here, whenever i feel like it.

I'm curious what you mean by needing to install .dlls that aren't included in any of the patches. What dlls?

I settled for New Dark Loader, guess i'll just use that from now on. Went through four Thief 1 maps, pretty primitive with horrid construction, but the gameplay in all of them was already better than most modern gaymes lmao. Fucking decline.

Guess i'll just settle for the AI as it is, even though i can dance around guards with my dick tied behind my ass at this point.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

libmp3lame.dll is one, there may be others related to it.

They just need to be placed in the Thief folder.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Is that only for FMSel?

https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140093

What if i use New Dark Loader?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm not sure. I only used the old Dark Loader before FMSel became available, and I faintly recall that it needed the same thing.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I noticed just now that in all the hubbub for the 20th Anniversary contest that there was a T1 FM release that wasn't part of the contest that went mostly unnoticed.

"The Upward Spiral" is an odd joke FM: Break into (read: Walk right in through the front door) a mansion that seems to just go on and on forever... upwards. This one has its shares of surprises, but since it's a daytime mission there's little room for proper taffing, just running past everything seems to be a better approach.

It's unpolished in places and could be so much better, but what's there is still worth a playthrough. I was mostly put off by the readables though, as they contain non-taff swearwords and unabridged manifesto of a real-life serial killer (because reasons).

A couple of hints:

# Stay out of the water if you can, it's designed in such a way that there's no room for failure and there are other means of traveling between the locations.
# If you don't know how to exploit the architecture to lose pursuers, you're gonna have a bad time.
# I only came across one locked door, and it opens from inside the room.
# The loot requirement is less than 10% of the total loot available, which makes it a non-issue.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I tried all those loaders from Dark Loader to FMSel and they all had glaring deficiencies compared to what I truly needed in a frontend. Then I discovered NewDarkLoader. Easily the best one I've used - and still use. It's the Thief modding community's equivalent of Doom Launcher, a superb launcher for Doom WADs.

 

[JarlFrank]

I tried all those loaders from Dark Loader to FMSel and they all had glaring deficiencies compared to what I truly needed in a frontend. Then I discovered NewDarkLoader. Easily the best one I've used - and still use. It's the Thief modding community's equivalent of Doom Launcher, a superb launcher for Doom WADs.

Just wait until Fen releases Angel Loader!

 

[SMDM-GORT]

LOL One of the votes for my entry has a shiny "1" in game play. I may have an idea of who that might be.

 

[DrKubiac]

I expected Skacky to win, but when you see the amount of work in Scarlet Cascabel, and you know the hell they went through to release it on time, it's a well deserved victory.
I also thought Rose Garden, Whistling of the Gear and Shadow Play would have higher places, but overall the scores are rather tight. That was one of the best contest we ever had.

Unkillable Cat's reaction to my mission tho