Thief fan missions and campaigns

[Unkillable Cat]

The says it all. Trump-bashing has become a very tired concept, especially when everybody are doing it and none of them well. And like the other event it has NO PURPOSE being in a Thief FM.

It's also unfair to say that he had been working on this for nearly 20 years when he started it 17 years ago, dropped it and only revisited it recently to finish it. Its 2003-roots are apparent though, but the tree hasn't been growing this entire time. Except for story content I consider it to be an updated 2003-mission, and as such a relic I find it quite enjoyable. (Also, how exactly do you depict a prison complex except by using blocky squares?)

What helps save the humor here is how it's all over the place, rarely stays on one topic and never for too long. "A Servant's Life" is one overly long poop-joke and I doubt anyone is laughing by the end of it.

 

[SharkClub]

Beware playing Thief with over 60fps. I've done it for a while because 60fps on a 144hz monitor is whack, but there will be times where you come across physics puzzles and traps in FMs that don't work, mainly pressure plates. Pressure plates will not press down at the intended speed unless you are playing with vsync locked 60fps or the stuttery as shit not worth playing locked physics frequency of 60fps.

If you wanna try it go to the locked keeper compound in The Haunted Cathedral that you have to enter for the final objective, that involves putting broken statue parts on pressure plates to open the door. If you put the statue parts on the pressure plate and have to wait more than a second for it to respond and open the door you'll see what I mean. At locked 144fps it could take up to 20 seconds to press down, which you can speed up by spamming the quicksave key to stutter your own game. Fortunately events like this aren't super common in T1/T2 but they are all over FMs in the form of traps and puzzles so it's pretty aids.

For puzzles where it's trial and error and you have to try different patterns of pressure plates being weighed down, or rooms full of pressure plate triggered traps it basically just nullifies any actual design that went into the area which sucks.

 

[marbleman]

A new mission by DirkBogan is out. It's very good.

https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150719

 

[Unkillable Cat]

"Compulsory Egress" is a good T2 FM involving tight geometry, vertical elements and some strange and haunting visuals. The author has now followed that up with "Ascend the Dim Valley", except it's in TG and not T2.

Garrett is sent to a remote location that was sealed away somehow and is only now reachable, to steal an item of value. This "valley" is controlled by two individuals locked in a power struggle, so most of the FM is spent in either of the two houses belonging to them. Don't think that makes it easy, they are wealthy and their mansions are veritable fortresses.

Oh, and the FM is vertical as fuck. Gaze upon the sky and despair, it's a long way up. Even so it's not a challenge, no tryhard jumps or fancy acrobatics needed - just patience and awareness. I finished with less than 300 loot missing, and although secrets aren't counted I found at least four strange places tucked away.

Despite there being no other enemies but humans (not even a rat scurrying about) there is never a dull moment, mostly due to the atmosphere of "Egress" is now in it's proper habitat - and there are some truly weird things to see and hear. Atmosphere oozes from this one in buckets.

Easily 8/10 for me, and a contender for T1/G-FM of 2020, well worth a play.

 

[Butter]

Do you guys generally prefer missions that cleave to the Metal Age design (a heist in a realistic setting with lots of loops, can be completed in a couple hours) or are you looking for something bigger and meatier from FMs?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I myself prefer the spice of variety. The 'standard' Metal Age-esque heist is fine when done properly, but it's when other elements are added to the mix when things get tasty for me.

One of the best examples of that is "Ominous Bequest". It's a standard mansion-heist (complete with the mansion essentially being a rectangular block) but one that slowly strays from the standard formula, like forcing the player to improvise to get their gear at the start. That is later followed up by what is underneath the mansion, where the author managed to squeeze in a tomb, some traps, an ancient civilization, a short jaunt through monster-infested realms and some Undead. The overall experience is one of the most highly-praised and top-voted Thief 1/2-FM of all time.

By contrast there is "The Art of Thievery". It's a pure mansion-heist against Mechanists and their security measures, but while it has next to no variety it delivers the goods in spades, to the point I felt emotionally drained after finally beating it many years ago. That feeling returned again more recently when I played "Lost Among the Forsaken", which is a similarly epic trip through Undead-infested ruins. It's not the theme or direction of the FM that eventually matters, but how it's done and how the journey fares. It's only really when FMs venture too far into the Meta of things that I start objecting.

 

[JarlFrank]

By contrast there is "The Art of Thievery". It's a pure mansion-heist against Mechanists and their security measures, but while it has next to no variety it delivers the goods in spades, to the point I felt emotionally drained after finally beating it many years ago.

I remember that being one of the first FMs I ever played, based on your recommendation in this here thread, almost a decade ago by now.

How time flies.

 

[Mikeal]

Do you guys generally prefer missions that cleave to the Metal Age design (a heist in a realistic setting with lots of loops, can be completed in a couple hours) or are you looking for something bigger and meatier from FMs?

I'm for both.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I revisited two 'classic' FMs, mostly because I hadn't played them in ages and wanted to see how they hold up today.

"Bloodstone Prison" is among the oldest FMs kicking around that's still worth playing. Garrett is hired to break into an Undead-infested prison to recover a brooch. While its age does show (look at those trees!) it's still quite fun to play today. The only real downside is how linear the path through the prison is - little room for exploring or alternate paths. This one is tight on equipment so it's also tougher than it looks. Recommended, but beware the audiolog readables.

"The Inverted Manse" is a milestone in FM-history. It pushed the envelope to its breaking point back in 2001 with new enemy skins, new weapons, a large area to cover and one of the most tense and atmospheric environments ever seen. Garrett journeys to an abandoned Hammerite factory to learn more about the stone he acquired during "Cult of the Resurrection". The place is packed with Undead but Garrett came prepared with an ass-kicking arsenal, almost every vanilla weapon has been replaced with an upgrade.

The FM's most noticeable feature is also its greatest downside - the FM changes depending on which difficulty level is selected. Available gear, enemy placements, which areas of the map are accessible, even mission objectives differ between the three. The problem here is that in order to see and enjoy everything the FM has to offer, it must be played thrice... and also because there's a passcode to figure out, and the clues for it are scattered across the three difficulty levels, to the point of it being the bane of the puzzle itself. The fact that the passcode is alphabetical instead of numerical (yes, they crammed a 26-button interface in there!) gives a glimpse into the insane genius at work here.

Where "The Inverted Manse" really wins is in the atmosphere. Environmental sounds are used to great horrific effect, and I still remember some of the creeps it gave me way back then - it's been 10+ years but it still bothers me to open that closet.

Still highly recommended to this day, and beware the audiolog readables - they're even worse here than in "Bloodstone Prison".

 

[Unkillable Cat]

So a T2 FM slipped under my radar, as nicked returns with an 'unconventional' FM.

"Malazar's Inscrutable Tower" has Garrett breaking into the eponymous tower after he witnesses its owner committing suicide via City Watch and successfully nicking his house keys.

I only played for about ten minutes, but the standard priorities of a Thief FM are sidelined here, this should be considered more of an adventure. There's still a loot objective, but the focus is much more on exploring, forging paths, solving problems and progressing through the tower.

(Mind the statues, though.)

EDIT: Blazed through it. That was fun. Nicked's usual attention to detail, creative level design and active imagination delivers a fun puzzler of an FM. Recommended if you like brain-teasers, though it wouldn't surprise me if a v1.1-release was imminent - some parts of the FM would only function sometimes.

 

[nicked]

^ What broke for you?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Hitting the vines with water arrows to make them grow. From some angles it wouldn't work at all, and on other angles it only worked sometimes.

 

[nicked]

Interesting, it's a weird one that. In testing, originally you had to hit the plant itself, which was a bit too precise. So I changed it to a fairly sizeable invisible volume around the dirt piles. But then some people are still reporting problems, as you've found. Something flaky going on with the water arrow's radius I suspect.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

To give you the best info I can, let's look at the vine in the watery ruins-area, and assume the direction the upper ledge (and the item up there) is at, is North.

Most taffers, due to the ledge layout, will be shooting their water arrows at the vine from roughly the SW. That never worked for me. But if I put myself right on the edge opposite, so that I was firing at the vine from the NE, then it would work some of the time.

 

[Krilmar]

Played some more FMs here and there, not much free time during the summer.
Night in Rocksbourg missions. Can't believe I put these off for so long. Brilliant, can't believe these were his first missions. Then I found out he made Lost Among the Forsaken which was my favorite TG 20th Anniversary Contest mission. Really good author!
nicked's The Violent End of Duncan Malveine. Really neat idea the murder mystery and the fact that's random every time makes it even better for replays. Also I am a sucker for hidden object games so I enjoyed the card hunt. Finally this mission gave me the biggest scare in the past few years with

Spoiler

the ghost appearing after you exit the room behind the fireplace

Finally I decided to go through the top 3 missions in the T2 Anniversary contest starting with third place Into the Odd. All I can say is wow. Haven't played that many FMs but this is in my top 3 for sure. It set the bar really high for me and I'm curious how the other 2 will compare.

And to answer the question of "favorite mission type" mine is the type which the briefing ends with something along the line "this should be easy gold, get in and get out". You just know shit will go down.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

And to answer the question of "favorite mission type" mine is the type which the briefing ends with something along the line "this should be easy gold, get in and get out". You just know shit will go down.

The biggest such example I can recall is "Bloodmist Tower". The briefing even ends on "Should be as easy as stealing candy from a baby..."

 

[Psych0sis]

Unkillable Cat, with regards to your post in the "Maddest Modder" thread, what mission was made with your argument in it? Also, is said argument in one of the earlier pages of this thread? I don't have the patience to sift through 140~ pages to find it, please feed me.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I have good news, bad news and great news.

# The good news is that start of it all is on Page 29 of this thread.

# The bad news is that either I'm misremembering some of the circumstances (it's been a crazy five years for me since this happened) and the "yelling at me"-part was never really a thing, or the posts related to that argument are mostly (if not completely) gone. I went more than 20 pages ahead and couldn't find a single one. One of the culprits seems to have scrubbed their Codex-account, along with all of their posts. The original post from that third forum has also been deleted, so only my quoted text remains as testimony of it.

# The great news is what's in store for you if you keep reading from Page 29 onwards: A carefully preserved slice of modder madness. It even got the Codex-admins and moderators involved.

Anyway, the end result was the FM "That Stupid Grimrock Quote" - which ironically isn't that bad, especially after it got Reloaded. Only the name pertains to me, though, so right now it's more of an Outstanding Outburst of Butthurt rather than a full-blown argument.

 

[octavius]

For someone who spent years reading books, that mad modder didn't sound very literate.

 

[Psych0sis]

Oh I'm well aware of the lore on THE Penetretator. Poor Yandros.

Ah ok, so it was Unna, I heard she (?) had a thing out for you, so now it all makes sense. I never understood how people can put stuff out for people to play and be surprised with any sort of negative feedback. It's just weak.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

# The great news is what's in store for you if you keep reading from Page 29 onwards: A carefully preserved slice of modder madness. It even got the Codex-admins and moderators involved

I just remember the ice cream cone dude.

 

[JarlFrank]

So I am playing Ascend the Dim Valley now.

Pretty sure this is gonna get one of the rare 9/10 ratings from me. The atmosphere is THICC, and the whole place has a surreal feel about it that I've only ever seen in The Widow's Ire. It's also vertical as fuck, which is always good.

 

[octavius]

Completed The Mystery Man for Thief Gold. Took me over four hours, and I had to check out the relase thread a couple of times (a bit needlessly, since I would have figured things out if I wasn't afraid of spending my last water arrow or take fire damage from a fireplace).

This is definitely one of the very best missions I've played so far, and I can't recall playing it before, which is weird, since I was sure I had played all the classic FMs from before 2008.

Lots of secret stuff to discover, and lots of locked doors for which you must find the keys, but it's a tight design and not too much endless walking even if you have to backtrack quite a bit. And no bullshit with guards you have to sneak past numerous times, which gets old real quick. Instead many of the guards must be distracted to be able to blackjack them, which I think is more fun.

The writing is quite good, and there's some new enemies to fight. Yes, there are undeads, and there is a supernatural vibe to the mission.

The only thing I didn't like about this FM was the use of loud ambient music a couple of places. If you really want music for the mood, then use it as music, not sound effects! Also some of the gimmicks were perhaps used too many times (like what happens after you read some books).

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Wow, I read (or tried to... it does get tedious and a test in endurance skills) that drama with the Yandros-Penetretator fixator recently linked here and I must say, he does have my vote and personal endorsement for the MMOAT (Maddest Modder of All Time) Award along with the GMOTFMN (Grand Master of Thief Fan Mission Nutters) trophy. Funniest part was when he accused a well respected FM author of being so into his DromEd tools creating fan missions that he neglected his wife so she fucked a n*gger (he read it on Facebook) but then the tedium set in and I couldn't get past any of his subsequent posts. There's really no place to go after that .

Anyway, I really should get back into Thief FMs soon. Shit was quality.

 

[DrKubiac]

And that's only one part of the whole thing. Before going on a posting spree on this forum, he's had several meltdowns on many thief forums, plus some colorful pms here and there. He even stalked a couple people.
He got banned from everywhere, and unfortunately all his glorious messages were deleted. All that remains are his posts on rpgcodex.