Thief fan missions and campaigns

[Karwelas]

Let's change thread name to 'Thief FM + Every other player missions in universe' as I have that feeling that we will start to talking bout them soon or later.

PS - I should read book in school now, instead I post in this thread. Thanks for new addiction guys... I'm happy with it as now I find quality in on so many levels and in so many games.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

There are specific threads for doom wads and quake maps.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Wow, that DukePlus thing is fantastic!
I played on the all first levels of all episodes and found them p. enjoyable. I didn't expected to do another DN3D playthrough but here you have it.

 

[Dev_Anj]

It's nice to know about other large fan mission communities for other games, and JarlFrank's linked Tomb Raider fan missions do certainly look interesting, but I think I'm going to share some Thief FM related news in the Thief FM thread. cardia1 released a two part campaign, Religious Conflict, and in all honesty, it's pretty much a puzzle focused campaign, with some sneaking. I tested the campaign, but only completed the first mission, and while I like it, it has some problems like a puzzle with pixel hunting early on, a room that was too hard to rope onto(it was made easier in the next beta), and a ridiculous loot requirement. Never got too far into the second mission, but I'll try it when I get time.

 

[Baron Dupek]

For which FM this book belong? I remember this one from Screenshots Thread but poster was kindly enough to not tell the name.

 

[Johm]

It's from "Rodamill", the second part of the Greyfeather Gems saga by Morrgan.

 

[Melan]

So, about the recently released House of Locked Secrets.

I expected much from this mission after Requiem, and got even more than that. It is, without beating around the bush, one of the best "mansion with a dark family secret" missions ever made; a distinction it shares with Ominous Bequeast and Rowena's Curse. So much about it is larger than life - well beyond the call of duty - that it is hard to list. So I will stick to the most important impressions:

• It reinvents the Thief/TDM core concept. Playing a Builder supernatural investigator kind of character has tremendous potential, and here, this promise is fully realised. It gives a logical connection for getting involved in this family affair, and there are enough differences in gameplay that it feels new. There are rewarding ways of getting into and out of places.
• It is epic without being stupid. I must admit, as great as Requiem was, its epic fantasy plot still felt out of place. A House of Locked Secrets has plenty of grandiose moments, but it deals with them logically. Your accomplishments feel well-earned, and you go through a lot to earn them.
• Small touches. The shovel. The amulet. The doors with the inset glass you can spy through. This is a beautiful mission that makes the most of a mostly clean, bright style (only to drop the hammer on you later!) The use of textures is exemplary, and it is all very expertly lit, bringing out the surface detail.
• When it is creepy, it is creepy. Nobody does creepy undead things like Moonbo. I am not 100% happy with the TDM undead selection, and their voices never did have that creepy air they used to in LGS games. Here, though... they are wrong, in the best way. And there are other moments of graphic storytelling that raise the chills - like the mystery of the servants' quarter, the cupboard, or the hall of portraits (I really liked this one).
• A splendid integration of gameplay and story. Things make sense, but they aren't disenchanted. There is still a mystery. This is why the puzzles are logical, and if you pay attention, they are never harder to solve than they should be. The optional secrets are hard and clever. I only missed one in the first mission, but found relatively few in the second. After finishing the mission, I'm still only at 5883 loot, meaning there is even more to explore.
• My playthrough has been smooth and virtually bug-free. That's nice in a huge, technological mission like this. There is even a functional automap!

So, this is a major feat! It is a grand mission, a hard but completely fair challenge, and a tremendous story. Commerical games rarely come this close. If the game industry wasn't such an intellectually stagnant field, I would recommend Moonbo to get into pro game development, because this mission, it outdoes what many talented people have done with very large budgets.

 

[Icewater]

Sounds absolutely incredible. Unfortunately I probably won't be playing it until my new SSD gets here tomorrow.

 

[JarlFrank]

Time to get back into TDM then!

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Time to get into TDM in the first place.

*waits for the scorn*

 

[Baron Dupek]

There was some thing in incoming TDM 2.03 iirc, I promised myself to not play it again until they did that thing, must wait then.
fakeedit: ah, that was 64-bit compatibility. @ Robit-h mentioned about it in TDM thread but can't find it in changelog. But the creators mentioned about prototype, that need more tests.
Oh welp.

 

[baturinsky]

Time to get into TDM in the first place.

*waits for the scorn*

*pity scorn*

 

[Latro]

SS2 campaigns can be difficult to find, so here is the link https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=hpjb1efmqotfkb4lepnclr5n85&board=3.0

So, did anyone play System Shock Infinite? Unofficial sequel mod, has a decent score on moddb.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

So, did anyone play System Shock Infinite? Unofficial sequel mod, has a decent score on moddb.

IIRC, the mod author came here to the Codex to promote the mod.

He didn't exactly get a warm welcome.

Beyond that, no clue as I haven't played it.

What I have been playing, however, is cardia1's latest release "Religious Conflict" - or as it's called in-game, "Religion Conflict". It was released a few days ago, in a "0.1" release, and then a "0.2" release and now on Wednesday in a "1.0" release - and it's STILL in a state that I wouldn't dream of sending it out the door. The typos and grammatical errors are numerous, and the opening steps of the first mission are cringe-worthy. But once you finally do get out the door (literally) it picks up a bit. I've finished the first mission and only need to meet the steep loot requirement before moving on to the next mission.

But right now, I'd say leave this alone until it gets polished up a bit.

 

[Renault]

The author isn't a native English speaker, so I wouldn't expect any grammatical/spelling errors to be fixed anytime soon. Some of the errors were pointed out to him by his testers (including the fact that the mission zip and mission name in the menu were spelled incorrectly) and he basically ignored them.

 

[baturinsky]

SS2 campaigns can be difficult to find, so here is the link https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=hpjb1efmqotfkb4lepnclr5n85&board=3.0

So, did anyone play System Shock Infinite? Unofficial sequel mod, has a decent score on moddb.

Christine's modules are "unofficial sequels" too. And are very good.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The author isn't a native English speaker, so I wouldn't expect any grammatical/spelling errors to be fixed anytime soon. Some of the errors were pointed out to him by his testers (including the fact that the mission zip and mission name in the menu were spelled incorrectly) and he basically ignored them.

*facepalm*

Wonderful.

For those that haven't tried, this mission has LOTS of readables. The first mission alone has at least 9 books with several pages each. Exposition after exposition on top of exposition, people writing about how horrifying something was, explaining every little insignificant detail.

None of which has been run through a spellchecker.

It's not "HOW IS BABBY FORMED?"-bad, but that phrase was soon popping up in my head regularly.

And the author doesn't care? Then why should we care?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

OK, made a little further progress with "Religious Conflict".

First off, the typos are all in readables in the first mission (he spells golems as "gollums") I haven't seen any of note in the second mission. That doesn't mean that the readables in the second mission are good, though. Remember the wizard in Heroine's Quest, the one who spoke in a manner that repeated a lot of things, because things needed repeating and tended to get repeated anyway? Yeah, whomever wrote these readables has a degree in Tautology from the University of Reduncancy.

Second, the music in the first mission is amazing. It's a very strange selection of tunes, but except for the 'title theme' they all work well.

Thirdly, the graphics, architecture and aesthetics of the second mission are UNBELIEVABLE at times. That chapel is jaw-droppingingly awesome. The mission uses a lot of textures and images from other sources, like Gothic, Quake and Discworld's Death makes more than one appearance.

Fourthly, there are some bizarre design decisions going on here. The first mission involves visiting a castle, a mansion and a Keeper's Compound, in that order. There is no deviation possible from this path, yet there's a door leading directly to the mansion from the starting point, and the gate is locked and needs a key - except you can get the key early on, but it only works from the OTHER SIDE. Because reasons. Would it have killed him to simply have a lock on the wall on the other side to show that you're supposed to unlock the gate from there?

And on Expert the loot requirements are roughly 95% of all the loot in the mission - so prepare for a hunt. Fortunately a lootlist is provided with the mission.

 

[Renault]

Heh, have you played any of cardia1's other missions? You pretty much just summed up every one of them perfectly.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The only one I remember playing and enjoying is "Ana to the Rescue" which shares many similarities (and resources) with this one, now that you mention it.

I just finished solving a puzzle where some zombies had to be fed by a dinner table. The first part of it was easy, but the second part didn't make much sense. Seems I missed a readable somewhere, by the looks of things.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

OK, finished the second mission. My earlier verdict stands - this FM is not worth the effort.

The first mission needs to be polished and would benefit from being more non-linear. The second mission is a gigantic fetch quest. Fetch 10 books, 3 medical supplies, 6 decorative containers, 12 jars and place them in their proper locations. Kill every monster, find and clean 4 unholy signs and then, ONLY THEN, can you undertake the final task of finding 4 glyphs hidden in the monastery, learning in what order they are to be pushed at an altar, and get a golden trophy cup.

And at regular intervals this FM seals the exits behind you, trapping you in a certain part until you solve everything. That ain't Thief-like gameplay. This shit ain't worth it. The second mission looks beautiful, but is bogged down by having to comb EVERY CORNER of the monastery looking for these items, and the music in the second part is as horrible as it is nice in the first. Terribly bad techno tracks with babbling texts about anxiety and voices in your head. No thanks, gets annoying REALLY fast. You have to retrace your steps more than once, and some puzzles have no obvious or apparent solution. For every clever puzzle there's at least 2 boring ones. If you're an experienced Taffer then there is nothing. here. of. value. Especially since it's a 310 Mb download.

cardia1 needs a producer, someone that takes his work and polishes and refines it before it's released. This is not the first "one-man job" that collapses under its own weight, and it won't be the last.

 

[Yandros]

Having given up in annoyance about 20 minutes into mission 1, I would brofist your post if I could.

 

[Dev_Anj]

Unkillable Cat: I agree with your assessment of these two missions. Hell, as a betatester, I pointed out some of these issues in the first mission to him, particularly the high loot count, switches and quest stuff that's too well hidden, and erroneous readables. He responded by saying, "I'll add 200 loot, but it's easy to find all the loot, just look hard! Oh, I got someone to proofread the readables(they didn't do much apparently, looking at the end product)." Honestly, I pretty much gave up testing the second mission after realizing that it was one obscure puzzle after another and getting stuck at the decorative objects room. I'm playing through it only to have a good look at all the areas, as the Castlevania like aesthetics are pretty nice, inspite of the rest of the mission.

In related news, Yandros' second act of his campaign, Death's Cold Embrace, has entered beta testing: http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=80532&page=3&p=2289547&viewfull=1#post2289547 . You can thank me later for the free advertising, Yandros. The screenshots are a bit too bright, but it does look interesting enough as an area.

Oh, and how much of the other missions were built by other people? You say this one is the only mission with all four contributors making the level.

 

[Yandros]

I just updated the screenshots by going back to the original captures and using much less gamma adjustment. Obviously my monitor settings are darker than most other people's because they look a bit dark to me now, just like most other author's screenshots. But since everyone is saying that, clearly they needed adjustment.

Most of the other missions were built originally by Polygon, followed by a lot of retexturing and heavy tweaking by me. Moghedian also did some significant work on the city map, and the map for mission 9 is completely original to me and Random_taffer since it was the last one added to the plan.

 

[JarlFrank]

Just found this, pretty good analysis what makes Thief so good and why modern games fail to reach it:

Thought I'd post it here.