qckbeam on 1/6/2004 at 17:11
This is honestly one of the greatest ideas I have seen thus far. I can just imagine watching the city grow into a fully developed, ever expanding environment, full of new missions, new sections, the old sections we saw in the original Thief games added back in, and best of all, new stories. It would be downright amazing, and with our community on it, I'm sure it would speed along at a blinding pace :D
I'm guessing it would work in a manner similar to Morrowind, with city plugins that can be enabled or disabled via some sort of external program? Perhaps we could even form some sort of website (I have hosting :p), where we can host these plugin missions for people to download, and have them vote on which ones should be put into the core city package, which would be something we release periodically the makes permanent changes to the city. There would be guidelines of course, but it could be a way to sort of 'officially' add sections to the city, sections which don't break the laws of the Thief universe, and add something to the background story of the City/Garrett/Factions/etc., or just new, fun sections to explore (new buildings to ransack and that sort of thing). The mission that add something totally off the wall could be accessed via the plugin program.
I don't know if these ideas are any good, but if the editor/SDK is ever given to us, I'm a programmer and I would love to help with any aspect of the project :)
Fallen+Keeper on 1/6/2004 at 17:16
Right. A new age of fan mission making.
darky on 1/6/2004 at 17:20
iam mostly a player (sometimes a testa)... so i like the idea... to plugin and plugout missions like houses into a city... every new official fanmod should get his own entrance or house... whatever ... but at the moment its like a dream... :(
Fallen+Keeper on 1/6/2004 at 17:27
Right, only the missions with a number X of silver hammers could fit in.
zacharias on 1/6/2004 at 17:47
What i'm getting at broadly is: isn't the jury still out on the structure on TDS vs T1/T2 anyhow?
Do the city bits in T3 add to the experience? Or do they get old fast? That's my main concern..i'd hate to see Thief become too much like Morrowind.
Fallen+Keeper on 1/6/2004 at 17:58
Quote Posted by zacharias
What i'm getting at broadly is: isn't the jury still out on the structure on TDS vs T1/T2 anyhow?
Do the city bits in T3 add to the experience? Or do they get old fast? That's my main concern..i'd hate to see Thief become too much like Morrowind.
And why not? Morrowind will live until TES 4 comes out and it is difficult to find another so expansive game. Besides, there is a big difference between us and the Morrowind community: we all know how Thief world works and we all (almost) see the thing in the "right" way, something that is missing in the Morrowind Comm. There are to many modders that do not respect the TES world.
liamhaynes on 1/6/2004 at 18:25
wow, this really is rather incredible. we so have to get this SDK! Wouldn't the links to the missions have to be included in the City Hub's? so a city section would be released with say, 4 FM's arttatched to it, and linked to.... this still raises the problem of attatching the new city hub to the existing city. somehwere along the line ur gonna need to replace on of the orignal city sections with a communtiy one. possibly in the form of a community patch. so community patch style city hubs linking to FM's! WOW! that way, the more FM's, the more city hubs needed to link to them and the larger the city gets. the city hub's limit the number of FM's that are playable. assuming that u can't play FM's without the city hub......
what i need is some documentation........
Liam
SubJeff on 1/6/2004 at 18:27
Thing is zach, the City could be alive. It could change according to the FM you are playing or what you have plugged in. Why should it get old? Sure if you were just wandering around aimlessly. . . but if you plug in an FM that has a city component, such as extra security around building X where the out of town merchant you have been tipped of about is staying, things alter.
But the City would still just be the hub. And if it expands how can it get old? It could end up being massive, like a real city. Population of 100,000 would do it. And you'd never tire of it unless you tired of Thief itself. We would never be able to create a city that is unrealistic - real cities are sooooo big if you really think about it.
liam, you would not need new city sections for each FM. There will always be doors or alleys that are not fully accessable. They could be made to be though. . .
Fallen+Keeper on 1/6/2004 at 18:35
Quote Posted by liamhaynes
wow, this really is rather incredible. we so have to get this SDK! Wouldn't the links to the missions have to be included in the City Hub's? so a city section would be released with say, 4 FM's arttatched to it, and linked to.... this still raises the problem of attatching the new city hub to the existing city. somehwere along the line ur gonna need to replace on of the orignal city sections with a communtiy one. possibly in the form of a community patch. so community patch style city hubs linking to FM's! WOW! that way, the more FM's, the more city hubs needed to link to them and the larger the city gets. the city hub's limit the number of FM's that are playable. assuming that u can't play FM's without the city hub......
what i need is some documentation........
Liam
Step 1: A City Hub. Nothing exagerated, of size of a medium city-mission.
Step 2: 3-4 missions attached before or even after its release, adding the links to them through patching the first city hub.
Step 3-Unlimited: New cities hubs, new missions, still attached through patching.
I assume that there should be a control group of 1-2 designers who prepare the patch in order to attach the best missions and make sure there won't be any collisions, something that is missing in Morrowind, but it's like webmastering; it could be done :thumb: Then we can think of re-creating the original city of the previous games or even reconstructing the T3 city (something I still have to see though). Each mission-mod could be attached though an application similar to the one you can get with Morrowind : plug or unplug the desired mod.
SubJeff on 1/6/2004 at 18:39
Lets not jump the gun. We have no idea how the editor works so we cannot speculate about programs that plug things in.
As for city section overlaps - that would be a problem but the creators would have to supply some location info so people could match up sections safely.
