Fallen+Keeper on 1/6/2004 at 18:39

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Heh, and one will need land rights, otherwise how do you plug in a mission that has no links in the original hub?

Let's take a city with, let's say, 4 dead ends. Now those dead ends could be transformed into links to the new sections that could be done in a second moment. And each city hub that you're adding will have to have a minimum, X dead ends for further espansions (it could be a rule for the designers ;) At least X dead ends.) Therefore there wouldn't be any problems with linking the parts into one great place (I'm talking about city sections, not FMs)

Fallen+Keeper on 1/6/2004 at 18:51

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We need an editor first. It's great flying above clouds with dreams and such but if Eidos doesn't give us wings anytime soon, the touchdown will be hard.

SubJeff on 1/6/2004 at 21:50

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Extensive sewers? Thieves highway? Ha ha ha ha. Of course! I'm not laughing at you, but at the brilliance of this idea.

However - there may need to be loading zones. The engine may not be albe to handle massive areas of high detail. Case in point: System Shock 2 ReBirth - the high poly models put strain on the engine, not the machines that far, far, far surpass the power needed. For all we know the new engine cannot do Life of the Party with streets and sewers. But we must wait and see. . .

Jahandar on 2/6/2004 at 01:49

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The basic concepts are there, and do work already. This same thing could be done on say, the quake 1 engine (if we were into that), and has to a degree (anyone remember the quake1 vote maps?).

To make things a little more free and open with regards to the initial base city development, I would say we should go for creating a new city of our own creation, having the player play himself (or some other non-Garrett character that we create, perhaps different ones depending on the mission), in a city that is not The City as created in Thief, but one similar (perhaps a neighboring city, that way you could still draw on the story if necessary).

That would open up a few more doors and avoid conflicts with the Thief story, which I think we all agree should remain pure.

In a new city, for instance, it would be okay for another faction to gain a large influence for a short time. This does not go along with the Thief story, but in this *other* city, we can do that. It would also be okay for us to fabricate new lead characters without having to worry about conflicting/agreeing with thief cannon.

Also perhaps certain events lead to the death of a key figure in this city, say the First Keeper for that city. We know who the First Keeper is in thief's The City, and we know his future, so we couldn't do that to him.

Just having other cities and claiming they're part of the Thief city causes trouble... say you want to create a wealthy district. Well, if its so wealthy, how come Garrett never went there? Things like that...


Using a new character(s) means we won't be limited by what we know of Garrett's history, skills, tendencies, weapon of choice, personality, etc.


For instance, our Garrett would never go on a charitable mission of mercy to recover some old lady's stolen something-or-other from the local thieves guild. Some other character might, though.

Maybe the main character isn't even a Thief, or a thief as we think of them. You could be anyone who would have reason to sneak somewhere, or not sneak even, as the engine will accomodate either.

Perhaps you play a keeper like Artemus, who is just as skilled at sneaking as Garrett, but would never steal, doing something... keeperish.

You might be a hammerite sneaking through Pagan territory trying to recover stolen artifacts.

Or a little girl, who doesn't have access to weapons or gear, forcing the player to ghost through a mission. Otherwise you'd constantly have to explain why our Master Thief left home without his gear, or got separated from it along the way.

Or a City Watch guard, defending the streets from a peasant uprising, with riots.

Or an Indiana Jones type, out to explore more for glory than gold.

Or a thug who isn't afraid to kill anyone who gets in his way (for those who're looking for that.. and hey, it may be a refreshing change of pace).

Or... well, I think you get the idea. :)

Not to mention the practical concerns... for one, we don't have Stephen Russell working for us. :)

I need to wrap this up before writing a book, I just think we'd see greater variety of FMs this time around if we don't limit ourselves to Garrett, The things he does, in The City that he lives in, and our perceptions about each of these elements.

But, of course, as Subjective noted, untill we see some editing tools, we don't know how far we can take this. Until then, this is just dreaming, but it is fun to think about. :)

As far as the multiplayer functionality comments go, I'm not sure how plausible this is, but I have seen stuff from the multiplayer components of the Unreal engine in the Thief3 files, so the multiplayer elements haven't been removed altogether. The question is whether we would be able to somehow get to them without having access to the source, and whether the modifications made by IS will be too prohibitive for multiplayer play (lag, lots of information possibly not transferred, lag, goal/objective functionality, lag, etc..).

Jenesis on 2/6/2004 at 10:07

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I think Scots had the best idea. We should just recreate Oxford.