Dev_Anj on 13/2/2015 at 14:02
I wonder if there are many fan missions with randomization, and whether there's a list of such fan missions anywhere. As far as I remember, only two missions in Thief 2, Eavesdropping and First City Bank and Trust, used randomization. But that indicates that it's possible to have them in missions one way or the other. Anyone know of such missions?
Renault on 13/2/2015 at 14:17
In the first mission of Broken Triad, several objects starting locations are randomized, very similar to Eavesdropping. I know there's more missions like this, just can't think of any others right now. Not aware of any kind of list either.
Yandros on 13/2/2015 at 14:52
Great question. I love randomization. My favorite genre of game after Thief is the old school 4X games with randomly generated worlds, like Master of Magic and Master of Orion.
In (
http://thiefmissions.com/m/HammeriteDeathmatch#m) Hammerite Deathmatch, opponents are spawned at a random spawn point, but that is of course far from a traditional Thief mission.
For over 10 years I've hoped to make a mission based on Clue, where you have to deduce the randomly-chosen solution, and the suspects and weapons would be placed randomly throughout the mansion. Back then it would have been a major PITA, but these days with NVScript it should be quite a lot simpler. I may pick it back up once DCE is finally released. I also have a series of missions planned where you're competing against an AI thief to get a certain amount of loot first, and all the loot in the mission would be randomly placed; also random spawned events like City Watch raids, aristocrat parties, and roaming rival thief gangs would keep the gameplay fresh. Again, don't know when or if I'll ever get to that.
But like Deathmatch, both of those ideas are non-traditional Thief missions. It would be cool to see randomization worked into more standard and canonical fare.
fortuni on 20/2/2015 at 19:03
Possibly the first FM with randomization......'Oblivion' by Wrichards Sept 1999
it may not have been done intentionally, but there's a Hammer on the top floor patrolling the sleeping quarter area, on the communion room side of the building, you can't kill this Hammer, your blackjack and sword just swish through him, but if you quick save around the corner he re-appears from either corridor at random......
if this was an intentional randomisation by Wrichards, its stunning to think he managed to put this in bearing in mind Dromed was only released to the general public 5 months previously
Random_Taffer on 20/2/2015 at 19:52
Yandros and I in our initial brainstorm of Drymian Codex had planned to make the ghost in the tombs randomly be there. Some playthroughs it would be there, some not.
Eventually we decided to make it always there, but I still like the idea.
Twist on 20/2/2015 at 20:31
Equilibrium featured a cool and significant random element. Every time you started a new game, different talismans were required to open the seal to escape the facility. So even if you already know how to solve the mission's main puzzle when you replay this mission, you still have to visit the sealed exit room each time to determine which talismans are required before you visit all the talisman rooms to collect each of the required talismans.
Quote:
For over 10 years I've hoped to make a mission based on Clue, where you have to deduce the randomly-chosen solution, and the suspects and weapons would be placed randomly throughout the mansion.
I've always thought a Clue-like mission could work really well in Thief. Get to it! :thumb:
In particular, I think it'd be cool to allow a fail state. If you deduce the wrong combination (suspect, weapon, location), you fail the mission. Well, maybe something a little less harsh...
Allowing the player to finish the mission yet fail... that's another interesting topic, but maybe one better handled in a different thread. Eternauta handled this gracefully with Kingsbridge and The Last Lighthouse Keeper. While you couldn't exactly "fail" these missions, if you didn't find all the clues and solve all the riddles or puzzles, you could finish each mission in what was pretty evidently the less ideal ending.
I think allowing the player to finish the mission with a less-than-ideal ending is a courageous thing to do, and makes the mission feel more like it provided a more genuine sense of player freedom.
Oh sorry. Randomization. Me liked Equilibrium. ;)
Speaking of randomization, I wonder how difficult it would be to implement some degree of the "narrative legos" Ken Levine described in this (
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020434/Narrative) GDC Presentation. Several layers of design and writing challenge there. :sweat: But it could make for a really fun and highly replayable mission.
zacharias on 21/2/2015 at 02:53
Feels a bit like pimping your own mission this, but there is some randomization in Bones:Ep 1. A few of the AI will be different each startup and there is also an expert objective which is randomized to one of 5 locations. Think that's it though, it's not what I would call structural randomization.
Put me down as another fan of randomization, I think there's a lot more mileage to be had from it..tangent/One of these days I'm gonna check out Spelunky, when time allows.
Dev_Anj on 21/2/2015 at 03:50
Wasn't there a chess FM too? I can't remember the name, but Ricebug had included it in his 2013 walkthroughs.
Pemptus on 21/2/2015 at 09:08
Mission X had a room you needed to mark that changed from playthough to playthrough. You had to actually pay attention to the clues to get it right. Cool concept.
