Hello there. Spider removal?

anilEhilated on 12/6/2011 at 21:13

Hi there. I've recently got my hands on a copy of Thief Gold, having never played that before but enjoying Deadly Shadows a lot. Now, I'm being told that Thief 1 and 2 are both superior to that, so I'd like to give them a try. There's just this slight issue...

I'm arachnophobic. Heavily. Don't want to conquer my fear, don't need to get ridiculed for it, so there's no reason to post that. Now, I know there was a patch for System Shock 2 to solve this issue and I know people were asking for a similar solution for Thief, which isn't all that unreasonable given the engine, but still, there appears to be no working solution.

Now, the only way to remove spiders from the main campaign I've managed to find is this one:

Now open DromEd. Select Object Hierarchy from the Editors menu. Click the + symbol next to Physical to view the objects under Physical. Now repeat this for Creature and Animal. Double-click on the Spider (the word itself, not the symbol). A box should appear with the properties of Spider listed in it. Don't worry about these - you don't need to understand them for the purposes of removing spiders.

On the right hand side of this box there is a button labeled Add. Click this button. Move the mouse down to Tweq. When the Tweq submenu opens, click on Delete. Set the Rate to 100 - this means that all spiders will be destroyed 0.1 seconds after this property is activated. Click OK. Now, add the DeleteState property (like Delete, it is under Tweq. Click AnimS and select On from the menu that appears. This will activate the Delete property as soon as the mission starts. Click OK, then Done and Close to close the Spider properties box and the Object Hierarchy respectively.

Which would be fine and dandy, except it doesn't work, there's still spiders frolicking under Bafford's mansion.
I don't know a thing about editing or programming so totally at your mercy here: Is there (and what is) an actually working way to get spiders out of Thief Gold?

Xorak on 12/6/2011 at 22:05

It seems to me you're just changing the properties for any additional spiders you are adding to the mission, not any that are already created and placed.

There might be a faster way to do this, but I'm not a pro on this part of Dromed yet
Under the Tools option, select Generate Reports.

In the box that appears, under the Warning Level, select Dump Everything Possible, and in the Report Types unselect everything but All Ob and Per Obj. I left everything else in the dialogue box alone.

This will create a report in the Thief folder, called default.rep, use wordpad to look at it easily.

Under the heading AI Guys Report: (which will be near the top)
You're looking for a list like this (will be different depending on the mission)...
AI A HugeSpider (33) at 0 108 -37
AI A HugeSpider (36) at 0 115 -37
AI A Haunt (110) at 25 110 -32 room Texture 169
AI A Haunt (111) at 33 115 -32 room Texture 169
AI A momspid (168) at 39 190 -79 room Texture 169

The numbers in red are the ones you want. Go back into Dromed and using Tab (to go forward) and Shift-Tab (to go backward) to cycle through the objects, cycle through to the relevant object numbers of the spiders in the mission. Then you can change the attributes for that specific spider. Then move onto the next one in your list. It might not be the quickest method, but at least there aren't 100s of spiders in each level. Don't forget to save the mission again (maybe back them up first).

R Soul on 12/6/2011 at 22:29

Those "Tweq" properties only take effect on subsequently created spiders, not ones that already exist. There is another method:

(It's helpful to have a backup copy of dark.gam before you made any changes)

Follow the steps in the first paragraph you quoted.

Click on the Add button, then go to Act/React and then Sources. You should then see a larger window.

Click on the Add button, and yet another window opens.

Don't set the Object number just yet, there's a bug that resets it.

First, from the Stimulus menu, select FireStim

From Propagator, select Radius

Set the Intensity value to 100 (this is overkill but I'm sure you won't mind).

Finally, go back to the top and put -2103 in the Object field. Don't forget the - sign.

Click on the Edit Life Cycle button. The default settings will kill the spider after 5 seconds, which should be short enough. If you don't mind their dead bodies, you can go to the next step. If you don't even want a corpse, from the Flags button, select Destroy object on completion.

Click Ok, then Ok again. Now you should be back in the larger window. If things went well, when you click on Ok, the window should immediately come back and you'll have to click on Ok again.

Then click on Done and Close to take you back to Dromed's main window.

[INDENT]There's another type of spider you'll want to deal with. In the Object Hierarchy you went to Physical > Creature > Animal and Spider. You'll need to repeat the above steps for Physical > Creature > Beast > SpiderBeast.[/INDENT]

Go to File and Save Gamesys and save it as dark.gam.

anilEhilated on 13/6/2011 at 05:14

Wow, thanks for the fast response. Going to try that out.

Edit: Okay, spiders under the mansion are gone, can't put into words how much that is appreciated. Only one problem, though: When I try to do the same thing with the SpiderBeast (whatever that is, sounds particularly nasty), it crashes Dromed. Any ideas how to go around that?
In particular, what crashes it appears to be the "kill it with fire" script described in the above post; I can add the (ineffective) delete tweqs just fine.

Wille on 13/6/2011 at 05:48

Maybe you could simply replace all spider models with something else? I think Schwaa made some beetle models that could work as spider replacements.

anilEhilated on 13/6/2011 at 18:25

Well, when there's an angry ball of chitin and mandibles jumping towards your tender fleshy face, you don't really have the time to count the creature's legs, so complete removal would be favorable. Not like it matters that much given the current situation - I have no idea how to do either.

Anyway, I'm kind of stumped regarding the spiderbeast crash; tried pulling a monolog.txt but all it says is something about the primary sound buffer format.

Edit: To clarify, "spiderbeast crash" refers to Dromed crashing when applying the solution that R Soul kindly provided to Spiderbeast's entry in the object hierarchy editor. I'm actually able to put in all the specifics, but when I try to OK the sources window, the added one doesn't show up there and Dromed crashes.

jtr7 on 13/6/2011 at 18:29

Might the Spiderbeasts' webshot and magicmissile emissions have anything to do with it?

R Soul on 13/6/2011 at 19:00

I double checked and it worked fine. Did you remember to set the object number after setting the other values? And did you enter -3037 with the minus sign?

anilEhilated on 13/6/2011 at 19:16

Oooh, -3037. Now I feel like an idiot - turns out I've been using -2103, the object number (if that's the term) for a normal spider.
In retrospect, it seems really obvious, but hey, that's what I get for messing with a tool I don't understand. Note to self: variables are NOT constants.
Thanks a lot!

Edit: Just a final question, if you will: Does this work the same way for Thief 2, or will we be going through this conversation again when I finish this game?

R Soul on 13/6/2011 at 20:06

It works the same but there is no SpiderBeast, and the Spiders number will be different again. Oh and you have to use a different version of Dromed for Thief 2. T2 has a version 1.18 patch which should be installed before setting up the spiders' self destruct.