Dev_Anj on 27/1/2015 at 02:56

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I noticed this mod and thought that it would be nice to see something similar for Thief: Gold and Thief 2: (http://www.dx-revision.com/website/) http://www.dx-revision.com/website/. After all, we have many talented fan mission authors here, and while the original missions weren't bad, they often did have problems like lots of empty spaces, janky cave architecture where you could get stuck easily, and lots of marble flooring which makes moving around tedious.

Now I'm not in a position to make such a project, and I know a lot of fan mission authors are busy, but what ideas do you have for such a project? Think of it like remaking all the missions for Thief: Gold and Thief 2, and making them all more enjoyable to play and also more aesthetically pleasing.

Dev_Anj on 27/1/2015 at 03:52

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Well, I don't have a problem with the original missions being made harder, and I don't have a problem with marble per se, I just have a problem with it being mis used. Like for example, let's say there's a room full of marble tiles, and some loot on the other side. There's only one guard nearby, and you need to walk slowly on the floor to not alert him. Now, if this room is moderately sized, it's fine as an optional challenge. If the room is too large though, it quickly becomes a tedious chore as the player does nothing but walk slowly for a few minutes or so.

Also, raising the difficulty alone is not a good way of designing levels. If it were, then missions would just have lots of tiling, lots of permanent lighting, and many guards. The locations need to be made interesting to explore, there should be proper scaling of difficulty throughout a mission so the player can prepare well for hard portions, ease off after hard areas, and get a feeling of progression throughout the level.

Melan on 27/1/2015 at 08:09

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The history of modding is littered with the corpses of massively ambitious projects like this. The few survivors demonstrate it can be done, but the statistics are massively against the idea. As we have discovered with TDM, building a campaign is not even just a matter of building a handful of large, complex missions, but a whole new level of difficulty. And that's why our project is basically dead at ~85% of completion.

Dev_Anj on 27/1/2015 at 12:02

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Look, I know that moss arrows are there for a reason, and I'm not complaining about marble floors themselves. I'm complaining about when marble is used in a lazy manner, and it does not improve upon the gameplay and just makes the player either shoot a whole load of moss arrows, or move around very slowly. Even using a whole bunch of moss arrows can still be acceptable as an inventory sink, but if your design isn't optimized and room after room is basically marble floors with many guards and few ways to move around, then it begins to become frustrating, as you generally don't let the player to use the sneaking mechanics and force him/her into some limited options.

Making a ludicrously huge, empty room with marble floors, providing the player few resources, and then placing some guards nearby doesn't make for many interesting gameplay scenarios; the player basically just has to move at a painfully slow rate throughout the level. This is not entertaining because it often doesn't involve doing interesting things, like watching patterns, manipulating security systems, hoodwinking groups of guards using several methods etc.

Dev_Anj on 27/1/2015 at 12:58

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Uhh... that mod is much more than a graphical update. Try heading to their Moddb page and reading the news articles there.