greenie2600 on 1/2/2016 at 20:03

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So, I'm a professional web developer, and (obviously) a Thief fan.

It's amazing that the community has kept this game alive this long, and created so many amazing tools and resources.

However, it must be said that a lot of Thief fan sites are showing their age. Most don't work well on mobile devices. A lot of them are abandoned or spottily maintained. And resources are scattered across a hundred different sites.

I've been looking for a project to work on in my free time, and I keep coming back to the idea of The Ultimate Thief Site.

There are a million directions I could go with this, but I would probably start with a comprehensive directory of fan missions: with support for downloads, nice big screenshots in a friendly slideshow interface, tags (e.g. "city mission"; "pagan"; "ghostable"; "puzzle"; "campaign"), robust search features (e.g., "show me all missions by author X"), player ratings, comments/reviews, links (e.g., to the mission's TTLG thread; the mission's official site; Let's Play videos), and walkthroughs/lootlists. Most of these features already exist on some of the existing FM sites, but I'm not aware of a site that has all of these features in one place. And, to be honest, the UI of most sites leaves something to be desired. (That's not a knock against their creators—many were created years ago, when the web was very different, and not everyone has the training or time necessary to create a super-fancy site.)

If the FM directory is successful, there are a lot of other things I could eventually add:


* A collection of DromEd documentation and tutorials. These are currently scattered all over the web—some of them are only accessible on the Wayback Machine. I'd like to collect them all in one place and clean them up (with the permission of the authors, of course).
* An area to submit, download, and rate resources for mission authors: textures, audio, models, scripts, etc.
* Some straightforward tutorials on the various fan-made patches and tools (NewDark, FMSel, etc.), and how to use them to get Thief games running smoothly on modern operating systems. (Even after playing Thief for years, it always takes me a while to figure all of this out when I need to set up a new installation.)
* A directory of folks who are available to help with FMs: voice actors, sound designers, texture artists, etc. (Users would be able to opt into this, and check/uncheck boxes to indicate what kind of work they're available to do.)


People often lament that fewer and fewer people are making and playing fan missions. Well, maybe a site like this could make it easier for fresh blood to become part of the community.

Does this sound like a worthwhile project? Are there any particular parts that you like or don't like? Any other suggestions for info and resources to include? Or is it a solution looking for a problem?

fortuni on 2/2/2016 at 16:25

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At the moment the various different sites (Darkloader, Southquarter, Taffersparadise, Gnartsch etc) are all maintained by one person only and due to the massive amount of time needed to keeping these sites up to date each of these owners tend to limit how much they add to their individual sites.

Your suggestion of having one site where you can access all missions, all walkthroughs, all screenshots, all lets-plays, all reviews etc would be fantastic in theory, but totally impractical for one individual to take on themselves....The Thief world has had many sites and projects disappear, people move on, get bored, get married and sadly some are no longer with us.

But if you could design an 'open site' whereby approved members could upload files directly you may have a reasonably good chance of developing a 'super' Thief site. How many people would get involved is the million dollar question, but I would happily upload all the T1/TG/T3 walkthroughs.

zappenduster on 2/2/2016 at 21:50

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I think the (http://spirited-tech.com/thief) Object Repository was the right step to collect all stuff from active and abandoned websites in a clear structure. And what about (http://thief.wikia.com/wiki/Thief:_The_Dark_Wiki) http://thief.wikia.com/wiki/Thief:_The_Dark_Wiki? It's not sooo bad at all ... :rolleyes:

Instead of an allrounder website which could be too hard to be maintained by one single person over the years I'd prefer specialized sites like one for

- general informations for newbies
- fan missions
- objects
- tutorials

and so on. :)

downwinder on 3/2/2016 at 02:36

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if this happens how extensive will it be,thief1/thief gold/thief2/thief3/etc

my view is if there is already a place to get missions ,i dont see a need for it,we already got a board here and places to get missions


it would be better to see more missions come out,so why not make something where maybe ever 3 months a missions comes out?something like that ,i think alot more people would like compared to yet another thief site,where thw owner will probaly put add to make money so really nothing more then a cash grab for the main owner=i always think people are out to pretend to do something good but in reality serve themselves to profits,also i am paranoid of most people,cant trust no one these days

more missions

yes i am a admitted taffer

Renault on 3/2/2016 at 04:12

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So you're suggesting a web site that magically generates fan missions?

Awesome idea!