Peanuckle on 10/4/2007 at 16:51
I looked everywhere before starting this so don't kill me if it's been discussed.
I was awfully frustrated with several aspects of the TDS engine; namely, not being able to hold the mouse button down for a blackjack strike. This made it difficult for me to knock anyone out and i'd usually just snipe them. I also hated what they did to the first person mode with all the bouncing and clumsy leaning.
THUSLY:
I propose a new project: The conversion of Thief: Deadly Shadows into Dark Engine Format! Loading zones would be no more, the city would probably just be replaced with loadout screens again (a fair sacrifice), but I think the gameplay bonuses would be worth the decrease in shiny-ness.
I have no skill. I would be unable to contribute except financially, which is lessened due to my "poor as dirt college student" status.
What are your ideas? Endorsements? Flames?
Goldmoon Dawn on 10/4/2007 at 16:57
These Missions are nowhere near good enough to bother with the Dark Engine. Just try to move on from the mess that was Deadly. :)
Digital Nightfall on 10/4/2007 at 17:11
Peanuckle,
I'm not sure how you'd intend to contribute financially. While I am not certain about the legal issues, the precedent has always been that money doesn't get exchanged while working on fan-related projects. While this is certainly an unspoken rule, I think you'd agree that it's also a very odd concept.
B'sides, if you're a poor as dirt college student, shouldn't you be eating ramen noodles every night and turning in your rent a week late?
OrbWeaver on 10/4/2007 at 17:22
What on earth is the point? There are hundreds of Fan Missions available for the Dark Engine games, with more being released regularly. What is so special about the TDS missions that would justify investing the time and effort in "remaking" them, when the mission authors involved could otherwise be creating new content?
Apprentice on 10/4/2007 at 21:13
Aye, I agree. TDS had like 3 really good missions, the Widow's Manor, the Cradle, and Of Breathren and Betrayal. Everything else in the game was pretty average to crap imo. I think a Cradle level on the Dark Engine would be interesting if a lot of effort was put into it but thats about it.
Aristed on 10/4/2007 at 21:39
Quote Posted by Goldmoon Dawn
These Missions are nowhere near good enough to bother with the Dark Engine. Just try to move on from the mess that was Deadly. :)
I'm really surprised that you think that, in my opinion the best thing about T3 was its level design. On the whole I think all the missions in 3 were better than most of the missions in 1 or 2. I cant think of any weak levels in deadly shadows and would rank it as a better game overall than T2. And why would you want to port them to the dark engine? I think the dynamic lighting and better textures of flesh massively outweigh the draw backs of using 8 year old tech.
I never had any problem with the interface of T3 the only major downer was the missions being split in two. If you wanted to solve that then do it in flesh. It can handle big areas, I think the only reason for small levels was that the xbox cant.
If you really want to remake them i say wait for the dark mod, but they dont need it.
Digital Nightfall on 10/4/2007 at 21:49
On a whole I felt that the missions in Thief DS were quite enjoyable. The plot was the weakest part, but overall I had a good time playing it front to back.
I would have liked some larger missions - e.g. the sunken city needed to be much larger, but I think that most of T2's missions suffered from being much larger than they should have been, so I am definetly not insisting that all of TDS needed to be massive.
In the end, no mission from TDS stands out to me as particularly bad. I think the clocktower could have been done a bit better. Gamall's lair should have had more attention given to it. The keeper headquarters mission was a bit of a letdown. The museum though a great mission, was quite anticlimatic.
But on the other hand, and I won't riddle this paragraph with spoiler tags, I found something quite like-able about each mission, especially the Hammerite and Pagan introduction missions, and the ones that featured "common" human settings. And then, of course, there's the Cradle, and though I don't place it on high like many do, is undeniably well crafted.
I think it would be far easier for me to dig into Thief 1 and 2 and point out things I disliked than it would be for DS. Was DS, overall, not as good as the other two? Maybe, but I think that when the previous two games were bad, they were far worse than anything DS did wrong, even if the good they did was arguably better than DS.
A project to try and re-write the PLOT of DS to not be a jumbled mess of stupid on the other hand, that I could get behind.
turbo_noob on 10/4/2007 at 21:59
I thought the first level of TDS was pretty good, it reminded me of Bafford's Manor a lot.
NightFalcon on 10/4/2007 at 22:49
"A proposal is an "empty" start, it's the first action that "starts" the proposal"[/philosophy]
However, I'll argue against you in that removing The City from the game would be too much of a sacrifice. You would have to consider importing that too, to the DarkEngine. It would be tough, since you would have to actually modify the engine to take you back to a certain spot after a mission and into a fully developed architectural city. You shouldn't also think of the conversion as a reason to convert the game into the DarkEngine because the original Thief: D S was flawed in any way, but just an interesting "different" version of the game that would run faster and in some ways would be better in game-wise the Fleshengine doesn't do as well. For example I think while the larger architectural possiblitie's in the Fleshengine are broader then the DarkEngine, the DarkEngine handles the smaller possiblities rather "finer". I think the DarkEngine is also more capable of atmosphere in some ways and a "broad" and "more polished" feel then the DarkEngine. I have never though of this idea, I guess it could be interesting, and rather possible if you put the effort into it, with a team of course.
imperialreign on 10/4/2007 at 22:52
minus the nuclea-blue footsteps and pop-up screens throughout; the second mission, made for a better 'tutorial'
