T2 FM: Fables of the Penitent Thief, by Sliptip and Digi (Nov 8th 2010)

downwinder on 11/11/2010 at 00:18

i tryed the mission,amazing graphics,although i think the motion should have been kept to walls only and not the ground,once you talk to a person it should not repeat,it should go into objective so you know what to do,i found myself reading the same stuff over and over,hoping for new clues lol

was the dirty doll a dewdrop? if so wow i would have never guessed

Gloria Creep on 11/11/2010 at 00:25

No Downwinder :ebil: I would have known. :sly: :joke:
My guess it was a antique doll :nono:

:cheeky: :angel:

Gloria Creep on 11/11/2010 at 00:28

Quote Posted by Romashka01

Thank you Sliptip for giving me directions on how to delete walls animations! Now i can play the mission.
So much fun, *crunch*, the frog song was nice, *crunch*, but where is the red key gardener hiding?

Rope up on the outside reversed garden in the gardener's house. You have to rope up to the grass more than once. Slide into the open spot ....

:angel:

Xiaopang on 11/11/2010 at 00:40

Quote Posted by downwinder

I disagree. If the floor wasn't animated then the wall animation would have looked quite out of place. If at all,everything should have been animated, but that's of course far too much work. The game reminds me of Super Mario World 2 which had a similar cartoonish style to it and that certainly wasn't too much either.

The information of the towns people certainly would have been easier accessible if it had gone into a journal, but its by far not necessary to get an overview over the tasks. The objectives are clearly listed and the hints are presented in a very memorable way. Also, every text box was enriched with a "more"-tag. Its lack indicates the last page before the text starts over. This was cleverly done. I wish every oldschool RPG would have thought of that instead of making people read the same stuff over and over.

Without the repeating text the towns folk would have looked less life like. Eventually the whole village would have been silent. How unfitting would that have been? The happy place would have felt like a zombie town...a bright one nonetheless. There were also times when I missed part of a sentence due to bad readability so I was thankful for the roll overs.

However, that last point makes me wonder if it would be possible to show the text with a black outline. Thanks to the bright textures (which looked even brighter thanks to ddfix' bloom) the white text was really hard to read unless I positioned myself at an angle with a dark background.

Sliptip on 11/11/2010 at 01:03

I really wished we could work out a way to have a black rectangle behind the text, but I don't imagine it will ever be possible (well... give it a few years)

I'm really glad to see people are enjoing it for the most part and really appreciate everyone taking the time to write what they did and didn't like. If I ever do another one like it, I'll definitely refer to this thread for the do's and don'ts. Sadly, it just won't be the same without Digi though :(

Xiaopang on 11/11/2010 at 08:53

Glad you like all the input. You guys really did some outstanding work there :)

As for the outline: I thought Thief used its own fonts to render text. Wouldn't it be possible to mod the font's characters by drawing an outline around each of them? Then the game would render them automatically in an easily readable form without the need to actually work on the mission itself. This wouldn't require a black text-box then. Also, the free-floating text without a box looks pretty nice.

Just out of curiosity: Those nice "yes" and "no" signs that sometimes popped up behind the characters seem to be all one would need to create a dark background. Imagine letting one pop up above the people's heads with a dark texture every time you talk to someone. That would be possible, wouldn't it?

But don't get me wrong, I'd hate to see such a box every time I talk to someone, because it's hard to imagine how this could fit into this game without destroying its style.

Edit: I fiddled around with thieffon and added an outline to the FM's font. Surprisingly it worked, but the new font has a distorted color and none of the letters match. I guess I should have defined the character code for the first glyph, but I don't have an idea which one that would be since the first cell in the glyph bitmap is empty. Sliptip, is there any chance you still have the original bmp file that was used to make the font including the command line switches for thieffon? I could outline the font without problems then.

Edit 2: Alright, found the correct character starting position. Now all I need is some color correction and the font will be finished in no time :)

Anmaron on 11/11/2010 at 12:52

Yes, deleting the files has brought an ideal result. I do no want to say something against your work on moving textures, but I prefer them stable.

Now i can have a look for the hidden man. :cheeky:

Edit: Yes, he is right: As I was a child, I always overran the lines in the painting books. :-) Nice gag!

Ravenhook on 11/11/2010 at 13:44

Any one please send me in the right direction for the dirty doll please..

Sagittal on 11/11/2010 at 13:53

Quote Posted by Ravenhook

Any one please send me in the right direction for the dirty doll please..

Try the best place for apples :thumb:

Spoil: Redshines orchard.

Ravenhook on 11/11/2010 at 14:09

Thank you...I thought it would probably be somewhere in there...I've been kicked out three times already.:tsktsk:
:thumb::thumb: