Nameless Voice on 10/9/2008 at 22:55
And it always sounds awful. I've never heard it done properly. Some amount of remixing Garrett comments, yes, but AI conversations built out of parts of other conversations from OMs? Most of us have heard those lines a hundred times - even the unused ones.
"Hail brother in arms. You know anything about the guys with swords in the ticket office?"
New Horizon on 13/9/2008 at 00:54
@jtr Sure, but my feeling is that these missions are different than other fan projects. I would treat them this way in an attempt to make the the missions appear to fit seamlessly with the rest of the missions. That's my goal, if another team didn't feel that way...so be it.
@Nameless Voice: Well, that's your opinion. Some creative writing after careful selection of files would be required and then attentive editing. If I get some time over the weekend, I'll whip something up. Another option would be to match some new conversation pieces to the voice of existing AI barks....though I would still prefer to do it with all original materials.
jtr7 on 13/9/2008 at 02:21
Quote Posted by New Horizon
@jtr Sure, but my feeling is that these missions are different than other fan projects. I would treat them this way in an attempt to make the the missions appear to fit seamlessly with the rest of the missions. That's my goal, if another team didn't feel that way...so be it.
I absolutely agree with the theory, I just don't see how it could be done in practice. The act of assigning a texture to a Jorged brush, the addition of any new brush, or object, or light is changing what is there, and if we go that far, new briefings, dialogue, texts, ambients. As far as I can yet tell, all the characters but Garrett are new, so the voices don't have to match anybody's, only fit in. I'd tried splicing some dialogue together years ago, only to find that there are inconsistencies and sometimes significant changes in hiss and quality, like some lines were added months later, and not recorded in the booth, and the actor hadn't had coffee yet, or had a cold.
I think we could make these additional levels at least as seamless as
Thief Gold's levels were to TDP, which I don't feel they were, and we have definite potential to create better continuity than TDS did in the trilogy. Hell, maybe even smooth over some continuity bumps, even the illusory ones. Being the middle of the trilogy, it could work in both directions.
We
could pretend to know nothing about the story at all, build the levels, then write the story, and then force the fairly separate projects together, and not make the deadline, then release an unfinished product.:ebil:
But really, I think the story, vanilla DromEd, a mission statement goal for a general sense of seamlessness, honouring the LGS legacy, and all the experience and know-how should dictate the judicious use of resources, yet allow for whatever it takes to refresh it without modernising it. No voice-actor should take this on as any other FM, and should study TMA and characters similar to their own in TDP, to match the cadence, the tone, etc., as well as they can manage, but without trying to
be those characters. They should sound like they are citizens of The City.
A digression: I love the idea of the Classic Thief contest forcing people to work under many original limitations. Sometimes going back to the basics can increase appreciation for the foundations, and inspire some to reach even higher. We hear that all the time from artists, but I understand it has to be per individual.
New Horizon on 13/9/2008 at 02:27
Quote Posted by jtr7
A digression: I love the idea of the Classic Thief contest forcing people to work under many original limitations.
This would be an ideal of mine as well...to a certain degree. Obviously, we would be using better computers, so people would have to enforce these limitations upon themselves. I'll be interested in seeing what happens with the missions someday.
nicked on 13/9/2008 at 11:51
It's great to see this being discussed again. I certainly hope an attempt is made to create these missions, however it is done. The first time round, we bit off quite a lot more than we could chew. The ideas were all there, and all good, but the goal was set so far at the end of the tunnel that you couldn't really see the light (to stretch a metaphor). If anyone does decide to take this on, I think I still have the museum mission kicking around - with architecture and texturing largely done.
sNeaksieGarrett on 13/9/2008 at 15:32
I dunno about any sort of team and making this a huge deal and what not trying to make it follow the series' plot, but I was thinking someday possibly (I say this cuz I really don't know how I'll have time or patience much for dromed anymore) I could pick up at least one of these missions and build from it. It'd be cool to have a full blown slums mission for example.:)
Snake on 13/9/2008 at 22:26
Ya I love the way this is being discussed again, coz I only noticed this thread recently and was wondering if it had been abandoned, but now people seem interested again.
Technically I've saved Thief 2 Gold... :p
Digital Nightfall on 13/9/2008 at 22:53
In a phone call with a friend we tried to sum up T2's plot in a nutshell. It went something like this.
So Garrett helps his friend run away with his girl and then he needs rent money, so he robs a warehouse. Later on he's hired to frame some policeman for some reason and doesn't know why or care, he just does it. Then it turns out to be a setup because obviously people who want to frame people can't be trusted, and Garrett runs away. Then the keepers come and find him and tell him you can't just run away, things are scary, etc etc. Everyone acts like it's strange that the sheriff wants a master thief dead, as if that wasn't the sheriff's job in the first place. Garrett goes to listen in at just the right moment when the sheriff is talking to the mechanist dude, and the conversation is then conveniently recorded. Rather than steal the recording then and there he waits for it to be locked up in a bank vault and steals it then, because that's cooler. He breaks into the bank, gets in the vault, and in spite of being a thief in a bank vault, only takes one lousy wax cylinder which he isn't even going to get to use anyway. So he decides to use the recording to blackmail the sheriff (for what? I don't remember) but oh no someone killed him first, but before killing him the murder was careful to leave a set of bloody keys at the scene of the crime which happen to have the name of the culprit written right on them, so he then goes and follows her as she delivers a letter, and then follows the guy she delivers it to, and then goes through a portal, and then somehow managed to form an alliance with a monster lady who had previously ripped out his eye and left him for dead, but that's okay because she's the only other female in the game so the hero has to be nice to her. So then he has to steal the plans to a submarine from a tower for no reason because they never use the plans for anything and they already know that the sub exists and where it is, so it was really just a big waste of time. We then go looking for this guy to kidnap but we find the submarine instead, hide in it, wind up in the lost city where something is happening, kidnap the guy, take him to the pagans, and we never hear about it again. Then for some reason because there were masks in the lost city and the mechanists use masks we need to break into this mask collector's house and steal a mask. Twice. But along the way we steal some rust gas so that Viktoria can look at it and go "oh this is scary". Then Somehow they figure out what Karras's plan is, even though none of the previous missions really lead up to the leap in logic, and so Vik dies so that there's alot of plants in soulforge (really? she needed to die to do that?) so when Garrett sabotages the crazy video game level where he needs to find the seven magic power dots and frob them, and the credits roll.
Try cramming 4 new missions into THAT mess and see if it makes sense.
Digi camps out with binoculars from a safe distance to see whose head explodes from his gross mishandling of T2's excuse for a plot.
R Soul on 13/9/2008 at 23:19
That would be most difficult. The only way to maintain sanity would be to say "this T2Gold mission goes between these two T2 missions". Make it fit in with them and leave the rest of the story alone. Then move on to the next T2Gold mission.
demagogue on 13/9/2008 at 23:42
@Digi :laff:
No wonder the plot of T2 is such a blur in my memory. I just remember the individual missions, but I'm not sure if the story was entirely straight in my head even when I was playing it.
Anyway, I stand by the opinion I made earlier somewhere ... I think the guys that were working on this before did enough preparatory work, whoever takes it over should just coattail on all of that, at least as a base. No need to reinvent the wheel and lose their work. Hopefully it all got archived.
