Thief Deadly Shadows is very under-rated

DJ Riff on 23/7/2008 at 08:20

Hammerites in TDS have 666 voice phrases (excluding priests, they have more).

Muzman on 23/7/2008 at 10:00

If T DS had proper Thief 2 sized levels in one piece I reckon I could have gotten used to everything else that's goofy about it.

I'd still love to hear the tale of them firing the guy who was rewriting the renderer to have real-time lighting, possibly because he was rewriting the render to have real-time lighting.
That is quite the story.

Beleg Cúthalion on 23/7/2008 at 12:00

You can definitely work with Flesh's lightning system; Thief takes place in the dark anyway. The levels again only suffer from that xBox limitation.

Well, to avoid any further discussion; TDS allows me to stay in a dark corner, waiting for a guard to return while having a quick look around to admire old stone arches, colourful rugs and tables, all the things that look beautiful to me, and to give me a quite familiar feeling of being somewhere I belong... if only just for a moment. That's OK for me.

Judith on 23/7/2008 at 16:29

Quote Posted by New Horizon

Some of them....although I'm sure the level sizes would have been bigger since they wouldn't have had all of the baggage they had with the flesh engine. They just would have been starting from a better base.

I don't think so. The level sizes would remain the same - to reduce the loading times and performance for Xbox, the same goes for lights limit (fortunately, this is much more scalable on PC).

New Horizon on 23/7/2008 at 17:03

Quote Posted by Judith

I don't think so. The level sizes would remain the same - to reduce the loading times and performance for Xbox, the same goes for lights limit (fortunately, this is much more scalable on PC).

I'm pretty sure they could squeeze more into a doom 3 based Thief than the flesh engine based one we got. Just in the way the engines differ. They would still be constrained by xbox memory, but I think the d3 engine could pull off more with that limited memory.

Beleg Cúthalion on 23/7/2008 at 20:22

If Doom 3 would mean these incredibly hectic shadows one could see in the alpha demo, I'd still stick with Unreal. Plus, the demo reminded me more of those games (like Vampire Bloodlines for instance, sorry, I don't play a lot) in which all surfaces seem to be somehow glowing...don't know...

Inline Image:

http://www.eidosforum.de/images/smilies/addon/kratz.gif Anyway, I think a what-might-have-been discussion is even less gainful.

New Horizon on 23/7/2008 at 21:12

Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion

Inline Image:

http://www.eidosforum.de/images/smilies/addon/kratz.gif Anyway, I think a what-might-have-been discussion is even less gainful.

:confused: Why in the world would that mean the hectic shadows of the doom 3 alpha demo? It was a demo after all and is a far cry from the finished game. :D

The glowing is an artistic touch, and has nothing to do with the engine beyond the fact that the level designer can enable it on surfaces if he/she wishes. Don't confuse level design with the engine itself. Doom 3 was a sci fi game, so they made it look sci-fi. We've taken the same engine and learned how to use it appropriately for our own purposes on Dark Mod. It 'could' have been the perfect engine for a T3 game.

Snake on 23/7/2008 at 22:01

I made my opinions known on this issue a few years ago, and I still believe TDS is underrated, and I'm glad there are others who agree with this. It certainly had annoying bugs, the wrong engine and was clunky and frustrating at times. There is also that depressing thought I get at times of "if only they had done this and didnt do that", etc...
Its important to remember that when I finished TMA, LGS announced soon afterwards they were closing their doors for good, and with it I believed Thief was finished. Naturally I was delighted when Ionstorm announced they were taking up the project, and to be honest they did a decent job. Some missions are very memorable, like the Cradle and Moira's Mansion. So for keeping Thief alive for another while at least, I thank them.

Severus Ape on 24/7/2008 at 06:21

Quote Posted by ZylonBane

That's pretty much it. We'd still have loot glint, atomic frob, Special Loot, blue dark, blindness-curing blackjacks, body awareness, that obnoxious HUD, and all the other little problems caused by having less-than-stellar programmers on the job.

Why no love for body awareness? Is this a general consensus among the Thief community (sorry, I must be new here)? I really appreciated it, and wish more FPS's would do it—it otherwise really stretches the limits of immersion when I look down to see that I'm just a floating camera with hands. Is Mirror's Edge really the only other game to give the player a body, and is that something to worry about?

theBlackman on 24/7/2008 at 06:42

The problem with "body awareness" is that the body does not follow the action of the player.

If you are stationary and turn your head and attempt to "Step" in the direction you are looking the body does not follow. It continues for a step or two in the original direction you were facing.

In motion the body follows the head. But not from a stop.

During play have you fallen off a pipe, or ledge after you stopped and looked around? If you have tried to change direction after stopping on a ledge or pipe, and have turned you head to where you want to go without falling off, you are lucky.

The entry to the CLOCKTOWER via climbing to the pipes is a good example. If you climb up, and back down on the pipe and then just turn your head to follow the pipes, you fall off. "Seeing" your body is no use if your body won't follow your head.

You need to use the "Turn" keys and turn your body to line up with the pipes in order to effectivelly move along them. And seeing your feet or hands is no frickin help at all.

As for seeing my feet I could do that in TDP, GOLD, and TMA by "looking at them". :ebil: