sparhawk on 6/6/2006 at 18:39
Quote Posted by Brother Renault
You could always email him. I noticed his site (listed above) has an email address.
To ask wether he has heard about us, or to ask wether he would contribute?
For the first question it doesn't really matter that much, and if my previous poster is indeed Randy, I can ssume he did. :)
As for the second question, I doubt that this would be a good idea. Not to mention that NDA's might prevent this kind of thing, and also it could get us in trouble. Because even if an NDA would allow that he works on our prpject, it could still be claimed that he contributed some knowledge, which he shouldn't. You never know with nasty laywers, so I wouldn't take the chance. And I think he also has enough going on, so that he wouldn't want to contribute to a free project as well.
sparhawk on 6/6/2006 at 18:43
Quote Posted by Randy
Everyone had great things they wanted to contribute to the project and for which they felt like they needed to push, but the development environment really couldn’t support all of it.
I know what you mean. :) We experienced the same in TDM, and we had to find a way to deal with this, without demotivating the developers. But at least we are a free project, so we can work as long as we want on this, and adding stuff, without having to meet a deadline. A big advantage if you are a fan of your own game. :)
What I always wondered though (assuming you are really THAT Randy since you are also a moderator). Do you have your own personal copy of Thief with sourcecode and without copy protection? Or did you just forget about it, once it was out the shop? Might as well considered be stealing, depending on the contracts and other issues But I was just wondering. I can imagine that at least some developers care for their own game, so that they would keep a private copy of it, to add extra stuff for themselve. :)
Renault on 6/6/2006 at 18:49
Randy, thanks for the reply. Always interesting to get more insight from the devs, especially THE dev.
Quote Posted by Randy
I’m being interviewed by Evil Avatar right now,
Looks like you might be starting a new career as a professional interviewee... :laff:
BEAR on 6/6/2006 at 18:56
Randy, our article was quite interesting and its great to get to hear this perspective on things. I can see exactly how what you describe could happen to a game. When I finished thief1 and 2, I remember getting together with my friends and talking some about the future of thief itself or the genre in general, and I remember we talked about alot of the same ideas that thief:ds brought out. Its a shame things couldnt have worked out better, I think you guys were really on the right track in your ideas department.
Im also glad to see you (still) taking in interest in the future of thief and games in general, those games mean a lot to us around here (too much probably), and its nice to see that you feel alot the same, if from a diffrent perspective.
ZylonBane on 6/6/2006 at 18:57
Woo! The Randynator!
I'm still disappointed there was never a Gamasutra Postmortem on either Invisible War or Deadly Shadows. There was such an impenetrable shroud over both those game's development that years later the fans are still asking, "What happened?".
Oh well, at least they inspired some of the most (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79527) creative Photoshopping this forum has ever seen.
Renault on 6/6/2006 at 19:02
Quote Posted by BEAR
Welcome to the forums Randy!
:weird:
BEAR on 6/6/2006 at 19:20
Ah, I see my mistake. My bad :)
People were saying "I assume its actually him" like he was new around here. Ill fix it ;)
sparhawk on 6/6/2006 at 19:47
Wow! Never seen that. That's the most impressive 404 photshopping I've ever seen. :)
ZylonBane on 6/6/2006 at 19:56
That thread has 13 pages. Try looking beyond the first one.
deadman on 6/6/2006 at 20:00
Yay, Randy responded to me *pretend fanboy comment* =P
Quote Posted by Randy
Well, it had a 3+ year development cycle, which is sufficient by nearly any standards. So “rushed” might not quite be the right word. It’s way more about how we made use of our time. There were some particularly serious challenges during our Alpha cycle (or maybe just that’s when our situation became more apparent), such as extremely long build turn around times, which made it hard to iterate and improve like you hope to during Alpha, and which is probably one contributor to the lack of polish you perceived.
Yeah, I realize you spent ample time on it, and wasn't under any illusions that this wasn't the case. Some have remarked that time would've been better spent on the game than rewriting the engine from ground up, and I generally agree with that. Priorities definitely seem to have been out of whack reading earlier dev comments, and by the time you realized the per-pixel lighting system was crap, you felt you didn't have time to go back and redo it. The game release gears were already in motion and deadlines only get tighter toward the end.
As I've probably mentioned before, I'd much rather have no dynamic lighting and a more stable feature-filled (dare I say prettier?) engine/game than what we were left with. And I realize the lighting issue wasn't the only one, but one of many. Many of the game mechanics just feel clunky and rushed; it's hard to mention specifics when I haven't played the game in so long (sorry, all you Thief 3 lovers!), but this was definitely what impressed on me during my first play through.
