Chateau-boy on 14/3/2018 at 20:08
Snobel, you commented:
"Unless memory fails me, buying those locks will make lockpicking easier but they're not required - I don't remember ever buying one, thinking standard lockpicking is fast enough when you get the hang of it. So if there's a bug introduced by the lock purchase, going back and not buying the lock might work - at the expense of less efficient picking."
Just to clarify that we are 'understanding each other here'........basically, TO ME, it appears that you're saying that it is absolutely UNNECESSARY to buy ANY locks in Thief: Deadly Shadows. Is this, indeed, what you are stating? So, in effect, according to you, I never need to buy ANY locks at ANY point in the game? That seems very contradictory and strange. Since new locks DO become available for purchase throughout the game (they're available to be purchased in 'fences') -- why WOULDN'T it be NECESSARY to purchase new locks -as they become available- in order to be able to acquire the 'ability' to pick these locks?
So if I understand you correctly, then according to you -- I never even needed to ever purchase the gold-colored lock -once it became available for purchase. I will still theoretically have the 'ability' to pick the gold-colored lock, even if I don't buy it. Is this correct?
McTaffer on 14/3/2018 at 20:34
I've always found PRACTICE LOCKS to be a WASTE OF MONEY because you can get EXACTLY the SAME AMOUNT of PRACTICE by picking locks in MISSIONS. BIZARRE as your SITUATION is, I would suggest that it isn't GAME BREAKING unless you're totally FOCUSED on PRACTICING on the designated PRACTICE LOCKS. TDS has some STRANGE design decisions, and PRACTICE LOCKS are definitely one of them.
Also, if you're exclusively using the keyboard, that could be your problem. It's slightly slower, but using the mouse to pick locks gives you a great deal more precision. The direction keys thing was there mainly for the Xbox version (which I played a couple of years ago out of curiosity).
snobel on 14/3/2018 at 20:45
Quote Posted by Chateau-boy
So if I understand you correctly, then according to you -- I never even needed to ever purchase the gold-colored lock -once it became available for purchase. I will still theoretically have the 'ability' to pick the gold-colored lock, even if I don't buy it. Is this correct?
You don't have to buy any of the locks. They are indeed (
http://thief.wikia.com/wiki/Gold_Practice_Lock) practice locks. It was my impression that buying one would speed up your lockpicking whether you practised or not but Brethren and McTaffer are probably right that they are
only practice locks - allowing you to memorize the pattern before facing one in a real mission.
As McTaffer said, if you're exclusively using the keyboard for lockpicking, do try it using the mouse. But if you're sure there are unpickable locks in your game for any reason, then a savegame near one could still be useful...
Mr Art Valnades on 26/3/2018 at 03:15
I highly suspect the problem, as the others have suggested, is that you are using the arrow keys to control the direction of the pick. It works for all the other locks, but the gold ones (which are intended to be the hardest in the game) require you to use the mouse to get the pick into spots in between the usual positions that the arrow keys are capable of. If I remember correctly, a common one was in between North and North-West. Gold locks are the only locks this happens with, which is what makes me think this is the problem.
I'm 90% sure there aren't any gold locks that you need to pick in order to progress and complete the game; things with gold locks are generally just protecting areas with valuable items or loot in them, or shortcuts/alternate routes. I could be wrong about that though, it's been a couple of years since I've played Deadly Shadows,
By the way, you don't need to use quotation marks for every noun. Their purpose is for directly quoting something or someone, or when you are clarifying that something is a literal name where this might have otherwise not been clear. For example if you were talking to someone who had never played Thief you might say there are items called "water arrows" to clarify that that is the actual name for them and not just a description. After that you'd simply say water arrows, with no quotation marks, because they already know what that is. I'm just telling you this because people might interpret your overuse of quotation marks as sarcasm and think you are trying to be rude to them.
Similar concept for capitalisation.
IAmTheWalrus on 13/4/2018 at 13:06
I didn't even know you could buy locks until about 130 hours playtime on Steam during my second full playthrough. They are most certainly totally unnecessary to progression, as I tried to explain on your Steam thread.
Chateau-boy on 19/4/2018 at 15:47
Unnnecessary or not.......I did an 'uninstall' and a clean full 're-install' to no avail: I still can't pick the gold lock.
My 'hypothesis' is that for some reason the 'sneaky upgrade' is 'slightly' incompatible with my system -the gold lock is the only major unresolvable glitch.
Perhaps if I had played TDS without the sneaky upgrade, this would never have been an issue -- but I was unwilling to do this since the Sneaky Upgrade offers widescreen capabilities as well as very significant gameplay and graphical advantages -- and many useful 'tweaks' -that the BASE TDS does not offer.
snobel on 19/4/2018 at 17:31
Please upload a savegame near one of the locks you can't pick. (And list the mods you had enabled when making it.)
Chateau-boy on 25/4/2018 at 18:10
I've tried that and many other things: I've tampered with V-Sync, ALL Sneaky upgrade settings, etc.
snobel on 25/4/2018 at 18:57
I mean make a savegame demonstrating the problem and upload it somewhere, so that I can download it and take a look.
IAmTheWalrus on 26/4/2018 at 11:33
Quote Posted by Chateau-boy
Unnnecessary or not.......I did an 'uninstall' and a clean full 're-install' to no avail: I still can't pick the gold lock.
My 'hypothesis' is that for some reason the 'sneaky upgrade' is 'slightly' incompatible with my system -the gold lock is the only major unresolvable glitch.
Perhaps if I had played TDS without the sneaky upgrade, this would never have been an issue -- but I was unwilling to do this since the Sneaky Upgrade offers widescreen capabilities as well as very significant gameplay and graphical advantages -- and many useful 'tweaks' -that the BASE TDS does not offer.
It's not major at all. I didn't even know it existed for 3 playthroughs. Why does it matter in the slightest?