[30 Nov 2023] The Black Parade -- RELEASE THREAD

DirkBogan on 23/12/2023 at 04:15

Quote Posted by Alma Elma

I have been LOVING this map pack so far and have made it to The Long Shadow Falls but I seem to be having a huge issue in it.

The alarm is seemingly going off at random and at nothing. No guards know where I am or have found the body's I hid. I even backtracked to all the areas I stored bodys in and no one comes by them, hell I even get alarmed while back in the sewers. I do have an early save but I try not to save too often and its a bit ways back. Is that a common issue people have had?

I'm really sorry, but this sounds like a super rare bug we encountered quite late that we were sure had been fixed. We took some drastic steps to fix it including cutting some guards and making the Captain's dog deaf. Some rare circumstance in the map appears to cause one or more guards to progressively feed-back alerts to each other.

Your best bet would be to resume that earlier save unfortunately, but if you have a save that's busted you could upload it to Google Drive or something and PM me a link, we'll investigate it in DromEd. The .sav files are found in your Black Parade folder.

Alma Elma on 23/12/2023 at 04:40

Quote Posted by DirkBogan

Ill PM ya!

Alma Elma on 23/12/2023 at 05:04

Quote Posted by DirkBogan

You know what you were right. I looked harder and one guard was in a looking out mode with his sword up, the one with the dog I knocked out. For some reason he didnt wanna leave that look out mode and I guess thats where that bug came in? He was in another room all together too so that was very odd. Im just going back and I guess I wont knock out the dog on its own.

mezalou on 23/12/2023 at 15:08

Just finished the campain !

Congratulations to everyone who participate to this unbelievable campain for Thief gold.
I'am blasted by the architecture and the map building.

Thanks to you, i have the opportunity to enjoy playing a game released 25 years ago ! this is unique.

Greetings from france !

Kaain on 23/12/2023 at 16:49

I am loving the first mission however I am having what seems to be a gamma or lighting problem. The mission is so dark that some areas cannot be seen at all. Maybe with a torch. I have gamma turned up all the way. Is it supposed to be so dark?

Brodo Swaggins on 23/12/2023 at 18:01

Quote Posted by Twist

That was awesome! Thank you for writing, publishing and sharing! I like how you wrapped it up with Thron's comments. Warm hugs all around. :)

Thanks so much! And yeah, Thron is....one of the nicest people I've ever met? Certainly the nicest person I've ever interviewed. Just a delightful, thoughtful, kind guy, and a testament to the ethos of Looking Glass. Made me wish I could go back in time to visit the office when it was operational, just to experience those vibes.

Darkness_Falls on 23/12/2023 at 20:45

Quote Posted by Ramirez

The mission seemed to be very high contrast. The light sources are very bright and shadows very dark. It's causing me some eye strain, something I've never experienced before (well except maybe some FMs by skacky).

Even despite my suggested nVidia Control Panel tweaks, etc., I still find something odd or not right with the contrast or muddiness of things, particularly in the shadowy areas. Every mission so far Causes eye strain for me too. Like maybe it is the texture themselves that are the problem? Or is it just because it is a Thief Gold FM? I don't think I've ever experienced this issue in all my years playing Thief 2

Quote Posted by Kaain

I am having what seems to be a gamma or lighting problem. The mission is so dark that some areas cannot be seen at all. Maybe with a torch. I have gamma turned up all the way.

Ahh, sounds like you're having similar issues as us. To make things a little better, you might play with the nVidia Control Panel settings I describe here. Just jump to the part where I reply to @Ramirez: (https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152429&p=2509380&viewfull=1#post2509380)

nVidia Control Panel > "Display > Adjust desktop color settings", and bumped Brightness, Contrast, and Gamma up

This helped a lot to see in shadows and play, in general, but something still seems odd.

Atropos on 23/12/2023 at 21:07

Quote Posted by Kaain

Quoting Fen from the Mission 5 Thread:
"Have you tried opening cam_ext.cfg and changing

;d3d_disp_sw_cc

to

d3d_disp_sw_cc?"

I finished the campaign on expert and it was really enjoyable. I'm usually not a fan of Thief 1/ Gold because of the optic but gave it a try. I really liked the non-linear missions. A lot to explore and interesting readables.

What I disliked about this campaign were the loot hints that didn't led to actual loot (like the barrel with the jewelery) but maybe I just didn't found it, the quite unsatisfying ending and that in the end the story didn't felt finished. I for excample would have liked to know what happened to Iryna DeWall. Regarding the gameplay I thought the lootgoal even on expert was way to low and there could have been more enemies especially in mission 8. Overall this campaign was quite easy.

But I had 25 hours of entertainment so it was probably one of the longest campaigns for me. Even with my little subjective critics I want to say: huge respect for finishing this campaign. Organizing so many people over such a long period of time is quite difficult. And keeping everyone motivated and willing to spend their freetime for a project which doesn't bring any money always impresses me. Thanks for all the work and the distraction. Could definitely need it. Thank you very much for your hard work.:D

Darkness_Falls on 23/12/2023 at 22:56

I've now tried "d3d_disp_sw_cc", doesn't seem to solve what I need. Also tried the 16-bit and 32-bit adjusters and several other things in cam_ext.cfg, but no luck. I think I'll just increase the saturation a bit to get a little more color (e.g., d3d_disp_sw_cc_sat 1.25) and roll with what I have for now. That extra boost of color may help everything not get so muddied out on my monitor.

PS: I also found this (https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151045)" target="_blank">(https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151045)) dither issue thread, too, but this isn't the issue I have. Linked in case anyone else needs.

EDIT: Okay, figured out my issue. The Brightness setting on my monitor was too bright, even at "50" or a bit lower. Problem was, blacks could never truly be black because the luminance of my LCD monitor would make them gray. All the graphics had a 'gray' undertone, so it was impossible to achieve good contrasts and nice vibrance. Indeed, I remembered for best taffing experience on my monitor over the years, I've had to lower the Brightness on it to zero ("0"). (On the monitor directly.) Once this is done, shadows and dark parts of textures were finally black. I also then set my monitor's Contrast to "100". (For me, that helps brings some good color vibrance to the graphics, especially the brighter areas.) You wouldn't notice the benefit yet because my screen in-game was mostly black unless I looked at a light. However, now that I had those baseline settings set in my monitor, I then used nVidia Control Panel (from taskbar icon) to fine-tune things to what I needed.

These are now what I've landed on in the nVidia Control Panel:
Brightness: +72%
Contract: +40%
Gamma: +1.43
Digital Vibrance: +70%

Colors are rich. Blacks are black. Vibrance exists. And muddiness is gone. It rivals my old Viewsonic PS790 CRT monitor with regard to Thief gaming now, just as it always had with Thief 2. And for the in-game Gamma setting that you control with + and - keys or the menu, I have it set to about three-quarters up. So I can still adjust that up or down on-the-fly as needed.

It's too bad I had to do that, as I've never had to adjust the nVidia stuff for Thief 2 before. Maybe my monitor has lost some of its luminance over the years, or maybe Thief Gold's textures/lighting (or this fan mission's lighting) is different than Thief 2, not sure. (I'd have to install/load up Thief 2 on my new hard drive to find out, but won't be doing that for a while.)

Sadly, I don't think nVidia Control Panel lets me save this as a custom profile. So if other games/apps/WinOS looks weird with these settings, I'll have to manually tweak them each time. Unless/until I get a new monitor, maybe.

Hopefully this is the same issue fellow taffers have had!

Dahenjo on 23/12/2023 at 23:21

I've also just finished the entire campaign on expert and want to thank Skacky & everyone involved in this superlative collaborative accomplishment!

Just saw another article posted today, with a quote from it:

(https://www.pcgamesn.com/thief-the-dark-project/retrospective) Starfield, Skyrim, and modern RPGs owe it all to a single ’90s gem

"Barrilliot sits at the nexus of all this, as both a Thief FM author and a level designer at Arkane. Under his TTLG handle ‘Skacky,’ he’s also known as the project leader for The Black Parade, a massive Thief campaign that launched earlier this month to mark the 25th anniversary. Pitched as a prequel to the original games, it features ten new missions with a new protagonist, and has been rapturously received by both fans and critics. It’s the best kind of love letter: one that articulates, via its own construction, why the object of affection is beloved in the first place."