Jollytaffer on 30/12/2024 at 16:41
Hi Folks,
This is my first post, so I should say hello! I've been reading this forum since the late 90's, always as a lurker, but I felt compelled to write something after playing The Black Parade...Oh my...wow..just wow..
My relationship with Thief started in 1998 when I read Kieron Gillen's review of TTDP in PC Gamer (anybody else remember that?). Keiron fell in love with it and that came through in the review he did. Nothing like it was really out there at the time and it released in a year of big competition (Half Life, Balder's Gate etc.). The review piqued my interest but I was playing other stuff at the time like the "Close Combat" series and "Myth The Fallen Lords" so I forgot about the review. In 1999 I was "between games" and wondering what to play next. So there in my desk drawer I spy an EIDOS demo disc (who remembers demo discs?! :D) with Thief The Dark Project on it, "Thief? oh yeah, I remember the review..I'll give that a go...". It was the first mission and I fell in love with the world of Thief. I read that Looking Glass were working on an improved version called Thief Gold..so I bided my time until November 1999 and the rest is history.
Thank you so much to Skacky and Feuillade Industries for giving this old Taffer the same joy and wonder I felt when I first dropped into that well and floated down the sewers underneath Lord Bafford's Mansion, you should all be very proud of what you have achieved with this campaign. God knows how many man-hours you all must have put into this! :eek:
Is it too much to ask if Feuillade Industries will be doing another one?:cheeky:
rochr4 on 8/1/2025 at 22:54
Wow..! Just amazing! So much content, so many memories, masterfully crafted, this is my first FM, 5 hours for a first play per mission is granted for me, I can almost taste dried pumpernikel and a 'frumantle' :)
5 hours of gameplay is sometimes a whole AAA game nowadays, you are madmen!
p.s. is there some 'making of' material, a video or article? I am so interested, will google it now.
thurup on 23/1/2025 at 12:32
Quote Posted by Jollytaffer
Hi Folks,
This is my first post, so I should say hello! I've been reading this forum since the late 90's, always as a lurker, but I felt compelled to write something after playing The Black Parade...Oh my...wow..just wow..
My relationship with Thief started in 1998 when I read Kieron Gillen's review of TTDP in PC Gamer (anybody else remember that?). Keiron fell in love with it and that came through in the review he did. Nothing like it was really out there at the time and it released in a year of big competition (Half Life, Balder's Gate etc.). The review piqued my interest but I was playing other stuff at the time like the "Close Combat" series and "Myth The Fallen Lords" so I forgot about the review. In 1999 I was "between games" and wondering what to play next. So there in my desk drawer I spy an EIDOS demo disc (who remembers demo discs?! :D) with Thief The Dark Project on it, "Thief? oh yeah, I remember the review..I'll give that a go...". It was the first mission and I fell in love with the world of Thief. I read that Looking Glass were working on an improved version called Thief Gold..so I bided my time until November 1999 and the rest is history.
Thank you so much to Skacky and Feuillade Industries for giving this old Taffer the same joy and wonder I felt when I first dropped into that well and floated down the sewers underneath Lord Bafford's Mansion, you should all be very proud of what you have achieved with this campaign. God knows how many man-hours you all must have put into this! :eek:
Is it too much to ask if Feuillade Industries will be doing another one?:cheeky:
This post encouraged me to write one myself and share my initiation into Thief games. Like Jollytaffer, I'm also more of a lurker than an active participant in the forum. I have been registered there since 2005, and so far I have write only one post (recently!!!), so this is my second!
I started my journey with Thief way back in 2000 (or was it 1999, I don't remember exactly), in the form of a CD with a couple of patched /cracked games, among which was Thief (TDP, exactly). At that time, I wasn't really a gamer in the usual sense, more of a casual gamer, up until then I had only played two games with my young niece (Super Mario on the NES and Spyro the Dragon on the PlayStation 1).
On a CD that had about a dozen games installed, I chose Thief (probably because of the icon :D) and the adventure began (and my long-standing fascination with this game). True, at first I almost gave up, because due to my lack of English at the time, I didn't understand what I was supposed to do (yes, I forgot to mention, the game had cut videos and "cult" level introductions, to make it easier to distribute, every MB was important, since we were on dial-up at the time), so I clashed with three Taffer guards at the entrance a few times and of course, frustrated and defeated, I said to myself, I'm going to try again, and when I finally somehow found my way and fell into that well and sailed through the sewers under Lord Bafford's Mansion, the magic that has lasted for twenty-odd years finally began. I remember exactly what attracted me most was the ambient music - effects, unsurpassed in any game to this day... and then everything else....
Ok, after this introduction, it's time to write a few lines about The Black Parade. Ok, after this introduction, let me write a few lines about The Black Parade. What to say that hasn't already been written, what kind of eulogy to write...when I find the time I'll write a proper review, because there are so many things I'd like to praise, but for now I just want to say that when I started playing, already in the first minutes of the game, a long-forgotten feeling, which I thought would never (almost) happen again, came back!
The city, in its full glory, complemented and expanded just as it should be compared to the original... and just to mention, a very important thing for me, that the developers deliberately and very consciously did not fall into the trap of "improving" graphics and textures, except very dosed and just the right amount...
Kudos to the developers, I'll definitely play this great game again and again...
Svperstar on 7/3/2025 at 23:44
I want to do another playthrough of this. One thing I am wondering. Hume's stealth isn't as good as Garrett's:
"Hume is not a Keeper and thus never received Garrett's training: AIs will now notice you if they bump into you or vice versa, sometimes even in a perfect shadow. Be careful!"
How can I change this back to default?
Random_Taffer on 12/3/2025 at 13:20
Quote Posted by Svperstar
I want to do another playthrough of this. One thing I am wondering. Hume's stealth isn't as good as Garrett's:
"Hume is not a Keeper and thus never received Garrett’s training: AIs will now notice you if they bump into you or vice versa, sometimes even in a perfect shadow. Be careful!"
How can I change this back to default?
You can't.
However it was done, you'd have to edit each mission's gamesys in Dromed and repackage everything up again.
Svperstar on 12/3/2025 at 13:27
Quote Posted by Random_Taffer
You can't.
However it was done, you'd have to edit each mission's gamesys in Dromed and repackage everything up again.
If it's a single variable might not be too difficult
Sent from my SM-S928U1 using Tapatalk
FireMage on 18/3/2025 at 20:11
Alright, let's take those in order :
Indeed, good catch, we forgot to change this one.
No, we can clearly hear you stepped on the tile floor before trying to pickpocket.
The AI was alerted and that's for this reason you had issue to get the purse, that's vanilla feature.
The goal was never to change how the game is working fondamentaly because it's impossible, we don't have the source code, and even if it was the case we wouldn't or else, it'd becomes unplayable.
Dark Engine has always been more merciful with AI vision than AI hearing. This is just how it works.
True we could have done this. But it's also a known rule for players that crates, barrels and furnitures are no shelters.
Quote Posted by Tristis Oris
he try to kill me with invisible shovel. here probably should be a trigger when i leave the room, but it was interrupted so i understand nothing. (
https://youtu.be/db5E9MNv_L8)
There's no shovel, he's just trying to kill you with his barehands because you left the room when he demanded you to free him. He's just upset.
Rest is just Dark Engine pathfinding being Dark Engine pathfinding.
Quote Posted by Tristis Oris
this npc have no AI model for idling. Maybe that true for every npc who is sleeping by default. He would stay forever at the last place you aggro him. (
https://youtu.be/WC_DXaF_x_Y)
I think you mean "default position" as model. And yes, several sleepers won't return to origin because those are unreachable since beds are not pathfindable surfaces.
If they leave those, they can't come back into those. So they just stand where they are unless we thought about the case and gave them a routine. But not all NPCs have one however.
You are the only one responsible for these two : we clearly stated that our campaign is
NOT MODDABLE and
INCOMPATIBLE with any texture or model packs, even the enhancement pack from TFIX,
and we disabled all DML for that very specific reason because TFIX enforce gamesystem changes in all Fan Missions, regardless of how changed these could be.
As we can see in your videos, you clearly removed the config setting that disable mods and DMLs. If enhanced models sink into geomety, textures glitch, some objects are impossible to climb or AIs impossible to carry, it's because of your own doing.
Play our mod vanilla and these two problems will vanish, and probably others you didn't encountered yet due to the mods.
Tristis Oris on 18/3/2025 at 20:28
i understand you can't change engine logic. Sound physic here is a thing i will never accept. I got a lot of weird situations which i can't explain, but i'm not very familiar with vanilla mechanics.
Quote Posted by FireMage
You are the only one responsible for these two : we clearly stated that our campaign is
NOT MODDABLE and
INCOMPATIBLE with any texture or model packs, even the enhancement pack from TFIX
Description say "The Black Parade requires NewDark 1.26 or above! Make sure you use the latest version of TFix/TFix Lite before playing!"
i have clear game with only TFix.
FireMage on 18/3/2025 at 20:43
Quote Posted by Tristis Oris
i understand you can't change engine logic. Sound physic here is a thing i will never accept. I got a lot of weird situations which i can't explain, but i'm not very familiar with vanilla mechanics.
Description say "The Black Parade requires NewDark 1.26 or above! Make sure you use the latest version of TFix/TFix Lite before playing!"
i have clear game with only TFix.
Yes to upgrade to NewDark. But we did set other option so its mods doesn't take priority over our assets and content by the use of a file name FM.cfg
Quote:
new_mantle
jump_speed_boost 1.4
small_portal_repel
force_correct_rope_lengths 1
fogging 1
enhanced_sky 1
render_weather 1
sfx_channels 48
apply_dbmods 0
enhanced_aidetect_trace
disable DMLs which are files used in mods to overwrite settings or datas in game files.
If you can't carry corpses in mission 3, it means the gamesyst dml from TFIX is overwriting our data because the civilians shares the ID of an AI we deleted from our campaign because taking data for nothing.
So if it's working in your game there're only two possibilities :
- You have edited or deleted FM.cfg
- You have played the campaign by using either an obsolete Fan Mission Loader (such as DarkLoader) or you've extracted the ZIP content to play it directly in your game (which should never be done when playing a Fan Mission).
Same for the texture and model trouble. We have included among our assets all vanilla models to keep the priority so no mod could risk breaking the geometry and create visual glitches.
If we see the enhanced hammer model sinking in the lamp model, again two possibilities :
- You have changed our ZIP and removed all the vanilla content that's located inside
- You have (again) used an obsolete Fan Mission loader or extracted manually our campaign among your game files.
EDIT : unless TFIX did some changes to keep enforcing its changes over missions... And I hope not, in which case, I might say we'll need to change our instructions and say "TFIX Lite" only.
