AM16's Thief2 Fixed 1.2d - Bugfixed Original Missions - Updated 2018-06-01 - by AntiMatter_16
AntiMatter_16 on 26/3/2013 at 08:23
@Mr. Headbone
The current version of tafferpatcher includes an older release candidate version of the fixed missions([Edit]Note: TafferPatcher now includes the current version, 1.0e[/edit]), and I believe uses cam_mod.ini (a new feature of newdark) to install the fixpack, which also allows it to be easily removed. If you installed the fixpack from tafferpatcher, you'll need to replace the files references in cam_mod.ini with the latest ones, or remove the mod_path lines in cam_mod.ini, and extract the contents directly to your Thief2 directory, overwriting the original missions. Lastly, your other option is to simply play it like a fan mission using either FMSelector included in newdark, or darkloader.
@Jtr7
In the first pair of screenshots you see small lines of grass along the edges of the tunnel. I edited that so there was a stone curb along the edges of the tunnel, since grass would be unlikely to grow there, and it looked quite odd. That's one of the very few instances where I edited terrain brushes. Another example in Running Interference was I raised the edge behind the fireplace a little, since the back mantle of the fireplace was sticking above it, and the object had no back poly, so you could see through it. I could either shrink the fireplace, or raise the backing. I opted to raise the backing. Another brush edit I did on that level was to fix the toilet. There's actually a brush that runs from the toilet opening down to a tank in the basement, however because of the brush timings, the hole carved out for the toilet was filled by a solid brush. Moving the air brush for the toilet forward in time fixed that. Another example I can think of from that level was a pair of pillars around a window in the west wing were out of alignment, so I changed them to match the other windows right next to them. Another was some of the brushwork around the stairwell in that same west wing room was messed up.
In the second set, you see texture alignments on a set of stairs were all out of whack, and were fixed. Probably the most time consuming thing I worked on in shipping receiving, were adjusting ALL OF THE TEXTURE ALIGNMENTS ON THE METAL RAFTERS IN THE ENTIRE MISSION. It's a tiny detail that no one will likely even notice, but it's all been fixed.
In the 3rd set, you see the view of the front entrance to Shoalsgate. If you examine the ground texture around the outside of whole building, you'll see it was meant to be grassy. Some of the brushes bottom faces were changed to a cobble texture. The trees on top of the cobble, and the remnants of the grassy texture inside the front entrance suggest that the change to cobble wasn't completed, or unintentional. Some of the other changes I added to that mission off the top of my head were adding a solid texture strip along the skyhack face on the other side of the wall with the dancing zombies to avoid a hall of mirror effect when a scouting orb is tossed over. I also scaled a bunch of trees that were floating so that their height was maintained, and their trunks reached the ground. The lava in the mechanist building didn't actually have a firestim flow brush around it, so I added it.
In the fourth set you see that the metal bridge's side face is mistextured. It has both brick and metal sides. In comparison to the other city mission, Trace the courier, the bridge is full metal. This suggests that the bridge texture was unintentionally messed up during development. That mission had relatively few changes in comparison to others. Most were very subtle, mostly misaligned textures.
In the 5th set, from Eavesdropping, there's some rather unusual brushwork going on there. After some investigation, it appeared that a wall from outside was placed after the inside rooms had been built, and so the fill solid brush was leaking into the room. It really cramps the room, and the air brush (which caused the weird ceiling texture, and the trim to be carved away) seemed to be a quick hack to allow the door to open without it moving into solid terrain. Changing the brush order so that the outside wall brush was created before the inside rooms made the room match the other set of barracks that is a reflection of that room. That wall didn't provide any substantial place to hide, or shadows. I never removed lights, or altered shadow placement. In some cases though, I found lights that were in solid terrain that I restored. For example, there are spotlights shining down on the servants in the tubes of water that were in solid terrain. I moved them downward about one tenth of a unit and they were restored.
In the 6th set, the bank mission is pretty self explanatory. The textures were slapped hastily on the windows. By adding solid brushes, I maintained the shape of the windows, while fixing the texture errors. Considerable work was done on the room brushes in that mission. Many were too large for their rooms, so while running around on the roof, your "getting inside the bank" objective would get checked off. There were also many automap issues where you'd be told you were in the wrong room on the map. Another huge thing I spent a lot of time on was fixing the physics dimensions of objects. Many of the missions that were built early in development had objects, such as chairs, with default physics boxes the size of the object. Then later in development, more precise physics dimensions for the object were added, but the previously placed objects were never updated.
In the 7th set, you'll notice that details on a building were added. Those details came from Ambush! and were not simply a liberty taken by me because I thought it was ugly. For some reason, that building was detailed in Ambush, but not in trace the courier. I simply copied the details from on missions to the other.
In the 8th set from Blackmail, the table's physics dimensions were incorrect, so items would sink into the table. I fixed the dimensions of the table, and moved the items to match. There's just a very small example from that mission. Many of the changes to that mission related to very bad automap errors. I actually ended up editing the automap, because it was missing rooms. Fun fact: several of the walls in the mansion grounds were original huge hedges. You can see this from the default texture of those brushes, and a screenshot that is used as a training tip during the Thief2 install.
In the 9th set, from Trail of Blood, you simply see that I fixed an egregious lighting error, caused by bad cell geometry. I did very VERY little to this mission. On interesting gamesys change I made to the eyeball plants was that when you kill them, instead of disappearing completely, and only leaving a blood splatter, their vines and leaves are left behind, so it looks as though you just cut up the eyeball stalk.
In the 10th set, from Life of the Party, you just see The Shemeov estate kitchen textures have been aligned. There were a LOT of room brush errors in this mission. Too many to count. I probably have PTSD from it all, but the automap should much more closely match their actual areas. (Btw, this is the worst automap in the game, likely on account of the level going through so many changes).
In the 11th set from Casing the Joint, you see that a fireplace was missing. There's also some floating coins in a corner, that were obviously meant to be sitting on an end table. I examined the furniture and area in Masks and replaced some of the furniture and fireplace. Fun fact, I spent the most time on Casing the Joint and Masks, due to the unbelievable number of texture alignment errors, and especially automap issues. I ended up adding several new room brush archetypes, because parts of the mansion simply didn't use the map sections created for them. The hilighted areas already existed, such as the 2nd floor ballroom, but the original level editor essentially just used one room brush for the ballroom, so the same automap area was used for the 1st and 2nd floors of the ballroom. I painstakingly tested the automap and enhanced the precision of it in several other areas.
In the 12th set you see a brush error present in both Casing the Joint, and masks. The brush that was meant to be wood ceiling trim was a couple units too high and created an unusual pocket. I moved it down to match all the other hallways in the mission.
In the 13th set, again from Masks and Casing the Joint I took the liberty of adding texturing to the wood beams, and aligned them. It appears LGS' level builders often created terrain with the wood texture on everything, then textured it to their liking. Another example is they left a large area of the roof on the west side the default wood texture, which I fixed. On these missions especially, they left a considerable amount unfinished, and it appears they cut out an entire basement area, probably because it would take too much time to integrate properly. A readable mentions the basement in Masks, and there are still room brush archetypes for the basement, though only a couple were left in the mission. There's one dead end hallway which doesn't really seem to lead anywhere but a guard station that seemed to be the original entrance to the basement. Seemingly, the player would've originally entered the mansion through the basement, then made their way up to the 1st floor. Also, all the conversations in Masks were broken. From Room brushes not having been placed, to a script being missing. They should all work now. One of the conversations might've been disabled, on account of broken sound propagation (a guard has a conversation with another guard on a balcony, but because the room brushes didn't properly connect, you'd only ever hear one side of the conversation, depending where you were at. This was also fixed.) I also fixed a scroll whose 2nd page was missing. You actually saw "page_1: " if you read it in game. I also found that the alter in the chapel had a scroll on it, but it was placed too low, so it fell into the alter. You can pick it up if you frob the base of the alter, but I just moved it up so the scroll sat on top of the alter. There were COUNTLESS texture alignment problems in this mission. There was really unusual construction for the floor and ceiling trim. Instead of using 3 brushes for the ceiling trim, walls, and floor trim, 4 brushes were often used for the floor trim, when there was a much more optimal setup. This seems to have been done because the original builder didn't realize you could alter the time of a brush, telling one brush to be created before another one.
In the 14th set, from Precious Cargo, you simply see that the elevator doesn't seem to fit the shaft, and the texturing on the iron supports was off. There were a BUNCH of automap issues I fixed, as well as room brushes with poor sound propgation. For instance, the room brush in the starting room connected through solid terrain to the large chasm where garrett says "it's a long way up". Through some clever adjusting, and breaking room brushes into smaller chunks, I was able to prevent the "leakage" of sound through the tens of meters of solid rock.
In the 15th set, from Kidnapped, you simply see some texturing I did for the ramp. Most of the things I did on this level were small details. There were a couple of obelisks whose multi-brushes were very misaligned that I fixed. A bunch of fans didn't have their ambient sounds property setup to make their moving fan blades sounds that I fixed. Lots of detail work. A couple lava pools didn't have firestim on them, and you could swim around in them like water.
In the 16th set, from Soulforge, I just took a screenshot of an aligned texture on some rafters. All things considered, soulforge (despite its infuriating difficulty on expert) was very well polished, and I did very little to it. Mostly aligning textures here in there. After "Trail of Blood" it had the least number of fixes, because it was already in such a polished state.
Anyhow... to alter your question Jtr7, I was very conservative when it came to changing brush work. I think there was probably less than 20 instances where I made adjustments to it. Shadows and lights are essentially completely unchanged. The entire goal of this fixpack, was to restore the missions fixing bugs and refraining from any sort of enhancement. Changes were made only when it was very clear there was an error, and the original intent was apparent.
blaydes99 on 26/3/2013 at 16:35
Thanks AntiMatter, nice work! I'm grabbing the download now and I'm looking forward to my next Thief 2 playthrough using this. :)
Hertzman on 9/4/2013 at 12:35
Amazing work. I just played Shipping and Receiving and it looks great.
AntiMatter_16 on 9/4/2013 at 16:32
Quote Posted by Albert
So separate 32-bit lighting is needed for this edited maps, I assume. Should we expect you to make those yourself for an optional ND-only release?
AM16's Thief2 Fixed 1.0e will be the only Thief2 1.18 compatible release. The next release will be Newdark only and will feature 32-bit lighting, however a Newdark release requires some additional testing since on occasion Newdark does things a little differently. For instance Newdark fixed a room brush bug (thank god) that caused room brushes to include cells outside the room brush. I had to do some clever stuff to get fog not to leak into places it shouldn't be in 1.18, but in 1.19+ I need to redo a bunch of room brushing dealing with Fog.
ZylonBane on 9/4/2013 at 17:33
This sort of fixup project is an astonishing amount of work, so kudos for finally getting it in a releasable state. I just wish I had the time right now for a playthrough.
sNeaksieGarrett on 9/4/2013 at 18:27
This is great AM, nice work!;) I haven't actually tested this out yet, but I went ahead and downloaded it and I'm going to include it in our FAQ thread.
AntiMatter_16 on 9/4/2013 at 21:01
AM16's Thief2 fixed incomplete gamesys changelog:
Fixed Schemas used that fix a lot of broken sound schemas
Arrows can now be fired through fences
Frobinfo and physics added to Pan & Jar archetypes so that they can be picked up and thrown.
'Sim' added to joints of several containers so that their joints move offscreen
Duplicate 'Container' script removed from Moneybox
AI no longer see magically through opaque drapes
Phantoms (The glowly actors used for ghost conversations) no longer respond to Noisemakers, breaking their conversation
Autosearch bodies now works on undead
Transparency property with value of 1 added to OfficeChair and Covered chairs to fix rendering bugs
Apeblowpipe project set to correct launch joint
Set firearrow to use proper model and fixed attached particles
Moss arrows now launch lumps properly
Rottenbarrels no longer just disappear when destroyed, instead they leave flinders
Eyeballplant leave behind a Largeleafplant when slain
SecCamera2, Turret, BaffBanner and Hammbanner now leave a corpse in the proper position when destroyed
Bellows tweq property fixed
Stack Count property removed from Drillbit
Reddoor no longer blocks vision through its window
Dressers, DecorVase, Chairs, WoodCrateHamme now properly cast shadows
Physics controls added to Jeweled Dagger, Carbumper, Coathook
Throwable objects no longer pass through AI
Fixed physics dimensions of Bigtable, Bucket, VicHutch, Deerleg, Carrots, Transformer, VicHopeChest, VicFormalChair, CarpenterTable, VicCouch, VicSmallDeskChair, CovVicArmChair, VicArmChair, Bunk, Pew, VicDresser, VicBlue3Chair, Chest, FancyBed, MechCouch, Bed-ArtDeco1, ArtDeco2, Victrola, EmptyFlatcar, PumpedFlatcar, CoalFlatcar, EyeballPlant, RamSofaChair, Pipe06
Ceramic material property given to DecorVase
Carpet material property given to Cushy victorian furniture
Wood material property added to WoodRubble, Rowboat
Metal material property added to MechTables, LC_Brazier, Mechchairs, MechanistDoor4x8
Glass material property added to MechSmallTable
Stone material property added to LC_Bed, MawCrystal, Fireplace
Fixed rest axis of Keys, Tray, Deckofcards, Metalplay, porceilen plate, gold plate, Bowl, Pick, eyeglasses, dice, LC_Scroll, LC_scroll2, schematics, Deerleg, Tallpan, Skillet, Handmirror, CameraFlinder
Fixed Inventory Bitmap for BramGuard, Thief
sNeaksieGarrett on 9/4/2013 at 22:26
Nice list.
I'm curious, how did you do the second entry on that list? I thought fences (or any other object for that matter) were completely solid pieces, meaning no holes. Or let me put it a different way, how did you get Thief to recognize gaps in the fences?
AntiMatter_16 on 10/4/2013 at 02:19
There's a pore size physics property you can set. It allows objects with physics radius smaller than the the pore size to go through the object as though its not there, while things larger than that size bounce off like normal.