AntiMatter_16 on 3/6/2013 at 02:10

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Hey Taffers! Get it while it's hot! AM16's Thief2 Fixed 1.1e is RELEASED!

This version include massive reworking of the terrible Thief2 automaps. Every level has been painstakingly tested to verify the accuracy of the automaps. Some automap images had to be manually edited to reflect the geometry of the level. And let me tell you, there were LOTS of automap problems. In some cases automaps were so bad, they were almost useless, or worse, their bugs misdirected and confused the player. They are far from perfect, however they are MUCH better than before.

This release also include many German text fixes, with thanks to Gnartsch who painstakingly went over all the German texts and fixed errors and bugs. The German automaps also received the same fixes as the English version. Gnatsch also notified me of a rather critical bug when trying to play with Darkloader. Darkloader creates missflags.str automatically if it isn't found in the archive, but only plays the first mission. Including the original missflags.str has fixed this bug, and those playing with darkloader should have a bug free, enjoyable time.

Much of the work on this release went into Life of the Party, as well as Casing the Joint and Masks. Though considerable work was done on all levels.

The textures in Angelwatch were aligned absolutely terribly. The prospect of re-aligning all the textures in the tower seemed ludicrous, yet, for some strange reason, I found myself doing just that! I believe you'll find the textures in Angelwatch to be much more appealing than before. In this process, I had to redo considerable brush work. All the stairs in angelwatch were AIR brushes, carving the stairs out of a SOLID wedge brush. This meant, I'd have to aligned several hundred 4x1x1 air brush blocks... I opted to re-create the stairs out of SOLID brushes, which appear exactly as they did before. I also had to redo the brushwork on the outer walls of the Top floor of angelwatch. They were constructed in an unusual way. Rather than creating a single solid brush, and carving out a hold for a window, they walls were constructed by carving out a space for a wall, then filling it in with 4 SOLID brushes around every window. This meany I'd have to adjust all of the solid brushes around each window individually. The redone brushwork should appear exactly as the previous brushwork, it's just constructed much more efficiently. Oh, and yes, I fixed the solid brush in the elevator Bug I so carelessly introduced in the 1.1c version. My apologies again.

On Casing the Joint and Masks, I ended up fixing a lot of misaligned textures in the room between the Foyer and the Ballroom. I also fixed tons of texture alignment problems in the ballroom as well. I fixed a relatively major bug in the library: the Library Apparition would sometimes walk into solid walls, and get stuck there! Quite a weird thing to do, but it's fixed now. I also found another conversation in Masks that didn't play before, between a mechanist priest, and a Slave/Servant.

Another interesting thing I found, was that on Trace the Courier, for each difficulty level there was supposed to be a conversation at the drop point, which is at a different location for every difficulty level. The conversation on Expert didn't play, because the Difficulty property on the Normal Conversation wasn't set. With this fixed, the "Newboots" conversation now plays while waiting for the Pagan, instead of sitting around doing nothing and waiting in silence.

Anyhow, there's plenty of more things that were fixed, and other interesting tidbits that were fixed, but that's what's coming off the top of my head for now.

I don't believe there will be another release (at least anytime soon or later), unless someone finds a major bug I introduced, or there is some sort of public outcry about some minor change I made. I think this will be it.
My gift to you, taffers, enjoy!

AntiMatter_16 on 3/6/2013 at 05:19

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The Life of the Party fixes are really too numerous to recount. There's at least a hundred hours worth of fixing done on LotP alone. I've been working on Thief2 fixed for about two years now. The major areas of fixing were object physics size corrections, texture alignments all over the entire map, and room brush type corrections, alignments, & sound propogations fixes. If I'd recorded the changes, it'd likely have taken about 10 times as long. For instance, the secret book lever in the necromancer's tower wasn't correctly rotated. Rotating it takes 10 seconds, but writing down the object number, and what the alignment it was changed to would take forever.

If you change the brush type filters so that only room brushes are visible, and open both versions in dromed, just (http://imgur.com/a/oD6dI#0) alt-tabbing between them (these were taken from the original and fixed version of "Kidnapped") will demonstrate the INSANE amount of fixes to room brush alignment I've done. In that example, you'll notice they fit the brushes more tightly, so as to fix room brush propagation errors. The room brushes in the starting area actually crossed through solid rock to connect with the room brushes in the chasm in Kidnapped. In LotP, a lot of the "groundout" type room brushes (which detect when the player ended up on the streets, so as to fail the mission) weren't placed correctly, so you could end up stuck on the streets if were clever, and managed to survive the trip down to the streets.

Most of the fixes are detail changes, which means they're all primarily aesthetic and will be visible to you. So if you don't like how it looks, fix it yourself. =P There are very few changes to actual terrain brushwork. The changes I recounted in the last post are the largest changes to brushwork I've done. There are of course some minor brushwork changes that were done as dictated by texture alignment correction. Actually, the reason there was a solid brush in the elevator in 1.1c, was because I re-added some brushwork that LGS removed. In the Thief2 demo, it was possible to go all the way to the top of Angelwatch, and you could reach it via the south side, via some buildings which LGS removed for the final version. I re-added some of the detail brushwork like some of the railing on top, and the base decorations on the corners of the building, just for fun.

If there was something specific you wanted to ask about, though, I'll see what I can do.

AntiMatter_16 on 3/6/2013 at 06:13

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I was the only one editing missions, but I had help in many ways.
The stuff I re-added was literally just a couple brushes on the corners of the south side, and I fixed the railing on top of the mission. Most of the posts were missing.

It was VERY seldom that I changed a texture... 99.9% of the texture changes were alignment. But if the bridge stood out to you, too, then you get the idea of the kind of changes I did. If it stands out to you as wrong, or is misaligned, then fix it, and you'll end up with a similar product. =P

In Casing the Joint and Masks, I remember noticing that all the closets had brushes for trim, but mostly only the ones with secrets doors had the trim textured, so I spent a huge amount of time, adding the trim texture, and aligning the closet textures. It was also pretty clear in those missions, that one of the authors didn't know how to alter the time of a brush, so they made 5 air brushes for trim around the perimeter of a room (3 walls, and 1 on each side of a doorway), instead of making one fill air brush for the room, and another one for the trim, then setting the solid doorway brush to be created after the trim. When aligning floor textures I found it easier to just redo the brushwork than trying to align 6 surfaces.

sNeaksieGarrett on 23/6/2013 at 06:29

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Minor problem but I noticed it when opening up your file so that I could compare it to my version:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1712[/ATTACH]

I've got a comparison shot there so you can see what I did to fix it.

sNeaksieGarrett on 24/6/2013 at 19:03

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Well, that's even better than what I did.