Favorite Thief 3 Deadly Shadows Missions to Be Ported to Thief 2/New Dark?

mikjames on 27/11/2019 at 03:12

I've been thinking of getting into creating fan missions but my interests don't really lie in creating original works. Thief Deadly Shadows missions, and general vibe are near and dear to me, but the engine hasn't aged nearly as gracefully as I would like. Even with Sneaky Upgrade installed, I just can't get back into it like I can with the other 2 games. I was thinking of porting over some of the missions into New Dark, either in numerical order, or in order of community popularity.

Some of my personal favorites are Checking Inn (minus all the handholding), The Bloodline Opal, Pavelock Prison, St Edgars Cathedral, The Keeper Library, Moira's Mansion, The Auldale Museum. Looking for some community input on any big challenges I might face, any really good missions I'm forgetting about, and how I could maybe spruce things up a bit, while keeping the general layout and objectives of the original missions mostly intact.

The most obvious difference is the addition of opportunities to use rope arrows and swimming, though I find swimming can be rather overused (looking at you TDP). If I were to recreate the docks for example no one would fall to oblivion, though shipping and receiving already does "The Docks" better than I ever could.

(https://thief.fandom.com/wiki/Thief:_Deadly_Shadows#Missions.2C_Briefings_and_Cutscenes)

Tomi on 27/11/2019 at 16:16

Quote Posted by mikjames

Looking for some community input on any big challenges I might face

I think your biggest challenge could be some legal issues that might arise if you recreate Deadly Shadows in NewDark. I'd say that it's better to leave the original missions alone, but I won't be stopping you if you choose to play around with them, so I wish you good luck. However, if you end up making some "improvements" to the DS missions, just don't add any more swimming than necessary - I absolutely hated all the underwater sections in T1/2. The underwater physics don't feel good, water looks ugly, and it breaks the AI. Deadly Shadows was a better game for having the insta-kill water.

ZylonBane on 27/11/2019 at 17:40

Quote Posted by Tomi

Deadly Shadows was a better game for having the insta-kill water.

1/10 trolling.

mikjames on 27/11/2019 at 18:37

Quote Posted by Tomi

Quote:

However, if you end up making some "improvements" to the DS missions, just don't add any more swimming than necessary - I absolutely hated all the underwater sections in T1/2. The underwater physics don't feel good, water looks ugly, and it breaks the AI. Deadly Shadows was a better game for having the insta-kill water.

I agree, swimming was way overused in the original games. Doesn't mean water has to insta-kill you though, and nothing wrong with providing more routes of entry for people who prefer it. I just don't like it when "the only good way in" is a dip through the sewers. It brought me great joy to "break" the original games, finding ways in via mantling and the rooftops that the devs didn't intend, saving me a swim through the sewers. I can forgive a silly lord like Bafford for not securing his rooftop, but Sheriff Truart and his police force really should know better ;)

With Sneaky Upgrade installed Deadly Shadows is a better game for many reasons. The ai is much improved, our resident Thief has finally purchased some suitable footwear to reduce the dramatic noise differences between flooring surfaces, a dagger makes way more sense than carrying a sword, being able to purchase whatever tools you want and keep your tools/gold for the next mission. The only drawback related to gameplay is the lack of rope arrows and the bland city sections. The biggest problem with the game is the movement/mantling physics and other engine problems that haven't/can't be fixed.

Tomi on 27/11/2019 at 18:42

Quote Posted by ZylonBane

1/10 trolling.

Only a bit though! Okay, perhaps the insta-kill water isn't the best possible idea*, but I like it when diving into the nearest puddle is not always a foolproof way to save your ass when the guards are after you. It just feels like such an immersion-breaking and cheap way to escape a tough spot when the AI can't handle the situation in a satisfactory way. I didn't particularly enjoy any of the underwater exploration in the first two Thief games either - crawling through a sewer pipe or two might be okay and jumping into a well was fun for one time, but the long underwater sections and tunnels and canals (etc) are overdoing it. So yeah, I still don't think that the lack of swimmable water in Deadly Shadows was such a bad thing.

* not being able to dive so that you'd be a slow and easy target for enemy archers would be better

Ghostly on 29/11/2019 at 01:15

Meant as general statement;
Regarding the water, if you get caught and run into water to escape it is more problem on the user-end than anything else, so if its such an immersion breaking and cheap feeling then simply don't play it like that, not the fault of designers who clearly didn't intend it to be used as such given the game has its obvious limitations for being an old game.

Hopefully this gets grasped and have the topic stay more on the subject as I am very curios to see what other people may think.

My input, would be curios if porting The Cradle to New Dark engine would improve or degrade the psychological effect it has on the player with its seamless ambiance and sound elements melding into one dastardly evil experience in the sense of "is it behind me?", considering how it can manage first-time players to keep on their edge with sound and looks alone, love that mission to the bones. :D

Tomi on 29/11/2019 at 15:16

Quote Posted by Ghostly

Regarding the water, if you get caught and run into water to escape it is more problem on the user-end than anything else, so if its such an immersion breaking and cheap feeling then simply don't play it like that

I don't think it should work like that. Self-imposed challenges might be fun when you've already seen everything that a game has to offer and you're looking for some extra challenge, but a game shouldn't have to rely on those to "hide" some not-so-polished features and game mechanics. What do you think that the designers intended the water to be used for if not for swimming? You can blame technical limitations for the ugliness (by modern standards) of the water perhaps, but I don't think that it's outrageous to suggest that the swimming physics and water could have been implemented in a better way. :)

I also don't think that the water discussion is that off-topic, as the lack of swimmable water in Deadly Shadows is really quite a significant thing. I mean, how would you recreate those "watery" maps in NewDark? Technically you can't even recreate underwater areas as they don't even exist in DS. :p

john9818a on 30/11/2019 at 10:23

Quote Posted by mikjames

Yeah I can see that line of thinking, but I just don't think it would be a problem these days. I can see why people didn't do it in the past, but this general rule has been broken so many times over the years. People have edited original missions, ported Thief Gold over to Thief 2, ported TDS sound effects over to Thief 2, and now they've made massive edits to TDS in an attempt to make it good. After the disaster that was Thief 2014 I don't think Square really cares anymore what we do with these old games, at least so long as we aren't trying to profit $ from it.

I agree, swimming was way overused in the original games. Doesn't mean water has to insta-kill you though, and nothing wrong with providing more routes of entry for people who prefer it. I just don't like it when "the only good way in" is a dip through the sewers. It brought me great joy to "break" the original games, finding ways in via mantling and the rooftops that the devs didn't intend, saving me a swim through the sewers. I can forgive a silly lord like Bafford for not securing his rooftop, but Sheriff Truart and his police force really should know better ;)

With Sneaky Upgrade installed Deadly Shadows is a better game for many reasons. The ai is much improved, our resident Thief has finally purchased some suitable footwear to reduce the dramatic noise differences between flooring surfaces, a dagger makes way more sense than carrying a sword, being able to purchase whatever tools you want and keep your tools/gold for the next mission. The only drawback related to gameplay is the lack of rope arrows and the bland city sections. The biggest problem with the game is the movement/mantling physics and other engine problems that haven't/can't be fixed.

DS had a dagger before the Sneaky Upgrade was installed.

Also DS does have underwater areas, but they're nothing more than a box that uses the same texture as the adjacent surface/ground. It didn't matter if the player could escape by jumping into water because the player still had to get back out of the water to complete the mission.