Decline Thiaf Pre-Release Thread

[Unkillable Cat]

I realize that my post is missing one word: "Even". Even in 1998 there were shifts in the air. It means that change was coming, but had not arrived yet.

Still doesn't give you a reason to be rude and obnoxious just because people dare to disagree with you.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Lichtech. Where Direct3D was slower and OpenGL was experimental.

First, it was Lithtech, not Lichtech.

Second, it was designed for D3D from the start, using source code of Quake as a reference (1.0 even supported quake map export), and it never had such thing as OpenGL (unless it's some shitty 3rd party port to consoles or other operating systems).

 

[Drakron]

Regardless 3dfx was still very strong in the end of the 90's, take Wing Commander Prophecy that was 3dfx and come out in November 97, Thief come out about 1 year later as did the Voodoo2 and the Banshee cards.

Its not hard to see there was a investment on 3dfx that end up blowing up on their faces because of the initial success, after the fall of 3dfx things eventually moved to DirectX with Windows 98.

When Thief was developed it was during the rise of 3dfx and so the engine was created for the market leader, even if Looking Glass had a magic ball they would not change the engine so some people would be able to play it in 2008.

 

[octavius]

I realize that my post is missing one word: "Even". Even in 1998 there were shifts in the air. It means that change was coming, but had not arrived yet.

Still doesn't give you a reason to be rude and obnoxious just because people dare to disagree with you.

"Angry Kobold" sure is a fitting name...

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

I remember being pleasantly surprised on my first playthrough when Thief ended up turning into some sort of subtle horror exploration game. The audio with environmental effects (EAX or Aureal or whatever) made it so much better though. I doubt that the world SUBTLE ever came up in Eidos Montreal's development cycle. It's all emotional/grim-dark/protagonists in an epic struggle from now on. THANKS OBAMA.

 

[Captain Crusade]

The Thief series was never big on world detail or setting history. The original Thief was one of the first, proper 'modern'3D games. It took advantage of Voodoo cards, the first ever 3D graphics cards and could only be played on one of those new fangled 'pentiums' that everyone was raving about. Not only that, but something that was considered revolutionary at the time, like nearly everything about the original game, was that if you overheard guards having conversations, no two conversations in the game would ever be alike. This held true in the first level of the game, but not really later on, as hardly anyone ever spoke to each other in the game.

I don't understand how people are dignifying this person with answers. There's just so much bullshit crammed up in one paragraph - I mean, Thief didn't even use fucking Glide, it used Direct3D across the board. Pentiums were new in 1998? What's all this talk about Voodoo cards? Glide and Voodoo were already in fatal decline, I myself had replaced my Voodoo 2 with a Riva TNT before Thief came out, and I had a Pentium 2 by that time, too - and I was pretty behind the upgrade curve at the time. There was no guard banter after the first level? What kind of fucking alternate universe is this? Well, it's just fabrication by someone who has no fucking clue.

Fuck you and fuck that whore of a mother that birthed you from her asshole.

Thief used 3Dfx. I distinctly remember that. Voodoo 2 was going very strong at the point. It may have been in decline sure, I don't recall that but I wasn't all that aware of 3d tech, but many games were built upon it.
And yes pentiums were all the rage back then except for the cocksuckers whose moms were 500 dollah whores and thus could afford to buy them the latest shit.

Stop deceiving people.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

This argument is getting insane. You're whipping your cocks out about the technical knowhow of a 15-year old game and nitpicking about when exactly one standard got dropped in favor of another. What's worse, no one here has actually provided any proof, only anecdotal evidence.

So I thought I'd at least try to post some facts, and looked around.

First I tried finding lists of games that used 3Dfx Glide. Guess what game(s) don't show up? Thief.

Then I looked up Thief specifically in relations to 3Dfx. One search result took me to TLLG, which are the de facto experts on all things Thief. One poster states flat out:

Thief has no Glide support, it's Direct3D only.

However, this is in a thread where a user is trying to get Thief 2 running on a Voodoo 3 card, and it turns out that's the card that Thief 2 looks the best on, hence the effort of the OP there to get a Voodoo 3 card running in 2006. Keep in mind though, that we're talking "native" Thief 2, not fan-patched to oblivion or using NewDark. The Voodoo cards could render stuff like the fog better than other cards, both back when Thief 2 was new and in the years afterwards.

EDIT: Almost forgot:

A list of games that use 3Dfx Glide.

Thief in regards to 3Dfx.

 

[Mangoose]

Disguises would somewhat go against the whole 'do not be seen' part. But a proper sandbox thievery sim, where you find out about places you can loot yourself, either through contacts, benefactors, or just eavesdropping on people on the street, that would be pretty interesting.

You do sneak... In fact you have to plan out how to steathily acquire a disguise. Whether that by knocking out a guard/doctor/whoever and dragging them somewhere safe. Or simply stealthing around to find an unworn disguise you can wear.

And then not all disguises fit for every area. Maybe your disguise was good for one section of the military base but then in a secret area you're not wearing the proper uniform. Do you try to again acquire a new uniform, or do you simply proceed in stealth mode?

And then in disguise, there's the art of hiding in plain sight. Walking at a normal pace, interacting with random people, walking with them, etc. Of course this part is mostly wishful thinking until we get much better AI.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

This argument is getting insane. You're whipping your cocks out about the technical knowhow of a 15-year old game and nitpicking about when exactly one standard got dropped in favor of another. What's worse, no one here has actually provided any proof, only anecdotal evidence.

So I thought I'd at least try to post some facts, and looked around.

First I tried finding lists of games that used 3Dfx Glide. Guess what game(s) don't show up? Thief.

Then I looked up Thief specifically in relations to 3Dfx. One search result took me to TLLG, which are the de facto experts on all things Thief. One poster states flat out:

Thief has no Glide support, it's Direct3D only.

However, this is in a thread where a user is trying to get Thief 2 running on a Voodoo 3 card, and it turns out that's the card that Thief 2 looks the best on, hence the effort of the OP there to get a Voodoo 3 card running in 2006. Keep in mind though, that we're talking "native" Thief 2, not fan-patched to oblivion or using NewDark. The Voodoo cards could render stuff like the fog better than other cards, both back when Thief 2 was new and in the years afterwards.

EDIT: Almost forgot:

A list of games that use 3Dfx Glide.

Thief in regards to 3Dfx.

Looking at the image above, there's a 3dfx logo on the bak of Thief's box. And mobygames informs thief uses glide:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/thief-the-dark-project/techinfo

 

[msxyz]

In 1998 3Dfx cards were still the king of the hill. Something started to change in the mindset of gamers when 3dfx released their first 2D+3D chipset, the Banshee, that wasn't faster than a Voodoo 2, not to mention a dual Voodoo 2 setup. The belief that 3Dfx was loosing the race was cemented the next year, when the Voodoo 3 still couldn't support 32 bit in 3D and when the VSA-100, itself a stop gap solution, was delayed from autumn 1999 to spring 2000; by that time, it was already outdated and outperformed.

3Dfx filed for bankruptcy in November 2000 yet, only one year before, the Voodoo 3 was still the best selling VGA, thanks to the competitive prices.

I think NVidia got incredibly lucky and incredibly smart putting out 4 generations of chips in 18 months (TNT, TNT2, GeForce, GeForce2). It also convinced everyone that 32 bit color was a must, nevermind the fact that the TNTs and GeForces were noticeably slower in 32 bit mode, the TNT couldn't produce real trilinear filtering (it went for a cheaper dithered interpolation between two mip maps) and S3TC texture compression remained broken in the GeForce chipset till the 4th iteration in 2002 . The image quality of early NVidia cards was simply plain terrible. They got away with it because everyone back then just cared about framerate and dumb benchmarks.

In 1998 Direct3D was still shunned by develpers, much to the dismay of Matrox, ATi, S3 and NVidia itself. Most of the games were primarly Glide with OpenGl/DirectX bolten on as a fallback (Monolith games being the exception, since the Lithtech engine was partly funded by Microsoft and should have been given away 'for free' along with the DirectX 6 SDK).

 

[Melan]

Folks, nobody cares about your deep and intricate knowledge of fucking graphic cards. Shut up.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Dots or blurry mess, which is better and why?
Diskuss!

 

[AngryKobold]

Lichtech. Where Direct3D was slower and OpenGL was experimental.

First, it was Lithtech, not Lichtech.

Second, it was designed for D3D from the start, using source code of Quake as a reference (1.0 even supported quake map export), and it never had such thing as OpenGL (unless it's some shitty 3rd party port to consoles or other operating systems).

A shameless nitpicking. Quake 2. And you're totally missing the point. The point is, we're in interesting yet totally pointless offtop in a thread dedicated to the worst Thief game since Dishonored.

There's a chance this little discussion is going to pop up in google next to 3dfxzone.it and vogons.org. Which is quite a troll.

 

[Morgoth]

Daniel Day-Lewis is telling the socialist hipsters to die in the mud.

Sup' Montreal. Very subtle.

 

[racofer]

This shit gets more and more retarded by the day.

 

[DragoFireheart]

SO DARK AND EDGY!

What's the point of this game?

 

[racofer]

SO DARK AND EDGY!

What's the point of this game?

To get us butthurt.

 

[DragoFireheart]

SO DARK AND EDGY!

What's the point of this game?

To get us butthurt.

Well, they are doing a great job at that.

 

[Darth Roxor]

cant wait for the polish edition

Złodziaj
co twoje to moje

 

[Black_Willow]

I lolled so hard.

 

[Siel]

"Stories from the City"

Funny that Dishonored made also a series of trailers before release, called...
"Tales from Dunwall"

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Daniel Day-Lewis is telling the socialist hipsters to die in the mud.

Sup' Montreal. Very subtle.

"And I would've gotten away with it tool, if it weren't for that meddling thief!"

Also liked his hand-mounted crossbow, gritty realism at its finest.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Thief Taker General, seriously?

 

[Echo Mirage]

"Thief Taker General". Thats some of the lamest shit I have ever heard. And who writes this shit ? And more importantly, who writes this shit and gets paid for it ?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Ahem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wild

This IS of course probably just the effect of some writer accidentally reading about the term or the dude somewhere and now trying to look clever and monocled, but I can't help but laugh at how even here they fuck it up, considering that the "thief taker general" shtick was essentially self-proclaimed, and a mockery of justice and the system.