Thief fan missions and campaigns

[Melan]

Once again, not much love for Purah here. Which is fine, but.

Some of the criticism has a point. At their worst, Purah's missions have a layer of bad Vampire: The Masquerade fan fiction. Nobody who writes lines like "This is a city of metronomes where chimney pots sway to the ancient gurgle of pipes whose forlorn songs rise from throats of incurable decay." is innocent. Skanky McFunbags is a bad character. Lady Calendra is a slut. However, she is not a bad character, but a well-realised one who tends to sleep around. There is a difference. That difference is what makes so much of the Calendra series - from Lampfire Hills to Calendra's Legacy - a set of great missions, greater than the sum of their flawed parts.

• Yes, they feature very hard segments, but it is those segments where you find yourself pushing yourself and feeling like you have accomplished something when you are done. Getting through the city in Calendra's Cistern felt great. Sneaking through the party was damn hard, but it was a feat, signing the guestbook included. Reassembling Brother Adrius was frustrating (mainly for locating the hidden observatory), but it was above and beyond side objectives in Thief missions.
  
• Yes, the missions break gameplay conventions and common designer wisdom about "good practice", but they break them in interesting ways that take the player outside his or her comfort zone. Midnight in Murkbell, that giant fuck you to conventional Thief gameplay design, still plays wonderfully as a challenging stealth level, and it makes you have to think about how to do that.
  
• Yes, the prose is purple, but it conjures a setting of dark intrigue and witchery, which conforms to Thief lore while also pushing it in its own direction (with Shakespearean and Vampire-based undertones). It has its own voice, just like it has its own approach to architecture. It has the stamp of its author (and collaborators); that's a good thing.

Some of the complaints in the Lampfire Hills review read like pettifoggery. There are metal steps in a staircase, or in a doorway? There is a find-the-book library puzzle? Some of the undead aren't standard zombies and apparitions, but harder ones? Not seeing it. If that's unfair, what's a mission author to do?

Altogether, while I think our understanding of level design has unquestionably advanced since Thief, and these missions were released (I don't remember them being talked about in these terms), and these discussions have added much clarity to what used to be I-like-this-I-dislike-that, it is time to get concerned whether they don't become constraints on our imagination, both as players and level designers. Because as a level designer, I am feeling it.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I agree with almost everything you say. Progress is done at the expense of the precursors, hindsight is always 20/20 and all those other clichés.

There's really only one point I feel I have to give a counterreply to, and that is:

Some of the complaints in the Lampfire Hills review read like pettifoggery. There are metal steps in a staircase, or in a doorway? There is a find-the-book library puzzle? Some of the undead aren't standard zombies and apparitions, but harder ones? Not seeing it. If that's unfair, what's a mission author to do?

The metal-steps-in-a-staircase bit is clearly intentional. It's the stairs to the library, I'd say about 12 steps or so. The stairs are partially covered in darkness, and the metal steps are EXACTLY in the darkness. So to any taffer who's walking up those stairs, they won't even notice unless they're looking at their feet, and that guard at the top of the stairs WILL hear the clang. That's not providing an interesting and perplexing challenge, that's trying to trap the player in circumstances that are otherwise easily avoided.

(On a small sidenote, which I forgot to mention (there's a lot of that going on with me nowadays) is that the writing in Lampfire Hills is actually pretty good. Short of Talbot's notes being Audiolog-infested, the rest is pretty well-written and don't feel forced, with the archive records being especially well done. Which makes the transition over to what Purah writes in the Calendra series feel like a trip down the drain. Honestly though, I didn't know that Purah did both Lampfire Hills and Calendra's until you brought it up.)

But yeah, I admit that's nitpicking on my part, you're bringing up a much bigger issue with the challenge of both level design and player. The Dark Engine has proven surprisingly stretchable in what it can do, and the Thief community has shown itself to be very adaptable when things are shaken up a bit ("Fables of a Penitent Thief" anyone?) but the sad truth of the matter is that to all good things, an end must come. Many FM authors before you have tried to spice up their creations with their writing, encouraging players to steal that same golden candlestick for the 2465th time, but THIS TIME IT'S FOR UNREQUITTED LOVE!...or something like that. I get that, doing so is a crapshoot, it doesn't always work out. It's just...I find it kinda strange that already in 2000-2001 T1 FMs were starting to show these stretch marks, with unconventional challenges and cheap tricks being thrown in - and yet here we are in 2015, and the Thief community is still a thing, despite Square Enix's best efforts. How much more life is there in DromEd, or the Dark Mod?

Maybe I'm just being a little too melancholic here. I've been re-examining my priorities and drawing new conclusions, and one of them is me realizing that Thief has been a staple part of my gaming life for 6 years now, and with an intermittent presence going more than 15 years back. My frobbing desires are spent, I think it's time I left things alone for a bit and focused those energies elsewhere.

So yeah, I hear you. But no one can tell you what to do next except yourself.

 

[Dev_Anj]

Some of the complaints in the Lampfire Hills review read like pettifoggery. There are metal steps in a staircase, or in a doorway? There is a find-the-book library puzzle? Some of the undead aren't standard zombies and apparitions, but harder ones? Not seeing it. If that's unfair, what's a mission author to do?

Altogether, while I think our understanding of level design has unquestionably advanced since Thief, and these missions were released (I don't remember them being talked about in these terms), and these discussions have added much clarity to what used to be I-like-this-I-dislike-that, it is time to get concerned whether they don't become constraints on our imagination, both as players and level designers. Because as a level designer, I am feeling it.

I agree that ultimately, level and game designers shouldn't be limited because some parts of the audience has standards that don't match up to theirs, or be caught up trying to make games or levels according to certain technical specifications and not according to what they wanted to make. But when their attempts don't pay off, I feel it's fair to try and express why, even when we may not be very good at it. We can always try to be more constructive and less harsh in our criticisms.

I think Unkillable Cat is talking about the context in which they are used. If metal steps are put in randomly, and without a way for a player to see them clearly, it can break the flow and feel unfair to the player. Similarly, if a whole building is a huge library, and only one book there is important and there isn't much in terms of flavour either, players can think it's too bloated.

Maybe I'm just being a little too melancholic here. I've been re-examining my priorities and drawing new conclusions, and one of them is me realizing that Thief has been a staple part of my gaming life for 6 years now, and with an intermittent presence going more than 15 years back. My frobbing desires are spent, I think it's time I left things alone for a bit and focused those energies elsewhere.

If you're getting tired with Thief and it's mechanics, feel free to take a break. I got tired of Thief too for a while a few years back and just stopped playing them. Hell, upon replays I'm finding that both Thief: Gold and Thief 2 have design issues and some levels aren't as good as they were the first time. There is a lot more to stealth than Thief, and a lot more to life than games.

 

[Icewater]

and a lot more to life than games.

no

 

[JarlFrank]

Maybe I'm just being a little too melancholic here. I've been re-examining my priorities and drawing new conclusions, and one of them is me realizing that Thief has been a staple part of my gaming life for 6 years now, and with an intermittent presence going more than 15 years back. My frobbing desires are spent, I think it's time I left things alone for a bit and focused those energies elsewhere.

If you're getting tired with Thief and it's mechanics, feel free to take a break. I got tired of Thief too for a while a few years back and just stopped playing them. Hell, upon replays I'm finding that both Thief: Gold and Thief 2 have design issues and some levels aren't as good as they were the first time. There is a lot more to stealth than Thief, and a lot more to life than games.

Yeah, I also get tired of Thief sometimes after playing too many FMs in a row (especially mediocre or outright bad ones), so I take a break for a while and wait for the taffer itch to return. Then I start an intriguing-looking mission and the spark is back again. You just get burned out after a while and it becomes boring, especially when you just had two or more bad FMs which weren't all that fun. And even excellent missions can get tiresome after a while... every good thing becomes kinda meh if you do it too often, you could even get tired of steak if you eat it for every lunch.

And yet, Thief is a pretty unique game and manages to scratch that exploration itch of mine like nothing else does. Stay hidden, explore every inch of a level, loot everything you can get your hands on. It's just the perfect formula. And many levels are just so well-designed either in gameplay or in atmosphere (or in both) that you just have to appreciate them. And yeah, upon replays you do notice the design flaws even in the original missions - especially after playing countless FMs of varying quality, and even more if you actually made a mission yourself (or toyed around with the editor). Doesn't change that they're damn excellent, though, even with their flaws.

I started playing Thief in 2009, and discovered FMs in 2010. Ever since, it has been a part of my gaming life that was on a kind of on/off mode. I'd play a lot of Thief for, say, two months, and then leave it for three. Then I feel like playing it again. And with the huge amount of FMs, there is always something to try that I haven't played yet.

 

[Melan]

Unkillable Cat: It's not a bad thing to take a break. I did it for a few years when I started to feel Thief was getting stale and predictable, then returned and even learned to make missions. As I have learned, Thief's creative well is not inexhaustible, but it is surprisingly deep. Like traditional D&D among tabletop games, it is often formulaic, but it is a good formula, something that takes well to episodic content. It is also worth returning to with new eyes.

What I wish we had would be similar interactive, story-based games with strong editing communities for different genres like cyberpunk or fantasy - but we don't have them since gaming mostly went to shit after 2000. One of my main hopes for Underworld: Ascension is a robust, easy-to-use toolset, and Unity gives me a faint hope we might get that one day. And I'd really like to make something cyberpunk/technoir.

 

[Dev_Anj]

Just a curious question Melan: how come the Thief fan mission building took off so well, and still survives to this day, while the System Shock fan mission community is almost dead? Is it because one style of game allows for more expression of creativity than the other? Because they do have similar engines and editors.

 

[Melan]

Yes; as I wrote, Thief takes well to episodic fan missions. The formula works. A few reasons:

• It is easy to find a motivation for action. It can be as simple as "I have a simple job planned for this evening. Break into a guarded mansion, steal another fat nobleman's priceless trinket, and leave quietly." If you want more than that, most Thief stories follow film noir patterns, which mesh very well with the gameplay.
  
• The games also give you a strong set of baseline assumptions, which work in your favour. You don't have to start from the beginning and build a whole world. Add Hammerites, and players will know what they are dealing with.
  
• On the other hand, the city is expansive, and can accommodate several different stories. It has no solid, well-defined limits.
  
• You can deliver a self-contained mission/story within one level, which can be any size you want. You don't have to do a whole campaign, and you can scale a project to your abilities/free time.
• There is no character advancement. Garrett is always Garrett, with the same general capabilities except equipment, which you can easily regulate.
• Most AI attack you, flee from you or disregard you. You don't have to develop complicated interactions, or do voice acting (which tends to be an "expensive" development resource for fan projects). You can communicate most of the story through readables and environmental clues. (Actually, it seems to me a lot of Thief authors and players want story first, aesthetics second and gameplay third. There are much fewer purely gameplay-oriented levels than levels which tell some kind of story. This also means you don't have to be a technological wizard to make a mission.)
  
• Both the Dark Engine and idTech4 are newbie-friendly, with relatively low barriers of entry and shallow learning curves. Many modern engines use custom-built models for architecture, which you have to create in an outside app, and import into the actual game editor. This can go wrong at three different points, and requires expertise in four fields (modelling, texturing, conversion and level building) instead of one.
• As a side note, it would be relatively easy to imagine a different Thief, one that had a text-based conversation/trading system like Ultima Underworld, and I am sure a lot of authors would prefer it to what we have. However, the game's focused nature and specific limitations also make it less likely for someone to get carried away and make something over-ambitious. It still happens all the time, but there are some hard restrictions.

In comparison, System Shock and Deus Ex are much more specific, and require you to put a lot more work into the story, levels, interaction possibilities, character stats, and more.

But I think it is mainly about that specific combination of strong focus and high variability that makes Thief well-suited for fan missions. It doesn't hurt that there is an established community playing, commenting on, and building fan missions, but that's more about momentum (which seems to be stalling, unfortunately), not the initial reasons for popularity. This community is also special in that it has a lot of people who aren't typical gamers. They often tend to be older, there are more women, and far less techies than in the regular FPS scene. Maybe that's also something which matters.

 

[SlyFoxx]

I've always thought of it this way. When designing a Thief mission most of the work has already been done for you. Melan spelled out most of it. As a designer I develop a premise, build a map, add obstacles and don't screw with the generally accepted mechanics of the game. (at least not much) There you go...a half hour to a few hours of basic thiefy goodness.

I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. Others have with varying degrees of success. I just know my creative limitations and lack of patience with trying to make dromed dance and sing with all manner of complicated scripting.

 

[JarlFrank]

Occasionally I also play Tomb Raider fan levels, which can also be fun when well-designed - and it's the only other game I know with a comparable content creating community. It's because both games are similar in certain aspects. Game with a level structure, gameplay that is simple in premise but allows for much complexity, the basics are pre-defined but the designers can do anything they want within the limitations.

That is the main strength of games like this. When you build a mission, you know what it's going to be like. In Thief, you sneak around and steal shit. Yeah, there might be some creative things done with scripting but no matter what kind of mission you make you need to pay attention to certain things like lighting and floor textures and loot placement. In Tomb Raider, you run around and solve puzzles and find artifacts. Simple premises that allow to be re-used countless times without growing stale or ridiculous.
Garrett is a thief and steals shit for a living. Wanna make a Thief FM and focus entirely on the level design without spending much time on the concept? Just send him off to rob yet another rich guy's mansion. And even when you go creative and replace Garrett with Elizabeth Bathory trying to work against her enemies, like in Sensut's Bathory campaign, it's still about sneaking around and stealthily acquiring shit.
Lara Croft is an archaeologist and raids tombs. Wanna make a Tomb Raider level without spending much time on the concept? Just send her off to get an ancient artifact hidden within some trap-filled ancient ruins. There are also some levels that try to add a story and do something a little more creative, but it still boils down to "navigate a level and solve puzzles".

This is what makes these games so good for level designers. They have good basic gameplay principles that the fans really enjoy, the editors are comparatively easy to use, the games give you a basic framework you can work with, and there's a dedicated and supportive community that just loves to get new missions because there are no other games like these out there.

Not being too heavy on rules is also a good thing for both games, considering fan level design. No RPG mechanics or anything, you just have equipment and enemies and the architecture. That's it. No bullshit, you can just focus on designing your architecture and story and gameplay structure.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Before I take my break from Thief, I figued it might be beneficial to show people which T1/G Fan Missions I keep around.

This is by no means a "Best of" list, merely a "My picks" list.

Spoiler

A Noble Death
Augustine's Revenge
Autumn in Lampfire Hills (version 2.1a)
Between These Dark Walls
Calendra's Cistern
Deadly Darkness
Endless Rain
Geller's Pride
Gems of Provenance
Gold in Fort Knocks
Hammerhead
Lord Beilman's Estate
Lorgan's Web
Nigel's Hidden Treasure
Prowler in the Dark
Returning a Favor
Sepulchre of the Sinistral
Shadow Politics
Shunned
The Order of the Vine
The Secret Way
The Skull of Herzeloyde

Not a very long list, but skacky has his hat trick here and Melan has one. Other taffers like gonchong, Purah and BBB have two, and even darthslair gets one in.

By comparison my T2 folder counts 166 Fan Missions, some of which are 'upgraded' T1 missions.

 

[Random_Taffer]

Hey guys. nice place you have here. I've read through the thread and just wanted to drop in and say hi.
Love the brutal honesty- it is most refreshing and something the Thief FM community could use a great deal more of.

 

[JarlFrank]

Wow, we're getting a sudden influx of TTLGers now for some reason :D

 

[Melan]

~ I liked the vicious hate forum of hate better when it wasn't mainstream. ~

 

[Random_Taffer]

I am flattered that something becomes mainstream only after I join.
I've been lurking this thread ever since I first heard about it via PM on TTLG. (Back when B_T first joined and commented) I was hoping to be more entertained with vicious hatred, but what I found was sometimes a bit harsh, but mostly fair reviews. I showed Yandros the forum because of the positive reviews of our team projects which I admit made me feel pretty good.
Anyway, I'll probably begin posting more here. Glad I found this place.

 

[JarlFrank]

Once you stare into the Codex...

 

[Random_Taffer]

How long before the Codex begins to stare back at thee?

 

[SCO]

The dark mod is harder than thief if you are existentially bothered by it. For me it's a so-so thing because i never really adquired the mastery of the mechanics i achieved with thief.

 

[JarlFrank]

TDM has WAYYYY more aware AI and it's much harder to get a good knockout. Them turning their heads when they hear footsteps makes it especially difficult. No running over stone and whacking them like in Thief.

 

[Random_Taffer]

I think my biggest hangup with TDM is the sound. Overall the sound effects are rather poor in quality and I don't like how muted footsteps are. I understand that the footsteps are greatly exaggerated in T1/2, but I always attributed it to Garrett having a better sense of hearing to go with his stealth skills. In any case, I noticed that in TDM it's difficult to hear guards walking that are fairly close to your position. They walk on cat's feet!

 

[Morat]

I think my biggest hangup with TDM is the sound. Overall the sound effects are rather poor in quality and I don't like how muted footsteps are. I understand that the footsteps are greatly exaggerated in T1/2, but I always attributed it to Garrett having a better sense of hearing to go with his stealth skills. In any case, I noticed that in TDM it's difficult to hear guards walking that are fairly close to your position. They walk on cat's feet!

That's definitely a reasonable complaint. The sound could use some work, though their team seems pretty strapped for help and time right now. However, it seems from my limited experience playing around with the Dark Radiant editor that mappers have a lot more control over certain things than they had with Dromed. The footstep volume, for instance, is probably an easy fix, but I don't think any mapper has bothered to change little things like that in their missions yet.

 

[Dev_Anj]

Since there hasn't been much going on in this thread, I thought I would put up some news.

Neux and Le Malin 76 have been working on their FMs, and I've got to say that they seem to be going for visually interesting styles. I like the mix of natural greenery and wooden scenery in Neux's mission, in particular. Now to hope that they are actually good missions.

Neux's mission:

Spoiler

Le Malin 76's mission:

Spoiler

 

[Morat]

The lighting is fantastic in those last two shots.

 

[Renault]

Thief 2 15th Anniversary today.

 

[Kirkpatrick]

Not as awesome as TDP, but boy do I still love it.

Shipping...and Receiving, First City Bank, Life of the Party, some of the greatest missions ever.