Thief fan missions and campaigns

[JarlFrank]

Why are her toes a different skintone than the rest of her body? This looks weird :D

EDIT:
Hey skacky, what's the name of this painting, and who's the artist? I've seen it before but forgot what it's called. I'd like it as desktop background :D

 

[Yandros]

http://www.wikiart.org/en/jules-joseph-lefebvre/mary-magdalene-in-the-cave-1876

You can drag the image onto Google Image search and it will find it for you, btw.

 

[Dev_Anj]

Personally I find the BJ has so few penalties - with its quick attack and extended range when combined with the forward lean

After playing the missions for long, I don't think the blackjack is actually as overpowered as people here and elsewhere make it out to be. What makes this weapon too powerful in comparison to say, the baton in Deus Ex or the anaesthetic attacks in Hitman 2, is how the forward lean gives so much more effective range to it, and how knocking out bodies makes no noise most of the time. Don't use the forward lean with it or knock out patrols where all the enemies are too close to each other while moving and the blackjack is just a regular old knockout melee weapon, albeit efficient in the right hands.

What does raise the difficulty is actually limiting how many quick saves and quick loads you make during the course of a mission. Obviously iron manning missions would be too stressful for many people and I doubt even the most seasoned Thief players would play anything except maps they are familiar with this way, but limiting saves to some important points, like say a save after breaking into a building, after entering the inner chambers, or after stealing something important raises the tension quite well and can make you try to use other strategies beyond rushing and knocking out everyone you see as soon as possible.

Hey skacky, what's the name of this painting, and who's the artist? I've seen it before but forgot what it's called. I'd like it as desktop background :D

Didn't know you were a pervert. Heh, but it's your tastes so suit yourself.

 

[skacky]

Yeah that's Mary Magdalene in the Cave by Jules Joseph Lefebvre. There's two more of his in the brothel, one in the lobby and The Grasshopper in Demetra's quarters. We spent hours and hours looking for classic nude paintings that didn't look off, and we even ended up gettings lots of regular classic paintings for our projects with DrKubiac. The ones by Otto Theodore Lingner and William Bouguereau are my favorites.

 

[Karwelas]

Yeah that's Mary Magdalene in the Cave by Jules Joseph Lefebvre. There's two more of his in the brothel, one in the lobby and The Grasshopper in Demetra's quarters. We spent hours and hours looking for classic nude paintings that didn't look off, and we even ended up gettings lots of regular classic paintings for our projects with DrKubiac. The ones by Otto Theodore Lingner and William Bouguereau are my favorites.

"Makes scenarios for old as fuck stealth game, best in genre. Actually use your time for searching classic, nude paintings." Haha, live is amazing, isn't it, my dear taffers.

 

[JarlFrank]

Ah, Lefebvre. It reminded me of John Collier's style so of course I didn't find it when I looked through Collier's paintings.

Didn't know you were a pervert. Heh, but it's your tastes so suit yourself.

Classic 19th century nude paintings are cultured, not perverted.

 

[skacky]

I use one of Collier's paintings for another mission I'm working on (the famous Lady Godiva).

 

[Karwelas]

Guys, I know I'm lazy fucker, but can someone send me missions titles that recently appeared? I formated my disc and my thief kind of disappeared... fuck.

 

[tannisroot]

Not fun, and I don't see what's supposed to be challenging about it. Challenge is to rope-arrow up to a high place, sneak around without alerting guards, or solving a puzzle with a handful of clues. Randomly looking through 5 rooms for a switch that is somewhere isn't challenging. If it were, looking for my car keys when I forgot where I put them would be awesome Thief gameplay.

Reminds me of the trial and error tedium of the text adventure / mud days when we tested verb and noun commands at random for every single room hunting for "secrets."

 

[Dev_Anj]

Guys, I know I'm lazy fucker, but can someone send me missions titles that recently appeared? I formated my disc and my thief kind of disappeared... fuck.

Here's the list of released missions this year:

The Crazy Priest (Thief: Gold)
Rendezvous (Thief 2)
Gems of Provenance (Thief: Gold campaign)
Saving Caroline (Thief 2) (Word Challenge Contest)
A Lucky Hand (Thief 2) (Word Challenge Contest)
Keeper's Medallion (Thief 2)
The Curse of the Skull Goblet (Thief 2) (Word Challenge Contest)
Thief Dungeon Crawl Level 1 (Thief 2)
The Stupid Grimrock Quote (Thief 2)
Working Late (Thief 2)
Castle Michele (Thief 2)
Religious Conflict (Thief 2)
Of Thieves and Rubies (Thief 2 campaign)
The Artifact Returns (Thief 2)
Heartcliff Islands (Thief 2)
The Chalice of Souls (Thief: Gold) (Summer FM challenge)
Roofs of Gold (Thief 2) (Summer FM challenge)

My recommendations are Gems of Provenance, Working Late, Of Thieves and Rubies, Castle Michele and The Chalice of Souls.

 

[Dev_Anj]

Rocksbourg is still a while away, but have these maps in the meantime. Courtesy of DrKubiac :

Spoiler

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=141276&page=6&p=2297989&viewfull=1#post2297989

 

[DrKubiac]

 

[Unkillable Cat]

What do the colours represent in the last one? Altitude?

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Another amazing well done map, that just shows how that map project is a poor job that people payed to be done...
Now we have some definitive maps of The City (skacky's one) and Rocksbourg.

Anyway, I finished chalice of souls in some days ago, and what i feel is that mission 1 is the best thing on that map. I found myself returning to it to find new places i had missed before (I was in the beggining of mission 2 but returned after people mention that hammerite in a hat that I had missed). And the I found most of the apartments, buildings, hidden rooms, though I missed a little loot, I'm aways ok with missing about 10-20%. The readables were interesting, and the level is bigger than it appears to be at first.

Then comes the 2 mission: Although the level architecture is top notch, the mission is poorly designed and is seems like it was made on a rush. The brothel is cool, but I felt it was just populated with AI to be blackjacked, and no "in-level" side-stories at all. Also, i remember a brothel seven sisters wich had hidden rooms to spy "the action" in the bedrooms, a BDSM scene, even though the brothel was smaller, it had more content. Maybe that's what a level inspired by Thi4f can acomplish... . Even so the level is ok, but the second part of the level, the keeper halls, well that's the most empty part of the level, and the main objective is just there with no story behind how it was there, or any puzzle involved or anything... it was just there, and you just stumble upon it. Also, the halls are amazing, but it's so big that makes the emptiness feels more aparent. Anyway, it would be awesome to have som keeper ghosts here and there, a link between previous levels like character that went missing on the brothel to be found dead down there, some notes mentioning those orbs in the water.

In the end I had fun, but mostly because of 1st mission, that alone makes this FM one of the best. But mission 2 should be released later with a more fleshed out.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Also, i remember a brothel seven sisters wich had hidden rooms to spy "the action" in the bedrooms, a BDSM scene, even though the brothel was smaller, it had more content.

Are you sure you're not confusing the Seven Sisters with T2X on this one?

 

[Darth Slaughter]

mission 2 on seven sisters has a brothel with a leather clad woman riding on a man...

 

[DrKubiac]

What do the colours represent in the last one? Altitude?

It's the status of the invasion. Green is safe, yellow under battle/control, red is completely invaded.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Oh yeah, now I remember. I was thinking of the "surveillance system" used in T2X, because you can see a similar setup in the brothel in Chalice of Souls.

Forgot about this brothel which just had holes in the walls.

 

[DrKubiac]

Another amazing well done map, that just shows how that map project is a poor job that people payed to be done...

Are you talking about the map project on TTLG ? The megathread called Mapping out the City ?
Wait, did people pay for it !?

Now we have some definitive maps of The City (skacky's one) and Rocksbourg.

Funny you say this as we'll probably share a non-canon universe. I'll use his version of the City as references, and he'll mention Rocksbourg here and there as he already did on multiple occasions.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Are you talking about the map project on TTLG ? The megathread called Mapping out the City ?
Wait, did people pay for it !?

They payed a speacialist in map drawing to draw the final map.

 

[Dev_Anj]

What do the colours represent in the last one? Altitude?

From the TTLG post I'm guessing they are the security zones mentioned in Rocksbourg 2. Don't know which colour is for which though.

Although the level architecture is top notch, the mission is poorly designed and is seems like it was made on a rush.

Poorly designed is a bit of an overstatement I think. I like how the brothel had guards which were more sensitive and so required some strategy to take out. I understand people not liking the difficulty of it, and tiring out some players, but it felt like the natural culmination of the difficulty which had been built up in the past mission. The brothel is so secret that you have to go through some tunnels to get there, and it caters to the upper class of the city, so it's just natural for it to be heavily guarded by the finest guards, so to speak.

Agreed about the Keeper compound though, and Skacky admitted that it was rushed to meet the contest deadline.

 

[Karwelas]

It's the status of the invasion. Green is safe, yellow under battle/control, red is completely invaded.

Invasion? I should really finally play your maps.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

From the TTLG post I'm guessing they are the security zones mentioned in Rocksbourg 2. Don't know which colour is for which though.



Poorly designed is a bit of an overstatement I think. I like how the brothel had guards which were more sensitive and so required some strategy to take out. I understand people not liking the difficulty of it, and tiring out some players, but it felt like the natural culmination of the difficulty which had been built up in the past mission. The brothel is so secret that you have to go through some tunnels to get there, and it caters to the upper class of the city, so it's just natural for it to be heavily guarded by the finest guards, so to speak.

Agreed about the Keeper compound though, and Skacky admitted that it was rushed to meet the contest deadline.

I had no trouble with the guards or difficulty at all. Actually, I barely noticed they were more sensitive. I just approached them in the same way I do. I aways assumed their sensitivity was due to the fact there was a lot of tiles. I used poorly is because there was a bunch of guards, prostitutes, nobleman wandering around, but no "in level" stories other than the madams' clientele or the cook's voices in the head, but they're all linked to the main plot.

But then I read that this is mostly due to the fact they had a deadline to finish the level for the contest.

Also, there's a lot of snow in the level for summer contest.

 

[DrKubiac]

Invasion? I should really finally play your maps.

Yeah, Rocksbourg is under a strange invasion from undead, a bit like what happened in the Old Quarter. Except I try to do something a bit more interesting than zombie infested streets, in fact you rarely see any kind of undead so far.

They payed a speacialist in map drawing to draw the final map.

Comes to think of it, check out the map from Mission X, it's way more interesting and I took it as a base for years.

 

[JarlFrank]

Another amazing well done map, that just shows how that map project is a poor job that people payed to be done...
Now we have some definitive maps of The City (skacky's one) and Rocksbourg.

Anyway, I finished chalice of souls in some days ago, and what i feel is that mission 1 is the best thing on that map. I found myself returning to it to find new places i had missed before (I was in the beggining of mission 2 but returned after people mention that hammerite in a hat that I had missed). And the I found most of the apartments, buildings, hidden rooms, though I missed a little loot, I'm aways ok with missing about 10-20%. The readables were interesting, and the level is bigger than it appears to be at first.

Then comes the 2 mission: Although the level architecture is top notch, the mission is poorly designed and is seems like it was made on a rush. The brothel is cool, but I felt it was just populated with AI to be blackjacked, and no "in-level" side-stories at all. Also, i remember a brothel seven sisters wich had hidden rooms to spy "the action" in the bedrooms, a BDSM scene, even though the brothel was smaller, it had more content. Maybe that's what a level inspired by Thi4f can acomplish... . Even so the level is ok, but the second part of the level, the keeper halls, well that's the most empty part of the level, and the main objective is just there with no story behind how it was there, or any puzzle involved or anything... it was just there, and you just stumble upon it. Also, the halls are amazing, but it's so big that makes the emptiness feels more aparent. Anyway, it would be awesome to have som keeper ghosts here and there, a link between previous levels like character that went missing on the brothel to be found dead down there, some notes mentioning those orbs in the water.

In the end I had fun, but mostly because of 1st mission, that alone makes this FM one of the best. But mission 2 should be released later with a more fleshed out.

Yeah, I liked the brothel but the keeper halls were a little too empty for my tastes. I don't remember the exact missions, but there have been some where the last part goes into some cool unexplored ruins... and the only thing there is is awesome architecture with little to find in there. Often feels like a bit of a waste of nice architecture, because the architecture in that place is definitely something.