On a related note, I believe the the engine they developed for the first two Thief games and System Shock 2, the Dark Engine, was also the first to use an entity-component system.
The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
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Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
#32I was amazed at the immersive nature of the thief game play. Used to love the game and it was quite different from the other FPS type games of that era.
Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
#33To Thief heads who played I and II and want more of it: play The Black Parade, an enormous mod 7 years in the making that is actually an entire new game. New gigantic maps full of secrets, style faithful to the original, weird universe, new story with cutscenes and voice acting. https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152429 I am not affiliated, just a fan.
How would you compare The Black Parade to The Dark Project?
Both are fabulous community efforts, and I agree with the sister comment by HN user klaussilveira. Now, they are very different things:
- The Black Parade is a single experience: one campaign with a beginning and end, on the oldschool Thief I foundations. Nothing more, nothing less.
- The Dark Project as of today is more of a “platform”: a modern base engine for creators and players who want a shinier Thief, and who acknowledge that with today’s graphical standards comes extra effort to create a satisfying map/campaign (need bigger assets, less “blunt” architecture, etc). To add to the “platform-ness”: as of today, out-of the box TDP has only a couple built-in missions and no meaty story arc. There are many excellent 3rd-party Fan Missions (maps in Thief lingo, go visit https://www.thiefguild.com/fanmissions/ ) for TDP, but it’s not “a game” the way Black Parade is clearly a game. This is not a judgement call and I had an excellent time with many TDP maps, and community members do discuss expanding the campaign & story... but for now it’s more of a technical foundation to download maps and tinker with, than “a game” :) . You can do some spelunking on the TDP forums if you want more details, the maintainers make no mystery of this.
Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
#34[flagged]
Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
#35To Thief heads who played I and II and want more of it: play The Black Parade, an enormous mod 7 years in the making that is actually an entire new game. New gigantic maps full of secrets, style faithful to the original, weird universe, new story with cutscenes and voice acting. https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152429 I am not affiliated, just a fan.
From what I've heard The Black Parade mission style hews close to the style of Thief: The Dark Project. If your tastes are closer to Thief II: The Metal Age (or you'd just like more taffing about), I enjoyed T2X: Shadows of the Metal Age[1] quite a bit. The voice acting was pretty rough in places, but I found that kinda charming. I've also heard good things about Death's Cold Embrace[2]. [1] https://www.thief2x.com/…
Agreed, thx for the additions :) . While we’re here sharing Thief goodies:
1. The essentials: TFix (https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134733) and T2Fix (https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149669)
2. The best place to find Fan Missions (FMs) is https://www.thiefguild.com/fanmissions/ , and the best GUI to manage & play them is https://github.com/FenPhoenix/AngelLoader .
3. For a good “enhanced, yet true to the original” visual textures + models pack, grab https://github.com/NamelessVoice/Thief-Enhancement-Pack
4. These days even Thief III is enjoyable, thanks to the https://www.moddb.com/mods/thief-3-sneaky-upgrade megapatch doing crazy things like stapling back together maps that had to be cut-with-loading-screen due to Xbox limitations!
Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
#36Whaat, I started replaying the game literally a few days ago, and now I see this on HN! The graphics and obviously didn't age well, although there are some higher res texture packs, which help when you play it in 4k. The Steam version worked for me almost out of the box, after patching it with TFix The gameplay is okay-ish, probably due to nostalgia, but the AI is not the smartest, which creates a lot of fun situatio…
Thief pretty much defined the stealth game genre, at least it did for me, where it's game over basically if you try to go all out on enemies. I may be wrong but I don't believe cleaning a level of enemies is the way forward in later levels.
Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
#37I think I played Thief 1 & 2 over 15 times in total, no hyperbole. I really, really like the atmosphere, the world building and Hammerites old-english and tenets (https://youtu.be/1gnGITh1cw8)... all of it. I even created a question to understand a specific phrase construction: https://english.stackexchange.com/q/588796. Good times.
Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
#38Whaat, I started replaying the game literally a few days ago, and now I see this on HN! The graphics and obviously didn't age well, although there are some higher res texture packs, which help when you play it in 4k. The Steam version worked for me almost out of the box, after patching it with TFix The gameplay is okay-ish, probably due to nostalgia, but the AI is not the smartest, which creates a lot of fun situatio…
Thief pretty much defined the stealth game genre, at least it did for me, where it's game over basically if you try to go all out on enemies. I may be wrong but I don't believe cleaning a level of enemies is the way forward in later levels.
You can get rid of all human enemies by knocking them unconscious (I play expert mostly so killing is forbidden anyway). But right, if you go rambo even on lower difficulty levels, you'll most likely get overwhelmed
For the rest, you're limited by supplies you buy or find but I believe it's possible to clear mostly everything if you don't miss. I know because I found myself running around the entire map to find the remaining 1% of the loot goal
Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
But I remember Unreal being unreachable for me at that time because I couldn't even dream of getting a graphics accelerator and it won't even start with out a one, or was it the sound card requirement that was the blocker?
Everything up to (and including) Unreal Tournament had software rendering. It was one of the selling points when its competitor (Quake 3) was Hardware-accelerated-only.
Deus Ex too.
Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
#40I'd love a black mesa style recreation of thief. I played it recently (its older than me) and I enjoyed it a lot, but its pretty rough in parts for me and my modern sensibilities.
The Dark Project is really cool as a platform, and seems like it'd be ideal for that sort of recreation, but the community seems pretty nervous of the legalities of such a project which is a shame.