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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)

#41

Post by EvanAnderson »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #23
burmask wrote: post #6

People talk about the graphics, but it was the crescendo and decrescendo of guard sounds/singing/footsteps in Thief that made it one of the most immersive games I’ve ever played.

Yeah, the graphics were honestly kinda underwhelming, in particular the models were behind the curve compared to contemporary titles like Half-Life, and this didn't really improve with later titles like System Shock 2, where half the horror was the distorted textures stretched across the faces of the models. I think what modern games have lost, that some of these late 90s titles absolutely nailed (Thief in particular…

I never played Thief, so I can't compare two. I was really impressed w/ System Shock 2.

re: the graphics - I don't remember being particularly underwhelmed by the graphics, but I didn't play many contemporary titles to compare it to. I was drawn-in by the System Shock franchise, but otherwise didn't really game.

For me the horror element came from the voice acting on the audio journals, the voices of "the many", and those goddamned cyborg assassins.

Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)

#42

Post by nylonstrung »

pawelduda wrote: post #29

Whaat, 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…

Try the Dark Parade mod campaign. It's so much better than the vanilla missions. Some of the best modding I've ever seen

Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)

#43

Post by nylonstrung »

Even cooler is that Entity-Component System was literally invented to create this game, in the form of the Dark Object System.

It's one of the most successful patterns in game dev and it's remarkable it came from 90s game dev where "composition over inheritance" was not at all a virtue like it is today

Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)

#44

Post by OldOneEye »

I really hope the author of this article can read this comment:

I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the excellent games that you all built in that era. Thief 1 and 2 are part of my formative games. I played it when I was a teen. The lore, the ambient, the thrill of playing a non combat game (well, at least until you get the sword to beat the bad guys in the last stages, in Thief 1). I could never like mainstream games to the same extent all my friends did after playing Thief 1 and 2. They may have had better graphics, but they did not have the same soul, passion and love that those games had.

It was with a lot of sadness that I read about the demise of Looking Glass studio.

To add a funny anecdote to this, I enjoyed the game even though I barely understood the dialogue and text, being a Spaniard. But it was one of those games that sparked my interest to learn English (alongside Zelda, A link to the past xDD)

Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)

#45

Post by shahar2k »

nylonstrung wrote: post #42
pawelduda wrote: post #29

Whaat, 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…

Try the Dark Parade mod campaign. It's so much better than the vanilla missions. Some of the best modding I've ever seen

I found out about that one through mortismal games and loved it, i actually played through that campaign almost entirely on a stream deck!

I don't know though if it would be as good to someone who's played it first before the main game(s)

Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)

#46

Post by pawelduda »

nylonstrung wrote: post #42
pawelduda wrote: post #29

Whaat, 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…

Try the Dark Parade mod campaign. It's so much better than the vanilla missions. Some of the best modding I've ever seen

Looks like I'm in for a treat. Enjoying TDP quite a lot already :)

Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)

#47

Post by chroma_zone »

pawelduda wrote: post #29

Whaat, 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…

TFix is very nice but unfortunately removes the software renderer described in this article. It's very difficult to get the original exe working on modern systems.

TFix also brings back the spatial audio / EAX support that was broken by Vista, which is a huge part of the experience IMO. Highly recommend installing and configuring OpenAL Soft for this game.

Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)

#48

Post by ronjouch »

nylonstrung wrote: post #42
pawelduda wrote: post #29

Whaat, 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…

Try the Dark Parade mod campaign. It's so much better than the vanilla missions. Some of the best modding I've ever seen

> the Dark Parade

You probably meant The Black Parade (a mod for Thief I), not to be confused with The Dark Mod (a standalone thief-inspired game based on the Doom3 engine)

Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)

#49

Post by rimunroe »

pawelduda wrote: post #38
tannhaeuser wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

> 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

I can't recall if they're in Thief 1, but in Thief 2 at least there are guards with helmets which are immune to the blackjack, but afaik none of them are immune to gas arrows/mines.

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