It’s wild how much Thief achieved with pure software rendering. The lighting and atmosphere aged better than a lot of early hardware-accelerated games—especially how darkness was integral to gameplay, not just visuals. Constraints really pushed smarter design.
The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
51–60 of 65 posts
Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
#52[flagged]
Ruby coders couldn’t even imagine being this competent.
Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
#53Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
#54Earlier 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…
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Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
#55Never played Thief, but I logged a lot of hours in Unreal, 1998. I was (and still am) amazed at how full-featured the software renderer was. I always wished I could peek at the code behind it. If memory serves, the only thing my 3dfx Voodoo3 could do that software-only mode could not was surface reflections. Maybe something with colored lighting too, it's been a long time. Point is, it was a decent enough substitute…
The (incomplete) Thief2 and System Shock2 source code was leaked years ago from a Dreamcast development kit. I imagine a Google search would find you a download. I think I saved a copy too, someplace.
Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
#56Also worth mentioning for Thief fans: The Dark Mod started as a Doom 3 mod, but now is a completely standalone, free and open source game: https://www.thedarkmod.com/main/ Hundreds of missions, an amazing Radiant fork maintained by the team, as well as an active and passionate community. They are awesome.
What's the best way to find the high quality missions or campaigns in those lists? Ones that are closer to what the Thief 1 and 2 games were?
Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The weird graphics is mostly because they used extreme low poly models with low res textures compared to contemporary titles. This is a bigger complaint with the relatively late System Shock 2, which was just a few months apart from e.g. Deus Ex.
Compare:
SS2 unmodded: https://imgur.com/psb30TT
Deus Ex unmodded: https://imgur.com/TWjoNSV
Obviously neither game is a marvel of graphical fidelity, but SS2 has these distorted proportions that make the characters look like inflatable sex dolls that were stored in the same supply closet as the Necronomicon and now they're all weird and whispering of incomprehensible horrors. Like the polygons don't really correspond to the anatomy of the character at all, which is something that contemporary games were beginning to figure out.
I really like SS2 (and Thief 1 & 2, and Deus Ex for that matter), and I don't really mind them not looking that great. But man they did not look that great by late 90s early 00s standards..
Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
#58[deleted]
Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The weird graphics is mostly because they used extreme low poly models with low res textures compared to contemporary titles. This is a bigger complaint with the relatively late System Shock 2, which was just a few months apart from e.g. Deus Ex. Compare: SS2 unmodded: https://imgur.com/psb30TT Deus Ex unmodded: https://imgur.com/TWjoNSV Obviously neither game is a marvel of graphical fidelity, but SS2 has these dist…
I got a good laugh out of your description of the models in SS2. I definitely see it.
Re: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
#60I have used this article as inspiration for my own software renderer. The portal-based clipping algorithm described in it is great, but sometimes too slow for very complex scenes.