Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it, follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
[Lets Play] Thief Series, Now with Thief 2!
TVs_Frank
Registered User
Registered User
Contents:
Thief: The Dark Project (Gold)
Pages 1-5
Thief 2: The Metal Age
Pages 5-?
I feel like jumping on the Lets Play bandwagon, so here I am. After reading Dartboy's Lets Play System Shock 2, I've decided to do Thief. It's a game I think everyone should experience. It's a PC classic. I had a bitch of a time setting this up. First of all, Fraps refused to record audio on my admittedly ancient sound card so I had to fetch a newer one from another PC. Secondly, I've never recorded or encoded video before so this is all pretty new to me. Thirdly, I'm using Stage6 to upload these to. While its an awesome site that supports uploading Divx movies of any size, its rather picky about encoding and file formats. Hopefully everything will go pretty smoothly though.
Also there's a small hitch. Fraps will not record the loadout screen and reading books since they're different resolutions from the main game. Kind of a shame. I think the books in the game are very well written and provide insight to characters, plot, and setting. I'll post all of the interesting ones in spoiler tags for the sake of keeping the post short.
Thief for Taffers
Garrett: Garrett is our cynical anti-hero. Pretty much Robin Hood...if Robin Hood was a lovable asshole who stole from the rich and gave to himself. He only really cares about his own survival, but he always seems to end up saving the city.
Factions: There are three powerful factions in the world of Thief. The Keepers, of unknown origin who watch the powerful and influential people of The City to make sure the balance of power doesn't sway too far to one side. Few seem to know about them, and fewer ever see them. The Hammerites are your basic Spanish Inquisition types. Zealously religious people who believe the end always justifies the means. They worship The Builder, who supposedly taught man how to build a civilization and saved them from a pagan demon called the Trickster aka the Woodsie Lord. Finally we have the Pagans. Creepy hippies with speech impediments that live in the woods away from the city. They worship said Trickster.
The City: The City is the only known civilization in the world of Thief. Its a dark, cold place where the strong abuse the weak and no one is as innocent as they appear to be.
Engine Oddities and Epic Lulz
Thief's Dark Engine was behind the curve graphically than others for its time perhaps, but it made up for it in other areas. It had an excellent lighting system, a deeper AI system, and a lot bigger levels than other first person games. Objects could sink or float and had basic physics as well. Doors, being objects and not acual level brushes, could be damaged and bashed in with the sword...or other objects. Objects, if they have enough weight can also damage the player or enemies. This leads to the quirk of being able to throw large metal hammers at gaurds and damaging them, eventually killing them. And since it was the hammer that killed him technically and not you, No Killing objectives won't get triggered. Another favorite quirk of mine is bunny hopping. When you jump in Thief, you gain a small speed boost but you don't lose it on landing. If you can find a long enough hallway (there are several in Bafford's) you can bunny hop and gain enough speed to slam into the wall at the end and die. Best way to die in a game ever.
Part One: A Keeper's Training
Introduction:
Awright marine, we're going to teach you how to walk! This is where the Keepers take Garrett in and teach him valuable skills such as opening doors, using keys, swinging a sword wildly at a man, and playing basketball. Guards are terrible at passing though.
Videos:
Thief Intro
Training Briefing
Gameplay
Books:
There's only one readable in this mission, and that's the secret quote scroll in the B-Ball court. I'll be copy/pasting the books' code directly from the game files. Slashes are just forced carriage returns.
Next up will be Lord Bafford's Manor.
Thief: The Dark Project (Gold)
Pages 1-5
Thief 2: The Metal Age
Pages 5-?
I feel like jumping on the Lets Play bandwagon, so here I am. After reading Dartboy's Lets Play System Shock 2, I've decided to do Thief. It's a game I think everyone should experience. It's a PC classic. I had a bitch of a time setting this up. First of all, Fraps refused to record audio on my admittedly ancient sound card so I had to fetch a newer one from another PC. Secondly, I've never recorded or encoded video before so this is all pretty new to me. Thirdly, I'm using Stage6 to upload these to. While its an awesome site that supports uploading Divx movies of any size, its rather picky about encoding and file formats. Hopefully everything will go pretty smoothly though.
Also there's a small hitch. Fraps will not record the loadout screen and reading books since they're different resolutions from the main game. Kind of a shame. I think the books in the game are very well written and provide insight to characters, plot, and setting. I'll post all of the interesting ones in spoiler tags for the sake of keeping the post short.
Thief for Taffers
Garrett: Garrett is our cynical anti-hero. Pretty much Robin Hood...if Robin Hood was a lovable asshole who stole from the rich and gave to himself. He only really cares about his own survival, but he always seems to end up saving the city.
Factions: There are three powerful factions in the world of Thief. The Keepers, of unknown origin who watch the powerful and influential people of The City to make sure the balance of power doesn't sway too far to one side. Few seem to know about them, and fewer ever see them. The Hammerites are your basic Spanish Inquisition types. Zealously religious people who believe the end always justifies the means. They worship The Builder, who supposedly taught man how to build a civilization and saved them from a pagan demon called the Trickster aka the Woodsie Lord. Finally we have the Pagans. Creepy hippies with speech impediments that live in the woods away from the city. They worship said Trickster.
The City: The City is the only known civilization in the world of Thief. Its a dark, cold place where the strong abuse the weak and no one is as innocent as they appear to be.
Engine Oddities and Epic Lulz
Thief's Dark Engine was behind the curve graphically than others for its time perhaps, but it made up for it in other areas. It had an excellent lighting system, a deeper AI system, and a lot bigger levels than other first person games. Objects could sink or float and had basic physics as well. Doors, being objects and not acual level brushes, could be damaged and bashed in with the sword...or other objects. Objects, if they have enough weight can also damage the player or enemies. This leads to the quirk of being able to throw large metal hammers at gaurds and damaging them, eventually killing them. And since it was the hammer that killed him technically and not you, No Killing objectives won't get triggered. Another favorite quirk of mine is bunny hopping. When you jump in Thief, you gain a small speed boost but you don't lose it on landing. If you can find a long enough hallway (there are several in Bafford's) you can bunny hop and gain enough speed to slam into the wall at the end and die. Best way to die in a game ever.
Part One: A Keeper's Training
Introduction:
Awright marine, we're going to teach you how to walk! This is where the Keepers take Garrett in and teach him valuable skills such as opening doors, using keys, swinging a sword wildly at a man, and playing basketball. Guards are terrible at passing though.
Videos:
Thief Intro
Training Briefing
Gameplay
Books:
There's only one readable in this mission, and that's the secret quote scroll in the B-Ball court. I'll be copy/pasting the books' code directly from the game files. Slashes are just forced carriage returns.
Spoiler:
Next up will be Lord Bafford's Manor.
TVs_Frank on
Posts
It's also interesting to compare the two games. They use the same engine, but in different ways. SS2 lacks some of the physics and lighting Theif has, or at least I've never noticed them.
It will be interesting to see both games compared side-by-side.
Proceed.
Let 'em eat fucking pineapples!
Fun shouldn't be this hard.
Or maybe I'm just lazy.
"Yorick tells me the Hammers are gonna close down Cragscleft..."
"Really? And what are they going to do with the poor sods they have locked up in there?"
"Uh, I dunno. Throw 'em into a well or somethin'. Anyhow, they just don't got enough guys no more."
The dimwit guard's grizzled voice made it hilarious.
SS2 actually uses the same version of the Dark Engine as Thief 2, one of the main upgrades over the version used in Thief 1 being 16-bit color. Woo!
Also of note: the grizzled-voiced guard, typically known as Benny, reappears throughout the series and is actually voiced by the same guy who does Garrett, Stephen Russell. I believe at times the voice-set is used for generic guards, but via some of the conversations in some levels, it's Benny.
To me, taking a ton of pictures is harder. Maybe I just think backwards. Anyway, the real plus side on videos is that everyone will get to hear the conversations that guards have, which as SteevL stated, are often hilarious.
Taking pictures is a pain in the ass. I missed a ton of excellent shots in my LP thread, and covering action can be just painful. The only real problem with video is having to re-record if you don't get a good audio sync.
Dealing with Dosbox for recording videos is not worth it. My next LP thread might be video if it is something that I can record a bit easier, i.e. something that I can get running natively in Windows. Either that or buy a capture card and do a console game.
You wanna come with?
I have the Xbox one(Deadly Shadows - 3?) and a PC copy of The Metal Age(2?). I've never seen a copy of the original.
I don't think I'm missing much, story-wise, from what I've seen?
Welcome to the world on this side.
Have you finished T3? It references T1. And you end up... uh... in 2...
Just get 1 off ebay and play it first.
Let 'em eat fucking pineapples!
No zombies (except one, har har), and you actually get to do awesome Thiefly stuff such as banks. Not to mention I love the throwable eye.
Plus, it has the single-greatest level ever: the Rooftop level. I should take this time to point out it was done by the guy who went on to design the Dark Brotherhood quests in Oblivion.
I concur; I also prefer the level and enemy design in Thief 2. Plus, it's got a much better villian, although (Thief 1 story spoiler)
The only exception, of course, is Return to the Haunted Cathedral in Thief 1. By far the most frightened I've ever been playing a video game. It literally took me three years before I could summon enough courage to beat that level on the hardest difficulty setting.
Seriously, where is it? I request, nay, demand it. Taffer.
UGH!
Don't worry that was a pretty good decision it made.
I use Opera and I hate toolbars.
It appears we have reached an impasse.
Because of his robotic eye, obviously.
I'm doing Movember for Men's Health! Donate if you can - thanks.
Let 'em eat fucking pineapples!
Second of all he has a point because
The City is very expensive.
I want Bafford's manor NOW!
I'm doing Movember for Men's Health! Donate if you can - thanks.
I'm thinking of installing it and 'ninjai-ng' my way through most of it on hard mode, basically getting my objectives done as quickly and efficientley as possible, but since it will be on hard, that means not running out into the open and getting myself spotted and killed easily, I'll still have to sneak to survive, or buy loads of health potions with my loot
Yeah, I know, I mean, I could just run straight to the objective but that would be too easy, I'd like more of a challenge. I'm just looking for an excuse to play the game again and 'going through as fast and efficiently as possible' seems to be something I enjoy doing nowadays. Could be interesting for a stealth game, I mean, I played MGS3: Snake Eater this was anyway but I got into a lot of (intentional) gunfights, just because it was quicker to kill and run by than sneak around.
The video issue is a pretty common one, but there are some workarounds.
There is an alternate codec here but I have not tried it. I usually use the RegIndeo.bat method above.
Its coming up soon. I'm getting over a nasty cold right now so I'm slowed down a bit.