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| Wednesday, May 31, 2006 |
 New Thief Series DVD Art - 4:31:32 PM - Dan |
Jacob Wilson's exceptional Thief Site has been updated to include new DVD cover art for the series. In his own words...
I've updated my DVD case cover for the original Thief games (original cover posted on 10/28/04 at 2:59PM). The new cover is for the Alphapak SLIM case, which is the same size as the Thief 3 case. The new cover (as well as the old one) can be downloaded at The Keeper's Compound (http://thief.omegacron.com) and I've also got a link to the new case so people can buy it if they wish.If you've never been to his site, I'd suggest it's worth a look, especially his Library section, which contains a set of essays on the Thief universe, expanding upon it with inference and creativity on his part. Thanks Jacob!  |
| New Thief 2 Fan Mission - 3:56:48 AM - scumble |
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Today we have a new Thief 2 fan mission release from Uncadonego: The Power of Suggestion. Nightwalker commented: I thoroughly enjoyed testing this one in all its phases of development and I think Uncadonego did a terrific job. It's a wide open, explore every nook and cranny sort of mission that's great fun!
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| Tuesday, May 23, 2006 |
| Fan Art Gallery featuring The Best - 11:08:40 PM - Dan |
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The Circle’s Fan Art Gallery has been given a major overhaul. It is now an honored space for the best Thief artists, highlighting the talent of the community, hand picked by the staff of The Circle. Congratulations to all our old artists who made it into the new gallery, and plenty of encouragement for any new artists who wish to submit their work.
Today as well as launching the new gallery, we feature the newest artwork added to this selection. Please pay a visit to the galleries of Clockwork Mifune, Lady Taffer, Redface, and Rohan.
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| New Thief 3 Mission: The Bridge - 4:27:49 AM - scumble |
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This is a mission that Dom Wright has been working on for some time. The concept is based around a Bridge, unsurprisingly, and provides many open oppurtinities for looting.
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| Wednesday, May 17, 2006 |
| New Thief 1/Gold Mission - 9:46:36 AM - scumble |
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A new mission for Thief 1 and Thief Gold today by Zontik.
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| Tuesday, May 09, 2006 |
| New Thief 2 Fan Missions - 7:23:17 AM - scumble |
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From Beneath The Sands is a mission with an egyptian flavour, providing tomb-raiding goodness. Response on the forums:This is a excellent mission. Good architecture, areas to explore, puzzles and atmosphere. I'm so happy to play something that combines the best elements of the Bonehoard and the Lost City. Just over two hours, ghosting with the obvious exceptions, with only a little reloading. That's what I call immersion! I've only started this mission, but I had to jump in here to say that this is some of the best texturing I've seen in years. Bravo.
The Quiet Heat is an interesting daylight mission, reportedly with a mediterranean feel.
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| Monday, May 08, 2006 |
| Thief reference in article on level design - 5:47:33 AM - scumble |
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Thief: The Dark Project received another reference last month in an article on the history of level design in 3D computer games. I quote the relevant section below, which describes the innovative elements in historical context, particularly the key use of sound as part of the gameplay dynamic. The full article can be found on Gamasutra here. System Shock 2 is also used as an example in the paragraphs following these: The Dec 3, 1998 release of Thief: The Dark Project and the August 1999 release of System Shock 2, developed nearly simultaneously, marked the first implementations of the Dark engine. Thief was best described as a First Person Sneaker, where the object of the game was not to loudly blast through enemies, but instead to avoid detection while pilfering valuable or interesting objects. The storyline was involved and played out in animated cut scenes before and after each level, setting the stage for the action to come. The cut scenes were well done, but it was the gameplay that was novel, encouraging players to hide in the shadows and use a variety of arrows to ease their path. Thief featured truly dynamic lighting, with almost every light source able to be doused, a vital component of the gameplay. Thief is, at the very least, the spiritual ancestor of popular modern titles such as the Splinter Cell series from UbiSoft. Thief also illustrated that there was a market for titles played from a first person perspective other than violent slaughter-fests. Thief also relied heavily on audio as an element of player involvement. In most previous titles, enemies were essentially silent unless they were attacking the player. In Thief, one of the best ways to determine the location of an enemy was by their footsteps. Further, players could use the sounds made by the NPC’s to determine how aware or suspicious they were; casual whistling could indicate they were unaware of anything amiss, while yells for help would ensue should the player be spotted. Players could also use these aural capabilities to their advantage, throwing objects or using special noisemaker arrows to distract opponents. This use and recognition of audio as an important part of the immersive experience was a significant step forward, adding another vital element to level design; the placement and use of ambient audio. While ambient audio had been used in previous projects from Doom to Duke Nukem 3D and beyond, Thief was the first title to make audio a central element of the gameplay (Grossman 175-176). |
| Playing Catch-Up: Thief's Randy Smith - 3:59:58 AM - scumble |
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It seems that this wasn't posted at the time, but last December Gamasutra ran a "catch-up" article about Randy Smith, not long after he posted in the Developer Announcement forum: Smith wasn't the only one at Ion Storm suddenly thrust into a foreign position on the game, eventually released as Thief: Deadly Shadows. "It was clearly very educational," he says, of his time there, "but there's a lot of learning through failure to be dealt with. Some of it was my own personal failure, but a lot of it was also that the studio was...the entire environment was not the healthiest around. So there were definitely a lot of issues in production, and in our relationship with publisher. The studio was kind of doomed. We did a lot of things really badly, and a lot of that was because a lot of us had never done our jobs before."
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| Saturday, May 06, 2006 |
| New Thief 2 Fan Mission: Ashcourt - 4:41:27 PM - scumble |
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A new release today from Ravenhook . It's a large mission that should be a challenge for experienced players.
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| Friday, May 05, 2006 |
| April and early May Thief 2 Fan Missions - 5:56:40 PM - scumble |
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The flow of Fan Missions continued through April to bring us up to May, including a few more début releases.
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| The Small Stock Resource Contest - 9:34:40 AM - scumble |
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In early February, Yandros opened a "Small Stock Resource" Fan Mission contest, meaning that all entrants had a small size limit and were only allowed to use game resources from the original Thief 2 release. This yielded the 13 missions presented below, with Eshaktaar's Keyhunt winning with almost a quarter of the votes. However, all of the authors did some excellent work, as shown by the screenshots posted in the Fan Missions forum. The files are all of a modest size, so don't hesitate to try them out:
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| Thursday, May 04, 2006 |
| Another handful of Fan Missions - 5:59:30 PM - scumble |
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After a bit of a delay, it's time to catch up with some of the many fan missions that have been released since February, including more Thief 3 FMs that are starting to emerge more frequently.
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Travel to: Go Back / T-tc.com (home)