Thief: Deadly Shadows has gone Gold

[Alluvian]

No, it didn't force 800x600, but for some reason it was a slideshow at 1024x768.  I am VERY forgiving of poor frame rates.  But we are talking low single digits here in very uncomplicated scenes.

[edited to add]

For comparison sake it ran about as well as the totally unoptomized doom 3 alpha engine on my system at that resolution.  It ran 'okay' at 800x600 but looked like shit of course.

[Fabricated]

I picked it up just a couple hours ago and installed it a bit ago. I'm at the free-wandering city part now.

Short impressions:
-Guards are definitely smarter. You aren't completely impossible to find if it's dark anymore. If a guard bumps into you in a dark hallway, he won't obliviously walk into you anymore. They seem almost hyper sensitive to noise now as well, but guards REALLY like talking to themselves at every opportunity.

-Since you can seamlessly switch from third-person to first-person person view, your whole body always has to be taken into consideration when leaning and moving. It's kinda cool to look straight down and see your feet instead of a floating shadow or something.

-The game runs like shit (3Ghz P4, 1GB PC3200 RAM, Radeon 9800XT), but slightly better than Deus Ex 2. The environments are larger too, but not by very much. The lighting and texturing are a notch higher too. The models are nicer too IMO.

-Decent voice acting.

-Still feels like thief. I'm rather pleased to say that it still feels like thief through and through, and the only "dumbing down" you have to notice is the fact that loot sparkles now (I don't have any problem with it, but the purists at TTLG didn't like it).

-The new lockpicking system is kinda cool, and pickpocketing is much harder.

-The physics and ragdoll stuff is most likely unchanged from Deus Ex 2. Guards flop backwards into odd positions after being blackjacked.

[Comstar]

Are there missions where you cannot kill anyone in them?  If so, this could easily be game breaking if a guard gets 'stuck' staring down a hallway you have to pass.  There may be no way past except to kill him.  .

Shound't be, there were locations like that in I and II. You just had either to find another way around, douse the light nearby, or distract them to go look at something else.

[SurfD]

dinner plates my friend, always fun to watch the guards collect around that dinner plate you just tossed down another hallway.

[Comstar]

this thread says there's going to be a 450 meg 2 level (training and misson 1) DEMO released TODAY.

I now have a sudden need to install Thief I and II and play them on expert.

[schild]

My problem with stealth games or the current crop (which consists of Splinter Cell PT, Hitman Contracts, and Thief 3 is that they are all wildly different. Four years ago I would have said Thief was my favorite series. After playing this game for a bit, Splinter Cell is my favorite with Hitman coming a close second and Thief 3 trailing...far...behind. This game just feels infinitely more empty than the other 2. I know stealth games are supposed to have a certain amount of emptiness to them, but Thief just feels like I'm wasting my time (also how I felt with Morrowind - which I also bought on release day). I'm hoping Thief 3 picks up, or I'll be turning back to finish Hitman and Splinter Cell - both of which I'm about halfway through.

[Alluvian]

-The game runs like shit (3Ghz P4, 1GB PC3200 RAM, Radeon 9800XT), but slightly better than Deus Ex 2. The environments are larger too, but not by very much. The lighting and texturing are a notch higher too. The models are nicer too IMO.

Ugh.  So it will be 800x600 again for me and my TI4200.  Fuck that.  I will at least try the demo though.  Splinter cell looks much better than this game and the shadows are just as good if not better (just going by T3 screenshots and videos).  There is no excuse for this game to run like a total dog.  Especially since the physics engine implementation detracts from the game instead of adding to it.  The ragdolls look like shit in both this and DX2.  Far Cry and Max Payne 2 are probably the best ragdolls I have seen so far.  Halflife 2 in videos also looks to do them well.

I am at the third level in hitman I think.  I am sort of fizzled out on it due to the game not only being identical to Hitman 2, but the levels are even feeling like repeats.

Still have not picked up Pandora Tomorrow yet.  Not sure what version I want.  I am leaning toward the xbox one because I like using my xbox when my pc is busy downloading.  But I hate the thought of playing a merc in fps with the thumbstick.  grrrrr.

[Sky]

I guess being on f13 staff trumps my report that the game is running like buttah at 1024x768, 4xfsaa, 4xaf, all ingame options maxed. It did chug at 16xfsaa, 16xaf...but I expect most games to chug at that level of scene processing. With normal settings, it's just fine, certainly not a 'dog'.

The ragdoll for corpses does suck. My biggest complaint is that this game was obviously pushed out the door. Lots of tiny bugs that should have been addressed. Right now those minor yet almost omnipresent quibbles are keeping it firmly at 4/5 for me, because despite engine quirks, it's a true thief game and I'm quite happy with it so far. I mean, come on, I've barely begun to play it and already I lifted the reward money for killing me from the pockets of the killers, then snuck past them. That's Garrett in action imo.

I like neither Hitman nor Splinter Cell, fwiw, but I've only played the xbox versions and I can't stand console FPS controls.

If you have any problem with the AI being too easy, restart on a higher difficulty level. They made the default level way to forgiving for series veterans (I played the first two on the highest difficulty setting). I play to the 'ghost' standard, though I sometimes settle for slightly less.

[Sky]

Alluvian - the weak piece on your video card as new games come out is the abysmal pixel shaders - I just upgraded a couple months ago from a ti4400 to a 9800 pro.

[Alluvian]

I am aware of that sky, but doesn't far cry also extensively use pixel shaders?  That game runs fine for me.  And your system running the engine like butter means nothing to me as I don't have your system.  I also don't have Fabricated's system so I will have to try the demo to see my luck.

Anyway, the problem is budget you see.  It is called being in debt and having a gamer wife who desperately needs a full system overhaul.  Our otherwise decent midrange dell if hamstrung by only allowing 528 megs of ram (piece of shit mb).  Since it is all fucking proprietary any mb replacement will also need a new case and power supply.  Any change in MY video card will surely require an upgrade to hers as well.  So it is not a simple upgrade path for me unfortunately.  The wife is okay with her system now, but without at least 1 gig of ram and a 9800 range video card that system will DIE when EQ2 comes out (she will at least play the first free month).  Her system is the critical upgrade system now, not mine.

I don't believe that I can run farcry great and have to upgrade for a comparably poor looking game like thief3.  Maybe farcry does a better job turning off shaders that my card does not run well, but then in my opinion if thief 3 does NOT do the same, it is a fault of the game, not my system.

Maybe the dx2 engine just does not like my system.  Hell, you complained about Hitman 3 running horribly for you and I get consistent 20+ fps with default settings and resolution turned UP from default.   I admit I don't run ANY AF or AA as I find them both pointless system resource hogs.  If I see jaggies I will turn up my resolution for IMO a bigger visual boost with less performance hit.

[HaemishM]

I don't get it. Thief 3 and DE2 both ran on modified versions of the current Unreal engine. How can they have been modified so badly that they run like shit? The UT2004 Demo ran like butter on my 1.2 Ghz AMD with 384 MB RAM and a GF2 MX 400 at 1024x768, and ok on my fiancee's old AMD 800mhz Duron with 192 MB RAM. How could they fuck up an engine that scaled that well? By not allowing it to scale right?

[Sky]

I am aware of that sky, but doesn't far cry also extensively use pixel shaders?

I thought ThiefIII's shadows were a shader program, I could be wrong. Shadows were what were killing my performance before I pulled back the aa/af, and that's with decent dx9 hardware. Afaik, there were only one or two settings that required pixel shader 2.0 performance in Far Cry (ultra high water is the only one I can think of).

Hell, you complained about Hitman 3 running horribly for you

No, I didn't. I've only tried 1 and 2.

And budget stuff, hey man, I hear ya. I took a stab at being a professional musician. I know broke. That's why I hate it when people think I'm bragging about my hardware, when I'm really just excited about it. I come in peace, man. And hey, having a gaming wife is so much better than having a wife that doesn't understand gaming at all and thinks it's all because you hate her or some other girly idea they sometimes get.

As to why Ion pooped out a mediocre engine, well, I dunno, I'm too busy being relieved that they managed to deliver a Thief experience in gameplay.

[Sky]

Does UT2k4 use the Havok physics?

[Murgos]

I'm running Thief 3 now on a Athlon 2200+ and a Radeon 8500 64MB and at 1024x768 with shadow detail at full and bloom on and I have little problem even with fairly complecated scenes.  I'm not far into the game so by complicated I mean the courtyard with the two guards and the moving lightsource.  I had at least 30fps in that scene.

My secret?  NoCd crack...  Fuck you Securerom.

[HaemishM]

UT2004 and Havok physics? I think so.

As for SecureRom and SafeRom and all that... yeah, fuck them.

[Fabricated]

I guess being on f13 staff trumps my report that the game is running like buttah at 1024x768, 4xfsaa, 4xaf, all ingame options maxed. It did chug at 16xfsaa, 16xaf...but I expect most games to chug at that level of scene processing. With normal settings, it's just fine, certainly not a 'dog'.

Describe "Buttah". I say "buttah" is 60FPS. Thief 3 didn't experience any of the serious frame hits that DX2 subjected me to, but it certainly wasn't screaming along by any standards.

[geldonyetich]

Criminey, when will those silly publishers learn that Securerom doesn't stop internet piracy while just hurting the game performance?   Anywho, game plays reasonably good for me, but the frame rate is still considerably lower than Unreal Tourney 2004, which is a far more optimized engine, it seems.

However, I forgive em' because I know the Thief 3/Deus Ex 2 engine is working a lot harder.   While it was indeed initally based on the Unreal engine, they did massive in-house modifications to it.  

Thief 3/Deus Ex 2 were one of the first engines to really include Havok physics (I see a Gamespot announcement about it's implementation in Thief 3 from back in 11/2001) but Max Payne 2 beat them both to market (and had a somewhat better looking balance on the physics to boot).  I think the physics in MP2 are actually a little simpler than DE2, but they look better because they're implemented right where it counts.   Try blowing up a barrel in both games and MP2 will produce a more satisfying result, but DE2 will produce a more complicated result.

What really sets Thief 3/Deus Ex 2 apart, and the probably the reason why the engine chugs so much, is that they have light done right.   Lights don't just cast shadows of mobiles, they cast shadows on everything, including the environment around them.    Find a light, any light, and you'll notice it can cast shadows from something as simple as the bumps on a stone wall.    There's a big difference between a flickering torch and a steady electric light.    If you find a low-slung light source, try dropping something in front of it - that object will cast a very realistic shadow, which you can then hide in.    Try that in Max Payne 2 or Far Cry: Very few engines are capable of pulling this off.  

You'll also notice the AI seems to have more info at it's disposal in Thief 3.   I've noticed when guards spot me they're often saying something like, "There he is... in the street!" and when looking around for me they'll say something like, "I think I'll go search by that barrel..." or "I think I'll go search by that bookcase..".   When they greet eachother on the street, there's a definate difference in dialogue if a commoner is greeting a guard versus another commoner.    There must be many hidden triggers in the game that provide the AI with this kind of capacity.

So yeah, Thief 3's engine definately seems slower, but there's many hints there that the reason is because it's genuinely working harder.

[Sky]

No chugging, no slideshow, no stutter. Smooth video rendering. My only complaint is that I can't seem to get a widescreen resolution.

[Sky]

Lights don't just cast shadows of mobiles, they cast shadows on everything, including the environment around them.

Yeah, I noticed Garrett casts shadows upon himself, wasn't that some big technology DOOM3 was pimping early on?

[Alluvian]

Quote:
Hell, you complained about Hitman 3 running horribly for you  

No, I didn't. I've only tried 1 and 2.

Sorry, I guess I forgot who made that comment then.

As an update, I finished the tutorial and am playing through the first level in 800x600 on my 2500 barton and TI4200.  Shadows are at the default minimum.  It is running decent for me, I will try 1024x768 and some experimentation with the shadow slider after work.  If it can handle 1024 I will probably buy it.  I like what I see so far, but let me just rant a tiny bit.

Why the FUCK are they wasting cpu cycles on the ragdoll physics?  They look like utter SHIT in this game.  Please just animate the damn death.  EVERY single kill or knock unconsious has looked utterly AWFUL.  And I mean EVERY ... SINGLE... ONE.  Legs bending backwards, back contorting, UGH.

/rant off

The gameplay itself seems pretty good, although I am SUPER early in the game and too early to really comment on it.  The 800x600 is assaulting my eyes though, so if the game vomits like dx2 when I put that to at least 1024 then I am just going to uninstall my ill gotten game and not touch it till it is in the bargain bin one day after getting a new vidcard.  I will have played less of it than the demo will have in it anyway.

I happen to like the sparkly loot myself.  It always annoyed me in the first two having to pick up EVERY single thing never knowing what was useless and what was loot.  So far in this game I have seen the exact same model used for 'valuable loot' as is used later on in the same level as nothing more than something to throw.

I kind of with the map showed me where I was... I know it is part of the gameplay that the map is very undetailed, but I get lost pretty easy.  No problems yet, but I know I will eventually.

Oh, and the model for gariot looks HIDEOUS to me.  Ugh.  *shudder*  Good reason to NOT play in third person I suppose.  maybe I didn't follow the game enough, but does he have a cyborg eye?  It glows in the dark... I would think that would be a bad thing for a thief.

Enough nitpicking for me.  The game lives or dies on 1024x768 tonight.

[Big Gulp]

maybe I didn't follow the game enough, but does he have a cyborg eye?

Damn, sounds like you didn't follow it at all...  He lost the eye in the first game, the hammerites gave him the mechanical one, and that's why you could have nifty stuff like zooming and the spy orbs in the second game.

[Alluvian]

Nope, all thief games have pretty much bored me to uninstall in about 3 missions flat.  Not sure if this one is any different or not yet.

[Sky]

Why the FUCK are they wasting cpu cycles on the ragdoll physics?

I agree 100%. Put the geek toys away until they work, dammit. Imo, from what I've seen about Havok physics, it = teh suck. I might catch some shit for that, and at least the boxes and barrels don't go flying the way I've heard they do in DE:IW. But they seem pretty crappy to me.

Also, I need to go back and check, because I haven't fired an arrow from far enough to notice, but I was trying to kill a beetle I thought was going to attack me (it's just there to make noise, I guess) and it seems broadhead arrows have no arc? A few arrows (like the fire arrow) traditionally in the series had a flat trajectory, but most arrows flew normally.

I tried to hide one guy I KO'd for about ten minutes, trying to get his body to lie normally, and it went from that arched back to legs through the floor to shaking like someone on heroin withdrawal.

Since I'm a Thief fanboi, I can pretty much overlook most of this stuff, since they have pegged the gameplay pretty well, but sheesh. Again, it just feels like it was rushed out the door.

It always annoyed me in the first two having to pick up EVERY single thing never knowing what was useless and what was loot.

Actually, you could tell by the shape and texture which loot was worthwhile and which was junk in the first two.

Nope, all thief games have pretty much bored me to uninstall in about 3 missions flat.

Well, sheesh, whattya expect? :P The reason I didn't try out Hitman 3 was that I didn't like the first two :)

[Alluvian]

I have this odd compulsion so like the Thief series.  something inside me says I SHOULD like these games.  I am hoping I actually like this one.  If so maybe I can go back and enjoy the others.

Bored to uninstall is actually pretty innacurate.  Annoyed to uninstall is more like it.  I got very annoyed at guards who would VERY inconsistently aggro for apparently no reason.  I could save and do the same thing ten times and be caught 2 of them for no reason even though I didn't do anything noticably wrong.  Being spotted when I should have been hidden and NOT being seen other times I was right out in the open also annoyed me.  I never played it enough to see if there were actual reasons for this or not.  I also found things like moss arrows and rope arrows abit too silly.

So if I like one of these games then I may be able to play the others and tolerate or overlook the issues I have with them.  That is my foolish hope at least.

As far as havok, it CAN work.  I think max payne 2 used it well, although objects in the game didn't have enough friction.  The ragdolls were decent though.  Far Cry probably to date has the best use of Havok.  Better use of friction, bullets going through weak objects, GREAT ragdolls.  DX2 and Thief3 (so far) have used this technology and made it a DETRIMENT to their game instead of a feature.  Havok CAN be made to work well, but often it is not used correctly.  HL2 looks like it will set a new standard for physics.  Doom3 is also bragging a lot about them.

[Rasix]

I have this odd compulsion so like the Thief series.  something inside me says I SHOULD like these games.  I am hoping I actually like this one.  If so maybe I can go back and enjoy the others.

I think we were separated at birth.  I like the concept of these games. I really want to like them. THEY SOUND GODDAMN NIFTY.  But the last time I tried Thief 2 I got annoyed at the guard aggro and just picked up another game and never gave it a second look.  

To be fair, I think I picked up Thief II about 3 days before I got my xbox.  I was mired in that thing for quite a while before I came up for air.

I'll give this one a shot.  Demo out anyhoo.

[Big Gulp]

I'm surprised, I just downloaded the demo, and as long as I turn off AA I can run it really smoothly at 1024X768.  This is with a 1.4 Athlon (yeah, I know, need to upgrade), but a GeForce FX 5200.  I also have 1.5 GB of RAM, so that probably helps out a hell of a lot.

Yeah, so far it's Thief.  No real complaints except for the stupid rubber doll physics, and the fact that I need to stand up before I can blackjack or backstab.  I even like the 3rd person mode.

[Alluvian]

Yup.  Runs well for me so far.  Only fear now is that I hear they have included zombies.  Which sucked ass in the first one from what I hear.  This is not an action game folks, don't put in shit that you can't sneak past.

As far as blackjacking or killing with a knife from behind, it works fine for me while crouched.  I do it all the time.  The distance is abit more finicky though.

I wish more places were labeled on the map or had readable signs.  Garret would know his own damn town. When they say xyz is hidden in blowjob armory I should fucking know where blowjob armory is.  The way the game is setup I can never even read a sign because there are guards by most of them.  So I end up breaking into every single little shop I can hoping one is the blowjob armory.  So far I have robbed a poor tavern owner and killed all his clientelle (although none of them saw it coming), and I have robbed a gemcutter who was a far cry from noble.

My sound cuts out on me every hour or so as well and I have to do a full system reboot to get it back.  F-ing annoying, but I have had lots of issues with this onboard soundcard so I don't really blame Thief for that.

[Rasix]

Shot a noise maker arrow, CTD, killed all voice sound as I was unable to hear the announcers in Chaos League.

Nifty.  Sometimes I really fucking hate this onboard sound.

[Murgos]

Nifty.  Sometimes I really fucking hate this onboard sound.

I hear ya, I'm seriously considering dropping some bucks on a SB Audigy.

The problem there is my local mail order place (it's mail order but it's local so I can call it in and go pick it up RIGHT THEN and they are very liberal with returns) has several different good cards.

An Audigy ES OEM for $45 and Audigy 2  ZS for $91 and an Audigy Platinum ZS for $191 and finally they have a SB Live 5.1 for $30.

I want surround sound and EAX, which they all have, and long experience with sound cards tells me that I'm no audiophile so is it worth it to go the extra $60 bones for the Audigy 2 ZS over the SB Live?  Does anyone know what it offers over an Audigy ES?

Any help is appreciated, even if it's just a link to some audiophiles condecending review.

P.S.  There is no way I'm dropping $190 smackers on a sound card that for 99% of my purposes will sound identical to a 15 year old SB 64.

[Sky]

I also found things like moss arrows and rope arrows abit too silly.

I miss rope arrows, those were fun. I'm withholding judgment on the climbing gloves until I get them, but it'll be tough to match the coolness of the ropes, trying to find a good wooden beam to plunk it into so that you could not only scale whatever you were scaling, but retrieve the rope arrow. I did entire missions in the earlier games with one rope arrow. I guess it's a tradition thing.

I find it very odd that not only am I using onboard sound, but it sounds great and isn't buggy nor instable. I've got the ASUS A7N8X with the Soundstorm chip (born in the xbox) for real-time DD5.1 encoding. It's not EAX, but it is fully positional...and free...

I, too, have been looking around for the blowjob armory, heh. Though after robbing the gem cutter, I saved him from thugs, in case I need him later in the game, and no tavern patrons were injured in the fleecing of the tavern :) I'm wicked rusty, though, not near Ghost performance at all...

[Ezdaar]

I may be in the minority here but I think SB has gone to hell with the Live series of cards. I've had nothing but problems with them. Find yourself a cheap Hercules Fortissimo III or something. It will do EAX, EAX2, Direct Sound, A3D, etc. and not have all the wierd issues the SB cards have.

[Fabricated]

Right now I'm attempting to lift a ratty old hand off of the Pagans, but I'm somewhat stuck. You have to make offerings of water, moss, and blood at an altar, and I can't figure out how to offer the fucking blood.

I tried throwing a dead body onto the altar, didn't work. Tried shooting the body so it bled, didn't work. So yeah, I'm kinda out of ideas unless there's a vial of blood somewhere I need.

I didn't have the patience to ghost this area since the male pagans can make themselves run really really fucking fast, so I just knifed or shot in the eye every guard I saw. Pagans? What Pagans?

[Murgos]

I may be in the minority here but I think SB has gone to hell with the Live series of cards. I've had nothing but problems with them. Find yourself a cheap Hercules Fortissimo III or something. It will do EAX, EAX2, Direct Sound, A3D, etc. and not have all the wierd issues the SB cards have.

Although this sounds good I am having a problem finding the card, other than a few used ones on ebay no one seems to have them.  Not even Hercules own web site...

[Ezdaar]

I may be in the minority here but I think SB has gone to hell with the Live series of cards. I've had nothing but problems with them. Find yourself a cheap Hercules Fortissimo III or something. It will do EAX, EAX2, Direct Sound, A3D, etc. and not have all the wierd issues the SB cards have.

Although this sounds good I am having a problem finding the card, other than a few used ones on ebay no one seems to have them.  Not even Hercules own web site...

Yeah I noticed that after I posted,. I have a Hercules sound card that's a couple years old, picked it up at CompUSA I think. You might try the Turtle Beach cards, I've had good luck with them in the past.

[Fabricated]

M-Audio makes some really nice cards too I hear.