Help on Thief II, please.

[General Ludd]

Read the readme file in the directory.

[Zkribbler]

Ah ha! My, that was certainly well hidden.

[General Ludd]

Yeah, it looks like they put the editor in there as an after thought.

[Skanky Burns]

Thief gold is available from ebay.
Look Here

[Zkribbler]

Interesting....I hadn't thought of ebay. The bidding doesn't close until the 5th.

Right now my plans call for me to go down to Newport Beach tomorrow. There's a mall right across from where I'll be, and I'll see if it has a computer game store. If not, I come back very near the South Coast Plaza, which IIRC, used to be the largest mall in America. I know it has computer games because there I made the blunder of buying Trade Empires. My guess is that one of those two malls has Thief Gold, and if not, I can still turn to ebay.

[Ecthy]

The game is just great, I just never finished the last misison, it was too full of those damned machines.

The rest of the game was fun. After the first 5 missions it got a bit repetitive though and didn't really have any really demanding missions anymore. Especially blackjacking guys gets easy quickly.

The bank and the city quarter (mission 10) are the best of all missions

ZKribbler, I ROFLed at your reply to Osweld's comment.

[OzzyMander]

i was like when i saw this topic!
coming from a guy who first played the game trough with all difficulties and then browned the web for the "easy" ways lol.
Excellent Game all together. Cant wait for Thief III

[Zkribbler]

#$!%&*$#! I'm stuck again.

I'm in the village at the Gathering Place. All the torches are lit. I have both ruby stones. (I also have the kid's doll if that makes any difference.)

I drop one ruby in each of the eyes of the big stone face, jump in the mouth, and nothing happens. I know the rubies are "eye specific," so I've also dropped each in the opposing eye. Still, nothing happens. I know I've overlooked something really simple but what the @%&*!! is it??

[Marid Audran]

Hail again Zkribbler, hope you're enjoying The Metal Age. I'm nonplussed about your situation, because after placing the ruby stones in the eye sockets you are supposed to jump into the mouth and it'll transport you into the later half of the level. It must be a bug. You might try triggering all the apparition conversations that occur in the village, retracing your steps everywhere to see if something in the program code will "recognize" you have taken the necessary steps to advance. Beyond that you might have to restart the level, or skip the rest of it with the use of the Ctrl-Shift-End command (though it'll be pity, since "Trail of Blood" is really awesome). I'm assuming your version of Thief II is patched, version 1.18?

As to the "construction kit" on the Thief II install disc, you're referring to DromEd, and that's exactly what it is, a level editor for Thief II levels (and there was an earlier DromEd build for Thief I). I was a part of the Thief "community" for a year before moving on rather recently, and got to know a great deal of the heavy modders and mission designers who were tinkering with the game. As a result there are scores of original Fan Missions (FMs) out there, ranging from the amateurish to the majestic, straight-forward to obtuse in their objectives. Some of them surpass even the OM (Original Missions) in their scope, and enlist original voice actors for encounters in game, and include their own CG movies! There are in fact a couple of unoffical "add-ons" for Thief II in the works, both of them as ambitious in design as the original Looking Glass games, using original coders, computer artists, architecture designers, voice actors, writers, etc, all FANS. Their to be uploaded in mass downloads for public domain, when finally playtested and completed. Now that's fandom. Their names are Thief 2x (I think) and Circle of Stone and Shadow.

Anyhow, if you're interested in continuing your Thiefly experience long after Karras's plans are rusted and gone, I'll direct you to a few sites which contain the best FM repositories around. There are FMs for both Thief I and Thief II, though the best ones are for the later, IMO.

http://www.3dactionplanet.com/thief/ Thief Underground

http://www.thief-darkproject.com/missions/ Thief -- The Circle

http://www.keepofmetalandgold.com/ Keeper of Metal and Gold

You'll have to load them with a freeware program named Darkloader, so be sure to download that along with any missions, and follow instructions on-site.

Happy Taffing!

[Zkribbler]

Thanks Marid. I almost cracked a joke that I must have bought a game with a dud stone face. Now, my god, it's true! Maybe I'll try backtracking and see if there's something I haven't triggered yet.

And thanks for the sites. I've saved them & will check them out when I have more time.

[Sarxis]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
Nope. None there. I even checked the Read Me and went on the company website.

Although Thief 2 can be bought directly from them, Thief 1 and Thief 1 Gold are not available. I didn't see any announcement for a Thief 3 or a Thief construction kit.

There is a level editor on the black Thief 2 disc called Dromed.

Here is a site with Thief resources, and fan missions for Thief 1&2, and other stuff:

http://www.3dactionplanet.com/thief/

here too:

http://www.thief-darkproject.com/

[Marid Audran]

Echo in here?

By the by, there is a Thief III in development; it's being made by Ion Storm, who picked up the baton of Looking Glass, and headed by Randy Smith, one of the original mission designers and programmers, so there's little fear of a Daikatana episode. It was showcased recently at E3, though we haven't seen a build yet. It's using a heavily modified version of the Unreal II engine.

[Zkribbler]

Backtracking didn't work.
Playing the scenario over didn't work.
The Ctrl-Shift-End command didn't work.

i yam zo fuqued.

[Marid Audran]

The command is Ctrl-Alt-End to end level Zkribbler, my apologies.

If that doesn't work for whatever reason, I can mail you a compressed save at the start of the next mission ("Life of the Party," widely regarded as the best OM designed). After you load it you can click on "restart" in main menu to see the .avi movies and purchase your own loadout, if you like. Let me know how it goes.

[Ecthy]

You what? ctrl+alt+end ends a level? that is odd...

[Zkribbler]

It turns out Ctrl-Alt-Shift-End ends the level.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Marid Audran
"Life of the Party," widely regarded as the best OM designed.

I can see why! I'm not even at the party yet, and already I've discovered one secret and have made the objective of stealing 750!

[Zkribbler]

"Life of the Party" made me a much better Thief II player. It's a really huge mission--travelling across town, breaking into Angelwatch, and then travelling all the way back. This mission uses up a lot of resources. And when I left Angelwatch, I was down to my last arrow, so the trip back was difficult.

But what this hardship taught me to do was to rely on steath much more than I had before. In the earlier missions, I was happy ambushing guards from the shadows. Now, I take great pride in my sneaking-passed abilities.

I'm now playing "Casing the Joint," and wouldn't you know it, I'm stuck again. I've found the clock, used the cockoo on it, and moved the hands to twelve. Guess what?? No secret passage. I think ol' whats-his-face bought his secret passage entryway from the same people who sold the pagans their great stone face.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
. . . I've found the clock . . .

Or, more precisely, I've found a clock, but I don't know that it's the clock. It probably is, but I want to make sure. --Nope, don't anybody tell me. --Yet.