Thief III Goes Gold!

[General Ludd]

My only complaint so far - There doesn't seem to be a way of restarting a mission or saving during the briefing.

[Skanky Burns]

And already there are tips to configure the game for a much more enjoyable playing experience.

Binding a walk key just like in the originals:

Here's how to make "S" bind to "Walk forward" and "W" to "Run forward" (plus change "X" to "Walk backwards" and "F" to "Crouch") :

Open "C:My Documents\Thief - Deadly Shadows\SaveGames\User Options\options.ini"

The key is the "MoveForwardBackward" command.
By default, the keys are set as follows:

S=MoveForwardBackward -1.000000
W=MoveForwardBackward 1.000000

To match the original Thief bindings, do

S=MoveForwardBackward 0.500000
W=MoveForwardBackward 1.000000
X=MoveForwardBackward -1.000000

And since "X" was the default "Crouch" key, you'll probably need to change F to
F=Crouch

The animations do work correctly. However, the "Creep" and "Walk" keys ("Ctrl" and "Shift" by default) are a little odd: they do not multiply the speed by a fraction, they directly change it to a new one.
So with the new bindings, "S" and "Shift+S" are exactly the same speed (1/2 speed), and "Ctrl+S" and "Ctrl+W" are both the same speed (1/3 speed).

Leaning:

In T3PlayerAnims.ini
change all [LeanLeftStart] through [LeanRightEndCrouching]
change:
Speed=1
to:
Speed=2.5

Smaller font size:

If you think the font size for your objectives and the "Tips" on the loading screens are grotesquely huge, you can change them. Open DEFAULT.INI and change this line under the [FontMappings] header:

'Papyrus14__tp=Papyrus_21,0.81,0.80' to
'Papyrus14__tp=Papyrus_21,0.61,0.80'

Changing 0.81 to 0.61 (or any other decimal value) will scale down the font size. This will affect load screen tips, your notes and objectives, the help screen you get from right-clicking on your equipment, and confirmation dialogue boxes ("Are you sure you want to quit?").

Modifying Papyrus12 affects the size of dialogue subtitles and the size of the text that appears below your item or weapon icon when you select it:

'Papyrus12__tp=Papyrus_21,0.61,0.80' to
'Papyrus12__tp=Papyrus_21,0.50,0.80', for example.

Removing the "help" tips

"Stealth tip: Your opponents will search for you if they get suspicious. Avoid them, and they might not catch you."

The "Safe Way"
If you want to turn off those oh-so-helpful "tips" that show up on the loading screens, go to Thief 3 -> CONTENT -> T3 -> Books -> English -> HelpText.sch. Open this file in Notepad, and simply change all the English strings from "Tip: don't let guards see you!" to "", an empty string (two consecutive quote marks). Voila, no more loadscreen tips.

The "Easy Way"
Just erase the entire file. Don't delete the file, but delete all the text inside it. I'm pretty sure this is safe, as I haven't encountered any problems, but make sure you have the original HelpText.sch file just in case. This is much, much faster than the "Safe Way."

NOTE: Deleting the strings from HelpText.sch only disables the tips, such as "Put out torches with water arrows" or "Guards will hear you if you run across metal." The flavor text- quotes from Hammerite chants and so forth- is NOT affected by this tweak. They will still show up, but they will appear partway through the loading process, then disappear. See the "Loadscreen displays ONLY flavor text" tweak to fix this.

Alternately, you can replace these tips with your own, or with flavor text from the first two games.

These get rid of many of my nitpicks, so the game should be even better to play.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
Dropping things for some reason involves putting your arm out horizontally and then letting go of the item - I would have thought a master thief would have discovered a quieter way of putting things down by now.

Sounds cool though.

[Kassiopeia]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
Dropping things for some reason involves putting your arm out horizontally and then letting go of the item - I would have thought a master thief would have discovered a quieter way of putting things down by now.

I discovered this the hard way. In the tutorial I picked up the candlestick when the guard had returned, went "WTF?" and dropped the thing. The guard noticed me and, me not being that accustomed to the whole fighting thing in Thief, promptly killed me.

Same with the stupid end of the tutorial. Forced a fight on me. I panicked and forgot how to throw the flashbomb so I mashed all the keyboard buttons franticly until I decided to just pull out my dagger and get nasty. Escaped with a single one of those health thinguses left.

[Skanky Burns]

I still don't have the whole flashbomb thing down well. I threw one at the wall and the guard behind me didn't notice. I threw one at the floor and he kept on charging. My third somehow worked though. I'll have to change the binding for that key if it plans to be useful in-game though. The "i" key is too far away from both the asdw keys and the mouse - what were they thinking?

I had a fight with one of the guards in the first mission at expert level, and I am happy to say I forced him to flee. I only got hit once, and the standard fighting method of sitting on their back hacking away seems to work just as well in this game as in the others. I am not so happy to report that he ran directly to the guard room (which I had yet to clear out) and I now had 3 guards after me. *splat*

In related news, I am getting better at looking for the loot-glint. It requires a bit of patience, so meets with my approval.

[General Ludd]

Yeah, the "loot-glint" seems fine to me, like a brief shine that catches your eye. The game seems a bit darker, anyways, so perhaps it's better to have it - otherwise alot of the loot would be practically invisable... atleast, where they are currently placed.

I haven't really had a chance to play the game, though. I've been in the garden most of the day and also playing a bit of Open TTD and some emulator games.

[Zkribbler]

i gave up trying to download the demo when the time estimate for the downloading came out to be 64 hours

[Skanky Burns]

You have the game but haven't been playing it?!? But... pdspppapojjfdospmf
/me adds Osweld to "the list"

[pg]

skanky - did you tweak your ini files? supposedly it isn't optimally setup for the pc(ala deus ex 2). it shipped with mouse lag/animation lag on, console size fonts, etc.

edit: i guess i should have read the rest of the thread...

[Skanky Burns]

I have the demo only, so haven't really bothered editing the ini files yet. As soon as I get the full version installed however you can guarantee I will be doing quite some editing. Now to work on removing that damned arrow trail.

[Skanky Burns]

From default.ini:

[EditorTools]
; this is the address of the metrics-server (used to be "metrics", now is "atnwrkmetrics"). 
; will get accessed a la [url]http://METRICS/foo[/url]
;                                                     -=< REMOVE BEFORE SHIP >=-

[General Ludd]

I've had some more time to play it now. Fun.


I figured out how to restart a mission - it's in the load menu for some reason. So I started the first (non-tutorial) mission over on expert and started playing through seriously. I still haven't finished it, but I'm having alot of fun. The game is deffinately a worthy succesor, I think.

Some silliness: I stole a giant painting (right out of the frame) and somehow managed to roll it up and stick it in my coat or something while a guard was patrolling the room. And he didn't even notice it missing. I guess the guards aren't really that much smarter.


The shadows are a bit wonky sometimes, aswell. With them suddenly appearing or disapearing and parts of the room geting litten up from certain angles. But maybe that's just a problem with my video drivers. Although I did notice that the torches don't cast shadows on themselves, which can make for a spooky shadow.



Is that his shadow, or a wraith?

[Kassiopeia]

There's an unofficial patch out that's supposed to allow you to change a myriad of things, including the blue "glow" on doors, bodies and loot, the arrow lines, and the loot glint.

I haven't tried it myself, since I don't find the effects too annoying, but it's supposed to work. You run it in the System folder, before that you should update T3Main.exe and CONTENT\T3\Map\Kernel_GFXALL.ibt . This should work in the demo as well as in the actual game.

For instance, the blue glow can be altered with the following values:

0.01 0.01 0.05 = Slightly blue
0.00 0.00 0.00 = No glow at all

[alva]

Some silliness: I stole a giant painting (right out of the frame) and somehow managed to roll it up and stick it in my coat or something while a guard was patrolling the room. And he didn't even notice it missing

A good AI is one that is not perfect.
IE one that mimics a human..

[loinburger]

I don't think there will be any spoilers in this post, so I'm not going to use any tags.


I'm going to have to wait until tomorrow to get back to playing my current mission -- I just had about the worst "oh ****!" heart attack moments I've ever had in a game, far worse than any I've ever had in, say, System Shock II. In the current mission I'm fighting zombies, except that these are "special" zombies -- most zombies are created by the Pagans and so you can permanently kill them with either holy water or fire arrows, but in the current mission the zombies are former inmates of an insane asylum, and became zombies not by Pagan magic but instead became zombies because the building where they died is pure concentrated evil. So, there's no possible way that I've found to permanently off them.

This is easily the best Thief mission I've ever played.