[SHOWOFF] Thief: Tales from the City - NOW WITH VIDEOS

[Scytheria23]

Hi All,

Following the demise of a WotLK project I was working on with a small team, I have decided to engage myself in a personal project that is being done mainly just to see if it's possible and to push myself hard in directions a little 'outside the box'.

Back in the day (maybe 15 years ago) I was a prominent figure in the fan-mission community for the Thief series of games from Looking Glass Studios.  If you've never played them, beg, borrow or (dare I say) steal copies of the trilogy - they're truly wonderful games which practically invented the stealthy, sneak-em-up genre.  The three games, The Dark Project, The Metal Age and Deadly Shadows (ignore the 2014 reboot), are set in a dark, dirty, medieval/steampunk city populated by thieves, guards, peasants, nobles, pagans, mages, necromancers, religious zealots and a secret society of 'Keepers' who preserve balance.  It's a rich, deep setting with a lot of lore which I've loved for a long time.  To this day, I play through the series on a regular basis.

I also play (and mod) WoW.

Now, for no particular reason, I have decided to fuse the two things together.  In other words, I am working on creating the city from the Thief series of games in the MMO environment of WoW.  This is a complete bottom-to-top reworking of virtually everything in WoW, which will simply be there as the client to drive what I produce.  It's almost an impossible task, but I have no time limit and like doing it.  I'm also not ashamed to butcher files from anywhere to get the job done.

This thread will be solely for me to 'blog' progress on this weird fusion project.  Hope you like what you see!

Scy

[Scytheria23]

Work so far:

I won't go into a lot of details about the game itself in terms of how it will work.  Players will be of one class (thief) with three talent trees: Stealth, Subterfuge and Combat.  You'll be able to choose your play style with your talents, so if you want a footpad who doesn't fight at all, Stealth will be the way to go.  A lock-picking burglar will be more Subterfuge based, and a cutthroat or thug will want Combat.  The only aim of the game will be to steal stuff, and there will be no levels, no magic items, no super-powers.  All rooted in gritty realism.

Since humans are the only race, I wanted a lot more variety when it comes to character customization.  I was unhappy with the standard WoW human male model, which is oddly-proportioned and rather bulky for a thief.  As such, I've been working hard on some new models, adapted from the Blood Elf male and reskinned with WoD human skins.  It's been a long, tough job (days on end in Blender), but the results look good:

Edit ---->

Apologies for the loss of image links.  I'm still working hard on this, as and when time permits.  At present, I'm developing the interface, removing things that are no longer needed, revamping many aspects, coding the new systems.  I'm hoping to get a Youtube video out soon to show progress, but don't expect to see any gameplay examples yet.  What you will see is (most of) the new interface, how characters are created, how they choose their playstyle, etc.

My approach is to work the concept first - in other words, get the game doing the mechanical things correctly before I begin the actual world-building, models, sounds and textures (which is relatively routine in comparison).  It's painstaking work, but I think this approach is more likely to result in a success.  Many projects begin with an idea, and a lot of time goes into building lovely zones and making interesting new models, spells, etc.  Then the job of implementing them comes up and it all falls apart.  I'm using self control to resist the urge to do the fun bit, instead getting the tough stuff done first.  I also feel this is the best way to recruit help - rather than saying "Hey, here's a vague concept - want to make stuff for it?" I'll be able to say "Here's a working system - want to add to it?"

[Scytheria23]

I've finally managed to get past Chinese internet censorship to post a couple of vids.  Your comments and suggestions are very welcome, and if you are inspired enough to play a part in this project's creation do send me a PM. -- Scy

PART ONE
[media:4lary0o4]https://www.youtube.com/embed/0QbBuhTyd1E[/media:4lary0o4]

PART TWO
[media:4lary0o4]https://www.youtube.com/embed/5sM3jnPa6F0[/media:4lary0o4]

[Ascathos]

Holy shit this is actually pretty impressive. Well done!

[noc]

splendide, gorgeous, великолепный.

[Uthil]

Nicely made, looking forwards to see more content and curious how you gonna handle the rest of Thief ideas. Was fun of it since first release.

[Scytheria23]

Thanks for nice comments!

Here's as good a place as any for random thoughts.  When I'm not at the computer, I'm jotting plans for the City itself.  In the Thief series, the City is vast - spanning a huge river and sprawling over hills.  It's physical limits are never seen, and all of the action takes place within it (or underneath it).  Creating that effect in WoW is going to be tricky.  Stormwind, for example, is the largest human city in the game, but a character can still run from one edge to the other in a few minutes.  The City, however, needs to be something that requires a day of travel to traverse (unless, of course, I go for the same level of belief-suspension that WoW uses).

The only solution (other than building a map that measures 100x100 adts or something ridiculous) is to section the city into walled areas, with 'portals' between them.  I don't mean actual magical swirly portals, but things that send you from one part of the map to another.  This is actually in keeping with Thief 3, which did a similar thing to link certain areas.  The 'rest of the city' will simply be evident as scenery surrounding the maps players can get to.  It's not optimal - I dream of a huge totally open city - but that's probably not realistic.  Thus, I'm thinking of having about ten or so areas the size of Stormwind, connected only by these 'portals'.  It limits the immersion and open-endedness, but ultimately makes the project doable, and doable in discrete chunks too.

-- Scy

[Steff]

I would try to do this woth custom wmos and on one map. We had maps with 10 000 plus models on one adt and it worked. Just try it.

[Scytheria23]

I would try to do this woth custom wmos and on one map. We had maps with 10 000 plus models on one adt and it worked. Just try it.

That's interesting - I'd always suspected the client could handle a lot more (and we have evidence from WoD maps ported into WotLK).  The problem, however, isn't solely the number of polys the client can push out, it's the amount of time required to realistically populate a city of the size desired.  Also, although a labyrinth of narrow streets with dead ends sounds nice, in gameplay terms it would eventually get pretty annoying, especially if most of those streets are only there as decoration.

[Steff]

Just start with a small area and use your idea of building a wall around.
Could also be some houses with no entrys and blocked streets where you cant get out.

Then you cna expand your city around step by step.

Also use some big decoration buildings outside the area so people think it is much bigger.

[Scytheria23]

Just an update.  Project is not 'dead', just going slowly at its own pace.  Most game systems are now functioning the way I want them, have tested the character abilities against various mobs and other players in a local server.  All seem good, but a little balancing to do.  At present, the world building is well under way, and the City as planned will be filling an area about 20 times the size of Stormwind.  Currently modelling and texturing the 'base' in Noggit, although most of the streets will be wmos.  It's a scarily large area to fill - the size of the north part of the Eastern Kingdoms...

Scy