Game Entities in Thief: The Dark Project

[@vfigplays]

ive been waiting to see this talk since you mentioned during your system shock streams that you hoped to be able to publish it. great to finally see it, thanks!

[@gamophyte]

The flexibility and variation this system provided was everything. It really made Thief what it is. I think if you didn't have it setup this way, there would be bespoke elements that repeat, and thief would look and feel so different, and likely feel like simple medieval quake. I really enjoyed this presentation, thank you!

[@humanharddrive1]

Thanks for sharing this, hope we can get some more information behind the technology and design of thief🙏 perhaps a talk about the sound propagation system and the lightmaps? After playing around with dromed, I really have to say that Archetypes and inheritances really make sense, I don't know how properties and such are set up in other engines, but i really clicked with the archetypes in thief. I really liked the brain story and the "guard reports his own death" story You said you gave the properties to terrain surfaces by assigning them to a unique object per texture on a level. So, do textures have properites before they're applied to brushes and thus "instanced" in a level? And how would you make textures/materials have different properties in modern engines?

[@rakunana]

I made my own sound propagation system relatively recently,(it's on my channel, sound occlusion if you're interested) using some old thief interviews and forums about the sound system as a bases, then went my own way with the new tools available to me. It seemed they would create invisible objects connected with raycast throughout the level . The sound var would travel from object to object(called a sound bush, if I remember correctly). Each pass would lower the value of the sound var until it reached zero or hit a door/window. Eric Brouis(not sure on the spelling) said in an interview that the sound system was all tunnel based. If a door was open, sound could travel through it. As for the light maps. I believe the player has a raycast pointing at the floor. This raycast reads the gray scale of the light maps and dictates how visible the player is. I would assume that each room has multiple light maps attached to the light sources. And when turned off, the light maps value is darkened. God speed Taffers!

[@vfigplays]

the first time a texture gets loaded in the editor for a level, if it doesnt have an archetype already, then an empty one will be created for it (under the “Textures” root archetype). in thief there are a number of taxonomic texture archetypes: Wood, Metal, etc that have been set up with the gameplay properties, so usually you just drag and drop the new texture’s archetype into the right one of those and youre done. (of course this js a change to the globaly shared archetype hierarchy, or “gamesys”, so as marc explains you have have “the brain” so you avoid treading on other designers toes when you set up new textures like this.)

[@vfigplays]

⁠lightmaps in thief are purely visual; they have no gameplay function. all objects (including the player) are lit by raycasts from nearby lights; the player’s visibility derives from summing the intensities of the visible lights from these raycasts. (there are per-object and per-area caches, initially baked in the editor, so that, e.g. unmoving objects dont need to rerun raycasts.) it is quite possible for the ground the player is standing on to be in shadow, such as from a waist-high wall, while the player is fully lit because the light reaches them over the wall; but if they crouch, then they become hidden as the player->light raycast now hits the wall.

[@rakunana]

It's awesome to get insight on how Thief :TDP was programmed back in the day. As I'm currently working on a Thief clone, learning about the inner working will always be of interest to me! Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge! Be well!

[@rakunana]

@@soundmurderer Sure thing friend! I upload progress on my channel! Hope you are well!

[@ataricom]

Hell yeah! I've been trying to reimplement the Dark engine's ECS for ages! I was a fan mapper in the early days of DromEd, and the stuff you could pull off through object inheritance was mind blowing for 1998. It still is, too!

[@skogsfinnar]

All coding tech aside, I find the rubber brain RCS idea utterly fascinating.

[@guillermojperea6355]

Ahhhhh, so many thanks for this! As much as you can share about the tech and design is a breath of fresh air, I can't get enough of Thief and old games that had soul in them! Thanks and keep sharing more! I'll check your channel back for other tidbits you might have already uploaded. Question: was Thief ever approached for a remaster in the last decade? Any chance it could be talked about with Nightdive or any other studio/publisher that have somewhat proven themselves at this? Such a legendary franchise still has a lot of weight with a hardcore and active fandom, community and massive respect from the media even after the last 'game we don't talk about'.

[@humanharddrive1]

Thief is dead as shit, blame Embracer, Square Enix, and Saudi Arabia.

[@muzboz]

It's an interesting idea. I honestly don't know how easy (or worthwhile) a Remaster would be! An updated working of the original Thief source code was released in 2018 or so (from memory) that did update and refresh some things, like smoother shadows, allowance for larger levels, etc, and the editor also got an update. And in some ways, that's the best sort of update for Thief! The engine is so integral to how it all works. If someone were to really "remaster" the Thief 1 and 2 games, I actually think the best way to do it would be kinda like "The Black Parade" (an excellent full scenario released lately) where some designers go in and use the original tech and levels, but just try to remove/iron out any of the boring bits, or clunky levels, etc. Like, just improving what's there, as if the dev team had another year to work on the game, and make improvements. But I'd still be interested to see someone try to fully re-imagine and re-create the games in some way. I just .... don't think it'd necessarily really work! There was a lot of magic in the originals, both in terms of tech, and the teams of designers and artists as well, the voices, the sound design, everything... hard to improve it by trying to remake it, I reckon! I'd probably rather see someone try to make a worthy new Thief game than remaster 1 or 2. Just some random thoughts there. :D

[@jillsandwitch67]

gaming would be so much worse without the contributions of looking glass, easily one of the most important studios right up there with nintendo.

[@TylerHNothing]

Lmaoooo the joke in the beginning, I always think of those 2 people

[@algorithmancyTube]

You're not alone in that. My plumber's still waiting for Matt LeBlanc to pay him.

[@TrueNeutralEvGenius]

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[@Octopussita]

Making ECS before ECS was cool