The AI is a signficant step up from Shock 1. We are using an enhanced version of Thief's AI. I've been playing the beta, and it does things I've never seen before. An example:

A guard was walking down a corridor. I closed a door so he couldn't see me. He said "Hey, what was that?". I heard him approach the door from the other side and he said "Hey, you, come out of there..."

I almost had a stroke. Thief is a pretty amazing game. And we get to use their goodies plus all the stuff we're developing on top of it. Ah, life can be good.

-Ken

:Some of the things I want to know are:
:1)Where did the idea of this game come from – I play some RPG’s,
:not all computer based, and would like to know where the
:designers got the idea.

It evolved over the course of many months. Originally, we were thinking of concentrating mainly on swordfighting as our core gameplay. We toyed with a "Dark Camelot" idea where Arthur was the bad guy and you played Modred. And Modred was this kinda sneaky little guy. Interest in the Camelot theme didn't take off, but by the time we bagged it the Modred concept had evolved into such a rogue that we went straight from there into the Thief game. A lot of this, of course, came from System Shock, where it's all pretty hairy, and you aren't really a killing machine, so you have to do a lot of ducking around and playing it tactically kind of commando-style.

:2)Do they have poison

No poison. It was on our long list but didn't make our short list. We have an idea or two that might make it into Thief 2, if there is one.

:and can you buy stuff

Yes, you can buy stuff. It's sort of a hybrid between the RPG approach (where there's this whole big economy) and the more traditional mission-based action or strategy game (where everything is generally very self-contained within a mission). Call it a "spendthrift economy," I guess.

You get a standardized mission loadout, but there's also in-mission loot which is basically credit towards powerups in your next mission's loadout. So in your loadout screen, you can spend the loot from your previous mission. But your money and your loadout aren't persistent beyond that.

It's a bit abstract, and (admittedly) not anything we attempt to fictionally support, but it's simpler than the whole-hog RPG thing, and your decisions in each mission become more straightforward: buy as many toys as you can, and don't be afraid to use them.

So, it's an unusual approach, really, but in practice it's pretty fun. We expect that some people will bristle at not being able to hoard stuff like you do in an RPG, but we're going for a more mission-based action thing than that, and hopefully people will like the overall gameplay that spendthrift economy gets us.

:is the environment
:interactive, can you pick stuff up and push stuff around, can
:you climb, crawl, and jump.

All of the above.

And then on the question of framerates:

Still optimizing, so it's too early to say. The current big performance suspect on our optimization list is our memory footprint: machines over the minimum 32 meg will currently get much better performance, and we're working to close that gap.

From Tim:

For the most part, we're trying to keep ammo to places where it makes sense to be found, e.g. armories and such. Arrows will be destroyed if they hit a creature. If they hit the terrain, they'll stick into wood or earth, but be destroyed if they hit other materials (like stone or tile). Arrows that stick can be recovered for later re-use.

The terrain distinction becomes especially important with rope arrows, which unreel a rope downwards if they stick in the terrain. So, that determines where you can and cannot place ropes.

From ROBOTKID, answering the questions of Talon54:

:Will the magazines coming
:out at the beginning of November have different avis or the
:same.?

There is a short version and a long version (5min) I'm glad you liked that movie! It took a LONG TIME TO MAKE!!!

:I thought you mentioned something about a rope arrow in
:one of the movies but I did not see that in this one.

The long version has 2 shots where the player shoots a rope arrow. The 1st he uses it to climb up to a balcony, the 2nd to get down from the rafters...

:Also how
:many levels of difficulty are there, and what makes them more
:difficult besides not killing any servants? Do the levels really
:test your skill as a thief in order to survive?

3 levels of difficulty. Each difficulty level has its own set of objectives, plus harder guards, etc. This way, if you only play THIEF on it's first difficulty setting, you will actually be missing a whole bunch of different stuff in each level.

And yes,the levels really test your skill as a thief in order to survive. If you ain't stealthy, you ain't breathin'!

It's almost done!!!!!

:I am going to list several things about Thief that I have heard
:from various sources. Can someone confirm or deny these?

Sure, I'm someone.

:1. No multiplayer but maybe in an expansion pack.

No multiplayer mode. System Shock 2 will have multiplayer.

:2. Arrows will not move in a straight line but curve like real
:arrows. Does this affect aiming at all?

Oh, yes. Not tremendously, but you do have to be aware of range to your target, and correct for it. There's a target range in the training level to help you get the knack.

Actually, a couple of the arrow types are gravity-free, which I find makes them much easier to aim, but many of our playtesters say that makes them _harder_ because now they're so trained on doing the ballistic trajectory correction.

:3.Wood will burn,water freeze, and things will float in
:water. (Any other environmental affects?)

No freezing water, sadly. Only certain things will burn when hit with fire, a plan which we had to cut back on mainly (as it turns out) because of the special-FX problem of showing acceptible fire FX on arbitrary objects.

:4. Bodies will stay where they are, and will leave blood
:stains. (What happens when a body is discovered? Do the guards
:organize a search for you?)

When guards see a body, or bloodstain, they become more alert and start searching around. They remember the experience and never drop to their "unsuspecting" alertness mode again. You can carry bodies around (slowly) and dump them in a shadow somewhere, to avoid this, or use water arrows to wash away bloodstains (which would otherwise soak away after a minute or two).

Generally, when suspicious or alarming things happen, guards will talk about it, and other nearby guards can hear them and get some shared information about what's going on. Sometimes this turns out to be a more organized affair than others.

: (How long are the levels going to be?)

Varies widely. Most of them are pretty big, I guess.

: 6.3dfx support?

Through Direct3D.

: 7. You can pickpocket guards for keys.

Yep. Or healing potions, or gold, or whatever happens to be on their belt. Of course, in the healing potion case, the guard will use the potion if he gets out of combat and needs it, so pickpocketing it becomes an even better idea.

: 8.You can move furniture around to block doors.

Yep. Just been ironing some bugs out of that one lately, in terms of how the AI's react to such a setback.

: Release date? latest I heard was around Thanksgiving.

On the Demos:

There's a CD cover-mount coming out on magazines right about now with a non-interactive demo including sequences captured from gameplay, with the intention that you can get a better sense of how the thing plays than from our previous, more stylistic promotional material.
The interactive (and downloadable) demo is scheduled to be released at about the same time as the game hits shelves. Basically, cutting the schedule so close to Christmas, we had to decide whether to take time away from the game development for the demo. So, we're starting the demo when we go to press, and counting on the faster distribution channel over the 'net to get it out in a timely fashion for buyers to check it out."

On Violence:

The Thief site at Lglass has had large updates. The downloads section now contains four very nice images and four voice clips. Yes, that's right, we finnaly have cool stuff to download. The gallery has 2 new screenshots and a new movie entitled, "Tools of the Trade". This movie shows off Garret's various toys using the nicely done animation/live action we can expect to see in Thief's cut-scenes. There is a new diary entry as well. Yup, Thief is now well into beta. Gamecenter on C-net also has a flattering preview up. It dosn't contain any relativly new information, but what it does have are many screenshots, most of which i have never seen before. Again, this preview makes false claims on Multiplayer. There is NO multiplayer in Thief! One last note, to finnaly squash anyone's doubts about Thief's graphic qualty, ROBOTKID of LookingGlass has posted a short message on our Thief forum

1) Is Thief going to be a game where you can scale any part of the level; be it roof-top or ceiling, with no boundries? Will we be able to climb over walls and fences? Will rope use be limited to rope-arrows? What about hopping from roof-top to roof-top?

2) Will the enemys die different ways depending on how you kill them or where you hit them; such as a shot to the neck which would result in immediate death, but a shot to the stomach would cause them to squrim in agony?
(are we sadists or what?)

3) When you 'knock out' guards with your black-jack, will they wake up? What happens when the wake up? If then never saw you, will they just be disoriented and think that they dozed off, or if they saw you, will they remember?

4) When you kill an enemy, will the body stay there forever?

5) If you thow a dead body down a stream, will it float or sink? Can you find the body downstream somewhere later? If you just knocked them out, and threw them in water, would they just drown, or will they wake up and try to swim? Can healthy guards swim, for that matter?

6) When's the Demo coming?

7) The music- is the stuff on the webpages the game music? How about the Trailer?

8) What about stealing a guard uniform, and walking around casually?

9) What kind of inventory system will there be?

10) What are those symbols we see on the pages and advertisments?

11) Do you support the PowerVR chipset? (What I happen to be stuck with at the moment.. *grinz*)