FM Stats for 2017

[Random_Taffer]

I find T2 movement way too bobbing and swaying. If you want to see the worst of it, just play something like first mission from the Godbreaker campaign, the one with those awful slanted rooftops. Modern games are a bit more fluid and transparent in that regard. While TDM is no Mirror's Edge, it's actually surprisingly close to it.

Show me on the doll where Godbreaker touched you.

[neux]

I find T2 movement way too bobbing and swaying. If you want to see the worst of it, just play something like first mission from the Godbreaker campaign, the one with those awful slanted rooftops. Modern games are a bit more fluid and transparent in that regard. While TDM is no Mirror's Edge, it's actually surprisingly close to it.

I don't know. Perhaps its the years of heavy play but I'm very comfortable with thief 2 movement. I prefer it over Darkmod and most games. New_mantle rocks tho.
Compared to Darkmod it takes more skill to master movement and I like that very much, though everyone that had to sprint circle jump into mantle with old_mantle knows there's a limit to the madness, especially when it starts to break immersion. But still...

Godbreaker to me looked amazing and actually loved the rooftops unfortunately It didn't go well with my play style. Hope that Taffer makes more

[Ricebug]

Unfortunately, long loading times are often result of using many complex brushes, as the engine tries to optimize them and merge intersecting/unused triangles. Version 2.06 uses multiple CPU cores and that speeds loading times up a bit.

It's been a while since I've messed with GtkRadiant and its variants. But, if you don't mind getting your hands dirty making custom models, Blender, 3DS Max, etc, can be used. Convert the models into .MD5 format for use in TDM missions.

Here's a LINK for the converter tools.

[Random_Taffer]

Godbreaker to me looked amazing and actually loved the rooftops unfortunately It didn't go well with my play style. Hope that Taffer makes more

Just out of curiosity, what is your play style? I tried to keep it fairly open ended as far as options go...

[Judith]

It's been a while since I've messed with GtkRadiant and its variants. But, if you don't mind getting your hands dirty making custom models, Blender, 3DS Max, etc, can be used. Convert the models into .MD5 format for use in TDM missions.

Here's a LINK for the converter tools.

I've been making models for TDM for around half a year now, as my WIP mission is 99% custom models and textures. Fortunately, you only need MD5 format for animated models, for static meshes you can use .ASE format, which is supported natively by majority of modeling software.

[neux]

Just out of curiosity, what is your play style? I tried to keep it fairly open ended as far as options go...

I play a very uninvolved minimum risk ghost style, sticking to supreme rules mostly but prioritizing immersion.

[Gloria Creep]

I always use you're walkthroughs

[Iceblade]

I'm getting somewhat different numbers for 1999 and 2000 Thief 1 FMs.

1999: 51 releases with 44 missions and 7 demo missions (including Guardhouse 1 and Down We Go - Dromed only FMs)

2000: 46 releases with 37 single mission releases, 3 campaign releases, 4 demos, and 2 missions upgraded with Thief Gold (Pre-TTGM 1 and 2)

Do you have a list of the missions being counted by year?

Edit: Oh I see the issue, some of the missions are missing on KOMAG's list (especially those re-released in a campaign)

Edit 2:
Thief 1
1999: 52 releases
Single Mission Releases: 45 46
Demo Mission Releases: 7 6 (including Guardhouse 1 and Down We Go - Dromed only FMs, and Bloodflowers)

2000: 52 releases
Single Mission Releases: 41
Campaign Releases: 3
Demo Mission Releases: 5 (including the Dark Lord dromed-only mission by Dark_Lord)
One Mission Upgraded: Tears of Blood (originally included as the Escape from Guilesatpeak mission in the Journey campaign - would count as its own release according to the accepted release count rules)
Two Missions Re-Released for Thief Gold: Pre-TTGM 1 and 2 (Garrett's Revenge and Dockland)
Total New Missions: 45 (41 singles, 3 missions from The Order of the Vine campaign, and Escape from Guilesatpeak in the Journey campaign).
Total Releases per Accepted Release Rules: 45 (47 if you count the Thief Gold versions of Garrett's Revenge and Dockland)

[Iceblade]

Because there might be some curiosity viewing a more nuanced year-by-year progression, I have begun digging through the FM lists and categorizing the missions and breaking down the campaigns. The key figures are single releases, campaign releases, and total new missions.

Here is Thief 2 for the last few years.

Thief 2
2013: 44 Releases
Total New Missions: 38
Single Mission Releases: 32
Campaign Releases: 1
Campaign - New Missions: 6
New Dark Re-Releases: 11

2014: 40 Releases
Total New Missions: 23
Single Mission Releases: 13
Campaign Releases: 4
Campaign - New Missions: 10
New Dark Re-Releases: 23

2015: 21 Releases
Total New Missions: 24
Single Mission Releases: 18
Campaign Releases: 2
Campaign - New Missions: 6
New Dark Re-Releases: 1

2016: 21 Releases
Total New Missions: 22
Single Mission Releases: 16
Campaign Releases: 3
Campaign - New Missions: 6
New Dark Re-Releases: 2

2017: 21 Releases
Total New Missions: 52
Single Mission Releases: 15
Campaign Releases: 6
Campaign - New Missions: 37
New Dark Re-Releases: 0

* Mission Counts based on Southquarter FMs page
* Missions previously released do not count toward Campaign Totals (a rarity in recent years)
* Total missions for each campaign based on Ricebug's Campaign List. Two-parter campaigns also counted as two missions if not included in Ricebug's list (only a couple weren't on Ricebug's list).

[fortuni]

Edit 2:
Thief 1
1999: 52 releases
Single Mission Releases: 45
Demo Mission Releases: 7 (including Guardhouse 1 and Down We Go - Dromed only FMs, and Bloodflowers)

Bloodflowers is not a demo, the author never described it as such, nor does it demonstrate anything new for other FM authors to use in their missions, but for some unknown reason it is consistently referred to as a demo.

Does anyone know where this misinformation stems from? or is it simply because it is however a ridiculously small mission that you can finish in under 1 minute.

[Iceblade]

The title of the file: Bloodflowers_demo

[fortuni]

Thanks Iceblade, my copy, which I got off Thiefmissions doesn't have the word demo in the title, but the copy on TaffersP does.

Strictly speaking it still is not a demo, as are a number of the early contest missions that also have the word demo in their file tiles.

[Yandros]

I imagine some of the very early missions were referred to as "demos" since they were demonstrating that fan missions could be made at all.

[Iceblade]

I seem to recall a discussion about Bloodflowers and not including the release totals, but my searches through ttlg have turned up nil. Did the author mention that the mission was not a demo?

The file title was what I used to make a final decision when counting.

On another note, the campaigns did not make much of an impact on the number of new missions, which only went to the low 20s. Only 2017 saw a large impact from campaigns and these were rare, super-large campaigns that took many years to be completed. Pretty sure we won't have even one such 5+ mission campaign this year or next.

[Yandros]

I imagine The Black Parade will make it out by the end of 2019, but you make a good point. The new campaign which Random_Taffer and I and a few others started planning last fall is on hiatus now, still in the planning phase. Not sure when or if we'll get back to it.

[trefoilknot]

Perhaps a better metric would be cumulative size of all .mis files released in a year. Overall FM file size would be heavily contaminated by things like high rez textures, and custom objects/sounds/videos etc... but I'd imagine the sum of .mis file sizes would give a pretty accurate proxy for the total amount of playable content released in a given year. If I find some free time, I'll run the numbers myself (at the very least, to check my own intuition about the validity of such a metric).

[Iceblade]

That would provide an approximation of level size depending on how blue rooms and solid spaces between areas is counted byte-wise; and the impact of scripting on byte-size. Generally missions don't have large spaces between play areas, so this approximation should be fairly valid for most mission years with substantial numbers of missions. Of course, this would entail a far higher degree of time and effort due to having to install each FM and record its mission size with name and release year. A big stumbling block, however, will be updates to missions since these updates could alter the size appreciably from the original mission file at release. Campaigns with duplicated or upgraded missions within them would potentially interfere with the yearly total as well.

If you are interested, you should try checking Thief 2 for 2014, 2015, and 2016. There are only so many missions released and the campaigns were generally made of all new missions. These three years would also provide for zone for comparisons since the number of missions is so similar for those three years. Ideally, you would want to see a similar magnitude for those three years with 2015 (being 24 releases) have a greater file size total since each additional mission is supposed to contribute a lot to the total.

Then repeat for Thief 1 FMs from 1999 and 2000 (years with very similar numbers of new missions), where mission sizes were still limited by the engine and experience of the first authors. Of course, for the initial comparisons of recent vs early, we are assuming file structures (and thus file sizes) are similar between Thief 1 and New Dark Thief 2 for comparable play area/complexity. More direct comparisons can be made with a final dataset and making more apple to apple comparisons between Thief 2 numbers.

If mission size is so much larger over the past 5 years, then the recent years should give similar or greater totals than twice as many missions during the first two years. You should definitely find the average mission size for each of those missions for a more direct comparison, though. Your final values per year should be a combination of average mission size and mission size total.

Final Note: While Thief 1/G/2/ND are built in the same engine and will more than likely have very similar mission structures (and equivalent sizes per play area/complexity); TDS and TDM would not be usable as there is no simple and reliable way to adjust their file size to a dromed standard. At best, you could assume that the average playable area and scripting complexity for a mission released in TDS or TDM for a particular year would be similar to an average Thief 1/2 mission of that year. And thus you could use the average T1/2 mission size for those TDS/TDM missions.

[Brethren]

I'd imagine the sum of .mis file sizes would give a pretty accurate proxy for the total amount of playable content released in a given year.

I'd be interested to know how you would even begin to determine that.

[downwinder]

i think common sense is more missions will start to come out due to new wave of people who joined board/making missions

i just hope it stays t1/g/2 for new dark

[Yandros]

There should be a bump in .mis file size for NewDark if for no other reason due to the 32bit vs 16bit lightmaps. However I don't know off hand if this is very significant.

[trefoilknot]

I'd be interested to know how you would even begin to determine that.

Probably by hand---download all of them, explore each zip file and record the size of the .mis. Perhaps it could be automated, but I wouldn't know how. It'd probably be a solid weekend of labor.

[Iceblade]

There should be a bump in .mis file size for NewDark if for no other reason due to the 32bit vs 16bit lightmaps. However I don't know off hand if this is very significant.

Couldn’t you use the two 64-cubed contests to do a comparison? I guess that would depend on the complexity of the new dark levels in comparison to levels from the first contest. Of course you could still just open a variety of mission files and resave them with new dark dromed both before and reprocessing the mission file.

Also, automating this is the way to go. This automation could be done with two new functions in the darkloader code plus a bit of functionality addition/changes to the front end and maybe another function or two for data handling and output.

[trefoilknot]

A number of older missions have been updated for new dark; with a handful of those, it should be feasible to tease out the "fixed" and "variable" components of the file size bump (as long as they missions weren't dramatically altered in other ways).

But in any case, even if the metric were only viable for comparing among the post NewDark days, it still seems it'd be a useful one to track, but I'd need to learn more about its properties to be sure. Eg, does .mis size scale up linearly in mission scale/complexity? If not, the approach could be a disaster.

[Brethren]

I'm getting lost now. What exactly is it that you guys are trying to track? Ricebug's original project is just to monitor the raw number of mission releases. Are you now trying to determine something like cumulative playable area in an FM, like square footage? I guess I don't see what summing up .mis file sizes really accomplishes.

[trefoilknot]

Well, it's an open question whether it would be a valid metric. Maybe it wouldn't measure much of anything. My intuition is that it would provide a decent approximation of the amount of playable content released per year. The previous discussion centered around the problems associated with just counting up N (eg campaigns, huge vs small missions, etc...); this approach could alleviate those concerns (while potentially introducing new ones). I'm not suggesting replacing the N measure, just supplementing it with something to capture a different dimension.

That said, there's lots of stuff I don't fully understand about the file structures. Do you have some reason to believe .mis file sizes wouldn't be at all informative in this respect?