Reply With Quotewell, hate to spoil the party, but he's not going to be such a happy engine exploiter when he switches to NewDark.
Some people have done absolutely amazig speedruns lately and recorded everything:
TG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgbYs...D87JMnkIpRshu0
TMA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXUl0...anqv3wjTMtv5dU
And there's a lot more if you search for thief and speedrun. I especially like the one for Return to the Cathedral in TG in 24 seconds, and that without blocking doors.The dedication of these people is truly amazing, I never had the nerve to practice missions for days until every move is perfect. The best time for completing TG has been cut down from my old ~53 minutes to below 36 minutes using ever dirty little trick you can think of.
I'm happy that there are young enthusiasts that have picked up the work of us oldtimers (who explored every little detail of the missions and the engine), and perfected gameplay to new heights never seen before.
well, hate to spoil the party, but he's not going to be such a happy engine exploiter when he switches to NewDark.
Tell me one reason, why speed thieves should use gameplay breaking mods. *shrug* TDP/TG/TMA lives _because of_ the many, many peculiarities of the engine. When they get "fixed", you get a borig result like T3.
Anyway, the sheer dedication and gaming skill is impressive, and I enjoy that. Sadly, there were only a few people with that dedication to take thief playing to the extreme ten years back.
one new graphics card later, he won't really have a choice.
Nonsense, I've been running Thief unmodded since it was released. Just minor patching is required.
And if that should eventually fail, modern machines are well able to run it in Software mode.
sw mode will have serious issues with FPS limiting, I believe, but yeah, that will always work via VM, so I guess I will have to agree with that.
anyway, the original hw mode is dead/unusable soon - give it a year.
Yes you're right, software mode has serious trouble with FPS. It runs too fast.
Have you actually tried it before telling others how it works?
sw mode? it's been a while. was seriously surprised by the heat/energy distortion effects back then. as for the hw mode, dx6/7 support is not getting better in the gpu drivers, and once MS drops the old api support from windows, the original hw renderer will be a dead fish swimming in brine.
Anyway, I understand that your real message is "I'm not interested in Thief speedruns." So be it. I am, though, as in any other ways to take the games and the engine to the extreme.
I've been trying to replicate some of the tricks he used (like the sword/blackjack fall thing) but yeah, impossible to do in NewDark.
You two should get a room. But anyway, watched a few of these at work without sound - why do some of them end with the player's vision going all sideways, like they had just been killed or something? Pretty strange - at the end of the Escape! vid, the player seems to be walking on the walls.
Because if you normally finish a mission it takes some seconds before you get the "Mission Complete". If you kill yourself, you can still move while the vision is going black and sideways. It's hilarious in the Bafford's video where he dies, runs into the throne room and grabs the scepter. The point is: It seems that dying triggers the delay before the mission end video, but the game checks first if the mission is won before it checks if the player is dead, so he actually triggers "Mission Complete" several seconds earlier than normally, i.e. it reduces normal mission time. (Is that explanation comprehensible?)But anyway, watched a few of these at work without sound - why do some of them end with the player's vision going all sideways, like they had just been killed or something? Pretty strange - at the end of the Escape! vid, the player seems to be walking on the walls.
I find it amazing how he perfected brush and AI jumping so that he can just fly where he wants to at the desired speed. I've practiced it a lot and was never able to get anything but lucky results. I managed to get Bafford's down to 40 seconds with AI jumping from the patrolling guard, but he's almost 20% faster!
P.S.: I can't see anything in Escape! that looks like walking on the walls. Did you mean another mission?
Last edited by Luthien; 25th Jun 2013 at 14:01.
What tricks specifically? Dieing early at mission end? Brush jumping? Kangaroo jumping? Keyholing?Originally Posted by skacky
Anyway, with this precision he's able to beat anybody in any mission. Even without any tricks he's just eight seconds or so faster than me in the training mission.
My, I just noticed in the MoC video that you can slow a steep fall by drawing your sword for a split second.
No, start at around 0:44. I don't really understand what he means by "Recoil to the left (swing to the right)", but right at that exact spot, he walks along the entire length of a wall, turns, and then walks out of the mansion at the same twisted 90 degree angle. It makes my brain explode just watching it.
well, he is an artist in his own way, one cannot deny that.
Amazing videos ! All these glitches and tricks, I had no idea these were possible in the old engine. It's kinda scary.
Xmodule999 (aka Bob in our Polish Thief Forum) has also made lots of "strange and unusual" (or funny) type of videos from Thief.
See here.
Okay, let me explain. What he's doing is called brush jumping. To understand it you need to know that Garrett's model (and other AIs) in the game is two cubes, cynlinders, spheres or whatever on top of each other. When you lean, the upper sphere moves relative to the lower sphere, and this creates tension in the player model. (There's a closet in Angelwatch with a shelf at waist heigt, and it's actually possible to stick the shelf between the two speres so that Garrett cannot move anymore.)
Now, if you lean around a "brush" (which means a surface in the thief engine, I think, but dromedders could probably give a better explanation), and then violently turn the mouse so that the upper sphere is wedged into the brush at a very high speed and experiences a violent acceleration into a more or less random direction (at least it's random when I do it). This acceleration often hurts or kills you. If you jump at the same time, you fly through the air (brush jumping). The same technique works even better if you smash into AIs (AI jumping). A good place to practice this is the training mission in TDP/TG because you cannot die there. Good objects to try are open doors, lanters, bushes, AIs etc.
This effect seems to also depend on the speed at that a leaning pose is relaxed. Thus it does work like a charm in TDP/TG, but not in TMA.
--
Now back to what you see on the video: The player has intentianally reduces his hit points to just a couple of points. He then:
* steps up to the bush
* leans forward
* turns a bit to the right so that the leaning upper sphere of the model slips past the bush
* violently turns left
The bush now accelerates the player to the right and kills him. Because Garret's dieing, his vision grows dark and turns 90 degrees to the left, while the speed from the bush accident catapults him right out of the mission.
Last edited by Luthien; 25th Jun 2013 at 21:27.
So the cool stuff is no longer happening on ttlg but in the Polish forum?But at least the cool stuff is still being done.
Could you convice him to make a list of strange techniques from the speedrund and elswhere and post it on ttlg so we can compare the techniques known here and in the Polish forum?
Hail Luthien!
Thank you for bringing these awesome speedruns to our attention!!!
Just finished Ramirez....
He picks the door, dies, slides on the ground sideways around the corner to nab the purse from Ramirez belt just in time. You are right Luthien, these guys have proven yet again that the many splendors of The Dark Engine are still relevant. Thank you so much, I had seen as many speed runs to date I could find before these.
Hail Goldmoon Dawn!
So nice to read a familiar name!
You know, when I did my speed thief run (now almost exatctly ten years ago), Assassins really gave me a headache. It cost me _so_ much time to follow the assassins into Ramirez' place. And then this speed thief comes along and just blackjacks the assassin and carries him through the whole level. That idea alone has easily saved two minutes of game time. ANd nowadays we have it all taped on viedo!
I had no idea about the Running Interference glitch, and it still works in NewDark. She could rescue herself all along?
You can actually lean forward and run into the door and swing your blackjack to get her to run out. It's a much easier movement to fluidly execute than the way xmodule does. So far I've only managed to tie his time posted. I tried nabbing that speed potion quickly in hopes that it would make up the difference for taking a longer route, but it didn't.
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