Thief 3 demo out!

[Mr. Natural]

A demo for Thief 3 has just been released. For now find it here. (http://www.eidos.co.uk/downloads/demo.html) It just came out and you'll be lucky to get it due to traffic. Hopefully we'll be offering it here at 3D Gamers shortly.

Update: Here (http://www.3dgamers.com/dl/games/thief3/t3_demo_uk.exe.html) are the official 3D Gamers download mirrors.

[Drewby]

I am 50% done now.

It is up on 3DG now too, although I had trouble connecting to a server. I am getting it from the official site now. :thumbup:

[DanTheManPR]

The gamespy review said:

Pros :
Excellent story, sound and voice-overs, good level design for linear missions, great lighting effects.
Cons:
Awful graphics, NPCs look like wax dummies, problem with directional sound in third person mode.


I don't mind horrible graphics, and I love the thief games, so methinks I'll be picking this one up.

[Drewby]

I just wasn't feeling it. Too sneaky and stealthy for me. The lockpicking sucked as well.

It also ran horribly slow on the specs in my sig. Around 20FPS on average I would say. I may give it another shot when I get my new video card.

EDIT: Typo.

[MikeMaster]

About to download, me loves Theif games too :):

[RangerRick]

Try this server. I got on with no waiting. Downloading as we speak!

http://avault.com/pcrl/dlvelo.asp?url=www.velocityservers.net/dl.php?file=/demos/thief_deadly_shadows.exe&game=thiefds

[SupaTroopa]

I've been mulling this one over, but would probably pick up DX2:IW before TIII, seeing that Theif III got somewhat mediocre reviews and it really doesn't offer anything new in the series other than some nifty new lighting effects from what I gather.

Interested to hear what other people think of it after playing it and/or the demo.

[MasterChief]

Huh? Thief 3 seems to be getting great reviews so far (see gamerankings.com). Then again, at gamerankings DX2 and Thief 3 seem to have almost exactly the same score.

[SupaTroopa]

Well "mediocre" is a bit harsh, the actual reviews didn't seem to agree with their own scores on some of them that I read.

It seems like a decent game though, but just going on what's been said about it, I'm just not compelled to buy it although I thoroughly enjoyed the first two Thief games.

Thus I'm wondering what some of the board members think of it.

[Torsion]

From what I heard, the game is basically like theif 2 with better graphics, plot and immesion. The games main drawback is that it doesnt really try to do anything new. However, sites like IGN were raving about the plot which is really nice to hear. Also, the game supposedly takes about 30 hours to complete so the value is there.

[Fzoulcmbyl]

I'm well into the 1st mission, and so far, I like it. I am a huge Thief fan, and I loved both 1 and 2.

The graphics are fine, I can see some improvements in certain areas, and in others, it just looks similar to Thief 2. I don't think Eidos ever suggested that Thief would break new ground in graphics quality, or even give Far Cry a run for its money.

I do see some framerate hits, but not enough to hinder the gameplay. I have the resolution set at 1280, and the Shadow Detail either low, or off.

I enjoy switching between 3rd and 1st person views, and I see this as an extra "bonus" to the game, that really just allows you a different view of your surroundings. I primarily use the 1st person view, but switch out to 3rd, if I need a "Widescreen" effect to view the area.

The lockpicking takes some getting used to, but after a few times, you get the feel of it, and it's no big deal....Splinter Cell has the "Jiggle the lock" trick, and Thief has the "Rotate the tumblers" trick....it's the same thing.

I have not made it out to the "City", to visit the stores or "Fences", or to Garrett's Apartment, but I imagine that comes after the 1st mission. The new effects for the arrows, and the flashbombs are cool, but I still need to try out a few of the other items.
Thief still feels like Thief, and for the $39.00 price, it's been worth it so far.


Fzoul

[Terry Penrod]

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I will definitely be getting Thief 3 the very next time my huge stack of backlogged PC games gets under four feet tall.

Cheers, Terry

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[Ravanor]

The demo's not bad, will be getting the game. Only encountered one bug in the tutorial mission, after mantling over the box got stuck in the ground and couldn't do any more actions. LOL.

[Drewby]

I played some more and I am loving it.

The tutorial was a bit boring, but the open ended mission afterwards made up for it. I am not going to get it right away, first order of business is a new video card. Then I will give the demo another run through and see if it is at acceptable framerates. If it is, I am surely getting it.

Anyone with similar specs and a 9800 Pro running this game? I would like to know how it is without all the lag. This isn't another horribly unoptomized game from Ion Storm is it? :rolleyes:

[Torsion]

I agree. After playing the demo I want to get this game. I think the graphics are awesome. I got some choppiness in the tutorial but the actual mission ran about 10 fps better.

[Cronus]

Argh where is the bloody secret switch? Can't find it. *sobs*

[Drewby]

The switch is in the large bedroom. It is a torch on the wall that is unlit. :thumbup:

[Cronus]

Ah cunning.

:)

[SupaTroopa]

Anyone with similar specs and a 9800 Pro running this game? I would like to know how it is without all the lag. This isn't another horribly unoptomized game from Ion Storm is it?

I've pretty much decided to take the plunge and buy DX2 and TIII this week. My 9800Pro w/XP Home seems to run both demo's just fine honestly as far as framerate goes.

After playing so much COH the last couple of weeks I need a break with a new SP game when I feel like playing something different.

[MikeMaster]

This game is great! I am most surely getting it next time I'm in town. I love it !

Thx!

[SupaTroopa]

Nice big, sturdy DVD case the game comes in - first suprise.

I played through a good portion of the first level and really like it so far actually. the perspective switch comes in handy as does the leaning. The bloom effect looks great.

Certainly a game I will take my time with and I find it just as, if not more so, immersive than the previous games. The fact that it's approx. 30 hours and involves some guild allegiances etc.., helps too.

[MikeMaster]

I love really long and difficult games, I like a game more if i can't do, because i know it will give me mannnyyy more hours.

I should be getting this game soon i hope!

[DanTheManPR]

I will get this game... Maybe. It runs like crap, which is too bad, but there is nothing like a good game of thief. Of course, I will play it on Expert right out of the box - I will settle for nothing less!

[SupaTroopa]

I'm suprised it runs that poorly for you Dan - I have a similiar system (except I have a 9800PRO 128MB) and run it at 1280X1024 with full details, and it runs great. Now if it were an FPS I'm sure it'd be a different story, but crawling through dark hallways and rooms, I don't really notice any problems.

Upgrading to XP really helped me run games more smoothly though I can say that much.

[DanTheManPR]

Its not that it runs poorly - most of the time it runs at 60FPS, but it tends to stutter at bad times (when alot of action is happening).

[MikeMaster]

Demo runs fine for me, and I'm at 800mhz and a geforce 4 ti 4200. :face4:

[SupaTroopa]

Geez, I didn't realize you had to sneak around the city streets as well, kind of tedious actually...can't even go to the store without risking your cover. Another huge annoyance is the lockpicking game, good lord I spent 10 freakin' minutes with one stupid chest lock last night, no wonder this game takes 30 hours or more to finish!

Regardless I still enjoy the atmosphere and story so far, it's hard for me to maintain my patience with all the sneaking for long periods of time. After a couple of hours playing last night I had to fire up Painkiller for a bit just to get my frustrations out! I still haven't finished that game!! (but am close)

[DanTheManPR]

Crap, wheres the damn 3rd secret item in the demo? Its keeping me from finishing on expert...

[Fzoulcmbyl]

SKT...the lockpick is easy as pie....they even tell you how to do it on the loading screens...

Check this out.....all you have to do is watch for your "right" hand to move quickly "up" so that in "Clock" terms....your left hand would be at "9" or there abouts, and your right would be at "12" or close to it. When that motion happens, the you "left-click" the mouse, and the tumbler instantly opens.

You should be able to pick a 4 tier lock in under 30 seconds using that trick.


:thumbup:



Fzoul

[SupaTroopa]

Gotcha thanks for the tip, the levels load so fast for me that I always miss the tips.

I am enjoying it thus far though. The voice acting is quite funny, with lots of variety. My enjoyment of the game is outweighing any complaints I have about it certainly.

[MikeMaster]

Hmm to lock pick all you do is move it arround in a circle until you find the point where it moves the most, then if it doesnt unlock move it up or down to find the "sweet spot" dunno what all the buisness with clicking is :s but you dont have to.

:crazy:

Some locks are harder than others, locks to chests with some loot in are usually easy but ones which are part of the mission can be quite difficult.

[Circlebreaker]

I've found that using the arrows instead of the mouse makes the lockpicking incredibly easy. The locks go open in no time. :thumbup:

I must say, I'm really enjoying the demo a lot, and that's surprising, because usually I don't really like those sneaky games very much. I might even get this one.

[MikeMaster]

Do! It's a great sequel, I'm getting it in a couple of days after i got my new PC!

[Circlebreaker]

Crap, wheres the damn 3rd secret item in the demo? Its keeping me from finishing on expert...

*slight spoilers*

There's the helmet in the chest in Lady Elizabeths room up in the tower in the castle interior, the medallion on the fireplace in Rutherfords chamber, and the painting on the first floor in the castle front. To get to the painting you have to get to the first floor in the castle front, and then go to the furthest room. There behind a big box is a small crawling room to get to the other balcony, and on the end of the balcony hangs a painting which is the last secret item. The other two were easy to find, but that painting was seriously hard to find. :thumbup:

[DanTheManPR]

Ah-ha! Thanks!

[SupaTroopa]

I'm having no problems now with the lockpicking, just takes some repetition also I guess.

[Fzoulcmbyl]

You are having no problems because you are using that shortcut?...or are you like Mike, and just do it the regular way?

Just curious if the shortcut helped you at all?


:thumbup:



Fzoul

[SupaTroopa]

I think it did, the more I did it, the easier it got apparently, but whenever I see the right hand go upwards now, I left click the mouse.

[Dwango]

Hey Guys,

Thief 3 is turning out to be a great game. Its still thief, and I like it that way. I was worried they'd muck it up to sell to the modern gamer.

Oh, by the way. If you are playing on Expert, the mode will break on reload. Turns out there is a bug that on loading a level, the game reverts to Normal mode. You'll still have the same objectives and treasure, but the AI will be dumber and the damage will be less. So, if you don't mind playing on Normal, no problem. But if you wanted that advanced AI, you'll have to solve a mission straight from the beginning. Worse, when you go through a blue portal, the level drops to Normal too, but only the second time you enter a segment. Its considered a load, since the state of a segment gets saved when you leave it.

Someone has a "fix" for it, but its kind of ugly. It writes to the memory every 10 seconds to update the level. It seems to work for me, though some say it does not work. It can be found on the Eidos or TTLG.com sites in the forums. If you got the X-Box version, you are out of luck.

Even so, I'm still loving this game. The atmosphere is unbeatable, and its still fun to sneak around.

[SupaTroopa]

I'm liking it so far quite a bit and am playing on the normal difficulty any ways - appropriately challenging although it can be quite easy to knock people out I'm finding. You can even be spotted just a few feet away and easily hide from them still.

I'm only in the Pagan Well mission though so it's hard to really form a complete opinion of it yet. The smaller, more focused levels are appropriate for this series though and I like it much better than the previous Thief games where I had no idea where I was going and it took forever (and lots of trial and error) to get to my objective.

Unfortunately I don't think it worked for DX2 at all, as the wide open, big levels in the original game were one of it's strong points I thought, for various reasons. Still haven't been motivated enough to buy Dx2 yet...although the demo runs MUCH better on my 9800 Pro than it did on the Ti4600.

[Mr. Natural]

FYI - a bug is being reported in the game. This quote from slashdot.
It's been revealed that Thief: Deadly Shadows has a bug that affects the intelligence of the guards and other characters in the game, both in the PC and Xbox versions. Ion Storm Austin, the creators of the game, really went to work on the character AI in Deadly Shadows - on Expert level, the guards notice things like open doors, missing objects and the like. The catch, as reported on the official Ion Storm forums, is that a bug in the game resets the difficulty level to Normal level if you save and load your position in-game. The word from one of the Thief developers is that: 'We're looking into it.Can't say anything more for now, and there aren't any guarantees... but the find isn't being ignored.' The PC version should be relatively easy to patch, but fixing the Xbox version would be trickier, perhaps requiring a full recall (Microsoft doesn't allow the Xbox Live service to be used for anything other than patches that affect online play.)"

[SupaTroopa]

The other bug(s) in this game revolve around NPC's and your character getting stuck in various places - I've gotten stuck in a freakin' chest trying to retrieve something from it (had to reload game), and last night in the Pagan Sanctuary two female NPC's were stuck in a doorway and it forced me to take an alternate route to my destination. Nothing could free them (noisemaker arrows, etc..,). Reloading a saved game didn't help either. And I don't kill anybody in the game so that wasn't an option (although I have been killing those big goofy monsters in the Pagan Sanctuary/Sewers without a care, since no one seems to notice).

Hasn't by any means reduced my enjoyment of the game though, perfect for turning all the lights off, turning the sound up, and ignoring real life for a while, just what a game should be.

[DanTheManPR]

Yea, getting stuck has plauged the thief series since thief 1. I would always somehow get hung up forever in some strange place. Pissed me off, since I don't make saves (I have a habit of not saving games. Makes them more challenging)

[Dwango]

Hey all,

I found a tool to fix the difficulty bug here:
http://www.team5150.com/~andrew/project.thiefbot/

Nice interface and it works. It allows you to change the various values manually, or set them to the default values for Expert, Normal, or Easy.

I tried two tests to make sure it really worked. First I launched the application before launching Thief. I set all the values to 10. I launched thief and loaded up a save game on the first mission. Just after loading a guy down the hall began to say "Who's there?" I moved to hide and he freaks, calling for the guards. Suddenly every move I make I'm drawing more guards. They catch up to me and BOOM, one hit I'm toast.

Next I set all the values to .5 with the game running. I load up the same game. Now I walk down the hall to the guy who first saw me in the first test. I'm running right behind him and he does not notice. I jump and nothing. Soon I'm running through the halls and no-one stops me. Before I know it I'm on a craze being Super Thief, smashing boxes, knocking over tables, knocking out people. I head out the front door and get the first guard, but the guard with the torch finally sees me. He comes up and whack, barely any harm. I pull the dagger and cut him up. Before I know it, he's running for his life. Okay, not very thief like, but kind of fun to have Garrot kicking ass.

Currently, I'm in the first level on Expert. I had a tough time figuring out the guard to Lady E's place, since I play as a pacifist. Discovered that water arrows work well to distract guards without alerting the whole castle. Normal arrows are worthless as guards no longer hear them. Its really fun so far, though I'm taking it very Sloooooow.

[Terry Penrod]

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Great solution Dwango.

This belongs in the permanent 3DG forum Reference Vault archive section.

Cheers, Terry

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