Surprise Patch for Thief 2 and System Shock 2

Arriving completely unexpected, an unofficial patch has been discovered for Thief 2: The Metal Age and System Shock 2. As reported by DrK on the Through The Looking Glass (TTLG) forums, a poster known as Le Corbeau on a French forum board called Ariene4ever posted about a Thief 2 version 1.19 patch and a System Shock 2 version 2.4 patch. The reason this is a big deal is because of the list of changes it boasts which sound so hard to believe, you'll have to see for yourself. Here's an excerpt from the TTLG post, which has an excerpt from the readme included with the patch:

" Renderer:
- Added windowed mode
- Added single display mode option - no resolution change between menus and game
- Added ingame support for all common resolutions, including widescreen
- Added support for 32-bit color
- Textures can now be automatically promoted to 32-bit, improving quality and effectively eliminating the palette limit
- Added UI framerate cap option to avoid GPU fan spinning up in UI
- Added DDS/PNG image support
- Added full 24/32-bit TGA/BMP image support
- Increased the maximum number of frames allowed in animated textures from 20 to 99, and increased the allowable filename length for animated textures (before the underscore) to support more than 7
- Animated texture rate can now be specified via a material file for that texture
- Fixed a bug where Transparency property didn't (correctly) apply on objects that contain transparent polys"

And that's just for the renderer. There's also changes for dromed, such as hardware rendering in editor mode! The implications here are very significant for Dromed level designers. Before you go tinkering with trying to install the patch, you can test the game itself with the Thief demo which has the 1.19 patch changes included. It should be pointed out that the 1.19 patch has no need for ddfix, a previous fan patch for thief 2 that was separate from the main game and ran along side it. I've also posted a mirror for both the Thief 2 and SS2 patches, seen here.

Thief 4 has been announced!

Thief 4, which has been speculated to be the second game Eidos Montreal is working on for probably a year at least, has been officially announced by EM, and even on TTLG!

Eidos Montreal's website is http://www.eidosmontreal.com Thief 4 also has it's new website.

Article on Gamasutra about Thief: The Dark Project

Article (on Gamasutra)

The above links to an article that was "originally in the July 1999 issue of Game Developer (magazine)." (Source is from the link above.) The article appears to have been written by one of the team members who worked on Thief. According to the article, this person was Tom Leonard, a lead programmer for Thief. This is a great article that gives you the back story of the creation of thief: the dark project and the struggles the company went through. If you never read this article, I suggest checking it out! :) Cheers!

Yahtzee reviews TDP!

Click here

I was wondering when Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation would ever review this game... Well, he finally has! For those of you who haven't ever heard of him, he's a game critic who reviews games through a often updated feature from Escapist Magazine called Zero Punctuation. You'll soon see why he calls it that. There's also references to Thief 2 in past reviews. I can't remember all of them, but I believe his review of Oblivion has a mention to thief 2, and thief 2 is mentioned in his review of FEAR 2 (at the end) :
Click here

It's over 9,000!

(The title of this is an internet joke. Look up "it's over 9,000!" on youtube, or "it's over nine thousand!")

UN-BE-LIEV-A-BLE ! For those that don't know, TTLG (ttlg.com and it's sister sites) went down recently for unknown reasons, and Saam (the guy who owns the server for TTLG) was on vacation... When he came back, it was fixed, and David (forum admin) announced on ttlg.com that TTLG needed help (donations) for building a new server/getting a hosting package. This means that TTLG will have more reliable service and be much faster! The administrator David, while reluctant to do so (read the thread on TTLG) asked for donations, and not only has the goal been met in a short timespan, it was exceeded! The amount of donations combined with USD and British Pounds (sterling?) equaled a total over over 4,000 dollars in American money. The goal was around 2,000 dollars! But you don't have to take my word, check the website, and look at the "Hosting Discussion" thread. TTLG is amazing isn't it? As some people have said, it's like a "home away from home." Thanks David and others for your hard work on keeping TTLG alive over the past 9+ years or so.

New Discovery

Click here

I don't know if anyone has ever seen this before, but I found an interesting secret image in the editor.res file included with thief gold. See the above thread for more details.

The Master Builder - Connection between thief and the play?

Probably no connection, but it was interesting to me anyway, and I posted a thread. Link below.

Click here

TTLG - Thief 10th Anniversary Contest!

10 year Anniversary Contest

A contest for thief is started by Brethren of the TTLG forums to create a mission in two months for thief's anniversary in November (November 30th is the one agreed on for the contest) of this year. If you like thief, and you have dromed experience, and would like to do it, then get crackin! :D This should be a cool contest....

Behind the Scenes video at Looking Glass "Technologies"

Below is the link to a youtube video regarding a German video report back in 1997 when thief was still considered an RPG and was simply called The Dark Project. (I never knew this, something new to learn.:) )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaugYown6GA

This video was made back before the release of thief (I'm guessing they just decided to change the name, as I've always known it as Looking Glass Studios). Thanks to jtr7 for sharing this from the TTLG forums discussion thread regarding old screenshots.

Taffer Art!

Hello taffers! There is a thread out there at the TTLG Forums called Taffer Art and it basically has.. well you guessed it, thief inspired artwork. Most of the stuff in here is top notch. I really like Platinumoxicity's character casting images on page 34. He did that with MS Paint! :o If you are an artist (and if you have an account, or would like to join) feel free to post in that thread if you like thief and have made thief related artwork.