Thief 3 - will be "another" Deus EX IW game

[Sotos]

I just hope it will run sufficient with my HIGH END SYSTEM
and with not 100000000 bugs

after the DEUS EX IW dissapointment i am afraid EIDOS is screwing up famous games

[Beagle Boy]

I hope you have a 3D card with vertex and pixel shaders. Thief 3's system requierments may be higher than dx2. The problem with Dx2 is the Unreal 2 engine. If the maps are a little large with many charecters the frame rates drop too much and load times are very long. I wish they had used the jupiter engine (Nolf2, Tron2).

[Nupraptor]

Originally posted by Beagle Boy
I hope you have a 3D card with vertex and pixel shaders. Thief 3's system requierments may be higher than dx2. The problem with Dx2 is the Unreal 2 engine. If the maps are a little large with many charecters the frame rates drop too much and load times are very long. I wish they had used the jupiter engine (Nolf2, Tron2).

Uh, no.

The current generation Unreal engine handles large areas with multiple characters just fine. UT2003, Unreal 2, Splinter Cell, Raven Shield... all of them use the same engine, have large areas with ~ half a dozen characters on-screen, on average.

Concessions were made for the X-Box version of Deus Ex: Invisible War. Concessions such as very small levels, to compensate for the X-Box's relatively low amount of RAM. These things have nothing to do with the engine itself.

[Quillan]

No, the technical problem with IW wasn't the Unreal engine. It is all the add-ons that Ion Storm added in. My personal thought is that the big resource hog is the dynamic lighting engine, because there were similar performance issues with Splinter Cell, which has a similar lighting engine.

The tech guys at Ubi Soft improved game performance on Splinter Cell by redoing the shadow rendering. I think a similar thing could greatly help performance here. And as I understand it, the intention was to use the same engine for Thief 3 as they used in Invisible War. That may change some, given what the fallout on IW has been.

[Nosferatu]

Originally posted by Nupraptor
Concessions were made for the X-Box version of Deus Ex: Invisible War. Concessions such as very small levels, to compensate for the X-Box's relatively low amount of RAM. These things have nothing to do with the engine itself.

Yes, but the concessions shouldn't have been included for the PC version, those levels were way too damn small.

[Mr. Perfect]

It looks like DE:IW was pushed out for Christmas sales. I think they plan to have Thief 3 done before next Christmas, so I doubt the bean counters will be as problematic this time around.

Personally I have no problems running DE:IW at 800x600 on my moderate little 2600+. I don't know why so many people have a hard time with it...

[Nosferatu]

Maybe they have been stricken with a severe case of stupidity?

[GulliveR]

I think it will be impossible to screw up thief as much as DXIW. Or maybe they have made it to a FPS or a mmorpg.

[DreamEndless]

In truth DX:IW is not that screwed up. Sure there are a lot of stupid compromises (texture quality, level size) thanks to the IdiotBox, but it is still very good

From the screenies I've seen of TIII, the rendered looks a lot different, so hopefully we wont get the same gaffs...

BTW, has TIII been anounced for the CrapBox or are we save from that evil?

[Quillan]

It says PC and Xbox on the game info screen at Eidos.

[DreamEndless]

Oh goody.

The mind simply boggles. How can a game of the depth and subtlety of play of Thief be properly played on that heap of a console and its crappy joypad??

I really don't understand what the hell games companies are thinking these days... oh wait... it's coming to me....

CASH!!!!

(For reference, before the flames start, I am not an out and out console hater. As it happens I own 7 of the things. I just have a personal vendetta against the TurdBox)

[Nosferatu]

The S**tBOX is just another scheme for Bill Gates to get money...You have to pay for XBOX live MONTHLY, and pay to download the software for the game you want to play...Not to mention buy the system and game and whatever extra...

[Secrets Of Nosgoth]

I'm getting disconcerned with Eidos recently. They are the holders of practically all of my favorite games (LoK, Thief, Deus Ex, Timesplitters, Tomb Raider) but recently there has been tons of unpolished releases. I think TS2 was their last good release and now that series is out of their hands I think. The last three LoK games have been glitchy, I won't even talk about the last Tomb Raider game, Deus EX IW is another one that needs no intro when it comes to not being optimized for PC.

This is not a good pattern for a company wishing to stay sucessful in the longrun.

[thegrommit]

Originally posted by Nupraptor
Uh, no.

The current generation Unreal engine handles large areas with multiple characters just fine. UT2003, Unreal 2, Splinter Cell, Raven Shield... all of them use the same engine, have large areas with ~ half a dozen characters on-screen, on average.

As Quillan noted, DX:IW does not use the Unreal engine in any form comparable to any other "Unreal powered" game:

http://www.gamespy.com/interviews/fe...2/index4.shtml

Harvey Smith

we used their editor, we used a lot of their file formats, but we replaced the renderer, we replaced the AI, we replaced the sound propagation, we replaced the physics. So, like what's left? We're using the editor and the file formats. And we even had to change all the file formats with our own object system because it had to be more memory efficient to work on consoles.

Hopefully the real world feedback on DX:IW's performance will help to improve T3's performance.

[IconoclastDX]

When will game developers learn that some some type of games dont play well on consoles and that most console games PC gamers wouldnt play even if they were free. Sigh, I think Ill go play some AA:O. Thats one game I know will never be dumbed down to appeal to a console players.

[Kerghan]

I think that T3 will translate better onto a console then the DX series did, and here are just a few of the reasons:
*Thief doesn't need tons of conversations.
*Thief doesn't have biomods.
*Thief never had a skills system to nerf.
*Thief DOES have multiple ammunition types.
*The new Thief DOES have a lockpicking system.
*The new Thief DOES have leaning (which was lacking in DX:IW).
*Thief doesn't require 'reloading'...because you use melee, bows, and special grenade-like items or mines and that's it.

All in all, there are less features in the Thief series to nerf and the controls can be much simpler yet still be effective then in what we'd expect from a DX sequel. However, I am still very worried about small levels and the overall length of the game.