It’s been almost 18 years now since one of my favourite games ever, THIEF - THE DARK PROJECT, has beed released.
What I’m trying to do now is rebuilding a level of that game into the unreal engine 4.
Since I don’t have any experience so far when it comes to modelling, animating or rebuilding the objects used in the original game, I am now looking for someone who is just as passionate as me about the game and who could help me out here.
I am thinking about creating the very first level - the one with Lord Bafford - from scratch.
I am pretty much still a newbie when it comes to creating games, but I am eager to learn and therefore the person I am looking for don’t has to be a pro at all. In fact, we can get through the whole learning process together.
Remember, this is not a project for getting money out of it. It’s just about someone who wants to take a level out of this incredible game into a modern engine and to see what it COULD look like with modern technology.
I’d love to hear from you!
So far I came across a website that shows some concept arts. It can be found here: Thief: The Circle -- A Through the Looking Glass Website
It’s not much, but it’s a start. Of course things like the street lights etc. need to be captured with a screenshot and then try to rebuild them. At least that’s the way I’d do it.
The Enemys in the first level are just regular guards, so no zombies or whatsoever. They look like this: Bafford Guard | Thief Wiki | Fandom
Also I found a table that points out the stats of the guards, when it comes to HP, Damage dealing, awareness, aggressiveness, and speed.
Gameplay can be found on Youtube from several people. I like this one, because the person playing is not talking through the game: Thief: The Dark Project -02- Lord Bafford's Manor [1/2] - YouTube
Yee i have that dream too but there are some things to be said here:
First of this thread is realy bad.
You tell people the basic idea but you dont give them anything to work with
You are new to development but you still want to have people to work with, what would be your workpart then?
A recreation of the thief game system would need some experienced people but you dont realy tell us what you are looking for.
If you want this to sucess you need to work alot in for hand meaning:
Writing down all mechanics and dynamics the game has that needs to be coded
All art that needs to be done and exactly how far you want to go with that
Making thaughts about licensee and what todo afterwards
You need to rework your entire post and make it bigger and more detailed so people see exactly what you want and where togo.
You are right there are lots of people who just wish a new a thiefgame would take place.
As long as you were doing it for a personal project with no intention of release or sale, you will be fine.
Stray beyond that, expect Eidos to fox your project right quick
It sucks, but unfortunately, that is how it works.
As I mentioned in my first post, this istnot supposed to be a project to release or acutally sell. It is just for personal pleasure. So no issues with licensing here.
Also this thread was not supposed to already show what exactly needs to be done (I’m pretty sure I couldnt write down all the tasks even if I wanted to - gonna be a try and error thing for me).
It was just about finding out if there is someone else out there, who likes the game as much as me and wants to participate in recreating a level from this game.
If there is no one at all and I have to do this by myself, there is no need to spam this thread with multiple tasks, right?!
Maybe it would be a first step just to recreate the buildings and lights and everything and totally exclude the guards and all the actual game functionalities in the first place.
And then we’ll see where this whole thing will go. So, if there is anybody out there willing to contribute, feel free to contact me.
I don’t think there’s any harm in recreating an environment as a homage to the original, I doubt you’d run into issues. If Eidos did complain you can just change names and any copyrighted material without compromising the project. A dark, low-fantasy stealth game set in a quasi-medieval period is not a registered trademark
What I would say is that you should look to do your own learning first and start the project yourself. As someone with no skills or experience, you will find it hard to attract and motivate a team of people to help. The question in everyone’s mind would be “we’ve all played Thief and know what it’s about, why do we need you?”.
I think you should start working solo and build up the skills so that you can make a real, tangible contribution to your own project. Volunteer projects like these also have a very high turnover of people, so you need to be able to keep the project going when one or more team members leave due to real life reasons.
Personally my two cents as a die-hard Thief fan (originals at least), I’d love to see a remake of this game but it would do you extraordinary good if you brush up on your dev skills first. Also I am not sure if you plan to release this game (free of course), but if you do and you want to get this game on a major platform like Steam or such, you may have to get the non-commercial license or a written permission from the IP holder to get your game on the platform or at least that seemed to be the case for my game which is also on my signature (not sure about consoles if they allow fangames anymore but in the older days I did see a few on PSN that were free to play in my youth).
Also, I don’t know how attached Eidos is to Thief, but you may want to consider the protective nature of the IP holder on the project you work on in order to prevent a nasty surpise DMCA takedown destroying years of hard work. Luckily for my game, the IP itself is badly tarnished and the IP owners don’t even seem to know they have the IP (because of the indirect acquisition when they bought Global Star), and those that do don’t even seem to care for it from my experience speaking with them. Those “shelved IP” or “lost in the vault” scenarios. Problem there is that my game also may not go very far with publicity on its own without some kind of popular platform (unless I have the proper PR skills and money to promote it or create my own platform but that’s another challenge entirely), and considering I plan to have online multiplayer, I find it extremely important.
If the IP brand is still something very popular (e.g. Halo) than it can complicate matters very quickly and you are probably better off avoiding the idea of making such a fangame entirely, even for personal pleasure.
Hope this helps mate. Many love to bring fandom into a virtual reality and I’ve always supported it but its not always possible for some IPs and if Thief is one of those popular brands, it’s better to save yourself the hassle earlier than to be sorry later. Wish I could say the same for me (spent 12 years, already too late to turn back).
