Business at Midnight - A Thief Gold fan mission by David Moore (atogguy@vividnet.com)
LGS Anniversary Edition Release 1 - May 25th, 2001

This fan mission R E Q U I R E S DARKLOADER 2.1 or above. Make sure you have the Thief Gold pack if you are running Thief: The Dark Project.

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The Trickster of legend is dead -- if not by your hand, then because of it.

But saving the world is not a profitable venture. Your name remains unknown, and your monetary problems unabated.

Perhaps Fate has something in mind for you, though. Your tight finances have forced you to accept a dangerous job from a infamous clan of corrupt nobles. The Feldrake family have been City Wardens for as long as you (or anyone else) can remember.

It's a shame that their eldest son, Rupert, was killed by his brother over a game of cards. It was unlucky when the City Watch - a loose conglomerate of Warden-run guards - carted off his body to their precinct headquarters before the family could invent an alibi and dispose of the body. Ther servant who called the Watch has already been taken care of, but quicker action will be needed reverse this turn of events. If Kourgan - the fierce and independent commander of the Watch - has the body, he has the evidence of the crime, and the Feldrakes have no desire to lose two sons in one night...or to show their fellow Wardens any weakness.

That's where you come in. Break into the City Watch headquarters. Steal the body - wherever it may be. Get out alive. And be careful of Kourgan. The man is rumoured to be deadly with a blade and to keep a keen eye on his men. The Wardens barely have control of him as is. If you were to be caught on the City Watch's own ground, punishment would be swift and most likely terminal.

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Tributes:
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Many thanks to my original beta tester, Jayle. He is the man.
HunterByNite, for his voicework. Good job!
Many thanks to all the helpful guys at TTLG - without them, I never would have been able to have a solid enough foundation to build on.

Playing Notes:
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There is no equipment for sale. You instead have the following:

20 Broadhead
10 Water Arrows
5 Earth Arrows
3 Rope Arrows
1 Gas Arrow

Please note that if the Watch sees you skulking about the gates of their compound, observing them for long periods of time or picking their gate locks (even if you are not yet inside) they will assume your activity is suspicious and accost you for "questioning".

* Play Information *

Game: Thief: Gold
Mission Title: Business at Midnight
Filename: bizmid.zip / miss21.mis
Difficulty Settings: Yes. New objectives. Map is meant for those who have finished the original Thief.
Equipment store: NO
Map / automap: Map, no automap
New graphics: Yes
New sounds: Yes
New Objects: No
Other stolen stuff: None, other than all the help that the tutorials at ttlg.com gave me.
Multi language support: No (only English at this point)
Briefing : Yes, but too big to include. Contact me if you want it.

* Other Information*

Build time: 250+ hours
Weight lost: 56 pounds

* Loading information *

You MUST use DarkLoader 2.1 or above or otherwise
review the addendum at the end of this file.

* Copyright *

This fan mission is copyrighted (c) 2000-2001 by David Moore.

Distribution of this mission is allowed as long as it is free and the zip file is kept intact and unmodified. You may NOT include this project in a mission-pack without my permission. No one may edit and re-distribute this mission without my express permission.

Any resemblance in the real world to places, events, or people found in this fan mission are entirely unintended and purely coincidental.

Address support questions to the Editor's Guild section of the TTLG forums: http://www.ttlg.com/forums

This level was not made by nor supported by Looking Glass Studios (RIP, guys, I loved ya), Eidos Interactive or Ion Storm of Austin, TX.

* Author's Notes *

Please do not read this section until after you have completed the mission.


When I started this, I wanted to be the first FM author with a large outdoor area...in Thief 1 (since that was the only thing out when I started this monster). I decided to use Gold since it opened up the palette a bit and also saved me a lot of work in creating mage-style objects.

Well I'm satisfied with the end result. Not happy with it, but satisfied. I wish I had a series of 8 hour days to work on this project, but unfortunately game development is a screwed up industry that isn't very feasible for college graduates with technical ability and a big imagination. Or maybe it's that the world is full of us and we all make bad game designers. :) C'est la vie, I guess I'll have to get my own company to follow up on my ideas. ;)

Things that went right:

1) Puzzles with multiple solutions that also did not fit the typical mold of Thief puzzles. The courtyard floodlight puzzle, where you had to find a way to kill the lights without setting off the alarm and releasing 3 killer guards.
2) The City. Looks good to me, I'm generally satisfied with both it's complexity and poly counts.
3) AI tricks I managed to pull off, including a pretty good alarm system and AI awareness of critical doors.
4) The backstory, while not being the most original thing in the world, is at least adequate to hold the player's interest.
5) A completely new character is cool. I like the "slowly burning" effect he produces.
6) Lotsa ways to get in and out of most places.

Things that sucked:

1) Those damn grav shafts in the tower. A cool effect, but it took me forever to get them to work. Plus they randomly screw up the gravity of the entire game. Yuck. I kept them anyway.
2) Kourgan sounds like he has a bad cold. And his voice doesn't carry. This is not the fault of the voice talent but rather that of amateur software I was using. GAH!
3) The whole outdoor thing didn't work. It's rather claustraphobic. But the polygon counts are decent - you can play this on a p-166 (which I am very proud of).
4) The fact that Thief 2 invalidated my idea by including a mission done at the City Watch that was at least as good, if not better. (Duh, LGS were proffesionals)
5) Kourgan's manor is not grand enough (although his tower is). His foyer looks like garbage, I was very unhappy with how the final design turned out. Too bad I didn't want to take the 10+ hours to fix it.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the mission. I am probably going to make a Thief 2 mission, due out in October. :) Remember that feedback is the LIFEBLOOD of a fan mission author, and if you enjoyed this mission even the slightest bit please contact me at the address below.

Thank you for playing and good luck with all your endeavors!

David Moore
atogguy@vividnet.com