Welcome to the new season of FM Author Spotlight, a series of interviews that provides an exclusive peek into the world of fan mission creators. In this episode, we are talking to vfig, the author of Making a Profit.
Aemanyl: Please introduce yourself and tell us how you discovered the Thief games.
vfig: im vfig. i reject apostrophes, capital letters, binary gender, and various other dogmas. my first steps in garretts noisy boots were in early 2000 when i had just started university and was sharing a house in tasmania with my older brother, who had a nice pc with a 3dfx voodoo2 accelerator and who had just installed the “unwelcome guest” demo of thief 2 off the cover disc of some computer magazine. the game immediately grabbed me and never let go again. i replayed that demo so many times, exploring every corner i could mantle or rope arrow to, and tantalised by the glimpses of lower floors in angelwatch that were boarded off and unreachable. it was wanting to see what was down there that led to me first opening dromed, and then to first discovering the ttlg.com forums when i immediately struggled to use dromed.
Aemanyl: Let’s bring up the perennial question - do you prefer Thief 1 or Thief 2?
vfig: i dont, no.
Aemanyl: Do you have a favourite genre, style, or theme of fan missions?
vfig: i think comparative rankings and taxonomical arbitration are futile endeavours, so im not going to talk about favourites. but instead, here are some facets that i greatly appreciate, in no particular order:
a developing narrative, where your context or purpose change as you make progress through the mission. it doesnt need to be complicated: a simple wild goose chase like in bbb’s Three Crowns brings a sense of momentum. Assassins’s initial fakeout, then tailing the mysterious (albeit inept) assassins, followed by a revenge looting spree and a stealthy return back to home turf is a great example of a small dramatic arc within a single mission. Rowena’s Curse deserves a mention here as one of the earliest fms i encountered to have a compelling arc, despite its simple architectural form and the crude keyhunt mechanic it is built on.
an unusual setting, taking us away from the conventional city streets and mansions and haunted ruins. some that stick strongly in my memory: the asteroid in A Keeper of the Prophecies. the bizarre, unexpected and unexplained subterranean section of Into the Odd. the post-apocalyptic outdoors of The Builder’s Paradise. and the enigmatic tunnels of Brainchild.
a sense of humour, idiosyncrasies that convey the authors personality: the whole setup in When Angels Refuse to Die. the escalating murders and three different viewpoints in Ten Little Taffers. taking the stairs, or taking the lift in Heist at Hilbert’s High-rise Hotel. Gaëtane’s whole L’Arsène series shines on this front, especially Emilie Victor.
strong use of spatial form, a rarer quality than the others, as it usually takes a lot of level design experience to develop well. things like the inverted spiral in Ascend the Dim Valley, or the layered quadrangle of Ravensreach, or the ring-shaped keep with all the between-floors access in Arcane Sanctum of The Black Parade. or, probably the best example in the original missions, the beautiful croissant that is Running Interference.
Aemanyl: What are your most irritating pet peeves in fan missions? I already know that you are not overly fond of spiders - to say the least - and that you have previously spoken against using the AI generated content. Are there any other elements of design or gameplay solutions that reduce your enjoyment of playing Thief?
vfig: yes, there are. if youve seen any of my fan mission lets play videos — and i guess i should plug my channel here: LINK — you will find i am vocal about the things i dislike, but also about the things i am enjoying: which i believe is very important, even though complaining comes easier to me! however, those complaints need to be heard in context; theyre not bright line rules.
if i had to pick out one thing that trips me up most frequently, its brushwork or objects that interfere with player movement: difficult mantles, awkward tight spaces, crawlspaces that you bump your head trying to enter, stairs that you cant walk or creep up without hitching. i get the feeling that these sorts of issues cause me more pain when playing than most other authors, so maybe this is just a peculiarity of my embodiment-projection-proprioception. but i do feel it strongly, almost as if i am physically tripping or stubbing my toes or bumping my head; so dont expect me to ever shut up about it.
Aemanyl: Your first fan mission, Making a Profit, was a well-received, large city map, filled with clever puzzles, immersive and dynamic sound design, original voice acting, and captivating story. Looking back on the development process, what were the key lessons you learned?
vfig: everything. i had never used dromed in anger before. well, back when i explored the thief 2 alpha with it, i also briefly tried making a level in it: i made one box-shaped room, with a crude brushwork table and a window, thats all. it wasnt playable. i didnt know how to place objects. i dont think way back then i even figured out how to apply textures. but in the intervening years i had spent many hours messing about in hammer, making levels for half-life 2 and team fortress 2, but never quite finishing anything. that experience helped a lot when coming back to dromed, but Making a Profit was still a three-month crash course in everything Dark Engine. i probably spent just as much time reading old tutorials and ttlg threads and studying how things were done in oms and other fms as i did making the mission itself.
even so, i think i only managed to release Making a Profit thanks to the pressure of the contest deadline, and the fact that i followed a pretty good process: i had a solid mental image and pencil and paper sketches of the layout before i opened dromed, and largely stuck to it. it was intentionally three “focal points” of significant buildings, with the streets as connective tissue, so i built out the focal points first with basic (but workable) texturing, and made them fully playable, while for most of the missions lifetime the streets were bare blustn corridors. i built the branching mission logic almost entirely in script, so that i could develop and test it in a separate standalone .mis (which was a very rough minimap of the layout), and have minimal chance of breaking it due to forgotten links or whatever in the mission proper. and only after the focal points and plot were all working did i start adding most of the detail to the main buildings and to the streets themselves. i dont remember the exact dates, but i think the mission was fully playable by the end of week three, although very barebones looking and with no guards in the street. this meant that at any time after that i would have been able to ship the mission if i had needed to, even if it would have been obviously unfinished and unpolished.
Aemanyl: Making a Profit already featured some impressive custom scripting work. Since then, you have become known as one of the DromEd scripting wizards, alongside Firemage. What would you say is your proudest technical innovation? You have plenty of videos demonstrating your work, would you like to share one?
vfig: i love burricks, and it was a pity that in Making a Profit i had to entirely cut the burrick tunnels below the hammerite sanctuary for time. i promised myself that my next mission would definitely have burricks—and, well, the next mission i started definitely will, even if it will not be the next that i actually release. i am very fond of the animations and behaviours i have put together for baby burricks. theyre just so cute! here is a wee burrick bairn following its mother around, becoming curious about something in the environment nearby, and then getting a surprise when garrett steps out of the shadows: VIDEO
Aemanyl: Living in Scotland, how do this region’s rich history, unique architecture, and dreary weather inspire your projects?
vfig: scotland doesnt have dreary weather; it has beautiful weather. i love wind and rain. i love overcast skies—colours in the world are always more vibrant under grey skies than when everything is bleached in bright sunlight. and yes, we do get quite a few sunny days through the year: those are quite nice too.
in terms of architecture: the first time i ever set foot in edinburgh, i got off the train and walked up fleshmarket close to the high street, where i was staying at a hostel for a few days, and then spent the rest of the day wandering the old town: over and under bridges, down candlemaker row, along the cowgate, weaving up and down the narrow closes. it made such an enormous impression, like actually walking through an irl thief city, that i decided right then that i should move there. so a month later, i did.
i dont know anything much about scottish history generally, but the visible historical structure of edinburgh was inspiring. my earliest idea for what eventually became Making a Profit was half drawn from how edinburghs old town is built on layers of itself, especially the buildings above and below south bridge, and half ideas provoked by The City and The City by China Miéville—even though in the end that core concept didnt survive into the actual mission structure or plot. i guess that means i can still use it in future.
Aemanyl: Are you currently working on any new levels? If so, feel free to share some screenshots!
vfig: i have two missions on the backburner: one is a time travel adventure set on a remote island—with burricks! the other has you playing as a pagan agent infiltrating a mechanist facility. neither of those are going to be finished anytime soon! but i also have a much smaller mission in progress for the 2024 speedbuild jam, which looks likely to actually release in time for that deadline.
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work-in-progress time travel mission (the one with burricks)
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work-in-progress mechanist inflitration mission
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work-in-progress mission for the 2024 speedbuild jam
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Aemanyl: Is there anything else you would like to add or share at the end?
vfig: i struggle a lot with motivation to do anything in dromed. but i have found one thing that always gets those gears turning again: playing fan missions. thats what gave me the urge to actually fire up dromed six years ago for the TDP 20th anniversary contest, and when i get stuck now i put dromed away and go play a few more fms. i owe huge thanks to everyone who has ever made a fan mission, and of course also to those who put such enormous efforts into understanding and sharing the technical details of the Dark Engine over the years: whatever wizardry i have done is built on top of deep foundations laid by others.
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Thank you for reading! We hope that you've enjoyed this insightful interview with vfig. In these series, we talk to fan mission authors, featuring both the rising stars and the seasoned veterans of our beloved community.
Stay tuned and see you in the next issue of FM Author Spotlight series!
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