Welcome to the new episode 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 Balboa, a veteran author who has been releasing high-quality fan missions since 2004.
Aemanyl: Please introduce yourself and tell us how you discovered the Thief games.
Balboa: My name is Doug. I live in New York, about an hour from Niagara Falls, and I'm 72. Not quite the oldest taffer, but definitely up there. I came across Thief Gold back in '99 (I think - that was a while ago). Followed that with Thief 2 (the 'Sold Out' version I'm afraid, but it worked). And then, TTLG, fan missions, and Dromed.
Aemanyl: Do you have a favourite genre, style, or theme of fan missions?
Balboa: I tend to prefer puzzle and exploratory missions. Hammers over Mechanists. Ancient ruins and sinister secrets below the manor. But if there is a solid story behind the mission, I'm happy.
Aemanyl: What are your most irritating pet peeves in fan missions? Are there any elements of design or gameplay solutions that reduce your enjoyment of playing Thief?
Balboa: I hate getting deep into a mission and having no idea how to proceed. And I don't mean missing an obvious clue. Rather, it can be quite frustrating when an objective has no in-game info as to how to proceed. When it stops being fun, I just walk away - maybe try it again another day.
Aemanyl: As a veteran taffer who has been making fan missions for over 20 years, what was it like to release Viktor Gaspar back in 2004 compared to now, in the 2020s, with releases like Matriarch or Haunt? Also, what makes you keep coming back to Thief?
Balboa: Well, a while after I had discovered fan missions, I saw that Komag Contest 5 was coming up, so I started with the Komag Tutorial, then jumped right in with Viktor Gaspar. The size and time constraints were perfect for forcing me to focus on the elements of mission design. Then I played Ominous Bequest, which blew my mind, and led to Tales from the Cleft. (I had to make a mini mission to do the intro movie for Vandal, but it got out of hand, and ended up being Ladytaker)
Now, with New Dark, it's almost too easy. No need to save Every Day, just in case Dromed crashes, and takes out your mission, and the rest of your family.
As for coming back to Thief, I enjoy mission building more than mission release. Dromed is a perfect tool for creating new stories, and if other taffers enjoy the results, so much the better.
Aemanyl: What would be your proudest technical achievement in DromEd?
Balboa: I am happy with how all of my missions turned out (bugs and all), but I think my proudest technical achievement was in Ten Little Taffers. After a nine year vacation from Thief, I saw the announcement of the TMA 20th Anniversary Contest, and I said 'I should do this'. Foolish me. I had to (re)install Thief, Dromed, and New Dark. Then relearn Dromed (ouch), and come up with an idea worthy of the 20th Anniversary. So, I picked Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians. Which meant doing three missions, from three different viewpoints, and three different murderers. Plus linking everything to ten different rhymes - it was far too ambitious a project, but in the end it worked out. This is a control diagram of the Conversations in just the Ballroom. (I must have been crazy)
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Aemanyl: I found the ghostly mirror world in your recent mission, Haunt, quite intriguing. How did you come up with the concept, and what was the process like to bring it to life?
Balboa: Again, I have to give credit to the Thief: Deadly Shadows 20th Anniversary Contest. I grabbed the TDSContestResourcePack when the contest was announced, but had no plan to enter. But I looked at the TDS textures and thought that they were especially creepy. And I recalled an old movie where the only way to kill a daemon at infinity was to position two mirrors opposite each other, then smash them. (Also, the mirror scene in Conan the Destroyer). So, smashing the mirrors was the seed of the mission. Figuring out how to sometimes walk through the mirrors, and still be able to break them took a bit of time. And the plan was to have the tension build slowly - no real threat until Act 2, then absolute terror in Act 3. (I was quite pleased that no one noticed/mentioned that all of the paintings in the mirror world were reversed.)
Aemanyl: What are some of your other interests, pastimes, or hobbies that you enjoy in your free time?
Balboa: I am an avid brewer, with my own brewery in the garage. I spent ten years chasing a national brewing medal. But, it's like a horse race - first, second, third, and everyone else goes home. Still, getting to the top ten in the country, four years in a row, is no small feat. And one gathers lots of friends, too.
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Aemanyl: Are you currently working on any new levels?
Balboa: I am indeed. Old Gods has been in development for a year (with a four month hiatus to throw together Haunt). Maybe another year to go on that. Basic city/rooftop mission, with a twist. Have I ever done a mission without a twist? After that, maybe a return to Tales from the Cleft. Lots of crimes to pursue, there.
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Aemanyl: Is there anything else you would like to add or share at the end?
Balboa: Just that I am fortunate that this community is still going strong after all these years. Without TTLG and Discord, I would never have made a mission, let alone eight (nine?).
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Thank you for reading! We hope that you've enjoyed this insightful interview with Balboa. 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!
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!
Imagine for a moment that the Thief reboot released in 2014 was an entirely different stealth IP, and that we haven’t seen a new Thief title since Deadly Shadows in 2004. And in this alternate timeline, several former Thief developers all reunite under the banner of a new company: Spyglass Studios.
They announce that the Thief franchise is emerging from the shadows once more with the fourth entry in the series, Dagger of Ways.
For those unfamiliar with Ion Storm’s original pitch for Thief IV, it was an attempt to reboot the franchise in a modern setting. It also featured alternate pathways through levels via the titular Dagger of Ways.
Garrett could use the dagger to slip into a ‘wraith world’ where he could take advantage of certain routes or things that may not be present in the physical realm. While I enjoy the concept of the dagger, I dislike the decision to modernize the setting. Thief is unique because it's a period piece. If I wanted modern or futuristic stealth gameplay, I’d turn to Splinter Cell or Deus Ex.
Thief should do what it’s always done best: deliver on the medieval burglar fantasy. For this reason, my version of Thief IV would include the dagger, but would return fans to the City in all its gloomy glory.
I would also elect to retire Garrett as the protagonist; he’ll don the mantle of reluctant mentor and train the young girl he caught trying to pickpocket him at the end of Deadly Shadows. A new generation of Thief fans need a new protagonist, and like Dishonored 2 with its switch from Corvo to Emily, our beloved series could stand some fresh blood as well. Let’s call her Scarlett.
In addition, transitioning Garret from young rogue to grizzled mentor seems a fitting way for him to end his story and means we can have an older Stephen Russell reprise the role.
And don’t worry, our favorite factions Hammers, Pagans, Keepers, Nobles, and the City Watch will be returning in order to reignite a series of events that take our young thief-in-training from novice zero to unlikely hero.
The plot would pick up 10 years after Deadly Shadows. You play as Scarlett, a talented apprentice to Garrett, the world’s most notorious thief. You’ve been given your first solo mission: stealing a rare rune-covered dagger for a client that’s been less than forthcoming with his true intentions.
The realistic graphics and overall aesthetics from Thief (2014) are fine, but add some splashes of color, especially in relation to the Factions. Consider adding in some sparse instances of daylight activity too.
Sound needs to play a monumental role in this game. It should take advantage of current sound hardware to deliver a truly immersive auditory experience, and should be one of the game's main selling points.
Offer customizable difficulties and a configurable HUD. When possible, providing players with options to tailor their experience is a good thing.
The game takes place in a large, dynamic City hub with side quests and emergent gameplay. It should expand on what Deadly Shadows started while avoiding the pitfalls of Thief (2014), with it's linear, fragmented level design. This is a chance to utilize modern tech to do the City justice.
It needs to feel alive, like a character in and of itself. Different times and days could result in different guard patrols, stores being open or closed, or residents leaving their homes to go to mass or market. Your choices and actions in the city should make an impact and create ripple effects.
As always, you’ll have several non-lethal methods to eliminate enemies, including the Blackjack as well as Gas Arrows and aerial takedowns.
Most of the classic weapons and equipment will be returning, but the Dagger of Ways will provide new approaches to level traversal and problem solving.
Though the nature of Thief doesn't lend itself to traditional forms of multiplayer, I think there are still ways to implement it successfully.
If I'm being honest I'm not sure we'll ever see another entry in the series, but it's fun to imagine what it might look like anyways. And if it wasn't already clear, these are all just my opinions and preferences.
Not everyone will agree with my suggestions, and that's fine; we all enjoy different things about Thief. Though I think we can all agree that a new game developed by the right studio could have a lot of potential.
Welcome to the 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 StandAndDeliver, the author of a recently released mission Coveted Formulae.
Aemanyl: Please introduce yourself and tell us how you discovered the Thief games.
StandAndDeliver: Highway robber by day, boxman by night. About four years ago, a friend I was screwing around with was showing me Dishonored, and when I asked him for recommendations on stealth games he mentioned Thief wasn’t great. I took that in and moved on (in retrospect, I think he was unaware that Thief 1-3 existed). About two years ago, I had 100%ed MGSV and Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, and I was out of stealth games. I was trying to mod Fallout 4 to be another Splinter Cell, to not-so-great results. The whole Thief franchise was on sale on Steam for ~5 dollars, so I decided why not, even with the bad things I’ve heard. Been hooked ever since.
Aemanyl: Congratulations for releasing your first fan mission, Coveted Formulae! Although compactly built and short, your FM was well-received by the community and I have personally found it to be very relaxing and enjoyable. What inspired you to create your own Thief level?
StandAndDeliver: I wanted to make a mission that would entertain me and wouldn’t annoy me, simple as that. I use CAD software frequently, and managed to re-use some of my skills for Dromed. That, and there’s a lot of freedom in Dromed once you learn it. I also have plenty of pet peeves, which I will detail in the related section below. I had some large-scale ideas, but decided to figure out how to do things correctly before I dive straight in.
Aemanyl: Numerous FM authors depict Garrett embarking on grand heists, during which he steals priceless artefacts and relics, often accompanied by vast sums of gold. Yet, as I played through your mission, I couldn't help but feel it could have seamlessly fit into Garrett's early career, perhaps preceding his burglary at Lord Bafford`s Manor, serving as one of his simpler jobs taken to meet basic expenses. How do you feel about the concept of building more modestly-sized missions, akin to Coveted Formulae, that delve into the mundane facets of Garrett's life?
StandAndDeliver: The grounded feel pairs well with the gameplay of Thief - they tend to be the most immersive. It’s also an unexplored part of Garrett’s life: in terms of 70s music, you hear a lot more Perfect Strangers than you do Down Payment Blues. What I’d say is most important is that a mundane backdrop makes things feel more impactful. An alarm system like mine is just some old thing in a huge mansion, but in a mundane mission where it’s mostly an ordinary job it’s a punch in the gut if you didn’t do thorough scouting. In a big 3000 loot mission, a 100 gold vase just feels like a thing - in a 600 loot mission where loot is scarce, you’ll do almost anything for that gold vase. In more elaborate missions, a mundane start is good as well, as the transition from normal to grand and/or supernatural enhances the feeling of outside the fortress -> inside the fortress.
Aemanyl: One of my personal favourite highlights from your mission was the pressure plate connection with the alarm. What would be your proudest technical achievement in DromEd so far?
StandAndDeliver: It’s that one, but since you already mentioned it my second favorite is a very sneaky rope arrow spot in the first street of the mission, southwest. It’s a very narrow gap to climb through and is hard to spot, but it’s very rewarding in the form of some gold and a pipe that allows the player into the sewers without dealing with the Hammerites. A third favorite is a very narrow hiding spot that makes your skin crawl as shown in THIS video. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.
Aemanyl: Do you have a favourite genre, style, or theme of fan missions?
StandAndDeliver: Most of my favorite categories are displayed in this mission. Old buildings, factories, and a modest side dish of cat-burgling. I’m also partial to TG/TDP missions with mostly stock textures, I love the missions from the TDP 20th Anniversary Contest. I also like horror missions that tend to stick to the classic Thief atmosphere like Lost Among the Forsaken, Alcazar, or The Black Parade mission Brand, though I also like Jaws of Darkness from the same campaign.
Aemanyl: What are your most irritating pet peeves in fan missions? Are there any elements of design or gameplay solutions that reduce your enjoyment of playing Thief?
StandAndDeliver: The #1 is guards that instantly turn 180, or flick 180 right as they start walking. There is a method that stops this: Use an AIWatchObj, first step is goto the TrolPt. Then, do normal stuff. Lastly, do your 180 or 90 or whatever turn. The degrees units are in radians, please learn your radians. Although the flick might still happen, its chance is much lower. #2 is bad rooming, admittedly I’m sort of guilty because the density of my mission caused missing sound glitches in small spots, but in a normal, not-super-dense hallway I should always hear the footsteps around the corner. #3 is bad EAX, either do it right or don’t do it at all. A distant #4 includes highly verbose objective descriptions with too many dry jokes, and useful information that is present in the starting description but not in the during-mission objectives tab. There’s also key/pixel hunts and overuse of tile floor, but enough people have already said that.
Aemanyl: Any specific plans for creating more levels in the near future?
StandAndDeliver: There’s a few ideas - I’ve got some seriously cool and detailed “snapshots” of parts of levels, but I’ve got a nasty Dromeder’s block as far as level creation goes. I’ve been thinking for a while, and I believe that making a more linear (not entirely linear though) map next would be a good next experiment. I struggled with Dromeder’s block a lot during Coveted Formulae, since I wanted to make it a streamlined, no-fat level but didn’t know how. The mission was very successful as far as learning the room-to-room gameplay & design of a Thief level, but big picture design is still a big struggle for me. I believe that it’ll be easier for me to figure out the big picture of a level in a linear setting, but I can still get more ambitious in the fields of gameplay and visuals. Lastly, I will use some form of translation for my next one, since I underestimated the foreign player-base of Thief as shown by Garrett TMT video of my mission.
Aemanyl: What are some of your other interests, pastimes, or hobbies that you enjoy in your free time?
StandAndDeliver: I’m quite good with guitar and I have perfect pitch identification. I used this skill to make certain sounds fit together in the mission. I also do a lot of mathematics, so I wonder how much of it has been discovered in the Thief universe - I’d say a good rule of thumb is to exclude any math discovered after 1600, and assume some inferior approximations are used for electricity. Despite these two things, I don’t like math rock. Although it’s not part of my job, I recently started looking into nuclear physics, it’s very interesting.
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Thank you for reading! We hope that you've enjoyed this insightful interview with StandAndDeliver. This marks the last interview in the current season of the FM Author Spotlight series.
Stay tuned and look forward to Season 2 in the future, where we'll continue to feature both rising stars and seasoned veterans of our beloved community.
See you in the next season of FM Author Spotlight!
Welcome to the 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 Lord Taffer, the author of a recently released mission Mysteries of Tolham.
Aemanyl: Please introduce yourself and tell us how you discovered the Thief games.
Lord Taffer: I'm known as Lord Taffer on TTLG and Discord. I live in southern Finland. I can't say for sure the year I first saw Thief: The Dark Project, but I think it was 1999. My older brother bought the game, and I used to watch him play. I liked the atmosphere immediately and was hooked! At that time, I was 9 or 10 years old. We had one computer, so often I was just watching my brother play. He bought a new computer around 2004, which is when I dived into the world of Thief myself, as I now had the old computer. Back then, I didn't understand texts very well or pay much attention to them, but I absorbed the unparalleled atmosphere and was very impressed by the cutscenes and the story. Garrett's persona was absolutely fantastic, and Stephen Russell's voice acting was superb!
I registered on TTLG in 2013 but played several FMs that my brother downloaded years before. I wasn't active at all from 2013 to 2017 and took a total break from Thief that lasted about 4 years. I got back into it in late 2017, played the OMs again, and then started playing FMs. I became active on TTLG at the same time that the TDP 20th Anniversary Contest was open, and what amazing timing to become active! I was so impressed by this contest - 23 missions in total! We can only wish to see such an event one day again! Of course, the TMA 20th AC was a great success too, and I managed to submit a very small and simple debut FM myself. This contest also has a very special place in my heart because I started my FM creation, and not to mention the contest's top trio that belong among the very best FMs ever made!
Aemanyl: Congratulations on releasing your TDS 20th Anniversary contest mission, Mysteries of Tolham! How do you feel about this achievement?
Lord Taffer: Thanks! It's awesome to be part of a 20th Anniversary Contest again. I'm very pleased with my creation, especially when comparing it to my first FM from four years earlier. Mysteries of Tolham is a work of passion, and I think it should be a challenge even for well-experienced taffers, mainly because it's so large and circuitous. My strength is probably the visual side and the stream of consciousness style of the creation process. I know I still have work to do to improve the gameplay and the story, but overall I feel very good now that my submission is out there for playing!
Aemanyl: Mysteries of Tolham isn't your first mission. In 2020, you released Time for Change, a humble yet promising debut. How did you get started with DromEd?
Lord Taffer: Thanks to Nicked for starting my FM building career! His Guide to Creating a Mission is the reason I dared to start DromEding in the first place. I had built some levels in Heroes of Might and Magic III, which is my all-time second favourite game after Thief 1. Creating levels in those games differ totally. It's much harder in DromEd to get something worthwhile done.
I started building Time for Change in a late state, because there was two to three months building time left for TMA 20th Anniversary Contest. I did what I could, and you should have seen it before beta testing - it doesn't get any rougher than that! It changed very much in one week of beta testing. It was really a time for change in that matter.
Aemanyl: What inspired you to create the concept of Tolham, a labyrinthine city steeped in ancient sorcery and intricate machinery?
Lord Taffer: At the time I started building Tolham, I replayed The Whistling of the Gears and Rose Garden. During my first playthrough, I knew that these two missions are very special, but back then I wasn't as experienced as now, so they weren't in my top trio in the contest, but close. Now after replaying them, they climbed to the top. They are a work of passion, it shows and feels! Especially The Whistling of the Gears inspired me to create city streets where metal and machines are in the centre like in no other FM. Rose Garden, on the other hand, is a very massive and captivating city mission. There are other FMs that inspired me a lot such as: Catacombs of Knoss, The Tomb of St. Tennor Pt.2, and of course Into the Odd and Alcazar. I think the duo Schlock and Squadafroinx has one of the most recognisable and wondrous styles to build and it inspires the taff out of me!
I don't really plan very much as I build; I just go for it. It's a stream of consciousness style as I place one brush after another and listen to music. I also visualise areas even when I'm not at the computer. For instance, when falling asleep, ideas of cool and weird areas emerge in my mind, and sometimes I remember them the next day. Then I might write a description of that in a notepad and see if it's worth building one day.
Tolham's centre, where the cataclysm happened and lava flows, I dreamt up much earlier. A couple of the weirdest underground areas, which involve objectives, I envisioned how they would look and then built them. Other areas are mostly created on the go. The first area was a small but tall city section where players can go to Salimar's house or climb high up, and then another even smaller area with a water hole and some debris. After that, things evolved and became connected as I built more. The overall idea broadly was to create a combination of an ancient magical city and blend it with metal and machinery. I tried to create an atmosphere of mystery, and the player can read about older events and characters that had an impact on Tolham.
Aemanyl: The readables in Mysteries of Tolham often reference names from Sperry’s classic campaign, Shadow of Doubt. What do you find interesting about Sperry’s work?
Lord Taffer: I really like old FMs as they have a special feel to them. They aren't so polished and beautiful overall, but that is exactly what makes them cool. They evoke the same atmosphere that I felt as a kid when I was watching my brother play, or later when I was playing OMs myself. Simplistic or quite minimalistic design definitely has its own aura. Oftentimes, I'm surprised by how creative they are, and the story and gameplay are very strong.
Sperry's Shadow of Doubt has two missions that I especially like: Tears of Blood and Broadsword of Sheol. Tears of Blood perfectly captures the feel of isolation and hopelessness in this Hammerite prison called Guilesatpeak. It's also a great contrast as you finally get to see the daylight, transitioning from pitch-black darkness to merciful daylight. Shadows are a thief's best friend, but this time it felt like a relief to see the daylight. Broadsword of Sheol is a very unique mission, and from that early era, I haven't played anything like it. It's honestly terrifying at times, and the total isolation and loneliness are palpable. The beginning pathway where you once again see the daylight is magnificent, and then into the darkness we go, and in the end, back again to the daylight. It's perfect that way! Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to Sperry's new work: Shadow of Doubt Re-edition and Goblin Den!
Aemanyl: Can you walk us through your typical DromEd workflow? Where do you typically begin, and how do you approach the different stages of mission development?
Lord Taffer: I usually start from one of my old FMs and load a very early version, which has one average-sized air cube and maybe all the basics set up. So, Garrett has a health bar and some basic equipment. I haven't so far drawn any sketches of what I'm going to build. I just start building and thinking about what would be cool and possibly unique. At the same time, I'm thinking of how the area should look, and what style: city streets, ruined streets, or something weirder maybe. I'm not a very rational person when it comes to the world of Thief. I don't think about realism very much, because I think it can extinguish your creativity to some extent and then you start to think maybe too 'normally'. That's why I don't really care if FMs don't have restrooms and such necessities for real life. For me, Thief enables a way to get away from the world we live in and fantasise. It grants me strength, as long as I don't spend too much time on it daily, of course.
About different stages: I first build quite a lot of the level, and lately, I have started room brushing partly at the same time. It gives me a better picture of the atmosphere, and it feels much better than silence. I usually put in lots of lights at the same time I build, but that can slow down building because optimisation takes longer. Lights just make it so much more lively that I've felt I needed them to get a better picture of the area I'm building.
Aemanyl: Are you currently working on any new levels? Do you have any WIP screenshots to share?
Lord Taffer: Yes, I have three WIPs of which one is quite far built. I started building it (TG) for New Dark 10th Anniversary Contest, but couldn't make it on the deadline. Then, there's a big snowy city mission (T2) that has a lot of potential, and a mission (T2) that was supposed to be for 2021 Summer Speedbuild Competition.
Open screenshot
The big snowy city mission for Thief 2.
Working title: Shadows and Silence
Open screenshot
The big snowy city mission for Thief 2.
Working title: Shadows and Silence
Open screenshot
The big snowy city mission for Thief 2.
Working title: Shadows and Silence
Open screenshot
2021 Summer Speedbuild Competition project for Thief 2
Working title: Ruinenham
See all work-in-progress projects by Lord Taffer:
Ruinenham (working title, T2)
Shadows and Silence (working title, T2)
Zulkan the Traitor (working title, TG)
Aemanyl: What are your most irritating pet peeves in a fan mission?
Lord Taffer: I've never really thought about these, but overall I don't get very excited about extremely hard missions where you need a walkthrough all the time. What else? Maybe very realistic FMs that have no weirdness in them. That's a broad description, but basic manor missions are so common in the history of Thief FMs. This might sound silly, but I don't yearn for restrooms in FMs, and if an author doesn't build these, I don't blame them. If there's a cool passage from the privy, it's much more interesting. But often it's just a moss arrow you find there, if even that.
Aemanyl: What are some of your other interests, pastimes, or hobbies that you enjoy in your free time?
Lord Taffer: I listen to music a lot and play guitar myself, acoustic and electric guitar. I'm even in a band but we're gigging rarely. Hopefully, in the near future we will be able to publish our first album and the second one has already many finished songs.
I like to read fantasy and horror books like those authored by Roger Zelazny, Stephen King, and Robert E. Howard. In the last few years, I haven't read at all because Thief has taken all my time, really. Also, I watch movies weekly. Both books and movies can be inspiring for building a mission. I could say that Roger Zelazny’s The Great Book of Amber was one of the sources of inspiration. ‘The Eternal Circle’ in Tolham is kind of a similar thing to ‘The Pattern’ in The City of Amber. Also, I should mention one of my favourite movies that inspired me: The Ninth Gate (1999). I used some cool phrases from that movie in Tolham’s three ‘poems’.
Also, I draw sometimes. This happens rarely, but if I see some cool photo or a map, I try to mimic it closely. I drew the map from J.R.R Tolkien's The Children of Húrin. It was good practice for Tolham's map. I drew Tolham's map quite fast as it is much simpler, but it was a fun process. There's that cheerful sea monster added in the map corner. It was just a wild idea that I decided to carry out. Aemanyl, I can thank you for showing me this medieval sea beast.
Aemanyl: Is there anything else you would like to add or share at the end?
Lord Taffer: I just want to say I hope our community grows steadily and new authors come to the scene. It's been very positive to see multiple debut missions released from brand new authors recently! Also, I want to thank all the members in TTLG and Discord for keeping Thief alive! Keep on taffing everybody!
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Thank you for reading! We hope that you've enjoyed this insightful interview with Lord Taffer. Every Thursday you can look forward to a fresh interview with 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!
Welcome to the 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 GORT, a legendary author primarily known for his ambitious and technically complex Rebellion of the Builder campaigns.
Aemanyl: Please introduce yourself and tell us how you discovered the Thief games.
GORT: Well, my name’s Shaun. Most on the Internet know me as GORT. Born in California and lived mostly in San Jose. Moved to Missoula, Montana in 1996. Been there since. For quite a while, I was pretty much playing only console video games until about 1999 - 2000. It was around 2002 when I found out about the Thief games. I found out by buying the Sound Blaster Live! sound card. Thief 2 came with it! Although, I did hear someone in high school vaguely talk about Thief in 1999 but I didn’t have my own PC at that time.
Aemanyl: Most of your missions are known for their challenging nature, often leading some players to opt for lower difficulty levels or consult a walkthrough. Could you share the rationale behind designing the missions this way?
GORT: Ah, yes. My fan missions can be quite brutal and unforgiving on the hardest difficulty. This is why I encourage players to start on the easiest first and work their way up to be ready for it. In my mind, there’s no shame in that. As for why I went this route, well… The way I was looking at it, I was expecting the player to be able to know the Thief games in-side and out before trying fan missions. However, I do think that I’ve taken it down a notch or two in my latest fan mission, The Pursuance of an Inscrutable Reciprocity (Post-contest version). I will admit here, The Rebellion of the Builder 1 was quite an intended troller. But here’s the reason for that. Might not be a good one, but here it is. When I was making this, it really wasn’t going out for everyone at first. This was mainly for my youngest brother when we were making a few small fan missions for each other. It wasn’t until I discovered TTLG later on in my college years.
Aemanyl: An Enigmatic Treasure with a Recondite Discovery is your only mission for Thief Gold released so far. I found it to be a truly unique level, with the atmosphere in the warehouse being my favourite highlight. I'm curious: what do you appreciate most about the first game in the Thief series, and how did you aim to reflect your appreciation in An Enigmatic Treasure?
GORT: In the first Thief game, I did like the mystical aspect and wanted to add a bit more to that. However, I was trying to see if I could blend in some of Thief 2 into it, but not too much. I also wanted to pay homage to the original missions like Assassins and Song of the Caverns. However, it was too bad I couldn’t do more to the city part of the mission. I’ve almost maxed out the cell count (32758/32760) with everything else in the mission. So most of the focus was sadly taken away from the city area.
Aemanyl: Moving on to Thief 2, both instalments in your Rebellion of the Builder series explore technological, futuristic, and sometimes dystopian themes. What inspired you to delve into these themes, and how do they enhance the narrative of the Thief universe?
GORT: Well, as I said before, the first one was mostly for trolling. But it was also curious experimentation on my part. I wanted to see what I could actually do in the editor and know my limits. Part 1 was going to be the only one of its kind with Garrett going back to his usual time and familiar surroundings, but one of my brothers said that I should have a cliff-hanger to make the players want more. In part 2 however, this is where more experimentation came in due to having NewDark around. Also, I was toning down the trolling. As for the themes, I’d figured that even though the Mechanists have fallen they would eventually have a group that would want to see Karras' vision to be a reality, but it would be quite altered through time. Also, I still wanted to keep some of the mystical and undead aspects in. I was going to get a bit deeper in part 2 in order to get a stronger link for the Christine family, but I was starting to get a bit burned out from making TROTB 2. I’m sure it shows when players play it. There’s quite a bit that I was happy about when making it.
Aemanyl: It appears you have a strong affinity for the faction of the Mages, a preference that is evident in An Enigmatic Treasure and your most recent mini-campaign, The Pursuance of an Inscrutable Reciprocity. Themes of magic are also present in your earlier fan missions. Could you elaborate on this?
GORT: I wanted to make the mages to have a good role in the series. I’m sure that mages like the ones in Thief 1 couldn’t just stay in one area (at least not some of them). I thought that having them use the opera house in An Enigmatic Treasure with a Recondite Discovery was a good way to show that they have a way to adapt to certain locations and acquire new apprentices. As I was finishing up the first contest and saw that there was going to be one for Thief 2, I thought it would be best to have both contest missions be linked. The challenging part was how to have it set well with Thief 2’s time-frame. It wasn’t very creative, but oh well.
Aemanyl: Your missions feature numerous impressive technical experiments. Which one are you most proud of?
GORT: I’m quite happy with quite a few of them. But if I have to pick one of them right now, it would have to be the second to the last mission in TROTB 2. That one was pretty tricky to make. I don’t know if anybody else made anything similar to that. One of these days, I may make a more advanced version of that in another fan mission.
Aemanyl: Can you walk us through your typical DromEd workflow? Where do you typically begin, and how do you approach the different stages of mission development?
GORT: Well, if I have my mind set about it, mostly I start by focusing on the most important event/location of the mission. Once I’ve got that, things seem to start coming along well. But that's not always the case. I’ll sometimes have to start building a few things to start seeing if it’ll make me come up with ideas. Most of the city missions I’ve made went through this route. But I really should start brainstorming on paper to get better ideas and workflow for my fan missions.
Aemanyl: Are you currently working on any new levels?
GORT: Sadly, at this time I am not. I was at first working on TROTB 3, but some real-life events are putting a big snag into the works. So, TROTB 3 is currently scrapped.
Aemanyl: What are some of your other interests, pastimes, or hobbies that you enjoy in your free time?
GORT: Well, I do like to draw, create some models in anim8or, do some audio editing/ MIDI music, watch movies, and gaming (when I have time).
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Thank you for reading! We hope that you've enjoyed this insightful interview with GORT. Every Thursday you can look forward to a fresh interview with 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!
Thief: Deadly Shadows, a great game by Ion Storm, was released on 25 May 2004, which is 20 years ago.
To celebrate this anniversary, we have just deployed some website updates:
Welcome to the 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 Trefoilknot, an author of several intriguing levels that introduce mathematical and philosophical concepts into the world of Thief.
Aemanyl: Please introduce yourself and tell us how you discovered the Thief games.
Trefoilknot: I’m Matt, a 34 year old professor at a university in Philadelphia PA, USA. I got into Thief in 1998 at the age of 9. We had just gotten a Windows computer (always had just Macs before) and home internet, and the first thing we did was look up if any cool new games were coming out for Windows. We saw an article about a recently released first-person stealth game, and thought it looked cool- it was! My brother (3 years old than me) and I played through it over the course of the next couple months, occasionally getting stuck (e.g., not knowing what a "grotto" was in Haunted Cathedral or a "keystone tree" in Undercover), but we were hooked! I discovered DromEd in 1999 with the arrival of Thief Gold, but I didn’t find out about the FM community until a couple years later.
Aemanyl: Judging from the content of the three missions that you have released so far, would it be accurate to assume that you enjoy puzzle-type missions? Additionally, do you have any other preferred genres, styles, or themes of fan missions?
Trefoilknot: Yes, puzzle-centric FMs are far-and-away my favorite. I love when there’s an emphasis on puzzles and exploration, rather than on difficult stealth (sacrilege, I know). I enjoy a stealthy sequence here or there, but I much prefer piecing together clues, solving puzzles and exploring. Some of my absolute favorites would be: Ominous Bequest and Broken Triad, Sepulchre of the Sinistral, Malazar’s Inscrutable Tower, The Den, Death’s Turbid Veil, and Ink and Dust. Haplo's missions are also up there - they always bring some fun new ideas to the table. Towers of Twilight is a recent favorite of mine.
They’re often looked down upon, but I actually really enjoy a well-paced keyhunt style mission, so long as the key locations are logical (looking at you ANiR1!). I tend to find that gated progression works really well; I enjoy the sequence of curiosity, wonder and progress that comes when you finally get through that locked door to find out what’s behind it. Seven Sisters, Rowena’s Curse, Ominous Bequest, Broken Triad, Rose Cottage, Seventh Crystal, and most of Eternauta’s and Gaetane’s work pull this off nicely, in my view. I know that many people prefer more sandboxy freedom (e.g., the allure of wide open city maps). I enjoy these too, but often find them a bit daunting/overwhelming. I usually prefer a more curated experience that dictates a sequence of events, and gives me that emotional arc of curiosity/suspense → surprise → wonder → achievement. I don’t want to feel "on rails", though; it’s a tricky balancing act.
Aemanyl: Can you walk us through your typical DromEd workflow? Where do you typically begin, and how do you approach the different stages of mission development?
Trefoilknot: I typically start each mission with an idea for the theme, story and an assortment of puzzle concepts I want to incorporate. Then my actual DromEd work is often a little scattershot. I usually go room-by-room, building out the important pieces, often with a particular photo or architectural feature inspiring what I want to do with the room. I rarely have an overall idea of the entire layout when I start (the exception to this being The Sunken Temple of Dielya). I instead just build as inspiration strikes, and occasionally realize I’ve boxed myself into a corner that I need to find a way out of. I’m sure I could be more efficient, but I doubt I’ll make any major changes to my workflow at this point. Until I start collaborating with someone else (always a good way to enforce better habits), I’ll probably keep doing it the way that’s familiar.
Aemanyl: What would be your proudest achievement in DromEd?
Trefoilknot: Hm, it’s hard to narrow it down to a single one. But three especially impactful ones would be:
1) The "Projection Room" in Bertrand’s Forgotten Tomb was the first puzzle I designed in DromEd that made me think I could actually complete a fan mission and release it to the public, and have it be worthwhile. Without this one, I probably would never had released anything.
2) The "Spectacles of Extra-Dimensional Experience" and the Paintings; their use to extract the Aleph Stone is probably my best-designed puzzle, to-date. It’s tight, subtle and clever, but still just straightforward enough that most players seem to have figured it out on their own, without needing assistance.
3) As far as technical achievements go, the portal in The Sunken Temple of Dielya is by far the most impressive thing I’ve produced. (see FenPhoenix’s NSFW reaction to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jggorA2eS7I&t=768s) The mission itself is somewhat barebones (though I was pleased with how most of it turned out), having been a speed-build mission that I built in about 4 days of solid DromEd time. But I truly believe the portal technique I developed is among the cooler technical effects implemented in any thief FM out there. I had hoped it would catch on, but so far no one else has wanted to wrestle with it (understandably…). I’m planning to use it quite a bit more in future work.
Aemanyl: Your magnum opus, Heist at Hilbert’s Highrise Hotel, incorporates numerous mathematical and philosophical concepts and problems. Where do you find inspiration for your fan missions?
Trefoilknot: Not just Heist at Hilbert’s Highrise Hotel, but in fact all three of my released missions. Bertrand’s Forgotten Tomb was about Mathematician/Philosopher Bertrand Russel, who was famous for his self-referential paradoxes. Heist at Hilbert’s Highrise Hotel was primarily about Hilbert and Cantor’s work on the nature of infinity, and the resulting feuds with Brouwer, Kronnecker and Poincare. There were some Cameos of other mathematicians thrown in for good measure. Sunken Temple of Dielya was all about Lobachevsky’s work on non-Euclidean geometries (hyperbolic geometries, specifically), along with Einstein’s adaptation of this work into his theory of general relativity.
I’m a huge math nerd, and love learning about math and its history. I especially enjoy ideas that are counterintuitive and initially met with fierce resistance, but subsequently come to be accepted. I expect that going forward, many of my missions will continue to involve real-world mathematicians, their mathematical contributions, and fantastical re-tellings of their histories. Watching educational YouTube channels such as 3Blue1Brown, Numberphile, Veritasium and Vsauce often gives me new ideas.
Aemanyl: Are there any creators whose style is similar to your vision of design?
Trefoilknot: The FM authors I’m most inspired by would have to be Eshaktaar, Haplo, Nameless Voice, and Nicked. I wouldn’t say our styles are similar, exactly, but I often try to learn from their missions and emulate certain aspects of their designs.
Aemanyl: Heist at Hilbert’s Highrise Hotel appears to be the first act of a series titled Triptych on Infinity. Do you have any specific plans for creating additional levels in the near future, building upon this initial installment?
Trefoilknot: Yes, Acts II and III are underway. Hard to say when they’ll release. At least a couple years off, still. My plan is to release them both together, but perhaps if I get too bogged down, I’ll release Act II first, while I keep working on Act III. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but Act II will pick up right where Act I left off (going through the White Gate into Cantor’s Paradise), and there will be some time manipulation involved.
I’m also working on a couple other smaller scale projects. Recursive Incursions will be a quicker puzzle mission that sees Garrett infiltrating Isaac Newton’s dreams, Inception-style, at Leibniz’s bidding, to steal Newton’s ideas. It’ll be a puzzle/platformer-style thief mission, with a focus on exploration and spatial reasoning, and will introduce some brand new game mechanics.
Aemanyl: What are some of your other interests, pastimes, or hobbies that you enjoy in your free time?
Trefoilknot: I’m a musician, an athlete and a father. I enjoy playing trumpet in a symphony orchestra (especially music by Mahler and Strauss), and also weight-lifting, [American] football, ultimate frisbee, and table tennis. But mostly, I like to spend time with my wife, Erica, and our daughter, Isabel. (She’s turning 4 next month and loves Fables of the Penitent Thief!)
Aemanyl: Is there anything else you would like to add or share at the end?
Trefoilknot: Just a big thank you to everyone for keeping this community going strong for over 25 years!
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Thank you for reading! We hope that you've enjoyed this insightful interview with Trefoilknot. Every Thursday you can look forward to a fresh interview with 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!
This week, we take a little break from fan missions, as we would like to interest you in an upcoming indie stealth game project, closely related to Thief game series and fan missions.
THF - SITN is an upcoming game developed by Felicitas Brämer aka. 'Lady Glinnevier', founder of Studio Yogensha Naiche and the original developer of Delightfyl. Felicitas has been developing games for nearly 10 years now, got a full art degree and is working with Unreal Engine since 2015 now. With her, there are a few other people who are working on the game directly and will hopefully one day be part of the studio!
Jonfeldt: You have a new game coming out soon: Project THF - SITN. What does SITN stand for?
Felicitas: I cannot yet answer what SITN stands for! However, I can say that THF stands for Thief and that project SITN will revolve around witches and things from Arabic folklore. It's very broad, I know, but we are still in the discovery phase for these elements!
Jonfeldt: That sounds very interesting, a bit different from the usual European based settings. Can you tell me a bit more about the world of SITN? Is the game taking place in the real world, or is it a fantasy one?
Felicitas: It's going to be a twisted mix of both, rather similar to Thief 1. The idea of different dangerous worlds was always appealing to me! But we do not want to lose out on the immersive, realistic elements that made Thief so big. We won't give the player Dishonored-like magic to just kill everyone in two taps.
Click here to expand THF - SITN alpha preview screenshot
Jonfeldt: You already made a stealth game called Delighfyl. Is SITN a continuation of Delightfyl or is it a completely new game setting?
Felicitas: It's an all new thing, the entire code has been rewritten. I needed to make sure that the code downfalls and clunkiness of Delightfyl did not follow us. The new movement is super smooth, and everything is coded in a highly modular fashion. That also means that the universe itself is overwritten now; it was an all-new, blank start!
Jonfeldt: So Delightfyl is not going to get any updates? All your focus is on SITN now?
Felicitas: Yee Delightfyl is fully dead now, hail project SITN!
Jonfeldt: Hail! Other than clunkiness and story, did you maybe want to add some new gameplay mechanics to SITN?
Felicitas: Focus on project THF was to make the basic gameplay stable, super stable. But then I got distracted with Dishonored and The Black Parade... Started adding a few of their features too. A lot inspiration comes from Thief 2 fan missions. The fanbase is so creative; they are really the best source of new ideas! I want to highlight the slide bolts from The Black Parade here, which I copied 1 to 1. Another fantastic game design tool!
Jonfeldt: Is it safe to say that Thief is your biggest inspiration, and fan missions as well? Do you have any favorites?
Felicitas: I have an entire list of favorite fan missions that I love! Godbreaker, The Black Parade, A Better Tomorrow, Vanishing Point, The Turning of the Leaves! There are so many more. I usually stay away from the ones that look bad... I just don't like the Thief 1 or 2 visuals. 
Click here to expand THF - SITN alpha preview screenshot
Jonfeldt: Did you ever try to make a fan mission of your own or did Delightfyl and now SITN become the main creative outlets for you as a Thief fan?
Felicitas: This is a very broad and big question. So I only opened Dromed once and then never again... because at that time I was deeply entangled in Unreal Engine. There is just no point to go back now if I can just code everything myself. I was big into modding 10 years ago, for Skyrim and Oblivion. But those days are long over. I do have multiple projects I work on and SITN is on the throne with one other project as my favorites. Thief holds a special place in my heart.
Jonfeldt: Do you get inspired by other forms of art like films, music or books?
Felicitas: I do, heavily! When we talk about movies I am usually more into special movies with high artistic value. I am not a big Avengers fan, or that weird Rebel Moon thing, or Star Wars... I am a fan of classics like The Thing from 1982, the first Dune movie... the 12-hour version of Lord of the Rings... I am a super duper fan of the Avatar thingy, with the Navi people. I love the Berserk anime and I am a huge fan of Made in Abyss. Brutality, detail, environmental storytelling, is where it is for me. Can you still remember that moment in Skyrim when you first entered Blackreach... and found that little Dwemer house where the alchemist lived in... That memory has burned itself into my soul.
Jonfeldt: So can players of SITN expect to see any of those influences in the game?
Felicitas: I would love to make a really dark and grim game, a game that makes the player feel powerful sometimes and then incredibly weak suddenly. I also want to make detailed worlds that are filled with beauty. I always talk about paradise spots as a guiding principle. Make a really dark and dirty world but hide small pockets of light and warmth inbetween. I am also a big fan of worlds that properly function and are not just set-dressing... This has something to do with interactivity and different dynamic routes for the players.
Jonfeldt: That sounds very interesting. Can you tell me when the game is coming out and where people can get it?
Felicitas: It's still very early to say; we are still planning the first level and are writing the lore. But Steam as a platform would be the main target! And we are big fans of demos, so it's likely that next year we will have something for people already. And not to forget, the tech demo for the game is on itch.io right now, so people can get an early peek.
Go to itch.io page and click "Download" to download the tech demo
Welcome to the 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 Squadafroinx, one of the most original authors from our community. Squadafroinx's solo debut in 2016 was Watery Grave, a cramped city miniature oozing with great atmosphere and compelling story. However, he is probably best known for his collaborations with Schlock that resulted in Into the Odd and Alcazar, which are both among the highest rated missions on Thief Guild. In this exclusive interview, Squadafroinx shares with us some insights on the sources of his inspiration, approach to working in DromEd, and most importantly - reveals information on a mysterious project that he is currently working on.
Aemanyl: Please introduce yourself and tell us how you discovered the Thief games.
Squadafroinx: Hello, I am Squadafroinx; a tricenarian man living as an anonymous cog within France’s enormous administration. As for how I discovered Thief, it was during the late noughties; I was searching for a good game and I stumbled upon Thief, that I purchased on a sudden impulse. In retrospective, I think it was one of the best thing to happen in my life, only second to when I discovered the community and its fan missions!
Aemanyl: Do you have a favourite genre, style, or theme of fan missions?
Squadafroinx: Yes! Since I really like miniatures, it’s no wonder that I really like densely detailed tiny and cramped fan missions, such as Sinful Opportunities by Polygon or Precious by AntiMatter_16.
I also really like what I call Neo-TDP or Neo-T2, maps that feel like they are continuities of the original missions but have also an interesting blend of custom resources, they feel so tasteful. Examples include Uncadonego’s The Power of Suggestion, a FM that is more T2 than T2, or of course the recent Neo-TDP trend that follows the 20th Anniversary Contest. I get an absolute blast every time I launch one of those new FMs.
Nonetheless, I also enjoy a lot custom-heavy fan missions such as Horns of Canzo or Bathory, which are among my favourite campaigns.
Aemanyl: Can you walk us through your typical workflow when creating fan missions? Where do you typically begin, and how do you approach the different stages of development?
Squadafroinx: It’s very chaotic. First, I get a rough idea, quickly open DromEd, and work for an hour or two. I think getting rid of the feeling of working on a white page is the most important part: stupid little geometrical shapes just standing there in the void feel eerie.
After that, I like to think of DromEd as a game of straight dominoes, as I try my best to match shapes and textures next to each other in the way it feels the most organic (as you match tiles with the same numbers of pips). I don’t really plan anything. I’d even say I don’t plan at all. When I began using DromEd, I used to plan everything down to a tiniest detail, but I noticed that it’s a chore, it’s hard to follow and it’s uninteresting. Now I just build because it feels cool. Too bad if I end up biting my own tail with impossible stairs, streets that are too twisty, apartments that are too cramped, and doors that lead nowhere.
As for when I hit a wall, I use the good old method of throwing brushes at the wall until something sticks.
My favourite moment is when I can finally use some sounds, to which I put a lot of effort. I think of sounds as an expressway to the mind, for they have the ability to bypass conscious processing and directly affect emotions. They can provide a sense of depth that visual stimuli alone can hardly convey. I put the same effort into writing readables, as I aim to hint a bigger, darker, and stranger world than what is confined within the map.
Aemanyl: What would be your proudest DromEd achievement?
Squadafroinx: I would say making my first conversation, or my first genie. Genies are NPCs that are stuck in blue rooms, and use levers to activate events happening in the map. They are like machinists moving the decors in a theatre. It’s duct tape and sticks at best, but I don’t like all this script-y stuff, I’ll gladly leave it to the nerds.
Aemanyl: What are your main sources of inspiration for your projects?
Squadafroinx: For visuals, I mostly take my inspiration from very busy movies such as The Color of Pomegranates (1969), The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973) or Hard to Be a God (2013); those are movies where you feel like every prop is a symbol to something, every colour has its own significance. I also really love Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Albrecht Dürer, or more contemporary, John Blanche, François Schuitten or Tsutomu Nihei.
As for the atmosphere, my inspiration mostly comes from the memories of how I perceived and understood the world when I was a lad, how everything felt eerie and mysterious. Remember how important a mere toy was? How deeply an insult could wound? Or how absolutely petrifying it was to learn that the sun was going to exhaust itself? I try to un-learn evidence-based reasoning and aim for a dreamy atmosphere, where one feels dwarfed and insignificant in a gargantuan uncaring city, set in a even bigger and even weirder world. I pay particular attention to that feeling of insignificance, as it is in (in my opinion) what makes the players feel like being Garrett the most: one who is out of the system. This is why I mostly build oppressive and aggressive architecture made of crushing cityscapes and vast machinery that makes little to no sense, write cryptic readables that hints of intrigues, hint cobwebs of intrigues, tentacular organisations or customs so ancient it can make one head spin... I’d say the Cyberpunk and Dying Earth sub-genres are my main inspiration.
Aemanyl: Would you ever like to collaborate with a specific fan mission author that you haven’t had the pleasure of working with yet?
Squadafroinx: I think not. It’s not that I’m a control freak or something like that, but I always consider myself a dead weight, as I can by go several months without even opening DromEd. Moreover, I don’t like when my crude building is eating away the spirit of someone’s map, I feel it’s kinda rude. However, I have found Schlock and Firemage to be my DromEd war buddies, as they share my exact vision of what make a FM look interesting and fun to play.
Aemanyl: Are you currently working on any new levels?
Squadafroinx: Yes! I always have what we call never-evers: maps that I began on a whim but never finished, though they are not abandoned either. Finishing maps is not that important to me, using DromEd is just my way of venting off, but after seeing the success of Into the Odd, I try to make an effort. This is not really about me anymore.
But as for maps that aren’t really never-evers (as I’m not the only one on it), I am working on something a little special but that is still top secret, as it’s not a very common theme. In fact, I don’t think it was made at all, save for some demos perhaps. We (yes, we are several on it) want it to be a pure surprise.
As of May 2024, I hope it’s going to be finished for 2025 or some such!
Aemanyl: What are some of your other interests, pastimes, or hobbies that you enjoy in your free time?
Squadafroinx: I enjoy studying dreams, history and esotericism, but most of all, I’m an avid reader, be it books, mangas or bande dessinées. I strive to read and enjoy them as much as I can while I live. To me, the written word is really fascinating: you just stare at scribbles and signs, and you’re hallucinating words, stories, even emotions!
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Thank you for reading! We hope that you've enjoyed this insightful interview with Squadafroinx. Every Friday you can look forward to a fresh interview with 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!
Welcome to the 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 none other than Random_Taffer, a well-known and very prolific FM author who is currently working on the ambitious Broken Goddess campaign.
Aemanyl: Please introduce yourself and tell us how you discovered the Thief games.
Random_Taffer: My name is Rob and my first introduction to Thief was probably in 99 or 2000 at a family friend’s house. I used to babysit their kids for a little cash in the summer before I could drive. When it was nap time, I was free to use their PC to play games. They had a bunch that came with their computer and after I got tired of playing Civilization 2, I remember stumbling across Thief: The Dark Project and being instantly intrigued by the title alone. I didn’t get to play much of it while I was there, but remembered talking about it with the owners. They weren’t interested in the game and let me borrow it for a while. After I was done that summer they let me keep it as a gift. I didn’t even know about Thief 2 until later. I was playing RTS tournaments (Total Annihilation: Kingdoms) on Gamespy (RIP) and chose the Garrett avatar. Someone in the lobby asked me about my thoughts on Thief 2. I thought "There’s a Thief 2?!?!" and instantly went out to buy it. However, my family PC couldn’t run it, so I had to wait until after I started a job and earned enough to build my own PC in order to play it and then Deadly Shadows which came out a little while later.
Aemanyl: Do you have a favourite genre, style, or theme of fan missions?
Random_Taffer: As most can probably tell, I love city missions where you can explore by rooftop, but probably the most important part of a fan mission for me personally these days is the story. I really, really love the intrigue that comes with a dark and mysterious evolving story. But I am fine with just paying the rent as well.
Aemanyl: Your extensive collection of published fan missions includes several solo works as well as collaborations with other authors. Arguably, the most well-known and popular among these are the so-called "YanRanTan'' missions, created in partnership with Yandros and Tannar. How would you characterise your collaboration with these guys?
Random_Taffer: The YanRanTan days were really great for me. I learned a lot from Yandros who was already a seasoned author by the time we decided to collaborate. He is now one of my best friends and we talk all the time. Both Russ (Yandros) and Michael (Tannar) are always a joy to work with. Michael really brought a talent for language and story and I knew that if he thought something was good, then we were in excellent shape. We are all different people with different styles that compliment each other quite well. Though Michael has contributed his language skills to my current project, he has seemingly retired from Thief for the time being. Wherever he is and whatever he is doing, I wish him nothing but the best. Russ and I are still hammering away, of course.
Aemanyl: Your FMs, Godbreaker and Feast of Pilgrims, introduce a new protagonist named Conall. Could you provide some insight into his character and explain how he differs from Garrett?
Random_Taffer: Conall is based on William of Baskerville from Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose - specifically Sean Connery’s portrayal of him in the Annaud film. But it didn’t start out that way.
When I first began building what would become Godbreaker, I had intended for it to be a Garrett mission. But I wasn’t able to get what I needed for custom voice lines, so I decided to work with another very talented voice actor who could do a range of voices. The name came first- I was searching around for different names that I liked that would fit in the Thief world. I came across the name "Conall" and I believe the website said that the meaning of the name was something like "strong wolf" in Gaelic I believe. I don’t know if that’s accurate, but I thought that was perfect for a Thief character - maybe an older, more mature one. Since I love dark mysteries I thought it would be cool to play with an inspector Drept type character who possibly spent time among the Hammerites.
I asked Jim (MasterThief3) to try out a few different voices that he thought would work and I gave him the name. About 5 minutes later he sent me an audio file of him reading some of the briefing lines in the voice of Sean Connery as a joke. I laughed while listening but then I remembered William of Baskerville and it started to fall into place. A lot of people think it’s silly, but I don’t care - I love the character.
Aemanyl: You are presently engaged in creating an ambitious campaign titled The Broken Goddess, set to be the next installment in Conall's adventures. Rather than asking mundane questions about progress on the project, I will approach this from a different angle. Considering its expansive scale spanning over ten missions, what environments, themes, and design styles are you eager to explore with The Broken Goddess?
Random_Taffer: I’m eager to create two unique cityscapes that are different from the City we all know - that of Cyric and Bohn. I want you to instantly be able to tell where you are based on the architecture and general feel. I did not care for my first attempt at Bohn, so last year I began rebuilding it from scratch. I am nearly finished with it now and am very pleased with how it’s turned out.
I am also very excited to try my hand at more remote exotic locations. There are a lot of different environments I intend to try. Apart from that, I’m excited to try to implement more detective type elements as well as some sort of “co-op” things that were done in Mission X as well as Among Two Storms. We’ll see what I can convincingly pull off that doesn’t feel too gamey.
Aemanyl: What would be your proudest technical achievement in DromEd?
Random_Taffer: Yandros usually does most of the scripting for me now so I can focus on my strengths as a builder. But before we began to collaborate more I did do Captain of the Guard by myself and it was very difficult to pull off. So probably that.
Aemanyl: You are a musician and you've had one of your songs recently featured in The Black Parade. Could you elaborate more on this passion of yours and share where people can listen to your music?
Random_Taffer: I love telling stories through many different mediums. Thief is one way, but I also love to write stories as well as music. I’ve been in a number of musical projects over the years and my biggest musical passion is certainly singing. My current project which is gaining the most traction is definitely my band Marmot - which is the music featured in The Black Parade credits. I also wrote the intro track as well with my friend from a synth-wave project we started together called Citizen.
You can visit our social media pages as well as search for us on whatever streaming services you prefer. Our website should have links to whatever you’d like: https://www.marmotband.com/
You can find our EP we released last year as well as 3 more singles (Including “The Brand” from The Black Parade) on Bandcamp. All the main streaming services should be active as well, so whatever you use to listen to music- we should be there.
Aemanyl: Is there anything else you would like to add or share at the end?
Random_Taffer: Yeah, if any mappers out there want to try their hand at a Broken Goddess map, we could definitely use some more help. We could also use more artists interested in contributing to briefings and cut-scenes. People come and go, no hard feelings. Feel free to reach out to Yandros or myself. The only thing we do not need more of right now is audio people. We’ve got plenty of those.
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Thank you for reading! We hope that you've enjoyed this insightful interview with Random_Taffer. Every Friday you can look forward to a fresh interview with 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!
Welcome to the 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 StinkyKitty. StinkyKitty is known for his handful of impressive TDP missions taking place in atmospheric environments such as abandoned ruins, deep catacombs, or remote strongholds.
Aemanyl: Please introduce yourself and tell us how you discovered the Thief games.
StinkyKitty: I’m known as StinkyKitty in the Thief community and I live in southern Minnesota, U.S.A., and I discovered Thief during my grade school years via an Eidos Demo disk containing the Overlord’s Fancy section of Thieves Guild. The demo ended before Garrett entered the sewers, therefore I didn’t get lost inside the notorious Guild maze until I later (how much later, idk) played the full game, and even then, I still enjoyed Thieves Guild and do to this day, as well as all of Thief Gold. (I grew up with Thief Gold rather than TDP, so the additional three levels don’t feel out of place for me.) I played The Metal Age not long after.
I didn’t know there was an FM community until around 2010. It blew my mind that it was possible to build my own mission. At first, I was leery about learning Dromed, and that FM building was beyond me, but I guess I couldn’t help myself.
Aemanyl: The fan missions that you have released thus far, including your arguably most popular creation, Gems of Provenance, perfectly evoke the surreal and forlorn atmosphere of supernatural missions from The Dark Project. Can you tell us what captivates you about the first Thief game?
StinkyKitty: The story, for one, particularly the cutscenes. The tension in the gameplay. And of course, the atmosphere. Not even Thief 2 could replicate it quite exactly.. Is it the lighting? The story? The gritty environments? Perhaps all of these, or perhaps it’s the feeling of isolation. In Thief 2, there’s Keepers, Victoria, and even Basso in the background, influencing Garrett’s decisions. In TDP, it's only Garrett. It feels like only you.
Aemanyl: Do you have any favourite fan missions, or perhaps a specific style of levels that you are fond of?
StinkyKitty: I enjoy TDP FMs, especially the ones that came out of the 20th Anniversary Contest, such as Scarlet Cascabel, Lost Among the Forsaken, and Tomb of St. Tennor, and others. Well, undead missions seem to be the pattern. City missions are my least favourite, which isn’t saying much, because it’s Thief and I still enjoy those missions too, as well as the myriad of T2 missions.
Aemanyl: Can you walk us through your typical DromEd workflow? Where do you typically begin, and how do you approach the different stages of mission development?
StinkyKitty: I’ll start with a simple story idea and decide on a specific environment to carry it: Tomb and mine? Tomb and waterworks? Tomb and recluse mage’s abode? Then I’ll search online for architecture that suits my visual and gameplay tastes, and perhaps sketch out a section of the level’s floor plan. It sounds like a lot of planning, but really it’s only a few minutes of preparation before I start building. I’m a tad impatient. Once I lay down some basic architecture and feel out the space, the rest of the level more or less flows out from there, based on intuition rather than rational thought. Definitely not based on rational thought.
As I build, I throw in textures, light, sound boxes, AI, objects, and music as I see fit. Typically, I design around what’s most important in a certain space. If the room contains a special piece of loot, the lighting and architecture will showcase it. If a room’s main challenge is an AI, I’ll try to make sure the terrain accommodates both the AI and the player. Or I’ll plug in a seemingly insignificant detail before anything else if it’s important to the story. A chaotic way to build, but it keeps my interest better than building all terrain at once, then texturing, then room brushing, and so forth.
Aemanyl: What would be your proudest technical achievement in DromEd? Also, tell us more about the Infinity Crate!
StinkyKitty: I’d say the guard riding the elevator at the beginning of Valley of the Burned, as well as the Hammerite attacking the control box in the next level. I always chuckle at those bits.
The Infinity Crate came about through experimentation with inventory objects, just to see what was possible. Once I discovered how to spawn infinite objects from the inventory, a crate seemed like a logical option. The player could now get anywhere in the map, including out of bounds (usually one of my goals) as long as they don’t hit the object limit. Now every level I make must contain an Infinity Crate.
You can also slow-fall with the Infinity Crate, even glide.
Aemanyl: What are your main sources of inspiration for your projects?
StinkyKitty: Whenever I stumble upon an image of dynamic architecture on Facebook or Google, I save it to a reference folder. Otherwise I simply pull from my own experiences and imagination. Though pulling from one’s imagination is not always so ‘simple’.
Aemanyl: Are you currently working on any new levels?
StinkyKitty: I’d rather not leave people with unrealistic expectations. If I release something, I release something. If I don’t, I don’t.
Aemanyl: What are some of your other interests, pastimes, or hobbies that you enjoy in your free time?
StinkyKitty: I woodwork and homestead. I built my own cider press this past year and brewed a batch of hard cider. Dangerously delicious.
I hike from time to time when the urge hits me. In 2014, I thru-hiked the entire Appalachian Trail in five months. What a journey that was! Sometimes while walking I’d listen to Thief: The Golden Soundtrack for a touch of ambience.
Growing up, my siblings and I played our own version of Thief in our old barn. We built wooden swords and giant wooden hammers and even made arrows with foam tips for a small bow we already owned. We put up walls to make the barn more sneakable, going so far as to add secret passages. The ‘guards’ patrolled and muttered lines from the game while the ‘thief’ snuck around the building. Good times. Needless to say, Thief amplified our young imaginations, and still does to this day.
Aemanyl: Is there anything else you would like to add or share at the end?
StinkyKitty: If you’re a mission author, build for yourself. You may think the bar is too high now that The Black Parade is released, and people expect that level of detail, but you only need to be better than yourself. Ask yourself: What do you think is fun? What do you think is challenging? What would you find creepy, or impactful, or meaningful in your mission? Some players may not like your vision, but others will love it. They will feel the passion in the project. Try to please everyone and you will please no one, including yourself.
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Thank you for reading! We hope that you've enjoyed this insightful interview with StinkyKitty. Every Friday you can look forward to a fresh interview with 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!
Welcome to the 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 JarlFrank, who has produced a number of interesting and original maps in the last decade.
Aemanyl: Please introduce yourself and tell us how you discovered the Thief games.
JarlFrank: Hey! I’m JarlFrank, and I got into the Thief games in 2009 after reading much praise about them on RPG Codex. I had known about them before that, but always assumed I wouldn’t like them because up to that point, my experience with stealth in games had been limited to forced stealth sections in action games, and those are usually horrible.
But when people whose opinions I trusted kept recommending Thief, I gave it a shot - and ended up loving it. When I had finished Thief 2, I wanted more. I knew about the cancelled Thief 2 Gold, so I googled “Thief 2 expansion” to find out more about that cancelled project. That led me to discover T2X: Shadows of the Metal Age. I made a thread about that on RPG Codex, and the resident Thief veterans informed me that other fan missions exist. Someone made a dedicated Thief FM thread, which became one of the largest ongoing FM discussions outside of TTLG!
I played T2X in summer 2010, and my first FMs in late 2010/early 2011. From that point onward, Thief and its FMs became my most-played game of all time.
Aemanyl: Do you have a favourite genre, style, or theme of fan missions?
JarlFrank: I have a soft spot for several FM genres and styles. One of my favourites tends to be under-appreciated at large: FMs with a distinctly cozy atmosphere. Christine is the absolute master of this style, all of her FMs make me feel at home (not surprising, considering she lives in the same region of Germany as I, and her style evokes local small towns). T2X also had plenty of missions with a cozy feel to them, mostly due to the custom textures and models they used. While the City Sleeps is an extremely cozy city mission.
At this point, I’ve become so familiar with Thief and its FMs that it’s become a “comfort place” for me, so I enjoy the missions that lean heavily into that vibe.
Another underappreciated theme I really like is tombs/dungeon crawls. They used to be rare, but in recent years quite a few excellent Bonehoard-style missions were added to the FM library. It’s a style that seems to have gained some popularity recently, with several entries in the TDP 20th Anniversary Contest and two missions in The Black Parade going for it. When I started playing FMs, tomb crawls were few and far between.
Aemanyl: Can you walk us through your typical workflow when creating fan missions? Where do you typically begin, and how do you approach the different stages of development?
JarlFrank: It depends on the style of mission. I currently have 4 WIP FMs that I fiddle around with whenever the Dromed mood strikes me. Two are mansions, two are cities. For a mansion mission, I just make a large airbrush and build the mansion inside of it. For a city mission, I first place Garrett’s starting position, then the destination that contains the main objective, and slowly build the connective tissue between them.
I tend to complete the brushwork first, then place objects and AIs, and roombrush only at the very end. I assume that’s a common practice, since any changes in architecture will screw up existing roombrushes. For testing, I always add a couple of rope arrows into my inventory and run through the level sections I just designed, to make sure they work well and allow for creative traversal.
Aemanyl: What would be your proudest DromED achievement?
JarlFrank: The floating animals in The New Sheriff!
Aemanyl: What are your main sources of inspiration for your projects?
JarlFrank: My missions tend towards the humorous, making light of common FM tropes and elements of the Thief universe. All the inspiration is in the games and their extended lore - Hammerites, Mechanists, nobles, thief guilds, wizards… there are so many interesting factions in the City, I don’t really need outside inspiration to come up with ideas!
The original worldbuilding for Thief 1 and 2 is quite excellent, and in twenty years of fan missions so much has been added and elaborated on. It’s an excellent world that stokes the imagination and keeps making me imagine new scenarios for Garrett.
Aemanyl: Would you ever like to collaborate with a specific fan mission author that you haven’t had the pleasure of working with yet? Alternatively, are there any creators whose style is similar to your vision of design?
JarlFrank: I work too slow to be a good collaborator, but stylistically I would probably vibe well with KFort. Sadly she retired from making FMs before I even started playing them.
Aemanyl: Are you currently working on any new levels?
JarlFrank: I have two missions that are pretty far along: a modern mansion where the brushwork is mostly complete and I just need to find some decent objects (if anyone knows a good source for low poly modern furniture, please drop me a message! low poly meaning low enough for DarkEngine to load it). And a city mission with an art gallery as its main location of interest.
Aemanyl: What are some of your other interests, pastimes, or hobbies that you enjoy in your free time?
JarlFrank: I like playing other games than Thief, mostly RPGs and strategy games. I’m also an avid reader of adventure fantasy fiction: classic authors like R. E. Howard and C. L. Moore, but also modern authors writing in the same vein like D. M. Ritzlin or Byron A. Roberts.
I also like to take long walks through my quaint little town and look at the houses I walk past. Oftentimes I see architectural details that would be fun to build in Dromed.
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Thank you for reading! We hope that you've enjoyed this insightful interview with JarlFrank. Every Friday you can look forward to a fresh interview with 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!
Welcome to the 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 Pookaball, the author of Nightwalk, an oldschool city mission designed for the One Million Units Contest in 2021.
Aemanyl: Please introduce yourself and tell us how you discovered the Thief games.
Pookaball: I first played Thief Gold as a teenager around 2012, maybe earlier. I'm not sure if I played Dishonored first, but at that time, I knew about Thief from an interview with Warren Spector in which he described his time working on Deus Ex, and I was familiar with some elements of the steampunk genre from other media. When I got Thief Gold, I was captivated by its cutscenes and worldbuilding. I played until Bonehoard or something like that and didn’t get very far. But the game stuck with me, and I revisited it a while later, getting stuck in Thieves Guild because I was bad at navigating, and it wasn’t until 2018 or 2019 when I came back to it and completed the whole game and later The Metal Age. I found fan missions at the same place where Thief was being discussed, and I downloaded a pack of some classic FMs but never got around to playing them between my bouncing off the game the first time and system changes. In 2020, however, I was hooked on the FMs. There was a lot to catch up on, and by then I think the 20th-anniversary mapping contest for TG had happened.
Aemanyl: Do you have a favourite genre, style, or theme of fan missions?
Pookaball: I prefer Thief Gold to Metal Age because of the more noticeable dark medieval themes. In terms of story, I like low-stakes slice-of-life FMs where you’re not trying to save the world and are just getting by, doing routine burglary, and maybe detective work along the way. I like exploring abandoned crypts and prowling the city streets. I like missions where you start far away from the objective and can choose to approach it in a number of ways. Tiled floors are the bane of my existence.
Aemanyl: Can you walk us through your typical workflow when creating fan missions? Where do you typically begin, and how do you approach the different stages of development?
Pookaball: To me, the ideal way to start making a mod for a game is to make some notes and sketches on paper to decide what I want to do before opening up the editor. Then I try to build the whole thing, starting to finish, in a very barebones, blocky way, and place the AIs and patrol points, objective items, and some loot, maybe lighting. It’s easier to change the flow of the mission when everything is at a large grid size. Then I would go over the brushes and add actual architecture and texture the brushes, making sure locked doors, light switches, and other mechanics work. Room brushing comes when all the architecture is done. Actual objectives, readables, and soundscapes come last. Pretty much, I follow the stepwise building method.
Aemanyl: What would be your proudest DromED achievement?
Pookaball: I haven’t made the big FM I'm proud of yet, but in order to get there, I have enjoyed learning to wrangle the editor and getting in a state of mind that lets me get to where I need to go. I don’t write scripts for Dromed, but I did customize some keybindings, and I know how to make custom textures, sounds, and models and get them in the game.
Aemanyl: What are your main sources of inspiration for your projects?
Pookaball: Classic books like Balzac, old masters’ paintings, European sci-fi comics (Moebius), fantasy and horror movies, biographies of medieval and Renaissance people, folklore and mythology, 3D renders of level designs for other games, and most importantly, other FMs.
Aemanyl: Would you ever like to collaborate with a specific fan mission author that you haven’t had the pleasure of working with yet?
Pookaball: I would like there to generally be a more alive mission-making community. Unfortunately, Thief just isn’t that popular as a game. Thief FMs deserve more eyes on them.
Aemanyl: Are you currently working on any new levels?
Pookaball: Currently working on an FM that lets you explore caves in an icy region, far outside the City.
Aemanyl: What are some of your other interests, pastimes, or hobbies that you enjoy in your free time?
Pookaball: Eeking out a living doing game art. I live for pixel art and low poly modeling. Also, I love Scottish Country Dancing.
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Thank you for reading! We hope that you've enjoyed this insightful interview with Pookaball. Every Friday you can look forward to a fresh interview with 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!
Welcome to the 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 Swiz. Swiz debuted as an author in 2018 by contributing to the TDP 20th Anniversary Contest with his classic manor level called Mother Redcaps Last Request. Last year, he released a post-Mechanist city mission titled Rockpool.
Aemanyl: Please introduce yourself and tell us how you discovered the Thief games.
Swiz: Hello! I'm Swiz, author of 2 Fan Missions: Mother Redcaps Last Request and Rockpool.
I missed a lot of classic PC games at the time due to a combination of university and being a terrible Amiga fanboy. I got into Thief, Deus Ex etc. around the mid 2000s - I've still got the budget re-release I bought (the dual-sided DVD Sold Out release of TDP + TMA) somewhere.
Aemanyl: Do you have a favourite genre, style, or theme of fan missions?
Swiz: It's a cliche, I know, but I'm still a sucker for the Sinister Mansion. But thinking about it, my absolute favourite FMs are city-based ones - Broken Triad, Seven Sisters first levels, and Disorientation. They can be large and sprawling, but still have enough landmarks to stop you getting overwhelmed and lost.
Aemanyl: Can you walk us through your typical workflow when creating fan missions? Where do you typically begin, and how do you approach the different stages of development?
Swiz: Nothing too outlandish - basic geometry and texturing, followed by objects and enemies, then a final detail pass. I tend to bounce around areas otherwise I obsess with fiddling with texture alignment for ages. I use GitHub to keep everything backed up.
Aemanyl: What would be your proudest DromED achievement?
Swiz: From my released stuff, I still like the overall atmosphere of the dockside area in Rockpool. For unreleased things, finally mucking about in Anim8or to step outside purely stock missions.
Aemanyl: What are your main sources of inspiration for your projects?
Swiz: From a mission-type point of view, the FMs I mentioned before. From a setting point of view I was thinking about gaps in the Thief story where something could be slotted in, and the downfall of the Mechanists seems mostly unexplored. It also gave the opportunity to have little side-stories in the readables (infighting after Karras' death, civilians going after them with torches and pitchforks, guards looking the other way, etc).
I also had a vague notion of a more sort of British heist movie feel to them, all thuggish gangs and bent coppers. But that only really comes across in some of the names (Mother Redcaps is a pub I've drunk in, and Rockpool is Liverpool by way of another mythical bird. Bonus points to whoever gets what no-nonsense female guard Inspector Shallott is a reference to).
Aemanyl: Would you ever like to collaborate with a specific fan mission author that you haven’t had the pleasure of working with yet? Alternatively, are there any creators whose style is similar to your vision of design?
Swiz: Honestly I don't think I'd be comfortable collaborating yet as I'd need to earn my spurs a bit more. Redcaps is very much Baby's First FM, and Rockpool largely did what it set out to do but what it set out to do wasn't hugely ambitious.
Aemanyl: Are you currently working on any new levels?
Swiz: Yes, expanding on the Mechanist themes I mentioned before. Needs a final push, but unfortunately work's gone mad.
Aemanyl: What are some of your other interests, pastimes, or hobbies that you enjoy in your free time?
Swiz: I got into cycling a bit during the pandemic to stop going stir-crazy. I need to get back into Pico8 (https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?uid=45932) as well, that was good fun to muck around with.
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Thank you for reading! We hope that you've enjoyed this insightful interview with Swiz. Every Friday you can look forward to a fresh interview with 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!
Welcome to the 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 Snake, the author of recently released A Thief`s Training, a very competently made daylight mission for Thief Gold.
Aemanyl: Please introduce yourself and tell us how you discovered the Thief games.
Snake: My name is Colm and I am originally from Galway in the west of Ireland but have been living in Dublin for the past 12 years. I am an accountant by background and currently work in banking regulation.
My introduction to Thief is probably an experience shared by many others. It began with a demo disc which came with the February 1999 edition of PC Zone, a UK video game magazine. I still have a copy of the disc. I was only 11 years old at the time so I can thank my older brother for purchasing the magazine in the first place. I have vivid memories of us playing that demo disc repeatedly, which contained A Keeper’s Training and Lord Bafford’s Manor and I think for that reason, both those missions are ingrained in my memory more than others, and might explain the setting of my debut mission to some extent. We eventually got our hands on The Dark Project and there was something about it that hooked me instantly, it was different to anything else at the time (most first-person games were shooters) and it evoked a unique and memorable atmosphere which I think is still unmatched today.
There are moments from TDP that still resonate with me from the first time seeing them, like the twist in the cutscene following Return to the Cathedral. I got stuck in The Haunted Cathedral for a long time that I nearly gave up on Thief entirely, and truth be told, I was probably too young and scared to play the game. I did obviously return to it after a short break and remember getting Thief Gold, Thief II, and Deadly Shadows as they were released. It was in the void left following the final game of the trilogy that I discovered T2X in 2005 and with that, TTLG and the world of fan missions.
Aemanyl: Do you have a favourite genre, style, or theme of fan missions?
Snake: It will probably come as no surprise that TDP/TG is my favourite game of the series and I naturally tend to prefer fan missions made for it as a result. There is a style of mission that is hard to describe but I think I’ve heard some refer to it as "urban mystery" and Melan is a master of this with Bad Debts, Disorientation, and Rose Garden being good examples. Skacky has put his own stamp on it too with Endless Rain and Sound of a Burrick in a Room.
Other genres I enjoy are those missions which recreate that other-worldly surrealism of The Dark Project. I am thinking here of missions by Schlock and Squadafroin such as Alcazar and Into the Odd.
Not to dismiss T2 entirely, I really enjoy a well-made mansion mission, with Heist Society, Duncan Malveine, and Conspiracies in the Dark springing to mind.
Finally, I enjoy supernatural/horror themed missions as well, but I tend to prefer the feeling of dread, or what you don’t see, as opposed to an out and out undead filled map. Horror can be created through atmosphere without ever encountering a haunt or zombie.
Aemanyl: Can you walk us through your typical DromED workflow? Where do you typically begin, and how do you approach the different stages of mission development?
Snake: My experience is based on building my one and only mission to date and given that I was very much learning as I was going, this may not be best practice!
I started A Thief’s Training by rebuilding the exit corridor from A Keeper’s Training. That was a great learning exercise, as rebuilding a small area from an original mission (OM), by reference to the OM itself in Dromed, helps you pick up some of the basics quite quickly (but almost all my Dromed knowledge came from Nicked`s excellent tutorial and help/support from the Dromed Discord and TTLG). If I were to give one tip to any new Dromeders, it would be to look at other missions in Dromed and figure out how they built or implemented certain things.
From there, I just built room by room without any plan as such. I had a general idea in my head of areas I wanted, like a main entrance hall, a scriptorium, a library, etc. but didn’t sketch any of that out. I used many photos of real places and tried to recreate those spaces in Dromed or at least use them as a base (more on that in my next answer). I also had no story, and it took me quite a while to figure out a reason for Garrett to return to the Keeper training compound. That part came quite late in development. In fact, the entire outdoor starting area was the last part built for the mission.
I tend to try and fully complete all processes for a room or area before moving on, so for example, I build the geometry, texture it, and roombrush it before moving on. I understand other authors might use dev textures and complete final texturing and roombrushing at a later stage. The processes I left until nearer the end were sound design, AI placement, readables, objectives, and some more technical aspects like setting up scripts and traps and the like. A Thief’s Training was largely complete from a geometry/brush perspective by Q3 of 2023 but it took many more months to implement those other elements (along with taking a break to play The Black Parade… and getting married!).
Aemanyl: What would be your proudest achievement in DromED?
Snake: This a short and easy answer given my equally short output in Dromed - finally finishing and releasing a fan mission. I take particular pride in this considering I first took up Dromed all the way back in 2005 and abandoned it for many years before returning to it at the beginning of Covid and lockdowns, where I had a bit more time to learn it all again. Even though it took me almost 20 years, I got there in the end!
Aemanyl: Your debut mission, A Thief’s Training, evokes a raw and austere atmosphere that is reminiscent of the early Middle Ages. Some of the readables were inspired by the poetry of William Butler Yeats and Martial. What are your main sources of inspiration?
Snake: A Thief’s Training started life as a potential entrant for the New Dark contest, a deadline I missed by some margin. Linking back to my earlier answer on how I discovered Thief, I spent a very long time replaying A Keeper’s Training from the demo disc and I remember my 11-year-old self being fascinated by that final corridor and where those doors might lead to. So, I thought it would be interesting to use the theme of the New Dark contest (create a new mission inspired by an original mission) and explore this idea by expanding on the original Keeper training compound. There was something about the daytime setting of the training mission (and Cragscleft) that made those missions stand out and resonate with me many years later, especially that contrast between the clear blue sky and birds singing, with the more dark and foreboding interiors, shadows and droning ambient music.
I rely quite heavily on photos for architectural inspiration. Many of the areas in A Thief’s Training are based on real life places. For example, the Restricted Library is inspired by the “Long Room” of the library in Trinity College Dublin and the internal cloister area is based on a similar structure in the fortified monastery of Lérins on the island of Saint-Honorat. Deadly Shadows was an inspiration for things like the Council Tower and sound design while other elements come from the small glimpses of things we see of the Keepers in TG/T2 such as the Interpreter’s Tower (also how this was implemented by Melan and others) and the scriptorium (eagle-eyed players might see that this comes from the first Keeper intro cutscene of TG, I even put imperfections in the pillar of the window separating the two sections of the scriptorium which can be seen in that briefing video).
In terms of inspiration for the story, setting, and readables, I tried to be authentic to a medieval setting, without it being too “real world” based. Many of the names are based on early medieval Anglo-Saxon names and some of the readables employ Elizabethan English, but I found these quite difficult to write so that style is limited to 2 or 3 readables. Most of the readables in the Keeper Compound reference other FMs or are loosely based on medieval political intrigue, particularly those referencing noble families and banking. Whenever I come across an article on an obscure or interesting medieval matter, I bookmark it for later reference. For example, most of the stories in the newspaper in the inn are based on real life peculiar medieval incidents.
As you have highlighted, I included two readables more or less verbatim from real poets - Yeats and Martial. The Yeats poem is only partially included (the beginning and end) and it is edited to remove real world references and replace them with Thief world ones. The Martial epigram is also edited (and I actually found it difficult to find a consistent version of it as it seems there have been many translations over hundreds of years).
Finally, many authors and missions inspired the design, particularly Alcazar, and there are some areas in the mission which should be instantly recognisable to those who have played Alcazar.
Aemanyl: Are there any creators whose style is similar to your vision of design?
Snake: As indicated above, and I am in no way putting myself in their category, but I did take a lot of inspiration from authors like Schlock and Squadafroin in particular but also the rest of the Feuillade team (DirkBogan, DrK, Firemage, marbleman, and Skacky). I am a big fan of all their work and I like how they have brought a lot of love and care back to The Dark Project, raising interest in that game and inspiring more fan missions to be created for it.
Aemanyl: You have recently published your debut mission. Any specific plans for creating more levels in the near future?
Snake: Right now, I will take a short break from Dromed, but not for long as I don’t want to forget everything I’ve learned or get out of practice. I have some ideas in my head, some of which had seeds planted in A Thief’s Training. So hopefully I can begin work on something new soon.
Aemanyl: What are some of your other interests, pastimes, or hobbies that you enjoy in your free time?
Snake: I enjoy film, reading, travelling, ballet, and art. Also watching, but no longer playing, football (fan of Liverpool) and snooker.
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Thank you for reading! We hope that you've enjoyed this insightful interview with Snake. Every Friday you can look forward to a fresh interview with 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!
The Dark Mod project trundles onward for it’s 15th year in a row. In that time we have improved our game engine in countless ways and have grown to over 170 missions!
To celebrate our perseverance and the years of improvements to come, we are hosting a contest to mark 15 years since the 1.0 release!
Unlike most recent contests, there is no defined theme and we are simply going to score based on our standard metrics of Story, Gameplay, and Visuals with our standard weighted scoring.
Contest Submissions should be provided before October 16th so that players can start playing and celebrating on the 17th
Welcome to the 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 Froghemoth, the author of Condemned Catalogue, a compact yet superbly crafted and atmospheric level for Thief Gold.
Aemanyl: Please introduce yourself and tell us how you discovered the Thief games.
Froghemoth: Hello, I'm Froghemoth. I discovered the series in 1998 through the Thief: The Dark Project demo found on a game magazine disk. Being a child at the time, I was too scared to even leave the shadows and risk facing Bafford's guards. But the sounds, cinematics, and overall vibe of Thief ingrained themselves in my mind forever since.
Aemanyl: Do you have a favourite genre, style, or theme of fan missions?
Froghemoth: There are two broad categories. The first category consists of dark and grimy city missions like those found in The Black Parade's "extended universe". The second category includes FMs with a slightly surreal atmosphere that managed to strongly affect me for one reason or another. Some examples include Breathing Corpses, Into the Odd, and The Sun Within And The Sun Without.
Aemanyl: Can you walk us through your typical workflow when creating fan missions? Where do you typically begin, and how do you approach the different stages of development?
Froghemoth: I begin by drawing a sketch of the level layout, followed by carving out rough mission shape with large air brushes. After that I divide the level into smaller areas and go through them one by one, doing brushwork, texturing, and object placement for each. I leave roombrushing and sounds for the last step, unless I want to get the full feel of some important area early on.
Also, there is always a sheet of paper by my keyboard on which I doodle when some interesting thought appears in my mind. If something good comes from it, like a cool architecture element, it goes into the FM.
Aemanyl: What would be your proudest DromEd achievement?
Froghemoth: If I ever manage to successfully make a large, mechanically solid FM with all stealth gameplay components (hiding spots, lights, patrol routes) planned and calculated from the beginning. It's difficult for me to pre-plan such things, and I end up improvising on the go.
Aemanyl: What are your main sources of inspiration for your projects?
Froghemoth: Anything with a particular feel that can work as FM's theme.
Condemned Catalogue was inspired by just a single illustration I saw somewhere online years ago. It depicted a street of Middle-Eastern-style buildings with walls made of bookshelves.
My current project is loosely inspired by the "Children of Taronne Tenement" mission from SWAT 4 and "The Horror at Red Hook", a short story by H.P. Lovecraft.
I also get plenty of inspiration just by walking through my neighbourhood. It's filled with crumbling 100+ year old buildings built from myriads of different materials.
Aemanyl: Would you ever like to collaborate with a specific fan mission author that you haven’t had the pleasure of working with yet?
Froghemoth: I have a modest opinion about my dromeding skills, so I'm not sure what I can bring to the table. But in purely hypothetical terms, I would like to collaborate with StinkyKitty or FrenchDecay if it means we get to see more FMs from them.
Aemanyl: Are you currently working on any new levels?
Froghemoth: Yes, though it doesn't have a name yet. It's a T2 mission that takes place in a run-down apartment building taken over by pagans, with a small city and dungeon sections as well. It's one Jacknall's Paw away from becoming a reimagining of TDS's Into the Pagan Sanctuary, but I'm not sure if it'll be done in time for the anniversary contest.
Aemanyl: What are some of your other interests, pastimes, or hobbies that you enjoy in your free time?
Froghemoth: I enjoy a bit of traditional painting and drawing now and then. I was also DMing tabletop RPGs for my friends until real life put that on hold. I actually used one of Melan's TTRPG settings and only much later realised it was from the same Melan whose FMs I played and loved.
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Thank you for reading! We hope that you've enjoyed this insightful interview with Froghemoth. Every Friday you can look forward to a fresh interview with 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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