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Thief 3 Deadly Shadows Bug Neuters In-Game AI 168

Posted by simoniker from the crossing-legs dept.
Channard writes "You can add another footnote to the strange fortunes of Ion Storm. It's been revealed that Thief: Deadly Shadows has a bug that affects the intelligence of the guards and other characters in the game, both in the PC and Xbox versions. Ion Storm Austin, the creators of the game, really went to work on the character AI in Deadly Shadows - on Expert level, the guards notice things like open doors, missing objects and the like. The catch, as reported on the official Ion Storm forums, is that a bug in the game resets the difficulty level to Normal level if you save and load your position in-game. The word from one of the Thief developers is that: 'We're looking into it.Can't say anything more for now, and there aren't any guarantees... but the find isn't being ignored.' The PC version should be relatively easy to patch, but fixing the Xbox version would be trickier, perhaps requiring a full recall (Microsoft doesn't allow the Xbox Live service to be used for anything other than patches that affect online play.)"
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Thief 3 Deadly Shadows Bug Neuters In-Game AI More

Thief 3 Deadly Shadows Bug Neuters In-Game AI

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  • YOU MEAN (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Game Developers don't do adequate testing? No way! I refuse to believe it.

    Sigh, this is just one more slap in the face of gamers everywhere. Companies will put millions into advertising and salaries for celebrity programmers, but then budget nothing for Q&A.

    And how the hell did Microsoft sign off on this? Isn't the promise of console games that they will be of higher quality, as a result of mandatory licensing fees? Isn't that why we pay more than PC gamers? Looks like that $10 markup is all for

    • Re:YOU MEAN (Score:2, Interesting)

      by esac17 ( 201752 )
      thanks for the obligatory microsoft bash, it had to come out somewhere. lets blame MS for the poor programming of 3rd parties just like everyone has been doing for years. Thief is not published by microsoft game studios which is where microsoft 'signs off' on it.
      • Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo all have QA processes that games must go through before they can be released on their platforms - regardless of who produces it. Edge magazine did an interesting feature a while back that described what the processes entailed at each of the console makers.

      • Re:YOU MEAN (Score:3, Informative)

        by gl4ss ( 559668 )
        sorry, but did you understand the bash? no you didn't. it was a bash against their inability to control their licensees.

        the platform is supposedly better because of their _required_ licensing they *can*(and according to them do) control what gets shipped to the shops and what doesn't. they act as if they control the quality, so they'd better deliver that promise as well..

  • A very very very sad day :( (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 222 ( 551054 ) <stormseeker@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @11:48AM (#9367508) Homepage
    When most people were ga-ga'ing over halflife, i was cuddled in the corner of a very dark room filling my pockets in Thief 1. It really changed the way i looked at pc games, and had the most immersive gameplay i had ever seen...
    Flash forward to today, and you see Thief 3 (albeit a fine, fine title) obviously rushed out the door, and most of the dev team laid off. What is it with this industries self destructive tendancies? I mean, really. Isnt the goal to make money? And isnt that a product of producing a good game?
    I just want to scream at my monitor when i see things like this happen. Just remember, the fault probably doesnt lay on the dev team when something like this happens, something tells me a phb thought he could shave a buck or 2 and went for it.
    • I mean, really. Isnt the goal to make money? And isnt that a product of producing a good game?

      Yes, indeed. Much like the formula for profit in music or movies is a high-quality original release. Titles that are carried on the strength of name recognition, sex appeal, or herd mentality just don't cut it.

      Oh, wait...maybe that's a bad example...


      --LorDPixie

    • Re:A very very very sad day :( (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SandSpider ( 60727 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:38PM (#9368726) Homepage Journal
      Flash forward to today, and you see Thief 3 (albeit a fine, fine title) obviously rushed out the door, and most of the dev team laid off. What is it with this industries self destructive tendancies? I mean, really. Isnt the goal to make money? And isnt that a product of producing a good game?

      Sadly, no. The current tactic is to keep from losing money, which means optimizing the development cycle to a minimum amount of time, thus reducing overhead such as rent, by employing far more people at any given time than are necessary. Then, when the game is done, you don't want to keep paying salary for all the extra people, so you let them go. This also has the benefit of reducing the amount of vacation time you need to give people, and it keeps you from continuing to employ burnt-out people. Because everyone will be burnt out, since there's been mandatory overtime for 3 months, forcing people to work 70-80 hour weeks to get the game done.

      It is very sad, and it will eventually change, but not immediately by any means. Personally, I think there needs to be a union for video game professionals. Unfortunately, too many college kids are happy to "live the dream" of working in video games, so it would be very difficult to start one; you'd always have some punk kid ready to take your place and put in 80-100 hour weeks for at least 3 years before becoming a shell of his former self. I've seen it happen far too often.

      =Brian
      • I lived the dream for two years before I quit my job... where can you go to live the dream for 3?
      • Another example of the biggest problem with our economic system today: short term thinking.

        I would argue that you are far better off arranging your company so that you have a smaller staff (which allows you smaller overhead per month) and a longer development time per game, and focus on quality. You'd get fewer games out per year, but they'd have a higher chance of being hits due to quality. That should translate into greater sales over time, which is how you can actually make a profit.

        Much easier said th

      • Re:A very very very sad day :( (Score:4, Funny)

        by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:16PM (#9372895) Homepage
        Unfortunately, too many college kids are happy to "live the dream" of working in video games, so it would be very difficult to start one; you'd always have some punk kid ready to take your place and put in 80-100 hour weeks for at least 3 years before becoming a shell of his former self.

        Yeah, sorry about that Brian. I'm trying to cut back my hours. But as the new guy I'm expected to wow and dazzle. This is my chance to stake a claim to my chosen profession, and as such I need to prove myself... Justify myself against all of the people out there who might have already implemented distance-based reflection maps or authored giant, multi-segment levels with unnoticably repeating geometry. I've got to do something to counterbalance my lack of experience.

        I'd love to see a union, but if you asked me 6 months ago would I be willing to be a scab? Probably.

      • Re:A very very very sad day :( (Score:5, Informative)

        by Superliminal ( 768640 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:23PM (#9372944)

        It is very sad, and it will eventually change, but not immediately by any means. Personally, I think there needs to be a union for video game professionals.

        You mean like IGDA? [igda.org] JOIN.

        Unfortunately, too many college kids are happy to "live the dream" of working in video games

        True.. a lot of places hire graduates because "they have more to prove,".. e.g., they're willing to work a lot for nothing. But what those zillion kids don't have is release titles.. hang in there a while, get some good titles under your belt, and you'll find it a lot easier to get into positions at good studios (who put out bestselling titles, retain their workforce, and know how to (gasp) schedule.) Good studios don't want to risk their AAA titles (god, I hate that term) on a bunch of noobs. It's just how it is.

        Unless you're lucky enough to land a job at a sweet place right out of school, you're going to hop around a bit as you find a place that works for you (and pays what you're worth.) If you're staying at the same place for 3 years working 80+ hour weeks, you're doing yourself a huge disservice.

      • Personally, I think there needs to be a union for video game professionals

        No way! Game developers are treated the way they are because there are way more would-be game developers than there are jobs. Simple market dynamic

        I wanted to be a game programmer too, but then I realized that getting paid chump change for being treated like a pogo-ball with some manager jumping on my head was really stupid.

        Now I solve interesting programming problems in a different market, and play all the friggin games I want,

        • Personally, I think there needs to be a union for video game professionals

          No way! Game developers are treated the way they are because there are way more would-be game developers than there are jobs. Simple market dynamic

          Um, you did read the very next sentence, which said, 'Unfortunately, too many college kids are happy to "live the dream" of working in video games, so it would be very difficult to start one; you'd always have some punk kid ready to take your place and put in 80-100 hour weeks for at leas

    • you see Thief 3 (albeit a fine, fine title) obviously rushed out the door

      Personally, I don't find it obvious it was rushed out the door. Admittedly, this is a rather large bug, but I've already played through the entire game and found it immensely enjoyable. I found it to be a generally worthy successor to "Thief". I didn't even notice this game (though I noticed it was pretty easy), and I didn't really notice any other bugs either.

  • I was wondering why even on expert difficulty, the enemies seemed pretty clueless...oh well, it's still a fun game even at normal difficulty.
    • I was wondering why even on expert difficulty, the enemies seemed pretty clueless...oh well, it's still a fun game even at normal difficulty. Exactly. Give that man a donut. It was exactly that that alerted folks to the bug - some people swearing blind the AI was great on expert mode, others saying it stunk. The people who thought it stunk had either gone through a portal twice or saved and loaded game and, joy of joys, the guards went back to their 'normal' AI level, making them about as bright as the Thie
  • I love statements like that... ... I'm still waiting for a 3Dfx patch for Commanche3 ;-)

  • Remember the 80's? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pluvius ( 734915 ) <pluvius3 AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @12:10PM (#9367786) Journal
    The PC version should be relatively easy to patch, but fixing the Xbox version would be trickier, perhaps requiring a full recall

    Remember when console games that had serious bugs just didn't get licensed? Boy, those were the days.

    Rob

    • Re:Remember the 80's? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Remember when console games that had serious bugs just didn't get licensed? Boy, those were the days.

      Off the top of my head, I recall that Final Fantasy 3 had some game-killing and save-destroying (!) bugs involving the sketch ability of one of the characters. Here [eyesonff.com] are the details. I'd consider that a showstopper.

      It happens. And in this case, Square and Nintendo did nothing about it. No recall, they simply said, "don't sketch", thereby rendering one of the characters completely useless. At least Ion Storm

      • No recall, they simply said, "don't sketch", thereby rendering one of the characters completely useless.

        That's like saying that I've just thrown some paint up in the air, rendering the sky blue.
      • Off the top of my head, I recall that Final Fantasy 3 had some game-killing and save-destroying (!) bugs involving the sketch ability of one of the characters.

        Since the bug generally only occurred when Relm sketched an invisible creature, it was pretty rare. A lot of people didn't even use Relm's sketching ability in the first place, much less go around sketching everything in sight. Compare that to a game that has a bug that has a 100% chance of occurring when one saves his game; just about everyone us
        • No, it didn't only happen when Relm sketched an invisible creature.

          It also happened if Relm sketched a certain enemy, Zone Eater I believe it was called (The enemy if it sucked your entire team down, you went into the cave where you could find Gogo.

          When you did that, your whole inventory and/or saved games could/would be messed up. Things like 255 of certain items you couldn't even get.

          Mind you, being 14 at the time, it wasn't a bug, but a feature.

        • Re:Remember the 80's? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:27PM (#9372981) Homepage
          Another example of a major bug in the middle years of console gaming is at the end of the optional Ancient Cave in Lufia 2. The graphics are competely gliched up on the 99th level of the cave, though it is still possible to blindly make your way to the boss at the end. Of course, most people who played that game (before emulation, anyway) never got that far, so this is another example of a bug that really didn't mean much.

          Considering I couldn't get even to the 50th level of the Ancient castle because Lufia 2 crashed and ate my save... twice... I would consider a total graphical glitch to be the least of the team's offences.

          The Relm sketching bug, however, was priceless. It took her from the realm of a useless additional character to one of might and importance. Sure, if you sketched invisible things there was a pretty good chance you'd spend 20 minutes selling off thousands of unusable dirks, but small price to pay for an exploit that might give you a dozen masamunes, twenty glass swords, two lightsabers, and about a million other random useless items (frying pans, etc). Total corruption of your save was also rare, even when the glitch did occur. I wouldn't be surprised if an unofficial grouping of QA people saw the problem and decided that it improved the character significantly. Sometimes bugs like that make it into the shipping game on strength of their side effects.

    • Re:Remember the 80's? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Dr. Manhattan ( 29720 ) <sorceror171NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @02:57PM (#9369496) Homepage
      Remember when console games that had serious bugs just didn't get licensed?

      Just a couple months ago Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow was released with a bug that would crash the system if you stayed in the game browser for more than ten seconds [penny-arcade.com]. Hard to imagine how that one got missed...

    • Remember when console games that had serious bugs just didn't get licensed? Boy, those were the days.

      I'm sure if you're still willing to pay $50+ for 8-bit games with primitive 2D graphics and FM synth audio, and gameplay engines so simple that they could be developed by a team 1/10th the size of a modern development staff, you could have lots of games with no serious bugs.
      • I don't think it was quite as simple as you're suggesting to create a good 8-bit game fifteen years ago. But I see your point.

        Even so, it makes you wonder why console licensing systems still exist. Well, besides old fashioned capitalism, of course.

        Rob

    • Re:Remember the 80's? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Guppy06 ( 410832 )
      Yeah, back before I got Beyond Good & Evil for my GCN. I'm still pissed about that!

      I loved that game right on up 'til the point where I lost my partner to a glitch and got stuck in the dungeon I was in (I need him to open the door to get out). I didn't know I needed to make multiple, iterative saves in a game. Where can I get a DAT drive for my GCN?

      And beyond the fustration of having to start the game all over again (which I haven't done yet because of it) there's the fustration of knowing I can't

  • Patches after release (Score:5, Insightful)

    by toolio ( 232349 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @12:10PM (#9367792)
    "Microsoft doesn't allow the Xbox Live service to be used for anything other than patches that affect online play."

    Good thing too, or we'd have a bunch of half-finished games with a "We'll patch it later" attitude.

    I'm tired of being a beta tester.

    • Re:Patches after release (Score:5, Informative)

      by Drakino ( 10965 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @04:54PM (#9371078) Journal
      "Microsoft doesn't allow the Xbox Live service to be used for anything other than patches that affect online play."

      Except for their own games. MechAssault has been patched, specificially the game loading code to close the exploit that allowed software modding the XBox. Deleting the MechAssault save data gets rid of the patch and reopens the exploit.

  • Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @12:11PM (#9367795)
    Why is there such an outcry over this? This frankly huge letter on the ionstorm forum is just over reacting. The developers now know about the bug and they've said they'll try to fix it. Suddenly going on about class action and sueing the crap out of them is not going to speed it up.

    Fair enough, if the developers next week announce that they've checked and they can't be bothered to fix the bug and basically screw you then yeah, start thinking about campaigning to get this fixed.

    If I was a developer this entire incident would give me a bad view of the gaming community. It portrays everybody as being obnoxious impatient asses. The developers didn't intend to release it with a bug. There is only so much testing you can do and people make MISTAKES. It's a fact of life.

    Wait and see what they do basically.

    • Unfinished products rightfully get outrage. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LordPixie ( 780943 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @12:59PM (#9368338) Journal
      Undoubtably, bugs will happen. There isn't much anyone can do about this. But there's a deeper problem at issue here. Namely, games are being rushed out the door before they're ready. Now, this is most likely the fault of the publishers rather than the developers, but there isn't much we can do to distinguish when it comes to our purchases.

      It's not like this is Ion Storm's first problem with this sort of thing. Did you try the abysmal Deus Ex II ? There were billions of issues there that should have been caught by simple playtesting. Likewise here...did no one test the difficulty settings for more than 5 minutes ?

      The gaming industry really needs to learn that they can't blitz a product to market at less-than-optimal quality, and expuct the publc to shell out $50+ without complaint. Gamers are used to (virtually) blowing crap up, not grabbing their ankles and taking it from behind. PC games are complex constructions, no question about it. If you want your game to be a quality release (and thus keep customers) you have to expend a good deal of effort in QA/testing. Hell, resort to a semi-public beta if you don't have the inhouse staff to do it.


      --LordPixie

      • Re:Unfinished products rightfully get outrage. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Creepy ( 93888 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @02:07PM (#9369027) Journal
        It's also a rather tricky bug that may not have been caught in their testing process.

        I can entirely see how their Q/A team would miss the bug - Q/A would need to be playing on hard, probably with no cheats on (otherwise, why save and reload?). Save and reload probably got some visible verification (inventory there, start point correct, etc), so that was probably checked off without further testing. Most testing probably never used save and reload - mainly because that is one of the last completed parts of the game completed. Portions of save/restore may work, but until item placement and inventory items are complete, why test it?

        I admit, what they need is to have some people run through the "finished" product once or twice at every difficulty to verify there are no outstanding showstoppers, but that's not always possible (time demands), so maybe they settled on a runthrough only at moderate difficulty. Due to the limited lifespan of games (about 3 months) they probably didn't want to have an open beta (no sense leaking the code to pirates any earlier than possible).
        • I can entirely see how their Q/A team would miss the bug - Q/A would need to be playing on hard, probably with no cheats on (otherwise, why save and reload?).

          IMO, playing without cheats is a pretty significant part of QA. Admittedly, you're going to need someone to breeze through the game easily just to make sure the basic mechanics work. But you're creating a game. The QA team NEEDS to make sure it has enjoyable gameplay, or they're just selling an overly expensive tech demo. Especially in a game li
        • It's also a rather tricky bug that may not have been caught in their testing process.

          Bollocks.

          This can be found out by anyone who does even moderate real play in the game, and many of the fans (especailly on TTLG) pinned down the problem in hours.

          If the testing team can't do it then there's something seriously wron with their testing strategies (if they even have them).
          • That's just the problem - few companies do moderate real play because of deadlines.

            Until code cutoff, new features are always going into the code, any of which can cause bugs (alpha). At some cutoff point, only bug fixes are allowed in (beta - but cutoff is often missed for that great feature that has to go in). Most of the time spent here is play balancing and feature verification. That last week or two before release to manufacturer is probably the only real testing done on the final product ('rc'
      • The gaming industry really needs to learn that they can't blitz a product to market at less-than-optimal quality, and expuct the publc to shell out $50+ without complaint.

        Sure they can. Lots of people did. Lots of people will. They've learned quite handily that gamers will buy 98% of the buggy crap put out each year, as long as it's good or from a developer they know or trust. And even then!
      • I was reading your post and thinking how could companies handle this. Obviously more testing but that increases the final price. And then there is the point about X-box, PS2 etc. releases with bugs.

        One solution is perhaps first sell the game to PC only for a cheap price. And the public, because lets face it dev houses are not going to retreat and start proper testing themselves, plays/tests the product while patches are released.

        Finally we have a stable product which can be released to the consoles which
      • "The gaming industry really needs to learn that they can't blitz a product to market at less-than-optimal quality, and expuct the publc to shell out $50+ without complaint."

        The Slashdot commmunity really needs to learn to check their spelling. What is "expuct" and "publc"?

  • Not only that... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Fweeky ( 41046 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @12:19PM (#9367877) Homepage
    I noticed early on that the difficulty settings specified in DEFAULTS.INI can be changed to make each difficulty level easier or harder (yeah, I'm nosy and like looking for things to tweak in games); that would be a useful intermediate "fix" to this issue, since you could specify NORMAL difficulty to be the same as EXPERT. The problem is, the difficulty isn't reset to the NORMAL specified in the .ini, but apparantly to some default setting specified in the game executable.

    I spotted this a few hours after installing the game; wtf are they hiring to do their testing!?

  • Patch will come soon (Score:3, Informative)

    by mugnyte ( 203225 ) * on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @12:36PM (#9368091) Journal

    I don't take this as completely crazy. Patches for bugs - and this one is somewhat obscure in the testing - happen all the time. Too bad for consoles, but I disagree with the concept of them anyway.

    It does let me in on a bit of how testing occurred. When we deploy a system, there is a "dashboard" (ug, i hate the term) of all the settings in the program visible on another screen. As you walk through the application, you can check the values live. If thief had a mode to display this (and most FPS have a console that should deliver this), they'd be able to check AI settings. Perhaps they did and it still isn't working correctly - now thats a bug.

    mug
  • I don't have the full version yet, but I just double-checked in the demo and it appears you can set the difficulty on a per level basis. Is this true? If so, just play through a whole level without loading. Don't save and load after each enemy you manage to sneak by. That doesn't strike me as very 'expert' of a tactic.

    Buy the game or don't buy it. This bug sucks, but is not a showstopper at all. A game deleting your boot sector when it is uninstalled, now thats a bug. The guy claiming to find the bu
    • I don't have the full version yet, but I just double-checked in the demo and it appears you can set the difficulty on a per level basis. Is this true? If so, just play through a whole level without loading. Don't save and load after each enemy you manage to sneak by. That doesn't strike me as very 'expert' of a tactic. It's not just that, either. Gamers sometimes don't have the time on their hands to spend four hours playing through a single level. They want to save the game so they can go to sleep or do

    • Re:Doesn't look like a showstopper to me (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sigma 7 ( 266129 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @03:18PM (#9369673)
      If so, just play through a whole level without loading. Don't save and load after each enemy you manage to sneak by.

      My experience with the Thief series is that it is not possible to go through a level once without having to resort to saved games - while it's possible to ironman levels, they either take too long to do in one standard unit of time (i.e. 1 hour, as most popular games gear themselves to), or require lots of practice to breeze through it.

      Being a "slow" game, you will need to reload, and therefore encounter the dumbed down guards. It is considered slow, since you have to generally sneak around occupied areas instead of running quickly to get to your destination.

      Saved games are required - there are instances in Thief 1 and 2 where you need to do specific jump. The jumping occassionally failed because you were just beyond the tolerance range for making the jump (and therefore either fell to your death or made a loud noise attracting whatever guard is available.) Also, there were a few instant-killing traps that were not visible unless you had a really good eye - something that requires either prior knowledge or save-scumming to pass through.

  • Indeed... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dswensen ( 252552 ) * on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:24PM (#9368587) Homepage
    ...and this is why, when people start talking about how consoles are going to kill the PC gaming market, I don't get all that worried.

    One of the big advantages PC gaming has now is the ability to fix bugs after the game has shipped. Even if that does lead to some greedy and short-sighted business decisions. "Ship now, patch later" is a lousy way to run a game company, but at least, with a PC game, you can patch later. With consoles, you're generally going to get the shaft.

    But as consoles get more sophisticated and come with internet connectivity as a requisite, this problem is only going to get worse. So the big advantage of consoles, "just stick a disc / cartridge in and play" is going to become "just stick a disk / cartridge in and wait an hour for the latest patch to download." Because the bottom line is, game companies won't ship a finished, polished game if they don't have to.
    • There's only 1 other Xbox game with a bug of this calibre that I'm aware of: The original release of Splinter Cell 2 would crash if you let it search for network games for more than 10 seconds. I'm not sure how Ubi resolved this.

      However, compare this to a typical PC game launch: Numerous problem reports ranging from people with older computers complaining about poor performance, people with modern cards and outdated drivers complaining about graphical glitches, people for whom the game doesn't work at al
      • I agree. What I'm saying is that those days are numbered. Once the capability exists to patch console games the way they can PC games, we're probably going to start seeing the same shoddy workmanship in console games. Because the game companies know they can get away with it.

        Granted, having a hardware standard counts for something (the massive variety of available sound / video / other hardware in PCs is one of the primary reasons there's so many bugs), but I think a lot of what it boils down to is plain o

    • Re:Indeed... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cgenman ( 325138 )
      Because the bottom line is, game companies won't ship a finished, polished game if they don't have to.

      Can we please get away from this attitude of "All game companies want to ship crap." Even the attitude that all publishers want to ship crap is incorrect. Sure there are some toothbrush salesmen at publishers, but most of the people want something great. Now, whether or not they want a great game because they love the industry or because they know a million seller will get them a house in Florida is an
      • I don't blame the developers for anything. In fact, I totally agree with this statement:

        Games suck because of bad timing, bad management, and bad decision making, not a lack of developer attention and intent.

        I don't doubt it's ultimately the bean counters that spell the doom of many a game. I've seen it happen many times. I'm sure most developers don't go into a game thinking about how shabby an effort they can make out of it, but circumstances push things in that direction sometimes.

        Sorry if you took
  • This is hardly a new error. Seems like a "good" dev organization would put this on the checklist of things that must pass smoke test and/or must be in unit test.

    Temple of Elemental Evil had a save/load issue, bigtime (menu items were wrongly named)

    XCom (the original) had this same problem, resetting of difficulty levels.

  • Ion Storm's little Thief 3 bug.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by BigNastyOgre ( 658078 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @03:09PM (#9369609)
    Ion Storm? You can't exit the level without Superfly Johnson!
  • picked it up last night.

    utterly and completely disappointed.

    i have a gforce 5200 and p4-2600, not a terrific system but it lets me play most games with decent framerates.

    theif3, at the lowest settings gives me horrible framerates. not only that, but the graphics are nothing to look at. even the menus in the game are pixelated to the point of almost being unreadable.

    i wouldn't mind jerky framerates if everything looked good (Farcry with all settings high jerks a little bit, but looks beyond amazing), b
    • A Geforce FX 5200 is quite literally the slowest DirectX9-compatible videocard you can buy. A Geforce2 or Geforce4 MX would be significantly faster at OpenGL or DirectX7! Expecting a $50 videocard to give you good performance on a modern, DirectX9 game is just ludicrous.
      • I played Thief 3 on an Athlon 1800+, with a GF 3 and 256 megs of ram. Turning resolution to 800x600 and turning down most of the detals made the game run perfectly playably, with a stable framerate. People with 3 times the hardware I've got complaining about it being "slow" or "ugly" need to either re-evaluate thier assumptions or fix whatever else they have wrong with thier machines.
        • A Geforce3 can be expected to significantly outperform a Geforce FX 5200. A Geforce 3 (not Titanium) has 7.3GB/sec of memory bandwidth, an FX 5200 has 3.2GB/sec. The Geforce3 also has twice the number of pixel pipelines as the FX 5200. Overall, I wouldn't be surprised at all if you got twice the framerate the dude with the FX 5200 did, or near-so.

  • No guarantees (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Andy Smith ( 55346 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @06:06PM (#9371738)
    We're looking into it.Can't say anything more for now, and there aren't any guarantees...
    That's the problem -- there aren't any guarantees.

    A lot of people threaten to stop buying PC games because of the "no guarantees" license agreement, but they keep on buying them. I have actually stopped. Haven't bought a PC games in, what, two or three years now. It isn't because I don't want to play them, it isn't because I can't afford them, I'm just not willing to agree to a contract that I disapprove of.

    It's amazing to me that a developer will publicly admit to a fairly major fault in a game and then say, effectively, "we might fix it or we might not, dunno yet". I'm sure this thought process goes on in many different industries, but game developers openly admit to having this attitude! It makes me wonder: If this is what they admit to then... well, finish the question for yourself.

    This is our fault, though. (Well, depending on who you are, it's actually your fault, not mine!) Consumers tolerated unfinished games for so long that there became very little motivation for developers to bother finishing them. We told them time and time again that we'd buy their faulty products and they heard it so often that they said okay, in that case we're happy to sell them to you. So we did this to ourselves. Or rather you did... ;-)
    • Uhhh...it is JUST a game. 9 out of 10 times the game will work with no problems right out of the box. Occassionally a patch will be released before the game hits the stores. No big deal there either. They will fix this (even though its not THAT big of a bug).

      But since you want to get all dramatic about it maybe you deserve an oscar?
  • From "The Last Thief 3 Preview You Will Ever Need to Read From a hands-on experience with the game, by Dan, a.k.a. Digital Nightfall."

    <Cain> Question: Is the game polished? did you run in bugs or glitches ?
    <Digital`Nightfall> The game is very polished. Release candidate #1 was accepted by eidos. That's virtually unheard of. If they do a patch, it will not be to fix bugs. I only saw one glitch, and that was a guard who's sword was haning from his armpit rather than his belt (usually they have to

  • .. and are covering it with a news article here [gamespot.com]. As luck would have it, the Thief 1 Gold I ordered off E-Bay just turned up today, so I guess I'll be playing Thief 1 till they fix this bug - if they fix it.

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