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Thief 3 Deadly Shadows Bug Neuters In-Game AI
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.)"
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.
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
"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.
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.
I believe that his argument is that, regardless of what platform they are made for, modern games are routinely released with bugs. The PC platform is relatively easy to patch for. Consoles are not. Are you going to argue that console systems are better because they will somehow force developers to adopt better QA practices and eliminate bugs. Very utopian... and unrealistic.
That developers release programs with bugs in them is not a direct result of the ability of the developer to release later patches. It is a factor, but a more important factor is that the consumers whine, stomp their feet, type IN ALL CAPS, and otherwise make a idiot of themselves if the game does not come out quickly. Couple that with the growing complexity of modern games (perhaps the most important factor) and you are destined to have bugs slip through whatever QA system the developer's have.
jr
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
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.