You may have heard the term "First Person Shooter" to describe other action games with a first-person point of view. Thief 2 is not one of those games. Instead, think of Thief 2 as a "First Person Sneaker." Sure, you can use your sword and bow to kill your enemies, but the general rule of engagement in Thief 2 is: "The enemy should never know you were there."
As a master thief, you have the ability to become practically invisible while in shadows. If an enemy is otherwise ignorant of your presence, he can pass quite close to you without seeing you, as long as you are in the shadows.
When you start the Thief 2 demo, you will notice a small green gem at the bottom center of your screen. This is your "visibility gem" and it indicates how well you are lit and therefore how visible you are to your enemies. If the gem is bright green, then you are in bright light and are therefore very visible, if it is black then you are in deep shadows and are just about invisible.
Crouching (press the "f" key to toggle crouching) will make you less visible and therefore will make the gem glow a little less brightly.
Having a weapon drawn will make you more visible and therefore will make the gem glow a little more brightly.
You can also make your own areas of darkness by using your water arrows to shoot out torches. Don't underestimate how useful this can be. There are also some electric lights in Thief 2 and they can't be put out so don't waste your water arrows on them.
Your enemies can also hear you. Different kinds of flooring materials will make different amounts of noise when you walk on them. For example walking on metal or tile floors will make lots of noise, while walking on carpets or grass will be very quiet.
If you have some moss arrows you can use them to muffle what would otherwise be very loud surfaces to walk on.
Running instead of walking will also make much more noise and make it much more likely that you will get caught.
In general you will want to stay in the shadows or move from shadow to shadow, walking, and staying off of metal or tile floors, with your weapons put away, when playing Thief 2.
Your enemies will also be making a fair amount of noise (walking, humming, whistling, or mumbling) so you can often hear them before you see them in Thief 2. ItÆs a good practice to stop in a shadowy place and listen for a few moments before moving into a new area.
You can also "listen at doors" and hear better what's happening on the other side of them, by leaning into them. You can lean by pressing the "q" key to lean left, or the "e" to lean right.
As a master thief you have several special tools and abilities. Here's a run down on some of them.
First, you are a great pickpocket and can often steal a key, pouch, or potion from passing AI characters. They must be unaware of you for pickpocketing to succeed, so the best thing to do is to hide in a shadow and wait for one to pass by. (Hint: most of the AIs will be on regular patrols so if you study their movements you can often find a good, shadowy place to hide in and wait for them to pass.) You can also steal arrows from bow guards who are unaware of your presence.
Next, you also have a set of lockpicks that can open many doors. First select the lockpicks by pressing the tab key until they appear on the screen, or by pressing the F4 and F5 keys. Next move close enough to the door you want to lockpick so that it lights up, then press and hold down the "use" key, which is the right mouse button. You may need to switch lockpicks a couple of times to complete picking the lock. Picking locks makes a fair amount of noise so try and make sure that there are not any guards in the immediate area before you begin.
You also have a compass which will tell which way is north, etc. You can access the compass either by pressing F9 or tabbing through your inventory.
When you start the demo you will first find yourself in a "Thieves store" where you can buy several different kinds of weapons and tools to help you complete your missions.
You'll start out with several items, which will be displayed, on the left side of the screen. In this demo you'll start out with your lockpicks, bow and some broadhead arrows, your sword, some healing potions, etc.
You also have some loot that you can spend on the other items being offered in the store. The item being offered for sale will be on the right side of the screen. When you left click once on an item you see a description and price listed for each of the available items. If you wish to purchase a highlighted item, simply left click on the arrow pointing towards your inventory on the bottom of the screen. The object will be placed in your inventory and the appropriate amount of loot will be subtracted from your loot total.
Here's a description of the things you can buy:
Healing Potion - when taken (used) will slowly restore some of your health points.
Breath Potion - when taken will let you catch your breath under water.
Flash Bombs - when used will blind and disorient the enemy for several seconds allowing you to escape.
Gas Mines - when deployed and then stepped on will deploy a powerful knockout gas to everyone in the vicinity.
Mines - when deployed and then stepped on will explode damaging or killing everyone in the vicinity.
Broadhead arrows - these are wooden arrows fitted with standard arrowheads.
Water arrows - these are arrows fitted with a glass vial of water, which will shatter upon impact. This is very useful for putting out torches and making your own shadows.
Fire arrows - these arrows are tipped with a powerful explosive. Not only will this arrow do lots of damage but it can also relight torches. It makes lots of noise so make sure there aren't too many guards within earshot.
Moss arrows - these arrows are tipped with a very fast growing moss. When you shoot them at the floor a mossy carpet will quickly grow allowing you to walk across normally noisy surfaces quietly.
Gas arrow - these arrows are tipped with glass vials contain the same knockout gas as the gas mines. These can be very powerful weapons as you can sometimes take out several AIs by shooting a gas arrow at the group.
Rope arrow - these arrows deploy rope when they hit and stick into a wooden surface. You can then climb up or down the rope. If you are close enough to the arrow when you are done with the rope you can pull the rope out of the wood and it will be returned to your inventory. Be careful not to "pick up" the arrow while you are still climbing on it above a big drop or you will fall to the ground and be seriously injured or killed.
Noise maker arrow - these arrows make a suspicious noise when the hit something. You can use them to distract guards so you can sneak by them.
Technical Info.
Thief 2 uses Microsoft's DirectX 7. We didn't include DirectX with the demo in order to save space. If you need to install Directx on your computer you can download it from Microsoft's website at http://www.microsoft.com/directx/homeuser/downloads/default.asp In order for you to play the game, you must have DX7-compliant drivers for your video card and sound card. You will need to obtain the latest DX7 drivers from your card manufacturer.
The following is a list of 3D video cards that have been verified to work with Thief 2 under DX7 at the time of this writing:
* 3dfx release new drivers (version 1.03.00) just as we were making our final build of this demo. These drivers created a few problems with Thief 2. Specifically, the "health shield", visibility gem, and the graphic of your selected inventory items are not being displayed correctly. We are working with 3dfx to resolve these problems. Hopefully, by the time you read this 3dfx will have released newer drivers to resolve this problem.
** As of the writing of this readme file (11/12/99) ATI video cards did not display fog. We are working with ATI to resolve this problem. Please check the ATI website (www.atitech.ca) and the Looking Glass website (www.lglass.com) for updated information about this problem.
EIDOS Interactive maintains a web page with links to all major video and audio card manufacturers, which is a good first stop if you're looking to upgrade your drivers. You can reach this page at: http://www.eidosinteractive.com/techsupp/updating_drivers/hardware_links.html
Thief 2 uses Intel's Indeo video playback system to display the opening cutscene and mission briefing. We didn't include the installer for Indeo with this demo to save space as it is probably already installed on your system. If you can't playback the videos you can download the Indeo installer from intel's website at: http://developer.intel.com/ial/indeo/video/driver.htm
Memory and Performance
While Thief 2 will run fine in 48 megs of RAM, your playing experience will be smoother if you have at least 64 megs. (Fortunately for you, the consumer, memory is extremely cheap right now.) Thief 2 will run on a machine with 32 megs of memory but you will experience very long mission load times.
Regardless of how much memory you have, you can maximize your available memory and increase the overall performance of the game engine by doing the following:
- Closing any open windows
- Shutting down all other programs, including menu-bar programs like ICQ
- Defragmenting your hard drive
You can also change certain settings from the OPTIONS panel, to improve your frame rate:
SOUND: Set the audio channels to 4.
VIDEO: Set the character detail to Low.
Lower the screen resolution. Generally, the game runs best at 640x480.
Gamma Correction
Proper gamma correction (screen brightness) is vital for the most enjoyable Thief 2 experience. Given that different monitors and video cards exhibit a wide range of gamma values, it is important to understand the optimal setting for gameplay. The ideal gamma settings allow you to see the basic outline of terrain and objects even in deep shadow, but only barely. Darker settings than this won't allow you to see where you're going in dark areas (of which there are plenty in Thief 2), and brighter settings tend to wash out shadows, making it hard to tell where you're safe from detection and where you're exposed. Also, dark shadows look a lot cooler. The easiest way to set your gamma is to start the training mission and go into the first large hall, where you are instructed to avoid the light. Adjust the gamma with the + and - keys on your keyboard until you can barely see the outline of the walls in deep shadow. It will probably be helpful to adjust your monitor brightness as well. You can also use the Gamma slider on the Options:Video panel to adjust your settings. Note: under DirectX7, it is possible to directly adjust the gamma settings of supported 3D hardware accelerator cards. If your card supports this feature, the Thief 2 gamma controls will address it. If your 3D accelerator card does not support this feature, you should be able to adjust your gamma settings by going to Settings/Control Panel/Display from your Windows taskbar.
3DFX Voodoo II-based cards don't currently support in-game gamma adjustment, but if you alt-tab away from Thief 2 to adjust your gamma settings, you may hang the game when switching back to Thief 2. We don't recommend this.
Sound Acceleration and 3D Sound
Thief 2 supports a lot of exciting features that are available with more advanced sound cards. If your sound card supports hardware acceleration and/or 3D sound (such as Creative Labs or, A3D compatible sound cards), you can turn on the Hardware Acceleration option in the Audio Options menu. Thief 2 supports 3D sound - you won't believe your ears! However, if your card does not support hardware acceleration and/or 3D sound, you may not get any sound at all with Audio Hardware Acceleration turned on. If this happens, just go back to the Audio Options and turn Hardware Acceleration OFF.
Primary and Secondary 3D Graphic Cards
If you have more than one 3D graphic card in your system (for instance, a primary card and a 3Dfx card), you can choose between the two by going into Video Options, Advanced Options, then clicking on Drivers. This will list the 3D hardware you have installed in your system. Click on the card you wish to run Thief 2 on, then exit. If you have a 3Dfx card installed in your system, Thief 2 will run on it by default.
Known Problems
If you own a computer with an AMD K6-2 CPU and you do not have a 3D video card, you will need to go into the options menu, select video options and turn off hardware acceleration before you start playing Thief 2. The 3DNow extensions built into the K6-2 can fool DirectX into thinking that your computer has full 3D capabilities and as a result your computer may crash if you do not turn off video hardware acceleration.
3DFX Voodoo 2 users: The Voodoo 2 does not support switching to Windows and adjusting display properties while running a Direct 3D program. Do not do this. Your system will lock when you switch back to Thief 2.
If you are having trouble using the number-pad keys and the shift button, make sure that NumLock is turned off.
We are in the process of implementing an auto map feature, however as of this build it is only partially implemented. When you look at the map, the areas colored in blue are areas you have already been. The area surrounded by a black box is the area you are currently located in.
In the advanced video options panel a fog option has been added. This feature does not work on all video cards yet. It looks great if it does work on your card so give it a try. The default for this option is off so you will need to go into the options panel to turn it on and see if it works on your card.
Default Key bindings:
Key Resulting Action
Esc Calls up main menu
F1 select healing potion
F2 select breath potion
F3 select holy water
F4 select lockpick 1
F5 select lockpick 2
F6 select flashbomb
F7 select gas mine
F8 select mine
F9 select compass
F10 take screenshot (saved as dumpxx.pcx in the thief directory)
F11 quick save
F12 quick load
~ put weapon away (makes you less visible to enemies)
1 draws sword
2 readies the blackjack
3 readies your bow loaded with a broadhead arrow
4 readies your bow loaded with a water arrow
5 readies your bow loaded with a fire arrow
6 readies your bow loaded with a moss arrow
7 readies your bow loaded with a gas arrow
8 readies your bow loaded with a rope arrow
9 readies your bow loaded with a noise maker arrow
- adjusts screen gamma down
+ adjusts screen gamma up
Backspace clears any selected item
Tab cycles through your inventory
q lean left
w run
e lean right
r drop item (makes less noise than throwing it)
t look up
a turn left
s walk
d turn right
f toggles crouch
g look down
z side step left
x backpedal
c side step right
v center view
b use your sword to block an enemy's attack
space bar jump
m call up map
o view mission objectives and status
[ cycles backwards through inventory
] cycles forwards through inventory (same as tab)
PageUp look up (same as t)
PageDown look down (same as g)
2 button mouse
button 1 (left) use weapon
button 2 (right) use item
3 button mouse
button 1 (left) use weapon
button 2 (right) use item
button 3 (middle) block sword hit
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