SCI-FI THIEF

Anyway, I couldn't find the game design document itself but I did find a lot of ancillary files related to it. They were in pretty rough shape (Stream-of-

conscious style writing) and, after attempting to copy-paste them into cohesiveness, just decided to retype the highlights all out.

In order to reveal the gameplay, I pretty much have to reveal "The Big Secret" of the game: In the game, no one really knows who you are. They just know you as a thief with some sort of super-suit that allows you to be invisible, undetectable and perform some incredible feats of derring-do. You never meet anyone in person and your voice is always digitized. In reality, you're a humanoid robot but that isn't revealed until the very, very, just-before-the-credits-roll end.

The chief gameplay mechanic was energy management: you only have so much energy to start out with and you are always, no matter what you are doing, burning

energy. There would be a few sources of energy on a typical level (for instance, there were one-time energy replenishments like a car battery or, just like

a wall socket, you could "plug yourself in" and recharge slowly) but, for the most part, what you started out with was what you had.

Energy demands were divided into three broad categories: Stealth, Physical abilities & Hacking. Like an 80s stereo, you could tweak various power demands to your liking and have hotkey pre-sets so that you could jump from a guy who could leap over walls to someone who could hear a conversation from a field away to a guy who was virtually invisible. Each "feature" had it's own scale of power demands (in other words, some features required more energy than others).

Another aspect of the game play was that you couldn't go to 0 or 100 on any one feature; Every feature had to be powered to some degree and no feature could be maxed out (I figured that this would be provide for some emergent gameplay).

Just like in Thief, you could bring along goodies to help with your particular style of thieving but everything always had a cost: For instance, bringing

along an extra battery pack would give you more initial energy but it was heavier which meant you needed more power in physical to run just as fast as you

would without it.

I tried to ground the game in "reality" (humanoid robot running around cyberpunk mega-city - yup, realistic) as much as I could so I ditched stealing

physical items in terms of gathering intelligence, maybe stealing one or a pair of small items and "hacking" that would be the equivalent of money. For

instance, someone wandering too close to you with a bank card would allow you to electronically "skim" the chip on the card to decode the encryption,

allowing you to use the money at an ATM or other such method.

SKILLS (There's no way I can remember all of them but I think these are most of them):

* Visibility: This was, obviously, the big one. How visible you are to others. You could never be completely invisible but you could get very, very close

and, in most shadows, were realistically invisible.

* Natural Sound & Contact Sound: I remember splitting these up but also remembered that I would probably have to combine them. Natural sound is you just

moving around: The crinkling of your clothes, the swishing of air as you walk or run. Contact sound is whenever you contact any surface other than you:

Walking on the ground, mantling, picking up an object, lockpicking, etc.

* Movement speed: Just as the title suggests. There was crawl, walk, run and you could set the speeds of each within a given range. The faster you go, the

more noise you would make.

* Jump height: Again, just as advertised. The higher you jump, the more noise you make (especially on the landing).

* Hearing range: From how far away you can hear & how sensitive your hearing is. Could be detrimental at extreme sensitivity.

* Seeing range: How telescopic your sight can become.

* Scanning range: How far away you could skim a card.

* Loot ID: Unlike Thief, you just didn't "know" what is valuable and what wasn't beyond the ultra obvious (or mission objectives). This skill acted like a

virtual "bar code scanner" on everything in sight, highlighting the items that were valuable within a certain price range. The more energy put into this,

the faster the retrieval of the information is.

Other highlights (in no particular order):

* Combat was handled very swiftly and (for you) very deadly. Unlike Thief, your only options are to run, run & run faster. I remember having some sort of

"last resort" impervious shield that you could purchase that gave you 5 or so seconds of invulnerability as you ran for your life. I toyed with a lot of

ideas but the moment you introduce combat into the game, you're beginning to veer from stealth into some form of FPS and that wasn't something that I

wanted. At the most, you're a stealthy assassin or a stealthy thug but you're not a techno-tank or cyber Bruce Lee.

* Levels were just like "Thief"; Intro, set your difficulty setting, buy your additional gear, start the level. I really wanted to make the additional gear

cumulative; If you bought it during level 1, it carried over to level 2. I remember wanting to make money more valuable than it was with Thief. I toyed with interactive "intros," where both the intro and the difficulty setting was merged into one.

* Difficulty settings weren't "easy, medium, hard" but more like "thief, assassin, spy." Each "setting" had it's own challenges but regardless of which one

you picked, the consequences of your actions would always be the same (ex. if you picked thief instead of assassin, stealing an item would result in the

person you would have killed being killed anyway, etc.). Again, I toyed with branching but wanted to keep things as simple as feasible.

* Hacking, locks... Those were all mini-games but there was an option to forgo the mini-game with a time penalty (to appease those demographics who didn't

want twitch mini-games). There was no pause with mini-games; Guards still walked down the hallways regardless.

* There were at least two types of locks - Physical (tumbler-style) & electronic. Physical locks were sub-divided into two types, each with their own

"skeleton key" mini-game. There was a "bump key" one & a "rake" one (probably the closest to what The Dark Mod has now). I remember there being a third type but I can't remember if I folded into one of the other two or dropped it entirely. I remember doing a lot of research into lock security and remember to being very stunned at how easy it is for professional thieves to break into virtually any modern-day physical lock without much effort. It did not make me sleep well at night. Morale of the story: Deadbolts are there for a reason. Use them.

* As for electronic, there were card-based, palm-print & eye-scan. Only the card-based one had a mini-game; The other two, you had to stand still & "scan"

the subject with some sort of ray. The more the subject moved, the longer it took for a successful scan or, if they moved too much, it wouldn't work. I know that you could swipe the card from guards (just like swiping a key) but I think that there was an option to "scan" the card remotely, create a duplicate & use a "skeleton-key" card with the duplicate info to bypass that type of lock. Again, I did some research into real-world card theft and it also made me not sleep well at night.

** Something that I remember ditching but maybe you guys want it: I remember thinking that one of the electronic ways would be by numeric pad. You could

spend extra for lenses that could tell you which keys had been pressed and, based upon how well the lenses were, the heat would leave the numbers one at a

time, giving you the combination. I can't remember exactly why I ditched it but it may have had to do with the # of electronic lock types that I already had and with the additional complexity of infrared viewing and whatnot. It just seemed like a lot of extra work for not a lot of payoff.

** I know that I toyed with "voice activation" locks; I can't remember much about it. I know that I liked it but that I already had a lot of lock types and

one more might have been too many. The plan was to follow a guy around and record what he said before a "synth program" could digest enough syllables to

replicate, to some degree, the code phrase that the guy used as a lock. The less syllables, the worse the result and less chance of success.

* I toyed with two types of invisibility: Visible and heat. I remember wanting them both but preparing to scrap the "heat" one as that may be too complex.

In short, some guards (in later levels for plot reasons) would start being equipped with infrared and what-have-you scanners that would detect heat or

infrared as opposed to visible light, so you had to compensate for that.

* I remember really liking the stun gun from Deus Ex and it's "stun them anywhere" ability. However, using it was a last resort and some guards (especially

in later levels) are protected from it with special armor.

* For a noise distraction, I toyed with "laser sound" (as that was an emerging thing at the time) which was laser-directed sound that you could "bounce" off of walls. I also remember just having little bits of debris all around the level that you could use to throw and distract. I can't remember which one won out but I remember liking the "debris" one as a low-tech approach in an otherwise high-tech game.

* I remember wanting enemies to be momentarily shocked if you suddenly appeared before them. Even the most hardened guards would flinch for a moment before

reacting. Less-trained guards would be momentarily frightened, briefly running away. I remember ditching an effect where the most frightened guards would

leave a "liquid trail" as they ran away, figuring that it was too much work for too little reward. Maybe just have a small puddle where they initially

stood?

* Water was handled that the "suit" had a limited amount of water-proofing and could only be in the water for so long before there was damage; That was the

"breath" equivalent. A pre-game option was completely water-proofing you but that came with an undetermined penalty in ability. I remember that, upon

exiting the water, you needed to hold still so that you could dry out so as to avoid unintentional water damage. Incidental water amounts (ankle-deep water) doesn't count as water and you were fine.

* For rope arrows, I'm a little embarrassed to write that I thought up of "climbing gloves" before "Thief 3" did. Again, research into futuristic but

feasible technologies. I remember reading about artificial gecko-like hands and thought about using that and being able to turn them on and off. Different

surfaces required different power levels and some surfaces were unclimbable (for gameplay purposes, obviously).

** I remember considering a "silly string" meets "nanotube"-type type of 'rope arrow' that shot perfectly straight, stuck to any surface, leveled itself

against gravity upon you not touching the floor anymore but dissolving instantly that it becomes detached to it's "gun." My notes indicate that I thought

that this not only might be too complex but also a bit redundant with the climbing gloves.

** I had a few notes that pondered how I could explain that you couldn't use it to grab anything (or people). This conundrum was probably one of the reasons why I didn't bother with a "rope arrow".

* I toyed with having a drone that you could use, likely a flying drone. There aren't a lot of notes about it and I probably ditched it from a lot of later

drafts because of the complexity.

* Concerning levels, that was dependent upon the ever-fluctuating story. I remember that the structure was very linear - Essentially, Thief 1/2, no

branching. The initial levels was a lot of urban exploration of the lower depths of the city. I wanted a lot of different environments and, as you went

lower into the depths, you began to see modern changes.

* Concerning the story itself, it all takes place in a mega-city. Kids go on field trips to the top of skyscrapers just to see the sky, never mind the

surrounding forest. The whole mega-city is encompassed under a dome (yes, this was written long before "Under the Dome" became popular as a TV series) to

protect against the harmful environment outside. The society has turned into a semi-totalitarianistic state, with people becoming thrilled over the littlest things that we take for granted today: "Hey, Bob, I heard that you just got your class 4 civilian license!" "That's right, Frank. Now I can own property and vote in city-wide elections. Hey... When are you going to get yours?" The player has a few independent missions which are secretly disguised as a tutorial, then the plot begins. An underground gang called "Dedheds" has consolidated control of the underground but their actions are hardly thug-like despite their appearances, involving complicated hacks and sophisticated terrorist attacks. Your missions will involve you becoming acquainted with them, infiltrating them and learning that there's far more to them than first glance. In fact, the Dedheds are just a cover for a bunch of eco-activists who predict (and rightly so), that all of the citizens are trapped in the mega-city. Your missions secretly revolve (without you knowing about it) around you dismantling the "Dedheds" organization to make it look as though they are dissolving so that the eco-activitist leadership that controlled the Dedheds can escape from them, throw "the authorities" off their track and give them a chance to become invisible enough to explore outside of the mega-city without anyone knowing. You unwittingly play along with this until the very end, when a power greater than the known city (and unknown to virtually anyone else) police intervene and trap the eco-activitists outside on purpose (exiling them &, realistically, killing them). The unknown organization acknowledge that they know you, they know ABOUT you and, if you're interested, they'll tell you their side of the story... At a time and place of their own choosing. Two other people witness this - A scientist & a politician. At the very end, the scientist forms what will become the spiritual successor of the "Mechanists" & the politician will form the successor of "The Hammerites." The eco-activists are assumed to be undergoing subtle mutations now that they are exposed to the outside world and they become the "Pagans." The technologically-advanced, unknown force is, by default, some sort of "Keepers."

* I never really invested in a sequel story (I only build sandcastles, not sand-skyscrapers) but, again, from what I remember, one area of interest was the

robot ultimately taking sides with any of the four for the ultimate direction of the city (I remember not wanting to explore the unknown force origins or

natural environments - save for a very small interior city park - in the initial story to leave room for a possible sequel).

Anyway, that's it. Enjoy. If you want more story, I can generate that.