Thief: The Dark Project is one of my favourite games of all time, so naturally I am very excited for Nightdive Studios’ upcoming remaster. But it’s worth remembering that the community has done an excellent job supporting the game up until this point. Unofficial patches like NewDark have ensured that Looking Glass’ landmark stealth game can run in high resolutions and with support for widescreen and multi-monitor functionalities for years.
And if you thought an official remaster might put such efforts to an end, think again. Not to be outdone by Nightdive, NewDark’s creator just released a new version of the overhaul which adds a radical new feature to Thief—dynamic shadows.
Yep, NewDark 1.29 introduces hardware transform & lighting to the Dark Engine, opening the door to GPU-driven effects in Thief’s gothic steampunk world. Chief among these is shadows that are dynamically cast by moving objects—guards, doors, even master thief Garrett himself.
The update’s effects were shown off in a YouTube video by Thief fan Bentraxx. What’s particularly interesting about the dynamic shadows is not simply how they look, but the mechanical implications they have. For example, opening a door between a dark corridor and a well-lit room will flood the former with light, while opened doors create shadows behind them, meaning Garrett can now use doors to create hiding spaces.
At the same time, shadows can be a hindrance to Garrett too. According to Bentraxx, NPCs now have awareness of Garrett’s shadow, meaning they might spot him skulking round a corner if he happens to be backlit. In the comments of his video, Bentraxx further notes that Garrett’s shadow only appears humanoid in Thief 2. In The Dark Project, it is “a simple box shape”, due to the fact that Garrett’s character model in the first game is a six-foot tall, poo-coloured cuboid.
Alongside dynamic shadows, Newdark 1.29 also adds dynamic reflections, normal mapping and parallax occlusion mapping, options for SSAO, volumetric light and fog, underwater effects, and various post-processing effects light luminance adaptation and light streaks. As noted by several replies to Bentraxx’s video, these features bring Thief much closer in line to the lighting seen in Deadly shadows and the Doom 3 total conversion The Dark Mod.
The download link for NewDark 1.29 is available via the TTLG forums, though for some reason, it’s currently only available for premium members of storage.to. And although this is all impressive, I should make it clear that none of it makes Nightdive’s remaster redundant.
Nightdive’s overhauls focus on preserving the original without introducing radical changes, adding things like improved models and animations, but nothing that would fundamentally alter how the game plays (which NewDark’s dynamic lighting does). Nightdive also recently revealed that the remaster will bring a new campaign called The Tarnished Mirror, which is undoubtedly what I am most excited about. Nightdive hasn’t said anything further on the new campaign yet, but no doubt we’ll find out more in the coming weeks and months.
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