Monday, August 30, 2004, 5:55pm
Monday, August 30, 2004, 5:55pm
To my relief, the 6:05pm Worcester Express has been announced and so my earlier gamble to climb aboard has been genuinely rewarded with a single seat at the front of the last car – 25 miles from now the carriage closest to the Ashland train station exit. I almost had a seat at the very back of the train, but came up short to a woman willing to abandon all modesty in favor of victory in her self-imposed game of musical chairs.
Normally, whoever first arrives to a seat walking at a regular pace gains the right to sit, and it is very unusual for a race of any sort to develop. In a tie, one person usually yields a bit, and that is the end of it. Rather than mythical Bostonian courtesy, the lack of altercation arises from how these seats are hardly worth any sort of serious conflict. I would have gladly yielded as a routine gesture, but had no such opportunity. Instead the woman dove in front of me, plunked herself into the seat like a roosting hen, then stared blankly through the dinginess of her newly possessed window as though she’d been sitting in this nest all afternoon.
Underway now I see rain drips streaking my own window. With closer inspection, the dinginess seems to have formed in a clear exterior plastic coating that has deteriorated with time. This coating is there to darken the windows, and I also suspect it may act as an added layer of material to strengthen the glass against shattering in the event of a thrown rock or other object. Clearly from the squeegee marks I see these trains are cleaned very often. So the windows are not this way for lack of effort and care.
A younger woman in the seat ahead of me giggles while she snaps photos with a small digital camera, even after the electrical power dies in the car, reducing lighting to several emergency lamps overhead augmented with ambient illumination from the windows.
“Good damnit!” – says a younger man sitting along the aisle holding an open book.
The woman ahead continues to snap her pictures in the near darkness. The train rolls along with all other passengers nonplused. The dim lighting is likely a minor convenience for most of us, if noticed at all. According to the conductors, the blackout stems from an overloaded circuit breaker that can be reset by the engineer. In a few minutes the lights are back along with the drone of fan noise that partially masks the sounds of comfortable conversation. If the fans were to blow cold air, the sound would be welcome. But at least the air is fresh, even if too hot.
The camerawoman gives a big smooch to her boyfriend for all to contemplate who might care. Then ‘John’ leaves – and how do we know his name? I suppose “John… I love you!” could be a clue. In a moment John vanishes into the eternal gloom of Back Bay Station. The fans drone on.
Designing Thief missions requires a software tool named DromEd. I’ve never had a good explanation for the name, but most Thief designers commonly see the ‘D’ as standing for ‘dark’ because the underlying software runs the game using the Dark Engine. DromEd assembles missions using elements created by tools such as Photoshop, True Space, Maya, 3D Studio Max, and sound editing tools like Sound Forge or Cool Edit. Some designers make their own introductory cut scene moves, which is another Universe of skills. In addition to commercial software, custom tools have been written, many by my friend, Randy ‘Shadowspawn’ Sybel, and with these programs we muck with character motions and can change the basic sizes of complex objects. After nearly five years I still know far less about this than there is to know, and the only solution to getting anything done is to learn what needs be known when I need to know it. Otherwise I’d spend all of my time studying these tools without ever building anything.
If I had I known that I would spend 5,000 hours building my campaign, I never would have started. But now with perhaps 500 hours left, it’s too late to give up. Even though Thief 3 is already for sale, players are still playing FMs for Thief 2, and this is likely to continue for a while.
At Wellesley Farms our outbound express train streaks past a vintage station house beneath a sky painted properly blue – as defined by the master game engine of the Universe. We’ve left the coastal rain showers in our wake yet water still drains and drips down and across my window from some higher up reservoir. This cabin interior is well above 80 degrees and the air hardly moves. Perhaps the clear air outdoors is as cool as it looks. Otherwise it may be a sweaty walk home from Ashland Station.
There are two versions of Alisha in my design – the ‘alive’ model and the ghostly version. Perhaps Alisha should not have visited those religious Hammerites. Although they are mostly craftsmen and workers, some of these ‘Hammers’ have spell-casting powers, and at least one seems to have an ability to create fantastic devices well ahead of the apparent technology of the day – or more likely, find them somewhere and claim them as his own.
At the end of Thief 1 we see Garrett with one of these devices – his new mechanical eye in place of the one lost while saving the world. I begin my series with Garrett in no hurry for this new device. The scene is early winter, a few months after his encounter with the evil Trickster.
In frustration, Alisha has gone to Hammers herself to retrieve Garrett’s mechanical eye on his behalf, and somehow gotten herself killed for her trouble. The eye has gone missing and judging from recent threatening letters it is a good bet to find it somewhere upon the mountaintop of Solustice Industries. Why would Master Solustice want the eye? – First of all to study it, I suppose, but mainly as bait to attract the attention of Garrett and to bring about his reluctant visit upon that hill.
As we depart Framingham Station the sky is still mostly clear, and with so few sticky bodies left aboard, the air conditioning is gaining a grip on the situation. Early twilight also approaches, and with this, the last glimmering hope of bright summer evenings. Public school begins in Ashland tomorrow and the gloom of my inner child is palpable.
