A Nice Game
of Chess

a fan mission for Thief II
by Kevin Daughtridge

English

Like all FMs, this one owes its existence both to the rich world that Looking Glass created and to the amazing fan community that has been expanding that world for 14 years. And though it may not come in a form visible to players, the work of those who have documented the Dark Engine, patched its arcane innards, created tutorials and tools, and answered countless questions is invaluable. Thank you!

I especially thank my beta testers, Tannar, Notesthes, fibanocci, CMD, itllrun10s, Eiji, and Darklady, for playing a tournament's worth of chess games to make this mission its best. Thanks also to everyone at TTLG for their support and feedback, and to Shalebridge Cradle for hosting the beta testing process.

Thanks to the translators who made this mission accessible to as many players as possible: to Azaran for French, to Notesthes for German, to Smallman_647 for Italian, and to Soldi for Russian. (The Spanish translation is my own. Material in the “Rules of Chess” book is from the chess Wikibook or Wikipedia article in each language.)

Thanks to the voice actors who brought the heralds to life, grounding the scenarios in the Thief world: Phantasmagore as the Hammerite herald; Michael Myers (saxmeister) as the Pagan and Mechanist heralds; and Rob Strain (Random Taffer) as the heralds for The City, Blackbrook, and the undead.

Some earlier fan works helped to inspire this FM:

• Kung Fu Gecko created a demo mission of Thief AIs making chess moves in 1999, though I have been unable to find a copy of it.
• In 2003, fallen pallando, The Shroud, and others discussed possible Thief chess sets on TTLG.
• SlyFoxx introduced chess to the fanon as a game played in-world in his fun little hotel FM The Auldale Chess Tournament in 2006. In deference to his claim on the filename chess.zip, I have used Latin word latrunculi (“pawns”) for mine.

Thanks to these community members whose resources I have used:

• My (very) custom script module is based in part on Public Scripts by Tom N. Harris (Telliamed) and includes lightly modified versions of his lg, DH2, and ScriptLib libraries, which derive in part from earlier work by GayleSaver and Totality. Both his and my script source code are available under the GNU General Public License. His code is available at his website; mine is included in this archive.
• Pagan book and various sky, terrain, metal, stone, and wood textures by Alun Bestor (Vigil).
• Wall candle, 10-foot fence, and Bafford-style throne by Robin Collier (R Soul).
• High-poly trees by Daraan (download).
• Resources from DromEd Deluxe (DEDX), edited by Rob Hicks, including:
  • Resources ported from Thief: The Dark Project/Thief Gold, including some modified by Daemonite.
  • Necromancer, succubus, and “dryad”/Viktoria by Rob Hicks, including voices by YcatX and AWang.
  • Revised version of the Trickster by Rob Hicks and Jeff Knez (Schwaa).
  • Red and blue crowns by Schwaa.
• Forest background, clouds, moon, and stars from t2skies by Jere Leppänen (Jermi).
• Chess table (of course!), inkwell, lantern, leaf plant, lectern, and improved spellcaster motions by Nameless Voice.
• Various improved models and textures from the Thief Enhancement Pack, organized by Nameless Voice and featuring the work of numerous modellers and texture artists (see its credits).
• Bloodstains and torches by Jason Otto (Ottoj55).
• Mountain background by Ville Paavolainen (Wille).
• Snowy gravestones by Russ Robbins (Yandros).
• Hammerite AIs (including robot), banners, and book from the Hammerite Mission Development Kit (HMDK), organized by Yandros, including resources ported from TDP/TG (see its credits).
• Motions and expanded motion database by Randy Sybel (Shadowspawn).
• Terrain textures from NTEX by thief_gotcha.
• Fire particle bitmaps and improved water by Renzo Thönen (Eshaktaar).
• Improved ladders from CoSaS Release Pack 3 by Yametha, organized by Daniel E. Todd (Digital Nightfall).
• Hammerite door from CoSaS Release Pack 11 by Redleaf, Saturnine, CRC, and Digital Nightfall.
• Gems from CoSaS Release Pack 21 by Eshaktaar and Digital Nightfall.

Materials newly introduced to Thief for this FM include:

• The chess engine (computer player) is Fruit 2.1 by Fabien Letouzey, available under the GPL. Its source code is also included in this archive. See the README file in that directory for more details.
• The “Rules of Chess” textbook contains text and images from the Wikibooks and Wikipedia articles on chess for various languages, available under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
• Traditional chess piece models derived from those used by glChess, available under the GPL.
• On-screen messages are displayed in DejaVu Serif.
• Knights Templar playing chess, ca. 1283. Illustration in Alfonso X's Castilian translation of Libro de los Juegos.
• Alfil, ca. 1482. Illustration in Publicius' Ars Oratoria.
• Johann Petrejus. “Perspektive von Bögen”, 1547. In Walther Hermann Ryff's Architectur.
• Starting setup in chess, 1916. Illustration in the Nordisk familjebok encyclopedia, volume 24.
• White flag waving, 2010. Vector graphic by Viktorvoigt, Dove et al. on Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-SA 3.0).
• Medieval Fanfare.aiff, 2006. Sound by tobyk on freesound.org (CC-BY 3.0).
• 20071104.forest.04.binaural.mp3, 2007. Sound by dobroide on freesound.org (CC-BY 3.0).
• Sandyrb Native Flute 01, 2009. Sound pack by sandyrb on freesound.org (CC-BY 3.0).
• hardcore creepy.mp3, 2010. Sound by Michael Carrier (HF2010) on freesound.org (CC Sampling+ 1.0).
• 02362 fanfare announce a.wav, 2011. Sound by Robinhood76 on freesound.org (CC-BY-NC 3.0).