Fanmade Thief 2 multiplayer released in beta form

by Mike Schramm on Nov 17th 2010 11:00PM

Who needs a new version of Thief when you can just hack some multiplayer into the old one? A group of modders has painstakingly hacked the ten-year-old Thief 2 into a multiplayer game, and the beta is now available for download and testing. While it will supposedly run, it's not actually playable by laymen quite yet. You'll need a fair amount of networking code knowledge to actually get it working in any sensible way, and even then it will apparently crash and burn.

But feel free to geek out at what's been done here -- these guys have gone back through, found unused code in the still closed-off game client, and then rebuilt and rewritten it to try and get it working on modern computers. And this was a game that was never actually designed for multiplayer! What they've done is like taking an old Model T and making it race the Indy 500. Sure, it won't actually win, but the fact it showed up running on four wheels is pretty amazing anyway.

Via: Reddit
Source: Thief 2 multiplayer

Tags: eidos, hackers, hacks, mod, pc, thief-2, thief-2-multiplayer

Reader Comments (10)

Way to rip off Assassin's Creed. God.
/sarcasm

I take it no one has ever heard of Thievery? It was an Unreal Tournament mod (well, TC) that was, in essence, multi-player Thief. It was tons of fun... six years ago!

Oh well.

The Thief series of games are way underrated. Ahh the memories of building my first computer in '99 & installing this & enjoying it immensely.

*digs out his copy of Thief 3 & plays through it again*

Thief runs off the Unreal engine, if I remember correctly. Or was it the Dark engine?

The Unreal engine obviously has multiplayer code in it. It would be a matter of finding it, and using it and integrating it correctly with the game.

The same thing was done for System Shock 2. People added in multiplayer, and even co-op to the original game.

This is another example of why pc gaming rocks. People adding functionality even the original designers didn't.

@Drakkenfyre
Both Thief and SS2 use the Dark Engine. SS2 actually had some crappy co-op in the retail release (or soon after in a patch). The modders made it usable.

Thief 2 also has some badass fanmade levels.