User Interface for my Thief 2 Walkthrough

Version 2.0 ©Alex Fung, June 2020.
Up-to-date version available at my Games page.

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Readers of my other game guides will notice that the interface used in the Thief 2 Walkthrough is a little different. Several new technologies are used and and new ideas are implemented. Notice that I'm talking here about the UI of the walkthrough, not the UI of this page.

The Walkthrough

Section Heading

Section and Excursion heading basically works like my earlier guides. You would notice that, unlike this page, the Section headings in the walkthroughs will grow a bit wider when the mouse is over them. Just another fancy effect. Excursion do not use this feature because if they get wider, the whole paragraph will reflow to adjust and is very disturbing.

The dynamics of the headings is same as before. Click the heading and the details appear, click it again and they disappear. You can also double-click the details to make them disappear (so you do not need to scroll back all the way to the heading to close it).

In T2 guide, you can interact with the headings. Right click on them and a popup menu appears. More about this in the popup menu section below.

Difficulty Setting and other Options

At the beginning of the walkthrough, you can often choose the game difficulty, patch level (v1.07 vs v1.18), playing style (Cleaning vs Ghosting) together with other options. This is because these choices often changes the cumulative values (loot, picks, etc) and the path sequence you should follow. Choose what you are doing in the game, and the walkthrough will adjust itself.

At times, you also need to enter other things. For example, in , you need to type in the amount of loot you found in the previous mission . It affects your loot count in the current mission.

Cumulative Totals

My Thief 1 walkthrough also uses the same presentation to show the cumulative {Gold; Gems; Goods}. The cumulation depends on the difficulty level, game version and playing style. First, because some objects do not appear in all difficulty levels or game versions. At times, you have have forks to jump to alternative paths. More important, on some cases you need to jump back and forth in the walkthrough depending on difficulty level, game version and playing style. Therefore the cumulation is not just done sequentially from top of page to bottom of page. Make the select the correct options at the top and the numbers will be automagically cumulated.

Like Thief 1, you have a summary line near the end to show you the total values.

In T2 guide, you can interact with the cumulative elements. Right click on them and a popup menu appears. More about this in the popup menu section below.

Tool Tips

Additional information is often available as tool tips. Move the mouse on the those words with bold brown styles to see the tips (no, nothing happens when you mouse over the words of this line -- none of the features are enabled on this page). These words are called the tip base. Move the mouse over them, and the tip body will appear.

Like in Thief 1, the tip body disappears when your cursor moves away. To make it sticky, click on the bold brown tip base. The tip will stay visible even if you move the move away, or select the text in the tips. Click the tip base again to make it disappear.

When you are using a touch device, you would find that it is not easy to get rid of a sticky tip. When clicking the tip base does not work (such as the tip body is covering the tip base), you can doubleclick the tip body. This also closes a sticky tip.

Unfortunately, doubleclick does not work for IE. When IE is running on a touch device, doubleclick zooms the window. In those cases, there is still another method. Press the Escape key also gets rid of a sticky tip.

Hidden information

Some types of information are hidden in the walkthrough. They may be hidden to make the main text more readable, or to give you a chance to think or conduct experiments before reading the details.

Annotated transcripts of conversations are usually presented as hidden information. One or more keywords in the walkthrough will be marked up in pink over grey (like this). When your mouse point is over these keywords, it turns into a hand icon and the text turns red over black (like this). You can click the keywords to show or hide the transcript.

The location of some well-hidden loots of powerups also uses this presentation. You have given hints to look for them yourselves. You can click on the keywords (again, formated in pink over grey) to reveal the answer.

Jumping

As in Thief 1, you are often suggested to jump to a particular locations via the links supplied. All external links opens a new browser, so you won’t lose what you are reading. Internal links will scroll you to the jump target. The target section and its parents will be expanded automatically, so they won’t stay hidden/collapsed.

To draw your attention to where you are jumping to, the jump target will change color for a second or so. The script will also try to scroll the target to the upper half of the browser window.

Whenever you follows a jump, the return address is saved. You can use the “Go Back” action in the Popup Menu to return to where you were.

Location names

Now, location names have their own colors. You cannot interact with them. They are colored just to highlight that they are proper names and will be referred to again.

Some of the location names happen to be jump targets. Some location names are links that jump back where you are first introducted to that location. You will notice they are links because they are underlined (and highlighting when you place the cursor over them).

Power ups

Now in Thief 2, I always try to distinguish beween arrows in crystals. In Thief 1, I always call them arrows. In Thief 2, the description is more specific and you will see things like “a crystal of 3 water arrows”.

Reference to other missions

Frequently, walkthrough of one mission will refer to another mission. If the walkthrough of the mission referred to is already available, it is a real hyperlink, like . The mouse cursor becomes a hand, and clicking the links goes to that mission. If the walkthrough is not yet written (such as ), they are just text in italics and nothing will happen if you click them.

Links can refer to anchors inside other missions, or even Thief 1 missions. It is used when the missions cross reference each other.

Popup Menus

Overview

There are two ways to invoke popup menus (also known as context menus). Both involve clicking the right mouse button.

First, Context Specific Popup Menus are available over the following items:

  • section headings
  • excursion headings
  • loots
  • picks
  • secrets
  • tooltips
With the mouse cursor over these items, click the right mouse button to invoke the Popup Menu. A list of commands relevant to that type of item will appear.

Besides Context Specific Popup Menus, there is also a General Popup Menu. It will appear when you right click anything inside the walkthrough, other than the items listed above. A list of commands that is not specific to any item will apepar.

In either case, click a command in the context menu to execute. One of the most important use of the popup menus is to access the Table of Contents, which appear in both the Context Specific and General Popup Menus. It is described in the next section.

General commands

The following commands are available to all items (ie all Context Specific Menus):

  • Go to my parent
    Scrolls to the heading of the block containing the current object.
  • Scroll me to the top
    Scrolls the current object to the top of the browser window.
  • Show TOC
    Opens the TOC browser window to show the Table of Contents (if not already opened). The TOC has several different pages, this commands shows the hierarchical table. The TOC will scroll to place the entry for the current object on top, and change its color temporarily to draw your attention.
  • Go Back
    When you perform a jump, the return address is saved on a stack. This command brings you back to where you were.

Section Headings

The following commands are available to structure headings:

  • Open me & close prev
    Opens this section, and closes all previous sections (under the same parent). This the normal thing you would do when proceeding from one section to the next.
  • Close all others
    Opens this section, and closes all other sections under my same. Useful when you have already opened lots of sections.

Loots, Picks and Secrets

The commands are common to loots, picks and secrets:

  • Go to next loot/pick/secret
    Jumps to the next loot item and open the containing section.
    To avoid unnecessary delays, the command is not greyed out even if it is already the last loot/pick/secret. When you try to jump from the last item, it will just say that there is no more loot to jump to.
  • Go to prev loot/pick/secret
    This one jumps to the previous item. Similarly, the command is not greyed out even if it is already the first item.
  • Show loot/pick/secret table
    Opens the TOC browser window to show the Table of Contents (if not already opened). This commands shows the table of loot, pick or secret depending on the type of item on which you are operating.

Tooltips

When the tooltip is a book or conversation:

  • Show book/conversation table
    Opens the TOC browser window to show the Table of Contents (if not already opened). This commands shows the table of book or conversation depending on the type of item on which you are operating.

Table of Contents

TOC Window

Table of Contents (TOC) is shown on a separate browser window. You open it using popup menus described in the previous section.

When the TOC window is open, and you use the popup window to open it again, it will switch to the required page instead of creating yet another TOC window. Just like when you open the TOC the first time, the selected item will scroll to the top and flash for a second.

On the top left corner TOC window, a button allows you to switch between six different pages:

  • hierarchical TOC
  • loots table
  • picks table
  • secrets table
  • books table
  • conversations table

The content of the TOC mirrors the status of the walkthrough. If you change the Difficulty Level or Game Version, the TOC will be updated automatically.

Next to the page button is a font size button. You can choose a font size suitable for your screen. I find values from 60% to 90% are usually good.

Hierarchical TOC

When displaying hierarchical TOC, you have five extra buttons:

  • Loots
  • Picks
  • Secrets
  • Books
  • Conversations

They control what details to show on the hierarchical TOC. Initially, they are set to display Loots and Picks but not the rest.

Listed on the rest of the window are all the sections and excursions. Click on an entry and the walkthrough window will scroll to that item and flash it. If enabled, the details (loots, etc) are listed in the section they appear. Click on the item and the walkthrough window scrolls likewise.

Loots Table

The Loots Table shows all loots in the sequence you find them (not necessarily in physical sequence, for you may need to jump backward and forward in the walkthrough, depending on difficulty settings). Each loot item has a sequence number. Items not relevant to your existing difficulty level or game version are not numbered.

After the description, the next column shows the section where the loot is described in the walkthrough. If you click on the loot description, you jump to the loot (which will flash); if you click the section name, you jump to the start of the section (whose title will flash).

The remaining columns shows the loot value, in {Gold; Gems; Goods} and as a total. There is a leading multiplier if mutliple loot items are stacked together. Note however the total is the loot value for a single occurence, before applying the multiplier.

Picks Table

Similar to the Loots Table, the Picks Table shows all picks in the sequence you find them. Each pick has a sequence number. Also like loots, you will notice that some picks do not have a number, and some appear more than once.

After the description, the next column shows the section where the pick is described in the walkthrough. If you click on the pick description, you jump to the pick; if you click the section name, you jump to the start of the section.

Secrets Table

It is a list of the secrets of the mission. Click the description to jump to the secret in the walkthrough.

Books Table

It is a list of the books in the mission. Click a description to jump to the book in the walkthrough.

Conversations Table

It is a list of the conversations in the mission. Click a description to jump to the transcript in the walkthrough.

Skill Guide

The Skill Guide is a small guide on many skills. Most of the combat methods in the skill guide are findings of Odyseeos. At times, the walkthrough mentions techniques and behaviours that are not specific to a mission. Clicking on the underlined words in the walkthrough brings up a new window to explain them in some details.

In the Skill Guide, there is a menu button that allows you to navigate among the skills.


Look at new technologies used to implement the user interface described here.

Back to the Complete-loot Walkthrough for Thief 2

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