I've played through to the Old Quarter and am noticing a distinct lack of zombies in the level. I've only seen one, right at the start, but the rest have gone AWOL.

I noticed some weird zombie AI in the Bonehoard mission. I was trying to bunch them all together for some effective crowd control, when they all started heading in another direction and ignoring me completely. They ended up circling around the area, and just wandering into areas I've never seen zombies go before. Some seemed unaffected and chased me, but most just shambled through the area and acted like I wasn't even there. I'm guessing the zombies in the Old Quarter mission are doing the same.

Has anyone else come across this issue, and does anyone know a solution?

zombie AI is a bit.. rotten at the moment. no known fix.

Zombie AI still works with TGfix 1.10 using the older engine? Is it only broken in the NewDark?

if I remember correctly, zombies were always wonky, even under the old engine. with NewDark, they are just wonky in a different way.

in my dictionary, "broken" means not working at all, and significantly changing the way the game plays (like the broken Maw portal). this is not the case, as the zombies still try to kill you. if you are referring to the fact that they lose track of you easily, zombies were alway like that if memory serves.

// just tried herding 9 zombies, led them to the firetrap and watched the carnage just like million times before, no issues whatsoever.

How are they supposed to react?

Last time I played through Bonehorde and Old Quarter levels. They would wake up if I got to close to a sleeper... Or chase me around if they were walkers...

I could get into shadows to lose them. That seems to be how they are supposed to 'function'.

yeah. and I did not see anything out of ordinary when I ran around Bonehoard. they wake up, chase you, try to kill you, and get exploded by the fire trap as always.

Zombies were always pretty tame, agreed. I'm not referring to their questionable AI in the vanilla game. What I'm referring to is a significant difference in behaviour when patched with NewDark.

I've played Thief Gold many many times - I'm an old school taffer - and I remember very intimately how zombies moved and reacted in vanilla Thief Gold. What I've never seen them do in pre-Dark games, is wander around in large groups after "activation" or "awakening" and move up and through the multi-tiered areas with no prompting on the player's part. What I'm saying is that they're clearly not reacting to a player presence. I can jump and move around in fully lighted areas, right in front of them, with no reaction. They just walk right past me. As a group. Like they're following some preordained path.

This has significantly affected gameplay, as the Old Quarter mission is missing zombies in key areas that used to contain them, making parts of the mission too easy and boring - even on Expert. Ditto for the Bonehoard - makes ghosting the level easy when the zombies have shuffled on to god knows where. I swear there must be zombie party in some forgotten part of the level :p

If I get time, I'll try and make a video and post on YouTube or something to demonstrate what I mean.

I've heard of people having problems where they could stand right next to a zombie, in broadlight, and the zombie would ignore them when first version of NewDark as released.

I thought that was fixed in later versions of NewDark?

I think there were some other pathing and scripting issues (characters not reacting to their daily routines, certain conversations not starting etc) and surface sound issues (enemies ultra sensitive to most noises even on 'quieter' surfaces) early on that were fixed as well in later version sof NewDark. Sure, isn't it in Thief II? Great idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEbZIYyoTZw

Speaking of zombies getting to places that they shouldn't... Apparently there is a flying zombie glitch in the original game.

I've never personally seen it myself.

yeah, that one is fixed. actually, there has been a complaint somewhere "can't make zombies fly in NewDark". impossible to make everybody happy, I guess.

LOL, personally I don't have much of a problem with bugs being fixed! I liked how some of the treasures that were impossible to get due to later official patches blocking access to them were made re-accessible... or the fog fix to Life of the Party, that makes the level atmospheric as it was supposed to be.

or fixes that bring in broken/missing conversation scripting that add to the story/atmosphere as long as they don't interfere with story continuity (understandably certain dialogue was cut on purpose and may refer to alternative puzzles that were cut, especially considering changes between Thief and ThiefG)...

Obviously a fix to disappearing elevators in the Mages level is good thing as well!

I personally would like to see a mod that would allow the ability to pick up items like could be done in original thief, in thief 2 (has this been done?). Sure its not required for gameplay, but it was fun to be able to go about stacking things in the original thief, to explore into place you aren't supposed to get to!

I may be betraying my ignorance here, but I totally thought you could do that in Thief 2 also (the original version, not Tfix which I haven't tried yet). Is that not the case?

In thief 2, most items were locked down, IIRC. You can bump into them, but you couldn't pick them up. This was mostly larger stackable objects. You could still pick up smaller items to throw as distractions, and obviously move bodies.

Many items such as pots and pans were able to be picked up in Thief 1, but locked in place in thief 2. People would use all these objects stacking them to get to weird places in the original.