Nightdive's Thief remaster unearths a 'very very out of date version control repository' with 'the wildest things to say about the code'

Nightdive Studios' remaster of the classic stealth game Thief: The Dark Project has unearthed a highly outdated version control repository for the game's Dark Engine. Software engineer Josh Dowell discovered numerous "evil comments" from Looking Glass and Irrational Games programmers, revealing the rushed and 'hacky' nature of its development, with notes like 'Giant hack! Never replicate this! We must fix this before '98!' and 'E3 hack! We must delete this after E3!'—some of which persisted into Thief 2. The project offers new insights into the game's creation, highlighting how the Dark Engine, despite its chaotic origins, achieved cutting-edge audio, AI, and lighting. Surprisingly, Dowell also revealed that Thief's rendering technology is largely a clone of Quake's, sharing identical lighting mechanisms, offering a new perspective on this influential game's technical foundation.