Original sentence: Development of the project took 2.5 years with a budget of $3 million.During levels, the player can find notes and parchments, and overhear conversations that expand on the setting; because of this, it has been noted that the revelation of Thief'''s setting is proportionately tied to the player's seeking of it.However, Thief's graphics received a mixed reaction
Edited sentence: " He noted that this was cemented by two decisions made around seven months before the game shipped: the game's was renaming to Thief: The Dark Project, rather than the tentative title "The Dark Project", and the preemptive removal of multiplayer support."After a hair-raising twelve-week stretch of grueling hours, the AI was ready for real testing," Leonard said.After several fruitless months of work, he decided that an entirely new system would need to be written.Because of this, work on the new AI system did not begin until March 1998.By the beginning of summer 1998, the project was in trouble and Eidos was increasingly skeptical.During levels, the player can find notes and parchments, and overhear conversations that expand on the setting; because of this, it has been noted that the revelation of Thiefs setting is proportionately tied to the player's seeking of it.He noted that if he had begun working on the new system sooner, it could have been ready three to five months earlier.However, Thiefs graphics received a mixed reaction.Leonard said, "We focused in on creating a single-player, linear, mission-based game centered exclusively around stealth, with a player toolset that fit within the constraints of an extension of the Quake user interface.Leonard took over his position, and described the code as "extremely brittle", but believed that it could be salvaged.The latter was done to focus as much time as possible on honing the single-player experience.The original plan for Thief included many features that were later discarded, such as a more complex inventory interface and branching mission structures.Thief'''s numerous simulation and AI systems were not working together properly, which resulted in a game that "could not be called 'fun'," according to Tom Leonard.This was largely due to the game's AI system, which was designed by a programmer who left six months after beginning work on it.While he had created the foundation for the system by November 1997, work was halted because the team needed to design a series of demos to quell "outside concerns that the team lacked a sound vision of the game"