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Ishtvan

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Everything posted by Ishtvan

  1. I could see Halberds being used for general 'regulating' duties around the city. I thought they were primarily an anti-cavalry weapon, but I was reading that they could also be used nonlethally to trip people or knock them down, which makes sense for a 'riot police' force. And lets face it, a line of guards with halberds lowered at you is a pretty good way to stop rioting. In 17th century America, they were also carried by sergeants as a sign of rank and to make large signalling motions on the field of battle. [ref: http://www.apva.org/ngex/c9halb.html ] For the elite city watch who are like 'riot police,' (if we're still making that distinction... can't keep track anymore! ), a halberd + backup shortsword would make a lot of sense. For manor guards/elite mercenaries that are protecting indoor areas, I would think they'd want to take less heavy weapons that they could readily use in close quarters, and could easily run with. I guess no one else likes the rapier + dagger idea. They could have a buckler on the dagger-arm too. Or one of those crazy bucklers with spikes to inflict damage.
  2. (disclaimer: this is just an opinion, and I know I'm not an artist or anything, but hope it's still okay to post here ) When I hear elite guard, I think of a mercenary who's survived his share of battles. He knows the ins and outs of security, possibly having operated on both sides of the law in the past. An elite guard doesn't care who he serves, as long as the money's good. He won't take pride in wearing some noble's insignia, or expensively crafted armor. He's not there to be a showpiece and impress the lord's friends. He a professional, there to make sure that anyone who breaks in doesn't make it back out. His equipment and armor is chosen for efficiency. He takes only what he needs to find those who do not wish to be found, and dispose of them. Anything that severely impedes movement is bad, since he knows he may have to chase after some agile intruder, or do some sneaking himself to catch a thief. For the armor, I think of something relatively light all around, like leather or at most a chain mail shirt, with a plain but functional breastplate and back plate. Some sort of greaves and shin armor, but nothing too heavy. On the arms, maybe some vambraces on the forearms, but I wouldn't think any guantlets. He relies on his weapon guard to protect his hands in a fight, guantlets would just slow him down. He wants his hands free for rapid actions, like taking out that crossbow, throwing flares (maybe he could have a bunch of flares at his belt), etc. For footware, some standard issue hard leather boots, possibly cloth wrapped to reduce sound. He's not too worried about getting hit in the foot during combat with thieves. He would rather keep mobility and stealth as an option. Weapons: I like the no guantlets but handguards on the weapons idea. I could see him fighting with two weapons, a rapier and a dagger (both with bell guards). He knows he may have to fight a thief in a close in space where his longer weapon would get tangled up, and fighting with a weapon in each hand will also make him all the more deadly in combat. A rapier is a tad on the light side, but it can be used with one hand, and is enough to punch thru the leather armor most thieves wear. Other equipment: Crossbow, flares (?), some kind of whistle/horn to alert others. All placed about his body for easy access.
  3. Wow. Words cannot express how kickass that is. [edit - If you want more constructive criticism than that, the 2nd wrapping of the chain on the right arm (its left) looks kind've like it's hanging in midair rather than wrapping closely around the skeletal arm. Don't know if that's intentional or not. Initial impression though is still just wow.] [re-edit: Now that I look at it again, I see that's not the chain but a piece of cloth from the sleeve sticking out that I thought was chain. No problem then. ]
  4. That was fast... oh well, guess we'll just have to wait for someone to offer to host the images.
  5. From Thief 3: Here's Garrett doing some never before seen unarmed combat techniques. Trying a different image host, lets see how long before the dreaded "red X" appears! Sorry these are huge, I don't know how to resize images (<- HTML challenged) Monkey Waits for Fruit! Awakening the Crane! White Snake Hides Tiger Claw! How it was done: Don't remember exact details as it was a long time ago, but in the Sunken Citadel, assume you have wallclimbing gloves, there was a low lying edge in the "egg room" that would trigger the Wallclimbing animations, even though most of Garret's body was clearly above the ledge. There was something about jumping towards it at an angle so Garrett would stick on rather than mantle.
  6. I have a twisted sense of humor, but I thought these webcomics were hillarious, if anyone hasn't seen them yet: http://cheston.com/pbf/archive.html [edit - A few of these potentially NWS (not work safe) ]
  7. Awesome, thanks! I see the project management board, dev central and code. Am I supposed to see project management?
  8. @Domarius: No problem, I probably spammed you guys a bit excessively with all the comms. I just wanted to make sure one of the methods reached you. If you want to discuss it here that's cool, I just thought maybe sending emails back and forth cc'd to everyone would leave some space in this thread for other people with suggestions. Maybe we could just start a separate 'sound propagation suggestions' thread? @Sparhawk: I would love to help in some way with coding, but I don't always have a lot of time due to RL job issues. I tried to describe my level of experience in my email. I don't program for a living (except some minor stuff in Matlab), and don't have much experience in optimizing code so that it runs fast for games, but I have coded for academic classes and for fun in the past, some of it in C++. While my lack of free time probably means I couldn't be a full team member, I would be honored to act as a 'contributor,' if you have some fairly low priority task that I could help with. Thanks for your consideration.
  9. Sparhawk, I sent it to New Horizon (because he's in charge of PR, I figured he'd have people's emails ), so that he'd forward it to you and Domarius. If it hasn't reached you that way... [edit - found your email on ttlg forums. I will try sending it directly to there]
  10. Yeah, a per-area noisyness method seems like it would be the most efficient, CPU-wise. You might be able to take it a step further and 'fake' propagation of ambient sounds to AI with the noisyness values if they're dynamic. The most simple way I can think to do this is: Say you've got a room with a noisy thing in it (room A), connected by 2 doors to 2 hallways (rooms B and C). (I have no idea how large the typical 'area' is, large rooms could have more than one sound zone i guess). Suppose the noisy thing in room A is initially off, and the FM author writes a script to turn it on. When the noise starts in room A, the script changes the 'noisyness' variable in that room, then checks the state of the doors to B and C, and changes 'noisyness' var in rooms B and C based on whether the doors are open. Then you'd have to attach a script to the doors so that when opened or closed, they would check the state of noise A, and adjust noise B and C appropriately. Doors or doorways could have a variable for how well they transmit sound (maybe they already have that variable for use with sound propagation to the player) So to summarize, thru brute force scripting, each 'noise on or off' script would go thru and adjust the noise in adjacent rooms, checking the state of all the doors, and each door when opened or closed would have to change the 'noise' variable of adjacent rooms too, checking the state of 'noise generators' nearby. This could be done entirely by the FM author if each zone just has a dynamic 'noisyness' variable. I've got another idea for a more complicated system that could be built in to the mod itself, but I'd rather not make (another) huge forum post. Is there someone I can email or PM some psuedo code to? Domarius, are you working on the sound propagation system, and could I message you some psuedo code as a suggestion?
  11. Sorry to resurrect a relatively old thread, but I have a question about the 'impaired hearing' property of rooms that Springheel mentioned, and some possible suggestions. Is the hearing impairment in an environment going to be a 'dynamic' variable that can be turned off and on (or ramped up if it's an analog scale), by scripts during gameplay? Or is it a map property that's set upon loading and stays at that value? I think you could do some interesting things with that if it were dynamic, for example: If ambient sounds were scripted to start and stop periodically, the hearing impairment could be linked to that, so you could time your movement to when the generator turns on or something. In a social gathering environment with multiple rooms, one could have a script that counts noisy party guests entering/leaving the room and adjusts the hearing impairment based on that. So if you KO all the guests or they leave the room, guards will be able to hear you better. If a character makes a lot of noise while moving (like the combat bots), that could also increase hearing impairment. If you wanted to get really fancy, you could build it into the audio system, so that guards close enough to hear your noises (the 'signal') would do some sort of signal to noise test comparing your signal to the other non-suspicious sounds they can hear. That might eat too many CPU cycles though, since you'd have to propagate both the Thief's 'suspicious' sounds and all nearby ambient sounds to all nearby guards, then run the signal to noise test on each guard (some might be better at picking out noises than others.. combat bot vs drunk Benny ). Maybe that would be feasible if you're already propagating all the sounds to the guards, and the signal/noise test is fast CPU-wise. I'm guessing that right now (and in previous Thiefs), only suspicious sounds are propagated to the guards? Anyway, just some suggestions. Good luck with the Mod!
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