Springheel

Just to correct a few things: Only guards with helmets become completely immune to blackjacking after being alerted (which happens if you hit them incorrectly with the blackjack, but not if you miss). There has been a plan to improve the blackjacking mechanic for half a decade. The team proposed replacing the current physics-based system with a simple distance and orientation check to remove the problem of getting too close or hitting things above the player's head. It's been on the bugtracker since 2016: https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=4289 and as far as I know has not been shot down by anyone. In fact, I had a vague recollection that someone was actually working it recently, though I could be wrong about that.

Dishonored has both lethal and non-lethal sneak attacks that only work if the enemy is not alerted. Assassin's Creed has stealth damage, Thief has it, tactical combat games like X-Com have it, most RPGs with stealth classes have it.

Nothing wrong with including it in the tips if it isn't already. But I would think the average player is likely to be familiar with the concept of "stealth damage" which is common in most games that have a stealth mechanic. You'd probably have a harder time coming up with a stealth game that doesn't include that concept.

The rules are quite consistent in the core mechanics. If mappers choose to change them, that could cause some confusion, but there's not much we can do about that. (For the record, the guards aren't "dodging" the headshot entirely...they're still being hit by the arrow, but the wound is non-lethal)

I'm not sure what claim you're making--that in real life, someone couldn't dodge at the last second to turn a potentially lethal hit into a nonlethal one, or that TDM AI should have some animation to indicate that this is happening. The first one is rather obviously incorrect, so I assume it's the second one. In which case...ok? It would be great if every tiny detail of reality were included, but we're talking about a game where AI spin around 360 without lifting their feet off the ground and where arrows disappear after hitting someone.

Yes, you are far more likely to hear and react to someone behind you if you are in a heightened state of alert. Thief itself had that mechanic, but off the top of my head I can think of 7 Days to Die, and Valheim, for sure, and they're not even primarily stealth games. Pretty sure Far Cry has stealth damage as well.

Damage to AI is increased if the AI is not alerted, and this includes headshots. I think that's a pretty common feature of games involving stealth. The justification is that an alerted AI will react quicker, perhaps dodging at the last minute to turn an otherwise lethal hit into a glancing blow.

Isn't that what helmets are for?

Yes, that tends to happen in a project that has spanned nearly two decades, with multiple amateur developers working casually in their spare time for free. Feel free to upload them. You won't be discouraging me from anything.

If the readables have no meaning or purpose and you want the player to stop reading them, then why bother making them readables at all?

Thought I'd share what I've been working on lately. While my mapping days are behind me, TDM still is still an inspiration for many of the fantasy illustrations I do in my free time. Here's a few that should look somewhat familiar:

Every voice set has these.

Some of our characters have 5-7k high poly versions, as I recall, though they use LOD. We have some prop models that are 10K plus, although they also have shadow meshes and LOD. Today I'm sure we could go higher, although mixing high and low poly assets is always bad for cohesion.

It's trivially easy to shoot charging guards in the face, so if you let arrows kill alerted AI, the player never has to worry about them. They can even take the arrow back and do the same thing on the next one. Originally I wanted to have AI shield their face with their arm when the player aimed in their direction, but that was too challenging at the time.

The reasons why TDM isn't on Steam have been listed multiple times. That wasn't on any of the lists.

I was assuming the screenshots--which combine highlighting plus dark outline--meant that it was a viable alternative. If it's not, that's going to confuse people.

The only problem (from a player perspective) with the original frob was that you couldn't see it in well-lit situations. The highlight+dark outline combo solves that problem. In dark settings, the highlight is easy to see. In light settings, the dark outline is easy to see. There should no longer be any cases where players can't tell whether something is frobbable or not. Whether players like it, aesthetically speaking, is up for debate (I think it looks pretty good from screenshots).

TDM is now older than Thief: The Dark Project was when TDM was first released.

The tracker may not have been closed, but I'm pretty sure grayman did implement a lowering of AI acuity during conversations (or rather, they ignore alerts of level 1 or 2).

I'm pretty sure we already do this.

Now THIS, on the other hand, does blatantly break the forum rules.

I'm pretty sure I went through the chest prefabs and changed them so only the lids are frobbable some years ago. The lid is the thing that is moving, after all...there's no reason for the entire chest to highlight and it's much easier to grab things when it is not competing for the frob trace. Having everything be picked up immediately on opening a chest wouldn't work for us, even if it was desirable, since chests often have multiple movable junk objects in them, and the player can only pick up one at a time.

That was certainly the case at one point, in order to allow frobbing of things on top of ledges or objects that would otherwise be difficult to target.

Having the outline appear behind objects is one of the things being tested, so if people don't like it, they should chime in.

Someone's first post that has a link to an external site, and references nothing that is actually connected to this forum? I'm guessing spam.