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Things that could be improved


Berny

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Maybe you used one of that secret explosion arrows and, wait, there are explosion arrows, when did you thought to make them public, eh? ;)

 

I too had that effect with the sleeping guy near the kitchen in Alchemist. Maybe part of him was inside the bed-model? Or there was just no room to fell down to the floor.

 

Are you all aware of that massive AI-kills that happen in Heart and Alchemist? Both missions have a lot of AI walking around, and in Alchemist all are on alert, and I saw three or four, at the end even five (all together) AI´s laying dead around. One of them in the middle of the room, but surrounded by other AI´s. The other bodies all were at the sides of walls. Most of the cases had no objects near them.

-> Crisis of Capitalism

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(hard stuff), more
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I've heard of the dead ai in heart, though i don't think anyone has pinpointed why, and i haven't seen it in game.

 

Fidcal, did you monster clip along walls?

I try and thicken most walls, just so ai torches and heads don't go into them if they are searching around.

 

fire arrows have always been included.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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I don't monsterclip walls to thicken them but I do monsterclip all wall fittings etc.

 

Must be something I'm doing different and also probably relates to alerts because I don't see it much. Used to be the cook always died down near the keg in the servant's dining room. I deleted interleave thinking changes but he still died. In the end I changed his path. Other FMs have these or similar interleave thinking settings without this problem. Notably, Politics was virtually unplayable on my old machine without them. Remember 6fps even in small rooms? So if that is relevant then there is something else different as well. Will be interesting to see if it occurs in my new one.

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I think what we should be doing is putting up more walkthrough videos of good FM gameplay in action. I don't know about other people, but I watch them to see how other people played the same FM I played.

 

Absolutely. I too have been looking for FM playthroughs for TDM on YouTube. Not only would it promote the mod, but it would give stuck players a place to turn for helpful walkthroughs in finding things they may have missed. Even if I've finished a mission, it is nice to see how someone else does it. Think of it like a modern FAQ/walkthrough for an FM. It is easier and faster for someone to do that than write a walkthrough for the various missions.

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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How is it that the feather/pen flits around when you toss it then?

 

 

well, the mass on it is set to 0.25. But the last time i remember the team discussing it we came to the conclusion that Doom3 can't got into decimals with mass, so it defaults to 1 anyway.

 

i just tested it at 0.25 and 1 and it behaves exactly the same. leading me to believe the 0.25 mass was a mistake and/or never corrected (not that it really matters since it defaults to 1)

 

the 'flinting around' is caused by a combination of 2 things.

1: the model is at an angle

2: the origin of the model is at the tip.

 

models rotate around their origin. so in this case with the angled model you get a 'whirly bird' effect. (it still throws the same distance and drops the same at mass 0.25 or 1)

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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models rotate around their origin. so in this case with the angled model you get a 'whirly bird' effect. (it still throws the same distance and drops the same at mass 0.25 or 1)

Moveables rotate about the center of mass, which is calculated separately from the origin. However, you can still have problems with non-standard collision models.

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well, the mass on it is set to 0.25. But the last time i remember the team discussing it we came to the conclusion that Doom3 can't got into decimals with mass, so it defaults to 1 anyway.

 

i just tested it at 0.25 and 1 and it behaves exactly the same. leading me to believe the 0.25 mass was a mistake and/or never corrected (not that it really matters since it defaults to 1)

 

the 'flinting around' is caused by a combination of 2 things.

1: the model is at an angle

2: the origin of the model is at the tip.

 

models rotate around their origin. so in this case with the angled model you get a 'whirly bird' effect. (it still throws the same distance and drops the same at mass 0.25 or 1)

 

Btw, we hopefully can fix this bug (anything less than 1.0 in mass being set to 1.0). I am not sure atm if this is in the closed-source part of not, tho.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Moveables rotate about the center of mass, which is calculated separately from the origin. However, you can still have problems with non-standard collision models.

 

I thought the origin was the center of mass, if not how can that be determined?

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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I´m sure you´re aware of AI´s getting blocked on doors. Have you already planned some code/solution that make AI´s wait and evade AI´s that are first on opening the door? Some wait-position/process until the way is free...

 

Builders Influence and Politics (NHAT1/3) are the missions that come to my mind where you always can see blocked AI´s on doors. I wonder if Fidcals habit of giving doors a radius of 150 instead of only 90 is an easy workaround?

But not always is the door already open. In Politcs I saw the door just, say, 10 degree open and three AI´s stood behind it. The first stood still, the others tried to go through, while moving not an inch. Maybe they pushed the first AI so much forward that he couldn´t start his opening-ani? :unsure:

-> Crisis of Capitalism

-> 9/11 Truth

->

(hard stuff), more
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AI's getting blocked around doors is a complicated code issue not easily solved ( = lot of work!) Before release, Heart almost ground to a halt with several groups of 3, 4, even 6 AI all blocked at doors. As a workaround I did various things but mainly changed patrol routes to try to avoid conflict, ie, less crossover of AI using the same paths. It was trial and error and is still not perfect.

 

The door open angle was not all 150 and nothing to do with blocking AI (though possibly it might help.) No, every door I set up I decide logically which way it should open and how far. Doors on corridors generally open *into* rooms not out into corridors. Doors should open away from the normal route (a door in a corner should open to the side wall leaving the entire room open to navigate not open to block the AI between door, doorway, and side wall. In RL doors mostly can open more than 90 so I usually see how far they can go to look natural; it's purely for appearance. The door in a corner might open 95 or 100 degrees just enough to reach the side wall as if blocked by it.

 

Another factor for mappers to consider (that I wasn't properly aware of until more recently) is there is an entity to tell AI where to stand when they open a door if the default is causing problems.

 

In Thief, the problem is solved by making doors non-solid to AI while opening/closing (maybe even when fully open I'm not sure.) This does mean they often clip through doors but they rarely get stuck on them.

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In TDS I read a common solution was to actually set up monster-clip (or the functional equivalent of it) at the back of doors so they wouldn't get caught and were funneled through the door. That's a different problem though, but it might help here (or make it worse).

 

If you wanted to do it properly, I think maybe all doors would internally set up an area by default, and when any AI enter that area, it closes off the area for any other AI to enter (commands them to step back out of the area), until AI #1 leaves the area, hopefully out the other side, or is killed or KO'd, etc.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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I played Heart a few days ago (awesome mission) and encountered an interesting bug: when I returned to areas I hadn't been to in awhile, KOed bodies were all twisted around like balloon animals, as if some of the angles had been inverted or something. I don't recall if I ever saw it without having saved and loaded the game some time (since the KO), so it may have happened during saving or loading.

 

I also ran into one stuck AI: a noble was stuck on the door to the left of the great staircase. I actually went up the stairs and dropped onto the top of the door so I could frob it and move it out of his way. It worked, and he was none the wiser!

 

Oh, one more thing while I'm on the topic of Heart:

When I was standing on the rampart with the archer at the beginning of the mission, standing up in the light for even a split-second would cause the bald guy guarding the back door of the manor down in the courtyard would come running up to get me, presumably at alert level 4. While it may not be entirely unrealistic (if you ignore the fog, which the AI do, right?), it wasn't much fun, game-play wise. I've read on here about a change already made to the top of the AIs' vision cone to make them less sensitive to things above them, and I've read about potential plans to add a delay to AI reaction-time. Maybe the combination of those things would make all the difference. It would be nice to at least be able to peek down at a fairly distant guard without alerting him so much.

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It's more complex than that - sometimes AI seem too INsensitive so just reducing acuity might not be the answer. It needs some study.

 

Meanwhile, gameplay-wise,

if you are standing up in the light you are probably doing it wrong. I've spent many an hour viewing the courtyard without alerting guards.It's a while since I played Heart but there is plenty of shadow there is there not? One of my routes is to climb down there fairly easily or along the walls at either side.

 

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I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to post this... this thread has been going for several months, and I'm not sure if 'improvement wishes' still belong here or not.

 

My question (and wish) though, is in regards to Secrets. Yes, I'm one of those that go around searching for every little Secret in the Thief games, and while I've seen a bit of it here in TDM, it's not quite the same. There's no listing '2 of 3 Secrets Found' in the final score...and I was wondering if deeper 'Secrets' support would ever make its way into TDM? Or will it remain an Objective-only system (such as in Heart)?

 

Aside from the things I miss that cannot be used here to avoid IP issues (oh Haunt sounds, how I miss thee), the Secrets system is the one thing I miss the most.

 

Keep up the great work, everyone. I never thought I'd purchase or install DOOM (or any game remotely like it, heck, even still when I think about it I get the shuddering willies), but you folks have created a wonderful conversion here. Thank you!

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The problem as ever is time. The stats page is intended one day to be upgraded for stealth scoring. While secrets are not officially supported, it would be nice if the stats page could show mapper-created stats (mapvars) as well as the objectives/difficulties page show mapvar options such as "show secrets y/n?"

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  • 2 weeks later...

in dromed to stop guard bunching together you could tell them to wait if they became in range of someone on their team, cant remember the correct way to do it but it was easy to set up.

 

would work as

if alert < 2

if team member becomes in n range of team member then

wait n

endif

endif

 

or

 

if team member in doorway then (or if team member blocking forward movement )

turn 180 degrees

walk out of range n

wait n

endif

Edited by stumpy
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  • 2 weeks later...

Sorry if it has been mentioned already, but I didnt want to go through 26 pages:

 

I'd like to see the statistics being improved:

 

- "Pockets picked: X" should be: "Pockets picked: X out of Y"

- I'd like to see an item: "Detected: Z times"

- also, a "Secrets found: X out of Y" would be great.

- and the Stealthscore is pretty useless atm: I suggest smth like this: for every mission the perfect score is 10000 points, for every killed person 2000 pints are being distracted, you get -1000 for every knocked out person, -500 for every detection and maybe also some substraction if you didn't find all loot or secrets.

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