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Other Gameplay Elements


DopeFishhh

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i love the stealth genre and i think thief tops the list. but there are aspects that are either don't make sense or just plain silly.

 

like guards instantly knowing that those footsteps he just heard was a thiefs as opposed to one of his comrades. An example would be in t3 in the hammer factory trying to steal the chalice, alot of guards and metal plating, you don't see them jumping about if they hear their brothers making a noise but as soon as you do they go nuts.

 

basically it's an ai issue, but there are other things than just the sound.

 

visually as soon as they've seen you they know you to be a thief, ok sure the bow and arrow pointed at their head might give garret away but there are situations where guards should be a little more human. likewise you don't see guards attacking each other the minute they see each other.

 

so guards shouldn't necessarily see garret as hostile unless he's doing something suspicous or hostile. you could do a meter to measure how suspicous your behaviour is, if it's low you could walk right upto a guard and he wouldn't attack you but might start questioning you, if it's high you got problems, disguises wont work as well or at all, your only option is to hide.

 

if you were to make the ai smarter/more realistic in those two aspects you could introduce some hitman like gameplay elements. garret could dress up as a guard and walk in unobstructed however this may get him only part of the way for a guard couldn't get into a vault himself.

 

you could also introduce more roleplaying to the game with dialog choices, persuasion, intimidation, bluffing, diplomacy all options the player has in discussion (noting that whether they work or not depends on what the character is trying to do).

 

now that my rant is over, are you planning to exceed the boundary of thief 1/2/3 ai and gameplay elements? or is this factor still in discussion?

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Everything you suggested there would make a game like Thief way too easy. Do you want no challenge at all, cause that's what non-hostile, gullable, half paying attention guards would make the game. I mean Thief guards are already stupid enough...

Loose BOWELS are the first sign of THE CHOLERA MORBUS!
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It no doubt sounds good on paper but if you were to try and implement that in a real game, I think you would find that it actually makes the game less fun.

 

The purpose of the game, in its simplest form, is to have to try and avoid the guards hearing or seeing you. Yes, there is the illusion that you are in a simulated world but that's the beauty of it, you aren't. For all of its complexity, it's really nothing more than a suped up game of pacman....the thief is Pac and the guards are the ghosts. You avoid them, they try to catch you. I don't endorse adding a multitude of bells and whistles to something. The more "stuff" that is added, the more the simplicity of the concept is lost. It's good to hone the core elements and tighten up what has already been established. Keep it simple.

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But not every innovation and complication to AI's behaviour makes the game easier.

Why not make some guards (not every) more cunning and unpredictable? They are too straightforward now - when they see you they starts to shout and chase you. They could for example quietly hide in some specified places, when they hear your footsteps but not see you yet and wait for you to attack in unexpected moment. Designers could specify those points similarly to flee points or vantage points in dark engine.

You know - not every guard is Benny.... ;)

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Hang on guys, DopeFishhh has made some good points, and they have already been addressed by us.

 

I already brought up a way of guards not knowing if it was your footsteps if there were other AI around also walking near you, but it got voted down. The general opinion was that it was another way of making the game easier (which is generally unwanted) and people sense when things are not quite right anyway.

 

Guards will not get angry if they see you in the street and you're doing nothing wrong. What counts as "wrong" is different for each team, and we already have a plan for this.

T2 already implemented this, but in a much simpler (and flawed) way.

 

PinkDot, you have described what we call "Elite Guards" and their abilities are being discussed. One current feature is that they don't make as much noise when they search for you, increasing the chance of them surprising you.

Edited by Domarius
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Looking back to T1, I remember a guard outside bafford's manor calmy say "how's it going?" to Garrett.... not suspicious because at the moment he was up to no shenanagins. It wasnt until inside they got all pissy towards you.... Also when sneaking around and making noise, the guards would often inquire who was there or who made that noise... they didn't automatically know it was a thief.

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Yes, if you are on the city streets the guards shoud not bother you, but the majority of missions are in mansions or other private areas or buildings, so it's obvious you shouldn't be there and the guards would be automatically antagonistic towards you.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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..then again, even on the streets, you're carrying a bow and quiver full of exotic arrows, a sword, a blackjack, and a bunch of other tools and items, and you just generally look like a no good taffer, so it's not surprising that guards would notice. you.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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Well the Thief universe seemed like a fairly gritty place... I think a happy, unarmed person would concern the watch more than a hooded and cloaked taffer armed to the teeth...

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In medvial times it was not THAT uncommon. At least not in our universe.

Says who? In that case we'll have to give other citizens weapons as well so our thief doesn't stand out.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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When they see our character walking around in the city, for all they know, he could be a foreign mercenary or a private guard for one of the nobles. Sure they might watch him a little more closely and act warily around him, but they're not going to attack him on sight just because he's carrying.

 

Or we could go the T3 route of having every guard know your face and instantly recognize you. I didn't really like that though, because thru the first 2 games, Garrett tried very hard NOT to become famous among the authorities, and then all of a sudden all the guards recognize him on sight.

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Says who? In that case we'll have to give other citizens weapons as well so our thief doesn't stand out.

If you look at T3 there are enough people with swords. And I guess our Thief wouldn't carry all his stuff on a display for guards to choose from. Quite on the contrary hw would try to look inconspicious which would mean the only thing you can probably see is the bow and the sword, which could make him a hunter arriving from outside town in the eyes of a guard.

Gerhard

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Yes, maybe we are too used to T2, where its just you, guards, and non-combatants. Therefore all people who are not guards or you, are non-combatants.

 

But in T3 you saw lots of people who weren't guards, had weapons too. So if we have the same thing happening in our FMs, it won't seem wierd if the guard's don't think you're strange, because so many other people have weapons too.

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Depends entirely on what time period we're talking about here. A lot of our focus seems to be on the Victorian period, and you certainly didn't have civilians walking the steets armed with swords and bows in those days. You would post definitely have been stopped by any authorites.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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That is not really a problem anyway, because it is a setting on the map itself. We should support both scnearious, because you can easily create a map like one FM I remember where you went into a Thief stronghold and as long as you didn't steal anything the AI was ignoring you. On the other hand there could be a mission where you have to sneak back to your lair (like the one in T2) and the guards were searching for you, so they even attacked you in the street.

Both are valid scenarios, so we have to support each of them.

Gerhard

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Some weapons can be concealed easily though, like the blackjack... not so much the bow or shortsword. (well, a shortsword can be concealed, but we're assuming our character is wearing it on the left hip for quickdraw).

 

I could see putting in something like guards let you get away with slightly more suspicious actions before they go berserk if you're not carrying any obvious weapons. You're still a crazy guy in a mask tho, so if I were a guard I'd be watching pretty close, weapons or none. :)

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Guards should have more ways to behave, when they see you on the streets with some weapons. Not only ignoring or attacking with purpose to kill you but f.e. forcing you to go away or disarm or just arresting you etc.. Killing should be extremity as long as you actually did not any crime yet...

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Well coming back to the argument that it makes things easier, that isn't necesarily true. You could give the player 1000 options about how he wants to do his mission, but if you increase the guard and make them *all* do patrols or searches for the player once alerted and they also shift their guard positions to cover some crucial spots then that would make things very hard.

 

i didn't like the thief 1/2/3 approach where if you leave em alone for a while they will forget about you, even if you got into a knife fight with him and two of his buddies are dead. once you alert them, they remain alert, will get help to their spot, either from asleep guards or town guards, and effectively making things very difficult, next to impossible i think.

 

that said if you guys have an agree'd upon design don't make major changes to it despite what i or others suggest, get the mod done first then you are in a position for requests.

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once you alert them, they remain alert, will get help to their spot, either from asleep guards or town guards, and effectively making things very difficult, next to impossible i think.

 

We've been planning this as well. Don't worry, we've been having discussions on these issues for months. There's very little we haven't covered. :)

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