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Should small static oil lamps be extinguishable up close?


wesp5

Oil lamps  

38 members have voted

  1. 1. Should small static oil lamps be exstinguishable up close?

    • Yes
    • No
    • Yes or no, depending on a new gameplay setting.
    • Yes or no, depending on how mappers define them.


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Of course I know that, don't jump on me like that ; )! I was still mostly referring to oil lamps which right now are exactly like torches gameplay wise. I was doubting that mappers count all extinguishable lights including oil lamps and try to foresee how many water arrows they must give to the player so that certain areas would be more difficult, which they can't because some players like myself rarely use them. But maybe I am mistaken and you do calculations like this?

I can't speak for TDM but in T2 absolutely everything is placed by the mission author, everything is calculated, everything is deliberate and to suggest mission authors don't place lights, objects and everything else in their missions deliberately and with care is, frankly, insulting to the effort authors put into making missions

Edited by esme
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Think of all the additional gameplay options! Laxatives, softeners, hardeners, all used to give the player plus or minus points on the Bristol Stool Chart, which in turn affects smearability. You're onto something.

 

Every single one of which needs its own menu option, because some user somewhere might want control over this aspect of the game, and no jumped-up mapper or stubborn game developer should have the right to deny them this choice.

 

Not to mention, if the player character is male (configurable!), he should be able to distract guards by projectile-jizzing into their eye. Think of it like the moss arrows from Deadly Shadows, but on a thirty minute cooldown that increases each time you use it.

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I was doubting that mappers count all extinguishable lights including oil lamps and try to foresee how many water arrows they must give to the player so that certain areas would be more difficult, which they can't because some players like myself rarely use them. But maybe I am mistaken and you do calculations like this?

 

You do calculations in your concept phase where you draw the map on just plain paper. Then later on you refine the concept when you're at the lighting phase of map building. After this there's inofficial betatests in which you find prove to your concept (or not and you have to start again). It's really not that people just randomly position lights around their mission and I wonder how you've came to this conclusion.

 

Anyways... I'm leaving this discussion since it doesn't lead anywhere. Maybe the thread should be closed anyways... -_-

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"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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It's really not that people just randomly position lights around their mission and I wonder how you've came to this conclusion.

Some of you misunderstand me so much, I must guess it's on purpose to be hostile :(. I make a very reasonable suggestion that half of the people here even agree too, see the poll, but some of the other half get lavatorial. Really mature! Don't you think I didn't have to add lights to the new Bloodlines maps that were included into the patch? Which has stealth gameplay as well in case you didn't know. I was not talking about placing lights, but about calculating the impossible to guess ratio of water arrows to extinguishable lights which is used as argument to not include the option because of old missions. And I'm not even talking about missions where you can buy stuff and it's even more difficult for the mapper to judge how many water arrows will be in the game.

Edited by wesp5
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The mapper controls the placement of water arrows in a map, the addition of water arrows to the player's starting inventory, the number of water arrows sold in the shop, the price of items sold in the shop (defaults are commonly used but can be overridden), and the amount of money the player has to spend in the shop or, in campaigns where loot from one mission becomes money to spend before the next, the conversion rates for loot.

Some things I'm repeatedly thinking about...

 

- louder scream when you're dying

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The mapper controls the placement of water arrows in a map, the addition of water arrows to the player's starting inventory, the number of water arrows sold in the shop...

Yes, I am aware of that, but still a mapper can not control how many water arrows the player has left when he enters a section with oil lamps unless they offer less arrows than oil lamps in the first place. Also in most missions oil lamps come late in the mission when a mansion or something has been entered and it's up to the player whether he has wasted a lot of arrows before that. So I think all the claims that exstinguishable oil lamps break missions are vastly exaggerated :)!

 

Now back to something constructive that would not change old missions. There have been a lot of people suggesting that new oil lamps should be added that can be extinguished. That's a great idea, but to fix the original problem that current oil lamps look like they could be snuffed out, something else would be needed. So why not use the current oil lamp models for the new exstinguishable ones and change the current models to glass protected ones like in the picture below, except for no turn-on/off-wheel. This way it would make sense that you can't just quickly blow or snuff them out!

 

http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium/under-the-oil-lamp-light-richard-mitchell.jpg

Edited by wesp5
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I make a very reasonable suggestion that half of the people here even agree too, see the poll

 

 

You do realize that 8 out of 26 people is no where near "half the people"?

 

Some of you misunderstand me so much, I must guess it's on purpose to be hostile

 

 

Right. If people misunderstand you, it can't be because you communicated poorly--it must be because they're hostile. And if developers don't like your idea, it can't be because the idea isn't a good one, it must be because they're conservative and stubborn.

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altering the way lights go out independently of the way they were originally designed to not go out feels like cheating or being cheated, because of someone not being skilled enough to do it the right way and just avoid them if its a solid enclosed light or use a water/gas arrow, if its an open flame and not attached to a candle. although a gas arrow is a rather expensive route.

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You do realize that 8 out of 26 people is no where near "half the people"?

You do realize that there are 8 more votes for extinguishable oil lamps options- or mapper-dependent, which make it an 16:10 ratio, quite more than half the people, for an implementation of some kind? So either you didn't understand the last two poll options I added later on or you ignored them on purpose! Or is the poll "communicating poorly" too ;)?

Edited by wesp5
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Mapper-dependent = status quo; as we showed you, the spawnargs can be changed already.

Well, before I brought it up, people weren't even thinking about it so of course I count these votes on my side :)! People wanting no changes surely voted no, because this is the status quo right now. Also as far as I understand it, there is still need to change the def files of the static oil lamps. At least this is how I had to implement it myself!

Edited by wesp5
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Oh, just forget it! You don't want to change anything, fine, I get it. Forget about the 7+1 people who want to have this feature or the others that might want it in new maps. They are not developers or mappers, so they don't really count anyway! There is another thread going on here right now to the same extend. Someone posted what he is missing in TDM and he gets jumped all over too because TDM is great exactly like it is and anything new would break all the old missions and you are really bad at taking critism: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/17373-blackjacking-what-the-hell/page-3

 

If I would have the same view about Bloodlines, there never would have been a plus patch with restored content and the game would have died years ago!

Edited by wesp5
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Blah blah I'm so awesome and you all suck because you can't recognise my brilliance and I'm being oppressed by a conspiracy and yada yada snore

Yeah, blah, blah, we don't need to change anything ever, our mod is so brilliant, better we close the whole improvement thread down.

Edited by wesp5
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Your options are

These figures may change with more votes

The poll is confusing, I suspect you're interpreting all the yes/no answers as support, I don't

I will say this again.

  • I have no problem with someone adding a new model which can be turned off or a script or setting so authors can allow players to turn certain types of lamp off in new missions, should the author decide to use that model, script or setting.
  • Also if authors want to retrofit these to existing missions then that's their decision.
  • If authors choose not to use this model or setting then I am against the idea that their choice can be overridden by the player, they chose a particular model and allowed certain actions to affect it for a reason, whether the player likes or even understands that reason is immaterial, it's not the players choice, it's the authors choice .
  • I am also against the idea of a gameplay setting that allows the players that use it to turn off lamps that they can't currently turn off in existing or even new missions, again the author chose a particular model, they could have added scripts to let the player turn the lamp off with a frob, this has always been possible, if they didn't know how to do it they could have asked, but they chose not to.

Which option says that ?

 

And any hostility on my part stems from your sweeping generalisations that mission authors don't plan their lighting to the very last light and don't plan which specific resources including the quantity you are given to deal with any obstacles or problems.

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The poll is confusing, I suspect you're interpreting all the yes/no answers as support, I don't.

The poll is confusing because other options were suggested after it was started and I added them later on. Still the people who have voted the new options surely thought they knew what they voted for and did not just vote no.

 

Anyway, I'm really tired of this. I already yielded to the pressure here some posts ago and suggested to add new lamps and retrofit the old ones to do what you suggest. Nobody reacted to that but kept attacking me instead :(!

 

So stop it and tell me what you think about this: http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium/under-the-oil-lamp-light-richard-mitchell.jpg

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Anyway, I'm really tired of this. I already yielded to the pressure here some posts ago and suggested to add new lamps and retrofit the old ones to do what you suggest. Nobody reacted to that but kept attacking me instead :(!

 

So stop it and tell me what you think about this: http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium/under-the-oil-lamp-light-richard-mitchell.jpg

 

I agree, I am also tired of this discussion, but still read on... I think, people keep attacking, because there have been several suggestions not just some posts, but actually pages ago, each and every you seemed to reject, because you insisted on an "options menu" option. Thus they are also tired and frustrated and thus they attack.

 

As for your suggestion: Why change the old models with your suggestion and make the old models extinguishable and not keep the old models as they are and use your suggestion as the new, extinguishable model (having in mind, that they cannot be pinched out, but simply have a wheel to turn them off). The problem with suggestions of new models is in general: find someone, who will make the model. There are not that many people here, who can make them and, sadly, they are usually busy with other stuff. I myself tried to play around with Blender a bit, but would have to invest a lot more time, to be able to make a model, that comes even close to the quality of the existing ones :(

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If the oil lamp model can be modified and give it a glass top similar to the photo yo posted, that would be perfect to keep both sides happy by keeping the oil lamp non extinguishable but still a bit more logical to those who want them extinguishable. Modifying the model is easy in a program like Wings 3d.

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Or we'd end up with another thread, this time about how realistically it should respond to water stims only from directly above, unlike the current open flame...

Well, a direct hit with a water arrow would probably shatter the glass and if I understand it correctly direct hits don't work at the moment anyway :)!

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I like it - , and as far about water putting them out from above, I would say there would not be enough water to enter the glass column to put out this kind of oil / oil lamp. Said and done. For the oil lamps I have at home like that, it is doubtful if I threw up a cup of water upward above it, enough water would enter and put it out... it would take quite a bit of a full water hit, not a shower....

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Then the only solution is to turn the option as a mod. After all, the NO to change oil lamps won. They all heard wesp5 point yet most decided to keep it as it is. As far as I've seen here none refused to the idea to turn this option into a mod for the game. And most cooperated to give wesp5 a hand to make it an option for his own use. You could also add other options as well. The only issue is the possibility of having to edit most of the maps in the game. Still is no difference with other mods for other games like Skyrim etc.

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