Alternate Light Gem

[Baddcog]

In the T family games, there was a light gem that showed how much light was falling on the character.

 

In T3, I noticed that because I could see who the light was falling on the character, I needed the light gem less, and the gem itself became another 2D element to distract me from an otherwise 3D world. In minimalist, I cold always tell what I was wielding by just looking the character's hand. I never needed a 2D icon to tell me that I was using--they just lowered the immersion.

 

As an option, it would be interesting to make the light sensitive gem--in a heavy ring that the character wears outside his glove, or perhaps as an amulet. When you need it, you can just look at it.

 

Also, I hope beyond hope that in TDM, you can see your character body character in first person mode. Player shadows added immeasurably to presence in the game.

 

Sorry I only read the first few posts...

 

Although I like the light gem I think the ring idea is very cool.

 

I'm just now playing D3 and the one thing I think is really cool is similar. The fact that you have to use the flashlight as a seperate tool to see into places where you need to shoot. Same idea somewhat, if you are busy looking at your gem it'll take a moment to ready a weapon.

[Dunedain]

Ah, the realism issue again. There have been some interesting suggestions on how the damage system could be made more realistic and obviously oddity tends to favor systems that lean toward the brutally unforgiving end of the realism spectrum. I certainly don't object to having some sort of "super realistic" damage/injury model option added in the main TDM menu for those that want maximum difficulty when playing a Thief fan mission.

 

I would take exception with the statement that oddity's work on TDM has somehow been "generic". I think oddity has made in TDM some of the very best looking models I've ever seen in any mod. These are some of the best looking, most intricately detailed and eye-catching character models around. They lend a real touch of sophistication, elegance and polish to the mod. One look at them and the impressive quality level is instantly obvious, hardly "generic".

[Domarius]

I would take exception with the statement that oddity's work on TDM has somehow been "generic".

Where did you see this being said?

(Use the quote button so that it links back so we can see it in context)

[oDDity]

Well you have to admit most of them are rather generic. For example, they all have 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 eyes 2 ears, 1 nose, 1 mouth, 10 fingers and toes each, just like every other character you see. Boring. They even walk about using their legs FFS, it's pathetic.

[Dunedain]

Domarius: It's from your own quote of oddity on page 3.

 

QUOTE(oDDity @ Apr 29 2006, 08:26 PM)

"I just feel this mod is a waste of my time and talent. I'm stagnating here, almost knocking generic stuff out on a production line."

 

I thought oddity was being too harsh on the analysis of his own work; I think the quality is quite high.

[sxotty]

Any decent health system you can think of, which has actual consequences for being a stupid and useless enough player to get damaged, requires a limited save system of some kind, since, in a recent study, approx 99% of gamers were found to be worthless cheating scum who'd sooner fool themselves into thinking that they're great than face any consequences of their inadequate skills.

You are amazing in your arrogance and abrasiveness. You must do very good work for I cannot see how anyone could get along with you.

 

You cast your perception of reality as the "truth" when it is only your opinion.

 

Worthless Cheating Scum!? Simply because you think that it is cheating. Who the hell decides what is cheating? If it is a single player game the player can play it however they want to. They are not cheating some other entity. You think they are cheating themselves? You think they are trying to fool themselves into thinking they are great? Maybe they play for fun and don't give a damn about your ridiculous life simulation. There is a reason these things are called video games

 

Here is a discussion about this very issue. You notice it is a discussion, not a decree about the worthless scum that are causing the world to collapse by not playing a singleplayer game the way that prince oddity has determined it should be played.

 

When you fall in real life, you either damge something, in which case you're fucked, or you're lucky and don't.

If you are trained in how to fall and land, then some skill is involved and you can safely fall from greater heights, but when it comes to really high falls, then it's more luck than anything else.

Since it's luck in real life, I see nothing wrong with making it luck in-game.

It's just a matter of choosing the cut-off height, below which you can always safely fall, since you are trained in the art, and above which you have a certain chance of damaging something that will end your mission, and the chance obviously increases with the height.

 

Not really true either, you can sprain your foot and continue the mission. The generic kill zone cutoff of 40 feet which is what it usually is, is also not really true. It is just an estimate. Yes it might be random luck, fine if you think that makes better gameplay but others would disagree. I helped a guy walk 8 miles who broke his ankle in 18 places after falling from a cliff...

 

Further you could easily take an arrow in the guts and spend quite some time being both mobile and still dying. Unless you want to go to the extent of actually modeling internal organs, vascular system, nerve system etc your idea is hogwash. We don't have the computational power to do that anyway in realtime and play a game as well. If you want to create a mod that has a blank room and you get shot at with arrows and get to see if you die in a realistic manner go ahead, but don't foam at the mouth when others disagree. Your opinion is just that an opinion.

[demagogue]

Odd's opinion is a way of thinking that if you are sensitive to makes sense. If you don't agree with what he says, chances are it's because you aren't sensitive to the things that trouble him, not because you don't like his ideas per se, otherwise you wouldn't get in such a hissy over his abrasive style, which is just the way he writes to get a rise out of people, everybody knows it and probably rolls their eyes but just looks to see the few good ideas that come out the other end; no need to get in such a fuss.

 

The catch is, though, it makes me think that at some level you really don't care about the way games are made in a way that could be not wrong -- of course, there's no right or wrong here -- but depressing.

 

I can agree with the general point that not anything that can be done should, even though they generate raving cheers on the surface (usually literally "generating" them in the most mindlessly generic way). Ultimately, things like games (along with movies, books, etc) are all cultural products, although we don't always think about them that way. But they reflect the kind of way we want to spend time in a way that seems valuable to us, as part of the kind of people we fancy ourselves to be. And thinking about it that way, there really is a problem with the dumbing down of culture that is an old story by now, but still an important one to pay attention to. And I can agree that people that don't care one iota how stupid our level of culture get are complicit in the sad state of things.

 

You can say it's all about "fun", but when you spend about a second's worth of reflection, you can see that not all fun is equal. A weekend skiing in Aspen with your best friends on the break before graduation is the kind of fun you remember for a lifetime. The fucking six hours I waste playing some awful 1984 hentai game just to see a 3 frame looping 16bit crap animation of a vaguly nude looking rabbit girl humping a frog is a waste of life energy of the highest order, even if I'll be damned if I give up the game before I reach hump time. And there is every shade of grey in between.

 

You can call Odd "arrogant" based on style alone, but putting his absurd rhetoric aside (and he and everybody else can see how outlandish it is) the way I see it his mission is to try to push things in the direction of taking the higher road in this or that detail. And it's a worthwhile mission, although I don't agree that many of the things he suggests will really have the pay off he thinks they will, but some might if you really gave them a serious chance.

 

But because most people seem to have the idea that all fun really is equal, I think it's worth tolerating the absurd rhethroic to have a few people that do care and would be happy, if you are going to force feed yourself whatever crap pops out of the pipe in any event anyway, to make sure that you are at least force-feeding yourself a balanced meal and not innane junk food.

Edited April 23, 2007 by demagogue

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

Amen

[sxotty]

Odd's opinion is a way of thinking that if you are sensitive to makes sense. If you don't agree with what he says, chances are it's because you aren't sensitive to the things that trouble him, not because you don't like his ideas per se, otherwise you wouldn't get in such a hissy over his abrasive style, which is just the way he writes to get a rise out of people, everybody knows it and probably rolls their eyes but just looks to see the few good ideas that come out the other end; no need to get in such a fuss.

There is no need to be rude either. If a person is as rude as that, calling people cunts for having a normal job, it only points to the lack of valid supporting points. When you resort to demonizing a group instead of providing examples and engaging in discussion you have just shown you are too foolish to find any real support for your argument.

 

But because most people seem to have the idea that all fun really is equal, I think it's worth tolerating the absurd rhethroic to have a few people that do care and would be happy, if you are going to force feed yourself whatever crap pops out of the pipe in any event anyway, to make sure that you are at least force-feeding yourself a balanced meal and not innane junk food.

Fun like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There are people who would hate that weekend at aspen. I would much rather go to Teton Village myself The point is a game maker tries to make an experience that the user will enjoy so they buy another game. Unless they are like EA and just gobble up previously successful IP and churn out utter crap.

 

I do spend time playing some games that are fairly crappy just to finish them, so I suppose sometimes you get locked into wasting time, but honestly like I said it is the person who is doing it that must determine the quality of the experience. I also toss games aside if they are too annoying, inane, pathetic, or whatever makes them not enjoyable for me. The type of person who will go to the bother of downloading this when it is done is not the type to be force fed from the pipe IMO.

 

I am all for innovation, but I am not all for annoyance. I don't want to waste an eternity on a game as I would rather go mountain biking or one of many other activities. Still a game has its place to me, it is entertainment. Like a movie. In a FPS edge of the seat bs is fine. In other types of games the narrative is more important IMO. I would far prefer that there was a decent story than that the play mechanics are uber realistic. There is no need for uber realism especially in a fantasy game. There is a need for consistency so the player is not jerked out of the story.

 

Your attempt is to make a toolset and that neatly side steps the whole necessity of the narrative, but that does not diminish its true importance. The narrative is IMO thousands of times more important to most single player games then whether there is a health meter or if damage is taken in a realistic way (which I actually am very supportive of, I think that you should hurt your leg and slow down, blood trails should lead the AI to you, but there also should be more than one way out of a castle and maps should not be stupidly constricting.)

Edited April 23, 2007 by sxotty

[Domarius]

Domarius: It's from your own quote of oddity on page 3.

 

QUOTE(oDDity @ Apr 29 2006, 08:26 PM)

"I just feel this mod is a waste of my time and talent. I'm stagnating here, almost knocking generic stuff out on a production line."

 

I thought oddity was being too harsh on the analysis of his own work; I think the quality is quite high.

Ah I thought you might have been but I wasn't sure. I see what you're saying now. But he was saying he wanted to do other things, not that his work sucked.

[Dunedain]

Well, he referred to the work as generic. I don't think it's generic, the quality is top-notch. One look at those hammerite/builder character models and visions of cool Thief missions immediately arise.

[demagogue]

Well, to my reading it was more like this project didn't bring out the best in his work, good as it is. It reminds me of something like Sellars getting famous from his fantastically brilliant performance in the Pink Panther series and then coming back and saying it was the biggest waste in his career, the script was awful, etc. There's gratitude for you.

Edited April 24, 2007 by demagogue

[Domarius]

That's like George Lucas (I'm comparing to Peter Sellers, not oDDity) - get's famous for the Star Wars franchise, then once he's powerful enough, throws away the idea that he needs professional writers (that helped make the originals what they were) and does whatever he wants, including modifying the originals for the worse, the only justification is "Well I want to do it that way." Sure, now you can, that you're powerful enough, but you seem to have forgotten what got you there, or are under the delusion that it wasn't the fans who got you there.

[oDDity]

Worthless Cheating Scum!? Simply because you think that it is cheating. Who the hell decides what is cheating? If it is a single player game the player can play it however they want to. They are not cheating some other entity. You think they are cheating themselves? You think they are trying to fool themselves into thinking they are great? Maybe they play for fun and don't give a damn about your ridiculous life simulation. There is a reason these things are called video games

Thanks for enbolding that keyword.

All games have rules, without them you have no game.

Break the rules, try to squirm your way around them, try to find loopholes and exploits that are there (and not because of any decision that was made by the developers, but because of mistakes and inadequacy of them) and it's cheating.

Whether you find this cheating to be 'fun' or not is irrelevant, the term 'cheat' still applies to you.

Most rapists find rape agreeable, but they're sill rapists.

 

Here is a discussion about this very issue. You notice it is a discussion, not a decree about the worthless scum that are causing the world to collapse by not playing a singleplayer game the way that prince oddity has determined it should be played.

 

That's King oDDity to you.

 

Not really true either, you can sprain your foot and continue the mission. The generic kill zone cutoff of 40 feet which is what it usually is, is also not really true. It is just an estimate. Yes it might be random luck, fine if you think that makes better gameplay but others would disagree. I helped a guy walk 8 miles who broke his ankle in 18 places after falling from a cliff...

Well, done, and I hope you polish your medal every night, but it's not really appropriate in the game to have someone who helps you hobble around the maps on your busted leg.

If you bust your leg, you're incapacitated, and as far as the mission is concerned, it's game over.

 

Further you could easily take an arrow in the guts and spend quite some time being both mobile and still dying. Unless you want to go to the extent of actually modeling internal organs, vascular system, nerve system etc your idea is hogwash. We don't have the computational power to do that anyway in realtime and play a game as well. If you want to create a mod that has a blank room and you get shot at with arrows and get to see if you die in a realistic manner go ahead, but don't foam at the mouth when others disagree. Your opinion is just that an opinion.

 

Yeah, I'd like to see how much you could do with an arrow in your guts (really I would), but again, it counts as terminal incapacitation, and as far as the game is concerned, it's all over...yet you don't die, you can linger on as long as you choose, and have to end the mission yourself. Kind of voluntary euthanasia if you like

I suppose you could sum my ideas up by saying I'd like to make the player more aware of their digital mortality, to the point where it actually means something to you.

All this death and destruction in games, yet it's all classed as different types of fun.

[Domarius]

Reminded me of this;

http://thedeliverancegame.com/index.html

 

"Action involving conflict results in enemies simply disappearing."

Riiiight. Instead of avoiding physical conflict in the game entirely, let's just remove the consiquences - what a great message to send out to all those Christian kids.

 

And my brother's comment on the game;

"You'll go face to face with Pharaoh, unleash deadly plagues, free the slaves...and part the Red Sea."

 

I don't get it... what's the point in removing such a small amount of violence when you can unleash deadly plagues and strike people down with lightning!? How is that more pleasant?

 

And heh, not even in a bible game does a female avoid muling around back-breaking breasts.

[Nyarlathotep]

There is no need to be rude either. If a person is as rude as that, calling people cunts for having a normal job, it only points to the lack of valid supporting points. When you resort to demonizing a group instead of providing examples and engaging in discussion you have just shown you are too foolish to find any real support for your argument.

A lesson you and oDDity both need to learn is that not all fallacies are equal, and context matters greatly. Most insults (or rather, name-calling) are not ad hominems, and as far as fallacies go, ad hominems are rather tame. Besides, a valid argument need not rely on all its premises to stand. You can be rude and abrasive when you know you're right, and oDDity has adequately supported his arguments for limiting saves--just not in this thread. He has every right to restate his opinions without providing a treatise every damn time.

 

I'm rather surprised you took offense to such a clearly hyperbolic statistic when it was in no way directed towards you as a person, nor having any qualification that would single out you as actually being in that 99% (except perhaps actually being a cheater--in which case you have no right to take exception). What gives?

 

Fun like beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The funny thing about generalizations is that they're generally wrong. Beauty is objective, and so is fun. There are set of rules describing what makes each that way, but there's plenty of room for variation.

[sparhawk]

He has every right to restate his opinions without providing a treatise every damn time.

 

Which does NOT mean that he must present his opinions in the usuall rude way. It was alrady said, that a person, which might be superior in a specific area, doesn't automtiaclly have the right to be rude to others, based on this superiority. And it was also said, that people have been kicked frmo positions DESPITE being superior in their position, just because they were unneccessary rude all the time.

[Nyarlathotep]

I'm not apologizing for his behavior. A troll is a troll, but that doesn't mean that they're automatically wrong (genetic fallacy). You can be abrasive if you're right, but there are still bounds.

[OrbWeaver]

Beauty is objective, and so is fun.

 

Half-right, and utterly wrong.

 

It is true that what most people define as "beauty" tends to be fairly consistent -- facial symmetry, proportions approaching the "golden ratio", etc. However the word "beauty" can apply to more things than just the proportions of the face and body, and may include other things such as attitude, personality or intelligence which are most certainly NOT objective with regards to other people's preferences. I won't even look at some overpainted flouncing tart who walks down the street like some kind of princess, even though that same person's face might rate highly on the "beauty" scale.

 

Objective fun on the other hand is absolute nonsense. I know many people whose idea of "fun" is to go to noisy clubs and get drunk with loads of other people, but to others like me that is more akin to torture.

[oDDity]

Heh, yeah, there's way too many of those peroxide blonde tarts with the hair extensions and tan from a bottle and so much mascara they look like albino pandas where I live as well. I'd say a good 30 percent of girls from 13 to 30 look like that around here. It seems they all want to look the same - or more likely the same as some image of beauty they've seen in a magazine.

It's a look I've never found remotely attractive, and don't understand how anyone else does either.

I still remember that photo of the American Ryder cup team's wives though. Every one of them looked like that.

[sxotty]

Thanks for enbolding that keyword.

All games have rules, without them you have no game.

Without any rules you may be right, without some you have a game still. It just happens to be a different one.

 

Break the rules, try to squirm your way around them, try to find loopholes and exploits that are there (and not because of any decision that was made by the developers, but because of mistakes and inadequacy of them) and it's cheating.

Whether you find this cheating to be 'fun' or not is irrelevant, the term 'cheat' still applies to you.

Most rapists find rape agreeable, but they're sill rapists.

 

Rapist have to have someone to rape. Another individual is being harmed. Who is harmed when someone cheats in a singleplayer game? Is hopping onto a ledge cheating? How do you know the map maker intended you have access? What if the AI cannot deal with it? Ever watched Q2DQ? Was that cheating? That is still only your opinion unfortunately. There is no possible way to play a game as you suggest unless you email the developer and ask them what they intended. Worthless scum is not usually a title applied to persons that did nothing wrong, yet what wrong is there in cheating in a singleplayer game to begin with? Is it wrong or right?

 

The question I find more relevant on this topic is what provides an interesting challenge? That is what I desire from a game.

 

Well, done, and I hope you polish your medal every night, but it's not really appropriate in the game to have someone who helps you hobble around the maps on your busted leg.

If you bust your leg, you're incapacitated, and as far as the mission is concerned, it's game over.

He could walk by himself. He had to move slow and be careful, and it was greatly beneficial for him to have help to move faster, but he definitely could walk slowly and carefully, kind of like the "thief" sneaks about slow and careful...He was punished with pain, and sometimes people faint from that I suppose...

And why is it inappropriate to have help? In game worlds people don’t or should not help others?

 

I suppose you could sum my ideas up by saying I'd like to make the player more aware of their digital mortality, to the point where it actually means something to you.

Fine, but is there a point? I don’t profess to know why people play games in every case, but I do assert that part of the reason is precisely to escape their mortality and become some ridiculous hero. Further death in game already means something, you just want it to mean something more. It has been tried and the plebes (or whatever silly thing you called those who support the videogame industry) did not approve. If you have such an abundance of cash why don’t you develop your own game? You can pay your underlings to build it exactly like you want. Then you can proudly show how well people have taken to your idea.

 

Half-right, and utterly wrong.

 

It is true that what most people define as "beauty" tends to be fairly consistent -- facial symmetry, proportions approaching the "golden ratio", etc. However the word "beauty" can apply to more things than just the proportions of the face and body, and may include other things such as attitude, personality or intelligence which are most certainly NOT objective with regards to other people's preferences. I won't even look at some overpainted flouncing tart who walks down the street like some kind of princess, even though that same person's face might rate highly on the "beauty" scale.

 

 

There are many beautiful things that are not feminine faces, the human form, or psyche. Beauty of the human form has been studied and beaten to death, but what of the beauty of a mountain? Is the paramount the quintessential mountain? The Eiger? People tend to disagree on such issues. Some think a swamp is beautiful others a desert or grassland. They do not necessarily agree.

[oDDity]

I don’t profess to know why people play games in every case, but I do assert that part of the reason is precisely to escape their mortality and become some ridiculous hero. Further death in game already means something, you just want it to mean something more. It has been tried and the plebes (or whatever silly thing you called those who support the videogame industry) did not approve. If you have such an abundance of cash why don’t you develop your own game? You can pay your underlings to build it exactly like you want. Then you can proudly show how well people have taken to your idea.

Oh, I fully agree. The army of vacuous individuals who currently make up 95% of the games industry customer base are not worth crossing the street to spit on, and they are getting exactly the sort of endless repetitive crap that they want an deserve.

The games industry is now a moneymaking scheme that produces endless generic titles as a means of generating profits for shareholders, nothing more.

This however, is not a commercial enterprise, and we have nothing to lose and no one to answer to, which is why I have been saying from the very start that we had a great opportunity to innovate wihtout fear.

[sxotty]

Oh, I fully agree. The army of vacuous individuals who currently make up 95% of the games industry customer base are not worth crossing the street to spit on, and they are getting exactly the sort of endless repetitive crap that they want an deserve.

The games industry is now a moneymaking scheme that produces endless generic titles as a means of generating profits for shareholders, nothing more.

This however, is not a commercial enterprise, and we have nothing to lose and no one to answer to, which is why I have been saying from the very start that we had a great opportunity to innovate wihtout fear.

 

 

Well if that is all your are suggesting I see nothing wrong with it really and in fact would support it to a great extent. Mod teams do provide great innovation. It seems to be honest that there was more time to innovate back in the days of quake1-2 era though than now. Content takes up so much time there seems no room to ponder new ideas. Not all innovations need be miraculous and huge either some simple ones are nice as well.

 

 

Many of the suggestions you made above though seem to be easily included. For example death or not seems fairly trivial to implement, limited saves etc... if that is to be the case I still don't see the harm in simply having a console variable to allow the user the choice of what type of game they want to play.

I do not see it as the role of the game developer to be a dictator of the player, I see it as the creator of the universe they play in. Perhaps you see it differently and think that you should force the player to play the game the way you intended it to be played.

 

A rather generic locational damage system does not seem that hard and could add greatly to the game play. One as simple as hurt legs means you walk slow, hurt one arm means, no use of bow or any two handed weapons. Both arms and no more weapons or climbing. You could escape and walk though still. If there are not dogs after you escape in real life is often quite achievable even if hurt fairly badly. Though drowning along the way or dying later of infection are also much more likely, and neither would be terribly fun unless the player actually has some way to manage/fight against such things.

 

Mod teams have the option of building it for themselves completely or building it for others. Anywhere on that continuum, but if they want others to utilize and appreciate their work then they must at some level cater to their desire.

 

Realism up to a point in games is great IMO, but if you press to far it simply becomes boring unless there is something else like a very compelling narrative or incredible places to explore to pick up the slack. Anyway that is enough I shouldn't have intruded I suppose it just seemed unfair to characterize huge swaths of people in what I believed was a negative and undeserved manner.

Edited April 24, 2007 by sxotty

[oDDity]

Well if that is all your are suggesting I see nothing wrong with it really and in fact would support it to a great extent. Mod teams do provide great innovation. It seems to be honest that there was more time to innovate back in the days of quake1-2 era though than now. Content takes up so much time there seems no room to ponder new ideas. Not all innovations need be miraculous and huge either some simple ones are nice as well.

Many of the suggestions you made above though seem to be easily included. For example death or not seems fairly trivial to implement, limited saves etc... if that is to be the case I still don't see the harm in simply having a console variable to allow the user the choice of what type of game they want to play.

I do not see it as the role of the game developer to be a dictator of the player, I see it as the creator of the universe they play in. Perhaps you see it differently and think that you should force the player to play the game the way you intended it to be played.

Yes, I see it very differently.

There's no point using words like 'dictating' and 'forcing' the player to do such and such.

You are 'forced' to move your bishops diagonally in chess, its 'dictated' by the 'rules', but that doesn't mean chess was invented by fascists and mind-controlling bigots..

The real world as plenty of hard rules as well, and I don't see why you want to single computer games out as areas devoid of rules.

 

We are a long way away from being able to make total immersion computer games where you can just let a player lose in a virtual world and expect them to have fun for any length of time, and even then you're going to need more or less abstracted systems to portray things such as health and death.

 

I want to see health and death of avatars become a major thing in games, becasue currently it's nothing but the most minor of inconveniences.

The closest we've been to that is perma-death on some MMO game servers - i.e. if your character dies, even if it's taken you a year to build him up, he's dead for good, no resurrection.

[Dunedain]

They used to have that in Star Wars: Galaxies, as a natural, organic way to control the number of Jedi. And it kept the number of Jedi to at least a somewhat realistic level, since Jedi are supposed to be very rare at this time in Star Wars. Then, as usually happens in MMORPG's, they started to cater to the lowest common denominator, by first eliminating perma death for Jedi, and then making it not even hard to become a Jedi. Now anyone can be a Jedi, right from character creation even. Which means you have Jedi running around all over the place now, which greatly damages the authentic believable Star Wars atmosphere that SWG once had.