my demo impressions and open source

[Chi Haotian]

It's great to see the mod project having advanced so well. Keep up the great work, guys.

[Tels]

Ahem. I'm pretty sure that having AI pick up and use nearby weapons is not on our 1.0 feature list (but feel free to point it out if I'm wrong). Please be careful about making unilateral public promises to include features; make sure they're in the design docs first.

 

If someone goes and adds it off their own bat, that's a different matter of course. (AIs using elevators, anyone?) Point is, we can't promise to add this feature.

 

I didn't say it is in the 1.0 feature list and I especially didn't say that we (or I) promise it in any time, shape or form. But anybody willing can help us. Sorry if my post caused confusion on this.

[Crispy]

OK, that's good, just wanted to avoid misunderstandings.

[HMart]

I also don't like the idea of a crosshair in TDM, but indeed knocking someone out is sometimes a little tricky i add some deaths because of this. About the guards throwing bottles i didn't add any of them do that, i only knew about this feature in the forum. But if they have a infinite supply of bottles them it is indeed strange, how hard would it be for them to pick up small objects in the environment to throw at the player?

[Crispy]

The new melee weapon behaviour, while much better than the old behaviour, probably still needs tweaking since it's a recent addition. It's tricky to get the first-person weapon animation just right for gameplay balance purposes. It's made worse than it would be otherwise because it needs a skilled animator to look at it, and we don't have many of those. (We're always looking for new team members to help us with this stuff!)

 

how hard would it be for them to pick up small objects in the environment to throw at the player?

More trouble than it's worth.

 

The bottles are only really meant to be placeholders, we just haven't got around to figuring out what we should do instead. The simplest thing would be to give the AI an infinite supply of rocks instead of bottles. But then you get people arguing about whether guards would throw rocks around in a mansion near valuable antiques, and wanting mapper-defined zones where rock throwing is not enabled, or different objects are used instead, and the whole thing snowballs! It gets surprisingly complicated for such a small detail. That's not unusual in game development though. You see the kinds of problems we have. We discuss these kinds of issues a lot internally.

[BrokenArts]

If something gets broken, I'm not fixing it!! Put those AI in their place!

[SneaksieDave]

Beyond adjustments and fixes, there's also something to be said for getting used to new systems. TDM's blackjacking is and is intended to be different from Thief's. You can't hop into a Ferrari and expect it to behave like a Kia.

[DrSpock]

The new melee weapon behaviour, while much better than the old behaviour, probably still needs tweaking since it's a recent addition. It's tricky to get the first-person weapon animation just right for gameplay balance purposes. It's made worse than it would be otherwise because it needs a skilled animator to look at it, and we don't have many of those. (We're always looking for new team members to help us with this stuff!)

 

 

More trouble than it's worth.

 

The bottles are only really meant to be placeholders, we just haven't got around to figuring out what we should do instead. The simplest thing would be to give the AI an infinite supply of rocks instead of bottles. But then you get people arguing about whether guards would throw rocks around in a mansion near valuable antiques, and wanting mapper-defined zones where rock throwing is not enabled, or different objects are used instead, and the whole thing snowballs! It gets surprisingly complicated for such a small detail. That's not unusual in game development though. You see the kinds of problems we have. We discuss these kinds of issues a lot internally.

 

I think someone complaining about a guard throwing a rock in a mansion where there are valuables is being a little too nitpicky. This is after all, a game, not a simulation of the real world.

[Komag]

You can't hop into a Ferrari and expect it to behave like a Kia.

 

Ah ha ha!

 

Maybe the previous game(s) should be a Mustang or something with a LITTLE more credit

[Chi Haotian]

Beyond adjustments and fixes, there's also something to be said for getting used to new systems. TDM's blackjacking is and is intended to be different from Thief's.

 

Can the blackjack knockout area be expanded beyond the head? It is physically possible to knock out a person by hitting at the back of the neck as well.

[AluminumHaste]

Can the blackjack knockout area be expanded beyond the head? It is physically possible to knock out a person by hitting at the back of the neck as well.

 

Probably not as the neck is usually covered with thick leather to protect the skin from the chainmail, and the only reason people black out from being hit on the head AFAIK is the quick acceleration of the head in a given direction, like any acceleration faster than 28 feet per second per second, will cause someone to black out.

So while you may kill someone by hitting them hard enough on the neck, I don't think you could knock them out.

[demagogue]

It's a little creepy how you know the physics of concussions so precisely.

[Ishtvan]

I think someone complaining about a guard throwing a rock in a mansion where there are valuables is being a little too nitpicky. This is after all, a game, not a simulation of the real world.

It would actually be easy to have them read a variable on the info_location they're in and have them throw different things in different areas.

[Chi Haotian]

When a player is out of reach but doesn't have too far back to retract, will the guards try to strike at his legs if he is within sword's reach?

[Crispy]

Currently the player will sometimes be counted as "in reach" if he's up on a slightly raised platform (e.g. a crate), and the guard will attack as usual. How this will work after the next round of melee combat changes I don't know, but I imagine that if they didn't still have that behaviour then we'd consider that a significant bug and try to fix it.

 

Short answer: Yes.

[Chi Haotian]

Another good feature I wanted to ask for: head focus. This was implemented in Thief 1; when a guard spotted you and was set to attack you, he would turn his head towards you and he would keep facing you during the fight. This created a special combative feeling of guards staring you down (think Hammerites in Cragscleft). I missed this feature in Thief 2, where guards would just blandly stare into space while fighting you.

 

Could head focus be implemented in Dark Mod?

[Crispy]

Good point. I think maybe they used to, but I just loaded up a testmap and you're right, their heads are moving around rather than focusing on me. I'll track it, but no promises.

[Chi Haotian]

You guys realize you'll have to create a complete, game-size mission pack as well, when you're done with the tool part of the Mod? It would be a waste of talent if you just leave it to the community to make the missions. I hope you put as much care into the level design and plot as you have into the creation of the Mod.

[AluminumHaste]

You guys realize you'll have to create a complete, game-size mission pack as well, when you're done with the tool part of the Mod? It would be a waste of talent if you just leave it to the community to make the missions. I hope you put as much care into the level design and plot as you have into the creation of the Mod.

 

Just quoting off the main page:

 

Our project has two main stages: first, to release a complete series of tools allowing fans to make their own stealth missions, and second, to create a unique campaign using those tools.

 

I hope nothing has changed in regards to this, I am looking forward to more of the same from this team, they are very talented.

[New Horizon]

Just quoting off the main page:

I hope nothing has changed in regards to this, I am looking forward to more of the same from this team, they are very talented.

 

We don't know yet. Things certainly change after spending nearly 5 years of your life working on a project. As we have said recently, there likely won't be a campaign..but there will be several stand alone missions released with and shortly after the mod is made public. I don't think it's unreasonable that the team would like to have their lives back after this. The Thief community is loaded with talent, I don't see why it would be a bad thing to entrust mission building to them...that is who the Mod is being made for after all.

[greebo]

I always expressed my willingness to work on a campaign together with my fellow team members. Whether this happens or not is to be read from the stars - like New Horizon said, it's been a while and TDM demands a lot from your freetime. It's amazing how much freetime you have when you take two weeks off from working on TDM.

 

I'll certainly be around after TDM 1.0, if my help is still needed by that time.

[Chi Haotian]

I always though that creation of a mission pack would also be the stage at which (besides testing and fine-tuning the Mod) you will implement most or all of those features to which you've been saying "not in the v1.0 release" so far. (I hope you're keeping a list of those, not just letting them sit in separate threads on the forum.)

 

And surely you can enlist the help of map-makers from the community; those guys who could not have helped you with the coding and modeling, but who can still make excellent missions using ready tools. This ought to lighten the burden of making the mission pack.

 

(Relegating the creation of the mission pack to the community entirely would only produce a lot of FMs and custom resources and tweaks, but would hardly improve the core Mod itself, IMHO.)

Edited November 15, 2008 by Chi Haotian

[Chi Haotian]

Another good feature I wanted to ask for: head focus. This was implemented in Thief 1; when a guard spotted you and was set to attack you, he would turn his head towards you and he would keep facing you during the fight. This created a special combative feeling of guards staring you down (think Hammerites in Cragscleft). I missed this feature in Thief 2, where guards would just blandly stare into space while fighting you.

 

Could head focus be implemented in Dark Mod?

 

So, how about implementing this next? Seems like a great way of improving AIs' combat at this point.

[Springheel]

Guards should already be looking at you during combat.

[Chi Haotian]

I haven't tried the Mod yet. Only saw combat demonstration vids (and they must be outdated). Great to hear you've implemented that.

Edited November 25, 2009 by Chi Haotian