Questions about features

[Moon Hoplite]

I have a question. Will these features be released in the near future? Like:

 

AI which is more similar, or better than the AI in the original Thief? Like when a guard finds a dead body, he will yell for help, but not run and find help. They will investigate the location of heard sounds...

 

 

More sound effects and voices? Like exclamations from guards, etc... How can you prevent 2 guards repeating the same speeches simultaneously?

 

 

Temple guards carrying hammers with 2 hands?

 

 

More fluent and smooth movement from NPC's in combat, as well as charging abilities for them? Better and more animations overall? If you run backwards during combat, you will know what I mean. They follow and stop, then follow then stop, then eventually take a semi-charge.

 

 

Being able to block and knock-out people easily with a blackjack?

 

 

Backstab with sword animations?

 

 

Guards getting startled with animations for a few seconds, when discovering you. I found it wierd and hard when a guard would immediately start striking at me when he found me.

 

 

 

I still enjoyed the mod a lot (initial 1.0 release), and I find it very solid. I find it harder than the original Thief. I didn't find many bugs, except some missing AI features, smoothness and animations primarily.

 

As you can see, these things aren't anything major, but if included will make the darkmod as complete as a normal Thief game...

I'm just curious if the team will be able to release these features either soon or maybe in the far future. Good work anyways, I hope my post doesn't offend any developers, since I know that you guys put in a lot of hard work into the Darkmod 1.0, and that it is only a BETA release...

Edited October 19, 2009 by Moon Hoplite

[Mortem Desino]

Just skimming through these, I see some features that had to be pushed aside for a moment to get TDM released sometime before 2025.

 

And I notice you're having problems blackjacking; Is this an issue only in specific places? Can you be more specific?

 

Oh yeah: Good to hear that you're enjoying TDM. Words of thanks are always appreciated.

[Moon Hoplite]

Just skimming through these, I see some features that had to be pushed aside for a moment to get TDM released sometime before 2025.

 

And I notice you're having problems blackjacking; Is this an issue only in specific places? Can you be more specific?

 

Oh yeah: Good to hear that you're enjoying TDM. Words of thanks are always appreciated.

 

Thanks, I look forward to it .

 

It is very hard to blackjack guards/thugs when they are checking bodies (ie. crouching). I probably shouldn't have mentioned anything about the blackjack, since I am mostly fine with it now. I need to think before I post :S...

[Manwe]

And I notice you're having problems blackjacking; Is this an issue only in specific places?

 

I've got troubles blackjacking personally with the way I play. Basically I've got autorun and toggle crouch enabled, so when I want to get near an enemy I have to hold shift to walk, then I have to press ctrl with the same finger to stand up while still holding shift (which is just impossible), and then I have to aim for the head. Thief did something great with the auto-stand up feature when brandishing your blackjack, and it did it for a reason. Because having to hold two different keys and pressing a third one to accomplish a simple action is a terrible idea. I can understand why some really hardcore players would want to remove it, but I think it should be left as an option in the settings.

 

Because coupled with the fact that you can't approach an enemy from behind without being crouched and walking and the fact that if you bump in the enemy he will notice your presence, it makes blackjacking very random and almost impossible most of the time. Maybe that was the point but the result is that we end up not using it at all as it becomes harder than ghosting. In thief the challenge was to ghost the levels, here the challenge is to knock-out the guards.

[HappyCheeze]

 

Because coupled with the fact that you can't approach an enemy from behind without being crouched and walking and the fact that if you bump in the enemy he will notice your presence, it makes blackjacking very random and almost impossible most of the time. Maybe that was the point but the result is that we end up not using it at all as it becomes harder than ghosting. In thief the challenge was to ghost the levels, here the challenge is to knock-out the guards.

Are you aware of the creep command? You walk very slowly, thus allowing you to "creep" up on enemies. Check your controls for it.

[Springheel]

Basically I've got autorun

 

That's the problem. I know some people do it, but I have yet to understand why anyone would have autorun set on a stealth game.

[Wormrat]

Neither creeping nor crouching is necessary, at least if you're on wood or stone. Also, the blackjack has a deceptively long range; you don't need to stand right to them, so bumping into the AIs shouldn't be much of a problem.

[SneaksieDave]

You can also lean forward for further reach.

[Manwe]

I can't really use creep, I wouldn't know which key to bind it too since I don't use alt or caps lock. I never used it in the original games either because it was unnecessary. I'll probably try to play without autorun on though and see if that makes things easier. I'll get used to it eventually anyway. The thing is I'm so used to the thief controls it's hard to adapt to something else.

[Mortem Desino]

I can't really use creep, I wouldn't know which key to bind it too since I don't use alt or caps lock. I never used it in the original games either because it was unnecessary. I'll probably try to play without autorun on though and see if that makes things easier. I'll get used to it eventually anyway. The thing is I'm so used to the thief controls it's hard to adapt to something else.

I've just got "x" bound to crouch and "ctrl" to creep. If you're a fan of T1's wadx, you can bind "f" to crouch and "v" to creep.

[Komag]

I always map all my games to ESDF, so I get an extra column of keys to work with on the left (QAZ)

[Goldchocobo]

I've got troubles blackjacking personally with the way I play. Basically I've got autorun and toggle crouch enabled, so when I want to get near an enemy I have to hold shift to walk, then I have to press ctrl with the same finger to stand up while still holding shift (which is just impossible), and then I have to aim for the head. Thief did something great with the auto-stand up feature when brandishing your blackjack, and it did it for a reason. Because having to hold two different keys and pressing a third one to accomplish a simple action is a terrible idea. I can understand why some really hardcore players would want to remove it, but I think it should be left as an option in the settings.

 

Because coupled with the fact that you can't approach an enemy from behind without being crouched and walking and the fact that if you bump in the enemy he will notice your presence, it makes blackjacking very random and almost impossible most of the time. Maybe that was the point but the result is that we end up not using it at all as it becomes harder than ghosting. In thief the challenge was to ghost the levels, here the challenge is to knock-out the guards.

 

Blackjacking really isn't hard. Walk up (no need to creep, unless they are paranoid) behind them, and AIM FOR THE HEAD. Don't bump into them either. Its really not hard after a mission or two of practice. Unlike T1 and T2, you cannot BJ them by hitting the back, or feet, for that matter.

Also, running around, being unmindful of guards and such isn't a good idea either. T1 and T2 you could run, BJ, run, BJ, run-jump-bj. A little more care and precision is required.

Personally I love the new BJing feel - so much more realistic and rewarding.

Thanks for the comments, we hope your having fun regardless

[Crispy]

Thief did something great with the auto-stand up feature when brandishing your blackjack, and it did it for a reason.

I didn't even realise it had that feature! I always stood up manually before blackjacking.

 

In TDM I use WASD plus toggle crouch bound to F, which makes it really easy. No sense crippling yourself by putting crouch and run on Shift and Ctrl and also using run-toggle - that just sounds like a needlessly awkward control setup to me.

[Komag]

Also I personally HATE the auto-stand up "feature" of Thief, I have gotten used to quickly pressing crouch again every time I swing my blackjack and want to stay crouched (like to attack spiders, bang on chests, hit someone sleeping, whatever)

[Weasel]

What I miss is the ability to bind keys to walk, run, and creep such that only that key needs to be pressed to move forward at that speed (as opposed to a modifier and "forward" at the same time). Is there a way I can set that up easily?

[Baddcog]

I've noticed a few people complain about similar thing. But you can bind whatever keys you want in game or editor, so that's a moot point.

 

I also like having to do more stuff than haveing the game do it on auto. Makes it more fun and challenging IMO. I can see wanting things quicker in a fast paced game (I turned on auto reload I TeamFortress2 awhile back. It improved my gameplay quite a bit I think, but you've got 16 people to watch for, firing rockets, bullets, etc... at you. A split second timing on reload matters).

 

But in DarkMod it's all about taking your time, thinking things through... Running makes tons of noise and in most cases leads to fighting or more running alert guards and trying to hide... It really fights you so having it as an auto feature would just make it more frustrating. Most of the time you really don't need to run anyway. Certianly all of the currently released missions are just to small to run around in.

I can see using it in a really big mission where you need to go to the other side of the city and have possibly BJ'ed everyone anyway. But using shift to run sometimes is no biggie.

 

I actually think Komags solution of ESDF sounds pretty good, I may have to try it. Especially since 'unload weapons' shifts all weapons over from standard Thief controls.

 

I feel creep is a much more important keybind than run.

-

I also bump into back of guards once in awhile, I think it's just gettinng used to the difference between T2 and DarkMod. T2 AI were fairly dumb when it came to that stuff so I think DarkMod AI are improved in some ways , especially BJ'ing.

[STiFU]

What I miss is the ability to bind keys to walk, run, and creep such that only that key needs to be pressed to move forward at that speed (as opposed to a modifier and "forward" at the same time). Is there a way I can set that up easily?

I guess it's doable, but you'd have to write your own scripts for that. I don't know the right syntax anymore but you can write two scripts, one beeing fired when you start pressing a key and the other when you release it again. I guess you could hack _forward and _speed into that. The problem is: bind "w" "_speed; _forward" does not work. As soon as there is an semicolon in the command neither _speed nor _forward works.

 

I prefer to have run a toggle-button...