Alerting the guards etc. with ambient noise

[Oldjim]

This is something which has often puzzled me

Sneaking near a guard and making a small noise will alert him but crouching right behind him and opening a sewer hatch, as an example, which makes a loud creaking squeaky noise doesn't alert the guard

Is it possible to alter things so that any noise alerts the guards rather than just ones made by the player moving

[SteveL]

This strikes me as odd too, but I assume it must be by design. Doors including sewer hatches make no noise that AI can hear. I played the NHAT beta too recently and I think I know the sewer hatch you have in mind: that creaky one 6 inches behind the builder guard who's standing over it... feels like cheating There's probably a good reason -- too many map layouts might need artificially silenced doors for example -- but I wonder if there's a way for mappers to control it by applying some kind of stim to a creaky hatch? Or would that just upset players by the unpredictability of it?

[Springheel]

You can make door noise alert ai. I've done it before, though it's not great for regular doors because ai treat it suspicious regardless of who opens it. For a sewer door it would be fine. Setting sounds as suspicious isn't something mappers are used to thinking about, though. I'm not even sure I did it for the sewer grates in my own mission.

[SeriousToni]

I also had this sewer door in mind which felt a bit odd not to alert the guard right in front of it

But in matters of gameplay I think it's better not to have each door / chest making ai suspicious as soon as you use it.

[RPGista]

 

But in matters of gameplay I think it's better not to have each door / chest making ai suspicious as soon as you use it.

 

Hmmm, to tell you the truth, I cant think of a single reason opening creaking doors would not be a valid way of alerting guards, gameplay wise. If you dont speculate on existing maps that might become harder because of it, theres really very little reason not to. Sure, it could make it frustating for players that open a door that happens to have a guard standing right on the other side, thus alerting him without the player being able to avoid it, but apart from that (which is, if we are honest, basicly a bad mapping design choice) most situations would become just a matter of making sure no guards are walking right next to you a meter away before you open a door. Doing that would be silly anyway because some doors might have an alert stim to them and could alert someone passing by regardless, so its basic common sense. And you can also overhear whats happening the other side of a door, to make sure noone is walking around on that side as well, so thats another dimension to it.

 

This could in fact make it interesting as a new feature/mechanics, to have Penumbra-like door manipulation - if there was a way of regulating the noise of hinges by operating doors in a slow careful manner, you could create sections of a map where the player has the added suspense of having to navigate the room silently, as well as opening doors and boxes silently, maybe cracking the exit door just enough for him the squease through right behind a bunch of elite guards standing in front of it.

Edited March 10, 2015 by RPGista

[RPGista]

BTW, I would use this sparingly, for specific situations or when AI is really up close, or it could become tedious to have to sloooowly open a treasure chest, trying not to wake up someone sleeping across the room. But if the guy has his head right next to it, that could make for an interesting gameplay situation, why not?

[Professor Paul1290]

 

Hmmm, to tell you the truth, I cant think of a single reason opening creaking doors would not be a valid way of alerting guards, gameplay wise.

 

It depends on the door.

 

It wouldn't make sense for a lot of doors in a typical TDM mission due to the presence of multiple guards and the fact that a lot of doors are opened and closed frequently by other guards over the course of their patrols. Having that kind of door cause an alert when opened wouldn't make sense as it is not outside the behavior a guard would expect as "normal". For those doors the current "briefly look over at the doorway" behavior seems sufficient.

Not all doors are like this of course, and doors that are almost never opened or are not supposed to be open during the time the FM takes place should be treated as suspicious if opened. The issue there is that this is currently up to the FM authors and it's easy to forget to do this.

 

Perhaps the hypothetical "ideal" (though not necessarily easy or practical) solution may be to have some method or some tool to automatically detect doors that no NPCs will ever open during their normal patrol and automatically treat those doors as suspicious, though I'm not sure how difficult such a tool would be to build or where it would fit in the tool chain even if it is doable.

 

Assuming such a tool is not easily doable, the next best thing may be to try to establish going through and setting up the appropriate doors to cause alerts as a "best practice" when creating FMs.

Edited March 11, 2015 by Professor Paul1290

[SeriousToni]

 

Sure, it could make it frustating for players that open a door that happens to have a guard standing right on the other side, thus alerting him without the player being able to avoid it

 

That's my point

[Destined]

I think it is true, that any uncommon noise should alert guards, but I also think it is quite frustrating as soon as a guard stands right behind the door. Even if you can hear a walking guard, you could not notice a standing guard and have no chance to notice the guard beforehand. Maybe it is possible to implement the abilitiy to look through the keyhole (like in most modern stealth games). That way it is your own fault to not check, wether a guard is standing there and thus your own fault if you open the door.

[RPGista]

Yeah, this doesnt stop creaking sound alerts to be something for future missions, not altering older ones - just make it a spawnarg tag thing like alerts for open doors, all doors that dont have the arg, will not be affected. This way missions will just get more sophisticated as TDM evolves.

 

The thing with "should be closed" tags for doors is that NPCs have to see it open/being opened, while a sound alert would work even if they are standing guard the other way, or in low light situations, it could wake up people, etc.

 

But professor is right about the problem of having guards alerting others by opening "should be closed" doors, wether by sight or sound, Im not sure how that works right now, but definitely something to use only for specific situations, where you know patroling AI will not cause confusion.

Edited March 11, 2015 by RPGista

[Springheel]

Maybe it is possible to implement the abilitiy to look through the keyhole (like in most modern stealth games). That way it is your own fault to not check, wether a guard is standing there and thus your own fault if you open the door.

 

 

Even the ridiculously exaggerated field of vision you get from in-game key-holes wouldn't be enough to tell whether there was a guard right to the side of the door.

 

It's a tricky issue. On the one hand, I think it breaks immersion to open loud doors right next to guards who don't respond. On the other hand, you don't want to penalize players for things they can't control.

 

The approach I tested was to make the door emit a very minor noise--enough for a nearby guard to go to alert 1 (did I hear something?) but not enough for him to leave his post or turn in the direction of the sound. The only problem was guards were responding even when THEY were the ones opening the door, which sounded silly.