Suggestion - scouting orb and playing death

[freyk]

I was watching on YouTube some playthroughs of thief 2 and thieveryut.

And i saw an object that i would love to see in tdm: the scouting orb.

It comes in handy in some missions.

 

Another idea is playing death.

Just Lying on the ground and only you can move your head.

Guard will investigate you and later ignore you. But if you move your head, you are been seen.

 

Whats your opinion about this?

Edited June 21, 2015 by freyk

[Sotha]

I was watching on YouTube some playthroughs of thief 2 and thieveryut.

And i saw an object that i would love to see in tdm: the scouting orb.

It comes in handy in some missions.

 

Another idea is playing death.

Just Lying on the ground and only you can move your head.

Guard will investigate you and later ignore you. But if you move your head, you are been seen.

 

Whats your opinion about this?

 

Scouting orb would be fun for a gadget-oriented thief character. A mapper could make one as a custom asset for their mission.

 

Playing dead is a bad idea and would make no sense at all.

[New Horizon]

The scouting orb was tied to Garrett's mechanical eye. So unless an fm author stated that the character in their fm also had a mechanical eye it wouldn't make much sense.

[freyk]

Playing dead is a bad idea and would make no sense at all.

Some examples:

- When escaping a guard and youve been shot. Lie down around a corner. The guard investigate your body, thinks youre dead and walk away.

- maybe as an distraction.

 

Some other ideas:

Bringing the spiderbot 2025 (from the tdm-mediapage) to life?

[Bikerdude]

Calling Obstortte.....

[SeriousToni]

 

Playing dead is a bad idea and would make no sense at all.

Indeed. I would find this very silly too.

 

The scouting orb was tied to Garrett's mechanical eye. So unless an fm author stated that the character in their fm also had a mechanical eye it wouldn't make much sense.

Yes, or you would use a mirror or something instead of the eye. But I think mostly sneaking around the corner will simply do it.

[161803398874989]

 

 

Playing dead is a bad idea and would make no sense at all.

Why wouldn't it? It could be an interesting gameplay mechanic. Get hit by an arrow, pretend to be dead, and see if the guards fall for it. Could work as a last-ditch effort, and it'd get the guards off your back, but you run the risk of getting found out, and if they do they basically get in a free shot. It also allows you to more or less reset the guard patrols after getting discovered since they think you're dead now, and that could definitely encourage continuing to play after getting found out.

[Springheel]

see if the guards fall for it. Could work as a last-ditch effort, and it'd get the guards off your back,

 

 

Because the guards are just going to ignore the dead body of an intruder in the middle of the dining room and wander off? I know AI act unreasonably sometimes for gameplay purposes, but that would pushing things to ridiculous levels, IMO. You might as well add a mechanic that allows the player to put a lampshade on his head and pretend to be furniture. See if the guards fall for it.

[Sotha]

Why wouldn't it? It could be an interesting gameplay mechanic. Get hit by an arrow, pretend to be dead, and see if the guards fall for it. Could work as a last-ditch effort, and it'd get the guards off your back, but you run the risk of getting found out, and if they do they basically get in a free shot. It also allows you to more or less reset the guard patrols after getting discovered since they think you're dead now, and that could definitely encourage continuing to play after getting found out.

 

Scenario:

I am a medieval guard.

I see a thief

I shoot an arrow at him. I hit. He falls down.

 

The one thing I'm NOT gonna do is call it a day and wander off. The one thing I definately will do is walk to the body and push my sword to their throat to make sure they are dead.

Otherwise the thief might come back to get some revenge for the arrow I put in him.

 

And that is just the realism argument. Spring already gave the gameplay argument, which is much more valuable than the realism argument.

[Oldjim]

I definitely agree with Sotha as that is what I would do and also with Spring from a realism perspective.

I might add that I also get a bit peeved when the guards go on alert when they see a guard which I killed but completely ignore one who is killed by another guard

[Agent Jones]

Because the guards are just going to ignore the dead body of an intruder in the middle of the dining room and wander off? I know AI act unreasonably sometimes for gameplay purposes, but that would pushing things to ridiculous levels, IMO. You might as well add a mechanic that allows the player to put a lampshade on his head and pretend to be furniture. See if the guards fall for it.

Why not? I can already put a crate on my head and the AI won't notice me because I'm in the dark.

(don't mind the blocky room)

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm going to add the Thieving Lampshade™ as a gameplay mechanic to my FM!

[Springheel]

If it's true ai aren't noticing you because you're holding a crate, something has broken. Shadows cast by held objects should have no affect on the lightgem.

[demagogue]

Playing dead sounds good as a nice one-off gimmick for an FM, for story or variety, but not as a general feature. I'd personally like authors to experiment with that kind of special mechanism in their own FMs.

[Agent Jones]

If it's true ai aren't noticing you because you're holding a crate, something has broken. Shadows cast by held objects should have no affect on the lightgem.

Don't worry, I wasn't holding the crate: I dropped it on my head. I guess it's working as intended.

[SeriousToni]

Haha, can you even move with the crate on the head or will that make you lose it?

[Springheel]

Don't worry, I wasn't holding the crate: I dropped it on my head. I guess it's working as intended.

 

Congratulations, you found a silly exploit. Most games have them. They're usually not a reason to intentionally add other silly exploits.

[Agent Jones]

 

Congratulations, you found a silly exploit. Most games have them. They're usually not a reason to intentionally add other silly exploits.

I wasn't serious. If I put it in a mission, the mission won't be entirely serious

 

Haha, can you even move with the crate on the head or will that make you lose it?

No, getting up or moving makes me lose it.

[Petike the Taffer]

The scouting orb was tied to Garrett's mechanical eye. So unless an fm author stated that the character in their fm also had a mechanical eye it wouldn't make much sense.

 

One workaround I could think of is that the character has some sort of semi-magical VR glasses equivalent in his inventory. These fulfill the same role as Garrett's one mechanical eye, but they'd offer more of a binoculars-style view of the scene. Whenever the player drops a scouting orb equivalent somewhere, the character puts on the glasses and can observe stuff.

 

The downside to the device would be that it's not comfortable to wear, given its primitive magitech nature. It could also relay the vision in a slightly blurred fashion, like the eye did in TDS (though not as drastically). These two properties would discourage its overuse as a tool and make it more of a trump card only for some particularly useful situations.

[Epifire]

Not sure if there is already a possible implementation of it. But something I think that would be kinda cool, as a "last chance" mechanic is sort of this near death thing seen in the main hub world in Thief: Deadly Shadows. Basically some other entity of sorts that would define when the player couldn't actually die, but was spawned/moved somewhere else and with altered health/equipment loadout. Could make for some interesting Pavelock Prison scenarios.

[VanishedOne]

That should be possible via http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Custom_Death