Workings Of See-ability?

[FishFace]

Hi,

 

I'm interested as to whether there will be a solution to the old problem of sillhoutting. In T1-3, as long as your body was dark, opponents were unable to see you. Obviously, in real life, you can be as black as night, but if you're in between a guard and very brightly lit, white wall, the big cloak-shaped dark bit would give you away. Is TDM planning to change this at all?

 

I'm not sure whether it would be more fun due to the challenge, or simply more annoying, but I'd like to know, anyway!

[Renzatic]

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say...we MIGHT. I think Ishtvan might have a rudimentary form of silhouette spotting implemented, but I'm not sure if we're gonna use it in the final mod...depends on how well we can get it to work.

[Ishtvan]

Nothing is implemented. It's purely in the discussion phase right now. If it's technologically feasible to do it, we will most likely give it a try.

[Nomad]

Originally posted by Renzatic

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say...we MIGHT.

 

Must have been a very short limb! :lol:

[New Horizon]

It's a good idea, in theory, and we will likely try it out but something like this has the potential to send gameplay in the opposite direction of "a good time". This may sound horrid but I often think of Thief style gameplay as being like Pac Man in a sense. You evade the ghosts in a maze and get the dots. Ghosts happen to be guards, the dots are loot and the mansions are mazes. It's a similar premise....well, in a very archaic fashion I suppose, but you see what I mean. :lol: Thief succeeded on a fairly simple premise...don't allow yourself to be seen or heard.

[Renzatic]

You just shattered the illusion and killed the mood, NH...thanks.

 

Must have been a very short limb! laugh.gif

 

Good thing I didn't climb out too far, cuz I was WRONG! The people on the team aren't keeping me updated with weekly newsletters...like I requested.

[Nomad]

Just having a little fun, Renzatic. The "we might" really cracked me up! :lol:

 

By the way, I've got a whip with red hot catus on the end if you want to borrow it to persued people to keep you updated.

Edited April 12, 2005 by Nomad

[gleeful]

...something like this has the potential to send gameplay in the opposite direction of "a good time".

oh dear, now oDDity will insist you implement it!

[FishFace]

And, after less than a day, I already have nearly a full knowledge of oDDity's reputation. Congratulations, oDDity!

[Ishtvan]

We're still definitley going to try it out though, if we can figure out how to do it without importing military-grade image analysis algorithms into each and every AI.

 

D3's traces are very powerful though... very powerful indeed...

[John D.]

Sounds nice, if it was put in it would add another dimension to stealth. It would be wise to have it extensively playtested to insure it wouldnt be too much of a burden on the player/average CPU.

[Dram]

I have done this in Thievery. Works well (against human players), that is, as long as they obey certain "rules" (ie: No running around hitting shadows randomly, ACTUALLY guarding, etc). It works really well, though the maps had to have no ambient lighting (duh! a black coloured dude stands out against a lightly lit wall), it actually improves the mood. Though this is just me, i ghost, and most of the time i prefer to stay in corners like you really would rather then stand like a dick in a hallway in which a guard is almost CERTAINLY going to walk through. I am still working on getting this to work for AI though, but I think it can be done via a trace from the guards POV to the light sources he can see (or bright walls). Hell, you could even do it simply by putting an invisible object thing which if the player is within a radius of, he can be seen (his lightgem stays on 0 though). The only problem is, that this is a ghosting feature (I'd love it) and so people who have played Thief for years may not really like it. So i think if it is done, it should be done through an option.

[FishFace]

The way I'd think of doing it would be to take a low-res image from the AI's point of view, and then obtain the contrast at the edges of the thief - between him and anything behind him. If the contrast is very low, then you can lower the value for being seen, if it's high, then raise it. This should probably be factored in on top of the lightgem calculations, otherwise it'd be too difficult to actually hide anywhere. This would mean that hiding in deep shadow would afford some protection, even if you where brightly sillhouetted. Likewise, this could mean that if they are in medium brightness, then (as long as the wall behind them is of a similar colour after lighting) they get a bonus.

The problem I foresee is that it will be very difficult to inform the player that, even though their lightgem is pitch black, anyone who looks at them from angle-x will see them perfectly. The other problem is that this will be darn difficult! If you think about your own sight, you can see anyone if they're in deep shadow yet sillhouetted even faintly.

 

If this idea is taken up, it's gonna have to be tested thoroughly to make sure it's not impossible to complete any missions! Perhaps other AI things might have to be taken into account to, to balance the realism of this with other elements, e.g. moving tends to make you extremely visible IRL.

[sparhawk]

Actually I was thinking of this approach long ago but the problem is that you must do this from all AI that potentially can see the player, which might put some strain on the system.

[oDDity]

Well, you could make it all the AI within a certain radius of the player to cut it down, and have a hard limit of 1 or 2 for rare cases where you end up being closly chased by many AI at once - silhouette recognition would not be necessary for all 6 guard in hot pursuit of you.

[FishFace]

There could be some simple checks to cut down on its application, as long as the sillhoetting wasn't the only method determining whether you're visible.

For example, if you're in deep shadow, then even if the wall behind you is bright white, it may be that the factor of the sillhouetting would be such that you'd only be at half-lightgem from that side. Therefore, you needn't sillhouette-test anyone further out than the point at which half a lightgem will stop alerting people, similar applies for being brightly lit.

 

Obviously you only have to test for AI who have you in their line of sight, also.

[Hylix Ulyx]

I always imagined Garrett's (and by association, the Keeper's) power more of an optical illusion than just hiding in shadows.

 

In other words, Garrett could use the shadows to manipulate what others "see" in that darkness, so that, for example, if a Keeper is standing in a "perfect" shadow, even if there was a huge window behind him with the moonlight peircing through, whoever was peering into (or through) the shadow would just see the window.

 

Maybe that seems farfetched, but I think it explains the theory behind Garrett's ability.

 

If you look at it realistically (and I use that word VERY loosely), you need light to see anything....light has to bounce off of an object and back into your eye for it to register.

 

Even if Garrett is standing in front of the window, if he's cloaked in the darkness, the AI would see only a form, because the light isn't "bouncing" off of him.

 

So, now speaking purely theoretically, it would be much harder for Garrett to manipulate what is seen while standing in the light. But in pitch black (even if it's just a patch of shadow), the eye could be tricked into seeing anything Garrett wanted the eye to see, as long as light does not pierce through the shadow (which would, obviously, dissolve said shadow).

 

I envision a "Predator-esque" kind of camoflague, only using darkness instead of light to create the optical illusion.

 

Might sound stupid, but it eliminates the need for the player to worry about WHERE the shadow is.

 

Hylix.

[oDDity]

Garrett or the Keepers are not in our game. Our thief is just a...thief. No speical powers, no mechanical eye, no magic.

[Hylix Ulyx]

I realize that....although the rope arrows, the water arrows, the finely crafted guard wielding a hammer, the light gem, hiding in shadows, lockpicking, the use of the words "steampunk" and "Thief" in the same sentence in the header description of your webpage and other coincidences might make a lesser man believe otherwise.

 

My point was not "Garrett does A, so you should do A."

 

My point was that if you're going to talk about how shadows are used in an obviously Thief inspired mod, then it is perfectly reasonable, acceptable, and expected for me to talk about how shadows are used in the game that inspired the mod.

 

Cut me some slack, Oddity.

 

I'm on your side.

 

Hylix.

[FishFace]

I know what'd be great, albeit perhaps difficult to implement:

 

A circular/spherical lightgem that changed in lightness around its circumference according to how visible you were from that direction. To do this it'd be necessary to calculate these values every frame, which could be slow. However, I was wondering whether taking the light values of things from an angle behind the player, and comparing them to the lightgem value of the player would work well enough?

This wouldn't be as real-life as actually getting the contrast values at the edges of the player, but may well be faster...

 

Just a suggestion.

[Domarius]

Fish face, why would that be great? Why do you need more information than being visible, or not, or somewhere in between?

 

Hylix, that's a good point, but I see it for a different reason. The way the light gem already works is a simplified version of what you'd be doing in real life. You have more options available of how to hide in real life, simply because there's more going on and more things around.

You'd be using more tricks.

 

The existing light gem is a simple simulation of this, for a simple game world.

The same way Thieves in Thievery UT go mostly transparent when in shadow, to emulate the little things you'd be doing in real life to stay hidden.

 

Because your options are more limited in a video game.

 

Implementing sillhouettes would probably be bad for gameplay, since it would break this simplicity.

Edited April 18, 2005 by Domarius

[Dram]

oh oh...

[oDDity]

Cut me some slack, Oddity.

 

I'm on your side.

Hylix.

I'm not being obtuse. Your entire preceeding post was based a theory that our thief should have special powers to make him capable of altering other people's perception of reality.

I'm just telling you that our thief is a normal man like you or I, so it's out of the question. Of course, after the game is released, anyone is free to make the main character anything they wish.

[Hylix Ulyx]

Fair enough.

 

However, I do believe I should have been more specific...or perhaps a bit more clear as to whom I was responding:

 

FishFace opened up this thread with this line:

 

I'm interested as to whether there will be a solution to the old problem of sillhoutting. In T1-3, as long as your body was dark, opponents were unable to see you.

 

My initial response was aimed primarily at that opinion: the Thief game's implementation of stealth was somehow flawed by calling the way shadow-hiding worked an "old problem". Of course, I must also clarify that I'm not saying that opinion was wrong, I was simply relaying my thoughts on why it was implemented that way. (So please don't think I'm in your face, Fish....ahem).

 

I suppose I thought you were being obtuse because the timbre of your reply made it seem as if I was telling your thief how to be more like Garrett, when I am not. So there is no implication on my part that I feel "your" thief should be anything other than what you make it.

 

I'm not just trying to get the last word

I just want to guard against any future ridges developing over whatever assumptions that are made about exactly what I envision when I think of this fine Mod.

 

I also realise that some of the devs might be alittle raw about the comparisons drawn between the project and the inspiration of the project, and/or just how "original" the Mod might appear to others outside of our circle, as well as feeling like others think you're trying to remake T3. I know this is not true.

 

But also, it behooves you to remember why you even bothered to make the Mod in the first place...because you all like Thief. To deny that it is the cornerstone of your project is naive and self-defeating.

 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again....this Mod is a Semi-Truck load of ass-kickery.

 

Hylix.

Edited April 18, 2005 by Hylix Ulyx

[oDDity]

NO one's denying the mod is inspired by Thief. How much or little it's like Thief will be a matter of opinion, I expect some will complain that it's not Thiefy enough, and some have already been complaining that we're too close to Thief already, and should make it different.

It's not jiust legal reasons either, I, for one, don't see the point in making a game that's already been made. This isn't just Thief with better graphics

Sure, this project initially started out as wanting to make a toolset for THief fans, in the absense of any hope of a T3editor, but now that editor has been released, it frees us up to go furthur down our own path..

I'm the rogue dev here in many ways, and one of those ways is that I'd like to see us making a very different game from Thief - basically a medieval stealth simulation, set on real Earth, with no woo, magic or silly tools or items. A real lock picking sim, the way it's done in real life (dram's a lockpicker in RL, and he and Ishivan and I came up with a very nice system), I would also completely revamp the loot system, and many other ideas branded 'too hardcore and realistic' by everyone else on the team)

I just think that there's so much more merit and achievement in us making our own game than making someone else's.

THen again, since none of us have any game making experience, it may be wise not to get too ambitious on the first attempt