About Koing

[Domarius]

Of course, smashing a metal pot with a lead weight is going to make a crap load of noise, a factor that could nicely limit the use of BJing without removing it entirely.

Anything that makes the BJ UN-STEALTHY is a no no, since it defeats the purpose and promotes killing as a better alternative.

 

Our current idea for blackjacking makes it a LOT harder than previous (so its' harder to quickly empty the level) but it is still stealthy so more worthwhile than killing, which we're also making it a worse path to take than the previous games - for one thing sound of someone screaming should travel through the whole mansion, and not just into the adjacent rooms... unless all the doors are shut and even then it should get a fair distance before becoming inaudiable. Its the kind of sound that even when far away and quiet, is too disconcerting to ignore.

[obscurus]

Hmm I wonder if I can get hold of a typical mediaeval helmet? There are some mediaeval societies floating around. If I can find a helmet, and I get organised enough, I could do some recordings and SPL measurements of various objects striking said helmet. A sufficiently padded helmet (and all mediaeval helmets I have seen were worn with felt or similar padding for both comfort and absorbing force), with the padding firmly attached to the inside of the helmet will significantly absorb the force of a fairly substantial whack to the head. A leather blackjack filled with shot will also distribute much of its force over a wide area. It wouldn't make that much noise, though it would probably be audible from 20 feet or so, depending on the accoustics of the area. Though audible, it wouldn't necessarily sound obviously like someone being attacked, however...

 

A blackjack of the type in discussion hitting a padded metal helmet will distribute its force over a wide area, and the helmet will absorb a lot of the force and distribute it to the neck. The likelihood of this impact causing a knockout will largely depend on the angle of the blow - from behind the head, it will cause the head to move forward suddenly, and if the brain sloshes enough inside the skull, a knockout will occur, but realisticly, this will happen less than 30% of the time. If the blow is from directly above, the force will cause the vertebrae to compress and possibly break, and the result will be that either the neck is broken, resulting in death, or that the victim will be in excruciating pain, and will likely start screaming blue murder. Noisy guard running around looking for help!

 

In any case, blackjacking someone wearing a helmet or not will be extremely risky in RL, as too much force will kill or severely maim the victim, too little force will simply cause momentary annoyance for the attackee. Therefore, blackjacking helmeted guards should have a random chance of success with a probability of about, say 10% (my guess without actually doing a series of tests) of actually causing a knockout, if you want to be at all realistic about it. and taking into account individual human variation (some people are more prone to blacking out than others), this guestimate should probably be even smaller.

 

since I rarely used the blackjack in Thief (only when the game forced me to, like the first level of T2), I don't care that much, as long as missions don't force me to use the damn thing. Personally it is one of the things I would like to see excluded from TDM, but hey, I'm the minority here so I'll live with it...

 

As far as I am concerned, oDDity is correct: helmeted guards should be extremely hard to KO, to the point of not at all.

[Springheel]

Having a random chance of KOing was discussed and abandoned, as it just encourages reloading. You have no control over whether your KO is successful or not.

 

The plan is to have KOing helmeted guards be more difficult though. We're simulating the need of picking just the right spot on the helmet to transfer the right amount of force to the skull by a 'power up' system. So hitting a regularly helmeted guard may indeed fail, but if it does it will be because you didn't do it right, not because of a random factor outside your control.

 

Of course, there will be guards with layered helmets that cannot be KOed, like the original game. It will be up to the FM author how common they are.

 

This system for blackjacking is based on the following principles:

 

1. Blackjacking should be risky, but not so difficult that it encourages sword or bow use instead

2. It should be easier to KO civilians; it should be harder to KO guards with helmets.

3. The blackjack does no damage (to human AI) unless it hits the AI in the head.

 

The player can make two different attacks with the blackjack. Tapping the Attack button delivers a short, sharp swing that does 5 dmg if it hits the victim's head. This regular hit is sufficient to KO opponents who are unaware and not wearing a helmet. Holding down the Attack button for several (approx 5) seconds delivers a much stronger blow (similar to the way the sword works). This more powerful swing does 15 dmg if it hits the victim's head. This is enough to KO opponent's with regular helmets, as long as they are taken by surprise.

 

While holding down the Attack button, the player is slightly more visible (about the same amount as having the bow out). His movement speed is also reduced slightly as he concentrates on hitting where he can do the most damage. This means the player will have to be more cautious while getting into position for a powerful hit.

 

Hitting an AI on the helmet (whether the KO is successful or not) is going to cause a muffled clang sound, about the same volume as a footstep on a marble floor. While this is not enough to alert guards in another room, it will cause nearby guards to stop what they’re doing and pay attention. Letting the body fall to the floor causes even more noise, and will certainly bring AI to investigate.

[Domarius]

And remember folks - its about emulating the real life difficulty in general, not actually simulating it down to the finest detail (which is impossible).

 

Creeping around isnt as simple as holding a creep button in real life, you'd be doing all these subtle ninja techniques like bending your body to the shape of shadows, or placing your feet in exactly the right way to avoid creeking floorboards.

 

Pickpocketing in real life isn't as sipmle as pressing a use button - you have to act and behave in an inconspicuous way with all your body language, and the actual act of pick pocketing might be a stumble into them "oops excuse me".

 

This kind of detail isn't feasible in a video game.

 

So for creeping, we make you make noise on certain floors, even though "realistically" you'd be wearing cloth boots.

 

And for pick pocketing, we make the rule that your light gem must be below a certain value regardless if your victim is facing you or not, even though "realistically" a lot of pick pocketing goes on in broad daylight and actually depends on which way they're facing.

 

As much as oDD wants ultimate realism, you have to simplify things for a video game, because it is a simplified version of reality.

[obscurus]

I think it is reasonable, if you are going to have blackjacks and KOs, that it requires a level of skill on the part of the player to do it just right, as in RL, successfully KOing someone without killing them or seriously injuring them would take a great deal of practise and finesse. The higher level swing you have described should kill un-helmeted victims to be a bit more realistic, so the player will have to be more careful when they attack AI with the blackjack. I think you have a pretty fair system going there, though I still would prefer the option of dropping the blackjack, and maybe replacing it with something else, perhaps a thiefy tool of some sort.

 

 

Can the player drop weapons and replace them with others? For example, in Far Cry, you can press the drop key, and you drop your currently selected weapon, and can then replace it with another. I would like to be able to discard all the weapons in favour of carrying more tools: I prefer tool and puzzle based adventure thievery to bludgeoning and hacking with a bit of sneaking around in shadows, how much of that style (the former) will TDM support out of the box?

 

I am planning a stealth based adventure game in which combat of any sort is basically non-existent, and I think TDM will be my best bet toolset wise, but I'd like to know how much further customisation I'll need to do to get my ideas off the ground...

 

Keep up the fantastic work by the way!

[obscurus]

And remember folks - its about emulating the real life difficulty in general, not actually simulating it down to the finest detail (which is impossible).

 

Creeping around isnt as simple as holding a creep button in real life, you'd be doing all these subtle ninja techniques like bending your body to the shape of shadows, or placing your feet in exactly the right way to avoid creeking floorboards.

 

Pickpocketing in real life isn't as sipmle as right clicking - you have to act and behave in an inconspicuous way with all your body language, and the actual act of pick pocketing might be a stumble into them "oops excuse me".

 

This kind of detail isn't feasible in a video game.

 

So for creeping, we make you make noise on certain floors, even though "realistically" you'd be wearing cloth boots.

 

And for pick pocketing, we make the rule that your light gem must be below a certain value regardless if your victim is facing you or not, even though "realistically" a lot of pick pocketing goes on in broad daylight and actually depends on which way they're facing.

 

As much as oDD wants ultimate realism, you have to simplify things for a video game.

 

 

 

True, without the tactile and non-auditory/visual feedback you get in real life, it is very difficult to make a realistic deep reality simulator where you can role-play a thief. That said, I think there are areas where you could quite reasonably boost the realism without any negative consequence, provided you dispense with a few long-held gaming traditons.

 

For example, take footstep sounds. One of the main reasons the sounds "have to be" made unrealisticly loud is because of the decision to have ambient background music. I personally hate ambient music in games, and I always turn it off when the game gives me that option. If you don't have the music, you can make things like footstep sounds and other ambient sounds much more realistic, because you aren't trying to hear yourself over a meta-game thing like music. I personally find games to be generally much more immersive and atmospheric without music, provided that the sound design is good. Turning off the music in a game very quickly shows up any deficiencies in the games sound design... The sensation of movement can also be simulated with carefully designed view-bob, thus further negating the need for boosting footsep sounds to an unrealistic level. I would prefer unrealisticly exaggerated view bob as my feedback than unrealistic sound design. But that is just me I guess...

 

Some things, like pickpocketing, can't be at all realistically implemented in a game, but other things can.

 

And realisticly, a thief would be wearing soft shoes that make little sound on hard marble tiles, but wooden floorboards are almost impossible ot walk on quietly regardless of footware in RL, so wooden floors should be the noisy floortype, marble tiles should be fairly quiet. There is no reason not to do it that way, except for sticking blindly to the unrealistic precedent set by Thief. Computer game technology has come a long way since Thief, so there is no reason to clone all of the defects in the original Thief when you can improve on the original.

 

And don't give me any of that "but X realism feature isn't good gameplay" BS - gameplay is what you want it to be, and is entirely subjective. Some people find resource management sims to be good gameplay, others find them boring. Same goes for a lot of features in Thief. I consider many aspects of Thief to be very poor gameplay, and my enjoyment of it comes from the gameplay features I like, while trying my best to ignore the gameplay I found annoying.

 

but I reiterate, keep up the fantastic work!

[sparhawk]

for one thing sound of someone screaming should travel through the whole mansion, and not just into the adjacent rooms...

 

We are used to Oddity telling crap, but now you start too? Sounds travel according to their volume and are propagated properly. There is no death-scream-is-heard-everywhere exception. The only exceptions are extremely loud (explosions) or environmental sounds (like thunder crashing).

[OrbWeaver]

What a coincidence, I was about to suggest exactly what Springheel described: a two-level blackjacking system similar to the sword.

[oDDity]

We are used to Oddity telling crap, but now you start too? Sounds travel according to their volume and are propagated properly. There is no death-scream-is-heard-everywhere exception. The only exceptions are extremely loud (explosions) or environmental sounds (like thunder crashing).

 

Now you're talking crap. A loud scream in the dead of night would travel through a whole mansion.

[sparhawk]

Sure.

[Springheel]

Can the player drop weapons and replace them with others?

 

You will be able to drop any equipment you want during the purchase screen, so if you want to start the level without a blackjack (or without any equipment at all, in fact) you can.

 

You'll also be able to try and KO guards with objects you find in the level itself, like broken chair legs or heavy candlestick holders.

 

As for the scream, the 'death barks' in Thief were always underdone, I thought. Our plan is to include more realistic screams of pain/distress, which DO travel a lot further than yells.

[Domarius]

That's right. Spar, surely with kids you must wake up to one of them crying in the night. In the past Thief games, that noise would barely have made it down the hall.

 

Ironically (to what you think I'm saying), what I'm proposing is MORE realism.

[sparhawk]

That's right. Spar, surely with kids you must wake up to one of them crying in the night. In the past Thief games, that noise would barely have made it down the hall.

 

Yes. But the reason is because I'm NOT living in a mansion. My kids sleep in a room pretty close to my own. And in fact I was raised in a house that you might call a mansion, at least in terms of size, and I can assure you that no amount of screaming would have traveled from one room to an arbitrary far away other room. In fact you can't even be sure that a loud scream on the same floor would have carried far enough to reach the other end, much less cause any substiantial suspiciousness.

[Domarius]

Well the T2 sounds didn't propagate far enough IMO - when I was first playing I was constantly finding myself in the situation where I was certain there was no way the surrounding guards didn't hear that, but they didn't.

 

And if we make death screams propagate much further than normal, that gives another reason to avoid killing by making it harder to deal with.

[sparhawk]

I don't see why death screams should be louder. Either they are loud, then they are propagated because of their loudness, or they are not as loud, but I don't think we should artificially push it.

[Macsen]

Screams do carry very, very far. Female screams tend to carry further, something the player should take account of when attacking a female character.

 

The big question is; do people scream when killed? According to research (well, some old people who fought in WWII) a person just takes a sharp, shocked intake of breath when stabbed in the back. In a swordfight the person would probaly do any screaming before being cut down, at which time he just wouldn't have any energy left for it (being dead).

 

I think after the players cuts someone down that person should stay alive for a while on the floor, screaming and pleading, before kicking the bucket. It isn't really realistic that a person would go from good enough to stand erect in armour to completely and utterly dead with a single blow.

[Domarius]

Well we might, after testing and experimenting, for gameplay reasons. After all, one of our main goals is to make it more worthwhile to go stealthy rather than killing, without imposing artificial objectives like "do not kill".

[Domarius]

Screams do carry very, very far. Female screams tend to carry further, something the player should take account of when attacking a female character.

I like this idea. High pitched noises do travel further.

 

I think after the players cuts someone down that person should stay alive for a while on the floor, screaming and pleading, before kicking the bucket. It isn't really realistic that a person would go from good enough to stand erect in armour to completely and utterly dead with a single blow.

More realistic yes, but will it be worth the extra work required? What you described is if you hacked them down with your sword. If you did an instant kill from the back (which is more likely the case) they should go down straight away (but they should still scream for gameplay reasons - its not enough to say "they don't always scream in real life")

Also what you described is getting a little grisly for me and reminds me of a game more like Postal or Hitman. Although I never kill anyone unless I really have to in Thief, so I wouldn't care in the end.

[OrbWeaver]

Also what you described is getting a little grisly for me and reminds me of a game more like Postal or Hitman. Although I never kill anyone unless I really have to in Thief, so I wouldn't care in the end.

 

I agree entirely. Thief is supposed to be a game of strategy and stealth, not a torture simulator.

[sparhawk]

Well we might, after testing and experimenting, for gameplay reasons. After all, one of our main goals is to make it more worthwhile to go stealthy rather than killing, without imposing artificial objectives like "do not kill".

 

So in order to avoid one artificial thing, we implement another artificial thing.

[_Atti_]

"That's kind of the point in wearing a helmet in the first place."

 

No..

The only point of a helmet is that sword or an arrow might slip on it..its not much of a protection against blunt weapon..

[oDDity]

Let's get one thing perfectly clear - stealth used in the context of this game does not mean whacking guards on the head and knocking them out, it means sneaking around them and leaving the place without them knowing you were there.

If you use stealth to describe knocking them out, then you can equally use it to describe killing them quietly.

At that point, the difference between this game and a shooter becomes wafer thin.

If you have knooked out a guard, then you have failed to be stealthy, knocking him out was the opposite of stealth, you may as well have killed him for all the difference it makes

THis is exactly why I came up wiht my 'swat' team idea.

If a guard finds his collegue merely knocked out, he is not going to call in the elite gurds, but if he finds him brutally stabbed to death, there's obviously a bloodthirsty maniac on the loose, and he is certainly going to call in the cavalry.

[sparhawk]

You are confusing two things here. Stealth and killing are two different categories. Now if you would stealth in opposition to noise it would be ok.

[oDDity]

So stealth and knocking someone unconscious aren't two different categories?

As it stands, there is no gameplay difference between killing a gurd and knocking him out, in both cases you've removed him from the map for the duration of the mission.

It's perfectly possible to kill someone silently.

Perhaps you'll show me the dictionary defintion of the word stealth where it says 'stealth is the art of remaining silent and unseen - it can't definitely involv whacking people on the head to knock them out, but definfitely cannot involve killing them quietly'

 

THe killing and knocking out are optional parts of the word steath, the only essential and most important part of stealth is that you remain silent and unseen, so that's the part we should emphasis in this game.

[Springheel]

As it stands, there is no gameplay difference between killing a gurd and knocking him out, in both cases you've removed him from the map for the duration of the mission.

 

Well, there will be a gameplay difference--a KO will be relatively quiet, while killing a guard will make a lot of noise and a bloody mess. KOing a guard is less likely to result in an alarm being sounded as well. With a KOed guard, an alarm would be raised only if someone found the body. Killing a guard gives you three times the chance of being discovered: the body, the bloodstains all over the walls, or hearing the initial scream.

 

To a ghoster there is no difference, perhaps, but this isn't a game just for ghosters.