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Some More Point Less Questions


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Ive been play TDS for the past few days and im kind of likeing it a little more then i use to. dunno why. maybe cause ive been out of the thief community for quite a while and now my opinion on it is diffrent. but that doesnt mean i like it lol. but i do like the look of the game tho. if they only spent more time on it and made it in a better engine. parts of the city are vary nice and even tho i dont like that you have to run around a lot and keep crossing the city just to get to a mission, thats just stupid imo. the city looks vary nice tho, vary thiefy.

 

what i want to know is will the dark mod be like this. where you have to run around a city and all that crap that no one wants to do or will it be like thief 1 N 2. where you buy your stuff at the start of the mission and when its over a video plays and you start the next one. theres no runing around to missions. shit do i hate TDS now. ( why do i talk about shit i hate )

 

ive got some more question if you want to wast your time lol.

 

the Objective and Map screens. when you press your O or M key and you map and objective shows up you know. well in TDS the map is like a universal thing. you can see every map you have colected and its not a full screen. it sort of pops up in front of you and there is no way to switch to objectives from the map window. also you never no where you realy are. In the originals. the map would fill the screen. you would only see the maps for that misson. and where you are would highlight in yellow. so you know where you are. also there would be a option to switch to objectives.

will TDM stay with the classic look of the full screen map that pauses the game and you have more control over you map/object's then just back? also the maps in tds look realy gay. they look like they where made in paint lol.

 

also the inventory and weapons and also health. i got a question that is vary important to the look of the game. the health bar. what are u planing for that. will the health be much like the original or just that same as. or are you going to try something new. also the inventory and weapons. are you planing anything dumb like TDS where the gears move and it has a gay little blue light behind it and when you put your weapons away the blue light stays. or are you going to make it look classic. almost the same if not exactly the same as the first two. with spining weapons and you inventory that only shows one item and it moves in the bottem right and your weapons in the left.

Are we to expect the exact same look and setup and also feel as thief I and II in this area?

 

another stupid lighting question. :wacko:

 

In the originals your sword would get a light glem when light is shinning off it. will this be the same in TDM. it is a vary realistic part of the first two cause a sword is reflective. when light hits it a gaurd will see it easyer then would or cloth.

 

Inventory Items............ ooowwowwww

 

i know that the only part of thief 2 i didnt like was your items. i perfer not to get to advanced in my thiefing. the scouting orbs and invisible potions and slow falling potions (LOL) are a bit much and out of this world. thief 1 had a way better inventory even tho it was smaller it lack the stupid stuff that made the game less thiefy. if you know what i mean.

are you planing on includeing all of the avalible ithems in both thief 1 and 2, maybe a few from 3. i know i liked the oil u throw on the ground. lol. funnny shit.

 

lock picking, Keys and other stuff.

 

one thing about tds i do like is the lock picking. the minimalest age made it vary tricky to get doors open in time. a realy cool thing. but i am a big fan of the classic setup so go ither way with it i realy dont care. but keys on the other hand. i didnt like the fact that in tds you never have keys in your inventory. the cool thing about this is how indepth it is. you have to take your time and do everything. even look through keys to find the right one.

what are the plans for these things. will keys be in our inventories or will it be like tds.

 

Mechanists.

 

i hate them. lol. to advanced for thief. hammers are perfect, keepers as well. i realy liked mages to and wished that LG went with mages and hammers in T2 insted of mechs but what can you do. mechs are way out of the thief world i think. mechines dont belong in thief imo. well not walking talking ones anyway lol.

i have seen the art work of the inventors which sounds realy cool. maybe a lesser intelegent mechinest. more mid evil, thief era. realy cool concept so thumbs up to who ever thought of the inventors but

what are the plans for mechs in tdm. will you include them or are we sticking to the thief 1 line up.

 

Realese Date....Single player chapain

 

lol. how many times will u have to read about a release date. :unsure:

 

but you know i cant wait to start useing the editor and such. from a scale of 1% to 100% how fare are we?

 

and about the SP game. are you working on maping and stuff atm. from your screens id think that there pritty solid maps. not just to show off your ability you know. so are you makeing everything you need to make you game and working on it at the same time so when this is release we are left hanging. i mean ill be fucking pissed if there is no game to play at release. what are your plans for a SP game? is it in dev? are you even going to tell us?

 

a ........................................

.. DEMO and VIDEO's

well i also want to know one last thing. are there any plans of recording some in game play and activitys or what ever so we can see how good your game looks in real time. not just screens. and also i think it would be amazing if you put out a demo. a one map thing. there doesnt even have to be objectives. just something people can play and realy find out just how thiefy this game is going to be. and how it will feel. thats vary important imo.

 

Thx for read this, latzz

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The auto-map feature (i.e. highlighting what room you're in) is something I think we can lose. Most Thief FMs I've played don't bother with the automap feature. As long as the map is drawn well, you should be able to work out where you are, so its not worth the extra work for most authors it seems.

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ok, i forgot half those questions but i'll answer some:

Q: Will there be a SP game when it comes out?

A: No, the single player campaign will take some time to create, and thus will be out a while after the toolset. There will be many maps you can play however. Examplary ones.

 

Q: Demo?

A: The game isn't far along enough to make a demo. Sure we have weapons and things almost in the bag but the inventory is still being worked on, as is the AI. Basically once all the core game crap is done TDM will be released, but that'll be once there's a fuckload of textures/sounds/voices etc.

 

Q: something something something like TDS?

A: TDM is aiming to be much more like T1/2 rather then T3 which seemed out of place.

 

Q: Health bar plans?

A: We have a T1/2-like placeholder atm and it's actually being discussed atm too (sort of anyways), but we're still deciding on specifics.

 

Q: City hub bullshit?

A: Most definately not since most missions at the start will be FMs and single maps.

 

Q: Sword raises visibility?

A: Yes.

 

Q: Crouching decreases visibility?

A: Yes.

 

Q: Inventory fumbling to look for keys and shit?

A: Being discussed atm, but most certainly will not be like TDS.

 

Q: Lockpicking types?

A: The lockpicking will be a more realistic approach with torque pressure etc. However you can switch to the T1/2 style. There will be no suck-in crap to the door like in TDS either.

 

Q: High-tech mechs like in T2 which walk/talk etc?

A: They will be more like T2, so yes pretty much.

 

Q: HUD style like TDS?

A: Fuck no.

 

I think I answered most of them :)

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Q: Health bar plans?

A: We have a T1/2-like placeholder atm and it's actually being discussed atm too (sort of anyways), but we're still deciding on specifics.

I hope you'll decide to implement pop-up (when injured) health bar. Getting rid of health bar from the screen is a good thing.

Cartographer's Note FM: in production.

Download Old Comrades, Old Debts FM or Mistrz Effects demo and see my old projects!

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I hope you'll decide to implement pop-up (when injured) health bar. Getting rid of health bar from the screen is a good thing.

 

This is also being discussed atm. I really like the bar being there all the time whie others like it disappearing. It seems it will be an option to have it fade or not.

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Dram wants to keep it exactly like the T2 shields.(he's really imaginative like that)

I don't want any health indicaton at all, nor any health pickups.

We'll probably be going for an unobtrusive healthbar which pops out beneath the lightgem when you take damage.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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mid evil, thief era. realy cool concept so thumbs up to who ever thought of the inventors but

what are the plans for mechs in tdm. will you include them or are we sticking to the thief 1 line up.

 

Thanks. :) There will be steam-bots of different types. Not exactly the same as T2, but that general idea. Of course, FM authors don't have to use them in their missions if they'd rather focus on mages or whatever.

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I don't want any health indicaton at all, nor any health pickups.

Of course you do. You also want the computer to punch the player in the nuts every time they make the slightest mistake. Sorry, not all of us play Thief prostrate and naked with jumper cables attached to our nipples.

 

Myself, I think an auto-hiding health bar is retarded. Health status is something I need to know before I take damage, not after.

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You don't.

To use some of the poiints I've been making elsewhere on the boards, you should never know if the next hit will kill you or not, just like in reality, and as such, a health meter would be useless.

Why do you need to know you have x health left and can then safely do x since you know you can take a few hits yet?

The health bar is only useful if you want to plan out in advance how many hits you'll be able to take, which is ludicrous.

It's just a pointless, unrealstic sytem of generic 'hits' which makes no sense at all, except in an abstract and totally gamey kind of way.

The player doens't need to know if he's sustained minor injuries, he only needs to know if he's either been incapacitated or killed, and either way the misison is over.

This pathetic gamey system of 3 or 4 minor injuries suddenyl adding up to you being dead after the 4th minor injury, makes me laugh.

Either you get a fatal/incapaciating blow all at once, or you don't, there is no middle ground.

 

In short, I want to get rid of the entire ridiculous, archacic system of a generic hit point pool and generic health pickups.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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The settings for how long, or whether, the HUD fades will be customizable. There will also be a 'refresh' button so that you can call up the healthbar whenever you want to see it. Our goal for the HUD was to create something is inobtrusive as possible, so the indicators are (at least by default) small and only on screen when you need them.

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In short, I want to get rid of the entire ridiculous, archacic system of a generic hit point pool

And replace it with WHAT, exactly? The concept of hit points exists for two excellent reasons--

 

First, the necessity of calculating the player character's physical status. A human's ability to function effectively is a complex aggregate of their health, constitution, endurance, fatigue, state of mind, and dozens of other variable factors. All this complexity cannot be modeled meaningfully in the relatively simplistic gameworlds currently available, so there's no point in trying. Thus, games abstract the whole mess into hit points, much like D&D's "armor class" concept is an abstraction of physical armor, reflexes, perception, etc.

 

Second, there's the necessity of communicating health information to the player in real-time. In real life, you "just know" how your body is doing-- millions of nerves all feeding status reports to your brain continuously. Since games can't currently plug into the base of your spine, character health data *must* be represented in a way that can be mentally processed in roughly the same amount of time as it take in real life-- which pretty much leaves no option but a bar graph or two (or three).

 

Then you have the question of why, at a certain point, the player just falls over dead. Again, there are two unimpeachably excellent reasons for this--

 

First, player "death" is merely (sometimes) an abstraction of the player character becoming sufficiently injured that they could no longer function effectively. Sure, yet another minor scratch or bump won't outright kill you, but they add up to degrade your performance. Can you go on with a twisted ankle? Yes. But can you go on with a twisted ankle, a scratched eye, bruised ribs, and a bleeding head wound? No. So the game just "kills" you. Yeah, it could instead put up a message like, "You're too beat-up to complete your mission", but the difference is purely academic so why bother?

 

Second, when it comes to damage you have to draw the line somewhere. Fact of life, that. Games can degrade player performance instead of slaying them outright, but that generally sucks because it rapidly leads to downward-spiral situations-- you become less and less capable of dealing with whatever hurt you in the first place. It's usually better to just slay the player and let them start off fresh.

 

If you were really as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't need all this explained to you.

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And replace it with WHAT, exactly? The concept of hit points exists for two excellent reasons--

 

First, the necessity of calculating the player character's physical status. A human's ability to function effectively is a complex aggregate of their health, constitution, endurance, fatigue, state of mind, and dozens of other variable factors. All this complexity cannot be modeled meaningfully in the relatively simplistic gameworlds currently available, so there's no point in trying. Thus, games abstract the whole mess into hit points, much like D&D's "armor class" concept is an abstraction of physical armor, reflexes, perception, etc.

 

Second, there's the necessity of communicating health information to the player in real-time. In real life, you "just know" how your body is doing-- millions of nerves all feeding status reports to your brain continuously. Since games can't currently plug into the base of your spine, character health data *must* be represented in a way that can be mentally processed in roughly the same amount of time as it take in real life-- which pretty much leaves no option but a bar graph or two (or three).

 

Then you have the question of why, at a certain point, the player just falls over dead. Again, there are two unimpeachably excellent reasons for this--

 

First, player "death" is merely (sometimes) an abstraction of the player character becoming sufficiently injured that they could no longer function effectively. Sure, yet another minor scratch or bump won't outright kill you, but they add up to degrade your performance. Can you go on with a twisted ankle? Yes. But can you go on with a twisted ankle, a scratched eye, bruised ribs, and a bleeding head wound? No. So the game just "kills" you. Yeah, it could instead put up a message like, "You're too beat-up to complete your mission", but the difference is purely academic so why bother?

 

Second, when it comes to damage you have to draw the line somewhere. Fact of life, that. Games can degrade player performance instead of slaying them outright, but that generally sucks because it rapidly leads to downward-spiral situations-- you become less and less capable of dealing with whatever hurt you in the first place. It's usually better to just slay the player and let them start off fresh.

 

If you were really as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't need all this explained to you.

I'm not going to get involved in a slanging match, since it detracts from the relevant argument.

 

 

My system is quite simple.

I know no one likes the 'R' word used in games, but it's justified in this case, given that randomness plays such a big part in real life damage.

When you fall 20 feet, all you can do is hope that you twist your ankle instead of break it, when someone shoots an arrow at you, all you can do is try to flinch out of the way in the split second you have, and hope it either misses, glances off you or hits a non-vital spot.

Melee combat has more skill involved, obviously, but when it comes right down to you making a mistake and being hit, luck is still there deciding how bad an injury you recieve from it.

 

IF you watch a boxing match, the knockout blow can come in the first round or the last round, it' is not dependant on how many smaller blows the man has taken. Incapacitating or fatal blows come at once in a single hit, and are not a result of a combination of smaller hits. Boxing matches often go 12 rounds, with each man recieving hundreds of blows and still being fine at the end.

 

As far as I'm concerned, you don't need to know about, a tally of aggrigate minor injures, you either recieve a fatal/incapacitating blow or you don't.

 

With this system, you never know if the next blow you recieve will incapaciate you or not. You have no hit points at all, there is just a chance that the next hit will be 'the one', or it won't. There is a multiplier however, and this still simulates a kind of aggrigate injury system, which means that the more hits you have taken, the higher the chance is that the next hit will be a fatal one, and if you are taking many hits in a small time period, which would mean you're fighting multiple enemies, then the multiplier rises even faster.

Remember this is not a fighting game and you are not a fighter.

Under this system, arrows are very deadly. There is virtually no circumstance under which you could be periced by an arrow, even in the arm or leg, and not be incapaiataed to such a degree that you coudn't carry on.

There will be a small chance that the arrow glances off you and does no damage, but essentially, you really want to stay clear of archers, and dodge like hell if one draws a bow.

There will be no taking 4 or 5 arrows in the chest, stabbing the archer, and then sauntering off and swigging a heath potion in my system.

The accuracy of archers will be the main thing here that decides if you get hit or not, and this will vary wth the difficulty level.

As for falling and other things like steam and fire, it's pretty much the same random multiplier system.

With fire/steam, there is cetain safe level, and after than the damage mutiplier rises rapidly with the longer you stay in the heat, but is always still random, so you can never safely predict how long you can do it.

Falling - you get a safe distance of say 1o feet, and after that, with every foot, the chances of doing a serious and mission ending injury to yourself increases, and also with every successful lucky jump, the multiplier goes up, so you can't continue to make huge leaps and your luck will eventually run out.

 

This random damage system, with a mutliplier, is far more realistic, far less gamey, far less intrusive, and far more exciting than the current system.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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Problem with it for most: randomness. Randomness isn't really fun, you have to simplify games so they have more cause/effect. Plus realism is not everything. I could go and pour a kettle of boiling water on my hand and it would have 100% realistic action. Wouldn't be fun though. Nor would jumping out my window and breaking my ankle.

 

And why you need to see health: before making a jump down that you know will injure you. Of course with your system there is no set 2m = 5 pts damage 4m = 10pts damage.

So with a random chance of damage I'd quicksave and do the jump a few times until I get it right.

As would many players.

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There is a multiplier however, and this still simulates a kind of aggrigate injury system, which means that the more hits you have taken, the higher the chance is that the next hit will be a fatal one, and if you are taking many hits in a small time period, which would mean you're fighting multiple enemies, then the multiplier rises even faster.

 

Other than the bit about varying damage based on how frequently you get hit, this is no different than the current system. The more hits you have taken, the lower your health is and thus the higher the chance the next hit will be the fatal one.

 

Under this system, arrows are very deadly.

 

Whether arrows are deadly or not has nothing to do with the damage system itself. If we decide the player has 100 HP, and that arrows do 101 points of damage, then they're very deadly. You don't need a special kind of damage system for this.

 

 

Your system does inject some realism into the game by making it unlikely you'll die from a minor injury. But that payoff comes at the expense of players being able to predict the consequences of their actions (since they have no way of keeping track of what their 'multiplier' is). It would also, I imagine, be much more complicated to code and playtest. What determines whether an injury is minor (and thus increases your multiplier) or major (and thus has a chance of killing you?) Is a sword slash to the chest major? What about the arm? the hand? etc. It also doesn't address the issue that sometimes you *can* be incapacitated by a minor injury, if you suffer a lot of them. You can generally survive one person throwing a stone at you. If lots of people do it, you die.

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Other than the bit about varying damage based on how frequently you get hit, this is no different than the current system.

It's completely different, You have no abstract hit points, you can die at any time, as well as the multiplier. There are no similarities with the current system.

The more hits you have taken, the lower your health is and thus the higher the chance the next hit will be the fatal one.

There is no health, the next one being the fatal one has nothing to do with smaller injures that have gone before, the fatal hit is a fatal hit because it's fatal, and would have been fatal anyway, evcen if it was the first time you'd been hit.

What the melee mutilplier simulates, if anything, is your tiredness and lessened ability to defend yourself after many hits, that's why there is more chance of it happening after you've been fighting a lot.

 

Whether arrows are deadly or not has nothing to do with the damage system itself. If we decide the player has 100 HP, and that arrows do 101 points of damage, then they're very deadly. You don't need a special kind of damage system for this.

And since they'd do 101 damge, a health meter would be useless.

What determines whether an injury is minor (and thus increases your multiplier) or major (and thus has a chance of killing you?) Is a sword slash to the chest major? What about the arm? the hand? etc.

This depends how well the combat system is implemetned. If w'ere having damage zones for the player, then yes, but also the type and strength of the incoming blow would have to be taken into consideration, and how many enemies you were facing, which would be measued by the number of blows per second.

It also doesn't address the issue that sometimes you *can* be incapacitated by a minor injury, if you suffer a lot of them. You can generally survive one person throwing a stone at you. If lots of people do it, you die.

 

Yes, but you don't stand there with no ill effects up until 999 stones, and then drop dead when the 1000th one hits.

THat's exactly what happens in games.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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And why you need to see health: before making a jump down that you know will injure you. Of course with your system there is no set 2m = 5 pts damage 4m = 10pts damage.

So with a random chance of damage I'd quicksave and do the jump a few times until I get it right.

As would many players.

With every sucessful jump, your luck multiplier goes up and eventually jumping will be impossible. IF you try to make a ridiculously high jump, and save until you make it, it doesn't matter, becasue when you do successfully land you've just used up a ton of luck, so it'll send your multiplier sky high, and you'll be saving and loading 50 times eventually trying to make your next jump, since your luck will be virtually non-existant.

You can't cheat my system.

I 'm not really worried about this anyway, I really couldn't care less how high players can jump from, it's hardly a crucial game issue full of potential exploits..

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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There is no health, the next one being the fatal one has nothing to do with smaller injures that have gone before, the fatal hit is a fatal hit because it's fatal, and would have been fatal anyway, evcen if it was the first time you'd been hit.

What the melee mutilplier simulates, if anything, is your tiredness and lessened ability to defend yourself after many hits, that's why there is more chance of it happening after you've been fighting a lot.

 

Those two statements are completely contradictory.

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