Araneidae

The latest beta (2.11-5?) seems to be ignoring my autoexec.cfg file. The first two lines are: seta r_fboColorBits "32" seta tdm_mainmenu_confirmquit "0" and it's kind of pretty obvious when these are missing! This was working on the previous beta, so something subtle has changed in this area. I do notice the following message in the console output: Couldn't exec autocommands.cfg - file does not exist. Has the filename being looked for changed? Edit: Certainly adding a soft link (`ln -s`) from autocommands.cfg to autoexec.cfg seems to fix the issue. Edit: Oh, but now the log is full of Unknown command '#' messages. Are commands comments not supported now? (Don't remember seeing this before...)

@Dragofer, with your test map I was able to reproduce the issue fairly quickly: While the guard is walking away walk left into the darkness Once the guard has turned around walk into the light so he can see you Guard goes quickly into alerted mode, score goes to 3 Walk straight back into darkness. The timing here is a little tricky... Score goes to zero, guard continues searching with sword out Think this is a clear stealth score bug!

Yes, that worked.

Well, that was interesting. I did as suggested, and ran `testmap stealth` without first loading bcd itself ... and got the attached screen: I've had to compress the screenshot in gimp (reduced JPEG quality to 10) to upload it, but it's a pretty truthful representation of what I'm seeing. Here's the corresponding log: ]testmap stealth ---- dmap ---- --- LoadDMapFile --- loading fms/bcd/bcd_stealth.pk4/maps/stealth WARNING:Couldn't load map file: 'fms/bcd/bcd_stealth.pk4/maps/stealth' ------------- Warnings --------------- during running dmap... WARNING:Couldn't load map file: 'fms/bcd/bcd_stealth.pk4/maps/stealth' 1 warnings reloading guis/msg.gui. reloading guis/mainmenu.gui. --------- Map Initialization --------- Map: stealth idRenderWorldLocal::InitFromMap: maps/stealth.proc not found TODO: Sys_SetClipboardData ERROR:Couldn't load maps/stealth -------------------------------------- WARNING:idSession: triggering mainmenu watchdog

@Dragofer, I'll have to try and repeat, but it certainly sound very like what I was seeing. Did I quickload at stage 4? Really can't say for sure, but know I saw the guard prowling around with his sword out and a score of 0. The transition (4)->(5) sounds fragile to me, but I'll have to see if I can definitely break it. Suspect I did duck into hiding at point (4), so my concern would be the guard becoming fully alarmed with a zero stealth score. I agree that this business of having the stealth score permanently on show very much changes the game. Will also give your mini-map a try.

But ... but ... Could have sworn I've been using ` all this time, but maybe my muscle memory is abandoning me?

Thanks, that works. Is this new?! Will try to remember. Think we need some way to communicate this change... Here is my viewpos, or somewhere around here: ]getViewPos 3591.34 -2224 218.25 48.1 -116.2 0.0 I am extremely high up, and I think the guard was in the courtyard directly below when he spotted me ... or maybe coming down the stairs, will have to wait through his cycle and see what happens. ... No, I got the position wrong. I was on the ledge below: ]getViewPos 3636.76 -2224.59 54.25 29.4 -118.4 0.0 Here I am visible, and there's quite a lot of possible activity depending on exactly what he sees. I think I can provoke a number of responses from this position.

Now this is odd. I can't bring up the console all of a sudden. There used to be a hard binding to ` (seem to remember there's an old Linux issue which means this can't be rebound, and I've bound ' to my "put weapons away" command) ... and it's just not working today. Am trying to get that blasted guard to spot me again, but it's proving pretty tricky: I have a save which I think was before he spotted me last time, but so far all I've achieved is two level zero alerts. Will let you know what `getViewPos` is once I can figure out how to do it!

Drat it. Just had a guard go into full alert without incrementing the stealth score properly. Playing Crucible of Omens : Behind Closed Doors and creeping about high up above a courtyard with a wandering guard: Guard spots me, barks "movement", goes into alert mode with sword drawn Stealth score jumps to 3 (searching?) Almost instantly (maybe no more than a second) the score falls back to all zeros Guard continues searching with sword drawn Blast it, thought we'd fixed this! I'm quite high up and some distance from the guard. My money is on a race condition in the code (a multi-threaded variable not properly guarded), am sorry to say.

Just played this through, very nice. It feels more like a homage to the original than a replacement, I have to say. I could almost ghost it ... but there's that one guard. I can turn the light off (a bust for Supreme), but can I get past him without an alert before he turns the light back on? I seriously doubt it, didn't try very hard, and I wouldn't be able to get back again anyway, so I abandoned the ghost. Is this meant to be ghostable?

Definitely not! I was trying for my best stab at "perfect ghost"; as remarked in another thread guess I'll see what 2.11beta2 looks like, will revisit CoS when this drops.

Thanks. I'll wait for beta 2 and then give it a go.

That doesn't sound right ... but looking back at what I wrote, yes, I guess that's exactly what happened. So guess it's a mismatch between whatever state is being checked by CoS and the stealth score. Is there anything worth testing on this front in the latest beta or dev release?

Either of the two settings works. Which should I prefer? Won't try the new shader now, but can do later on if it would be helpful.

I've got a lighting problem with the latest version (think I was seeing it with earlier drops too). What's particularly strange is that it doesn't show in captured screenshots! The simplest way to reproduce: open Crown of Penitence (it just happened to be the first place I spotted it so obviously), start a new game, and crack the door open just a trifle. The whole room is immediately fully lit (presumably by the torch on the other side of the door). I took a screenshot with F12, but it doesn't show the effect, so I won't drop that here. I reverted to 2.10 and the issue went away, so this is a regression. My graphics card is a bit archaic, so maybe the drivers are wonky. My system specs are: Fedora release 36 with stock drivers Radeon HD 6950 graphics card (AMD Cayman Pro)

Given how easy this is, and given that changing the mission involves restarting the game, it does strike me that it would make a lot of sense to build a separate launcher to act as the "front end" before the starting a mission. This could even be built by anyone comfortable with GUI building in any programming language of their choice as a completely separate project. PyQt maybe? (Haven't built a GUI app in forever.) Sounds like a fun experiment, and a rewrite of the mission downloader would not hurt (though it seems a lot better behaved than in the past, haven't had it crash on me recently ... though I have learnt not to tab away when it is running).

Raising the player's stealth score on detection of missing loot by a guard is probably too unfriendly. One argument against doing this is that this can happen long after the player has left the scene; suddenly your score would jump up by 1 or more for no detectable reason ... and there's nothing at all you can do about it. Think this kind of alert needs to be decoupled from the player.

Oh that is good news! Thank you for the update. Regarding the other other part of the conversation about guards alerting on missing items, it doesn't trouble me, though I agree this should really only be for conspicuous items! A voice-over "that's going to be missed" would certainly be a nice touch.

Interesting! Will have to take a look.

Sigh. I have described this in detail over in another thread, here: starting at the middle of page 3. In brief, playing The Bakery Job (a tiny mission which makes this very easy to reproduce): The effect is extremely easy to reproduce: just let the guard glimpse you, long enough to be alerted. Go and complete the mission. The status screen will show perfect zeros (if you've used the score tracker mentioned in that thread). Didn't know about tdm_end_mission, see that can be useful for verification ... but I have verified the hard way, and I did think that my findings were verified in that thread.

I think I can safely say that the only reason the guard became alerted is because he glimpsed me. I have verified this problem elsewhere, and this particular map and my behaviour will not have triggered any of the other causes. I feel I'm having to explain this over and over: the current stealth score is fundamentally broken at the moment when it comes to perfect ghosting.

Just a note to remind developers that the current stealth score is sadly disconnected from the guard alert state, presumably in an effort to avoid this cascade of alerts affect triggering too many stealth score hits. At present it is possible for a guard to spot the player, enter a fully alerted state (sword drawn) and yet the stealth score remains a perfect all zeros. Just now playing through Sir Talbot's Collateral I had the annoyance of encountering a guard with his sword drawn more than half way through the playthrough; I have no idea when this happened, and I either have to put up with it or bail and restart. Regarding the level 1 alerts, these can certainly happen without any visible or audible indication to the player. Sleeping characters are very inclined to this level of alert, and generally have no detectable reaction.

I have seen @Klatremus use an interesting hack to solve this problem, which was to first drop a readable document (which seems to fall straight down and land silently) and then to drop down onto the document ... which then amazingly cushions the fall and makes it silent!

Good idea. How do I do that?

Yeah, and it's not happening again. Ho hum. Was hoping the limited logs contained a clue. Will see what happens...