Obsttorte

Thanks for the feedback. Remember that the idea was that this feature should help players when running away after getting detected, not to increase the speed of the player so he runs through the level all the time. Therefore a few aspects haven't been taken into consideration as they are not relevant for that case, but obviously would need to be added when implementing, while some of your points result from the unintented way of using it. Crouching: left out due to the above reasons, but obviously you should not slam open doors while crouching The noise propagated needs tweaking I guess, and the door should make a different sound when slammed. This would require changes to the door or some default fallback sound to be played as alternative to the typical open/close sound to reflect that it is loud. The aspect you mentioned in regards to closing doors without passing them is correct. I'll have to give this a thought. Regarding closed doors: I guess if you run into them in full speed expecting them to be openable quickly, the sudden stop you'll experience will make quiet some noise I don't really see any reason to tweak that.

Probably ... twenty years ago I played them one and a half year ago again, but only because I had no internet for some weeks and without that you don't get any modern game installed. At least not if you have bought it.

You could blackjack alerted guards in Thief as long as they couldn't see you. However, as they don't spot you when in full darkness, you could take out half a dozen of them quiet easely by jumping to attract them and then blackjacking them while leaned forward once they approached you. Probably not what the devs had in mind

Well, there is the core mod that basically is a compromise that the team members could agree on so to speak, and there is what fm authors make out of it. Just because you use TDM as fundament doesn't mean you can't experiment a bit or go a different route. Hence questioning features an common design philosophies is important. It can be a great source of inspiration considering what could be different (not necessarely should). And even if an idea brought up may not seem fitting for TDM as a whole, it can work well under specific circumstances provided in a fm.

mimimi I have to check whether this is stated in the spawnarg restriction, though, as there is ko_immune and gas_immune iirc, and mappers may expect falling crates to fall under the first category, which doesn't seem to be the case if you are right.

Aren't they ko-immune? Or is that ignored when considering ko's due to heavy objects?

At this point I have to disagree. They aren't really inconsistent to begin with, except those inconsistencies that may come from mission authors altering the default behaviour. This is, however, rarely the case. That ai is more resistent against damage if alerted is basically a takeover from Thief like many other mechanics, of which some got adjusted and some stayed as they are. Whether something could be handled differently is, as this thread shows, always a source of heaty discussions It is however very unlikely that such things get changed all of the sudden just because of said discussion, unless the majority of the team members do agree that a change is necessary. Considering that this topic is not brought up the first time, I would say that the necessity is not seen. If you really wan't to push a change then the best approach imho is to create a fm on your own in which you use an alternative setup. Let players and mappers experience the difference and maybe more mappers will adopt the mechanic and people even get convinced, that it would be better to have it this way as default. That's actually an interesting idea. I don't know whether it has been discussed before, though.

I am not arguing, I just wanted to know how you came to that statement. How representative uploaded playthroughs are is something I can hardly judge, though. Nevertheless. I don't think that the matter is whether or not mappers can or should implement this or that in their missions. In the end it is always the choice of the mapper. And if you or others tend to not use stuff they don't like and are ok with that, that's fine either. But other players may have other mindsets. Some of us tend to see games as a challenge they have want to win, and they will take the shortest and easiest way to accomplish this. And for those of us balancing this stuff out is very important why "not using it" simple isn't an option. If a gameplay mechanic simplifies reaching the goal, we gonna use it. If it oversimplifies reaching the goal, we consider this bad. And as much as I can accept your attitude, it might be able for you to accept mine. On the matter of broadheads I think it is a delicate topic. We had this discussion internally several years ago already as they are really on the edge. In some missions they are fine, but there are others where they can be considered very powerful. And the fact that the broadheads are as they are is a compromise, no consens. So it is no surprise that people who weren't part of that discussion bring up this matter.

I once made a tutorial about adding custom arrows to a mission, addressing mappers in general on how to create new kinds of equipment. That doesn't equal to wanting to add something to the core mod. I didn't wanted it back then, and snatcher didn't explicitly write that he wants to, so this is basically only your interpretation. Personally I find it relatively unclear whether he gives ideas to mappers to use in their missions or whether he is proposing to exchange the broadheads. Maybe @snatcher can tell us. So ignoring the first is based on the assumption of the latter.

To the moderators: We have this discussion twice, once here and once in the respective FM thread. It would be good to merge it here, as the amount of posts made regarding this topic is pretty high and pretty much off topic considering that most users may get to the mission thread to ask for hints. Thanks in advance. (This post can be deleted afterwards).

That was actually refering to other replies in such discussion in general, not that specific one here. I thought I don't need to point that out. Maybe I should have. I don't think it is black and white seeing if I consider it offending, that if someone (not necessarely myself) brings up a valid point in regards to gameplay, the only reply is that he is not forced to play like that, essentially ignoring the argument brought up. Similar I don't blame you for seeing black and white only just because you completely reject any kind of restriction (which is a very unspecific term to begin with), as something bad. Actually, as @snatchertried to point out as far as I understood him, the game is restricting the player anyways. You are restricted by the amount of gear you have. You are restricted by the amount of damage you can take. In many fms I recently played, I have to find a key for almost any door, even though I have lockpicks, for example. Is that no restriction? Often there is, despite your claims, only one way to fulfill the main goal. Find that one readable containing that one clue to that one secret switch leading to that one room containing that one item. I have to acquire an item in a showcase? Why can't I break the glass? I have to make my job worthwhile? Why is there no alternative if I can't find sufficient amounts of loot? I have to find clues on a specific matter, maybe to incriminate a person? What do I do if there is none I can find? How can I actually know there is something like that to begin with (despite the game telling me it is)? So in the really important matters, those which decide whether or not you accomplish your mission and win the game so to speak, the player is normally forced to crawl through a set of bottlenecks, while in less relevant matters, where minor restrictions might spice things up or could create tension, any derivation from the known formula is bad. I assume there is some sort of logic behind that reasoning. I just don't get it, though. Where? As far as I read it he is explicitly refering to this mission and was even proposing to move the discussion here instead of holding it in a seperate thread. You have a point here. Although I don't see the issue in having differences between missions, but more in the authors not communicating them. Although that could be intentional, too.

Oh, how I like that argument. If you don't like it, don't do it. If you don't like the game, don't play it. Why on earth should a player restrict himself in the way he achieves his goal. It's the job of the game designer to balance between the freedom the player has and the restriction under which he operates. The latter are also called rules, something pretty normal for a game. And similar to how overly restricting the player is a bad thing, the opposite can be bad either. Of course this is the mappers choice, and it is completely okay to choose like that. But it has implications. And everything @snatcherpointed out is how he perceives this implications. This neither implies the mission is bad or that it shouldn't be done like that in general. It's an observation, nothing more nothing less. As much as I like the community, especially considering how civilized it is compared to the rest of the internet, I find it very counterproductive that criticism is often faced with the above attitude. Especially considering it comes from otherwise nice people

Ah, ok then. I don't consider immersion and player choice the same, but I am no native speaker, so maybe that's why I found that label odd. I would probably choose adaptive, as the game adapts to the player choices instead of following a fixed script. But well, it's not that important. As a Metalhead you don't have to tell me. We love our categories and sub-sub-genres.

Welcome to The Dark Mod. Oh, and better don't mention restrictions, it's ... delicate.

Currently the game propagates one of six sounds per surface, depending on whether the player is crouched and at which of the three speeds he is moving. As far as I can see this is controlled by the SDK. So there is no straight forward way to alter the noise the player makes.

I never understood that labeling. Are there any nonimmersive stealth arcade titles available? But seriously. It's a label used by a very few in a rather small community that is only a minor excerpt from the players who enjoy playing games using stealth mechanics, which have been used to varying degrees in several titles. But how something should be in the mindset of some and how something could be when people start to experiment and break out of trodden paths are two completely different things.

But there are none. Currently the script only allows switching between the three different speeds via mouse wheel, it doesn't add any new functionality. And afaik noise propagation is tied to this trinary system, so you can't simple change to a system with more than three speeds without having to alter sound related files, too.

Oops. Getting old. fastdoor.zip I haven't looked into it yet.

Yeah, the naming is specified by the saving entities. It should neither be Save_0 or Save 0 as in your case, which is an oddity considering I couldn't find anything in the code that would cause such naming. May have to take a second look.

@snatcherHere is a modified version of the script that causes a sound to be propagated, hearable for nearby AI. Initially the sound origin was the door in question, but for some reason that doesn't work if the door is touching a visportal, which it usually does. Therefore the sound is emitted by the player. As they are nearby when a door gets slam open or closed it doesn't make a big difference, though. You can play with the number in the propSoundMod function call to modify how loud the propagated sound is (note that the player cannot hear it, it's only for alerting the AI).

@snatcherA diff file contains information on what lines in a document should get either removed, added, or exchanged by something else. In theory you can apply these changes per hand, but using a tool obviously speed up this process alot (not to mention that computers programs normaly don't make typos). If you want to try something out but are not into programming that much, you can ask someone to create the binaries for you. As the changes proposed by daft mugi have partially been added to the mod it might at this stage probably be easier though to either use a svn build or wait for the next release, instead of getting used to a behaviour that will only be partially the same in the next release.

That's an issue. It could be somehow circumvented by increasing the cooldown speed if the player is in a spot where he is neither detectable nor reachable. I am unsure to which extent this can be added to the core mod without breaking the whole AI behaviour. IMHO this is more of an issue with the mission design then with how the core mod works. People always claim this or that to be added to the core and that it is easy and will solve everything. But at some point you cannot improve a tool any more and have to consider to work on your skills on how to use it. Some thoughts: Like acuity also the alert level threshholds as well as the cooldown time are parametrisized, meaning that mappers can tweak them to fit their mission and layout. So in missions with lots of dark places in unreachable area, where it is likely that players will just hide there once detected, mappers could decrease the cooldown times. In inside missions with lots of small rooms acuity could be reduced to accomodate for the lower stim travel distances. The issue of whole maps becoming alerted could be avoided if the missions would be build in a way that it consists out of several sectors with buffers in between that avoid the alert to spread from one area to another. Note that this is meant figurative! Obviously the player still has to be given the impression of one big area, but what the player perceives and what the underlying architecture is like are two different things. Dishonored did a good job on that matter imho.

I am not sure whether the "gimme more and I use it more" argument really holds. When playing a mission for the first time, one may assume that if he is getting a big amount of a specific gear, it is because it is needed often. That can encourage saving it up for later, too. In return not getting that much of a gear may be because it isn't that useful. There is no point in giving the player tons of water arrows if the mission mainly features electric lights. Why do you assume there stim doesn't travel through portals? The glowing is basically a mechanic to outweight their power, as it has been in the original games (which for me somehow implies the devs didn't expect the majority of players to ghost their games). Changing that like changing the behaviour of other items is questionable as existing missions have been designed with that behaviour in mind. It is however up to the mappers to create their own tools for their missions. So they could exchange the fire arrows with explosive arrows for example, that basically behave the same but don't glow (the renaming would imply that). I am with you on this one. Especially considering that the flashbomb is intented to be used in situations where you may get surprised by the ai it should be more intuitive to be used. The fact that you can blind yourself might be realistic, but is questionable gameplay-wise. A larger detection radius could be a two-sided sword, though, considering that the player can sneak up on them to disengage them. That may become harder with a higher radius (would need to be tested). I actually liked the LAM's from the first Deus Ex, which you could throw like a grenade or attach to any surface. I used them pretty often back then. Deus Ex is actually a good comparision here. Like Thief you could easely play through the first Deus Ex without ever killing anyone or causing trouble all the time, but the game wasn't necessarly designed like that. On the opposite it wasn't designed to be played like an ordinary shooter, even though even that was possible. Instead most encounters where best solveable by using a middleground between those two opposites, try to avoid enemies if possible but take out some crucial ones as well as mechanic obstacles (like cameras, turrets and bots). How much you tend to go into one or the other direction depends on the situation and your capabilities (so whether you are better at sneaking or shooting) as well as your preferences, of course. In TDM the fm authors seem to design their mission for one extreme only, and only give players gear because they may need it and to make it simpler for newbies. Therefore they don't really consider their useability regarding the situations provided in their missions or whether a modified tool would be better.

@OktokoloWhat would be the point then? You have two key to control speed now and you would have two keys to control speed then. The only addition might be to allow players to turn those keys into toggles.