Pyrian

Well, they didn't know that. :lol: There were some desks and stuff you could get under.

My understanding is that having AI's detect silhouettes is a relatively difficult programming task. The technique I heard was to project a "shadow" of the player as if the AI were a light source, and check the brightness of the textures that virtual-shadow falls on. My guess is that that could get extremely processor intensive under certain circumstances so you'd have to be very careful that it doesn't grind the game to a halt. To do that, you'd want to optimize and perhaps simplify the process as much as possible (obviously), and then strictly control the circumstances under which the check is even made (if they already see you or you're out of LOS there's obviously no point, for example). Unfortunately silhouettes are notoriously visible at long distances so you couldn't just put a distance cap if you wanted it to seem realistic. For realism's sake you wouldn't want a small percentage of stationary silhouette to give anything away, either; how visible it is should depend a LOT on whether its moving and also on how "recognizable" it is as a person (and not another guard!). The issue simply isn't simple. Also, the player shadow is a potential giveaway, and implementing that has a notably similar set of problems. I'd be worried that implementing all that would have a similar effect on the Doom engine as adding a pile of overlapping lights to a complex room purportedly does.

I cracked up when you brought up ninjas to support your point. Anyway, ahem, my point is not whether thieves can fight, but rather can guards fight? A thief should not be a straight-up match for even one typical guard, IMO. In games in general and FPS in particular it's quite usual for the central character to be far more powerful than the foes they face - but it's not generally realistic.

Not voting just makes that figure all the more lopsided.

What amuses me most about Robert Jordan (whom I haven't read) is that everyone seems to agree that his series went downhill but nobody seems to agree on where... I've heard everything from book 2 to book 9!

I wish U.S. elections weren't personality contests.

You could try UnFREEz. It's not luxury, but it gets the job done for the right price (none).

Always check for a patch.

On the subject of silhouettes, IF they're done, I'd suggest a fairly large difference in spotability if the player is moving, and by what proportion of the silhouette is visible. A partial silouette of a crouched individual against relative darkness, not moving, simply doesn't attract the eye much.

Except in extreme circumstances, getting guards to fight each other should be nearly impossible. I love AI that reacts appropriately at least as much as the last guy, but most of the more outlandish suggestions I've heard depart even more from reality.

Personally, I found the senseless battles in T:DS to be rather weird. Anyway, in terms of deductive reasoning, I think that people can reasonably figure out what they caused and didn't cause, making a simple flag sufficient. The "amnesty" concept would allow a guard who nudged something to get pelted - in a few circumstances that could be realistic, but in practice it just doesn't add value. Programming in actual deductive reasoning is not remotely plausible. EDIT: I do like the idea of "oops, I knocked it over"->"careful, you knuckleheaded taffer!" barks, though I don't think it would be necessary to have them involve any sort of alert-state modification.

One possibility would be to combine the techniques, such that only a player-set-off chain reaction that went down in the amnesty period would go unnoticed - a relatively reasonable reaction. (Indeed, one of the things I liked about the "amnesty period" solution is that the guard wouldn't be able to pick out player actions from a chaotic situation - although, as you pointed out, in simple situations it can break down.) Can you chain the flags such that a chain reaction caused by the player is picked out from chain reactions caused by NPC's?

Interesting. Perhaps you could simply give the guard (and probably nearby ones as well) an "amnesty" period when they collide with a stationary object. Thus, the AI could kick a box and have a bunch of stuff fall on him and his buddy as a result without going nuts.

Y'know, that sounds like a great idea.

Yes, although oDDity's obscure post seemed to indicate you were instead going in the direction of making you run out of whacks, which doesn't seem right. Hopefully he's referring to guards eventually waking up.

Not really, since there are arrows. Although shooting a rope arrow into the moon would be hilarious...

I remember, in playing Doom 3, that the reflection of the flashlight was inconsistent with it's "actual" pointing.

Happy Birthday.

Wasn't Daikatana "infamous"?

No, oddity, you're just deliberately mis-interpreting what people mean when they say 3d so you can make a pointless semantic argument that nobody cares about.

For the record - yes to both counts. Anyway, this has got to be some kind of record for fastest shameless copy. :lol:

Hmm, I guess there is a slight semantic problem with the term 3D. I do think we're generally agreed that it refers to perspective-based mapping of a virtual 3D environment to a 2D screen with the ability to move the camera relatively freely in at least two dimensions. What constitutes the first 3D game then depends on whether we define 3D to include vector-based perspective mapping or only polygon-based solutions. I can't honestly say I care, though I haven't the foggiest notion what the first polygon-based 3D game was. There were also a number of incredibly early bill-board based "3D" arcade games (by bill-board I'm referring to the way Doom 1 did enemies).

Battlezone (also not for PC - in fact it was an arcade game - although this early that's hardly a surprise) was several years earlier than Elite. An article found through google - I can't really vouch for it, but hey.

Battlezone...