peter_spy

It seems like you've moved the bloom slider from the default position, first values from the left shouldn't give such weak effect. Either that, or it's the matter of color value for the blend add texture. Anyway, it will always be a relative effect to some extent.

Ideally TGAs should be used only for prototyping materials. And one of the downsides of TGAs is that they will be treated by the engine aniso filter, which is subpar to highest quality mipmap filters used with DDS. This affects both game world and 2d menus (e.g. inventory icons made with TGAs will always be blurry in comparison to high quality DDS). Perhaps texture compression options could make their way to video options, although IMO for players the texture size (image_downsize stuff) would be more important. Basically all games have texture quality options, and it's quite weird TDM never had it.

Okay, so the initial setup is 64-bit color on, bloom on, there's one light in the center of the room, noshadows. 3 objects with bloom material (nevermind the weird shape): 15 objects: As you see, the GPU cost is the same, CPU should be as well, maybe there was some fluctuation while I was taking screenshots. The GPU used is nvidia GTX 1060. Edit: Out of curiosity I packed 30 objects here, and that gave me some slightly CPU/GPU utilisation, but I think we can assume that this isn't the most viable scenario

That still looks odd, and the difference between 54 and 57 fps might be coincidental, especially with in-game fps meter, which isn't super accurate. MSI Afterburner tools are better for that (both the fps meter and the hardware load percentage indicators). Also, console commands like r_showprimitives and r_glprofiling should give you some more insight. With lights and emitters for every luminescent surface you will generate more drawcalls and texture calls, than with just one material that has emissive stage. Also, it would be interesting to see several light + emitter combinations in one line, with player looking at the first one, and all the other lining up behind it. That will should you the overview of the impact that particles transparency overdraw might have.

A little study in metals: copper, silver, gold. Tried to use as much as I know from the PBR workflow.

I'm not offended, I'm tired, by you. You use the same old tricks I've seen everywhere else, and ignoring most of the on-topic stuff I already wrote, so it really stopped being a discussion some time ago. All this stuff is exhausting and it distracts me from doing creative stuff that came up with the talks on the margin of this topic, and has a chance to be a positive contribution to the mod, regardless of the actual frob implementation. Stop replying to me, I really don't have anything more to say, and neither have you. Whatever you say next will be ignored by me.

Stgatilov is a TDM dev and he quoted me. So I replied, even though I'm just reiterating what I already said. Since you're just bored^ and already wasted tons of my time, you're not going to get the same treatment. Now excuse me, I have an exciting little project to start

Not all of them, but using them more selectively. Making all 20 bottles on the shelf interactive, just because you can do that in real life, isn't meaningful gameplay. Hiding something behind those bottles or leaving a few of them pickable, in case the player might want to use them as distraction item, is much better design. Nope. If you take a look at both old and new im-sims, it's not like each and every object is interactive. Both Dishonored games and new Prey have tons of static geometry, only stuff that supports the gameplay in a fairly meaningful way is interactive.

I can only help with proper loot items, and core mod stuff, to be precise. Adding more complex models and materials will help solve that problem (human eye will focus on elements that are more detailed or stand out more, *insert relevant 2D art theory*, etc.). Again, IMO you want a UI-based, one-size-fits-all solution to counter design mistakes; these are problems that can't be fixed that way, at least not without consequences I already spelled out. I think these consequences are serious enough to rethink that approach. But obviously, you'll do whatever you decide, I'm covered either way. Now please leave me out of the further discussion, I'm super tired as I spent most of my free day on it. I don't have anything more to say.

On the contrary, it's extremely relevant, because it's how other games deal with this, and TDM doesn't exist in a bubble. People playing TDM don't live under the rock, they play other games too, so they can carry over their expectations just fine. I do. And not only reskin them, but make them from scratch, with better materials and more loot variations. Some objects can replace existing assets, using the same dimensions and the same origin point placement, others will be made as new content. Preparations are already underway. I'm not promising to remake everything, but slowly adding stuff month after month is doable. I already got a preliminary list of objects to work on.

It's funny, because with what I just described you'd essentially have "my thief character knows what to pick up" thing, but being a fully intentional effort from designer, and without making significant changes to anything else. But I think this discussion has run its course already, at least I feel like I was forced to devote more time to it than I wanted to. Let mods cut the meta discussion and leave this thread for actual feedback.

Oh yeah, this has been brought up as a point several times already, but I don't really think graphical complexity is a problem. First off, TDM doesn't look that modern in comparison to other games. And, newest titles have been managing this quite well, with just being selective (and consistent) with objects that are within player agency. You can do the same in TDM: just place static models, or turn off frob for junk models, so they'll react to physics and weapon hits without being pickable.

I believe there's no symmetry here. I think addressing problems at its source (asset design) would be a better option. As I mentioned, there are talks underway, and from what I've seen in DR viewers, there aren't that many core loot models there; quite a few are just variants of one model. So a rework project might be more feasible than you think.

Okay, so let's get down to some details. Imagine a new FM, player walks into a room there's a table and a few brand-new custom objects: goblets, plates, and cutlery. There's a stationary/sitting guard next to a well-lit exit. All interactive objects have proper materials, most look plain and wooden, but there a few that look like silver. All are highlighted by the frob outline when up close, but with no additional info. Player scans the objects and thinks, "okay, silver is probably loot, and there are a few wooden items, so I'll pick up that wooden goblet last, and throw it a bit away from that guard, so I'll distract him and make for the exit." It's a fun mini-game of scanning the environment, trying to guess the rules, and then planning and executing the your plan. Player walks up to a new silver goblet, frobs it, and has a pleasant "yup, I was right, this is loot" moment, and a similar one for the wooden utensils. These small moments of uncertainty and risk vs reward planning are also part of a bigger theme, which Thief series always had, namely the idea of doing all kinds of stuff in a place that that you're not supposed to be in, which is both uncertain/scary and exciting. Now imagine player's thoughts in the same situation when the frob is gold for loot and blue for junk: "okay, objects on the table, blue, blue, blue, gold! press RMB!, blue, blue, blue, next room please." At some point you stop seeing objects, you just look for outline color as it does the job the fastest.

It sure can, and I actually have a recent experience with that, as I've been playing Nier: Automata lately. It was like "Wait a minute, I'm being manipulated here: this absolutely gorgeous music feels elevating and emotional, but the actual gameplay is fairly meh." Seems like they had a great composer, but not so great quest designers. Well, at least boss fights were awesome. So you risk a similar sentiment, plus you'll have to do several people's work yourself. Again, I have nothing against crap missions, we all need to start somewhere, it also shows us our progress. Nothing wrong with that. But trying to correct bad design is designer's choice. Plus I'm concerned about gameplay as it is a bigger change than you think, and it will have consequences, see my previous post. I'd have to post recommended frob shader settings, once I find values that I like. The list already includes stuff like bloom and 64-bit color, and the mission is optimized for stencil shadows + soft shadow quality set to low. It will probably work fine on higher settings and shadowmaps, but this is the setting I find most consistent, performance analysis-wise. I also have a draft of TDM menu rework for the mission, so I need guis to be editable, although this might be too time-consuming to be taken as far as I'd like to. It might end with just custom replacements for current low res backgrounds and effects.

But you're not improving anything per se with it, you're obfuscating bad design with an interface helper. And not only that: by making this option on by default, you're also conditioning old and new players to switch off their brains when exploring your world, and in a way you're making it a less immersive experience by interface taking over. And it's only natural that first maps are worse than subsequent ones. Some mappers like to go back to their first missions and do remakes or makeovers, now that they have enough experience now to accomplish what they wanted to do back then. I keep most of my progress screenshots to be aware how far I've gone. I don't want to deny that quite a lot of stuff I did looks like crap in comparison to my latest work, it really does Without spoiling too much, let's say that there are talks underway

Again, no disagreement from me here on the quote, this is something I realized as a kid, when I compiled my map draft in first Unreal editor. But that doesn't exclude anything I said above either. Making that stuff is hard, and making levels for stealth games is especially hard, as opposed to e.g. shooters. You can read more on that in pdf presentations from LGS folks in the Level design thread. Exactly, and finding a way to do it is very important aspect too. In your example, you're introducing a huge potential point of failure between you and making music. This will be time-consuming as well, and it's a time you could spend on just making music or learning how to do it better. If your music is great, and the map turns out not so, it will distract people from the former. Not to mention that there are more efficient ways to learn how to write score for video games. You can team up with a mapper and create music for their work. You can record a play-through of your favorite game with bg music off and try to score it. Or you can just take a playthrough from YT and mute it, if you can't be bothered with recording that stuff yourself. That reminds me I had a similar idea for my body of work in photography, to create a "walking simulator gallery" that would showcase my work, at the same time it was supposed to be a space that connects all of them thematically and tells a certain story. Kind of like walking inside a sculpture that tries to be an artwork itself, with photos plastered all over it Yeah, it sounded great in my head, otherwise it was super time-consuming, never worked out as I intended, and I did better off by creating a portfolio website In retrospect, I think I did this as a pleasant distraction, something to delay the process of getting down to actual work and selecting the most significant photos from a 5-year period of my work, which turned out pretty hard as well.

First off, as far as I know, TDM team intended this thread for the new frob feedback, so mods feel free to separate the meta discussion into another thread. IMO it's kinda like trying to have a cake and eat it too. By analogy, are there any tools for writers that would like "just to tell a story" without becoming good writers? Even phrasing a question this way feels weird to me (maybe because I belong to the first of the aforementioned camps). I mean sure, there's spellchecker and thesaurus, but none of that will make you a good writer by default. Same goes for level design, you got debugging tools for technical stuff, but that's it. There's no magic trick, this stuff is hard. And perhaps, if you just want to tell a story, why not focus on writing something instead of creating a map? As a player, sure, I can just switch it off. As a designer, I know how to make objects so they look valuable or more interesting than the background, and I can teach players to recognize them. So instead of adding yet another item to the list of things players would have to change for the "intended experience", I might as well "fork" the 2.08 and distribute the whole thing as standalone package.

In short, IMO gameplay is king, not realism. You can make every object in your environment interactive, but it's kinda meaningless. IMO fun in im-sims stems from having just a few types of objects and their properties, and looking for fun ways to use them. And in general in games, most of the environments are static for a reason – to focus on core gameplay loops. What is believable is another question IMO; you don't need every object to be interactive for a location to feel believable. E.g. in the 90-degree-dungeon-crawler era, everything was a set of corridors, but we were all felt like we were in villages, cities, snowy mountains, or jungles It's mostly the matter of convention (and how picky you are with your suspension of disbelief).

That's a good question. I think that on one end, there are people who are naturally curious and research their hobby as much as they can, because it's what makes them tick. On the other, there are those who just want to have fun, and talk with friends who are interested in the same subject. No group is really better than the other; there's no obligation to "git gud" at level design. It's your hobby, you can do whatever the hell you want. You can post tutorials, point out to knowledge bases, something like we have here for example: But otherwise I don't think you can force anything.

You missed the point, that is a tutorial. Perhaps not the best one, because of how chests work in T1-2, but these objects are used in consistent manner. And there's no point in that exaggeration either, you can do it without alerting all the guards No, there are player abilities, like walking, running, jumping, picking up objects, but it's the mapper who puts that in context. All of these abilities. By making level geometry that conforms to jumping distances, they can make you feel like an athlete, and not a clumsy thief. By making meaningful objects pickable, and not placing dozens of stupid bottles and parchments everywhere, they can make the gameplay meaningful and not random. This is not UI oddity; it's the end result you focus on, but the source of a problem is bad design. It definitely is a problem, but as above, you ignore the source and look for quick fix. If you're 100% sure about introducing this system, the question is more about whether the option will be on or off by default. If it's going to be on, I'll have another important reason to stick with 2.08.

Sorry, missed this one. You can try to teach mappers via tutorials to use interactive objects in more intentional manner, and how to teach players which objects are which (and you can do the latter without super explicit tutorial section). But obviously mappers will do whatever they wish, and why not have a right to fail? In a sense, this is is not a problem to be solved in any forcible manner.

Why protagonist and not player? Why adding a superficial layer here? Mappers can establish consistent set of objects and they can teach players to use them. Plus none of this is what Thief was. Garrett was a master thief as a story character, but player could be anyone they wanted to be, as long as they could deal with the consequences. If you're going to go down this route and you want to be consistent, then next up should be automatic jumping from one ledge to another. Our nameless protagonist is a master thief and an able athlete. He should be able to nagivate rooftops like it's nothing, right?

Again, that's up to the mapper to establish what should be interactive or not, loot junk or otherwise. You're trying to 'fix' bad design with UI.

You don't seem to care that you're trading off quite important gameplay element, basically switching off player's brain when it comes to interacting and experimenting with the environment (which is one of the pillars of im-sims). Sure, there are perfectionists and save scummers who will reload anytime anything goes wrong, but that's a corner case that can't be helped with any design (except removing saving entirely ). Killing risk vs reward when reaching out for an item won't automatically make any bad map better. Also, it would be much more interesting to see a loot asset revamp project, even if the scope was as small as adding specular texture or a cubemap to their materials.