peter_spy
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Posts posted by peter_spy
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I agree that some of the points are kinda not relevant anymore. The quad window view for example; I don't know about you, but I used the quad layout when I started 3d modelling, as I had to get used to the concept of working in 3d space. But for the long time now, I've been using either 1 or 2 views (perspective + ortho) and using hotkeys to switch between the xyz planes or rendering modes.
Hotkeys ergonomics was interesting IMO, because I had a similar experience. I changed a lot of the default ones for the most frequently used actions to single-key shortcuts, because a lot of them used Ctrl, Alt or Shift modifiers, which is painful for the wrists in the long run (Ctrl+Tab for example).
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Been using 2.10 beta 5 along with Hazard Pay for a bit, and I think I would be awesome if volumetric lights were decoupled from shadow maps for all other lights as a requirement. They still seem unoptimized and eat up GPU resources really fast, while stencil + soft shadows seem to have much less severe impact on a CPU.
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This is a pretty good video showing how good UI/UX is vital to making better maps in less time, and how sometimes even things like mapper health are depending on it:
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Kind of a tangent, but modern developers also use this approach, where they ditch the whole concept of difficulty levels and relegate it to level design; players can choose the difficulty by taking or not taking a certain path in the game: https://youtu.be/iNEe3KhMvXM?t=1515
Perhaps such approach could move the focus away from difficulty levels to something like gameplay types or challenge modes, to experiment further with interesting concepts.
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6 minutes ago, esme said:
And once again it's a players personal decision to play a particular game, and that's not the authors concern, I keep saying you make what you want, but I don't have to play it
And that's okay, I bet most authors won't care, as they will be busy engaging with players that do want to play such missions. It's you who are making it sound like as it was one of the most serious things in the world for some reason.
Also, since you've been repeating the same stuff over and over again, and now you're parroting my sentences, it means you've run out of arguments. I'm out too, no point in wasting the forum space.
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1 minute ago, esme said:
And yes I'm interested in my particular needs just like you are
Hell no, I like games doing weird and experimental stuff, and I don't mind plenty of challenge modes for all the different groups of players. I play most games on easy because my time for playing is limited, but I don't mind all the crazy options in hardcore survival modes, Ironman or time modes for speed-runners. I love diversity and I respect tradition, but I have no problems with questioning it, if it takes me somewhere interesting.
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You are still playing the same broken record. Authors will add features because they'd like to, not because they have to. They will sacrifice whatever they deem unimportant for it. That's not your concern, it's their personal decision. It's funny that one of the arguments for altering the saving system was that authors get too controlling – again, do you realize how controlling your post sounds like?
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13 minutes ago, esme said:
Do you seriously think that's going to change anyone's mind or give your opinion any more weight ?
No, not anymore, since multiple people were trying to explain the same thing with different wording, and most of the responses were like: "IM NOT LISTENING TO YOU, COVERING MY EARS, LALALA, STOP TAKING MY FREEDOM!"
Sorry, but this is just begging to poke fun at.
And your response shows that you either still don't understand the topic, or don't really want to understand it. All you seem to be interested in is your particular needs only. To the point that you are, again, protesting against an optional, experimental mode that was inspired by other games. Something that you probably won't play, but for some reason can't stand the thought that author might include in their mission. This is how your response looks like. Do you realize how silly it looks?
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18 hours ago, kingsal said:
I agree with @demagogueit is a matter of taste.
It should be optional either through difficulty levels, maybe we should expand that system, or maybe down the road we add some feature that allows authors to set up settings for players to choose.
The conversation is good here, but no author is taking away anyones “freedom” - that’s ridiculous and silly…
I must say that the lack of open mind and imagination here is rather disappointing, not to mention the 'muh freedom' reaction. Meanwhile "This is how we've always been doing things here" stance is the most commonly known factor for stagnation or killing any innovation.
And the continued ignorance of the fact that this is/wil be an optional mode or difficulty seems more like a "live and let live" problem. The fact that there might be a difficulty mode you won't master, perhaps even called 'Expert', does that hurt anybody's ego or something?
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I don't think save rooms or any means to limit or disable saves has to be coupled with traditional difficulty levels. It's more like a different type of gameplay and pacing. It's not hard to imagine that people playing rogue likes/lites, Resident Evil or Dark Souls games might want to try this mode on without having to beat the mission on expert difficulty.
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All the talk so far was about risk-reward situations where people have to deal with the consequences of their choices, plans or mistakes. You're kinda trying to dumb down this idea by focusing on possible design mistakes, like chasms being deceptive so players might try to jump over them and fail.
The talk is still about this being an optional mode and implementing that in future missions, even though the thread started on retroactively fitting save rooms in existing missions, (which is not possible without major map design changes IMO).
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32 minutes ago, stgatilov said:
The fun of permadeath is about getting enough skill in analyzing the current situation and understanding when you can continue and when you should run away.
And this also applies to stealth games: you gauge the situation, think of a plan, execute and... quickload if it fails
But you could try to deal with the situation at hand. Well designed maps allow for this, you can look at OG Thief maps for example.
And I don't think TDM needs to have leveling system. Again, OG Thief maps are usually designed the way that you can "expand your territory" by either buying and finding water arrows to douse lights and set the scales more in your favor. You can expand that idea to other player tools, it doesn't have to be water arrow.
32 minutes ago, stgatilov said:TDM is not randomized, so replaying is not so fun.
Mooncrash doesn't have randomized world, and it's still plenty of fun because items, events and monsters are randomized. You could do a similar thing in TDM. That plus all the systemic reactions between different stim impulses and receivers make unique and not 100% predictable situations.
32 minutes ago, stgatilov said:I did not play Dark Souls but isn't it just a masochistic game? Not something to compare TDM to.
It's a brilliant tough-but-mostly-fair series of games, that attract the curiosity of many different players with all backgrounds. I absolutely adore this playthrough, it's brilliant to see how Ellen has grown throughout it:
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You can tune the AI, lighting and the level layout in general to accommodate for the high-risk reward situations. There are plenty of games with automatic / restricted saves that give tons of fun for thousands of players. Metal Gear Solid 5 has automatic checkpoints when you get near or leave a mission area, so you have to own up to your mistakes or run away and reset the mission. Dark Souls have automatic saves every few seconds and in bonfires. Prey Mooncrash has a time limit, and a game world state and abilities saved between level runs (that and a few other things you discover on your own). None of that discourages exploration. It only limits you from seeing everything during one play-through.
And none of that makes a game boring. On the contrary, encounters have higher stakes, your choices have consequences, and there are funny emergent accidents. I had plenty of great playthrough stories from Mooncrash, because of how unpredictable and suprising the events could get. A lot of near-death experiences, dumb mistakes that were reverted later by finding proper equipment, or near-wins destroyed by me not making to the rescue pod, because I made a mistake and got detected by that one nasty monster. It was awesome
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@AluminumHaste again, first off, it's/can be an optional game mode or difficulty level, not something you have to do. And you're wrong about getting your skills too. The only difference between the way you got them, and the way you can get them in a game without saves is time. Nothing else. How do you think people master games like Dark Souls?
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4 minutes ago, Dragofer said:
My regrets are that this takes up one of the difficulty slots, so one potentially can't have expert-level mission design without save restrictions, as well as my earlier points about unfair deaths and losing progress if you run out of RL time for your session before you make it to the next save room.
I guess it would feel less controversial and more clear if there was a system that would allow to choose a gameplay type and then choose a difficulty level for it? Like playing Quake with bots and first choosing between deathmatch, capture the flag, etc.and then the difficulty level. But I'm not sure how much of a gui nightmare would that be, plus how much additional work for mission authors to set the whole thing up.
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Just now, chakkman said:
Why implement that mode in the first place?
Because it changes your approach to gameplay and levels are/can be designed in a different way. You have to take risks, make guesses, and go with the consequences. It makes for sudden and interesting development of events, player panicking and thinking on their feet. It makes players forget about their stealth score 0 and just having fun, even if being clumsy at that. You can already play games like MGS5 or Prey Mooncrash to see how letting go of your inner perfectionist can lead to much funnier and more interesting experiences.
And again, so far it's a C O M P L E T E L Y O P T I O N A L mode/difficulty level that you can try. The standard gameplay is still there, on other difficulty levels.
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1 hour ago, Dragofer said:
Regarding the save restrictions, I think having a console-based cheat for them would make sense just like we have for god mode, notarget, noclip. It's on us if we use cheats irresponsibly (i.e. playing the whole mission with notarget enabled), but cheats do have their place and would in this case allow to experience Hazard Pay's expert-level AI placements etc. without having to make enough time IRL to make it to the next save room.
IMO it's not the same thing as other cheats. Different approach to saving is more like having a different gameplay type, and it's okay if you don't like it or don't want to play it. Why trying so hard to alter that mode then?
And, e.g. you don't complain about RE typewriter saves or roguelike games, insisting that authors should change it to your needs. You either make time for these games, if the gameplay is appealing to you, or you avoid them. Same thing here so far, you can always just choose different difficulty/game mode.
And raging about that is IMO just not listening what the other side is trying to communicate here, not to mention that it sounds super entitled. Authors can design missions however they want and they do not owe players anything.
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1 hour ago, datiswous said:
This only works if you do multiple playthroughs.
And that's what mission authors want, more longevity to their missions. If you reload a save every time you make mistake, your story is basically: "I moved carefully through the shadows and completed all objectives". And you can still have that on "standard" difficulties. But you're not really seeing the full potential of emergent systems working, if you reload the game every time you don't like the outcome.
These experimental difficulties, or rather new game modes, try to do something different, get more interesting emergent stories for (and from) the players, even if it means moving them out of a comfort zone a little.
The first step to understand this would be to trust that mission authors are trying to show you something new and possibly awesome, and just try it
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6 hours ago, Goldwell said:
Devs: hey here’s this new OPTIONAL feature which we think might change up gameplay a bit. It’ll be a fun experiment.
TDM Community: *Braveheart music playing* THEY CAN NEVER TAKE OUR FREEDOM!!!!!
It's actually kind of funny, given how stealth games' community members like to think of themselves, as more intelligent, progressive, or sophisticated, than fans of other genres.
And then you get situations like this one, where people would go out of their way to create a mod to alter an optional gameplay mode, so it plays just like those standard ones that are already available to them
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8 hours ago, datiswous said:
Personally I'm not a fan of mappers integrating autosaving/save rooms etc. in their missions, because a non-manual save system disables Emergent gameplay in some situations. You're not trying out all possible options when you can not save at every possible moment.
If mappers are going to map their missions around such features, this will change gameplay.
Actually, quite the contrary. With manual saves, you quick save/load your way through the map without ever facing the consequences of your actions, if the route or plan you choose goes wrong, or in the way you didn't expect. With limited or no saves you have to go with the flow and think on your feet – and that's when you really see the emergent systems at work, to full extent. With infinite saves players typically choose the safest option and they're done with the mission, instead of choosing a different approach in another playthrough.
And then they can boast of the forums that they finished the mission in 30 minutes on expert and it was a little too easy for their taste
Edit: and while I like to use cheats in FMs, e.g. to give myself a sightseeing tour and admire the views/ambience, I'd never edit anyone's map. IMO it's a sign of disrespect. They did what they could at the time, with the knowledge and resources that was available to them. It's a finished work unless they'll have another go at it, it's not up to me to mess with anything they created.
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25 minutes ago, Anderson said:
Of all the console features I loved the checkpoint save systems in games. That way, a sort of autosave system allows not to break immersion when everything is good, but also allows you to stay focused. But only if checkpoints can be often found and if it doesn't make the game stutter or freeze.
Yup, and at this point it's not even a console feature, as these games are on PC too. In general, in last ten years or so, game designers got really good at making the checkpoint systems almost invisible to the player, who doesn't have to think much about saving their progress.
At the same time, there are devs experimenting with both im-sim genre and e.g. rogue-lite features. Prey: Mooncrash did that really well, ditching manual saves, but carrying some of the things throughout your progression. To me it was one of the most fresh experiences back then, and I've heard Deathloop is going further down that road as well (can't wait to play it!).
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22 hours ago, AluminumHaste said:
You're the one that brought it up....
But I forgot the golden rule; don't argue with peter_spy, so I'll humbly bow out of this discussion, I've already thrown my 2 cents in.
I brought that up because there is no polar opposition here or contradiction. I thought it's obvious and not worth discussing over and over again that there is an authorial intent, even in sandbox or im-sim games. It's just that the author is giving players toys in a controlled sandbox environment, and they're just not authoring the experience in a linear way, minute per minute, as in other games. But authoring the experience is still there, just in much broader sense. Again, obvious things for im-sims and sandboxes.
And I was opposing the cvar for overriding the save system, because it can be more much more influential than just level design tools; as in both Kingsal's mission and other games using different approaches saves (or lack thereof), you can see that there is a potential to create basically a new gameplay type, or at least adding some fresh elements. Roguelike/time trial levels for speedrunners, adding old Resident Evil kind of pacing and resource management to the mix, etc.
Adding a cvar to override this is like adding a save system to Quake deatchmatch, or a fighting game.
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Can we skip sunday school for im-sim level designers? I believe everyone here knows that, and that we're talking about saving system, which is higher in the game systems hierarchy than level design tools, while obviously influencing everything down the line.
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5 minutes ago, AluminumHaste said:
Dude, our ability to bypass a feature has no bearing on your enjoyment of the gameplay or feature.
And there's no roguelike features implemented. If I die I don't get to keep the fire arrow I picked up etc.
It's not about my enjoyment, it's about author's intent. If someone wants to create an FM with different saving methods and resulting gameplay, they should be able to do it. They don't always have to cater to everyone.
7 minutes ago, esme said:"Scumming" such a nice term, gives me a warm glow
Save scumming is a term decades old and it's commonly used; "compulsive saving", if you need to be so formal.
[2.10] Volumetric Lights
in TDM Editors Guild
Posted
Yup, exactly. In order to avoid confusion, just let volumetric lights use shadow mapping, maybe give players On/Off option for these lights in the UI to improve performance, and when the time will come to phase out stencil shadows, you'll remove the stencil/maps switch.