Maximius

In fact, most security forces operate in such a way. I know because I was part of the security taskforce in a nuclear missile unit in Germany years ago. (Hey Spar, how far are you from Giessen? I was stationed in Herborn Seelbach back in 90/91, 45minutes from Frankfurt A.M. north up the autobahn towards Dortmund.) Essentially, security forces have assigned posts, and when the alert is tripped, you go to your position and stay put until told otherwise. Security forces operate under such protocols so that leaders know where they have assets at any given time as well as covering escapes and vulnerable spots.

I think I may have asked this before but Ill try again. The problem with AIs and ladders is that the player can use them to confuse the guards, climb halfway up and jump off, lead all the guards up a ladder then run away, leaving them searching fruitlessly while you plunder three rooms over. So what about if, in every five or ten guards, only one or two could climb ladders? A fully armored guard is not going to be climbing much anyway, one fall and you will shatter bones with 40 lbs of armor on. But in every group of five, for example, there could be one guard who is lightly armored and who will climb any ladder the Thief is seen scaling. It wont matter if the THief jumps off or not, because the guard is not just chasing the Thief, he is going to guard teh room at the top of the ladder. So the Thief is pursued by a gang of guards. He scoots up a ladder. One of the guards breaks off and climbs after him. The Thief hops down and runs off, the other four pursue him but the climbing guard continues to the top and then patrols the room up there. Maybe he wont even come down for the rest of the mission, he will stay up there to insure that the Thief wont try to escape his fellow guards by climbing up there. Essentially, the guards realize that they cant follow the Thief up ladders so one of them stations himself up there to preclude the Thief from hiding easily. I realize this doesnt address all of teh problems with ladder climbing but perhaps its a start? Of course this doesnt say anything about pagans, townsfolk, and servants who have nothing to stop them from climbing wherever they like. I do think that AIs NOT climbing ladders detracts from the atmosphere, nothing was sillier in T1/T2 then hiding from an ape-beast , who can obviously climb like devils, by climbing a ladder.

I like those ideas Om, heres a suggestion: Guard is unalerted, weapon sheathed, you ko him and have to catch him but weapon is not a concern. Guard is alerted, weapon is out, if you gas him or kill him and he drops you can still catch him, but the weapon hits the ground, loudly. Another layer of difficulty, just a small touch but it would contribute to realism a bit without being a major hassle.

The only part of Braveheart worth watching was Mel Gibson being disemboweled, I cheered out loud in the theater and got several angry looks from fellow viewers. Rob Roy was a much better movie, not the best but decent. What about racial differences? One of the things I liked about the Thief series was that it wasnt all white faces. I would like to see different kinds of people, with different clothing and weapons and such. If for example the Thief travels to a Southern city or town, it would be cool to have different architecture and all. I know this is an assload of work, Im just daydreaming. I'd like the pagans to cross the line between human and animal to a degree. Lets say we have a band of these wolf-warriors, perhaps one or two of the members, being of purer animal spirit and filled with burning devotion to the Lord of the Woods, actually take on some wolf characteristics. They could yip and snort, sniffing the air with their elongated snouts and howling to attract reinforcements. They could have improved senses, making them really tough to hide from, and perhaps they can run faster or fight harder or something. The point is to make the pagans really scary, I never found them that spooky in any of the games. In fact, the best encounters with pagans were the cutscenes, where they looked really witchy and animalistic and scary.

It looks really good Dram. I cant wait to be perched on one of those arches lining up a bow shot at someones head...

Im looking forward to your results. The teleporting thing is cool, it would beat having an assload of level portals to wait for all the time.

That would be fun, the player could even be made a little nauseous looking down towards the city if the rocking were bad enough, talk about realism! Gildoran:If your city is low-poly enough that the entire city can be viewed without a drop in frame-rates, you could take a third option of keeping the ship still, and having the city be the "monorail". Ok so how about the map, the giant City, has three levels? 1. the ground floor, with active streets and small homes and shops and sewers to explore. halfway up the tallest buildings is a level portal to 2, the second half of the buildings and rooftops, wizards towers and thieves nests, level 1 being a low rez floor below if you look over a ledge or window and the sky being a slightly higher low rez roof. Now at certain rooftops there are air ship stations where the Thief can sneak aboard a docked ship, which then kicks off 3, a leisurely journey to another air station across the City. This 3 could be a "city monorail" with the rooftops well below the ship so they could be pretty low rez, the ship could be detailed and explorable, robbing guests and crew and stuff, then docking across the city, level portal, back to 2 but at a different site of course. When the Thief wants to head back across the city, he could sneak back aboard, perhaps randomizable guests and guards and other foes could be generated for a different trip each time.

IIRC in Thief as you ran out of breath, your life meter would drop but it would recover if you surfaced in time. I always read this as the player using his last few breaths, so it made sense that they returned. I guess I was assuming something similar would happen in FC, that the red meter would be your last few seconds but recoverable.

I didnt think that the damage was from water inhalation, that would make sense. I am used to the life meter being the last few breaths, not permanent damage from the lack of it.

Sorry I never played RedGuard Dram but I will have to check it out. That screenshot sound like the trick, throw some clouds in and the illusion would be solid. I think. Thanks for your information. I had another idea for air ships, let me float this one by you.... ( ) Ok, the story line is that the Thief is aboard one air ship which is under attack by another air ship. The second air ship is attempting to board the first, so there are a number of grappling hooks and chains joining the two ships. The first ship is doomed, its on fire and will be going down soon. The Thief has to sneak from the first ship, avoid the battling crews, shimmy across a chain, and hide on the second ship to avoid going down with the first. To build the map, all you would need as far as non-ship environment is a cube with five sides of "sky" and one indistinct side of "ground" The two ships are actually one object, joined by a number of chains, though it wouldbe neet to have the 2nd ship drop its chains after a certain point but whatever. The ships dont have to move, or at least much, they could rock back and forth for effect.

They do look a little crabby though. I liked the limited weapons too, and I also like the breath meter. What sucked though was when you lost health from drowning and it would not come back, thats unrealistic.

All it does AFAIK is make your weapon bob and drift a little when you are sitting around in the game. Its just to add a touch of realism I think, doesnt impact gameplay. The "crabs" are the smallest of the TriGens. WHen you get to the end, there are at least two other kinds, one carrys an assault rifle like the mercs and the others are these rocket firing monstrosities that can take a shit load of damage. The big ones are stupid and clumsy though, I killed a few with the old Thief trick that used to wipe out the Mechanist tanks. Hide halfway around a corner in a doorway and let the tank start shooting, the rocket hits the wall and damages only the tank itself. I got two more by running along the edge of a cliff, they tried to follow my path and slipped off the edge into the water. I thought the mutants were a little stupid but overall they were still pretty fun to play against. The Tanks will knock stuff out of their way if its blocking them, last night two Tanks and a crab were tangled up in a group and the Tank whacked the Crab halfway across the field to get it out of his way.

Its not as bad a slog as D3 was, that much is for sure. One of the things I liked as well was the ability to simply walk past enemies, whereas it seemed in D3 the player was constantly forced to confront every AI in the place. In some areas, I simply crept past the bad guys to conserve ammo/save time. Did you quit because you were getting bored with it like you did with DUUM 3?

That all makes sense to me. I was thinking of a hang glider like in FarCry, which was a hell of a lot of fun to soar around in. Until the helicopter gunship arrived.... Here is an idea for the giant city and making it more workable. What if the city was split in half, so that it was actually two separate levels. So when the player is on the ground, and looks up, he sees what appears to be really tall towers and sections of the sky but he is actually looking at a low roof. He can enter any building and go up so far, but past a certain point he would actually be entering another map, this time a map of the top half of the city. Now, in the top half, when he looks over the edge of a roof or whatever, he sees what appears to be a city street far below but he is actually looking a t a floor that is only a few feet away. Every building would have an inter-map portal joining the top half to the bottom half at the same point. Im not familiar with Arcanum airships, I proposed a dirigible ( ) because it is relatively low-tech and doesnt require a magical explanation to explain its ability to fly. And no, we dont have to have all the crews be Americans either......*<;o}

Since this is a wish list kind of thread, I have another question. how hard would it be to make an air ship that could travel about this city? Im thinking of a blimp like thing that the player could sneak aboard to ride across the city or hell even steal and navigate his/her way around. Imagine being pursued to a roof top where your only escape is to leap onto an airship passing nearby . Or stealing an airship only to be pursued by the Fuzz in their own airship. Another fun item would be some sort of glider craft. The Thief could hop off of a taller building and glide to a lower rooftop of a building unaccessable from the ground, or break into a building at the bottom level, work his way up to the roof and escape by gliding off into the night. Im sure these ideas have some purists muttering but I think they would be a lot of fun if they would be possible. Comments?

How far along did you get into it? I would also suggest playing it on expert, it makes it a lot more realistic IMO.

Im almost finished with FarCry so I thought Id grade it and get all your opinions. Overall, I give it a B+/A-. Its was a lot of fun, the outdoor scenery was incredible, its the first FPS with outdoor action that actually made me feel I was outdoors. The indoor sequences were pretty good too, I know some here thought it was a "corridor crawl" and thats true to a degree but I still had a lot of fun fighting my way through. The AI were pretty tough. I would have liked to have seen more grenade use by the mercs, as well as ladder climbing. They did use the vehicles effectively, at one point I killed a hummer squad only to have a third merc sneak up behind me, jump in the vehicle and run me over. The mutants were not the best idea in the world, a little dumb looking compared to the rest of the AI, but they still pulled it off. BTW, is this the "Island of Dr. Moreau" or what? The snipers bugged me a little though, I could see that they could see me at a certain distance but they would not start firing until I got closer. I could snipe them, so it unbalanced their effectiveness. The merc conversations were pretty good too, but I thought they could have been improved in one or two ways. For one thing, you dont say "I dont know what that was and I dont care!" or "Not my problem!" when a grenade goes off 30 feet away. A nade going off 30 feet away IS your problem. Nor does a merc shout "You're going down!" to a slobbering monkey mutant who is charging you, you scream mindlessly and shoot the fucker. I thought that they could have worked the merc commentary to a bit of a finer degree, but this is of course nit-picking. The physics were really cool. one time I tossed a nade into a room and when it blew up, it sent a merc through the air, smashed him into a shelf of crap which toppled over spilling its contents, and he lay on top of it sprawled like a rag doll. Another time I was being pursued by a patrol boat, I turned my turrent around and started returning fire and after a few seconds of exchange the gunner pin wheeled off the back of the boat into the water. It looked like a scene from an action flick. Yet a third time I pushed some barrels down a slope, they rolled right over two dudes and flattened them. Fun! I did NOT like the "detection meter" thingy. I found it mostly useless, it was either too late, it went red around the time bullets started flying or too early, it was like an ESP that told me something was watching me when I didnt even know it. I would have much preferred a light gem like thing, to tell me my relative level of exposure and let me use that to navigate the terrain. I LOVED the rock tossing thing though, what a common sense, low tech way to distract or attract guards! Love it! The weapons were pretty cool too. Each was useful in its own way, with the exception of the pistol which I found mostly useful only to conserve rifle rounds early on. The shotgun was a real treat, I mowed down legions of AIs with it, usually with a flash nade into a room and then the scattergun! The MP5 navy (i think) the silenced sub machine was nicely balanced, only a 9mm so its not overpowering but the silencer made it very useful. The best was the assault rifle with the grenade launcher attached, that thing simply kicked ass. I also like the limitations to carrying weapons, I would have made it even tougher by making the player able to carry only 3 weapons if one was the rocket launcher but thats just me. The vehicles and turrent weapons were both fun to use and useful, I cleared out a lot of indoor AIs but leading them back to a point where I could jump into a machine gun nest. Overall, a really good game, i recommend it and I cant wait to mess with the editor a bit.

That makes sense Domarius/sparhawk. Remember the Doom I expansion pack, with the kooky fan missions and all that stuff? My roomate and I had two 486s networked with a phone cord, we would start playing Saturday night around 11 P.M. and not stop until 7 a.m. the next day.

no, its not strafing, in my key bindings there was a key for sliding, or something like that, i think it was bound to the ALT key in the original installation. If i remember correctly, A and D could be bound for strafing independently, i certainly never played with them bound for turning.

I floated the idea of the Thief using a sort of over-sock for walking silently across noisy floors. he would slip them on before and then carefully tip toe across. The benefits: 1. no moss arrows, I dont mind using magical items but it always bugged me that the AI would be alerted by a doused torch but a brand new carpet of magical moss in the front foyer never raised an eyebrow, and 2. the socks are infinitely reuseable. But they are not something the Thief would want to wear all the time, because they only let him move just so fast without slipping and falling and he sure as hell cannot scamper up a rope or mantle up onto a wall with them on. So they have limitations as well, as any good tool in a game should have. Domarious, you seem to know much about the mechanics of t2, what in the hell was the "slide" button for? I could never get it to do anything at all in the game, I tried it alone and in combination but it never did anything for me.

Hexen, I dont know if this has been mentioned yet, but along with Thief 1/2 being incredible games, there are hundreds of megs of fan missions for T2. T1 has some fan missions but not as many, I think they are harder to make in T1. So if you drop 20$ U.S. for T2, you are actually getting +YEARS+ of fresh gameplay. And many of the fan missions are top notch too, better than the games in fact. Im not sure if the fan missions for T2 are readily interchangable with TGold, I assume they are though. Check out this site: http://thiefmissions.com/ and you will get an idea of the quantity of fan missions out there.

Wait until he gets to the Cathedral........

is there a difference between carving out hallways and using hallways to block hallways to conserve on processing power, and building discrete buildings that block the views to conserve power? (Assuming that the alternative to the hallway method is the discrete "block" method {my terminology} of building each individual structure or city block.) I understand why rooftop maps demand more power, as the extended view has to be processed simultaneously, but on the ground level is there an important difference between hallway and the "block" method as long as the views are portalized or blocked by other structures? While Im at it, portalization is the process of putting an invisible BSP in each doorway/window/extended viewpoint that forces the renderer to only process what would be visible through that aperature from the players POV at that moment as opposed to having to create the entire possible viewpoint through the aperature at one time. So if I am looking into room X through a doorway w/o the portal, a chair that is next to the door in room X would be rendered even though I cannot see it at that moment. But if there is a portal, the chair will not be rendered until I move into the room or until I move to a POV outside the room that allows me to see the chair. Is this correct?

Domarius, when you say that its carved out like hallways, do you mean that literally as in you build a blank series of hallways then paint them with textures and fixtures to look like a city street?

That makes sense. I was planning on most of the action taking place inside anyways.