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eigenface

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Posts posted by eigenface

  1. RPGista, you're right, zombies would still need to pull open doors that open toward them. For me personally, with an appropriately slovenly door-pulling animation (not a careful door-pulling animation like other characters, which the zombies use now), I can buy zombies pulling open doors to get at what they want. For me, the seriously immersion-breaking part is when they stop, turn around, and close the door - I can't imagine zombies having that presence of mind.

    As for the door-pushing animation, I remember the zombies used to do a sideways limp, dragging one foot behind. I don't see them doing that anymore - is that animation still around? Maybe it could be repurposed as a door-shoving animation, leaning into it shoulder-first. The zombie wouldn't stop to open the door, they'd walk right into it, and it would open as they shove through. Is something like that plausible?

  2. To me, I can justify walking corpses that reenact some of the same behaviours they did in life more easily than I can justify doors that suddenly close on their own behalf.

    I agree, but with the doors I describe, that slowly start swinging closed under their own weight as soon as they're opened (like many real doors do), we wouldn't have to justify either - no strange zombie behavior and no magic doors.

  3. SilentKlD, I 2nd your reaction to the polite zombies, as well as your suggestion that they should open doors just by staggering into them, and then not bother to close them.

    Sotha, I appreciate your points. They can be addressed by doors that automatically close after some time delay, which I've seen in some missions. Auto-closing doors also address your points for the case when the player leaves a door open, plus the case when an AI opens a door and doesn't shut it because the player sidetracks them. However, in my opinion, timed auto-closing doors are immersion-breaking as well, especially in missions that aren't supposed to be haunted. I have a humble suggestion.

    It is possible to make auto-closing doors completely natural and non-immersion-breaking. Many real life doors are auto-closing, and I'm not just talking about the ones with a spring mechanism at the top. If the hinges are misaligned vertically, the door swings shut under its own weight. I'm sure everyone has noticed countless doors like this, especially in older buildings. If the misalignment is slight, it can take quite some time, say 5 or 10 seconds, for the door to close all the way. Also, you will notice the door starts moving extremely slowly, and then accelerates, reaching its max speed just before closing all the way. This is the perfect behavior for a self-closing door in TDM, because it leaves the AI or the player plenty of time to go through the door while it's wide open and moving very slowly, even if the player is crouched and/or creeping. If the player sits in the doorway and the door does hit them, no big problem, it just stops, and then starts to swing closed again once the player leaves. This way, TDM could have self-closing doors that are completely natural. And as a bonus, zombies don't need to be polite with doors, just stagger into it to open and then leave it to swing shut on its own.

  4. Here's some textual inspiration to go with all these images. From the introduction to the book "Perdido Street Station" by China Mieville:

     

    Veldt to scrub to fields to farms to these first tumbling houses that rise from the earth. It has been night for a long time. The hovels that encrust the river’s edge have grown like mushrooms around me in the dark.

     

    We rock. We pitch in a deep current.

     

    Behind me the man tugs uneasily at his rudder and the barge corrects. Light lurches as the lantern swings. The man is afraid of me. I lean out from the prow of the small vessel across the darkly moving water.

     

    Over the engines oily rumble and the caresses of the river small sounds, house sounds, are building. Timbers whisper and the wind strokes thatch, walls settle and floors shift to fill space; the tens of houses have become hundreds, thousands; they spread backwards from the banks and shed light from all across the plain.

     

    They surround me. They are growing. They are taller and fatter and noisier, their roofs are slate, their walls are strong brick.

     

    The river twists and turns to face the city. It looms suddenly, massive, stamped on the landscape. Its light wells up around the surrounds, the rock hills, like bruise-blood. Its dirty towers glow. I am debased. I am compelled to worship this extraordinary presence that has silted into existence at the conjunction of two rivers. It is a vast pollutant, a stench, a klaxon sounding. Fat chimneys retch dirt into the sky even now in the deep night. It is not the current which pulls us but the city itself, its weight sucks us in. Faint shouts, here and there the calls of beasts, the obscene clash and pounding from the factories as huge machines rut. Railways trace urban anatomy like protruding veins. Red brick and dark walls, squat churches like troglodytic things, ragged awnings flickering, cobbled mazes in the old town, culs-de-sac, sewers riddling the earth like secular sepulchres, a new landscape of wasteground, crushed stone, libraries fat with forgotten volumes, old hospitals, towerblocks, ships and metal claws that lift cargoes from the water.

     

    How could we not see this approaching? What trick of topography is this, that lets the sprawling monster hide behind corners to leap out at the traveller?

     

    It is too late to flee.

     

    The man murmurs to me, tells me where we are. I do not turn to him.

     

    This is Raven’s Gate, this brutalized warren around us. The rotting buildings lean against each other, exhausted. The river smears slime on its brick banks, city walls risen from the depths to hold the water at bay. There is a vile stink here.

     

    (I wonder how this looks from above, no chance for the city to hide then, if you came at it on the wind you would see it from miles and miles away like a dirty smear, like a slab of carrion thronging with maggots, I should not think like this but I cannot stop now, I could ride the updrafts that the chimneys vent, sail high over the proud towers and shit on the earthbound, ride the chaos, alight where I choose, I must not think like this, I must not do this now, I must stop, not now, not this, not yet.)

     

    Here there are houses which dribble pale mucus, an organic daubing that smears base facades and oozes from top windows. Extra storeys are rendered in the cold white muck which fills gaps between houses and dead-end alleys. The landscape is defaced with ripples as if wax has melted and set suddenly across the rooftops. Some other intelligence has made these human streets their own.

     

    Wires are stretched tight across the river and the eaves, held fast by milky aggregates of phlegm. They hum like bass strings. Something scuttles overhead. The bargeman hawks foully into the water.

     

    His gob dissipates. The mass of spittle-mortar above us ebbs. Narrow streets emerge.

     

    A train whistles as it crosses the river before us on raised tracks. I look to it, to the south and the east, seeing the line of little lights rush away and be swallowed by this nightland, this behemoth that eats its citizens. We will pass the factories soon. Cranes rear from the gloom like spindly birds; here and there they move to keep the skeleton crews, the midnight crews, in their work. Chains swing deadweight like useless limbs, snapping into zombie motion where cogs engage and flywheels turn.

     

    Fat predatory shadows prowl the sky.

     

    There is a boom, a reverberation, as if the city has a hollow core. The black barge putters through a mass of its fellows weighed down with coke and wood and iron and steel and glass. The water here reflects the stars through a stinking rainbow of impurities, effluents and chymical slop, making it sluggish and unsettling.

     

    (Oh, to rise above this to not smell this filth this dirt this dung to not enter the city through this latrine but I must stop, I must, I cannot go on, I must.)

     

    The engine slows. I turn and watch the man behind me, who averts his eyes and steers, affecting to look through me. He is taking us in to dock, there behind the warehouse so engorged its contents spill out beyond the buttresses in a labyrinth of huge boxes. He picks his way between other craft. There are roofs emerging from the river. A line of sunken houses, built on the wrong side of the wall, pressed up against the bank in the water, their bituminous black bricks dripping. Disturbances beneath us. The river boils with eddies from below. Dead fish and frogs that have given up the fight to breathe in this rotting stew of detritus swirl frantic between the flat side of the barge and the concrete shore, trapped in choppy turmoil. The gap is closed. My captain leaps ashore and ties up. His relief is draining to see. He is wittering gruffly in triumph and ushering me quickly ashore and away and I alight, as slowly as if onto coals, picking my way through the rubbish and the broken glass.

     

    He is happy with the stones I have given him. I am in Smog Bend, he tells me, and I make myself look away as he points my direction so he will not know I am lost, that I am new in the city, that I am afraid of these dark and threatening edifices of which I cannot kick free, that I am nauseous with claustrophobia and foreboding.

     

    A little to the south two great pillars rise from the river. The gates to the Old City, once grandiose, now psoriatic and ruined. The carved histories that wound about those obelisks have been effaced by time and acid, and only roughcast spiral threads like those of old screws remain. Behind them, a low bridge (Drud Crossing, he says). I ignore the man’s eager explanations and walk away through this lime-bleached zone, past yawning doors that promise the comfort of true dark and an escape from the river stench. The bargeman is just a tiny voice now and it is a small pleasure to know I will never see him again.

     

    It is not cold. A city light is promising itself in the east.

     

    I will follow the trainlines. I will stalk in their shadow as they pass by over the houses and towers and barracks and offices and prisons of the city, I will track them from the arches that anchor them to the earth. I must find my way in.

     

    My cloak (heavy cloth unfamiliar and painful on my skin) tugs at me and I can feel the weight of my purse. That is what protects me here; that and the illusion I have fostered, the source of my sorrow and my shame, the anguish that has brought me to this great wen, this dusty city dreamed up in bone and brick, a conspiracy of industry and violence, steeped in history and battened-down power, this badland beyond my ken.

  5. Alright, here is my take on the "relaxed" lines for the pro guard, as per the script earlier in this thread. Currently, they're all normalized to the same volume, with no compression or reverb. I'm open to all kinds of criticism, on both recording and vocal skills. If these are generally satisfactory, my plan is to power through as many lines as I can tonight, and finish the rest in the near future. What say you?

     

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/mcmw5xny93rhnz7/tdm_pro_relaxed.zip

     

    I have a few questions. Is the script earlier in this thread the most up-to-date version? Are the names in the script the filenames you want (idle_1, idle_2, etc)? If so, what should I name the coughs, sneezes, and such?

  6. Pop shields are less for excessively-loud sounds and more for wind. As a mic is sensitive to pressure, unfortunately it picks up air currents as well as sound waves. Sometimes when you talk (such as pronouncing 'p' or 'f'), you expel a little puff of air, in addition to the sound. The pop shield blocks the wind but not (much of) the sound.

     

    However, a real pop shield (that is, a disk on an arm mounted independently from the microphone stand) is pointless overkill unless you're using a high-end mic (several $100 at least.) For cheap mics, use a windscreen, such a little foam covering on the end of the mic, or just throw a sock over it (seriously.) It can also help to speak past the mic rather than directly into it.

     

    IMHO, windscreens (improvised or otherwise) have a number of advantages over pop shields (unless you have a high-end, professional recording setup):

     

    1. They block wind from all directions instead of only one, so you can take the mic outside. (Although, in high-wind conditions, you'll also need a dead cat.)

    2. They take up less space and are more portable - you don't have this gangling arm flopping around.

    3. They keep dust out of the inside of your microphone. This is key at my place.

  7. I'm stuck. I've been over and over the areas I can access, so at this point I'm more interesting in a direct "do-this-next" full-spoiler, rather than a vague hint.

    [spoiler]There are locked doors I can't open on the back of the church and the crypt outside the church. I have a church storage key I found inside the church, but it doesn't open any locked doors I can find. And I can get to a sewer with an underground tomb at the end, with a mysterious arch and a letter about it - I don't know what to do here. What should I do to move on?[/spoiler]
  8. I've just gone back and read your MWoT, Airship Ballet, very insightful. I can't tell if I actually disagree with you about anything, but if I did it might have to do with scripted events. They're great for gradually building up apprehension and dread, at least on the first playthrough. Scripted events have very little replay value, because you already know what's going to happen. But that's fine, replayability isn't necessarily a major concern.

     

    The problem is, I've played so many horror games / mods, I'm getting really good at figuring out what's scripted and what's not, while it's still happening. For me, scripted events have much less first-play value than they once did, because I already know what's going to happen, in general terms: I won't actually be attacked - that's what's going to happen. Oftentimes, I can run right up to the "danger" and stick my face in it, with little fear of consequence. A horror veteran doesn't have to wait for the 2nd playthrough for scripted events to lose potency, much is lost as soon as he can tell the them apart from "real AI". I understand every game requires suspension of disbelief, but as you play more and more often, you automatically develop a higher and higher degree of "perceptual skepticism" - you become genre-savvy.

     

    The only solution I can think of is to focus hard on blurring the line between scripted event and AI - keep the player guessing right up to the end about what constitutes a "real AI". Unfortunately, this becomes even more difficult with a fan mission for an existing game, because chances are the player already knows how an AI typically looks and behaves in that game. And if you do want replayability, scripted events are right out - your best bet would be try to make AI which are good at setting up scripted-event-like encounters dynamically. An example is an AI that sneaks up close behind the player, but doesn't do anything else, unless they're noticed.

     

    I noticed another meta-game problem for the genre-savvy: the implications of helplessness change. Early on, helplessness meant I'm vulnerable. Through experience, I've now come to understand helplessness means I'm unlikely to face anything that's a real danger (only scripted events.) If I don't have any means of defending myself, I know you're wearing kid gloves, because you wouldn't want me to feel the game is unfair. At best, I'll have to run out of the room, and at worst, I can just wait out the scripted event.

     

    A perfect example of what I'm talking about is the beginning of the Thief 2 FM Rose Cottage. From the start, the atmosphere is amazing, but I observed everything with a knowing smirk on my face, right up until the point when they gave me a weapon. My response was, "Oh shit! Now I better start being careful." I've come full circle on this issue - I think the game should never make the player completely helpless, because in the meta-game, the experienced player responds not by feeling vulnerable but by anticipating the kinds of things they'll encounter while completely helpless, that is, nothing "real".

    • Like 2
  9. I think stealth games are tailor-made for horror-themed missions. Hiding from powerful enemies is already scary without deliberate horror elements. If done right, stealth games make the scariest horror games.

     

    I also think stealth is the only genre that does horror justice. Horror needs sophisticated AI, which can do more than just chase you and kill you. Horror needs AI that can search for you and not necessarily find you. Horror needs AI that can become suspicious, and decide to go look for you in some hiding place, as you hold your breath and watch from another, nearby hiding place. Unfortunately, most of the recent renaissance of indie horror games have AI that only chase you and kill you, at best - many have scares that jump out at you and that's all.

     

    For me personally, the most important part of engagement in a game is emotional involvement. For me, horror games have always been the best at creating that kind of involvement. As Lovecraft says, "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." Needless to say, my favorite Thief game is The Dark Project / Gold, although The Cradle from Thief 3 gave it a run for its money.

     

    However, I do think "found horror" is the best horror (in the sense of "found footage" and "found food".) This is because we must build up a sense of the expected and the known before we appreciate the unexpected and the unknown. Another problem with many recent horror games is they drop you into a "scary situation" right at the start, without ever establishing a feeling of normalcy. That's one reason Thief is such a great fit for horror: occasional horror elements are mixed into general thievery - you have a job to do and you know how to do it, there is a known, an expected, and then you stumble upon something unknown and unexplained. The Rocksbourg Thief 2 fan-mission series by DrK is a fantastic case study.

    • Like 2
  10. I see. Physics would get us most of the way to what you're talking about. Use a squashed-cylinder for a collider, and restrict the horizontal range of your freelook direction to within 100 degrees or so on either side of a vector sticking out of one of the two flattened sides. When you turn, the collider turns with you, so your freelook direction always stays right in the center of the range, unless the collider is obstructed.

     

    The sticky part is how you decide when to disable crouch and reduce movement speed. You can't do it whenever the collider is colliding with something, because then your movement is reduced any time you slightly brush up against a wall. Also, in my experience, physics is jittery (usually, when it tries to resolve collider penetration.) If a wall has bumps and protrusions (lamps, door frames, etc.), you're likely to get collisions starting and ending, off and on, over and over again as the collider bounces and skips along the wall. For similar reasons, you can't reduce movement whenever you have more than 1 collision (when you're wedged between 2 walls), because again if a wall is rough, you can get multiple collisions with a single wall.

     

    What do you think would be a good way to implement this? Of course, the idea is NOT to have special trigger areas laid out in the map.

  11. The really like first part of the idea, about squeezing into narrow passages by turning sideways. It would add new kinds of areas for the player to explore, the kinds of narrow spaces they'd be able to access with a real body rather than a simple collider shape. Just being able to access these areas, and in addition, the sense of space they'd get from having to turn sideways and inch along, would make them feel more involved with the physical environment, more present in the game world. I've often thought it would be a lot of fun to explore these kind of claustrophobic spaces, everything from narrow alleyways to cracks between rocks in caves.

     

    The squeeze would work even better if it had a horizontal version as well. That is, the ability to lay down and inch along on your stomach. You could crawl through small sewer pipes and wormhole-like passageways in caves. Unlike "going prone" in most games, I think the stomach-crawl would work better in TDM if you didn't have to start with your feet on the ground at the same level as the floor of the space you're crawling into. For example, if you find a hole at eye-level in the wall of a building, you can just squirm through. In other words, when you mantle, the space you're moving into doesn't have to be able to fit you while standing or crouching - if it will only fit you while prone, you'll automatically be put in the prone state as you go.

     

    I'm wondering how squeezing sideways, the original idea, would be implemented. I've seen this as a context-sensitive prompt in the environment (like in Outlast), and I didn't like it. The fact you know that this action can only happen in certain specific areas set out by the mapper really kills the sense of organic exploration. Of course, there's no need to have a visible prompt - the sideways turn/collider-squeeze could happens automatically when you enter certain areas. Determining which areas trigger the squeeze effect might be tricky, though - it's not necessarily 2 flat, vertical walls, it could be uneven, organic barriers with lots of polygons at different angles, like cave walls. Or maybe you're in between a pair of fences made of horizontal rungs, or vertical bars. Or inching between 2 giant spheres. The mapper could manually lay out the squeeze-trigger areas, but I think I have a better idea:

     

    Make the ability to squeeze manual (just like the ability to go prone.) When you're in this state, you can only move in 2 directions. Your movement rate is greatly decreased, and you're freelook is constrained as Plutonia says. The squeeze would be useful not only for getting into small spaces, but hugging walls to avoid nearby guards. Even with the bug, I found the wall-hugging in Thief 3 added to the experience, and in TDM you could do it in a more natural way than Thief 3 - you don't need to be near a wall to enter the squeeze state.

     

    One of the things I liked about the dark, shadowy environments in Doom 3 were all the cracks and irregular spaces in the walls. Instead of solid metal, there was always a narrow space between 2 bulkheads, a hole in the floor or ceiling, an indistinct nook or cranny, which a monster could crawl out of at any moment. How much cooler it would be if you could explore all those little creepy, claustrophobic spaces yourself, find secret passages, etc...

  12. Yes, I have a razer mouse, but I did not have any other razer software installed before installing surround / synapse. I also have win7 64.

     

    Apologies if I think that's a bit of an over reaction.

     

    Whatever, do what you want, of course. I figure I would be doing everyone a disservice if I didn't warn you about what happened in my case. I hope razer surround does not cause you any problems.

  13. This sounded like a great idea to me too, so I installed razer surround. I regret it. First, understand that in order to use razer surround, you need to be running the other program bundled with it, razer synapse, and you need to be logged into a razer account for "game settings in the cloud" (that's already a red flag for me, but not the worst part.) At seemingly random moments, the sound would cut out altogether as stop working entirely until I restarted. Also, the price you pay for simulated surround sound is worse fidelity - the sounds seem flatter, and my system sounds would sometimes glitch and get cut off halfway through a "click' or "beep" (this is a separate problem from when all the sound would stop working entirely.) Also, razer synapse took over my mouse settings and "optimized" them so I could not control my mouse as effectively as before (when I had the settings I manually entered and actually wanted.) So I tried to uninstall razer surround and synapse. The uninstallations finished successfully. After I restarted my pc, I noticed my sound was still flat and glitchy, and my mouse controls were still fucked. A search of my hard drive found the razer driver files still installed, and msconfig told me a razer process was still running. Apparently, my control over my own drivers had been "optimized". After a system restore, I finally managed to get rid of the razer malware (I hope...) Install at your own risk.

  14. Those all sounds like great ideas, and I think they'd make the game better.

     

    With the possible exception of the backward speed decrease. Having done a fair amount of sparring in unarmed martial arts, as well as LARP-style, padded-PVC swordplay, I've discovered that backing up and staying out of range is a perfectly viable defensive tactic. That is, assuming you don't run out of room. In TDM, I think it's appropriate for the thief to be an artful dodger, but if that absolutely has to be nerfed, I think there's a better way to do it than restricting movement, which makes the controls feel less effective overall. In your video, it seems to me the AI's problem is he's not moving forward as he attacks. He stops and stands in place whenever he takes a swing. Instead of slowing your retreat, make the AI advance while attacking.

  15. Thank you AluminumHaste, for showing me how it's done. This makes the whole game more fun. After adopting your tactics for combat, not only is combat itself more palatable, but stealth also takes on a different, more immersive feel. Due to the fact fighting is now faster and more dynamic, I'm more willing to fight when cornered instead of reloading. And this willingness to fight means the enemies themselves seem more threatening, even when they haven't seen me, because if they do see me, they might kill me, instead of just boring me into reloading.

     

    I really hope you guys don't decide to nerf dynamic combat tactics by reducing the backward movement speed. In that case, there would be no way around the arduous experience I described in my earlier post. Consider this first:

     

    AluminumHaste is really good at dynamic fighting. I'm not that good. My victory is far from assured, even when I adopt his tactics. The decrease in backward speed is not necessary to make fighting difficult for the average player - it's already difficult, and damn-near torture if you take a slower, more static approach.

     

    I liked how combat worked in thief 1 and 2. It was difficult and felt a bit clumsy to the novice player, and indeed, I was only slightly better at it by the time I finished both games. But as I continued playing FMs, my skills gradually increased, until finally, after 100s of missions and god-knows how many hours, I was able to take out large groups of enemies with ease. Combat was easy to learn and tough to master, but possible to master - you weren't artificially hobbled.

     

    The reason I liked this is because it puts the focus on stealth in a natural, organic way. It's not that you sneak up on the guard because the mission will automatically fail if he sees you, it's not even that you sneak up on the guard because the game has set the odds so overwhelming in his favor that fighting would be suicide. You sneak up on the guard because you're not a master swordsman, like, for real. You could be a master swordsman - nothing in the game is stopping you from fighting masterfully. You're just not, because you have not had the extensive experience necessary to become a master. If you actually practice long and hard enough, you can become a master swordsman.

     

    "Being a good fighter" is not some mythical, impossible thing that reminds you you're in an artificial game world which does not contain "being a good fighter". "Being a good fighter" is something real, which you could have, but you don't, because you're a street urchin, not a highly-trained knight. "Being a good fighter" is there, it's just far away, and the reason you don't have it is the same in practical terms as the reason you don't have it in terms of the game's story: because it takes a lot of practice, and you haven't practiced that much. As opposed to: the reason you don't have it in practical terms is because the game you're playing doesn't allow it. See what I mean?

     

    Right now (in light of AluminumHaste's tactics), dark mod is much like thief 1 and 2, in terms of combat. I've played a fair number of TDM missions, but I'm still not great at combat - I stick mostly to stealth because rambo tactics would get me killed (get me killed, not bore me into reloading, because combat is actually fun and something I do now, thanks to AluminumHaste.) You have to understand, the reason this seems like a real choice on my part is because I could chose to fight everyone, if I was a master swordsman, which I could be, if chose to practice that much.

    • Like 1
  16. Combat in TDM feels broken to me, not because it's too easy or too hard, but because it's too simple, and at the same time I don't feel like an active participant in the outcome. My typical fight goes like this: guard attacks, I block, I attack, guard blocks, guard attacks, I block, I attack, guard blocks, guard attacks, I block, I attack and hope the AI decides not to make the guard block this time because I'm getting bored, guard blocks, guard attacks, I block, I attack and start to get exasperated, guard blocks of course, guard attacks, I fuck up the block and get hit (me: "Very good, you got me, I can't do the same repetitive motions over and over again indefinitely - I will inevitably fuck up at some point, and obviously, the AI is more than capable of carrying on as long as it takes"), I attack, guard blocks, guard attacks, I block, I attack, guard finally gets hit ("Wow, what a sense of accomplishment, the AI finally decided to let me win!")

     

    I know you're supposed to vary your attack directions to fake out the AI - I do, and the above is still my experience. Fighting a guard is like getting put on time-out as kid - you have to go sit in the corner and be bored for a while. As you repeat the same slashes and blocks over and over, all you can do is try not fuck up, and hope the guard does - the AI decides when and if that ever happens (when it decides you've served your time.) Combat just doesn't feel fun or interesting or suspenseful. When I get caught by a guard and I can't run, I don't think "I'm in deep trouble now! I'm going to have to use all my skill to survive", I only think "So do I have the patience to wait out this fucker, or do I just reload and get back to the worthwhile part of the game?"

     

    Of course, the game is always going to be mostly about the stealth, so I'm not sure if implementing a more complex, nuanced combat system is worth the dev time. But I do know the combat as is feels boring and broken and would certainly benefit from more depth. Or maybe less depth. I really liked Condemned: Criminal Origins. There's a greater focus on melee combat than in TDM, and the melee system is in some ways less complex than TDM, yet I never got bored. I felt tense and engaged, like my life was in my hands, whereas every fight in TDM feels like a chore. What's worse, I anticipate the chores to come while sneaking - the main sense of threat I get from the enemies is that they can rope me into a tedious game of metal patty-cake.

    • Like 1
  17. My 2 cents, for what it's worth. It seems to me, the realistic behavior would be:

     

    The AI sees a door swing open, by any amount (fully open or just a crack.) If they didn't see someone open it, they watch to see if anyone comes through.

     

    If they're walking and the door is non-suspicious, they look at it for as long as they can (when they can't twist their neck far enough any more, they look away.) If they're not walking or the door is suspicious, they stop and look at it for as long as it takes to determine what to do (see below.)

     

    If someone they expect comes through the door (anyone other than the player, in most cases), they immediately continue what they were doing without taking any action (perhaps bark a greeting.) If it's the player, then the AI's actions are the same as any other time they spot the player.

     

    If they don't see the person who opened the door or see someone come through the door within some short period of time (say 5 seconds), they investigate. If the door is suspicious, they draw weapons, otherwise they do not.

     

    Does this sound reasonable? Here are a few scenarios:

     

    The player opens a non-suspicious door a crack to peek through, then closes it again. A guard walking by inside sees the door open, and looks at it as he's walking. If he walks past the door and has to look away before 5 seconds is up, he'll disregard it as not important enough to warrant further attention. If he's stationary or his patrol is such that he's able to continue looking at it for 5 seconds, he will (why look away after it's grabbed his attention?) If after 5 seconds, still no one he knows has come through, then he'll go investigate. He won't draw his weapons, though - he's happened upon something out of the ordinary, but then again maybe someone accidentally bumped the door.

     

    The player opens a suspicious door (such as the back door of the bank) a crack to peek through, then closes it. A guard walking by inside stops to watch. After 5 seconds, no one he knows has come through, so he draws his sword and goes to investigate. The player retreats back into the darkness as the guard comes through the door to look around. After a while, he doesn't find anything, so he puts his sword away and goes back inside to patrol again, on edge over the possibility of a thief.

     

    A servant opens a door. A stationary guard on the other side can see the door but not the servant, so he starts watching. The servant walks through, the guard sees him, says "Evenin'", and turns in a different direction.

     

    A servant opens a door. The player knocks something over in the room with the servant. The servant hears it and goes to investigate, leaving the door open. The stationary guard on the other side doesn't hear it or see the servant, but he sees the door open, and starts watching. 5 seconds later, he investigates.

     

    The part that seems critical to me (which as far as I can tell is not included in 2.0) is the idea that the AI should start watching the door when it opens if they don't see the person who opened it, wait some period of time, and then base their response on whether or not they saw a friendly come through the door. If the period of time expires and still no friendly, they go to investigate. Of course, it's not the mere fact of the door opening that draws the AI's interest - doors open all the time for legitimate reasons. And of course they don't need to see the player to know something may be wrong. They only need to NOT see a legitimate reason for the door to have opened. Does that make sense?

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