Airship Ballet

Noticing the absence of certain guards would work wonders provided they were used in a way that meant the player couldn't still knock everybody out before they were registered missing. The second would, I imagine, be too fiddly to implement and the third would change nothing: those going around knocking everyone out aren't likely to care about their stealth score.

There's a big campaign in the works, and a couple regular-sized ones out already. You're not going to get anything the length of Deus Ex because it's so much work for one person to undertake that it'd be a pet project spanning a year or two. Levels can be linked: I'm doing that for a series of bank heists, though story-wise it's merely an excuse to rob a load of banks in a row, aside from a twist I have planned for the final one. You can link areas with teleporters with no need to load a different map: you can simply lay out two areas that are cut off from one another that a player teleports to when they frob a door TES-style.

Well, I get a lot of fun out of making a space look and feel believable, the downside being that the locations are pretty uninspired where grounded in reality. I'd like to do something a bit more fantastical some time, but for now it's realistic banks. I'm glad you like the aesthetic, even if it isn't too interesting! The no-digging rule was just a cop-out to prevent me having to implement assets based on easier ways into the vault: if there's only one way in then I only have to hook up one set of triggers . I'd like to see other mappers record their building and make timelapses too: it's really mesmerising, even when it's my own work.

That serves the exact same purpose as an unconscious body on the floor, except it's got its eyes open and is mumbling to itself. As Springheel said, anybody who's going to go around knocking people out will do so anyway, and if people get back up and sound the alarm of their own volition you've made the blackjack useless and reduced the player's assets to distractions and their movement keys. The game is in part about overcoming obstacles in whatever way you see fit, with varying degrees of grace and ingenuity. When you implement things like this, you make at least one playstyle suffer and at least one type of player miffed: it was a pain in the ass when guards in MGS2 got up minutes after being shot in the temple with a tranq. dart and it'd be annoying in TDM too. I like to knock everybody out my first time and play in progressively restrictive styles once I know what's up with regards to loot, keys and objectives so that I can focus on speed or stealth without testing every door and fiddling with every decorative moveable. I can't stress enough how important it is to leave restrictions to the player's discretion or to keep them under novelty difficulty settings, and to keep restrictive gameplay mechanics out of the vanilla game.

Added Breaking Out The Fence!

I didn't use any water arrows at all. You wanna take this outside?

Here's a quick summary if you're not up for a read: + Great city area + Great visuals inside the bathhouse + Good sneaking gameplay throughout + Perfect use of light and dark + Great voice acting and briefing - Too easy - Rushed storyline - Too simple & lacking in the latter half

Whoo! I guess this is as good a time as any to stop mapping and start catching up on new releases. Scathing review incoming.

Like I said, I thought that was cool and someone from id said that they do too, but that it's ultimately a coincidence.

I got, played and completed Thief TDP on Christmas day '98! I got Half-Life and Baldur's Gate too, but TDP just hooked me. I used to love wearing these really frumpy-ass sweaters (and had only just done away with these god-awful John Lennon glasses) and I distinctly remember chewing a brand new sweater to bits at the neck out of nervous habit in the undead levels. It was a blast, despite the nightmares! Merry Christmas! damn it's weird seeing my name in every other sentence

Well, it depends on whether they see it as an acronym or just plain initials I suppose, should have said that if it's just initials it should be pronounced I.D. Since it appears in their logo, website, whatever as id, and they pronounce it as such, it's intended to be used as an acronym.

You stop that.

The same as in 'did', because I originally thought it was a really cool allusion to instinctual desire or something, and I remember someone saying in an interview that they liked the idea too but dismissed it as purely coincidental. The 'in demand' bit was actually contrived after taking the name from Romero's 'Ideas From The Deep' name, which I really think they should have stayed with. Still, it's an acronym and so really should be pronounced eye-dee, but they themselves pronounce it simply as id. This is like a similar but different version of the gif/jif argument, only I agree with the one that makes no sense (id rather than I.D.) whereas I agree with gif--which is in keeping with the rules of English pronunciation--rather than jiff, which is how the creator insists it's pronounced.

I tend to just filter out all the meta textures like that, but with maybe half the opacity again it'd be pretty handy. This really brings out the wonderful craftmanship in that final screenshot, by the way. What a beautifully made lobby.

@Thiefette @Grayman I'm glad you both enjoyed yourself! The next one's on the way

Firstly, it was MirceaKitsune, and secondly you should be prepared for harsh criticism of your map. Ask why and where people disliked subjective things and ask where and how they broke categorically broken things. Freaking out about it is neither appropriate nor constructive. Sure nobody wants harsh criticism, but if the only way to keep you mapping is by a circle-jerk in your honor, you're not doing it for the right reasons.

Ah, ninjad, but yeah there are plenty of in-world combo locks controlled by a script, probably all derivatives of Fidcal's combo lock script. They're physical objects controlled by physical buttons, which I prefer to the very flat GUI keypads you get in most games. Here's the example I was going to give of my FM, though it's been done before and most likely better at that.

I think the old key is the one you use to open the door upstairs that leads into the bell tower. Good enough for me! I'm actually pretty sure he's called Deer Lord in the editor, too. I've got mad jokes.

If you can make a game scary while playing thumping techno in the background, it has to be inherently terrifying. Shame it's too dated to properly scare me anymore, same for the TDP zombies. The tree-folk things in TMA still scare me though, something about how violently and noisily they chase after you I imagine. Oh, also the bear in Condemned 2. I think I just hate being chased by the manifestation of ridiculous raw strength while being unable to look back and only hear a great thrashing noise.

I think you're flying wide of seeing the problem here. Obviously this isn't intended to offend, but it's hard to critique something without being harsh where it's needed, and I really think you need to be given it straight. The intonation and accent are in and of themselves not very accurate when compared to the video you provided. You constantly have a raised voice and always sound as if you're turning to the crowd at a pantomime play and making exaggerated faces at them as you deliver the lines. She, on the other hand, is simply a softly spoken woman in every context I can find. The accent is off, too: you drawl far, far more than she does and end up sounding more like a rough Southerner. Still, that's not the most important problem, because the qualification for having your voice used is not "sounds like a carbon copy of Caroline John", but rather "can pass as a woman". You categorically cannot pass as a woman when doing that voice, it's just that simple. You sound like a man shouting in an affected accent, that's it. My advice would be to just steer away from that voice and do something else. Your vocal talent lies elsewhere, because I can safely say that it isn't acting in a straight-faced female role.

Well, no, these problems don't exist in this scenario. It's a hypothetical made to question our response to an almost impossible ideal situation that cannot go wrong in and of itself. The machine will stay up to date, the people who make a mistake and no crime will get caught out because it has these fictitious and perfect algorithms making sure it doesn't. It's the perfect machine, and the only thing at question is whether or not people mind having their lives sorted through on principle. The last point is valid and people do that all the time with real-world police, shining high-powered lasers at patrolling police choppers, shouting bomb threats on a packed plane and the like. They get arrested for the judicial equivalent of being a nuisance, same story here.

Not relevant to the question itself but still relevant to the purpose the hypothetical serves, however obvious a statement it is. 'Superhero' was more or less shorthand for 'robot with near-omniscient levels of knowledge and the programming to do nothing but good with it'. Ideally it would be capable of knowing which information was essential to stopping a crime or preventing a terrorist attack without reading it, or more realistically (not that it matters) working with patterns in encrypted gibberish and bringing down the hammer accordingly without ever dealing with names or faces. I'd be okay with that, for sure. One example among thousands, although one that hits closer to home. The internet is endlessly helpful when it comes to creeps scouting people, regardless of how much information they themselves make available.

Of course, it's absolutely fine. Were you to be able to make an impenetrable, infallible superhero in a box that had to collect everybody's information in order to wipe out crime, terrorism, whatever, it's entirely acceptable. The problem people have is that there's no such thing and that people can, will and have accessed those kinds of databases and used them for their own ends as you know, given the way you phrased the hypothetical.

Although I'm obviously not in charge of what is and isn't used, if it's you're planning on doing again, it'd need a lot of work or manipulation before it sounded feminine enough to work.