The Bozz

You could bind a key so it makes you walk VERY slowly. It's possible in quite a few games to bind a key to make you walk/run at a speed of your choice (the command generally looks like MoveForward X), and I believe that Doom 3 isn't the exception. Right now I don't have the game installed, so I can't check it myself. And it shouldn't be considered a cheat, because you still are walking and you make noise (although quite less), but as you move so slowly you have more trouble to get out of patrol paths or lightspots. However, the w-w-w-w-w... eeeemmm.... "technique"... lets you make no noise at all, at a slightly lower speed than crouch-walking or creeping. Hence it's a cheat.

You got me wrong: it's not 3rd person view what I asked, it's to see the rest of your body in first person. Like when you look down and you see your chest and your feet. I've always thought that it should be implemented in more games. I was already told that it is a pain in the butt to animate, code and make it all work fine and smooth, so I understand it. I insist that I've always thought that the sword (or dagger, in TDS) must be used only as a last resort. I also don't like just going and killing all that's in sight. It's not "thiefy" at all. But smashing a zombie or two with a mace would be quite satisfactory, wouldn't it? Anyway, if you guys don't wanna, I'll go and learn how to model and do it myself after your TC is released. I should be able to use the blackjack animations without trouble (if you don't mind me to do so), so it saves me some work.

Yep, but not here. We're talking 'bout weapons, and we should stay on-topic.

A short sword's allright for me too. It's small enough to not get in the way and it's good as an all-around weapon. Sort of a compromise between the dagger and a normal sword. But if you can only choose between two melee weapons, you should make them well balanced: Sword: quick and easy to use, but not too powerful. Mace: capable of crushing things, quite powerful, but slows you down a lot. Other weapon issue: are you gonna add some magical quest weapons? Like Constantine's Sword in TG/TDP. Having some would give more objective flexibility to the mappers and could even help to a story-driven campaign. I know that many people out there don't even wanna hear about magic in this mod, but Thief World has a lot of magic, and if you leave it out it wouldn't be the same.

Hmmm... hadn't thought about programming/animation issues... well, it's better having a floating hand with a sword than having nothing. You guys do what's best for the project. Mind you of the 3rd mission in Thief, "The Horn of Quintus", where there were zombies all around, and to accomplish an objective of finding a special item you needed a certain quantity of fire arrows. That, combined with a zombie horde, makes any alternative way of dealing with zombies a welcome one. But still, using these melee weapons shouldn't be encouraged. They should be used only for emergencies or very specific reasons, and only if the players thinks it's necessary for him. That's why the weapons should be tweaked to bes useful in few situations. About the dagger, sorry if I touched a better-be-forgotten theme. I thought that if I gave an example of when it could be useful it would be better accepted. For me, variety of choices and strategies is a must in any game. That's what I love of Thief so much, it's very open to new strategies. Opening the game a little bit more wouldn't hurt it if it's done in a balanced way, right? Anyway, thanks for the quick replies! P.D.: I just thought, how are you gonna manage savegames? I believe that saving too much should be discouraged or restricted (think AvP-type saving...), it's too easy that way.

Hey there. Been following this project for a while, and I must say I wait eagerly to see it complete. Although I have browsed thru older topics and even read some of 'em, I couldn't find one where this theme had been fully discussed. If there is, I may have missed it . Well, here I go anyway (sorry for the long post): I think that there should be more than one choice for a damaging melee weapon (aprat from the blackjack, which MUST be permanent, if not this wouldn't be Thief related anymore!) that the player can choose to buy or just pick from the start depending of the mission and the objectives you have. It would help a lot to mission balance. I've already got some ideas and the different scenarios to make an example: 1.- Dagger (don't flame me for this one!!!): let's say you have a mission where you need to sneak inside of a very fortified zone, like your typical Thief mission. A dagger is easyr to carry and is capable of killing foes cleanly and quickly. But it's pretty useless against armored foes. It would be useful only in places where you expect less or weaker resistance, or if one of your main goals is to stealthily get rid of some character that's inside the complex for some specific reason. For that last one, a sword would be less-than-ideal. 2.- Sword: but then there's a mission where you somewhere you know there'll be heavier resistance, call it armored guards, better trained swordsmen... or maybe you go into a pagan forest or a cave inhabited by dangerous animal species. A dagger wouldn't cut it, but a sword would be much more effective, because of its longer range of attack and superior damage dealing. Let's not even talk about blackjack here! I found pretty stupid the fact that you could just go and blackjack a giant two-legged, gas-belching lizard with an enormous and thick cranium. 3.- Small mace: then come the zombies... they feel no pain, they won't die from bleeding wounds, won't stay put for long after they fall down. That makes the dagger a no-goer, and makes the sword much less useful. You should have some means to deal with the undead face-to-face. To crush their rotten bones and rend them harmless. Can you spell "mace"? But a mace is a mace, it's heavy and slow. Zombies are slow too, so no big deal. But most guards and pretty much all of the critters aren't that slow, or aren't slow at all. So a mace could be evaded easily and lose a lot of potencial. Of course that Thief has always been about stealth and stuff. But shit happens. You do run out of fire arrows to blow up incoming zombies. You can accidentally trigger a trap that sets off an alarm and sends five or six guards after you. You can accidentaly wake up a whole nest o' burricks. You can't always rely on stealth to survive. I believe most thieves don't have a magic "Quickload button" to resort to in this cases (well, we have one... but that's no excuse! ). And a master thief always plans ahead for a mission (even if you can't always predict what you'll find). So I believe it makes sense from a realistic point of view... Apart from this: will we be able to see our body? I really liked that about TDS. I think that it's pretty dull when in a game you look down and you don't see yourself. It's like "Yay! Looka t me! I'm a floating hand holding a sword!". At this point of gaming history, it's something so basic I wished that more game devs had thought of. If you made it down to here, thanks for reading!