wesp5

You probably left out the torches on purpose which for me are the real type of lights you need to put out with water arrows! The oil lamps are a group inbetween and it just breaks the game world consistency that you can't snuff them out. Keep it like it is, if you want, but this thread is about improvements, and for me and some others not being able to do so destroys the immersion a little bit which is so great in TDM! Also from a logical point of view, water arrows are all about snuffing out lights from a distance. No thief would fire an arrow at a torch right beside him instead of putting it out with his foot or something. Gameplay elements are fine, but when they are too obvious recognizable as such the game is not yet perfect ...

I'm not aguing that, but we are only talking about small oil lamps here, not about torches which are used much more often! Most of the time oil lamps are indoors in smaller buildings where splashing around with a lot of water does not make sense anyway, because guards would notice the stains .

While I agree that snuffing out small oil lamps will not critically affect water arrow usage, I don't like the idea to place books on lamps. Honestly, what thief would do this when he can either blow out a lamp or snuff it out with his fingers? The risk to have the book fall off or be recognized as alarming is much too high and in-game item manipulation would be even harder to pull off. Maybe a small extinguishing cap that has to be used from the inventory could be addd to snuff out oil lamps if you want to make it harder than snuffing out candles.

I don't think so, I only noticed this because it made little sense from a logical point of view. I rarely use water arrow but rely on timing instead...

How does the player extinguish candles? Probably by pressing the wick with the gloved fingers of his hand. The same should work for the small oil lamps shown!

Isn't there already a seperate exe to check if TDM is up-to-date? Maybe all mission loading could be moved to that app, like keeping TDM missions up-to-date too!

I though about this too, but in the medieval setting one could think he is a hunter or similar. The guards probably would know better though...

Ah, that's a shame really! I imagine a mission in which you move in a big tavern stealing stuff here and there without being noticed, but not being chased at all until you are seen. Or some big dancing event or similar, like e.g. the ball in Dishonered. Or do missions like these already exist?

I have another suggestion which I don't know if it has already been mentioned in this huge thread: I'm really getting annoyed sometimes that everyone is knowing that I am a thief! I mean this might be okay for guards, but why do civilians outside or in a tavern recognize me instantly for what I am? Wouldn't it be much more realistic to have areas or characters that react neutral to the player unless he actually gets caught stealing something or hurting someone? P.S.: I just filed bugtrackers for my suggestions to make the map closable with the use and frob key, for the issue about the wooden chest and door sounds being the same and for snuffing out small oil lamps the same as candles.

Nothing, as I just finished it yesterday with TDM 2.03 ! Another fantastic mission, although it starts a little bit slow in a not so detailed town area, the mansion and the basement area were cool. I liked the bit with the destroyable window, but had some hard time because you can destroy it with arrows but not the sword. If it's possible this should be fixed! And I had some really funny situation in the end: I had sneaked inside the mansion, blackjacked everyone there and come down to the basement with all the undead. As I hadn't wasted any fire arrows, water arrows, mines and potions yet, I decided to go for the kill! I got the Alchemist with fire arrows and the others with holy water arrows while moving up the stairs, which alerted the gate guard (unless it was scripted) who ended up in a fight at the combination lock door with the last zombie. So I went down, got the potion and the turmalin and when I came up, I killed the zombie to see that he had killed about three or four guards in the time I was below ! Of course the way back was easy then...

Wow, that looks great! While someone is busy improving the download menu, maybe it's time to improve the local mission list as well. I remember there was talk about adding the played difficulty and possible other stats to the mission list...

I don't like the idea of sprinting, it simply clutters the control scheme some more! I always assumed you were running at your top speed already and I sometimes escape guards by running away and mantling up somewhere where they can't follow which basically is what you suggested with the parcouring. I like the idea of the caltrops, but I wouid suggest to have them stop the guards completely for a time until they can remove them. I don't think anybody will still follow a thief with a nail in his boot ! I'm not sure about the tightrope. As has already been explained this seems to be only useful in specific maps that are made for it. In many cases using a rope arrow and then jumping onto the dangling rope should give the same result.

Okay, it seems nobody either reads or cares about the old improvement thread, so here I'll ask again. Am I mistaking or are the sounds of wooden chests opening and closing exactly the same as thsoe of wooden doors? Because I often flinch during missions when I pick a chest to see if a door nearby has opened and a guard is starting to breath down my neck . If this is true, I would suggest to use different sounds there which would make more sense from a realistic point of view as well!

When and where do you plan to display them? On the left side in the main menu while the characters are cycled? Maybe it would even make sense to display tips not at random but connected to the characters, like when the undead is shown there are tips on how to handle the undead! On a similar note, I just played the FM "The Builders Influence" and noticed that during loading of the mission the background image changed! So would it one day be possible to show the mission intro during loading in a similar way? I guess there could be other solutions to buying stuff and setting difficulty that would work with such a process. I also noticed something else that has been bothering me for some time and should be easy to fix in the next update: Opening and closing chests sounds exactly like opening and closing a door! This makes no sense really and I often "look over my shoulder" to see if someone opened a door at the same time I opened a chest because of this. Last but not least I also noticed again what I already listed above: maps can't be closed with the FROB key unlike all other readables and they can't even be closed with the USE key if they were opened with the MAP key. This is another small UI fix that should probably be easy to implement and would make the handling of the game more consistent.

You are righr, for this to work it must be explained somewhere! Then it's probably easier to add a "put or place or drop item" means dropping it using the drop key to the random tips...

I though I alread did that . My suggestion was to play the "Not here" sound effect when people try to use an inventory item that can't be used. Provided there is a flag or something already marking quest objects compared to e.g. keys, loot, weapons and others, this should be easy to implement and it should automatically work on all existing missions as well! As for the random tips, great ! I was thinking about proposing exactly that, but I thought it would be to difficult to do. So when do these tips appear? While loading a mission like in other games, e.g. my favorite Bloodines?

As for point one, right now this is all up to the mission creator's description and how a player understands it. There is no general gameplay related way to distinguish the two kind of items and I was just suggesting one. As for point two, I posted a lot of suggestions earlier on this thread page. But I agree with you, space in the menu is too limited for explanations of that kind. But then the training mission is only a small mission among hundreds of others and I played it a long time ago! Maybe there could be an integrated help page or something explaining the most basic things that are not obvious? I don't like to visit a Wiki or some other online page to figure things out. Also, just out of curiosity, what are the other actions that the use key can do to frobbed objects?

I agree with that, but you forgot one more type of behaviour: 3 - an object can be used on it's own (e.g. readables, weapons) What I was suggesting with the sound idea is to distinguish items of type 1 and type 2 by an audible hint when you use them. Also as I finally got the attention of some active developers , how about one of my earlier suggestions that should be easy to implement and would be another improvement for gameplay novices: Add some explanation of what the USE key can do to Frobed objects to the controls menu, like INV USE (CANDLE OUT, BODY UP) or similar.

That's my problem, because most other FPS or RPGs I play do it like I described. If you need to place something somewhere you normally USE it there and the game recognizes it on it's own. But the solution you described sounds rather complicated to get the same effect into TDM and thus is probably not worth the effort...

Ah, I thought it was the other way around. So is there no inventory flag marking items as loot, usables, readables, weapons or similar? If there is, it could be set to play the "Not here." sound if it was used...

Ah, I think I understand the problem now. Still it's strange that using something on the correct location gives the red feedback, so in this case I was always thinking that I had not yet found the right locker! Maybe it would be possible to give some feedback that the item in the inventory can't be used at all? Because keys and lockpicks use the scheme green for correct location and red for wrong location it must be something different. How about using the sound effect that is made when the player tries to drop an item somewhere where it doesn't fit for using an item that can't be used?

You can take stuff out of a chest with Frob and they appear in your inventory again. So Frob and Use could be used complimentary...

This one has probably mentioned before but I stumbled upon it while playing the otherwise great Business as usual mission by bikerdude: - One objective is to place a bottle in the chest of a guard. I found the chest, but using the bottle on it didn't work, I got the red feedback... it took me some time to remember that there is an actual drop key which I then used successfully! Can't placing stuff like this be changed to work with use too?

I just now played this map and it really was great! I especially loved the planetarium in the tower, it's amazing to see fantastic visuals like this in a FM. I have ony one suggestion: As many others I found the exit tunnel rather via accident and didn't like it, because it just didn't make much sense. Why not actually add the exit tunnel to the cool cave area and remove the corpse there for another happy ending ? You could even keep the corpse and made the tunnel reachable via the second climeable vines wall, which that guy just didn't get...

Okay, I'm using this old thread to post some suggestions that came to me when I just now started playing some fan missions with TDM 2.03: - Thanks for implementing my earlier idea of closing readables with the FROB key! But now I noticed that the map can't be closed like this even when it was opened by the USE key. - As posted elsewhere, it might be good to add some more explanations to what the USE key really does to the controls menu, like INV USE (CANDLE OUT, BODY UP) or similar. - It's still hard to get valuables out of chests because the bottom is frobable. I thought there was a suggestion to only make the lid frobable once the chest has been opened? - I'm still annoyed now and then that the FROB distance for lockpicks is smaller than for keys. This may be realistic but gameplay wise it's not good to move closer just then. - Last not least, again I noticed that loading a mission takes a lot of time which could be covered by running the intro cutscenes or texts in parrallel. Is this not possible? Update: Another thing that I noticed while playing the great The Cadeceus of St. Alban mission by Bikerdude: - Shouldn't it be possible to snuff out stationary small oil lamps like the candles?