wesp5

Hm, I meant that only the player locally votes for a mission he plays. No online voting needed at all, just a reminder for later which mission one liked the best! These votings could then be uploaded and compared or listed, if one wishes, but I agree with you that moving online votes into the mission list might cause problems.

That's why I would suggest to start with a player only voting system first. If that gets accepted you can always sort the issues with a public vote system out later !

That's exactly how I would like to see it and it would finish all the TDM is not a game BS for good! Still I am no mapper and we would need someone to actually create this. Shouldn't be impossible though because a lot is already there...

Besides that a main hub wasn't even my idea, you are thinking much larger than I am. As I already wrote, I would rather see it as a bigger training mission with maybe St. Lucia and the campaign included once it is finished. I would never dream about having all the FMs starting inside the hub! If someone wants a main hub like this, I would be the first to claim that this is ridiculous. My idea of adding the FMs would either be via main menu, as I wrote before, or if you really want to start them from inside the hub, from some kind of job board in a Thief's guild or near a fence. As for the map server MD5 issues and automation, I'm all for it! Taaaki, can you rename all left over series missions so they can be recognized and automatically replace the non-series versions? Oh, and would you be the right guy to add some more informaton, like a player score or difficulty or similar in a colour coded system like I suggested here recently?

I seldom use water arrows at all for stealth. Most of the time you can use the correct timing to get through lighted areas! Great idea, I would like it if it would be implemented but it won't . BTW if you think this through and you could use holy water on the sword you should also be able to use it on broadhead arrows or the black jack or everything else, so seen logically, the holy water on sword idea does not really make sense. Putting it on water or moss arrows would do though!

The original idea of Taffer418 was to use holy water on the sword when it is drawn. That way nobody would need to create a new holy sword core weapon, no mapper would need to add it and it would fit in completely with the gameplay mechanics without changing anything. An elegant solution for a more uncivilized age ...

I agree with that, but I never assumed this was the main reason for people asking for a hub. To me it is more about making TDM a "real game" (you probably remember the discussion) by including a hub with the training mission, so there is no way people could argue that TDM is only a tool kit for fan missions ! Right now the training mission is just one amongst many and it doesn't even register as being completed, unless you manually change the text file of it. See above, for beginners it could be used as training mission, but you are right, later on you'll waste loading time for nothing. Maybe there could be a new menu option called "new game" (main hub with training mission, st.lucia and later the campaign) and "new mission" renamed into "fan mission"? Still it would be more of a cosmetic thing and somebody would have to create it while it seems everyone is busy with their own missions or the too long going campaign!

Is this valid for just renamed missions too? So in case some series missions have been renamed, I would have to manually delete the old ones by first using an online list to find out which missions belongs to which series? As for the ratings, wasn't there some talk about adding a rating by only the player himself with no need to go online? Just to have a hint later on which missions one liked the best! Or adding the difficulty by e.g. changing the hook colour, which could be used for a rating too, like red=bad, yellow=okay, green=cool !

Yeah, I'm probably misjudging the effort of creating such a big and beautiful project with many people in their free time. How many members are there in development anyway? Yes, and to me TDM looks quite finished now! So why not risk a little more feature creep now that the core is solid ?

Yeah, but some of these arguments still make little sense to me. But enough of that, it wasn't my idea in the first place . Yes, and quite the same I like the idea and don't get why you don't do it. The arguments about different characters or themes could easily be circumvented, but I do understand that nobody has the time and nerve to do it, because there is the unfinished campaign too... Well, maybe it will be done one fine day in the future whenever you are finished or bored with the other stuff . Okay, but has anybody ever created one?

Okay, I'm a complete newbie here but what would a mapper need to do to e.g. create a new weapon? I have only played about two dozend FMs yet, but I can't remember seeing anything like this. Can you point me to some FMs that do this? Yeah. that's my problem . But somehow since I am following this thread I have the impression there never has been a yes to any suggestion that's wasn't about some minor AI issue! Or did I miss something? Don't get me wrong, your mod is a fantastic work and you do it for free as well. But I'm kind of dissappointed that answers in this thread normally go like let the mappers do it. And just for the record, the holy-sword thing wasn't my idea and I would never use it as I don't fight in TDM at all, I just got annoyed by the usual quick dismissal !

This is basically all I wanted to hear, so you consider TDM finished right now except for details. I can understand that because you also want to stay true to the original Thief games. But is there a chance to do a plus version of the mod featuring new stuff? I choose that road with my unofficial Bloodlines patch... Probably, but normally the holy water is the limit, not the water arrows. Only valid for a few undead maps compared to e.g. the sound fix which affects much more maps. I agree to that. In fact I never yet killed anyone with a sword and didn't know you could kill undead that way at all. I don't know, it would indeed give you a new gameplay option, e.g. in case you wasted all your holy water arrows ...

No, but some suggestions here were really "things that could be improved" as the thread name suggests. The holy-water-on-sword-idea for example would have improved the game for some without hurting others. Maybe, but is TDM already that far along? Adding new stuff keeps a mod alive and I'm speaking out of experience here. In my Bloodlines patches I am often fixing small things like you did in 2.02 that most people won't even notice, but every now and then we restore a new map or similar major thing which gets people exited! A negative example would be the fantastic The Babylon Project game. For month the guys there are working on details like turrets firing through walls and similar but they don't release their work to the public, even while the space combat sim hype is going strong. I know TDM isn't doing that yet, but if you refuse to include new ideas, how soon it will be that there's nothing more left to do? Okay, there'll always be new bugs, but you know what I mean ! And here I see a big problem! Like if someone included the holy-water-on-sword-idea I would wonder why it doesn't work elsewhere. Wouldn't it be better to offer the broadest base of features so mappers don't have to divert from the core game features?

I checked the last one before I posted. What would you call two new features there? The most basic change for me would be the AI noticing being robbed but that still is only a minor AI adjustment compared to e.g. new weapon suggestions...

I only mentioned the sound propagation because Springheel argued that existing missions could become unbalanced by core changes which could happen by fixing core issues as well, so this argument wasn't valid IMHO. And I will now playing devil's advocat again to get some bashing, please remember I'm a stubborn newbie and know little about the TDM development , but when was the last time a real core change or addition was actually implemented? Everything suggested in this thread that looked like more than a fix of already existing stuff usually got turned down for whatever reasons. Could it be that you are all pretty well pleased with how TDM is at the moment and have no interest at all to actually add new features? Maybe because it is closest now to the original Thief games and you want to keep that?

Isn't the number of holy water bottles the real limiting factor in most of the maps and not the number of water arrows? I can't remember ever having played a map where I ran out of water arrows before I ran out of holy water... Also it seems to me this kind of change would be really minor in changing the balance of missions compared to the new audio system changes you just released !

Well, this bug will certainly be fixed in 2.03 if you already know about it ! I disagree. I'm not a sword fighter at all but if someone wants to have this option, why not give it to him? It's consistent and logical, but making this a mapper-created tool would make people wonder why it works in some missions and not others. And as Taffer418 said, it wouldn't unbalance missions either because any water you use on a sword is lost for arrows.

So have some of these been updated to show this in the list? Because I'm pretty sure several weren't the last time I played. Or do I need to re-download them or something?

Yeah, but seeing the other pairs was completely inconsistent and as already said broke the fourth wall badly. I mean all dimension changes before did work differently, why should there suddenly be a dimension with other dimensions visible inside? Also a lot of the audio tape "explanations" were pure Technobabble and I already hated that in Star Trek !

If you mean the multiple universe stuff tacked onto the ending, I didn't like that at all! It felt completely out of place and I think it would have been much more consistent if the game had ended at the doors to Rapture with the DLCs following there and nothing more. Besides the twist at the end is once again the old SS/BS twist, only now taken to the extreme.

Well, I think all of the Bioshock games, as well as SS2, are solid games, but were quite over-hyped. The worlds while looking fantastic at first are either rather dead (SS2, BS) or very static in a theatre background kind of way (BSI). I never got the feeling that these were living worlds compared to say Black Mesa in HL! The layout of SS2 was a joke to supposedly be a spaceship and the underwater aspect of BS was never really used, no breaking glass, no flooding sections, no diving, swimming or being floated somewhere! The combat was repetitive especially in SS2 where you needed to use a wrench on hundreds of endless respawning enemies because you had little ammo and your guns would break after a few shots. What a ridiculuous setting! Also the so called plot-twist was guessable years ahead in SS2 and it wasn't much better that it was then repeated in a similar manner in BS too. I never played the first SS but I wouldn't be surprised if they did the same thing there already...

Yeah, guilty as charged ! Well, it got its own thread here... I know, but opinions varied. Some said no gameplay changed, others disagreed. I never did! I thought this thread was meant to discuss possible issues and this was the reason why I voiced my concern. Why would one want to do this in the first place? As a beginner I usually open the doors completely. Is this because of sight? Also I wasn't aware stopping a door is possible already. In that case it would only be an improvement of something existing! Ah, I wasn't aware of that either. But you are the first one to actually answer this question which I probably asking multiple times here. So the NPCs only see if a door is open or closed? I always assumed the closing door sound would be heard!

Sorry, I didn't intend to demotivate the team. I only wonder why some complicate things seem so high priority while others never get tackled at all. Also I keep repeating some things because it looks to me that I didn't really get any answers. Like does this change affect gameplay yes or no? Makes it closing door silently possible? Makes it AI not recognize you when you look from behind a half closed door? It may make sense to figure out things like these before starting on a huge change like this... As for doing something constructive, I have no experience with TDM other than a player at all, so all that I can do is voice my opinion on possible changes. I apologize that I can be a bit stubborn in that ways. I'll try to lay lower...

No really. If it doesn't affect the gameplay and is bound to cause problems, why do it? Was it requested by many players?

I am still wondering why you want to do this in the first place if it doesn't add anything to the gameplay! Is this just because you could and it was cool in Penumbra? Aren't there more reasonable things to do? Like the readable-close-frob and weapon-holster suggestions that would make the UI more consistent in an much easier way and were always pushed aside as only adding another option. It seems the mouse-movable door is adding just another option, but one that's connected to much more work and problems!