wesp5
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Posts posted by wesp5
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An excellent example in Thief is the 'The Cradle'. In literature 'The Shining'.
Another good example is the Ocean House in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. The background is a little bit similar to The Shining, and many people perceive it as very creepy, although there are no NPCs around and you can only die if you are very inattentive. Still the atmosphere does it all! It even won a prize for "2004's Best Level Design (Any Game)".
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It's a tiny thing that you can fix yourself, no need to go reworking the game's controls to bypass it.
Ah, I already forgot about that because it was dismissed. Therefore I asked for the fix here
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Running into that problem and then going to suggest a rework to the entire game's UI is completely unnecessary.
I was never asking for something like that! As far as I know items that can't be used flash red, but two of the items in this mission always flashed green so I figured this was an oversight. Also I already finished the mission by dropping the items in the right places, I just wanted to suggest an improvement because I knew that bikerdude was updating the mission already, okay?
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Neither Dishonored nor Bioshock Infinite had any semblance of charm or personality for me. I think it's the huge tooltips and other blaring meta elements that always took me out of it.
I agree with you again, worst of all for me is the UI of nuThief which doesn't at all fit into the gameworld atmosphere with its modern minimalistic design! And I won't switch it off because otherwise I'll be jumping all over the place to find the one location where I can climb something or I'll get lost in a big grey city where everything looks much too similar to me as well. TDM does this much better, especially how the readables are implemented to keep the player inside the world without need to switch to some modern journal.
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Nahh, never really been impressed by any Bioshock games. It's more like bemused frustration that such crappy writing can be considered decent because it isn't another 'Murica Vs The World story. Besides, it's not severe, just critical. You can shine an ounce of common sense on it and see how riddled the narrative is. I think what makes it particularly frustrating is how emblematic it is of the AAA crowd. It's such simple gorbij, yet it was hailed as the dawn of a new age of narrative, same for BS1. All that had was a plot twist and binary morality, seriously no idea why it wowed so many.
I couldn't have wrote that better and I agree to your other postings as well! The whole multiverse stuff is a joke and the game would have been a whole lot better if it had ended when they crashed near the Rapture entrance. Also I agree with Lux that Columbia including its NPCs is just a lifeless static stage play backdrop for the strange narrative told through short sequences and optional audios between endless repeating fire fights. Even the empty city of nuThief appears more real than Columbia-Disney-Land and almost ten years ago games like Bloodlines could already represent a living world better! It also seems to me that Levine used the same twist of the "good" guy turning out to be the bad one in all of his games. Topping it of in Bioshock Infinite where the player is it himself!
But I disagree with everyone here glorifiying SS2 and DX. In my opinion both are a little bit overrated! Maybe people who played SS1 just had to love SS2, but coming from HL, to me it was a fake world with disintegrating weapons, ammo dispensers, endless spawning enemies, unrealistic maze like levels, endless backtracking and no alive NPC to meet, which got old very fast! And while the multiple-approach-dogma of DX was great, the narrative was almost as confusing as that of Bioshock and many maps were just too obviously constructed for the gameplay with always a vent where you need one. To me it is obvious that nuThief was developed by the same studio that created the recent DX games. If you want to sneak around most easily, just look for a convenient vent nearby!
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I know, but as you can guess from my other threads here this is a principle UI issue for me
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@Wesp, I thought the instructions where it says to 'drop' it in the pool gave enough of a hint.
I was aware of that, but the UI confused me. Sometimes using an item on something drops it in automatically. So can you make the aura of the skull and the puppet flash red when used, just to prevent a mistake like mine for other newbies
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Well my intention was more like, if you really want it, you can open up player.cpp, cntl-F Find "readable" or a similar key-word (since I've never seen it before, I just know it has to exist somewhere, your ability to find it is honestly as good as mine), change that puppy, recompile, and shabam, you get the UI you're happy with and we never have to hear about the issue again.
The problem with that is that I am a completely newbie here and wouldn't know where to look or how to recompile anything in the first place. But you seem to do so
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Ah, okay then. Another suggestion while you are still testing the map: I was confused about the skull handling because using it made it flash green, so for a long time I thought I had to use it on the pool like a key on a door, instead of just dropping it in! Maybe you could disable this effect or directly put the skull in the drop position on using it...
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Local tweaks generally mean personalized tweaks applied only to your own install, there is no guarantee they would end up in the developer version of the game.
I understand that, but my guess would be if demagogue could say that only one line must be changed in a specific file, you developers would more easily consider to include it because there would be no need to search for it yourself. I have a lot of experience due to patching Bloodlines and people who deliver the solution to a fix are the best
! So what do you say, wouldn't adding FROB to unread a world-readable be UI consistent? -
That's a pretty insistent comment.
Yeah, but I just recently noticed that items in the world are handled exactly like my suggestion already, the readables are the exeption to the rule IMHO.
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Some objects you can throw from the inventory like that, like mines. So the mapper could have set it up that way.
I guessed as much. I was confused especially because the item flashed green when used right from the beginning. It probably should have flashed red unless it was near the place it was supposed to be dropped.
I'm a fan of local tweaks and do it all the time, so it's easy for me to recommend it.
So could you look into a solution for my readables suggestion? If you could provide an easy fix to the deverlopers they might include it in the next update!
There is something to say for consistency in the sense of not changing UI things for players to re-learn 4 years into the game, or at least there needs to be a good reason to change it.
As this wouldn't be a change but only an addition, old players could still use the attack key like they are used too, but others could use the frob key instead.
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Another thing, and yes, I know I can be annoying
, I just played the great Alberic's Curse mission and got a bit confused because I forgot that there is a dedicated DROP key. Alberic's skull flashed green when pressing USE, so I figured USING him on the pool would work. But I had to drop him in! Any chance to make USE bring items that can only be world-dropped into the dropping position? This would possibly get rid of the DROP key altogether and thus minimize the UI somewhat further... -
Just played this fantastic mission and want to report, that the readables messing up the inventory bug is still active...
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Still not past the denial stage of loss, are you?
Well, I didn't really get an answer other than "We always did it like that, so deal with it!". Looking at the blackjacking thread shows that indeed sometimes suggestions of us newbies could be used to improve the game, although most of you old timers here just don't want to change anything and assume everything is perfect because you are accustomed to it. In that case just remove this thread and stop working on TDM
!A core design principle is minimalist UI with a simple "world" and "inventory" separation (in terms of frobables) and separate UI control over each domain to explicitly reverse what was considered a flaw in T2's design (shared frob control), which over time the player absorbs the logic of, ultimately improving their control and immersing them within the game.
Then please explain to me again, how closing world-readables with the world-frob key is against this principle! Right now if you take an item with world-frob, you also drop it with world-frob, not with attack or use. To me the readables are out of the design rules here! The whole thing could probably be fixed by just adding another key line to some config file. But I can imagine that if there is no variable yet remembering the last weapon used, there is no easy way to add the other feature, but that wasn't suggested by me anyway
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I can understand that, but as the other thread shows, some easy fixes are possible to improve the situation and New Horizon is already working on it
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Probably better to wait for SFX to be implemented, rather than put extra work into all that stuff.
What is this SFX? Also as an active developer, any chance to get the key suggestions to be implemented that were asked for? Like using FROB to close a document in the world or using HOLSTER again to pull out the last weapon?
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Bump into the AI. The cone is gone before they have even turned around to identify the player or drawn their weapon to signify that they are on high alert. Personally, I feel that reaction is a tad too superhuman.
That's exacltly what I meant and a short delay would be great there! Also we are not normally talking about just bumping into the AI, but doing so because the blackjacking wasn't perfect. As my video shows, you can land several better ones until the AI even turns around but right now this wouldn't help because it is already immune...
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Why not simply back up a little as you're learning how to blackjack, until you find the right distance?
Because it is unrealistic that you can only hit an enemy at a certain distance and not from up closer!
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I think it would be easier and better to just change the hitbox a little bit into the arm to make blackjacking possible from closer distances like suggested in the other thread.
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I find this mod outstanding, and even better than the original Thief's. It's just that the blackjacking is a bit difficult.
I fully agree to that! I even like it better than nuThief, although that one has an very easy takedown mechanic...
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You can't get any force through an arm swing if your arm is bent in and not extended most the way.
Uh, ever seen some boxing? I'm not into this at all, but a hook is as powerful as a straight hit AFAIK.
The correct distance is the distance where your blackjack actually hits the AI in the head (or the back of the neck for AI with helmets).
So if I am closer what happens? I hit the AI with the base of the blackjack or the arm because my character has only this one fixed-arm-distance strike? I can understand that this is an animation problem, but why can't you just prolong the hitbox a little bit back into the arm to simulate that your character adjusted his arm while hitting?
Practice makes perfect, not too many FPS virgins pick up a mouse and score headshots all day long on their first try, why would blackjacking be any different?
That's not a good comparison. Rather like in the new Thief when you aim an arrow at the head of an unsuspecting guard you can make a headshot, but if you do the same when he is alerted you magically will never hit his head! The same goes for the helmeted guards, tell me what you want, alerting them is magically making them immune.
Mind you, I still love backjacking in TDM and usually don't kill anybody when not necessary, but because this is my favorite style, the more I play the more obvious the problems behind it became. I can live with like it is right now, but as this is a great free game still in development, I figured I could ask if this could be improved. My two suggestions here, closer-hit-distance-valid and alert-going-invincible-delay could probably be implemented just by changing two specific integers somewhere, no?
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If you have a good 3D sense of distance, it is pretty close to an outstretched arm length with a bit of a bent elbow.
But the issue here is that there is only one correct blackjacking distance right now, as if the player could only bent his elbow to a certain degree and never hit anything closer. While I can understand that this is limitated by the animation, it doesn't carry over as wrong if you are too close because it looks the same. So extending the cone, or however this is done, to reflect this would be a possible fix! Also to me the magical invulnerability breaks immersion pretty much anyway. Either you can knock out someone wearing a helmet or you cannot, regardless of alert state or direction. With maybe the exception of a drawn weapon due to the stance...
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Perhaps now that we have the source code, we could look into the possibility of making the elbow non-solid to AI when swinging the black jack.
That would be great, because to be honest, how could a thief fail blackjacking someone because he is too close or hits him with his elbow? This is bad game mechanics right there! Has someone ever checked out the valid distance right now from the side? Would this work? Also even if I hit his shoulder, how come he doesn't go down with the next hit on the head? Yeah, because he magically became immune now. That's makes little sense either! It's different when the weapon is drawn because he then moves in a crouched way where hitting his head isn't easily possible anymore, but before? Please at least try out how this would work with a delay until the weapon is actually drawn. Even if you don't want to make that the default way, you could add it in when you add the additional alert states in the next version...
Things that could be improved
in The Dark Mod
Posted
Uh, so creep and crouch are not the same? Is this something like prone? I don't think I ever used it.
I wasn't aware that this is possible either! In other games running automatically have you stand up.