ChronA
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Posts posted by ChronA
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I think this has some promising signals. For one thing let's acknowledge that, after the Thief 4 reboot failure, it can't have been easy to get this thing made. The first reboot was a studio mandate project, clearly designed by a committee of brainless marketing execs to chase the proven Deus Ex HR buyer market. But who is the target market for this game? The legion of VR equipped Thief fanatics--all ten of them?
No. This looks to me like it could be someone's passion project that somehow bubbled up through the studio system. Notice also that this one is far more naratively daring than 4. Firstly they are not trying to gaslight us with a fake Garrett. Instead they are actually trying to do a woman apprentice as teased by the ending of Deadly Shadows. Secondly, while it's easy to joke about Garrett becoming The Eye, that is actually a really interesting way of renewing the cycle.
In the original trilogy The Eye was an enigma. It had no real explanation in either of its appearances. By transmuting the old protagonist into the new equivalent of that enigma, all the events of the previous games become legendary, and that lends the new story an opportunity for mythological gravitas that Theif 4 never had.
Does that mean I expect it to be good? Hell no! The record for recent female led soft reboots of male led franchises is terrible. And making good stealth games is hard at the best of times. But there is the possibility. It seems like they are trying to learn from the sins of Thief 4. If they can thread the needle with the new protagonist, making her genuinely suffer and struggle without becoming pathetic, and get the gameplay right... Maybe.
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4 hours ago, Fiver said:
I don't see why the original files can't be used as references (and stubs) during such a work. As long as they are not outright copied.
The responsible thing would be to consult an IP lawyer in your jurisdiction first. Ultimately there is always a certain degree of risk any time you build off someone else's intellectual labor. Who if anyone actually can exercise property rights over information cannot be definitely answered except in a court room, because at the end of the day it's all just a bunch of arbitrary and fuzzy labels being incompetently rationalized by halfwit bipedal apes.
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1 hour ago, chumbucket91 said:
Ran through Hazard Pay on expert for a few minutes, and the autosave script did manage to create a save at the five minute interval. So, as written, this mod overrides the intent of the FM author and just makes saves for you anyways.
Not sure how I feel about that.
I think this is as it should be. I have been vocal in my support for Hazard Pay's and in preaching the value of respect for authorial intent. However I'm also a big believer in the freedom to modify software however you want. In my opinion, installing mods is like leaving the designated trails in a national park. It should be understood that by doing so you are taking full responsibility for your experience into your own hands. If you have a sub-optimal time, that's your own fault.
This could be a very valuable tool for people who want to experience TDM a certain way (authorial intent be damned) and it would be a shame to risk neutering it for the sake of a few edge cases.
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2 hours ago, OrbWeaver said:
Where are all these mission authors submitting deliberately broken missions, missions containing child porn or missions promoting Nazism?
It's never a problem, until when one day it is a problem. That said, maybe this is a disease where continuous preventative treatment is worse than a targeted remedy after infection.
I'm reminded of an incident I saw in the 0AD RTS project's community where someone (possibly as a troll, but maybe genuinely) complained about "immodest outfits" worn by female villagers and hero units for some of the civilizations being in breach of the project's content and exclusivity guidelines. The tremendous irony was that the bikini tops on those character models were already a concession to modesty, considering the historical reference art they were modeled from were even less covered up.
Any rule set is going to contain oversights and ambiguities that trolls can exploit.
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By the way, the blog "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry" by Dr. Bret Devereaux is a great resource for accessible information about historical armor and warfare generally. As it happens, his most recent post critiquing sci-fi armor in movies and video games gives a good primer on historical armor design in general.
Of course, it should go without saying that just because historically things were done a certain way does not mean that artists need to follow suit. But it can be helpful to understand the practical logic behind the traditional iconography of armor in so far at that informs modern expectations. The linked post is also interesting in providing some insight into how practical requirements for real ballistic armor and film costumes have skewed the popular understanding of how armors should look.
(Lastly I would be remiss not to recommend Bret's stunning dissections of the battles in The Lord of the Rings -- examining every level of the action in both the books and movies from the perspective of a historian of warfare (starting here).)
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My vote would be for a new armor set using #2, or maybe blend between #1 and #2; the guy with the breastplate looks good at #3, and #4 looks good on the guy on the left with the shoulder plates. I think that would give a appropriate progression of ostentation, without any of the armor sets subverting the implication of pervasive decay that characterizes the TDM aesthetic.
Addendum: IMO #4 is definitely too shabby for the breastplate set. At that level of grungyness I feel like we should be seeing more rust spots and pitting on the face of the breastplate, and the fact that they are not there makes it look like a painted prop rather than actual steel. The texture work for #4 on the gorget and spaulders of the guard on the left do it right.
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15 hours ago, MirceaKitsune said:
If the super shiny armor is to be turned into a new skin, I'm in favor of making a whole new outfit for polished armor guards
Just out of curiosity, do you have something specific in mind? Maybe a different helmet?
To my eyes the guy with the visible breast plate and cage helmet is just about at the right level of gear where you would expect a refined finish, and also at the point where adding more armor doesn't make much sense for daily guard duty. In fact, I'd even say gauntlets might be overkill.
For example, look at what the Swiss guard wear:
As a rule with plate armor, the further you go from the head and torso the more you get diminishing returns for both protection and practicality; even if admittedly gauntlets and grieves do look super cool.
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5 hours ago, peter_spy said:
It looks like super polished metal armor, taken out of the closet once a year to use in a tournament or battle reconstruction event. Very sterile look. I imagine that something a guard wears to work everyday would look much more dull and dirty.
Armor rusts, and the more you ignore the rust the faster the rust spreads. (Corrosion reactions scale with surface area, which is increased by rust flakes and scratches. A mirror polish minimizes surface area.) So if you neglected your armor so that it looked like those Fromsoft references, you would be buying a new suit of armor within a few years, and suddenly that captain-of-the-guard salary would be stretched pretty thin. Plus your employer would probably fire you for making him look like some pitiful hobo who hired a bandit to guard his house instead of a proper man-at-arms!
So yes, in a realistic setting, an elite guard like that would probably have armor that is polished to a mirror finish, because part of his job is in fact to care for his armor. That would include making sure that it is immaculately oiled and polished before putting it on.
That said, TDM is a fantasy game, and it's important to have a cohesive aesthetic to communicate the themes of the setting. One of the most common of those themes is the depravity and corruption of elites, and an easy way to communicate that visually is to put a thick layer of tarnish and grime on all their shiny trinkets. In contrast, to modern eyes mirror polished armor communicates vanity, grandiosity, and egomania, but not necessarily depravity. In that sense I agree that the new model should be a separate variant rather than replacing the default, so that FM authors can be intentional about how they use it.
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2 hours ago, STRUNK said:
I like to explore, and when it's a really good map I just walk around wondering (after knocking/blocking everyone), and enjoy the build, while searching for the remaining hidden (in plain sight) stuff.
When I get that mood I go into no-clip + no-detect and fly around the map, sight seeing.
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5 hours ago, peter_spy said:
LGS / Ion Storm's Randy Smith made a presentation on compulsive saving / loading, "How to help players stop saving all the time" – something like that
I can share it with anyone interested.
I don't think I've seen that. Now I'm curious.
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I don't like using the blackjack. To me it's feels as artless as running around slaughtering everyone on the map from the shadows with your sword. Mechanically there is no difference at all between the two, and for role play I can't really buy into the fantasy that the blackjack is supposed to invoke. In the real world getting cranially bludgeoned with a sack of lead on a stick will absolutely kill you dead, nearly as surely as getting stabbed or shot with a low power arrow in the same location. (Real talk: if you bludgeon 7 or 8 guards during a mission, chances are more than one of them is not waking up after the mission is over, no matter what your score screen says!)
Gas arrows I like better. It's a fun puzzle trying to optimize the usage of those precious few arrows for maximum effect. It's also easier for me to suspend my disbelief in magic sleep gas than in magically physics and biology altering cudgels.
Consequently most of the time I do end up playing a pretty ghost-like style. I think leaving conscious enemies behind also makes the game more fun for backtracking.
I do save quite frequently, pretty much every few minutes, or every time I reach a particularly safe seeming spot. This just seems prudent to avoid huge loss of progress if I die or the game bugs out or crashes. However, I try not to ever reload unless absolutely forced to. Additionally I try to play with a rule that if I do reload because of an avoidable skill-failing on my part, I must discard some sort of rare resource that I will miss, like a special arrow or a health potion. Thus, to conserve resources, I almost always try to play the escape after I get caught. Admittedly, in such circumstances I tend to panic, so my survival rate is not always great, but I have had a few really thrilling escapes that remain quite memorable.
This system keeps me from deliberately scumming most of the time. However, it's tricky because I feel like quite a few missions are balanced around the assumption that players will save scum, and therefore need to be challenging even taking that remarkable power into account. Consequently they are not balanced such that one can go discarding resources each time something goes wrong! This is discouraging, and there have been a few very high quality missions where I regrettably lost interest because I ran out of expendable consumables to drop after so many irrecoverable accidents.
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@Sotha Okay, so you are looking for a means to materially incentivize no-KO and no-kill, without a hard loss condition, and without majorly increased production work. Also I assume you don't want gamy-nonsense like just instantly alerting everyone in the area when the deed is done, regardless of the lack of witnesses. Fair enough.
How about this then? Split your map into two or more areas. Then have a trigger so that when the player breaks the optional objectives, the alert level increases in all the areas except the one that the player is in. Lastly have a trigger so that when the player leaves the area where they did the deed, the alert level in the area they left behind is increased (perhaps even more than the other areas). This could simulate the idea that the person you eliminated failed to check in or something like that, and it caused an alert to be raised, without massively increasing the complexity of the scripting or requiring custom assets.
You could also take this concept even further by de-spawning some easy to grab loot at respawing it in a more secure location at the same time the alerts are triggered. Locking up the valuables is a reasonable response when something is amiss.
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On 11/23/2024 at 5:11 AM, Sotha said:
It would be cool if we could somehow re-invent those difficulty conventions. Increasing difficulty should increase difficulty and no-kill and no-KO does exactly that. What would be another way to increase difficulty? I am all ears for better suggestions.
The classiest solution could be to have alternate endings. For example, one could reward the player if they successfully completed optional no-kill and no-KO objectives with an extra bit of bonus dialog or a cut scene at the end of the mission. In a multi-mission campaign you could also alter subsequent levels with more alert guards or chatter about a killer on the loose.
Obviously that would take some extra work for the mission author to implement, so I don't mean to suggest it as a prescriptive solution. But for those with the means, it would make an ideal compromise between the vision of the author and the freedom of the player.
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11 hours ago, taffernicus said:
"An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped—human brains could follow"
I'll make a prediction: as with the human genome project discovering that most of the human genome is made of low or non-functioning "junk" DNA, I suspect these brain maps will reveal that most of the connections in the human brain are random junk, and the minimum necessary neural graph needed to sustain human level cognition is actually embarrassingly small.
There's some biological precedent for this. Evolutionary selection for lean, efficient brains is actually pretty rare in nature, but where it does occur it usually gets results without sacrificing behavioral complexity. There are humming birds the size of insects, and wasps the size of micro-organisms, that somehow still manage to act like their big counterparts. Humans are a new species in a new niche, and it's likely that we have never experienced selection for neural efficiency, unless that happened to be one of the prerequisites for evolving our intelligence, but that's just unsupported supposition.
The other evidence that our brains are still in the messy prototype stage of their evolution is that LLMs have already managed to generate some very human-like emergent cognitive behaviors, using comparatively very lean neural networks that ought to be mostly dedicated to linguistic symbol arithmetic. That's why I no longer believe bio-mimetic neural-architecture to be a hard technological prerequisite for AGI (after years of holding that position).
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It's pretty remarkable what's possible these days. Maybe large voice samples are no longer even needed.
If they are though, and anyone were looking for samples to train new characters, I suggest considering LibreVox recordings. Since these readings are all in the public domain, the legal and ethical case for using them to create derivative works with AI is much less fraught. LibreVox even says so themselves: https://wiki.librivox.org/index.php?title=LibriVox_and_Artificial_Intelligence_(AI)
In particular Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (version 3) narrated by Caden Vaughn Clegg is excellent. I could imagine a voice and style of intonation like Clegg's main reading pattern fitting really well in the The Dark Mod. His monster voice is not bad either. Some other interesting ones are Greg Bryant in Paradise Lost. His performances could make for a good player character voice. He has a similar gruffness to Stephen Russel as Garrett, but with a different overtone. Lastly Cori Samuel gives some really good performances that could be suitable for young women characters, especially those of noble or plucky-roguish backgrounds.
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Someone who actually makes maps would know better, but I think how TDM does climbable surfaces like ladders, chains, vines, and pipes is with invisible brush volumes where non-standard physics apply. (Volumes of water are made the same way.)
If this is true, then in principle what you are proposing ought to be quite easy to add (to any map you care to modify in order to support it). Just add a box of the climbable brush under any wall-lip or ledge you want to be able to shimmy around under.
The tricky bit for a FM maker would be how to communicate to players that such an unusual movement method is possible. Heck it could be that a lot of FMs have spots where you can do this already, and hardly anyone notices. (Or I am misremembering how the feature works.)
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I really hate how large language models are being conflated with search, and especially the lack of transparency in how these new services get to the results they put on screen. If you think the problems with censorship, bias, and adversarial SEO are bad now, just wait. Imagine how bad it will be when every site is trying to overwrite the search LLM's instruction and context prompts with instructions to exclude the sites you are actually searching for.
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@snatcherThere should be a map making contest where the challenge is to build a level around the new tools and mechanics in TDM Modpack, Unofficial Patch, and other TDM-original novelties. I bet the community could create some wild mission concepts around tools like Loop.
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6 hours ago, snatcher said:
How about rewarding players for not saving?
This is an interesting idea that's worth exploring. The simplest would be to keep track of the number of saves and reloads and then give some type of score bonus on the after action report. Can you complete the mission in "under par?" However not everyone is susceptible to that sort of incentive.
A more interesting variation on that idea might be having map elements such as optional loot or items that would become locked off by reloading outside of approved save points. This could add an exploration incentive to the mix that would appeal to more players. The implementation detail might be more complicated though. Under what conditions do you lock the optional goodies? Could we have something like challenge segments, where even if you failed the previous segments you could still try to get the next one? Maybe even reset the map to try multiple times? Obviously such a thing could be quite involved to program, but it could open up some interesting options for FM authors, without the distasteful implication of taking away a feature.
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@Frost_Salamander, I only just started this mission and probably won't finish it soon, but I want to join the chorus singing your praises.
For one thing. the atmosphere you have crafted in this mission is superb. Every single area is a feast for the eyes and ears, especially once one gets inside the city. It fires up my huge nostalgia from Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and other Middle Eastern inspired media, except if anything your set dressing is actually better--more detailed and immersive. I love it. But I think you have heard all this already.
Let me hone in on something more original.
Something I am really enjoying here compared to other FMs is that the implementation of security feels (for lack of a better term) realistic. It feels deliberate and adversarial, like you thought about all the ways a thief could get into these spaces, and then intentionally sealed most of them off, just like an actual architect would do.To get in to most of these spaces, one needs to find an out-of-the-way windows or door. It adds to the atmosphere and realism, but it also makes each area into a challenging little puzzle. My progress may be glacial compared to some other missions, but I feel huge satisfaction each time I manage to crack a new part open. I think this is a winning formula--literally the Dark Souls formula for addictive TDM FM design--and I hope you will stick with it. I'll definitely be going back to play all your other missions I slept on if they are like this.
The other thing I really enjoy about your build style here is that it is compact. There's no wasted space that I can see. No palatial pretensions. (Except maybe in the harbor area.) These are spaces sized to their occupants, where the player is challenged to find places to hide on the edges of their inhabitants' routines, rather than the usual approach of having obvious safe vantages and corridors. Each approach has its merits, but you made this work brilliantly. Bravo.
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I don't think anyone is actually suggesting that guns should be in the game. (Certainly that's not what I'm asking for.) Rather I see this as an opportunity for this very creative community to brainstorm some fun and clever explanations for why guns don't exist in this setting when clearly explosives of some sort do.
Example:
Suppose wesp5 is right: fire arrows and explosive mines both work because each contains an explosive fire crystal. The crystal is triggered to detonate from an impact, supplied by collision with a surface in the case of the fire arrow, and a clockwork mechanism in the case of the mine. Why then has no inventor ever thought to stuff a tiny one of these crystals down a hollow metal tube, stick an arrow in after it and then use clockwork to detonate the crystal in order to launch the arrow out at enemies with superhuman speed? (And this is meassumingignoring that TDM doesn'talready have straight-up cannons sitting around as props in some mission.)
Unless... maybe small fire crystals are much more impact sensitive than the larger specimens, making them unsafe for use in a man portable device. Where could an idea like that lead us for world building?
Maybe the main doctrine of war in this world is to have loose formations of archers equipped with fire arrows, capable of annihilating even the most heavily armored squads of enemies at 100 paces. Imagine what that does to warfare. Stealth and ambush become your best defense. Warfare evolves into elaborate sniper duels, where the moment you knock your fire arrow you either win or you die! So some elite soldiers revert back to using broad-heads, hunting their foes from the shadows.
Maybe in some future FM we get to play one of these soldiers, either on a special infiltration mission, or returned from war with a certain set of skills. Or maybe we get an FM about a rogue inventor developing a new fire crystal formula that is more stable, and now he has this insane new weapon: a man-cannon that can kill beyond the range of any bow. Now he's selling the formula to the Minoans and our thief has to steal it... Many exciting possibilities; but that is only one example.
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4 hours ago, chakkman said:
firearms are a tiny bit loud in a stealth scenario
Which is a fine rationale for the player character, but what's the excuse for the guards?
2 hours ago, wesp5 said:Explosives exist in TDM? In what missions?
"Explosive mine (Mine) - This is the standard, more common variant of the mine, seen in most mission where mines appear. Once an armed mine is triggered by a non-player character or creature, it will create a small detonation, the explosive force being deadly to anyone standing in its vicinity...."
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35 minutes ago, HMart said:
Perhaps you want some in lore special reason why there's no guns but the truth is more simple, is because the developers of this game, didn't wanted guns as a gameplay tool.
Lore's job is to contextualize developers' non-diegetic design decisions in a complete and consistent diegetic rationale. Thus I think tib has asked a good question.
It's also not valid to point at Thief and say "we are just copying them" (even though that is the truth for the non-diegetic explanation). There are some big differences between the Thief setting and TDM. Namely, while TDM (understandably) lifts many of the late Georgian/early Victorian style elements from Thief 2, it lacks the context provided by Thief TDP's story. Remember that all the steampunk technology in the Thief series is not an organic part of the culture, but rather a magical expression of the Builder's influence in an otherwise largely medieval society, which then got unleashed in Thief 2 because of the Trickster's death.
The setting in Thief 2 and 3 is basically a medieval one that got uplifted into a Victorian one in the space of 2-3 years using world-bending magic. Therefore it is understandable that no one, outside of the Mechanists, has figured out technologies like cannons, even though they are technically possible.
The setting in TDM lacks this excuse. On the contrary its own lore is quite clear that that it is meant to be an alternate history real-world analog. Clearly explosives do exist in this setting, so it is fair to ask why no one has ever thought of using them to propel an arrow or rock out of a tube to hurt someone, and that this might be an easier way to equip a fighting force that training all the men in archery... This is especially perplexing, since the sort of society TDM seems to model is one that is strongly influenced, if not enabled, by the existence of firearms tech. I wouldn't say the lack of a definite explanation is a fatal flaw, but it's something that should have a rationale.
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11 hours ago, RedEmber said:
You can only save after escaping from an enemy who was alerted and started an aggressive search or combat. (Once per enemy, after escaping can save once for 1 minute).
This strikes me as less likely to gain traction, as it incentivizes the very play style that people seeking to avoid by setting anti-save-scumming rules for themselves. This rule set punishes the player for operating slowly and carefully. The longer you go without being detected, the more progress you will lose if or when you finally do mess up. It encourages a playstyle that is deliberately sloppy.
That might be interesting to some players in the right context, but it does seem to contradict the core power fantasy that most TDM FMs are built around: being an undetectable ghosts. It might unlock a compelling alternative power fantasy, but I think that would need to be contextualized by a bespoke FM, one where getting noticed is unavoidable at certain points. For general missions though, I think your first idea is better. The appealing part of the equation is adding a resource cost to saving to prevent rampant scumming, but the player still wants to be in control of how they allocate those resources.
If I may make a suggestion, how about a mod that makes arrows into the save currency? You could still use the calling card mechanic, but each time one uses it, an arrow is deducted from the inventory, and if none are available you can't put down a save point. I'd suggest an implementation where each time you use the card, an arrow is deducted at random from the quiver, with no regard to type. This means each save would a gamble that you will lose a premium arrow that you wanted to hold onto for later, like a rope, a water, or a gas. But you could also limit it to broadheads or waters if that seems less brutal.
Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow Announcement
in Off-Topic
Posted
Uh... A suffering protagonist is kind of core to the whole Thief narrative formula.
Observe: Garrett starts as a starving street urchin, then graduates to professional freelance burglar struggling to pay his rent while every guard, warden, guild thief, and hammerite in the city is gunning for him. It finally looks like he is going to catch his big break if he can just complete a series of harrowing, supernaturally charged heists. Then surprise! His patrons transform into a couple of eldritch demons and rip his eye out of his head! Congratulations, guy who just wanted to get rich and retire, despite your severe injury, you get to go into literal hell and save the world pro bono. Aren't you having fun yet? (And yes for the slow people in the audience, you are having lots of fun, but the character isn't. And the fact this hyper-competent character is clearly struggling in this situation is part of what makes you feel like such a badass roleplaying him.)
Shall we continue to games two and three?
And for the record, in this case it is not even about being a Mary Sue; because Garrett IS a huge Mary Sue. It's about having a story with character motivations and conflicts. Changing the sex of the protagonist doesn't change the fundamentals of good narrative.
Honestly I feel like the real misogyny is that as soon as a woman is put in a life threatening situation and doesn't act like it's a lovely walk in the park, some people get a reflexive ick reaction. But what do I know? It's not like I've been spending the last several years of my free time writing a mythological fantasy novel starring a (completely non-eroticized) young female protagonist, and agonizing over how to calibrate the amount of danger she is exposed to and her reactions to it. That would be crazy.