Wellingtoncrab
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Days Won
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Posts posted by Wellingtoncrab
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1 hour ago, datiswous said:
I thought that part of the discussion about code indentation was fun though (I remember the fun parts).
You can never ban the memories.
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@OktokoloI am not sure what you're getting at with the whole Nort "triggered" anyone thing - sounds very dismissive of the negative impact they were having. Nort wasn't a pest because they used Windows 7 and ms paint - they were a pest because they belittled and minimized everyones contributions in the same breath and was so present in every thread you pretty much had to ignore them to get any utility out of the forum.
Honestly the members Nort was the least fair to were the ones who showed them the most patience and they got lots of olive branches. We're all ostensibly here for a reason - hopefully when there is some disagreement we still learn something. On this forum I have not seen anyone else so unopen to input yet so obnoxiously convinced they had so much to teach everyone (“We have such sights to show you.” - Nort).
Why would it be a requirement for anyone to willingly donate unlimited amounts of their time and energy to a belligerent and absolutely immovable object because “internet”?
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2 hours ago, Obsttorte said:
Thrown together, as you named it, so don't expect too much. But it gives an idea of what I've meant.
Looks quite promising I think!
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1 hour ago, Obsttorte said:
Also a subtle arm raise indicating you are close enough could help.
I always liked this in TDS - which had also had a rather finicky blackjack feel (though it very satisfying when it worked) - being able to disable it like the frob helper seems like a great way to add a little more confidence to those who need it without messing with the core mechanic too much (which I would still advocate as necessary tbh, but is likely to result in something more divisive than a toggleable setting).
48 minutes ago, Springheel said:Only guards with helmets become completely immune to blackjacking after being alerted (which happens if you hit them incorrectly with the blackjack, but not if you miss).
On the player level I could see why this distinction is a bit opaque - since the point of impact of the blackjack is so important your chances of landing a second hit if you fouled it the first time can be slim and obviously helmeted guards are quite prevalent in the setting. I imagine players can just internalize the distinction as “well sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t” across all the AI lending into this feeling of inconsistency around the mechanic.
As you mention though every time I have brought up the blackjack (which is perhaps too often) I have always gotten a response from a dev that it’s being worked on and it actually seems like it is an area where there is broader agreement some improvement could be made. I look forward to seeing what that looks like!
1 hour ago, Obsttorte said:As the one introducing the feature of savegame restrictions:
That was never the reason on why I did it. And for the last fucking time: Increasing difficulty was neither!!!
I would point out as an aside from someone who really liked this mechanic, one of the reasons why it was so successful in HP is that the mission makes the blackjack pretty much irrelevant removing that layer of inconsistency which makes leveraging quick saves so important. It is much harder for me to imagine pulling this off as successfully with the typical human AI, but perhaps I am wrong there and would still be interested to try something like that.
Either way I just think there should be more tolerance for the player to make and correct their mistakes. Even if this margin more in favor of the player which exists in Thief, with things like flashbomb and visibility interrupts, is the result of “a bug” it is in my opinion a fortuitous one as it adds to enduring feeling of those games.
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11 hours ago, Daft Mugi said:
I'm leaving a spoiler here for others (and possibly my future self) who are having trouble finding Tobin's spyglass. I spent ages and ages looking for it.
SpoilerYeah this can clearly be rather difficult for players to find. The Burgage House was an area that was originally cut from the mission and was then reimplemented when it seemed like the 2.10 performance increases would support it. This was quite difficult to squeeze back in and I think the ramifications weren’t ideal for this quest line. It’s something I would like to smooth over.
To answer your other question - yes there are alternate routes down to that location that do not involve the drop - but I figured I’d give players whose curiosity outweighs the cost of some HP a shortcut.
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This mission was great from the get in beta and playing through the final version was a blast. Fantastic job on this!
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I am basically rehashing lots of points of discussion which have already come up on the discord, but I think the biggest problem with gear is that in the event of detection it rarely provides a viable or preferable alternative to reloading the game, and so even if the designer attempts to “lead the horse to water” it still seems much more often they will languish in the players inventory. I guess there is always the thrill and brief endorphin injection from hearing that frob sound!
Tools I think should be much more effective means of interrupting and ending the alert states of AI, or at least this strikes me as the most fruitful venue for coaxing players out of the detection = failure = reload the game loop. A flashbomb for example provides a rather brief window for escape into at best a lengthy wait for the simulation to reset. Things like the rather brief “I am blind” animation only looping through once also doesn’t provide very good feedback to players how effective the tool even is.
I always got the the impression in thief that blinded AI was pretty much opened up to an easy 360 degree KO from the blackjack (and thus a quick simulation reset) but it doesn’t seem to work this way in TDM (striking them at least seems to re-loop through the “I am blind” animation). I also think the default effect duration could be longer (or at less of penalty to the player, or perhaps I am not very good at not blinding myself).
Perhaps bringing over the choke mechanic for moss arrows from TDS, even it’s just using the same blind stim, is another avenue to expand the versatility of tools - then moss arrows become multifunction and can also be used to offensively interrupt alerts and open guards to KO. Maybe this could be expanded further and the moss pads not only dampen player sounds but reduce player fall damage (which I understand is technically more difficult than it sounds and has obvious potential ramifications for legacy missions).
TL;DR - players don’t use tools - perhaps they should be more useful.
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IIRC We’re all already in a cult, so it’s just a classic at that point
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I was beyond TDM burn out by virtue of what was becoming a relentless sprint towards release on my own mission. I started to play the contest missions and they all had elements that made TDM feel vital again (also full of humbling reminders there was still a lot to learn).
One of my favorite moments in TDM ever was when I head shot a zombie in front of a security camera in HP and the corpse sent the camera into an alarm state pulling 4 more zombies into the area (not even sure if this was intended design for the security camera). I actually hit the reload key out of habit but of course nothing happened. Then I remembered I had picked up a vial of holy water and and I still had a couple of water arrows left. Here were four zombies all clustered right together and this problem became an opportunity. Wouldn't of happened if that reload key worked.
Never say never on this mechanic or other new (to TDM) concepts in my opinion.
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I agree with Goldwell here regarding tools. Watching any video of TDM/Thief being played it is clearly hard enough to get players to use the tools at all, making them a scarce resource doesn’t likely help the matter and they should be budgeted in a way that players can feel comfortable using them - but you can still make them work to collect them. I think this is balanced very well in Noble Affairs with the store and exploration elements letting you really kit out - though not if you simply critical path the mission.
I also think it’s more important to design circumstances where a tool could be used instead of making them prescriptive solutions to problems the designer dreamt up. This always reads to me a little in games as the designer trying to demonstrate they can setup a clever scenario instead of the letting the player feel clever by using the tools to creatively solve problems, but that is just a personal pet peeve of mine.
Getting players in general to leverage the toolset more is I think a fruitful topic, but perhaps one for a separate thread.
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On 6/20/2022 at 2:11 PM, Obsttorte said:
- somehow communicate it to players that they can increase the settings further (and may do so once they played a bit to get the experience the mission authors are aiming for)
Perhaps on the difficulty selection screen during the mission briefing there could be a small button below the three main difficulty selections - “Advanced Difficulty Options” or something which just takes you to the screen to adjust the seeing/hearing/lock picking global options. Not sure if you’re at the point of the mission brief if you can even open the main menu without exiting the mission (so you might have to watch the briefing video again, etc)
I still think even though there is a definite element of design and FM authors could do better here, for overall accessibility it would still be good to have additional layers to make the game easier. This might allow you to “flatten” the experience across FMs and better contend with all of the existing variance in legacy missions.
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One of the criticisms I often read of TDM, especially in other venues where it is being unfavorably compared to the thief - is that AI acuity balance by default seems a little unfair where a slight misstep can feel like it brings the whole map down on you. Overall this contributes to an unfavorably high “quickloads per minute” for many typical players.
While I don’t agree with many of the other typical criticisms - this one I can’t really argue with.
Obviously an element of this is in the individual encounter designs themselves which will vary mission to mission, but when it comes up I almost always encourage new players to crank the acuity in the difficulty down to their taste as they may not be aware this is somewhat scalable in the options menu.
I honestly play on nearly deaf/nearly blind myself. I wouldn’t propose overhauling the current acuity settings options but maybe there could be additional ones even lower?
Perhaps one of these lower setting could be set as default and then adjusted up to taste instead of risking new players having a bad experience before they get to the point they understand they can tailor this element of their experience?
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5 minutes ago, Obsttorte said:
How about the settings? Do you think the timing is fine or would you change the values?
To me the timing pretty much looks spot on for the move_time of the door - fast enough to smoothly move through at a sprint with the door just getting out of the player as they traverse through.
Obviously given the whole customizable move_time spawnarg thing there’s probably not a great fit all sizes solution there. I imagine more often than not doors are kept at their default properties so it would make sense to balance around that. Or perhaps bias towards a faster modifier to cover more edge cases.
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I personally don’t think it’s counter intuitive for the door to open quickly in either direction - this to me is the entire point. IRL You can hurriedly swing a door in either direction and this is not IRL after all so I think narrowing it down limits the use case for an already situational mechanic and the inconstancy is more likely to be confusing to players.
The action of running through the door does look quite smooth and slick I think - I like it. It’s still hard for me to tell overall if the running action is the best thing to anchor this to but as setup in the test map it looks like it works well.
How far and in what conditions are you thinking the alert stim will propagate?
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19 minutes ago, Obsttorte said:
last paragraph of yours reads a bit passive-aggressive to me.
Not my intention - as I said I have no desire to backseat drive on your feature if you are at a point you need to prototype it. Ideas are cheap and plentiful but most of us aren’t going to be able to meaningly contribute to implementing them. I was merely saying I wasn’t trying to waste anyones time as it seems like you already have a clear picture what you want to do and I am more interested in seeing that than diluting the concept with more random ideation.
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Fair enough. I don’t necessarily agree there isn’t room for another method of opening locked doors given how dull lockpicking kind of is and I don’t think it’d be frustrating provided there is no penalty for attempting to force a door that is locked and can’t be forced.
I do agree that it may be beyond the scope of the discussion and that teaching players to do anything new is a potential point of confusion (this includes teaching them this running bash technique and the penalty for it).
I interpreted the thread as wanting feedback to flesh out the idea, but it seems there is something already clearly in mind and it wasn’t my intention to backseat drive - so I will withdraw any further comments.
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.map files can get quite big themselves if there is a lot of brush work.
Not sure if they creep into the “really large” category but Perilous Refuge and Penny Dreadful 2 are both like 50mb and there is a whole lot to them (also great missions).
So yeah obviously archive size isn’t everything - I mean perhaps it’s old fashioned but I usually just read the mission descriptions until something clicks and then give it a try!
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We seriously have so many great missions - and I usually find something interesting even in the ones that don’t gel with me - but I will add that one of the Greatest of All Time™ “Full Moon Fever” manages a very svelte 23mb.
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I understood the intention very clearly and am not coming from a point of confusion regarding the thread title - my point is instead of deciding for the player that since they are running they must want the smash open a door and potentially alert AI they cannot see is to give the player the option to open the door faster in exchange for the added risk whenever they choose.
As the running option does not seem very clean to me when it comes to deciding what a players intentions are, but I am open to being wrong. Areas in TDM can very narrow and serpentine by virtue of needing to be visportaled - to me it seems like players could easily be fleeing but not able to maintain momentum up through a door and I know I usually stop myself before opening one. It just seems likely to me players will experience situations where they won’t get the bash when they want it and will end up doing it when they don’t with this method.
I do also think there is more potential for other interesting uses of a mechanic if you allow it to be accessed from an additional key press when a door is opening. Say we could also give a locked door the spawnarg “forcible” and maybe the player has to choose between finding a key or forcing a door with the new bash mechanic and alerting the guards.
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Sounds potentially cool - I would probably make the “bash door” mechanic a more intentional button combination than simply how quickly a player is moving when they do a frob action as this seems likely to misinterpret the players intentions at some point - I’d be cautious especially since this could result in an alerted ai and that subsequent frustrated reflexive leap towards the quickload key. Maybe like how when you press the use item button while dragging a body to shoulder it you could do this while holding frob on a door to “bash” it open?
Also the speed of movers such as doors is currently in the control of the mission author - so the concept of what is “faster” seems like it could potentially differ quite a bit.
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I don’t necessarily agree that tension really exists at all - what you are describing about narrowly picking a lock or looting a painting before a patrol just sweeps by sounds like a great scene in a movie. Movies don’t have fail states - regardless of what happens in the scene you will continue to progress through the movie.
In TDM most players perceive detection as a fail state and they promptly hit the reload button if this happens - so where is this tension? I also imagine most players will focus on neutralizing an obvious threat of the patrolling guard before they focus on looting the painting.
Really the result is in rare circumstances you increase the chance for the player to experience a fail state and make everyone else wait for an arbitrary amount of time before a single type of loot ends up in their inventory - something that would be frustrating in a mission that didn’t specifically design around the mechanic.
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1 hour ago, snatcher said:
While I could agree, this hardly has to do with game mechanics but with how these mechanics are put to work by mission makers. A different story altogether.
I can’t follow that logic at all - how many iterations of the lockpicking/hacking mini game have we seen over the years in an attempt to make this mechanic engaging?
While it is a pet peeve of mine when fms decided every lock should have three lock pick stages the underlying mechanic is still what only supports this being interesting at all maybe a few times in a given mission.
same with your theoretical painting mechanic - a player might be engaged by holding down a button and waiting for a timer to fill a couple times, but I imagine that is it. Doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea - but it seems like something that should maybe be mission specific instead of a core mechanic.
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4 hours ago, snatcher said:
Isn't lock-picking containers fun?
The answer to this question is no unless it’s employed briefly and sparingly.
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On 6/12/2022 at 1:14 PM, STiFU said:
IrfanView.
This was a great recommendation! I have been needing to replace Pictus as it's abandonware now and this has been perfect with much expanded feature set.
Should small static oil lamps be extinguishable up close?
in The Dark Mod
Posted · Edited by Wellingtoncrab
It’s discouraging to read both a developer and a player saying we give no consideration to certain design elements of our missions in the context of a conversation that seems to be about overwriting some of those intentions anyway.
Given we already have frobable oil lamps, as well as non frobable ones and that we can do practically whatever we like in this regard via spawnargs/custom scripting I think our intentions as to how/if you’re supposed to be able to interact with a given light source are usually pretty clear on the mappers side.
Part of what makes TDM cool is that players can also change almost any element of the game or a given mission themselves regardless of those intentions and no one is trying to stop them.
So in a world where players have the option to play the mission as intended, unofficially “patch” the game to have the feature, or even boot up DR and hook up a light switch themselves what is even the ask?