Wellingtoncrab
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Days Won
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Posts posted by Wellingtoncrab
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@wesp5 I guess my perspective over on the core user end is it’s better to look forward on some things - while I am sure there are many older missions where the author would like to replace the slow match if there was a different option it’s probably best not to make assumptions there or worse break something in them - at least when it comes to what is available in the core mod. Given the mods long history - preservation is also important, and this seems to skirt a fine line between improving a mechanic and replacing it. I think many mechanics can improved, but in this case perhaps for example the physics interaction with the slow match is integrated into a puzzle somewhere we are not considering . Or to use a broader example I would agree a new training mission would be awesome, but I don’t think anyone is advocating the original be completely purged from the archive and forgotten as part of the process. I love that mission!
So in my mind as a mapper/core user I think it would be great to have the flint tool added to core so it can be integrated into more missions going forward but not replacing anything - but that would be assuming the assets used are even being offered for integration or there is any interest on the dev side to do so.
When it comes to your patch you obviously can take a different approach as it is more explicit in it aims at altering these existing experiences.
Bit off topic but congrats on the new bloodlines release btw.
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@AndersonYou wouldn’t need to replace the slow match really to add a different relighting tool - both could exist in the mod and the author could choose which to make available or if to give the player the ability to relight lights at all.
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2 hours ago, CountMorillonite said:
I've started replaying the mission and already found stuff I missed. There are so many Bonus? Items to pick up, how do we know when we have them all? Is there a list somewhere (fan mission is TOO recent I guess).
Maybe a tally would have been nice. Ex) you found 1/10 items or 1/6 books, etc.
Glad to hear you’re back at it and I hope things have been going more smoothly! I think it’s a bit of projection of my own preferences there - you can’t help but do that a bit really trying to design anything - as there is a new secret system which I could potentially use to tally how many secrets the player had found and I considered doing that, but personally I never liked systems like this as it always kind of feels like converting exploration into a bit of checklist and makes you very aware of what you’re apparently not doing that the mission seems to imply then you should be.
There were a lot of explicit objectives and side objectives and I didn’t want players to ever feel like they hadn’t actually finished the mission when they were done with it. The mission will typically let you know when you have followed a thread all the way to the end, but it doesn’t try to compare your progress against any benchmark besides what you set for yourself. At least that was the philosophy there, whether it was successful in this regard is another matter.
1 hour ago, vozka said:Fantastic mission, it's not just about the size of course, it's so well made, detailed and cohesive. Surely one of the best missions so far. Sometimes I'm a bit unhappy that TDM tends to be a bit less lighthearted and more serious than Thief, but how could I complain with missions like this.
Thanks so much for playing! I am glad you enjoyed it!
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Maybe I am misremembering but I thought the flint tool in Snowed Inn/Written in Stone/etc also did this. Not sure how it works exactly- but since fire arrows can relight extinguished light sources I figured when you used the flint tool it just stimmed the extinguished light source in the same manner and throws some satisfying sparks in for good measure.
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While I think it is kind of cool, perhaps in addition to the slow match that “flint” tool which appears in multiple fms or some equivalent could be added to core as it’s a bit more intuitive when it comes to relighting light sources.
Also as someone who is also terrible at remembering key shortcuts I like to use the inventory grid to jump around items quickly - default key I think is tab - or at least that is what I bind it to.
It’s also good if you periodically like to use a controller.
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5 hours ago, Dragofer said:
Maybe the glasses stop working if you have 2 of them in your inventory? I dont know how robust their scripting is if it's called from 2 different entities.
Could be there is a way to foul it up, but I tested having two glasses in inventory quite a bit and could never cause an issue. I have some ideas on how I could stress test it a little more though. -
48 minutes ago, CountMorillonite said:
Could you remind me where to go ?
SpoilerFastest method would be to buy them at Calvin’s Curious
@cvlw Thank you for the bug report!
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16 minutes ago, CountMorillonite said:
Also, the version of your fan mission I'm playing is ver1 . I think there is a ver1.1. Maybe that is a problem
If it came from the link on the forum of the in game downloader it should be version 1.11 - the in game downloader keeps it’s own versioning and since 1.11 was the first version to be added to the mission database it displays there as version 1.
Keep me updated on how it goes - while no one else has reported it yet it is still quite possible whatever precipitated it is repeatable!
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@CountMorillonitewell I wouldn't normally advise running a 16x MSAA for performance reasons and given you are running at native res I would turn image sharpening off for the volumetric lights to look their best, but running at those settings would have no impact on the lenses as far as I can tell - at least they still work on my machine (though the frame rate is unplayable).
You can drop the glasses from inventory - though not sure what the default binding is - it's "Drop Inv. Item" in the inventory settings. What happens if you drop the glasses and then pick them back up?
So far I cannot find a way to replicate this. Perhaps try removing the files from the directory except for the "savegames" folder and reinstalling the mission?
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12 minutes ago, CountMorillonite said:
When I equip the lens from the inventory and press the "Z" key, (which means "use" the inventory item), it flashes red and does nothing.
Something is certainly off - while at one point in beta there were visual artefacts tied to some graphics settings I have not encountered something preventing the item from even being used and haven't run into any tools interfering with it either but there may be some combination of elements here that just hasn't been encountered yet.
I am trying to put the glasses through their paces on my end to see if I can stumble into the same issue but I haven't run into anything yet. Is there anything about your system you might describe as uncommon - like exotic choice of resolution, frame rate, 32-bit os, etc?
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@fortunithanks for taking the time to play and your kind words! If you've been away for a bit and think you can handle a bit more there are many great TDM missions, but these recent contest entries seem like a very good place to start to get a sense of breadth of what's on offer. As hard as I worked on Iris, there are several times playing them I was like "This is absolutely nuts, I could never pull this off!" - the fact that they were finished in mere months also just boggles.
Thanks for the bug reports as well - got those on the tracker and will attend to them on the next patch. Thanks again!
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15 minutes ago, CountMorillonite said:
I know this makes me look stupid, but when I equip the lenses (picking it out of the inventory in the same way I choose to equip the lockpicks) then "use" it with the Use Key Stroke (default "Z" key)...nothing happens. No visual change, no access-way opens, no codes illuminated on the walls, nothing. And where am I supposed to Use it? In front of the various triangles one sees throughout the mission, or the doors that wont open that have a picture of the character with a "beak". I'm pretty sure this is why I've hit a dead end in progressing in the mission.
Not at all - you may have encountered a bug of some kind though I am not certain what is causing it. If the glasses are equipped an overlay appears on the screen that looks like the outline of a pair of lenses - if you're not seeing this then it seems there is an issue.
The "z" key is the same key you use to say - use a health potion from your inventory?
The lenses though are not necessary to progress in the mission or even complete it - so if you are stuck in another way I can try and walk through it.
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6 hours ago, CountMorillonite said:
How do you "use" the glasses, which I'm presuming to be the "Peculiar Lenses". I know there was a readable about it but damned if I can remember which of the countless readables reference it.
Yes if the question is how do you use the item - when you press the use item key they become equipped and you should an overlay on the screen which indicates this as well.
If your question is what do you use them for that is a slightly different matter.
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41 minutes ago, GUFF said:
What's the deal with the builders in the plague ward, by the way?
Just like the corpses, they look different when you wear the glasses and they don't count as kills when you kill them. One of the pagans watching them seems to hint in his journal that they're something else, that they come out at night and flee into their black building before morning. So I guess they're actually some kind of supernatural creature?
SpoilerThey do seem a bit off, now that you mention it.
My gratitude for playing not even once, but twice! I am glad some of the tweaks to the patrol routes paid off. Thank you again!
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1 hour ago, wesp5 said:
Nobody wants manual crafting of arrows, just add a small bundle of shafts to the inventory grid like the unarmed icon!
I can’t really think of a reason to occupy the players inventory with an item they don’t actually use - this dead item actually seems potentially confusing to me as opposed to clarifying. Most players would assume they are supposed to do something with a bundle of sticks in their inventory - should there are also be an icon of a semi trailer in the grid to explain how the player carries so much loot, armament and loose sticks apparently with them?
Again if this whole thing is about realism - is it more realistic to walk up to a tuffet and find a fully assembled moss arrow or find a piece of moss? The game imo communicates to the player well when they pickup an elemental crystal that an arrow has been added to their inventory via a gui message. Either way it’s probably a discussion to move out of Goldwell’s thread as lot of missions use this custom arrow set or other abstractions, and it is perhaps presumptive on my part but it might be better to reserve this space for feedback specific to this mission.
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@esme Thank you for playing! I am gratified to hear you are enjoying it. Yes this is my first release - though I would repeat I have also been puttering about in some form of a game editor almost my entire life - just never managed to finish and release anything - as you can perhaps tell from this mission my impulse control could use some work.
Spoiler- It sounds like you have all the pieces you need to solve Ursine’s puzzle and your intuition about the portrait is correct. Perhaps take another glance in the margins.
- There are no rope arrows in the mission - believe it or not I did try to set some design constraints on the outset of this iteration to keep the myself from blowing up the mission out of my control.
- looks like I missed a target there on the script that renders the “blackjack discount” on store goods - thanks for catching that and I will add it to the list for the next patch
Thanks again for playing!
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5 hours ago, datiswous said:
Interesting, can you elaborate on that? Could this be a solution for other missions?
This is already possible via a spawn argument - the catch being that on stencil shadows the light volume will not interact with any shadow casting geometry - so it will go through walls, pillars, etc.
So to answer your question: it depends.
Congratulations on the release!
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11 minutes ago, VanishedOne said:
There's the Inn Business approach - use the campaign system to run the same map multiple times, allowing for persistent items/variables - but it only works for a finite number of revisits.
Having finished your masterpiece, I just wanted to ask about one room:
Thanks for playing! I will definitely look at tip about using the campaign system to run the same map!
SpoilerYes - I believe there is also second area with the pyramid decal inconsistency and you didn’t miss anything there. This is a byproduct of at one point the pyramid graffiti did not represent this at all so a couple area still need to be brought up to speed. Aware of these for the next patch!
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Ha! Yeah I have that issue with some of the core prefabs for ambient ai in my mission - the have such huge damage mods on them if you actually kill one the stats look like the player initiated an extinction level event.
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The pickup animation and sound is great imo - evoked dishonored in my mind much more strongly than thief 4 - though perhaps my memory of that game is simply not as strong.
Elemental crystals have usually represented arrows in thief and I like that the mission has both. This opens up resources to be collected in areas like bonfires, fountains, trees, etc where the fully assembled arrows would read as out of place. Yes there is abstraction involved - as there almost always is in games.
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@kingsalThanks for those starter values! I am curious if you also modify the stealth damage modifier or not?
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I do think you want to be cautious about how high you set the damage multipliers though - I cannot recall what I landed on - but I think it was around 3 for head and I found this was plenty.
I bring it up because you don’t want any of your damage multipliers to potentially negate the cool underlying system of material based “defense” multipliers on the arrows themselves.
One of the reasons I got into tweaking the arrows at all is I wanted to make stealth kills more viable and the distinction between cloth/chain/plate armored foes greater so this system could shine a little more. Currently the arrows do so little damage this system might as well be invisible practically speaking, but take your multipliers too high and this too also becomes invisible as the base damage overwhelms all armor types. I never quite got what I wanted with the chain mail (almost seems like this needs a chance to deflect lethal arrow damage, but doesn’t quite feel right that a stealth kill is impossible) but you are welcome to look at the spawnargs I applied to the AI, as I imagine they would be visible if you opened the .map file in a text editor.
It’s your mod, but I also don’t think you should completely flatten the damage model between stealth/alerted as I do think it’s quite fair the player get a damage boost when they are undetected - in fact I think I probably landed on increasing this advantage when I was attempting to balance it all out.
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I think it’s not damage is decreased when enemies are alerted but rather increased when the player is not detected by the sneak_attack_mult spawnarg on the ai.
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I think with zombies it could be a balance issue for some missions which were designed around the player needing to scrounge up holy water or flame arrows to contend with the obstacle but I found the tension created by trying (and often failing) to land that crucial headshot on the undead in hazard pay resulted in some of my all time favorite moments in the mission.
Speaking more broadly about the damage model of arrows/sword vs human AI I think the assumption players will all change their play style because lethal options are easier is probably wrong. If you watch interviews with Warren Spector about his role in the development of thief he brings up over and over again his disagreement with the devs about how concerns about making the game’s combat too viable would make it too easy and no one would engage in the stealth aspect.
There may have been something to that at the time, as since thief was in effect a new type of game even teaching players stealth was an option might of been a challenge in itself. Deus Ex is an interesting counter example as he basically did what he thought the thief devs should have done and supported a variety of play styles - still when given the option many players, perhaps even most, would engage in stealth and non lethal options because in effect having the option was all we needed to restrain ourselves.
When discussing whether it is realistic for a head shot to kill a zombie which has no brain matter it can easily also be framed as how realistic it is for a human head or velvet draped torso to deflect 4-5 arrows. The basis for all these mechanics seems to me to be more how they were originally in Thief than what is necessarily reasonable to expect.
I personally think not being precious about thief mechanics may be as important as honoring the legacy there, and I like that mappers were given so much flexibility to adjust these things - though probably hard to notice as realistically how many well conditioned thief players would even try?
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2.10 Crashes - May be bow \ frontend acceleration related
in TDM Tech Support
Posted
Yeah a user over at darkfate.org also reported some crashes in Iris specifically after using the bow as well.
I could not replicate exactly what ever it was, and didn’t have the issue in HP either which certainly puts the bow through its paces, but it does seem repeatable perhaps.