Wellingtoncrab

You do not "need to use" hold frob to extinguish candles - you can use hold frob but the 2.11 controls also work exactly the same as they used to. Pick up the candle - and "use inv item" to extinguish it. Pick up food and "use inv item" to eat it. Do you have some other setting or keybinding which is preventing this from working?

Yeah it would be cool to see some more detailed statistics and it’s a shame they aren’t really captured. Since we are talking about fan mission platforms, where players also make the content for the game, I feel like the best thing we’ve got is you can look at the number of content releases for the games. Keep in mind the graph counts campaigns as single missions - so for example NHAT and TBP both count as 1 mission. A good year for TDM has has approaching maybe 50% - mostly we’re 25-30%. https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152494 You could also look at the number of ratings thief missions get on https://www.thiefguild.com/ vs TDM ones, but that is pretty iffy in that you could chalk that up to more awareness of the site in the thief community than TDM Out of curiosity is there a reason a thief player can’t be a new player? I kind of think a player is a player and new players would be ones who are playing the dark mod who weren't? Is there disagreement the base of players most likely to pick up the game are fans of the thief games? They are certainly the most fruitful place to find feedback on the game beyond the sphere of this forum that I have seen. When we were trying to finish up SLL there was a lot of discussion on the forums about how long it had been since there was a release for the game. I am thankful that the stats show at least some stability over the years in terms of releases for TDM, but the trend for all of the games is decline. Not doing anything is a valid response if that’s what the devs want to do - it is not possible to provide evidence that any effort will slow that inertia. As a player and content maker I would just prefer trying to find feedback where it is offered from players who were willing to try the game but ultimately could not engage with it and see if there is anything that can be done within reason to ease them into the game. The game has a lot to offer imo. All those players are potential contributors - contributions in turn attract players - it’d be nice to see the cycle go on as long as it can.

I was asked for feedback on some different mantle implementations. I liked the overall direction and the current 2.12 one not just because it is more responsive but because it also includes some other polish like getting rid of the kind of weird “double dip” mantle you would get when mantling into a crouched position with low ceilings. There are small things I would change were it up to me, but I prefer it to the original. It’s nice that there is some accompanying control in the main menu in terms of the animation intensity. I always liked the mantle feel of TDM and think now it feels even better, but that is just me.

How do you mean? That’s certainly not intentional and I am sorry if I come across that way. My only point to you was that you don’t even have to apply the threshold of “realism” to have a valid opinion about how the game feels.

Do you get mine: With the new mantle do you have an opinion on what the default mantle roll value should be? You can say you don’t have one.

As I mentioned in my post, if the this is even an issue the devs modeled it off of actual human capabilities. ie watching actual people perform the task. Whose capabilities are you measuring that feeling against? Your own? That of a season thief? It really doesn’t matter, they are your perceptions of the game. That should be valid enough without worrying if your subjective feelings about how the game should feel meet “reality”. The game is inherently not realistic, nor are any of the games in the pantheon of immersive sims. That is another topic entirely though. Do you have an opinion on the default mantle roll setting?

I am not really invested in realism being the criteria for a how a game should play, but it sounds like the devs modeled it using actual parkour videos - which would be people mantling in real life. Even if it was desirable I am not sure “realism” is an achievable result. The capabilities of people in reality is pretty diverse after all. I think what you are describing as "realistic" is just what feels subjectively natural or correct to you, which you can and should advocate for that. I am speaking specifically about the “mantle roll” - the tilting camera animation which plays at the last stage of the mantle. What I found is that the new mantle kind of clicks and feels subjectively “right” to me with the revised speed is a setting of .5 instead of 1. But that’s just me, so curious if you or others have any opinion on this menu setting.

I like the new mantle speed a lot. Though I find with the faster speed the default mantle roll of 1.0 looks rather exaggerated and can be a little jarring, so I have been dialing it back. This is pretty subjective, but I have been dialing it back to around 60-50% and find that feels like a good balance to me. Might be worth looking at adjusting the default value now that the fundamentals are different, but maybe somebody else has an opinion.

My guess was that it would have a positive edge and be more legible in slightly more circumstances than white (though not perfect) - but that is not based on any testing admittedly. Only a hypothesis as I know I have had issues with pure white text in guis I have made.

@snatcherI think all the options look pretty good - I guess the only thing that occurs to me is check the legibility in bright environments? I use an off white gui pop up in the missions I have worked and in some conditions this can be quite hard to read - so it’s just a theory but perhaps the yellow might have an edge there?

@snatcher can’t say I prefer yellow or the grey - but I will say all these mockups I have seen from you are a definite improvement over the placeholder art - very nice work! To everyone involved this is a very cool feature.

Exactly the point that is made in my post:

@Frost_SalamanderIf it is helpful, I have express permission from Marcel of cgtextures/textures.com that packaging his assets in a .pk4 is acceptable and at the time he was fine with packaging them in TDM projects: Also you mentioned not being able to use your images for just textures - do I take it this means you can use them as textures and within materials in the context of a mod - you just can’t package and release them as only textures correct? Lastly idtech 4 is an engine old enough it’s package files (.pk4s) can be opened with any archive software (would be difficult to mod otherwise). I will include your license information in my documentation if I ever get to release, but is there any special consideration I should give to packaging assets derived from your images in older game engines which lack modern security? The main thing I hope is to just ensure you include his license and that you do not distribute the textures themselves outside of the context of the fm. There is a bit of a slippery slope in that terms on the site have changed a lot over the years. The current licensing model finally seems to state that the photo ref textures are ok to use in "Scenes" for example, but for many years it stated it was only acceptable to use them specially in models. There are many many assets in core which are from this site, which were licensed under these much older terms: https://web.archive.org/web/20100818122748/http://cgtextures.com/content.php?action=license Ultimately if something is licensed, the terms can change. So buyer beware.

@Näkkialready looking great!

Folks please let’s not necro a lengthy discussion on the merit of save restrictions in general in Kingsal’s release thread, when it’s well represented elsewhere.

If TDM were an RPG with an inventory system like CP2077 or a bethesda game yeah I imagine the primary function of interacting with a body might be related to inventory management. Again the developers of that game had a context sensitive input, they prioritized what it should do based off of their game and what the player is mostly likely to need. This is not making a stronger case we should not do the same thing for our game. You have never bothered to explain why in this game a player would need to prioritize dragging and manipulating a body over shouldering it beyond it being being “inconsistent”.

You are correct in that is a partially unfair example in that dishonored 1/2 use a lot of “modern” gui conventions like text elements, progress bars, etc for a lot of it’s interactions and telegraphs pretty clearly to the player what context sensitive action will result on frob. There is a delay on some interactions, including picking up bodies, but this is to prevent unintended inputs, not to enable something like multiple control layers. The primary function of using frob on the body is to “pick it up” ie shoulder it. No idea why this is material to an an argument that this should be the result of frobbing a body? No one is even suggesting removing this kind of manipulation from the game. The examples I can think of this kind of drag mechanic: the modern deus ex and hitman games, both of which are interactions exclusive to bodies and don’t feature shouldering as a mechanics at all, and the fine grain physics manipulation modes you see in Bethesda games starting with Oblivion, which requires long pressing the interact key on a physics object to allow you to move it around. Incorrect: TDM does not have the ability to move “anything” as physics object and all of those games have physics systems which include objects the player can move around. Also not material as to why a fine grain limb manipulation and dragging mode should be the primary function of the frob key. No one is advocating removing the feature from the game, and you can get the exact behavior you seem to want by disabling the hold commands in the main menu.

@wesp5 Make sure you skip thief, thief2, deus ex, dishonored, dishonored 2, etc. Not sure what military grade hallucinogens they were smoking but they all have physics object you can pick up and bodies you can shoulder - tied to the same input! It was quite the scandal - all anyone could talk about at the time is “why don’t the bodies just float in front of my camera when I pick them up just like this potted plant does?” What they didn’t have that the current build of TDM does was the ability for players like you turn this troublesome development off in the main menu. Thankfully I am absolutely certain you’ve been spared the pain of playing of these games, as it is seemingly the only explanation I can come up with for you to still be posting the same comments over and over and over again in this thread. Seriously though these interactions in the game were never really the same thing, you do not drag most physics objects in the game slowly along the ground, you pick them up kind of like how shouldering the body is a non goofy way to display you have picked it up, so no idea how it is inconsistent and even why that matter so much.

Yeah, I do see some benefit to being able to pass items to the grabber with less inputs so I think it’s worth trying and getting a feel for. That mix of some inventory items being moveables and others being static without collision meshes will kind of inherently make it hit or miss depending on the item, but it seems like a potentially nice addition.

Unless I am missing something the only really difference in this table vs the current implementation would be inverting the shoulder/grabber behavior for bodies (I guess it also removes the fall back on long press to do the default action on things like junk - not sure if it is actually preferable for some reason to just do nothing in these cases). Switching the body interaction to shoulder on frob is one of the foundational elements of this change and judging by the polling information is supported by a majority of players. The reasons for this change are well articulated in this thread, but the short version is that this has been confusing new players for years who actually think there is no shouldering mechanic in the game at all. The first thing the game shows them is fine manipulation of bodies via the dragging mechanic, and they must learn to use an unfamiliar key combination to actually carry one. This is only described in a easy to miss readable in the training mission. I am myself only learned of this mechanic after playing several missions and by accident. You can read accounts of players literally giving on the game elsewhere in this thread. I imagine they would potentially support this change as well. Which is the more common action a player must undertake in the game - shouldering a body or manipulating limbs and slowly dragging it around? So if that is the only element of the implementation which is “inconsistent” (again I don’t think this is actually important - shouldering is the primary interaction with bodies in almost every other similar game and this confuses no one) then I think it’s a pretty small tradeoff for a pretty big pay off.

It is quite litigated in the thread already whether it is particularly important or common in games for a context sensitive input be "consistent" or whether this inherently means something is intuitive - so I won't repeat my thoughts on it. I will say It seemed like it was quite difficult to get this change as it is into the game, so while I think anything can be improved I am not sure anyone wants to go through another 10 pages, polls, etc. So I hope I don’t sound short or dismissive, it’s really not my intention, it’s just been a very long thread. I will say if an object is frob highlighted, ie subject to an interaction prompt, if frobbing it then does not do anything or provide any feedback the game immediately feels very strange and broken. I do not think it is good a idea to have objects which can only be interacted with via long press. The current design is around primary interactions being on short press and the secondary more situational actions being on hold, while also retaining compatibility with all legacy interactions. There is some disagreement as far as what is a "primary" interaction, but I find it pretty intuitive in practice as it is today. There are some exceptions that did not work out in testing. I will the example of candles/lanterns - having extinguish as the primary interaction makes a lot of sense, but in practice didn't work very well. The game is full of extinguished candles, empty candle holders, etc that are now simple physics objects that require a long press to pickup and have no primary interaction - see issue above. You also have to handle lanterns differently, which can be toggled off/on. You could code in the TDS method which is extinguish a lit candle on frob, then it becomes a physics object (“junk” in the parlance of your table) so the primary interaction should then be grabber. There seemed in general to be a lot of concern about keeping the code clean. Being able to grab moveable inventory objects on hold without having to do the current dance of bringing them into inventory first and then “dropping” them - like keys and tools - could be a nice addition. Many loot objects are not moveables so these might be a bit of issue?

@STiFU thanks for playing! If you really want to see some tricks using some special eyewear - I recommend you check out Written in Stone! @MirceaKitsune Also thanks for playing! The behavior you a describing regarding AI not reacting to player sounds in restricted city areas should only occur on the “nostalgia” difficulty. As far the remaining SotV:

Yes by default nearly all of the ragdoll entities you can find in Create Entity > Ragdolls > Bodies all have shoulderable set to 1 in their definitions - including rats and spiders. This probably was not intentional - but this means in a lot of missions if an author has placed a dead rat or spider these have always been shoulderable - its just rare anyone bothered to try.

Let us know how it goes!

What will appear in the mission downloader as "version 3" of Seeking Lady Leicester is available for download at the link below: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15928fkRigw20310G5EtZ7h4Vngf9-sk-/view?usp=drive_link This includes a collection of minor bug fixes: the hard to reach/frob loot under the manor stairs is easier obtain the difficult to reach health potion in the canal is easier obtain fixed nonsolid building next to the bookshop that players fella through/into. Lots of small fixes and polish