Cyberwolf

Are you really sure about that though? I think a lot of the appeal with games is the ability to virtually 'do' things that at least resemble how things happen in real life. Sure there are abstract concepts like the puzzle game genre, but for the most part, we have games that, to some degree or another, strive to achieve "realism." I think the appeal for something like this lies in the same place that it does in other games: Your actions don't produce real world consequences. It's almost laughable that you say that no-one wants to do boring things. If that's true, how on earth do you justify the popularity of games like dungeon siege, or really (as far as I'm concerned, don't mean to bash the game) online games like WoW? Your actions in these types of games are so repetitive, but for millions of people there is a driving force, a definite reason to keep forking out the monthly fee...and I'd be surprised if that reason was the repetition of killing monsters.

A few years ago, a project called Archaean was in the planning stages, there was a group that got assembled from around the 'net, much like this project...the aim was to create a massive online world. The concept of the MOW was a lot different than just creating a MMORPG. The project died I guess, but there are a few scraps of it here and there around the 'net, one is an interview with the project lead here. Their idea was to create a fully 3d, fully deformable and buildable world with a fantasy setting, so that it would resemble rpg's but basically allow everyone to do whatever they pleased. This kind of concept has been sort of implemented in the text based rpg Cantr, but the limitations of that system are obvious and frustrating. Several things that they did do that I thought was neat was that they didn't place any predefined value on any of the items or raw materials in the game. It became up to players to establish an economy and society based on what they eventually did with those raw materials. They have some sort of strange invention system that I don't quite understand but it has serious limitations. Imagine the kind of design that would have to go into creating even a small plot of ground (say 50 square feet), that was fully alterable. It would have to be constructed entirely of near particle-sized 3d objects, each with their own definitions as to what 'material' they are, what their properties are, how they are affected by the physics calculations, etc. To be able to dig in it, you'd have to have layer upon layer of dirt material, not just a flat, razor thin poly for an area of grass or dirt. Players and characters would also have to be constructed from world materials, and wouldn't be able to be separate 3d models, if interaction with the world would be what it would need to be. Anyway it's just fun to think about...does anyone think this will ever be possible (or at least mostly possible) in the near future? From a programming perspective, I know creating some sort of engine like this would be absolutely unimaginably hard. Also it would put an enormous strain on bandwidth. Eh I like to dream big though...

lest we forget morrowind's absolutely hideous economy, which basically forced you to steal items, because money was almost worthless. I remember one of the things my friends did when he first played the game, he went straight to vivec and found all these vaults guarded by some mean looking fellows. Well he saved the game standing behind each guard and would sit there for hours reloading his save and trying to pickpocket the guard for his vault key, until random chance kicked in and he was able to steal the key. The vaults had nice stuff, but hooray for gameplay!!

I'm counting on the fact that Bethesda is talking this game up way too much. They made Morrowind sound way, way better than it turned out to be. I looked forward to its release probably as much as I have ever anticipated a game, but I was so disappointed in the final product that I don't think I put more than 3 or 4 hours into it...I was actually so disappointed that it didn't deliver that I went back to playing daggerfall. I haven't touched it since, and there it sits in my cd collection. The pretty graphics definitely do not hold any appeal if the game is crap. With any scene that is getting rendered in games these days, I don't care how many graphical touches and extras they throw in, eventually if you stare at something long enough, you're going to start noticing little flaws that bug you. Morrowind is actually starting to look like a cartoon now, just a couple years after release, (and we're still on the same version of direct x) just because of all the advances in shaders.

If things like day/night cycles were in effect enough to allow the player to wait around for days, adding windows of opportunity for certain missions could also be implemented, to put a limit on the amount of dawdling the player can do before failing, or making the mission much harder. If that kind of interaction is implemented in the city hub, it would be possible to advance the entire campaign based on who the player talks to/events that happen inbetween missions.

That makes sense, Spar. The fact that the suit could be viewed from far more perspectives and distances than it could ever have cameras for, presents a severe limitation. This is part of the reason for the wired article suggesting convex nodes containing six cameras, pointing in several directions, instead of just 1 camera connected to 1 lcd node. A way for someone wearing the suit to combat this difficulty might be that they would have to be constantly identifying targets that are capable of looking in the suit's direction (using some sort of targeting computer built inside a contact lens?). When a target is identified, based on the triangluation of the target's distance and perspective to the suit, the related cameras could fine-tune their positioning and focus, to perfectly camouflage the suit to that specific target. If over three or four targets are looking towards the suit and they are all targeted, the suit might begin to have a hard time adjusting for all the possible perspectives, but it would at least provide stealth in limited situations.

with GITS, or even stuff like Asimov or star trek I can see getting away with just not explaining it, but since I'm trying to fit this into a more present day setting, I imagine that just not explaining it to some degree, or explaining it away by saying 'it just works,' might actually make the premise fall under cliche. Having to fit the camouflage into existing technology presents the limitations that would make an interesting or fun game where strategy and skill would still be very much involved, rather than just walking around perfectly invisible everywhere all the time.

There is also the question of how to power something like this on a portable supply...This article has been wonderfully informative and imagination-inducing. Also, here's a fun read on invisibility...I've skipped to the good part on page 2 click here

This is true, a suit with folds of fabric is a far more complex shape than, say a tank, which has far more simple geometry. Yes, perspective becomes a big issue, to the point where it would probably be impossible to create a perfect invisibility effect no matter how many cameras are used. A limitation of the camouflage might be that it is less effective in the middle of a room, where the number of angles the suit is viewable from increases. Against walls or in non-complicated environments the invisibility would be very good. Another fun limitation would be the complete ineffectiveness of the suit in mirror reflections.

Meh, actually I stole the term from DE, it shows up a couple of times in the game, but the thing would make you invisible for about 10 seconds before running out of charge. I used it once in the vandenburg airbase to run like the wind past a heavily guarded door...got my heart pounding like crazy. I've never seen Ghost in the Shell, didn't even know what you were referring to until i looked around on wikipedia...anyway I wasn't thinking along those lines for the camouflage...more like something that would provide some sort of interference or optical illusion to thermal devices. Point well taken, though, maybe it would be too much to make that sort of thing believable.

yeah i figured as much. really there is no hope for me ever getting it done unless there is a team backing the project. I can't do much beyond stories and concept art. I've got enough of a concept floating around in my head that it would make a fairly complete novel just standing by itself, maybe i'll go that route

Well I've actually been thinking of starting to storyboard something that I can't help but think would make an awesome game experience. I basically have no modding ability other than being able to use photoshop so really I'm thinking more along the lines of fleshing everything out in writing first. I've been reading a lot of articles lately from different sources that cover nanotechnology, and the research that is going into place to create little machines that are able to build or destroy objects one atom at a time. The main idea is that anything can be constructed with enough nanite assemblers (who are fed raw material by nanite disassemblers). A lot of papers seem to cover the possibilities that this introduces in the medical field. Tiny nanite machines that are able to tweak human DNA, enhance human eyesight, hearing, cure disease, all that good stuff. Of course this sounds like something straight out of Deus Ex (I guess I'm on sort of a DE kick lately? I dunno that game just never got out of my system). The crazy thing to me is that this is happening in real life. Predictions say that in 20-50 years this stuff will be mainstream. We'll have computers that are half digital and half organism, all kinds of insane stuff. The setting of the mod is about 10 years into the future, the player i'm thinking will probably be some sort of test-pilot for a mega-corporation that invests heavily in bleeding edge tech. Training missions might first take you first through a few of the corp's "experimental" weapons, but the idea of the first mission is to test out the corp's new thermoptic camouflage, an entire suit constructed of millions of tiny camera nodes that are able to change color based on the surroundings. The suit is not performance increasing or any nonsense other than providing visual camouflage. I don't even want it to work perfectly all the time. At a run or maybe even any sort of motion should produce the sort of fracture effect we saw in predator, because of the cameras having to readjust for their surroundings. After testing the camo, the player is contacted by someone in the corp for a job opportunity. The premise follows afterward something like this: A rival corporation is known to have been sinking a lot of money into nanotech research. Somehow, (information leak, informant who was later found dead, i dunno) word has leaked through that they are on the edge of something big. In basic form, you as the test pilot are to use the camouflage and some company supplied equipment/weapons to break into their facility and discover/steal/sabotage/etc, whatever possible to set them back and leak the research. Obviously at first, levels might be somewhat simple. Human security guards, receptionists, businessmen, etc are the first obstacles. The initial break-in mission might even be in broad daylight just for fun. This will be nice for the player to get used to the limitations of the suit, and the amount of time before the suit shuts down to recharge, etc. The player starts running into obviously more difficult opponents, scenery gets different, etc. Augmented guards, robots, security systems, etc etc etc. The plot to unravel: Gah I've got such a perfect evil scheme but it seems a shame to unravel it all!! The main idea at least is to have a sneaker based in present time but to provide that same sick, uncomfortable feeling you got with the world we live in, that you got after you watched the matrix...

I agree that adding multiple items with the exact same properties and a slightly different look is a bad thing. For the specific example of the crowbar, though, I think it is different enough from the sword that it should be considered. Anyhow, of extremely higher importance than just randomly adding extra items to the game, is the way that the entire structure of the items/weapons/ai systems will allow 3rd party mappers and modders to add this sort of content later. I say focus much more on making the game mechanics work solidly with the items you are currently planning on, and if it is implemented smoothly, adding new content should be a snap, am I correct?

gah that looks so sweet!!

I don't really recall any game EVER where this kind of objective layering was a good idea. Reminds me way too much of keycard hunting in the original doom. Honestly there are plenty of ways to make a map more interesting than adding this sort of pseudo-puzzle. Really, things like swords bashing or prying things will not make any player save for the most nit-picky even bat an eye. This sort of thing is not an immersion breaker. I can recall bashing crates into little splinters with a baton or a knife in Deus Ex, and not even noticing. The case FOR having a crowbar, and I think the reason that so many extra gadgets and tools are being suggested is because variety is good!! For the very same reason that it is important to have more than one kind of guard walking around, or all sorts of readables strewn around, or many different kinds of glasses, etc, it may be important to add more tools for the use of the thief. While adding all sorts of seemingly useless inventory items may seem like a worthless investment, having the OPTION for the player to choose from a big list of items that do similar things with little differences will actually add immersion because it allows a map to be tackled by players with more diverse playing styles. Really the only difference between a crowbar and a sword has to be in programming terms is that it deals blunt damage, is more effective at prying, and makes a different noise when it hits stuff, but it might be nice to have in there just because it's something to CHOOSE. I don't know if the same is true for everyone else, but some of my favorite gaming moments take place in the planning stages, like in rainbow six, before the mission you outfit your squad with different kinds of armours, guns, equipment, etc. TDP and TMA actually kind of deprive players a little bit of this joy...I actually think I skipped the buying stage a lot because it didn't seem like there was anything fun to buy. Just the same old stuff.

A beautiful update guys, keep up the awesome work!

Gah, I guess there's no way that'd work then. foiled again

Actually from looking at the picture, I'm thinking that the object would certainly have to be carried by the guards to ensure correct angles, which actually would allow for the check to be done dynamically. The guards "pick" certain times and locations to "shine" their invisible floodlight lantern, and the brushes return a checksum of how much "floodlight" hit them. This would vary slightly as subtle lighting changes occur naturally, or as the guard's positioning may be slightly different, but the guard would certainly notice large changes in the amount of light. This might actually add another awesome way to distract guards (they get jumpy when they notice large changes in the area's lighting).

Ok, I'm trying to come up with a way that silhouetting will be able to be done without having to send snapshot textures back and forth from gpu to cpu all the time, but it's kind of a feature that will more or less have to be statically placed by level designers rather than it being a check the guards are able to perform anytime, anywhere. In the graphic attached, imagine a square room. A guard is in the southeast corner, near a torch (the green lines are lit areas, the rest of the room is black). The idea is for a map designer to be able to place a sort of 'invisible light beam' entity, aimed specifically at areas where known silhouetting problems will occur. The invisible light beam is a totally invisible object, but imagine it casting an invisible floodlight on the brushes that it is pointed towards. In step 2, the thief steps between the invisible floodlight, and the lit wall, which will cause an invisible 'shadow' to be cast against the wall, and a change in the "color" of the affected entities will occur, even though the player will not see this happen, as it is all done on an invisible color pallette. The idea is that if there is a guard who is looking in the direction of the floodlighted wall when the 'shadow' is cast, he will notice the silhouette, NOT because he himself was performing silhouette checks every 2 seconds, but because the actual WALLS give off an alarm when there is a dramatic change in the checksum of the invisible color. I hope that makes sense? is it possible?

I've been thinking about the silhouetting issue and I'm wondering if there is a way for the actual brushes in a map (walls, entities and such) to dynamically "know" what color(s) they are? I know that somewhere in the way that the D3 engine calculates dynamic shadows and light, there has got to be some sort of collision detection routine...actually i have no idea how they managed to get the dynamic lighting to work. For example, in D3, I point my flashlight at wall1. Does the flashlight "tell" wall1 to light up, or is all the lighting done independently of a map's brushes ever appearing in the code?

Alright!! maybe we could have some special levels where you are the dog! Actually come to think of it D3's four legged beasties had pretty fluid motion...but really how natural did they need to look, you see them pretty much from one angle (charging at you full steam), and that's about all they do, besides pause when they're shot.

That is definitely understandable and really I'm not disappointed. My main question lies in the flexibility of the S/R system. Say I wanted to throw a (Normal, two legged humanoid type) special baddie into my map who, say had a real awareness of anything that was around it that was carrying anything made of steel. (Some sort of steam powered metal detector? I don't know, just an example ) Anyway, I'm wondering if it's possible to add Stim values to items or objects (like to the thief's sword), that are able to be detected by NPC's who react to that stim.

What I'm really concerned about is the flexibility of the tools that are going to get released. I am wondering if the Stim/Response system is going to be able to be tweaked, in case someone ever did want to add something like dogs or even any npc other than what is included. The reason that I wonder about dogs is because they would rely much more on objects giving off some sort of "Smell_Alarm" stim rather than by line of sight. The way I imagine the S/R system working is something like in the diagram i posted here. The blue lines represent a room with a hallway extending from either end. In the middle of the room on one side is a window, through which light emanates represented by the green lines. The pink plus sign represents a pool of blood. Two circles originate from the pool of blood, the gray circle representing the strength of the blood's smell, the pink representing the amount that the pool is visible (which changes dynamically as the room's light level does). If the box in the corner of the room is a human guard, his personal sight radius (the large pink circle) overlaps the pink circle of the pool of blood, and he SEES the blood! His gray circle, however, is very small (maybe this guard has a stuffy nose), therefore he does not SMELL it yet. A dog, on the other hand, would have a SMELL ability equal to or greater than the radius of the guard's seeing ability, and would be easily smelling the pool of blood being that close, even if it wasn't able to see it yet. Customizable S/R like this would allow customization of each and every NPC placed on the map, even somewhat allow for different personalities (like a sick guard). Mainly what I'm curious about is if it would be possible for the end-user to ADD a Stim like "Blood_smell" to the actual ENTITY of a blood spill, and create NPC's with the ability to recognize the stim, without the stim having been originally included.

Well I'm always thinking of ways to make the game harder, which brought me to having an idea about city watch escorted by dogs (which would have more acute hearing and smelling, but worse eyesight). While I'm sure it's SO MUCH FUN to come up with all kinds of animations just to make an animal look realistic, I can see where it would throw a lot of fun into a mansion where important item x is in the noble's study, where his favourite bloodhound is peacefully sleeping by the fireplace. Dogs would pick up on blood spilled on the ground much better than human guards, forcing the thief to have to stop and clean up blood after a kill, as well as remove the body. Also this would introduce the thief having to bribe a lone dog with poisoned meat and wait for it to die, or any number of other possibilities. I am wondering if something like this will be easy to implement into the game AFTER the dm tools are released, even if this sort of thing isn't added into the set that you release? I wonder if the stim/response system is going to be intuitive enough to where an NPC will be able to be added and as an individual have its S/R defined?

Fair enough then You know, something else that I have thought was sadly lacking from the Thief series is the ability to climb walls...I remember it being implemented in Daggerfall, walls sort of acted like ladders--you oriented your view until you were perfectly square with the wall, walk forward and you were in climbing mode. I remember playing the Thief 1 demo for hours upon hours when I couldn't afford to buy it, the level was simple enough, you entered a giant well guarded chateau in search of the owner's jewel encrusted staff. The thing that made it absolutely brilliant was that the whole house was constructed of nice thick wooden beams and pillars. You could shoot a rope arrow just about anywhere, and use height as an advantage much more than in the levels where everything is made of stone. Sometimes I would sit perched right above the final guard, high in the rafters where he couldn't see, and shoot arrows around the darkened room to confuse the crap out of the guy. it was just FUN. I think there should still be a way to achieve these kinds of maneuvers on certain materials. Granted, a perfectly smooth wall should be unscalable, but climbable bricks or certain kinds of stone would keep levels fresh. The advantage to rope arrows, of course, is their virtual silence, they are quicker, and they allow you to climb anywhere, not just against a wall.