jtbalogh

Sadly, someone accidently posted the sign in front of the internet ... "WC - toilet". Meanwhile, visualizing real people exist on the internet can be the first step to seeing reality in a virtual matrix. And then realizing, real people have no infinite amount of time to implement every single idea possible. Is damage so crucial? Thief is not a damage intensive game to require fancy statistics. Imho, most of the damage I saw was from accidents or mistakes, and most could be quite embarassing enough as punishment to know any damage occurred at all -- and add something so disgraceful as taking a potion to heal from it. Unlike other games, having no damage and maintaining all the items at the end that I started with is kind of a reward encouraged by this game slightly. I like the idea of transparency mentioned earlier to help with a minimal hud. Having the health bar hardly visible at all is enough for me to know if I am hurt. I also like the idea of transparency of the hud mentioned that surrounds the gem and other items varying according to how visible you.

Nice pic. Thanks.

This thread should be called, "Some More Point Less Responses ..."

Possible, but you are only talking about cosmetics. The game is still keeping track of these meters behind the scenes (health, loot, weapons, items, etc). The game does not forgot you got hit once in which a second hit could surely kill you. Your analogy starts to feel like, "... no need to know how much loot/weapons/items we have until we run out of them or the game is over." If a health meter can be replaced with some other cosmetic indicator, than more power to you. BTW, slowing down gameplay or filling the screen with a red overlay to simulate pain may be the wrong approach. I get my fast 4GHz computer to get 60 FPS, and not expect the game to simulate 5 FPS, nor ruin my graphics quality. Find me someone who would like fraps saying 60FPS but the game moves like a slow 300MHz dinosaur even with 640x480 and no AA. We had an big FM (you remember) that reduced health points because of poison. An FM author maynow want to reduce health points after receiving an injury which does not get treated. The dark mods programmers truly do not need to invent anything to help us, do they? STill in this case, we need some kind of health meter or we never know when we die.

Using random calculations to challenge players can be inversely proportional to being fun. To be fun, actions in the game could provide the player some control over the outcome of events. E.g. enemy that can randomly see you in a shadow is a challenge, but less fun. E.g. random damage from an arrow/sword never lets a player build a strategy to minimize the impact or build the next course of action. BTW. Seeing the effects of random damage from arrows or swords is not a feature that players see anyway since thieves are supposed to avoiding getting hit by anything. A feature I am supposed to avoid ends up not a feature at all ?

Forget about the scouting orb tool if the AI never see it sitting or hear it drop. The enemy needs a chance to go on alert. Dropping the orb into a shadow helps minimize alerts.

Small hud like this?

... nothing is stopping us from eliminating/shrinking the health bars AND light gem AND weapons/inventory. (dark.cfg: vismeter_zoom 1000, hpbar_zoom 1000, inv_obj_height 1, inv_obj_width 1). That is a good compromise. IMHO, we can still live without the feature. I will use the dark mod user configuration files to shrink my hud so its not distracting. Playing with smaller huds is all I need because why stare at them all the time. I can count pixels to see remaining health. The gem does not have to be too small because it already gets darker. I can see smaller weapons/inventory, if selected during the game. Just a thought.

If the hud changes, then then hide the health bars so it is not a factor in testing (edit dark.cfg). Unselect weapons and inventory. Only the lightgem and the game should be visible. I went back to baffords too and still did not see any gamma changes when moving from a light to dark room.

So. The hud could be darker in a dark room. The screen could be darker in a bright room. For now, I can live without this feature. Would be good if there really is time to implement it.

Springheel suggestion about torches and lanterns is okay by me.

Is the suggestion to have two different gamma corrections for the dark mod team to implement? Is it a feature that would slightly increase the global gamma when in a dark room but also reduce the brightness of the hud at the same time. Implementing this could considerably delay the project for the dark mod team. BTW, I have not seen the gamma change in T2 on the hud or in the game as is suggested. The bright light gem fades away, so maybe it is an optical illusion that everything else is adjusting. The only thing I notice is my eyes adjusting to a dark room. IMHO, the hud had always stuck out like a sore thumb in a dark room, which is why I modified DARK.CFG settings to shrink it more and not interfere with the dark game. There was one FM I played that did affect my gamma settings once, but that was a special situation and not average gameplay. Wasn't Domarius referring to only the hud being darker in a dark room so it is not so blinding bright? You are correct that a dark room should not get even more dark.

Great ideas. Meanwhile, may I suggest to keep the thread focused on adjusting gameplay mechanics. Not just creating similar objects (because FMs may do that anyway). Less variety in inventory can be balanced with more variety in situations that use existing inventory. Sounds good to me. IMHO, the sword is enough to bash crates, doors, and obstacles on land or in water. An FM designer will later reskin a weapon to look like a crowbar, if desired. Or simply leave the crowbar as inventory item and use it like keys on a crate, door, or obstacle. Or maybe use a broom to increase frobbing distance and not just use as junk (as sparhawk suggested). Edit: For safety, objects that can be used should not also have to be thrown. Only drop or leave in permanent inventory. Not the players fault to use the broom and frob an object but the broom ends up thrown a mile away instead For some items, the right mouse button is already for using, so throwing is a no no. In addition, all weapons in the weapon inventory are shown as usual and can not be thrown, dropped, or frobbed. But seeing the same weapons in the item inventory too could allow it be thrown, dropped or frobbed. This was the question of the original thread ...

Can the texture of water be made more opaque, like muddy water or the labrea tar pits? Limited vision.

Thanks for checking New Horizon.

We are assuming the lantern is waterproof, or will gameplay mechanics distinguish it. Same goes for torches. Light in deep dark water sounds intriguing though. Mushrooms sound like a good idea. Frob one from the floor. Carry it with you. Hide it in your backpack. Throw it somewhere else. It's waterproof. Once frobbed, it dies very slowly. Not like stupid flares which die in seconds. Domarius and all you other guys brought up some good points.

Okay, you have convinced me weapons under deep water can remain disabled. However, seeing weapons disabled in two feet of water is a restiction. Standing in 5 feet of water could still allow weapons ? For deep water, perhaps leave throwing as an option since can not deploy weapons ? Throwing flash bombs, mines, boxes, etc. can show it is feasible to do things while in water, so not out of the question. Can the crystals for bows be shown in the inventory too so the player can frob/throw it, and not just shoot it? The player can float along the surface of deep water and throw items. Whether in water or on land, the throwing distance will obviously remain small and inaccurate. Dropping it does nothing special except leave the crystal on the floor as usual.

Will an FM author have the capability to allow weapons to be drawn while standing in water rather than having the game automatically shoulder it. For example in three feet of water, climb out with a rope arrow or bash/cut obstacle with a sword as usual. Same thing in deep water, but the weapons are wobbly and inaccurate like when being tired. In deep water, the weapons only cause half damage or deployed at half speed. Just a thought.