Professor Paul1290

One from a recent run where it's pretty visible. Not a very clean one admittedly.

A bit of an update on the sound effect. I did a clean reinstall and that seemed to have stopped the "missing shader sound" beep from occurring in this case. That said, now it's totally silent (or maybe really really quiet) for whatever that sound effect is supposed to be, and it is causing an AI alert which I'm guessing is not the intended behavior. Anyway, most consistent way I've found to recreate it is using this chest in particular in The Knighton Manor: https://i.imgur.com/EPFFt6D.jpg If you grab the Noisemaker Arrow before touching anything else in there then it should cause the seemingly missing/silent sound effect and cause an alert without triggering other sounds. Just dropping the boot or otherwise tripping the "trap" as intended does create a bunch of audible sound effects, so I'm guessing it's just one of the sound effects getting triggered there that's affected.

Actually you can! Pretty much anything you can pick up that doesn't fit in your inventory can be broken down using Recycler Charges. That said be careful with that, as a LOT of things are susceptible to Recycler Charges, including a lot of supplies, so loot first before breaking down the furniture.

There is definitely "spawning" of enemies in Prey 2017 but I don't think I'd call it "respawning". By that I mean a lot of the areas repopulate with enemies, but they're very often a different set of enemies (often more difficult ones). I'm still not that sure how it works. I think it's tied to progressing in the game and it's just dropping in new baddies when you reach certain points in the story. The idea that the Typhon are spreading and making more of themselves is a sort of plot point so I'm guessing it's going along with that. You do end up revisiting previous areas a lot more than in SS2 or Bioshock and the overall map is a lot less linear than those in those games. You can actually explore a large portions of the station before they become relevant to the main plot if you feel like it.

I've been having an awesome time with Prey 2017. I guess I'd even go so far to say I genuinely like it more than System Shock 2, though I'll mention for context that I've had my issues with System Shock 2. I like Prey 2017's skills/powers more than SS2's. The first "level" of each skill/power generally has enough utility to stay useful even if you don't decide to invest much more into that specific skill/power, so you're much less likely to feel you've wasted any neuromods. Hacking may be the exception as I don't think it really gets its general utility until "level 2", but even that isn't too big an investment for what you get. I also don't feel like there are any skills/powers here that I would consider truly useless, unlike some of SS2's skills/powers. I also like how the enemies work in Prey. They've opted for quality over quantity for everything above the ankle-biter Mimics, there isn't really a hybrid or splicer equivalent "trash humanoid" here. The basic phantoms do enough damage and are resilient enough that you're motivated to leverage whatever advantages you can get in a given encounter. I consider this an improvement as I never really liked the basic hybrid/splicer types from SS2 or the Bioshock games. Stealth is also surprisingly viable here. Obviously it's not as much a stealth game as Thief or Dishonored, but it's more useful than in System Shock 2 or Bioshock. That said, one possible issue with Prey 2017 gameplay-wise is that it's very often a much slower-paced game than SS2 or the Bioshock games, mostly due to the lethality of a lot of enemies and how dense the distribution of things to find is. It's enough of a difference that I could see some people finding Prey 2017's pacing somewhat frustrating compared to its "predecessors", though given this is a community of Thief fans I doubt many here would have that issue.

I think there's another factor that is motivating this decision, which is the fact that a lot of users now hate annotations. Unfortunately some channels have abused annotations so much they've turned a significant portion of the viewers against this feature. At this point lot of users just immediately turn off annotations or disable them completely. I'm pretty sure YouTube has noticed this by now and I wouldn't be surprised if it's part of the motivation for this change.

Not sure what "hyper visor bios exploits" refers to specifically in these docs. Perhaps it has to do with the section on EFI/ UEFI? Anti-sandbox can refer to quite a few things that show up in this leak like "Flash Bang", the "Elderpiggy" exploit for iOS, or maybe the trick they pulled from "The Trojan Upclicker". What about them? Yes BIOS exploits and anti-sandboxing techniques are a threat. Yes they are very concerning. While they're not the most common types exploits floating around, the CIA don't exactly have a monopoly on them. Does whether the CIA or some criminal group have them change your threat model significantly? I suppose that depends on your situation. The docs do not describe the "ability to remotely control vehicles for assassinations". If they have such a capability, it's not explained in here. What is there are a set of meeting notes where "Vehicle Systems" are listed among "Potential Mission Areas". As far as I can tell, the topic is not expanded upon beyond that, at least not in the docs that have been leaked.

Well, I was anal-retentive enough to spend several hours actually going through the docs that were released. I've come to the conclusion that while the docs themselves seem legit, the summary/interpretation by WikiLeaks is awful at best and intentionally misleading at worst. Some of the content of these docs are really concerning, but it's only a small fraction. Of actual interest are some exploits for iOS and Android, and these are the most interesting mostly because of the lack of info about them. Realistically there's a good chance a lot of these do not work anymore. Most of the rest is exploits and malware which is of concern in itself, but a lot of it is the same sort of exploits and malware you'd find produced by non-government entities, there's just a lot of it and it's more refined because they're better funded. It's not the sort of stuff that is suitable for mass deployment or mass surveillance, that doesn't appear to be much of a focus for the department in question. For the most part it seems geared for manual deployment in the field or deployment via targeted procedure. (I suppose that makes sense given what the CIA typically does) That TV "fake-off" WikiLeaks mentions requires manual install and setup via USB. The CIA would have to break into your house and have physical access to your TV to use it and at that point it's serving as an alternative to "conventional" bugs. It seems this joint project was done as a proof of concept for a specific model that wouldn't have much operational value in of itself. The component library maintained by the "UMBRAGE" group is indeed a collection of attacks and malware from other countries, but only in the sense that they mostly come from existing malware and code which inevitably happens to be produced in a lot of different countries. A lot of them come from open source repos or from existing malware samples. If this wasn't CIA this collection could easily be from a well-funded security company (particularly if they do penetration testing) or criminal group. I could keep going on as there's a lot of material to cover, but I think that's enough for you to get the idea. What these docs describe has very little to do with mass surveillance nor some "magic government remote access" to everyone's devices that a lot of readers are unfortunately assuming is in here somehow. If there is such "magic government remote access", it's not mentioned at all here. Seriously, if you're really interested in this, I would suggest ignoring the WikiLeaks summary and actually going through the material yourself. I'm not expecting everyone to have specialist knowledge on information security, but I'm sure enough of you are familiar enough with tech to understand enough of it to realize how misleading he WikiLeaks summary/interpretation of it is. A lot of you don't have to trust me on this, if you really wanted to you could go through the material yourself. Heck, I'd even go so far to say I can only conclude WikiLeaks is either being misleading on purpose, or is being so incompetent at interpreting the material that it doesn't matter if they're being malicious or not. In some cases it seems like they're deliberately banking on the idea that everyone is going to parrot their summary and not bother to go through the source material, and unfortunately if they are it seems like they would be right so far. As for my personal view on this, while I have no reason to believe any of the source material WikiLeaks released is fake, my trust in them to interpret said material has pretty much evaporated with this release. I'm starting wonder if they've always been doing this and maybe I'm only seeing it now because this is the first time I've bothered to go through the source material and understood enough of it to realize it.

Just saw this. I have a couple videos still up if you want to use them: 2.0 Standalone Trailer: 6 minutes of Old Habits II:

I do sometimes "time" guard patrols with a watch and/or clock, but not too often. I only really do it if I don't feel like I have another good way to get some "warning time" on a guard. Usually I'll look into other methods that aren't timing dependent first. When I do use timing I usually try to get at least 3 "sample" encounters to make sure it is consistent due to a lot of missions having semi-random elements to their patrols, and even then I try to leave significant margin for variation. More often in order to avoid the random guard coming in unexpectedly in while searching around a room, I'll rely more on positioning and sound where it seems viable. Where possible I try to minimize my time in the "fatal funnel" in front of the doorway such that if a guard does open it they'll likely have to step further into the room before they see me, which gives me some time to hide. I also try to stay near potential hiding places most of the time even when there is no guard so I can hide quickly if one unexpectedly comes in. Also, if I know I'm going to be in a room for a significant amount of time, I'll sometimes leave the door partially open so I can hear the guard coming. It's worth noting that since you'll often have to enter a room via the doorway yourself before searching it for loot, you'll have a good picture of what a guard will immediately see when they open the same door. It helps to remember what you saw from the doorway when you came in because for larger rooms that info may reveal an additional safe spot.

I use lean a lot, but not really to stay unlit as much as to try to see the guards around corners before they see me so I have some time to react. I wasn't actually aware of how exactly it interacted with light until this thread.

Honestly, I could understand not finishing System Shock 2. In my opinion the game suddenly becomes really annoying partway through the Rickenbacker.

I don't think this is really limited to gamers. I notice a lot of my peers (gamers or not) haven't been as into "traditional" TV as they used to. Nowadays they're usually using Netflix and/or similar services and if they do watch TV it's only for specific shows rather than random watching.

Yay, it lives! The previous games were like Hitman but more rage inducing (in a good way, usually).

Finally got around to playing this mission. I liked the believable setting and details in this mission. I do agree with others that it is rather linear and I tend to prefer more open maps. It is rather cramped and well lit. While I wouldn't necessary promote that as a desirable trait, I'll admit I kind of liked that in this case. Whether intentionally or not, it does emphasises some skills that go underutilized in a lot of other TDM missions, such as "timing" and locating guards through indirect or non-visual means. I wouldn't want too many missions like that of course, but it was a bit refreshing in a way.