Professor Paul1290
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Posts posted by Professor Paul1290
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We discussed this early in development, but decided against it (obviously). I forget what the main arguments were now.
However, many of the things you mention above could still be done by reducing the frob range/bias of the loot.
In any case I am very glad that you guys at least considered it at one point.
Many game developers and modders seem overlook things like this entirely.
Sounds like a solution looking for a problem to me. Forcing every player to hit an extra key every time they pick up a piece of loot just on the off-chance that an occasional map author will want to create a gameplay situation involving manipulatable loot doesn't seem like a net win usability-wise.
It's not just about specific situations, this is also about things we might not be able to plan for or forsee, at least not in the form of specific examples.
Part of encouraging emergent gameplay is giving the players a set of actions they can "trust" to a reasonable degree. You usually want systems that behave consistently over a variety of cases rather than one with a lot of exceptions.
For example, part of why the mantling system in TDM works so well is that the player generally knows what they can mantle on without additional cues, and objects that look like they can be mantled but can't are an exception rather than the norm. The player can "trust" this mechanic to work at least to the extent that's reasonable.
As an opposite example, something that I think would be nice to improve TDM is the more unusual climbables such as vines and chains. These can work different between maps and as such a lot of players don't consider them options as much because their behavior is not consistent between maps, and whether they are climbable or not feels rather arbitrary. I often don't feel like I can "trust" this mechanic to work.
Whether this can or should be fixed is probably best saved for a different discussion because it has a lot to do with consistency, problems with existing maps, and giving FM authors the freedom to do what they want, but you get what I mean.
Back on topic, right now as Sotha also pointed out, loot items are treated as exceptions to the normal rules regarding normal items to an extent that they feel like completely different idea. This rather inhibits the player's ability to "trust" that movable items will behave in a certain way. Given how versatile the physics and ability to manipulate objects in TDM is, this can be rather jarring. Not to mention it causes unpredictable behavior with unusual loot items where non-loot and loot may overlap. We can't exactly predict how the player might use their ability to manipulate certain objects, but we can try to make the behavior more predictable to a reasonable extent to encourage its use.
On the other hand, you are definitely right that usability is an issue with this sort of thing. There is a balance between having versatility and usability that often comes in to this sort of thing, which is why I suggest this with quite a bit of uncertainty and doubt. Sure adding more systems to a game can give it greater depth and variation, but it can also make the game harder and harder to learn and play. Again, I can definitely see why this would feel very awkward to players used to the existing behavior which is why I thought this would be an interesting topic to discuss.
Yeah, it feels that objects are different in the world.
Junk gets picked up in the frobber.
Items and loot insta-disappear into the inventory.
The player can never frob and touch and rotate their valuables, they can only marvel junk.
But I can't see any alternatives, though. Current system has the best useability. And not all loot is moveable. And often the player needs to grab items quickly when the guards look the other way. Making this harder feels like a bad move.
That is a very good point. The existing maps have been made assuming the current rules would apply, so I'd imagine there may be loot items that would be broken if this was changed and would in essence become exceptions to the new rules.
Another possible but far more sloppy alternative would be to make a different "pick up and move" action that would work the same for all movable items, like the way Bethesda does it in their later games. This would introduce a consistent behavior that the player can rely on to pick up and move anything movable without interfering with the existing behavior.
Of course, this would be rather messy way of handling it and not something I would want the mod team to waste time on unless there's no reason not to.
I think TDM is a big improvement on Thief in just how hard you have to work to find nice trinkets like discarded jewels / rings - I found a real bit of pleasure in one FM where I found letters urging someone to hide a paganish ring - I searched his office and just saw it glinting at the bottom of a tall amphora!
I that's probably why I wouldn't mind making it a bit more difficult to get loot in TDM. I kind of feel that the loot feels cheapened when you can scoop it up like a vacuum cleaner out of the chest or closet in an instant, especially in FMs where there's often many loot items in one place.
Of course, that's very much a matter of personal preference.
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This might sound a bit strange, but I think it could be a potential improvement if loot required you to pick up and use a seperate button, such as the "use key" or some other key, to actually take it in as loot.
I could be alone in this, but I always found the way loot behaves in the Thief series as well as TDM to feel somewhat awkward. More specifically, I sort of dislike the idea that loot immediately gets sucked into your inventory as soon as you grab it. I think part of this is that most other gameplay elements in Thief, and by extension TDM, seem so much smoother that this one feature really sticks out at me like a sore thumb.
As far as immersion goes, I don't like that it often leads you as a player to pick up loot that you might not have realized was loot to begin with. Personally I find this more immersion breaking than anything regarding unusuable doors not having knobs or usable windows not being very clear.
I also don't like this because it's inconsistent with the behavior a lot of non-loot objects that are similar to and can potentially be loot. This inconsistency makes the loot a bit less "flexible", for lack of a better word for it, and it creates more situations where an author might have to work around or fight this behavior.
For example, it doesn't easily allow for situations involving more manipulation of the loot itself would be required, like perhaps it has been booby trapped, has a objects placed on top of it that may potential make noise, or is put inside a cage where you have to manipulate it out somehow (there is at least one of this last example in one of the FMs).
It also creates problems if for some reason the player might not want to pick up all the loot. I recently posted another thread about such an idea and realized that behavior of the loot is somewhat of an obstacle to this.
By making this behavior more versatile and consistent, FM authors and players won't have to work around or fight the existing behavior as much to create unique challenges in FMs.
Unfortunately, I know this is a behavior is one that a lot of Thief and TDM players are very accustomed to and it would feel awkward for a while for a lot of people if it were ever changed.
However, I also feel that one of the good things about TDM is that it tries to improve upon Thief's gameplay in some ways rather than copy it directly, though admittedly this might be a potentially risky improvement.
What do you think?
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I'm wondering if there have been any TDM or Thief 1 or 2 FMs that had an objective that said you couldn't take more than a certain amount of loot.
I'm kind of thinking about how to dissuade a player from trying to search every nook and cranny of a map the first time through. In most Thief missions you're encouraged to go everywhere at least once to check for and steal all the loot, but this might not be ideal in some situations. Perhaps there could be multiple ways to a certain objective but I want the player to feel that they can choose what they think is the "more effective" a route and ignore a certain area if they want to, so I don't want them to feel like they have to go their eventually anyway for the loot.
I kind of think perhaps a way to do this would be to remove the want/need to get every single piece of loot by limiting how much loot the player can take. Perhaps this could be justified by saying that they don't want to raise too much suspicion afterwards from too many things going missing.
Do you think this would work or would it seem too out of place or silly?
This might or might not belong in the editing forum. I thought it would fit here since it's more about the idea rather than specifically doing it in TDM. (though advice on how to handle this would be nice too.)
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I feel that a lot of recent games try to do too much to control the pace of the action and keep it coming consistently. This feels especially true in more linear first person shooters, where they seem to want to keep the action coming to the player in a consistent way so as to prevent them from becoming bored.
To me, when a game tries to keep the action coming so consistently the action itself loses value. Sure you don't get long periods of nothing happening, but in eliminating the low lows you also lose the high highs. The game feels like a painfully sterile and controlled environment.
I myself am a big fan of tactical shooters like the first three Rainbow Six games, SWAT 4, the original Operation Flashpoint, and the ArmA series, but it's not necessarily just because I like realism. I also like them because they don't attempt to control the pace of the action as much as a traditional shooter, and they allow for the really intense highs and the quiet lows. To me action seems to have more value when you allow for the periods of quiet to contrast them.
What do you think?
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The only way I've managed to record TDM apart from a 30 sec Fraps video was to use the built in video + audio recording feature in Doom 3 (using recordDemo and aviDemo), but I had to use at least three shareware programs to convert, compress and stitch it into an avi... and after all that I had audio sync problems. I did manage to get pretty good quality for the file size using this method though, so I might try this again and see if I can sort the audio out.
Also, I found that using recorddemo doesn't support the HDR-lite post processing graphics options, so a separate recording program might be better if the intention is to show TDM at its best.
Does recording a demo and getting a video out of that result in a smoother framerate? I haven't tried it with Doom 3, but I used to use a similar method for recording video in Source games.
My framerate often doesn't stay consistent while recording with FRAPS which makes getting good video a bit difficult for me.
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I mistake I used to make a lot when I'm in a hurry is not noticing the angle of the shot relative to the wall.
I try to hit just behind the torch on the wall it is mounted on, but since it's coming in at an angle the arrow hits off to the left or right of the torch rather than right behind it and doesn't do anything.
Now I always to remember to imagine a line going up from where the torch is attached to the wall so I know where I want to hit the wall.
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I loved those gas grenades in deus ex 1, where you could place them on walls to incapacitate enemies who try to surprise you while hacking..
I also do that all the time in Deus Ex. I've made it a habit to always place a gas grenade near the door whenever I need some privacy.
With that in mind, it would be really nice if you could disable and pick up the mines again after placing them. Right now even if they did work well I have a hard time using them effectively except as extra explosives that require more steps to use, and even then I avoid using them because they become yet another potential obstacle if they don't go off.
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Virtualdub is tooooo old
Avidemux is the (free) future! http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/
My coding formats: MPEG-4 AVC + AAC
Now that sounds interesting, I might just give this a try.
By the way, does anyone have anything for video capture you'd recommend trying out besides Fraps?
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As far as exploration goes, I prefer it to come into play more when you're beyond the limits of what would be the player character's prior knowledge.
City streets outside a building for example are places where anyone can casually walk through so it would make sense for our Thief to already be familiar with which streets go where and which doors lead to what shops or houses and whether there would be any point in going inside. I think it's ok in these places to provide the player with more information in general to reduce aimless wandering around.
At the same time there may be things that are less noticable in the same areas such as windows, grates, hidden holes in walls, and so on that perhaps should be left ambiguous for the player to find. However, things like obvious doors to a random home or shop that aren't accessible in the first place should be marked as such somehow (the more subtle and believable the better of course).
On the other hand, when you go into a space that would be previously unknown to our thief then I think exploration should be a big part of gameplay. If it's an area that our thief didn't know the layout of beforehand like the interior of a secured building, a secret passageway, a cave of some kind, an outdoor area behind the mansion that normally isn't open to the public, or perhaps even a section of the city that is not normally visited or accessible to the general public, then it would makes sense to wander around and check every nook and cranny, including doors that may or may not be accessible.
I forget which specific ones have this, but I remember some FMs that provide the player with maps of the streets but not of the interiors of the buildings and I like maps like that for reasons mentioned above, they show the player what our thief already knows about the place so the player doesn't wander around aimlessly as much. At the same time areas that can't be casually observed to any random person are not detailed in the map, leaving those places to be explored by the player.
Ideally I think it's better to have most doors be accessible and there be something there behind them, even if it's relatively simple and not important to the mission, but that's not always possible to performance and time constraints. The more possible targets of opportunity the better of course.
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I think it would be nice if other methods would be used instead over having doors with no handles whenever possible.
For example, in outdoor areas I think it's better to have a map but have it end at doors or gates that supposedly lead to areas of the city not relevant to the mission. That way you have a way to tell the player to not go there that is more believable.
For that matter, even boarded up doors or doors that are secured in other ways would be preferrable to not having a handle because they're more believable
No real preference. As stated many times above, it should just come down to smart mapping practice.
The opposite issue is what I worry about more. I've played a few FMs only to think to myself, "How the hell could I have known that window was openable?! No subtle hint like a handle, or being slightly ajar? Grr. I think I hate TDM for life now."
Sometimes mapping comes down to knowing little psychological tricks.
Now this thing with windows really bothers me too.
Unlike the doors, windows can be more troublesome to get to. It's rather irritating when the building in question is one that you can go into and does have insides, but the window doesn't open and is unbreakable.
Right now I don't feel like I can "trust" windows very much. They're behavior is so unpredictable from mission to mission that I generally prefer other means of entry unless I there is some indication that that they can be opened or broken through.
I think it would improve the use of windows a lot if there was somehow more consistency in the way they worked, but I understand this would be tricky with some missions
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Another amazing mission Sotha.
The weather thing wasn't as noticable as I expected, but I almost don't want to say that because the rest of mission was so good that I didn't really care.
I liked the conversation over the price of the Mandrasola.
I actually had a hard time finding the entrance of the so called "basement" I read about. I was actually wandering around the first floor and was just about to head outside to look for an outdoor entrance when a section of the wall opened up and a woman walked out almost spotting me. It scared the crap out of me and I almost got caught at that point.
The wolfmen gave me a bit of a difficult time in the cave. They move around so much and so quickly was hard to sneak past them. I ended up gas arrowing one and using a fire arrow + a few broadheads on the other.
I almost snuck up on the Pagan (I think?) guy to blackjack him when he turned around showing me his evil red eyes and made that growling sound. "HOLY SHIT, DIE DIE DIE!" I ended up stabbing him to death then giving his corpse another couple stabs for good measure.
Unfortunately I didn't screenshot my stats, I was really eager to play this mission and didn't bother reading the rest of the thread beforehand.
I think my stealth score was 28. I forget how much loot I had.
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It depends, in most cases I prefer decorative doors to not have handles.
This may or may not apply depending on the story of the particular mission, but the explanation I like to go with for inacessible doors is that the player character knows he has no need to go there. In that case, going up to those doors to try them doesn't make sense.
I think of the lack of handles as something to convey what the player character knows about the doors to the player ("I don't have to go here, don't bother with it.").
Now if it's part of the mission's story that the player character doesn't know the door can't be opened then the above doesn't really apply.
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How about an "official gameplay trailer" contest for the community?
That would be pretty nice.
Gotta agree here. This time is all about video media.
People do not read anymore, they watch video tutorials.
Having some good clips on gameplay would certainly increase mod visibilty and maybe make it more accessible. Heck, anything showing tdm in good light is benefial. Just dont make bug videos..
I think in this case it's not so much that people don't read anymore as much as it is that a lot of the people who would like this mod are used to being disappointed.
I think it's important to realize that many of this mod's potential players are used to reading all these good things these games and mods will do only to find that they don't deliver. They don't have much reason to fully believe what people say or write about their games or mods anymore.
These days, when you're trying to tell someone about your mod or game, their previous bad experiences with other mods and games is often working against you.
In other words, you don't just have to convince them that your mod or game does what you say it does, sometimes on top of that you have to convince them that it is even possible at all for any game or mod to do it.
It's terribly unfair but that's the way things work sometimes.
I have to admit that simply reading about this mod did in fact tell me a lot about it, but I was skeptical and I didn't really believe that it was as good as was being said until it was being shown from the mod itself.
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I've been aware of The Dark Mod for quite some time but previously I've been largely ignoring it because I didn't have a sense of what it really was. Sure there's screenshots on the site and there's some trailers on youtube, but I don't think either of those really show off the game very well.
It wasn't until I stumbled across a walkthrough almost by accident and saw someone playing The Dark Mod did I really realize its level of quality and how "Thief" it really was. Now I'm hating myself for not giving it a chance sooner.
I already had a copy of Doom 3, but it was going to be another week until I could dig it up. I actually bought Doom 3 off Steam just so I could play this mod sooner and not have to wait a week, I had to have it that badly!
Here's what I'm getting at, I don't feel there are enough videos out there showing off the gameplay that are not walkthroughs or short demonstrations of features. Sure there are some trailers and nice looking screenshots, but I don't think they give a good sense of what the game itself is like.
Perhaps there needs to be a new trailer for the The Dark Mod, maybe after a big update that adds some nice features or gets it polished to where you really feel comfortable with it.
However, this time perhaps it would be better to not go with the flashy editing or concept art of the previous ones. Maybe it should be more about clips from the mod itself actually being played.
This might sound a bit silly, but I think in a way the mod is good enough to "sell" itself if you let it.
I mean, I've seen a lot of the comments on TTLG and elsewhere and there seems to be a lot of misconceptions about how the mod itself plays. I suspect a lot of people (previously including myself) are expecting something that's just Doom 3 with some Thief features added to it, but it's obvious that it's a lot more than that. A good gameplay video put up on the front page of the site for everyone to see can dispel this sort of thing very easily.
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I get an Error 404 whenever I try to visit www.thedarkmod.com. Obviously I can get to the forum here just fine.
I'm guessing either something went wrong on my end or I must have missed a post or announcement somewhere since don't see anyone really bringing it up.
Does anyone know what might be going on?
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First I will say that I do like this mission. Going without the blackjack and other equipment for a while was pretty fun and I like the way a lot of the rooms were decorated.
I also loved what you did with the safe at the end. Seeing the walls of the safe move like that and the jewel being lowered into place was all sorts of awesome. As a long time Myst fan I like seeing cool machines like this in maps. Just getting to see that work was more than enough reward for messing around trying to figure out what to do.
There was one thing that really didn't like about this FM though. Keep in mind this could be more of a personal pet peeve of mine and it could be rather subjective.
Whenever I play a game involving a house or other building I have a habit of thinking about whether the building in question would "work". The rooms themselves look nice to be sure, but the way the rooms are arranged does not feel right to me. I think the problem is that it doesn't feel like it could function well as a home and that kept bothering me at the back of my head for the whole mission.
To mention a few more specific examples, there seems to be only one poorly lit and narrow stairway to get to the second floor, you have to pass through the dining hall to get to the library, and the master bedroom seemed unusually far from everything else.
Now that's not to say that other FMs don't have problems in this regard, but somehow I thought it was really noticable in this particular FM.
On the other hand, I'm not an architect so I could be wrong about this.
I really liked this FM overall and I think the positive things I mentioned above more than make up for the layout issue.
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This FM is a bit problematic in places, but it was an interesting change of pace especially with the chase that often starts at the beginning (not sure if that's intentional or not). The openness of the city was nice with the back alleys and such and it felt like there were enough enterable buildings.
A couple possible issues I noticed:
The mansion window on the second floor is a bit strange. I wasn't able to break it with the blackjack or the sword at all. I gave up and looked elsewhere and came back to try again. I often use broadhead arrow to help adjust my aim before using rope arrows. I ended up accidently breaking it when the broadhead flew a bit too high and went throught he window
Also, I wandered the underwater place in the sewer leading to the little basement room with the bandits/thieves. They spotted me and I ran back into the water to escape, but they followed me by walking underwater.
The cabinet in the jewlery store is a bit difficult to open even after you use the key because you have to be so close to frob it that it runs into you the moment it tries to open. I had to try a few times with a bit of leaning at odd angles to finally get it open.
I was also wondering where I could find the fast-paced music that plays at the beginning of the FM.
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Whenever I try to start the FM called "The Thieves" it crashes as soon as it's finished loading.
I have not had any problems with any of the other FMs that I've tried, which so far include:
-The Crown of Penitence
-The Outpost
-The Parcel
-Too Late.
-Thomas Porter series
-No Honor Among Thieves series
-Thieves Den series
-Lockdown
-Return to the City
-Some others I can't remember off the top of my head right now...
Is there something different about "The Thieves" in particular that would cause it to crash like this? Again, this is the only FM I've had this problem with so far so I guess there must be something different about it.
EDIT:
Ok, it seems that "Trapped!" does the same thing for me. Not sure if it's related or not though.
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I really like how the lighting and the puddles affect how you sneak around in the streets here.
I also liked the fight with the Lich. However, it didn't occur to me to use the sword since it didn't work so well against similar looking enemies in the previous mission. I ended up running around a bit before finally using a fire arrow.
I thought the customer walking in afterwards was a nice touch. I actually brought the store owner upstairs to place him in his bed and didn't notice her until I came back down. Yay for normally useless habits being helpful for once!
I thought the loot might have been a bit to concentrated in the small church, but the other hand it does make sense that the loot would be there. I suppose with the current trend in other FMs, by now a lot of TDM players automatically read Builder symbols as big "ROB ME!" signs.
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This might be a silly question, but how do you light the fireplace? The objective mentions finding some firewood, but I haven't found any wood I can actually put into the fireplace.
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To add to my above post, I feel that the "drop" key (R by default) feels strange to use because it doesn't have that much use in normal gameplay. Right now there are things like dropping the skull in the room in St. Alban's Cathedral (might be a different FM correct me if I'm mistaken) and using the slow matches in The Heart of Lone Salvation that don't feel quite natural and sometimes feel like exceptions to the usual rules because dropping items is used so sparingly otherwise.
If the "drop" key brought ordinary items into your inventory (candlesticks, food, small non-loot things, ect.) in addition to pulling things out of it, then would it allow it to be used more frequently in normal gameplay without needing the FM author to allow for it specifically. I think would give players more opportunity to become familiar with its use so it won't feel as strange when an FM requires it. Also I think if players became used to using it then inventory clutter from books and other such things would be less of a concern.
I think it would make more sense for items you can already bring in and out of your inventory as well, at least more natural than the "use" key. It took me a while to realize you could put a flashbomb back in my pocket with the use key without dropping it on the floor first because it didn't seem quite right. I actually expected the "use" key to detonate it in my face because it was called a "use" key.
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Ah now about the bed cover, what happens when the Ai get out of bed..? I assume they just clip through it..? btw, could you link me a prefab of said cover..
It's from The Heart of Lone Salvation, and I'm pretty sure that character doesn't move.
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Well, needed somewhere to put the knocked out guard so:
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/4323/guarddisposal.jpg
It's gonna be fun when the sleeping potion wears off.
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One thing I sometimes end up wishing TDM had was a way to put any reasonably small item in your inventory.
I think it would open up some interesting possibilities if players could choose to put reasonably small items in their inventory whether the FM author intended them to or not.
However, even more importantly than the above, I think it would present an opportunity to make the behavior of various items more consistent.
Right now a lot of very similar items act very differently when frobbed. Books and notes in particular are rather inconsistent in several FMs. Some books and notes are picked up while others are read on the spot. Loot and non-loot items also also act in a way that sometime feels inconsistent, as loot items are automatically collected while non-loot is simply held.
I could be alone in thinking this, but I think it hurts the immersion somewhat that such similar (or in some case identical) items act so differently when frobbed and used.
If there was a button that places a held item in your inventory then a lot of these items could be handled more consistently. Books and notes could be held and moved around, read with "use" (U key), and put into inventory with the "pocket" key (can't think of a better name for it right now), and this could apply to all books and notes rather than only some. All other relatively small items including loot could be moved around as well as put into your inventory with the "pocket" key. This would allow loot and non-loot items to act more or less the same, at least until they are put into your inventory.
On the other hand, I suppose the problems with this would be that it would probably mean having to have another button to worry about and it might differ too much from original Thief games to feel comfortable.
Come to think of it perhaps an extra key wouldn't be needed, maybe the "drop" key (R by default) could do this. I think right clicking again already drops the item for things that can be held and moved around so perhaps the R key could be used to place them in your inventory. If I remember correctly the R key just drops the held item, which seems a bit redundant since right clicking already does this.
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Has anyone ever tried a "loot limit"?
in The Dark Mod
Posted
Come to think of it, I wonder if it would work to "un-loot" all the remaining loot after the player gets a certain amount. However, I'm not quite sure how feasable or practical this would be in TDM and I'm not sure if it would be to strange and immersion breaking.
Something else that might work is perhaps putting a "soft" time limit on the mission. Not something short enough to put the player in a big hurry but enough to encourage them to pick their route more carefully and to convey that they want to "get in, steal, and get out". Perhaps something along the lines of having additional guards wake up or come in after a certain amount of time.