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Professor Paul1290

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Everything posted by Professor Paul1290

  1. I do, and they do it, all the time. Do I like it? Of course not. Am I going to forgo the benefits and enjoyment the technology can bring to avoid it? That depends. In this case no. Like a lot of things in life it's a cost/benefit thing. I'm not going to go out of my way to try to protect information I don't think is worth protecting. If it was something like my personal thoughts and beliefs or my credit card information then it would be different (Or perhaps not? Again, it depends.). People I don't trust are watching me, but that's old news. I deal with and manage relationships with people I don't trust all the time. In fact, I believe being able to weigh and manage the potential risks involved in interacting with people you don't trust is sort of a requirement to get what you want in life. Do I value my privacy? Of course I do. On the other hand it's a means to an end and not an end in itself. I like my privacy because it's one of the things that lets me enjoy life, so to some extent I'm going to want to preserve it. At the same time I'm not going to try to protect something if doing so is more a pain in the ass than its worth as to me that defeats the purpose. There are some things about me that I do want to protect and I do make an effort to protect those things. Unfortunately for this text, I prefer that people not know what those things might be in the first place.
  2. If practical, both, but that's rare. Otherwise usually digital, preferably in DRM-Free form that I can store myself later and even more bonus points if it registers with multiple stores. (Humble Store gets preference on both counts) That said, those are just soft preferences and the lack of them won't stop me from buying a game I want.
  3. It depends. Usually I only knock people out if they're preventing me from getting somewhere or if leaving them standing seems like too much of a risk. If they're fairly easy to sneak past and/or don't seem to pose much of a threat I'll just leave them be. In practice, during an "average" difficulty mission I might knock out a two or three guards. If it's a more difficult mission then probably more, and if it's a fairly easy one I might simply not touch anybody. I find that most missions with no-knockout objectives don't have very difficult guard patrols, as they are pretty much intended to be played that way. They're usually "easy" enough that I probably wouldn't have to touch any of the guards anyway even if the no-knockout objective wasn't there. There are some exceptions though. "The Builder Roads" effectively has a no-knockout objective in that it doesn't give you an blackjack, and its guard patrols were pretty difficult. I did manage to get through it my first time, but only barely with a lot of close calls:
  4. Either way the sword is not very heavy. A one-handed "arming sword" is usually maybe around two and a half pounds (1.13kg?). What our thief is carrying is probably smaller than even that. That's not super light, but I'm pretty sure the rest of his gear not to mention the loot he might carry weighs quite a bit more than that. Unfortunately, I don't know what a traditional bow of the similar time-period / technology-level would weigh. I do know that a lot of modern wooden bows can be pretty light and can weigh around one to one-and-a-half pounds (0.45 to 0.86 kg) on their own, without the quiver and arrows. That said, those would be made with more modern tools and techniques, so I don't know how much lighter or heavier they might be or whether they would be comparable at all.
  5. I usually don't re-load until I get killed or a fail something, so I do end up bringing out the sword sometimes. If it's just a guard or two then I usually don't have too much trouble fighting provided I've committed to fighting them, so I find the combat more or less just fine as is. I find that what usually gets me killed isn't really combat by itself, it's being indecisive as to whether I should run or fight. If I've decided that I'm going to fight then I'll usually get the kill, or if I've decided to run then I'll usually get away without too much trouble. If I'm sort of half-retreating half-fighting and haven't really decided and committed to either one fast enough, then that's where I usually end up having trouble.
  6. I think it would be fine just having the AI comment that they lost something then briefly scanning around for a bit. Even if we wanted it to be realistic, I don't think raising an alert would be realistic in most cases. I'm pretty sure theft wouldn't be the first conclusion a guard would reach if something was missing from his pocket or belt. He might arrive at that conclusion if there is other evidence to suggest it (such as spotting the thief or other stuff going missing), but it wouldn't make sense to raise an alert right away as you'd get far too many false alarms from simply misplacing or dropping things.
  7. It's been a very long time since I've played that mission and my memory of it is pretty poor, but I don't remember there ever being any "never-ending" locks in any missions I've played. That seems like things unusual enough that I would remember if I ran into it. Are you sure you are picking the lock properly? If you're having trouble you can try practicing in the lockpicking tutorial in the Training Mission. Either that or you can reduce lockpicking difficulty in the options. EDIT: Ok, I thought about this a bit and I might know what's happening. I noticed you mentioned that "the lock never finishes picking" as if you were expecting the lockpick to finish on its own, which doesn't quite make sense how The Dark Mod's lockpicking system works. I have a hunch you might be trying to use the lockpicks the same way you would in Thief 1 & 2, which won't work here by default. The Dark Mod's lockpicking system works a bit differently from Thief's. You use the same two picks, but the use of the picks involves some timing and listening. When you use the correct lockpick a series of clicks will play, pause, and repeat and part of the lock and/or the doorknob might also move with the sound. Listen for a brief pause in the clicks right before they start over. Release the lockpick button/key right at that pause. If you are successful you'll hear the tumbler unlock then you can start on the next one (which may or may not require switching to the other pick), if you failed then it will make a "clunk" sound and you'll have to try that tumbler again. The lock will open once you get through all the tumblers. There's a section of the Training Mission that has a few different locks you can practice on. Alternatively, if it ends up being too difficult, then you can lower the Lockpicking Difficulty all the way in the options menu, which will make the Lockpicks automatic so they work more or less the same way as Thief 1 & 2. On the other hand, if you already knew this and the pickable lock doesn't seem to open as it should, you might want to check the relevant thread for this mission to see if the mission author did something wierd with that lock.
  8. This is really a matter of opinion so others may weigh in with different suggestions. Personally, if I had to only pick three missions that provide some variety and are "feature rich" I'd pick the following: -William Steele: In The North -Old Habits 2 -The Lich Queen's Demise That would get you a very large mission with a little bit of everything, a good "standard heist" type mission, and an undead mission with a couple nice puzzles thrown in for good measure. That said, there might be a bit of a caveat in that all three of these may be quite difficult. It's a bit tricky to pick missions that use a lot of the mod's features while staying beginner-friendly, as a lot of "easier" missions omit some AI behaviors so they don't become too difficult.
  9. Sol's Bar - The Nameless Mod OST: If you like Deus Ex and haven't played The Nameless Mod you owe it to yourself to do so. Atlas - Starbound OST: The Starbound soundtrack has a lot of beautiful pieces in it.
  10. I guess "strategy puzzle" does sort of describe this. Admittedly this was partly inspired by my recent plays of AI War: Fleet Command, an RTS game that uses somewhat similar methods for handling certain types of reinforcements. Indeed, the way I picture it right now, it probably should be impractical for most to get all the loot items, as it should be up to the player to decide what to leave behind. Replay value would be a nice perk of this. I can see how this can happen. However, you can pretty much do that with just about any FM or just about any game for that matter. If the player is used to playing that way then I'm not sure it's that much of a problem. Also, in some ways I picture this mission as being meant to be re-loaded. Maybe not mid-game perhaps, but ideally the player would re-play the mission and attempt to make a push for more loot or try a different way of getting said loot. In that sense the mission would get re-loaded at least a couple times anyway. I definitely don't intend for this to be my first TDM map, I do have an idea for a much more "conventional" map I sort of want to build first. That said, I might try to set up a "lite" version of this in there somewhere as a proof of concept of sorts. In any case, this would probably be a bit far off for now as I have some other projects at the moment I want to knock out before I could get really around to this. I do have some ideas of what to do about difficulty levels. Balancing changes in the mission for different difficulty levels might be rather difficult as I can already see balancing the mission as is would already be a bit tricky. Instead I'm thinking that the difficulty levels could prioritize different loot items, and leverage the variable difficulty that would already built into the mission. Using the example security procedure I mentioned: -The Easiest difficulty would be a straight loot goal and one important non-vault item. This means that the player is not required to push the alert level past 3. -The Medium difficulty could require a multiple important non-vault items. This would make an alert level of 3 inevitable and 4 very likely towards the end, and the player will have to plan around that. -The Expert difficulty would require multiple important non-vault items and items from the vault itself. This would increase difficulty significantly as the player will have to grab the vault items some time before triggering level 4 alert and will likely have to deal with grabbing locked-down and now more heavily guarded items to complete their objectives afterwards. Of course, the easiest difficulty would list the expert difficulty's objectives as optional so the player can reach for them if they find things are going very well. Even on expert there would be optional objectives as I don't think all the important loot should be required, as it should be impractical to get all the major loot items. Getting every important loot item in the mission could be considered a "stretch difficulty" for lack of a better phrase. It could be a goal that would theoretically possible but not achievable in testing. I would like to leave that as a goal for that player who is far better at the game than I could ever anticipate.
  11. This is sort of a very rough and vague unusual mission idea I've been chewing on lately, and I find it interesting enough that I wanted to get opinions on it. Let's say we have a mission in a building that is expected to have some form of well trained security. I guess for now we can call it a bank, but it might not necessarily be a bank. At the start of the mission the player is going to have a lot of intel, far more than they would get during a more conventional mission. The map will be much more detailed, and show more or less where all the major loot items are as well as which doors are expected to be locked. The player will also have information on the guards "normal" patrol routes (they may deviate somewhat) as well as how many guards are stationed at there. The player will even have detailed information on what the standard procedures are for security when stuff goes wrong. Plot-wise, the thief pretty much has copies of the guard captain's important paperwork. The mission itself will have more difficult guard patrols than would be reasonable for a normal mission, though they won't all be active at once from the beginning. Security in the building would have several tiers of alert depending on how likely it appears that a security breach has occured. Much of this would be tied to doors being unlocked, loot items going missing, and obvious things like unconscious/dead guards turning up. Different items locked areas will have different effects on the alert level depending on how important they are. Plot-wise there would be several intermediate alert levels for practical reasons, mostly so that things like the staff leaving a door unlocked or misplacing less important items doesn't result in the whole of guard quarters being summoned and everything being locked down. An example of what a possible security procedure might look like: -Level 1: Something minor went missing. All guards currently on patrol are put on alert. -Level 2: Several minor items went missing and/or important doors were left unlocked. A few guards are added to patrol hallways. Unlocked doors that are normally locked are locked and/or re-locked as they are encountered. -Level 3: Something important has gone missing and it may or may not be a security breach. Half the total available guards are deployed on patrol. The generator is turned on and lighting normally only left running during "business hours" are turned on to check for abnormalities. Important items are checked to make sure they are still there. (this can trigger another escalation depending on what has been taken) -Level 4: Security breach is certain. Rooms with important items get guards in them and are re-locked. All available guards are put on patrol/search. The main vault's lock is overridden and switched to a timed lock will be impossible to open until morning. (Not getting required loot from the vault before this occurs would be a failure) -Level 5: The currently available guards are not sufficient to deal with the situation. Elite guards equipped with lights are brought in from an outside barracks with RIT through all major rooms. Once escalated, alert level will not be reduced for the duration of the mission. On the other hand, it will be impossible to complete the mission objectives without raising the alert level, the alert level will inevitably be raised over the course of the mission and the player will have to work around that. The idea behind this is for the player to use the information they are provided with from the start to figure out a route to navigate the rooms and grab loot items in a way that allows them to get as much loot you can and retrieve the required items before security makes them very difficult or almost impossible to retrieve. The mission as a whole sort of becomes a puzzle with multiple possible solutions, with the player having to determine when to take certain items and when they can allow the alert level to increase and still be able to complete the mission. I guess that's about as much of this as I can think of at the moment. Like I said this is only a very rough idea at the moment and I'm not sure at all about whether or not this would make for fun gameplay in TDM, which is why I'm curious as to what you guys think. I dunno, if there's enough confidence in this I might take a stab at making it work at some point.
  12. I'll attempt to ghost, but I'll knock out a guard if I don't feel like I can manage with them still standing. As for how I decide when to use the blackjack, if from what I'm seeing I don't feel like I can ghost through a spot ten times in a row without making a mistake, then the blackjack gets used. If I get spotted then I'll go ahead with a flashbomb, or the sword if that won't work.
  13. I'd have to say Thief 2. I've re-played Thief 2 plenty of times over the years, but I've rarely re-visited Thief 1. I'll admit that I think that Thief 1 does have the advantage in story, voice acting, and atmosphere. However, personally that doesn't do enough to make me prefer it over Thief 2 because I'm not quite that big into the plot and atmosphere side of Thief, as odd as that might sound for a Thief fan. I feel that Thief 2 plays better and is more mechanically interesting for the most part, and that makes me lean towards it over Thief 1. It doesn't have some of the exotic elements of Thief 1, but what is there feels more refined and expanded upon.
  14. Oh man, that guy: http://forums.thedar...rs-of-st-lucia/ But yeah, as mentioned there is a way around this guy that allows you to bypass him, and his purpose is try to get the player to look for such things. Most other guard placements aren't going to be as mean as him. That said, even if you can't find or don't want to use the alternative route, there are some clever ways to pass him without being seen. I like to shoot a broadhead or two into the barrels next to him so he comes to investigate, then I slip by while he's on his way back to his position. Another trick that has been mentioned is to use a flashbomb and run past him while he's blinded.
  15. I don't think a random cup or candle sitting somewhere would be reason for alarm. If it was a jewel or something of relative importance or value that is expected to stay in place, then yes I would expect suspicion. Cups, candles, and other such items are common items that just about anyone around is allowed to touch. As far as I know there aren't likely to be any explicit household rules regarding how they can be used other than the usual idea of courtesy. Because of that I think it would be unlikely for such items to raise suspicion, at least suspicion "there's a thief about" variety. In-universe, maybe the next morning the staff and/or guards get a stern yelling at about not leaving stuff lying around in the hallway, but I wouldn't expect much more than that.
  16. Come to think of it, moss arrows feel weird enough to justify some alternative uses. For some reason I feel like moss arrows could have more to them because they seem so delightfully strange for something that just quiets footsteps. Maybe electrical lights can be temporarily blocked by moss. Electric lights are not supposed to be de-activated much if at all, but you could make it a rather short time window for balance and justify it by saying the heat from the light dries out the moss quickly and causes it to die faster. Maybe you could burn moss to generate a lot of smoke. Perhaps if you shoot moss at a torch it'll burn and I would think moss would give off smoke like crazy when burned. (come to think of it is there smoke in TDM?)
  17. Cups, candles, or other junk that is taller than it is wide: I sometimes place these in the middle of certain hallways or rooms I know I'll be coming back to to so I don't get caught off-guard by AI on long or semi-random patrols. If I come back and they're knocked over then I know somebody somewhere passes through that space. Torches, candles, or other re-lightable light sources: On missions that have AI that can re-light light sources, I'll occasionally put out certain light source even if I won't be going near it so that a nearby guard will re-light it and slow down their patrol. This can help with guards that I'm having trouble timing to sneak past or with situations where I think a noise-based distraction would be too risky. Mines: On rare occasions I might use these as distractions, like an improvised noisemaker of sorts. Explosions tend to be hard to ignore. XD Doors: This is very situational and risky, but can be useful if I'm really pressed for time and am willing to risk it for some reason. AI do turn their heads towards visible doors if they open nearby, so you can open a door near them to distract them briefly so you can pass through a lit area. The window for this is very small though and it usually requires a relatively quiet surface so you can move quickly.
  18. I asked around a bit elsewhere and someone pointed out that this is probably Oyungezer, a Turkish gaming magazine. http://oyungezer.com.tr/
  19. Aside from what has already been mentioned, I guess I will give a cautious recommendation for The Void. It's a very pretty and atmospheric game with some really nice art direction and some pretty interesting mechanics. However, I give it a "cautious recommendation" though because it does have rather nasty caveat. It's a painfully difficult and unforgiving game, which is completely at odds with what most people expect from "artsy" games. You're almost guarenteed to fail badly and have to start over on your first couple attempts through the game. I recommend keeping a lot of saves because gameplay is such that it often punishes you very slowly and painfully for a long time for your mistakes, and when you do finally "game over" there's a good chance you've been slowly sinking towards that loss for so long that your recent saves will turn out to be not viable. Still, if you can endure its difficulty it's a very interesting game indeed.
  20. I guess you can count me in the "I actually like SS3" club as well. I mean sure you have to reload some of the guns and there's a sprint key now, but in practice I would have to be in a really really pendantic mood to complain about that. I suppose maybe I could complain about it being repetitive, but criticizing Serious Sam for being repetitive kind of misses the point.
  21. Has anyone else here played this? I just finished this game and while short (though I guess that's sort of expected for a horror game) it was pretty fun. It sort of played like a bit of Amnesia meets Clock Tower/Haunting Ground meets Uncharted with some Stealth elements. The enemies aren't quite as creepy nor do they kill you as quickly on contact as in Amneisa: The Dark Descent, but they do tend to hang around longer and require you to deliberately sneak past them in order to proceed more often. It has Clock Tower / Haunting Ground -ish under the bed and in the locker hiding places, but the game also has shadow stealth with crouch and lean that works as you would expect. It also did have a couple features I thought were convenient. Outlast has "grab-corner-with-hand" contextual lean but it's implemented as an additional feature on top of a normal "lean anytime" lean. You can lean anytime you want with Q and E as expected, but if you are at a corner while leaning it will bring the hand up to grab the corner, then you'll pivot around the corner as you turn to peek. It's not quite as dynamic as I would like and it's a bit picky with what corners it does this with, but normal lean is still there so it doesn't take much away from you. Also, if you are running/sprinting the Q and E lean is disabled and instead they turn into head pivot keys that you can use to look behind you over your shoulder while running. The assumption there seems to be that if you're running you're unlikely to be peeking around obstacles and more likely to be running away from something or someone chasing you, which is a pretty good assumption in this case!
  22. I think others have already mentioned most the more obvious and generally wanted things, though there are some things I would like to see more of personally: -I like seeing more random-ness in guard patrols. I love guard patrols that have additional branches that may or may not be taken. Because they add "hidden" elements to the routes and when players realize that they are there, they move more carefully wherever they are to try to leave some safety room for unexpected occurances. The biggest thing is that it puts pressure on players to utilize the obstacles and shadowed areas in a room even when it's empty or apparently safe, which in my opinion allows the existing space and obstacles to have a greater effect how the player moves at all times rather than only when there is a threat present. It also pushes players towards acquiring stronger more versatile general-use tactics and techniques rather than relying on one-off ways to solve a specific situation. -I like seeing mission having more tools and less tool restrictions, and instead having more guards and more lights to compensate. There are performance and balancing issues associated with this of course, but personally I prefer having more guards and more lights and instead having more tools to compensate. I sort of lean that way because there you have greater difficulty but still give the player freedom of movement where they might need it, though it leaves it up to the player where to "budget" this freedom of movement according to how they play. -I feel that ghosting should be possible, but I don't feel that it should be balanced around nor should the mission author should be obligated to be able to do it themselves. That might sound a bit weird so I'll try to explain. I feel ghosting should be possible, but be something of a "hardcore bonus" way to complete a mission. I don't think it should be practical for most players under normal circumstances. I also do not think should it be expected to allow for solutions as flexible as "normal play" as that limits how hard "ghosting" can be and how versatile "normal play" can be, and personally I believe the two should be allowed to diverge in that respect. I could be completely wrong about this, but in a lot of TDM missions I'm getting the impression that mission authors try to ghost their own missions and balance their missions around that (I do NOT know that for a fact of course, but that's the feeling I get). I feel that wouldn't be ideal because it doesn't leave room for people who are better at the game than the author. I think ideally you should be able to "prove" the mission is ghostable without being able to ghost it yourself. There are several ways to this, one is to test each the hardest parts of the mission individually and "prove" that they can be ghosted. If you can prove each of the toughest sections that make up your mission are ghostable, you've essentially proven that the mission is ghostable even if you cannot pull it off on the mission as a whole yourself.
  23. I remember a while back one of the Steam staff gave a more detailed explanation of what the heck "ClientRegistry.blob" did while trying to resolve someone's issue. I don't quite remember the whole thing, but from what I remember they mentioned that "ClientRegistry.blob" was part of Steam's older authentication system from before it got as big as it is now. It's no longer used in more recent games due to the problems it had, but it's currently still present in Steam because there are still older titles in Steam's library that use it, so they can't remove it otherwise those titles would suddenly stop working. Apparently before it can be removed entirely they have to go through every single game that uses it and switch them over to the new system, which given the size of Steam's library is slow as hell. There was other stuff related to that regarding how it adversely affects Offline Mode for some people as well, though I don't remember the specifics. In any case it sounded like they've been trying to get rid of it for a while.
  24. I figure this would be pretty popular on GoG. I remember making a thread there a while back and the reception was pretty positive in general. Actually I think there's already a wishlist entry on GoG for The Dark Mod that can be voted on. I'm pretty sure I've had at least a couple that used their own updater regardless of Steam. One of them was AI War: Fleet Command, but I forget what the other one was. Aside from that, since I often buy non-Steam copies of games that also come with Steam keys, I've noticed a lot of indie games in general behave identically on and off Steam provided they don't use Steamworks so there doesn't seem to be anything explicitly blocking the use of other updaters there, at least not for free or indie games.
  25. I have a few that I'm looking forward to: X-Rebirth Star Citizen Kinetic Void Limit Theory StarPoint Gemini 2 Take On Mars Tangiers SOMA (Frictional Games) Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord Sir, You Are Being Hunted The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Cyberpunk 2077 Prison Architect Ether One Drox Operative: Invasion of the Ancients (expansion) Sui Generis The Last Federation TMR, A.C.E. 3, or equivalent realism mod (whichever matures first) for ArmA 3 There are probably more but that's what I can remember at the moment.
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