Professor Paul1290

As long as it doesn't conflict with existing behavior then the mouse wheel behavior would be more ideal. I really loved that function in Raven Shield, though in that game I used it more for carefully popping flashbangs into rooms than for stealth.

How about the "slow walk" speed? (is that what it's called?) Maybe holding the "slow walk" key could slow door opening and closing, which might fit more intuitively than crouching. Also, if you're holding "slow walk" then you're not going to keep pace with the door very well anyway unless you are towards the hinge side. If doors opened slowly when you're walking slowly then it would sort of match your speed better, so it would makes sense as you'd be able to more naturally follow the door as it swings into the room. Actually, if you wanted to it could make sense do this with run as well. If doors opened faster while you held run then that would make the door match your desired movement speed better.

If it isn't a full on stop, walk over, and investigate then I don't think it would. As I've mentioned above, as long as they don't walk over and investigate the area immediately (which honestly wouldn't make sense in most cases anyway) then currently the game gives us sufficient means to deal with it even in most "worst case scenarios". Sure there are some outlier scenarios where it would be too hard, but unless I'm missing something they would have to be very stacked against the player in a way that I don't recall happening in any of the current missions. I really like this! Wow, that pretty much takes care of it I guess! I should probably pay more attention to the bugtracker next time.

Right now guards don't react much to doors being opened and closed. That kind of makes sense in most cases as doors opening and closing in a building with people walking around in it happens so often it probably wouldn't be worth investigating by itself unless they were REALLY paranoid. However, sometimes the AI seems a bit too oblivious to this, especially when they are alone and someone clearly does not come through. Trying to fix that in an ideal way would probably be a real pain in the ass and due to the great number of things that would make an opening door either suspicious or ordinary. Even if it could be done, it may be rather unbalancing in missions that were made assuming that the AI didn't have that ability, and in that case you might have to add yet another thing for mappers to worry about. On the other hand, TDM does give us a lot of control when it comes to doors. We can open doors partially and we can listen through them fairly easily, and leaning to either side and forward allows us to open doors from a variety of angles. With that I think having the AI have a rather mild reaction to doors being opened by the player wouldn't be too disruptive. Perhaps if a nearby door is opened by the player the AI should "hear" the door opening, but their reaction should be delayed by a few seconds and they should only briefly look over at the door before going back to what they were doing. If there's a few seconds of delay on this, then the player has time to move out of sight before they turned to look, and it seems reasonable that a door opening nearby is only suspicious if nobody is heard or seen going through it after that amount of time. At the same time, the AI at least do something so it doesn't seem like they're completely oblivious. As far as balance goes, I don't recall many reasonable situations that would be truly broken by this. Again, we can open doors partially and we can do so from many angles. If you're going into the guard's room and the door is well lit, you can still go through safely as you can just open the door partially, wait until after the AI briefly looks over and dismisses it when he sees nobody, then go right in as you would before. You just wouldn't be able to open it up and go right in right away. If you're exiting the guard's room through a well lit door the time between you actually opening the door and going through would be very brief and should fall within the short delay the guard takes to turn and look at the door you used to exit. Either that or if you don't feel safe you can open the door and retreat back into hiding before proceeding through. If there are guards on both sides and the door is well lit then all you need is somewhere to hide from the guard in your current room immediately after opening the door. This can be done whether you stay in your current room after opening or go through immediately after opening, you just need to find cover from the guard in the room you end up in when the delay is up and he looks over at the door. The only case I can think of at the moment where this may truly block the player would be if both sides of the door were well lit, there were guards on both sides, they were positioned far enough away from the door and centered enough so the door couldn't act as a barrier on either side (remember, you can hide behind an open door from someone in the same room if they're off to the side of it), and there were no other usable safe spots or barriers available near the doorway. However, that situation would have to be so bad that I would argue it would probably make sense if you were caught trying to go through it that way. Of course there could be other scenarios, though I don't recall any at the moment.

I use Steam a lot, but it's not the only service I use. I also use GOG, GamersGate, and if possible I buy from the game developers site. Between those options I can usually get just about anything. GOG is DRM Free and leaves you free to keep as many backups as you want, so where applicable I often prefer to get my games from there. Some developers sell the game on their own site and some even give you Steam keys in addition to their own copies from their site and that works fine as well because you get to back up the game and download it from the service. Personally, I think having an available downloadable copy on a digital distribution service that also leaves you free to make backups is the ideal solution when you can get it. I find that even more ideal than a physical copy as odd as that might sound. The obvious problem a downloadable copy that's tied to the service for every install, via DRM or otherwise, is the possibility of the service being no longer available in the future. The problem with physical copies, and one that I don't think is brought up enough, is that there's nobody on the other end having an incentive to maintain the game, which can matter just as much as being able to simply store the game as game's aren't as straightforward simple to keep around as music or movies. In additon to that anyone who has kept a lot of physical copies over the years has probably learned that you're going to make your own copies anyway if you want to keep them a long time. As someone who has kept (or tried to keep) a lot of games for a long while, I think relying on the quality of the typical CD or DVD on its own isn't any better than the DRM-tethered downloadable copy. If you have a downloadable copy that can be backed up on your end as well, such as from some developer's sites and GOG, then you get the best of both worlds. Someone on the other end has an incentive to keep that copy available and playable with current systems and you can keep a backup in case they go away, and both have to fail before for you really to lose the game. Now the caveat to this is that you can't really re-sell game, but I don't really do that much anymore. The monetary value for most of the expensive ($50-$60) games I buy drops before I would be willing to re-sell them, and games I buy that stay at a consistent price for a while tend to be cheap enough that re-sale isn't worth the bother.

I'm not sure if that would be better or if that would just make it more confusing. AI acuity is more vague than lockpicking and it comes into play much more frequently than combat. I suppose now that you've mentioned how it works and going back to the earlier example, maybe the most jarring part isn't necessarily their reaction time alone but what they do after "detecting" you slightly. The fact that I was able to lose them so easily during their casual search combined with reaction time makes it seem worse than it would be otherwise. If I had to do more to throw off their casual searching than simply taking a few steps back then it would seem less awkwardly easy while at the same time not making it more sudden and twitchy again, and I get the impression that the recognition being sudden and twitchy was more the initial issue more than the overall difficulty. On the other hand doing something about that might be more complicated than changing a variable however, and might not be practical in the near-term.

I guess to clarify it's more of option A. It's most noticable during when I get caught for brief periods in the light and duck back into the shadow. For example, there was a recent moment during recent run (I think it was either The Knighton Manor or The Phrase Book) where I was caught in the light with my back to the NPC. The NPC said the usual "what's that?" or something to that effect, then I had enough time to turn 180, see him, think "oh sh*t", and duck back into the shadow. After that he walked over on low-alert and went back to what he was doing, and I was left wondering how he didn't catch me. That one sticks out as the most jarring incident that comes to mind. It hasn't been that obvious most of the time, usually being a bit more nebulous with minor screw-ups here and there seemingly not being punished quite as much as they used to. I don't know how much of that is me getting better and how much of it is the 1.08 adjustment.

This is just something I'm starting to notice more and more lately and I'm curious as to what the consensus is on this (if there is one). What is your opinion on the current acuity of guards to light? This is just about light and spotting the player visually, not about sound. Note that I'm not actually sure how distinct the latter question is from the first question. It may be irrelevant, so I guess someone else would know more about that. I feel I've been getting away with being in the light more than I've been able to get away with previously and there are times where I feel like I should have been caught but wasn't. I'm not really sure though as this is something really subjective. I don't think feel like anything game-breaking or that seriously off at the moment so unless there's a very strong leaning one way or the other this would probably be low priority for now.

I got distracted by other games and stuff for a while, but I've gotten back to finishing The Knife of Dunwall DLC. I'm on the third mission and at this point I think I can say that I like The Knife of Dunwall's missions more than the main campaign. Daud's toolset is a lot like Corvo's but it's even more stealth-oriented. I'm especially liking the placable stun mines, dust bombs, and other non-lethal options he has. I also really like the guard patrols in this DLC. I mentioned earlier that I suspected some of the guard patterns were either very complex or have some random bits in them. At this point I'm starting leaning towards the latter because the guards have continued to be unusually unpredictable in this DLC compared to the main game. There are also often more guards in this DLC per given area than in the main game. The Dishonored main campaign often had mostly lone guards and guards in pairs, The Knife of Dunwall leans more towards having guards in groups of 2 or 3 or more which often makes them more difficult to isolate and take out one by one. I've been playing on Hard since the Very Hard mode is locked the first time through, though Hard in the DLC seems just as difficult or maybe more difficult than Very Hard in the main campaign. On a side note, I've stopped recording this first run as it was getting a bit too finicky trying to record a blind run this long and it's been impairing my enjoyment of my first run of game somewhat. (also since a lot of people play and record this game already anyway, it's not as high a priority for me as my TDM or ArmA videos) Here's what I did record though:

I played with the 2.0 beta and it seemed to work just fine for the most part: I think the only real problems were that I got a bit stuck on top of the the shelf in the Lich Queen's room and one other very amusing issue:

Don't people usually complain that the mod is too hard? Darn conflicting feedback.

If you still need more then I'd be up for this as well. I'm a bit busy but I might be able to get a mission or two in.

Stealth Score already somewhat penalizes tool use in a lot of ways so unless it was changed pretty significantly having Noise Arrows not count would be rather inconsistent. On the other hand, on the subject of Stealth Score, having separate yes or no check at the end that would only count alerts at level 4 and 5 or above would be nice. Since they draw their weapon at those alert levels you could say that that's when they believe there is an actual intruder rather than just something odd occurance worth checking, and that would be when stealth is truly broken. That would make for a good baseline stealth run in most cases make the idea of the Stealth Score being "perfectionist" more clear.

The issue with sending them to sleep is, if I recall correctly, that there currently isn't a good way to get them in and out of ragdoll. I suppose to suggest an alternative, there could also be a hurt/crippled animation that avoids having to deal with ragdoll. This could be something like stumbling into kneeling on one knee or down on all fours position and slowly getting back upright to continue and such. Of course that would require having yet another animation which isn't a small thing, so that might not be that viable either.

How hard would it be to have it so that zombies become slower and more sluggish if they take enough damage? It kind of makes sense that it wouldn't be practical to kill (or re-kill) them with arrows, but at the same time holes are holes and most stuff tends not to work as well given enough holes. If they get hit with an arrows or swords enough then it would make sense that they'd become at least somewhat impaired and wouldn't be quite as able as they were.

I'm only near the beginning of the Knife of Dunwall DLC so far, but I did find something rather amusing. *Spoiler Warning* There is this one guard rather early in the first proper mission that has an interesting pattern. He's in the room with the safe right below and towards the factory from the room where you get a note from Granny asking for a whale eye, and. There's a door to the area in front of the factory and a balcony overlooking the water. This guard is rather interesting because he has a rather complex patrol pattern despite the fact he spends almost all his time in that one room. He goes between a point outside the door (sometimes talking with the guard outside), standing at the balcony, standing at the table in the middle of the room, and standing near the safe. Most of his patrol (I'd guess around 3/4 of it) takes him between the balcony and the point just outside the door and the other portion (guessing the other 1/4 of the patrol) takes him to the other side of the middle table and to the safe. Now the portion that takes him between the door and the balcony is a bit interesting because he goes back and forth a few times and it goes through a couple variations in that time. Half the time he makes it all the way from the balcony to the door then back again. The other half of the time he doesn't make it all the way from the balcony to the door. He looks like he's going to go all the way to the door, but in the middle he suddenly turns 180 and goes back to the balcony. No, he doesn't stop, and stare at the door for a bit, then turn around as you'd expect the guards to do most of the time. He literally does a fast 180 turn mid-walk and goes back the balcony without stopping. This bit seems explicitly designed to have a chance of instantly catching people who try to trail him as he leaves the balcony. This guy almost caught me on my first run, though luckily before trying to enter that room I noticed his oddly inconsistent interval at the balcony and that kind of tipped me off that something was really "off" about him. Because of that I approached him with more caution than usual and ended up being thankful I did when I saw how weird his pattern really was. (I'm actually recording this run and will have it uploaded when I'm finished and I remember making some rather funny comments about this guard in the recording.)

Oh dear, if you've been playing TDM without using "lean forward" then your life is going to become a lot smoother now. In my opinion it's one of the most useful actions in TDM. You can reach out of the shadows to pickpocket something off a guard's belt or to pick a lock. You can look down over the edges of beams to land arrows or throwables on the people below. You can pull rope arrows out of odd angles so you don't lose them as much. You can reach out and space yourself better for using the blackjack. You can also space yourself better and give yourselve a bit more room to block/dodge if you get caught and have to sword fight a bit. You'll also have a much easier time getting things out of chests and drawers. That's probably the most common use of it and it's very nice for this because leaning over a chest will put your view more or less directly over the the opening so you can see and frob everything inside. You might notice in my videos how much I use "lean forward".

How often do you have to do that? I've rarely had to jump on top of chests or tables specifically to grab the stuff in/on them. I usually just lean forward with the F key to reach over and I can usually pick up stuff out of the commonly used chests, desks, and off of the tables without having to do any crazy jumping or moving around. The only times I've had to jump or crouch to reach into a containers or tables are if the container/table is oddly shaped or I'm trying to stay out of the light or check behind the container at the same time.

It's been a while, so here's a blind run of The Builder Roads: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWCaQ1OQ0oc&hd=1

On missions I've never played before and when recording video, I tend to quicksave occassionally as I go through a mission though I only load a save if I die or fail the mission. If I get caught I usually just roll with it unless the mission fails or it becomes unworkable somehow. If it's a mission I've already played through at least once, then I often don't save mid-mission at all and just completely restart if I die. I almost always try to ghost as much as I can but I usually don't restart a mission if I have to take out a guard. Usually I decide whether to KO a guard or not by deciding if I, based on what I can see, feel like I can ghost through the room or situation ten times in a row without making a mistake. If it feels like I would be able to pull it off then I'll go for it. If I'm not feeling that confident at the moment then I'll take out a guard.

I guess if you really wanted to you could go extra long and shove the old name inside a new one. Thieves of Bridgeport: The Dark Mod (now with more syllables!)

Wouldn't using a reserved or static IP avoid that or am I thinking of something else?

I gotta say, that's probably one of the few female soldiers/guards I've seen in a video game who actually looks qualified for her job.

I try to ghost and avoid reloading any saves most of the time, but I consider not reloading a save and avoiding being detected more important than the ghosting so I'll knock somebody out if I don't think I can make it past them well. The way I usually try to guess whether or not I should knock out somebody or otherwise break my ghosting run is I ask myself "Do I feel like I can do this 10 times in a row without a mistake?". If the answer is "no" then I'll knock somebody out or try to go for a different solution. It's a pretty nice litmus test in general as it cuts down on a lot on the little careless mistakes that break iron man runs.

It does not seem like killing people by itself causes "high chaos" and gets you a bad ending, or if it does then the effect is pretty small. I don't know exactly what matters for chaos, but it seems chaos is more about people knowing you're running around killing people than the actual killing of people. From what I've tried in a few missions, killing people quietly and putting them away doesn't seem to cause chaos, but killing people in plain view of other people and leaving corpses everywhere to be found does. Even then, there does seem to be a significant threshold you have to pass to go over the edge into "high chaos", so it doesn't seem like the random odd accident will hurt much. I think I ended up killing a bunch of random people on certain missions and still managed get "low chaos" anyway as long as it stayed fairly controlled. I think you're fairly safe.