STiFU

Fully agree. Do it right, if at all. As I said, I was just brainstorming what other things could be done via optional mutators. Also, of course if a player enabled mutators, there's no guarantee that the mission if finishable with those, so there should be some form of disclaimer saying that FMs weren't designed with these mutators in mind and that they might not work properly. The existence of mutators should ideally never affect any mapper in their work.

I am 100% on board with optional bonus challenges (mutators) you can activate before launching an FM. Could be a nice project for me for 2.13. As posted in the "Hazard Pay" thread, my idea for a save restriction mutator is that you pay for each save with some resource like a water arrow or a health potion. Something that hurts, to make players who seek the tension think twice about saving. Another mutator idea was "Ghost", i.e., mission fails as soon as stealth score turns non-zero and blackjacking is disabled. I wonder why everybody jumped on the save restriction topic, instead of this mutator, which would be really useful for quite a few players, wouldn't it?

No need to create a new thread, @MirceaKitsune. Snatcher already posted one.

So, I've got a confession to make: Up until recently, I hadn't really played a full FM in quite some time as I only did the occasional playtesting. I am currently trying to catch up and boy did I miss some gems! This FM is one of them and easily one of my all-time favorites. The save-system on expert combined with the incredible athmosphere of your mission created a tension I haven't felt in a Thief-style game in a long, long time. Thank you, thank you, thank you and bravo @kingsal. TDM and its mappers have really come a long way, competing high up there with commercial productions. Your FM inspired me in two ways: At one point, I died due to my character not jumping off a slope, eventhough I felt like I pressed jump at the right time. I think everybody of us knows this issue and you always have this kind of in the back of your head that you don't jump when the ground is not perfectly even. This failed jump was of course very annoying due to the saving constraints, so I instantly started thinking how we could solve this. There's a technique known primarily from platformers but also from FPS like Doom Eternal, and that technique is called "Coyote Time". It allows the player to jump for some short timespan after leaving a platform. We should maybe explore something similar for TDM, to make jumping off slopes more reliable. We have to be careful to not allow the player to cross further distances this way of course. I loved the save restriction and the tension it create so much, that I want more of it. I started to brainstorm and remembered the optional game mutators from Unreal back in the day. These mutators allowed you to enable extra challenges or modified physics etc. for your game. Coming back to the save restriction, a respective mutator for TDM could be that each savegame costs some resource. Some resource that hurts, like a water arrow or a health potion, to make the player think twice about saving. A mutator like that would honestly be my default play-setting, I think. Other obvious mutators could be "Ghost" (missions fails as soon as the stealth score is non-zero and blackjacking is disabled), "Ironman" (no saves), "Strong Enemies" (enemies hit harder, have more health). I shall follow up on both of these points soon.

Prey is much less stealth focused than TDM, so hiding bodies serves much less of a purpose. Much like System Shock actually. By the way, you should also give the System Shock 1 Remake a shot. While its probably best enjoyed, if you already played the original, it's still a great game anyway.

Congratuliations on the release and what incredible quality for a first-timer. The story was really neat and felt very authentic. Gameplay-wise, I also had a lot of fun, although it got really messy at times. You see, I like to play with the rule to only reload when I am dead, so I am forced to play through my mistakes, which can be really fun. A mistake in this mission often meant, that almost all the guards got alerted because a huge portion of the mansion is connected without any doors. And with so many guards, trouble often snowballed, which made this mission pretty difficult. So many guards in one spot also very frequently lead to AI misbehavior like continuously running into a wall etc. For your future missions (hoping there weill be more), I would suggest to split up areas more so that not so many guards come flocking on you on a single mistake.

The hold-type-grabber means that you hold the mouse button to drag an entity and when you release, you drop the entity. That of course doesn't work on a short-press frob, as pressing shortly is the opposity of holding down the frob button for as long as you wish to drag an entity, i.e., it is mechanically impossible. That's why I said that @snatcherprobably rather meant the toggle-type-grabber on short-press, i.e., press frob once to grab an entity, press frob again to release the entity (traditional TDM style). And this I'd feel uncomfortable to go through with as explained in my previous two comments.

Sorry, but that is mechanically impossible. ^^ I am going to assume that you didn't mean the Hold-Grabber, but the Toggle-Grabber on Short Press. To that, I would like to raise two comments: There has already been a huge discussion about this topic that I didn't partake in. I only see the result of this discussion, which is the current implementation, and I wouldn't feel comfortable to just ignore this and do something else. What you are asking for is not a simple extension, but a different code-path, which makes things messy, and the frob-code is already quite messy as it is. I understand where you are coming from, but please understand that I don't feel comfortable to go through with it. Also, our lead dev also has a say in this and I doubt he will be happy to open up more code-paths. You still have the original control scheme to fall back on, if it is so important to you to have the Toggle-Grabber on short press.

The second Styx game is a very nice Stealth game, very similar to Thief actually (except that it's third person) and much better than the first title. I hope anyone got this game. If not, it is still on 85% sale right now.

Kinda feels like I threw a live grenade into a dung pit by necroing this thread. Anyway, it seems like there is some agreement with my current work on both sides of the pit, as it will make the control scheme a bit more consistent, while leaving the general new control scheme intact. I have a working prototype that implements the following table. Contrary to the previous table, hold-type-grabber for loot and tools is not possible, as the long-press frob is already tied to multiloot (pickup multiple items successively without releasing the frob button). This extension is enabled via cvar, i.e., completely optional.

Well, I hate to be that guy, but as a researcher who has done tons of subjective tests with big subject groups, I would like to jokingly comment that the used test procedure does not allow the conclusion that people prefer short press frob for shouldering. What we can conclude from this poll is that people prefer short press frob for shouldering as well as various other actions AND long press frob for alternative actions in favor of short press frob for various actions as well as double-press frob for alternative actions including shouldering. This is the classic error of modifying too many determining factors between test cases and attributing the results to only one of the determining factors. However, I don't question that there is strong agreement with making shouldering the primary / short-press frob action. This has been criticism of TDM for a long time. We've had people coming to the forum asking for shouldering over and over again. So I concur to change this and set it as the new default even.

I quickly hacked this in yesterday evening and it actually worked quite well. Having the option to both toggle-type-grab and hold-type-grab junk objects is a nice quality of life feature to me. It actually worked for most loot and inventory items in the training mission as well, so that's also pretty cool. However, what isn't so cool is that food remains, unlit candles or candleholders (that never even saw a candle) are not treated as junk objects so the hold-type-grabber ist not applied. This requires some more coding logic, but should be fairly doable. So basically, above table would have to be altered in the following way. With this adjustment, long press would always execute a special action first and would then consistently degrade to hold-type-grabber. Entity type Short Press Long Press Junk Toggle-Grabber Hold-Grabber Food Toggle-Grabber Eat Food remains Toggle-Grabber Hold-Grabber Loot Pick-up Hold-Grabber Bodies Shoulder Hold-Grabber Lanterns Toggle-Grabber Extinguish / Light Lit Candles Toggle-Grabber Extinguish Unlit Candles Toggle-Grabber Hold-Grabber Tools Inventory Hold-Grabber

I agree that this would solve many problems TDM has for new players, especially with our new mildly inconsistent control scheme, but it goes against the design philosphy of TDM, which is, to be as immersive as possible with as little HUD as possible.

Granted, that might happen to a player once, but then the player will have learned that there are two types of grabber-interactions, the toggle-type which he/she knows from Lights and Food, and the hold-type which he/she knows from bodies. Anyway, there is no harm in trying this, right? Even if we just end up hiding it behind a disabled cvar for the people who like it.

Thanks for summarizing the most relevant arguments. Saved me from reading this monster of a thread in its whole. It is obvious that a lot of thought from a lot of smart people has already gone into this. Still, it kind of rubs me the wrong way that the grabber-interaction with bodies is so fundamentally different than the rest and it frequently annoys me that I can't hold-type-grab junk objects as well. So maybe, to catch two flies with one stone, the hold-type-grabber-interaction just needs to be added to a few more entity types. In other words, stick to the frobbing-rules you guys developed in this thread, but additionally add hold-type-grabber-interaction to Junk and Tools, and if possible, Loot as well. Entity type Short Press Long Press Junk Toggle-Grabber Hold-Grabber Food Toggle-Grabber Eat Loot Pick-up Hold-Grabber?? Bodies Shoulder Hold-Grabber Lights Toggle-Grabber Exstinguish Tools Inventory Hold-Grabber (Highlighted interactions in the table differ from the new control scheme)

Thanks for searching those quotes. Maybe @Daft Mugi can clarify, but it seems to me that he was arguing from the standpoint to keep the hold-type-grabber as an option in the code, whereas I propose to either drop it entirely or to embrace it fully for all entity types. Both options should be fairly straight-forward to implement, because there is no mixture of different grabber-control styles anymore, contrary to the current situation.

I think some things might have gotten mixed up there in the discussion and some implementation specific things have also changed since DM started with this project. It should be fairly easy to implement now. Especially, because it'd be consistent with the original control scheme.

I get that and full disclosure: I did not read the full thread, it's just too much! I was absent in recent months, so I missed all of this. That makes a lot of sense. Although, to solve this, one could communicate via audio cue ("uh uh") that no use-type-interaction is available for that entity. Anyway, there is an incredibly easy way to solve the inconsistency while staying true to the original control scheme and that is to simply swap shouldering and grabber. Entity type Short Press Long Press ...Release Button Junk Grabber Nothing Nothing Food Grabber Eat Nothing Loot Pick-up Nothing Nothing Bodies Grabber Shoulder Nothing Lights Grabber Exstinguish Nothing Tools Inventory Nothing Nothing This way, every interaction that was originally "frob + use" (shouldering, eat, exstinguish) will the become long-press-frob. So, the long-press simply becomes a shorthand for special action, nice and clean. While I do love the hold-type-grabber to death, I'd be willing to sacrifice it for a consistent control-scheme. (@stgatilov @Daft Mugi) Right now, we have this weird mixture of hold-type- and toggle-type-grabber that I guarantee you, will confuse new players (and streamers). I say, either fully embrace the lovely new hold-type-grabber (which I am still all for) or drop it completely.

Hi everyone, I know I am pretty late to the party, but I have been doing some playtesting of this feature and I am honestly loving the way bodies are handled now: hold mouse to move it around, release mouse to drop it again (hold-type-grabber). It just feels very natural and somewhat authentic this way. I love it so much that I would like to see it optionally extended to all grabber-interactions. I also think that the new control scheme is a bit inconsistent because, depending on entity type, different kinds of inputs are required to achieve the same game functionality (the grabber). Here is a table showing how different entity types are currently controlled: Entity type Short Press Hold Button… ...Release Button Junk Grabber Nothing Nothing Food Grabber Eat Nothing Loot Pick-up Nothing Nothing Bodies Shoulder Grabber Release from Grabber Lights Grabber Exstinguish Nothing Tools Inventory Nothing Nothing And here is a suggestion of how I would change it to make it consistent and to have more objects use the fun hold-type-grabber from bodies (of course the release from grabber by button release could be made optional such that a second click would release from grabber) . Entity type Short Press Hold Button… ...Release Button (or optionally press again) Junk Nothing Grabber Release from Grabber Food Eat Grabber Release from Grabber Loot Pick-up Grabber? Release from Grabber? Bodies Shoulder Grabber Release from Grabber Lights Exstinguish Grabber Release from Grabber Tools Inventory Grabber? Release from Grabber? All use-type interactions would be on short-press, whereas all grabber-interactions would be hold-type or on long press / press again. In addition to being more consistent, this control scheme also has the advantage that the grabber is always intentional, i.e., you never accidentally pick up a junk object. The only downside I can see right now is that, with the hold-type interaction, object rotation is a bit more finicky with the hold-type-grabber, because you have to press two buttons at the same time, but it's absolutely doable (I tried).

Ahhh, so that's what the x-rays feature is. I read that term multiple times, but its development must've fell into one of my inactivity phases.

Can't believe I missed this FM and played this now almost two years late. Congrats @Wellingtoncrab, what an incredible achievement. I loved every bit of it and it is sooooooo beautiful! Those volumetric lights really go a long way!! How the hell did you pull off I also loved the idea that you start out with almost nothing and have to acquire your tools, which kind of introduces some metroid vania elements to your FM. And that writing... Damn! If I had to be really nitpicky, I would say that your FM had too many tools scattered around that you don't really need. Tool scarcity is always a sure-fire way to create tension, so I think your FM would have been even better if there were less flashbombs, water arrows etc., and more loot instead.

Haven't read the whole thread, but my theory is that this happens when you have already picked up the key the other guard (pool area) is wearing.

I fully agree. And I also love the visuals. They are just fitting and perfectly resemble what I imagined Citadel to look like when I was a kid. Here's what I wrote about the game: