zergrush
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Posts posted by zergrush
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Already tested it. Some improvements for sure, but also some funny results. I'll upload some test videos later on. Thank you for this!
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@Grayman, once you fix the bug, would it be possible for you to produce some videos showcasing different time settings so we could have an idea? I'm fine with Wesp5's suggested times, but it would it would still be nice to have a look at how it behaves in game.
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That sounds like a good idea. Normal for the default setting, and rename the easiest from Nearly Blind to Forgiving.
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I support Wesp5's times. I think that if you really want Nearly Blind to last 8 seconds, then another tier should be added in between. "Relaxed" or something like it.
Naturally this also open the question on whether the default difficulty should remain Forgiving.
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Okay, I'm not getting enough responses to my questions, so let me rephrase:
For the given situation in Cleaning Up the Neighborhood (fully lit, far away), how long (if at all) do you think it should take for the AI to start walking toward you before he recognizes you as an enemy? In both 2.00 and 2.07, the walking starts at 2.73s for Nearly Blind.
Nearly Blind
Forgiving
Challenging
Hardcore
I would suggest:
Nearly Blind: 2.5s
Forgiving: 2s
Challenging: 1.5s
Hardcore: 1s
One change I would make though, I think the AI should walk towards the player before drawing its respective weapon.
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I found the "bug", which was introduced (by me) in 2.04. The change fixed a problem first noticed in 2.04 development where a distant AI would be frozen in place if the player was too far away to "recognize as an enemy". (Think of whether you'd recognize somebody as a thief at a far distance.) The change allowed the AI to at least search around for whatever was tickling his alert level.
I suspect that search changes I did between 2.00 and 2.07 would also have solved the "frozen" problem, so I'm experimenting with removing the distance check.
Please comment on what behavior you'd expect from an AI who's far away and has spotted you in full light, raising his alert level, but not to the point where he's sure you're an enemy. Would you rely on his search pattern to bring him closer, or would you want him to delay a bit, then come straight for you?
I think it would be nice to see some videos of at least a couple of proposed behavior changes in action before making any final decisions on how to permanently change the AI. Springheel's suggestion seems pretty ok though.
Also, perhaps we should construct a small map to test AI in the future? Some kind of map that would spawn a guard at a different distances and with different levels of lighting, perhaps.
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The TDM community has been a long running one, boasting an amount of players and content creators that is remarkably exceptional for a game in the Stealth genre, and even more so if one considers it to be a subcommunity arising from TTLG/old Thief community. Yet for all of these years I have a sense there is still potential to build a lot more interest and engagement for such an awesome (and free) game.
Recently I've been closely following the amazing community effort being put in place by the OpenRA team to revive classic Command & Conquer. Aside from reconstructing the engine for and optimizing the games for modern online play, OpenRA has been creating seasonal leagues to boast its player base and garner more attention in the media. Similarly, other communities organize charity streams and speedrun events for a similar purpose, while contributing towards a good cause.
Given the TDM community has some pretty seasoned taffers going about, some of which that are actually regular youtubers who frequently do LPs of most missions, I feel organizing a charity stream would be an interesting low-investment community project that holds the promise for great returns.
Let me know what you guys think.
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I absolutely love the electric lamps in this set, and how they fit the verticality of the cathedral environment without looking out of place.
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So I found a bit of space to gather some numbers.
Here's a pic of what I measured. The granularity of the snapshots is 0.1s, not every frame, so these are rough times:
This shows the amount of seconds it takes from the guard first spotting you, for him to reach each of the 5 alert levels.
Comparing each visibility setting in both 2.00 (back when I wrote this stuff) and 2.07 (today).
What pops out for me is that the delay between reaching level 4 and level 5 has dropped considerably. This delay was intended to give the player some time to duck back into the shadows.
What I'll do when I get more time is examine the delay code and try to figure out where the bug crept in.
This is very interesting! So there is a bug after all! Does it mean that in 2.0 upon reaching lvl 4 the AI would walk but not charge against you? I'm wondering if the distance compensation is also bugged at this moment, since soldiers seem to be reacting very fast from far away as well.
I still think, however, that the reaction times between levels 1-4, i.e. the total time between spotting the player and drawing the weapon, is a bit too fast. I think it would make more sense to increase the interval between levels 3-4 and reduce the interval between levels 4 and 5. This would mean the guard would hesitate longer before drawing his sword but would be more aggressive once it's out. It would make for a more natural reaction and would be better for stealth scores too, I feel.
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No problem! Thank you for volunteering for having a look at this issue, and best wishes with pulling WS5 through. Let me know if you need help with beta testing.
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"more lenient" means slowing down the reaction time, which needs to be done in the code, so I'm not sure why you're asking for suggestions, as if there are alternatives.
Also keep in mind that this discussion is continuing w/o anyone having looked at the visibility code, to see if there is a bug. IIRC, there were changes to the lightgem made in the past year or so that might be returning a different light value to that code. This needs to be researched.
I don't think we should be discussing changes until we have all the information. If someone thinks a change can be done through spawnargs or cvars, and we make that change and subsequently discover the root cause and fix that, the spawnarg/cvar route will need to be undone.
That sounds fair enough. I've already submitted the bug report in the meantime. We can wait for the results before retaking this topic then.
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In the first video, your lightgem is brightly lit by 0:17. The guard doesn't draw his weapon until 0:20, and it's another second or so before he begins running in your direction. So that's at least 4 seconds of grace time. That seems perfectly reasonable for a guard who is alert. Now, since that guard isn't alert, you might have an argument for increasing the delay; how many seconds would you want to see?
Neither guard becomes "blackjack immune" in those videos.
Please find attached a hi-res version of the video. As you can see I enter full light at around 0:17:600, the moment the woman in the street is saying "it feels like this day will never end". The guard starts reaching for his sword exactly at 0:18:533, which is the moment the reaction technically begins, and without any vocal warning. This makes it less than a second reaction time, which is simply superhuman, especially at a distance of about 30 meters. Even if the player has enough time to escape or flee back into shadow before the guard finishes drawing the weapon, this is enough to ruin a stealth score, hence why it is still unfair.
I agree that the first video certainly doesn't seem very "forgiving". I don't recall guards in the original games responding that quickly or from that far away, except perhaps on Expert difficulty or with particular FMs whose authors had ramped up the difficulty settings.
I would still oppose a dedicated reaction time setting for the already-discussed reasons, but I'm definitely in favour of balancing the existing difficulty sliders so that they cover a wide range of play styles. As it is, I feel that this game is a little too biased towards the hardcore players who consider the original games way too easy, at the expense of the more casual players who actually enjoy a T1/T2 (or dare I say it, TDS) level of difficulty.
Like I said, I'm perfectly fine with reaction time being accounted by the current AI Vision setting instead of having its own dedicated slider. The question now is how to implement this delay without breaking AI. For that I would like to hear your suggestions. The ultimate goal for me would be to keep the current reaction time as part of a higher AI vision difficulty, but making Forgiving and Nearly Blind definitely more lenient.
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I'm not sure what you're expecting here, this is more or less how Thief games worked. At least with this lighting setup, this is how Deadly Shadows worked. IMO it's a design and mapping thing. Most mappers seem to prefer pretty aggressive lighting, and that's up to them.
I am aware, but TDM is both supposed to be an homage and an improvement upon Thief's original gameplay. I'm perfectly fine with this type of reaction on harder difficulties, but I think the player should also be allowed to make things easier for himself to an extent, especially if it results in reducing the time of reloads per mission. This form of artificial difficulty on Thief was both a product of AI limitations and perhaps a somewhat deliberate choice for prolonging the game's length. But we're no longer in the 90s, and TDM is capable of many more things Thief isn't. Moreover, the reason why I think you shouldn't just leave it to mappers, is because older maps would then have to be tweaked retroactively.
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Based on the video, I'm not sure anything is broken.
The AI in both cases don't go directly to full alert when they spot you. There is a second or two grace period where you can see them ramping up, particularly the guard that's further away.
On the CuTN video, it's 1 second or less, actually. I enter full around halfway around 0:17. The guard starts reaching for his sword in 0:18. not even having hesitated or tried to get close. On the Bakery Job video it's even worse, since the guard literally reacts BEFORE looking up!
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AI seems fairly generous here, but then again, you're not standing in full light. This reaction time (around 2 seconds) would be realistic for full light, and it should be exponentially increased every 10 or so meters. In my opinion, in the first video I posted from CuTN, I shouldn't have even been spotted since humans ignore most far away objects at that distance, but for gameplay's sake, I'd say an initial vocal warning followed by walking to investigate and only then draw the sword, would have been acceptable.
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Perhaps, this being a stealth game, the solution is not to stay in full light for more than a split second.
It being a stealth game does not mean the average guard is supposed to have the eyesight of an eagle and the reactions of an automated turret, and much less that players have to constantly keep an eye on the light gem without being given any leeway for a single mistake. As it stands, the game won't even let me lower the difficulty in this regard, which is why I initially proposed a setting for increasing reaction delay.
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Well, if it's not a bug it's still mighty unforgiving especially given the distances and the fact the game difficulty is set to forgiving. A less than 1 sec reaction time is not what I would consider fair in any case, hence why I initially suggested this grace period should be controllable and customizable by the player in the options menu, if anything to compensate for the difficulty of some missions. As it stands now It is neither realistic or enjoyable, just plain frustrating.
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Created two videos showcasing the problem:
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That's ok, but would it be possible for someone to have a look at the savegames to confirm the issue is there? Otherwise I can slso try to record a video of it.
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Well the issue will have to be investigated in order to find out if something has become broken...because reaction time was definitely worked on. I remember testing it myself.
Would it be possible to move this thread to the bug tech support session then? Will I also need to file a bug on the tracker as well?
*EDIT*
Filed a bug report. Also replicated the issue again in Cleaning up the Neighborhood, by some1stoleit. Please find the save game in the link below.
https://wetransfer.com/downloads/33bec10066e14e6f228a7d41b3f17a2f20190325222824/4fad18
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Are you using capped or uncapped FPS?
Capped
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I disagree. Adding individual options for every little piece of AI behaviour is poor game design, and an abdication of responsibility from the designers. It clutters the UI, and potentially confuses players, who now have to understand not only what each option does, but the many more ways in which each option interacts with each other option (a quantity which increases exponentially as more options are added).
Having a couple of overall difficulty sliders is fine, and these can in turn influence various other aspects of AI behaviour based on the setting (for example, AI reaction time could be influenced by the Visual difficulty slider, since they are reacting to what they see). But adding an entire control just for reaction time is far too much detail, in my opinion.
That's fair enough and it seems like a simpler way of doing things. But how to solve the current AI overreaction issue then?
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Well then something is definitely not working fine then. I'm running 2.07 hotfix on GNU/Linux using default difficulty settings ("Forgiving" for AI Vision and "Challenging" for AI hearing). Reaction time from AI is still too fast, as you should be able to see on the save game I uploaded. Whether this is a bug or not, I think making reaction time an adjustable difficulty setting would be a good idea.
Shall I file a bug report though?
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I've produced a save game for the bakery job showcasing this issue.
The guard will be walking through the door downstairs this time, and he will immediately draw his sword as soon as he comes within line of sight of the player.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/0s7c7yr36m8vl50/bakery.zip/file
AI reactions and reasonable doubt
in The Dark Mod
Posted
Here are the videos showcasing the time cfg changes suggested by Grayman. There seems to be little noticeable different between Challenging and Hardcore, but the differences are pretty clear on Forgiving and Nearly Blind. AI also seems to react in a weird way in the Bakery Job in Forgiving mode. It goes in and out of the building and takes notice of the player halfway in.
Last thing to take note: distances don't seem to taking much effect into the equation. If you watch the ending of the Bakery Job video, I load Nearly Blind difficulty and get close to the AI guard. He does not seem to notice me at all in full light standing right in front of him, and there's no time difference between being at a distance and being at close range from the AI.
https://youtu.be/oImW0RbbDFc
https://youtu.be/7LeSlUBjfOA