zergrush
-
Posts
296 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
2
Posts posted by zergrush
-
-
TDM AI is pretty configurable at this point as far as range of sight and hearing goes, but one of the things that I still find lacking is the absence of a reasonable interval between spotting a target in full light and reacting upon it. Even if at lower AI vision difficulty setting, AI will go from "uh, what is this" to drawing its sword without a moment to question itself or to let the player react to the initial warning.
An example: I was playing Sotha's The Bakery Job today, and I was standing on top of the canopy outside of building. While I briefly stepped into full light when moving into the corner, the guard walking inside the building, meters a away from the window, immediately took an aggressive stance, only having spotted me for a split second and with a very narrow line of sight. You may find attached some screenshots of the situation below.
What struck me at that moment was that despite AI vision difficulty being set at "Forgiving", the lack of any setting for controlling AI reaction time turned that particular moment in an overly punishing situation for the player: in short, losing track of the light gem on a moment of distraction can make the difference between finishing a mission or having to reload.
So I would like to suggest an optional setting to control AI reaction time on spotting. People always have a sense of reasonable doubt when spotting objects at a distance, even if in full light. They will generally question what they saw first, then investigate, and then become aggressive. For TDM this would mean players would be allowed to make some mistakes and even take some risks without having to plot a quick escape. Hardcore stealth runners wouldn't lose either, since moments of reasonable doubt would also add to stealth score. All in all this would reduce the amount of times less experienced players have to load the game, and for hardcore ones, the setting could be turned off any time.
-
1
-
-
The latest hotfix is crashing on the mission downloader for me. It already happened in the previous version as well. Essentially when I'm halfway downloading a big maps (e.g. the Crucible of Omens), the application will suddenly crash.
-
If I increased the light radius to make it light up enough of the room people would wonder "why is there a huge amount of light coming from this oil lamp?".
If I recall correctly, this is something Grayman did on his Wm. Steele series and it looked just fine. A more powerful wall-mounted lamp can pass for a gas-fueled one (much like the streetlights used in the 19th century). Maybe I'm just being picky, but indoor torches are such a staple inaccuracy for me, it breaks my suspension of disbelief altogether
-
There's no requirement for maps to be realistic, here it's more about spending a gameplay resource (water arrow) to tackle a problem (or avoid the light). There could be a gas/electric light with a switch there, but it would make the situation a lot of easier. There are fireplaces/chimneys without proper air duct as well, and nobody complains about that, because they serve as simple decoration, and light source that can be extinguished/avoided.
This would only make sense if water arrows could not be used to put out oil lamps or small oil burners. There are plenty of options available that make using indoor torches pretty much pointless.
-
What a quality release! Might I ask how many episodes do you have planned for this series?
Also in a fair bit of criticism, regarding the image below:
If this torch was placed like this in real life two things would happen: a) with little ventilation around, the room would be filled with smoke, b ) the whole place would have caught on fire since it's entirely made of wood! Torches like this were never used in days of yore to light up interiors since the light they produce is overly obfuscating and they tend to burn out too fast. Candles and oil/melted fat lamps, like the ones already used on TDM, were commonplace instead, since they are much safer, durable, and produce a stable flame with no smoke.
Edit: I found nice a video explaining why indoor torches don't make much sense at all: -
Remaking Thief 1 and 2 is pointless for me. TDM already has its own universe and stories to tell. I'd be much more interested in a full original campaign for TDM than a remake of Thief missions at this point.
Speaking of which, what happened with the development of the Crucible of Omens?
-
1
-
-
I've been using Xubuntu in my old laptop for years. Updating it is as usual and running a fair share of GoG and steam games on it. I don't remember the last time my desktop crashed, or that I had a major problem that took me a while to solve.
PROTIP: run a *buntu or debian-based distro with a DE that doesn't suck and that is properly developed by an active community. Avoid GNOME3 and stick to XFCE and MATE distros. LXQT also appears to have a very promising future. Obvious recommendations go towards Xubuntu, Linux Mint and Lubuntu. I have no experience in Fedora-based distros so I'm unable to comment on those.
-
Wow, while I respect your freedom of choice on this matter, I think that is pretty darn repulsive you're willing to go as far as using an obsolete code base for the sake of not sharing your sources.
-
Greetings to everyone. I have been messaged by Freyk over at moddb.com and decided to reply to his questions and requests here in the forum. The core TDM members and devs might still remember that there had been a couple of attempts in the past by me and others to see if there is any common ground/interest in a cooperation thief themed idtech4 multiplayer/coop project. And back then it seemed that the differences in artistic and gameplay-wise development direction were diverging too much to actually be able to establish a team of devs, ready to dedicate some serious non-paid development time to it.
And so I guess everyone went on with what we were busy at the time. Whenever I could, I kept myself updated about the TDM project development and you guys surely made some impressive progress both technically and community wise.
In terms of my agenda with a thief based project (among many other projects) I decided to push on development of my Doom3 MCS PVE/COOP project (where an update release is due this year) and then use that new codebase to continue work on a thief themed idtech4 multiplayer/coop title. Now naturally as most of the time I am a "1- man-army-team" these endeavors are multi-year-commitments but the TDM team itself is no stranger to decades long dedication driven by the love and passion for idtech4 and the thief universe...
In the past years many iterations of my thief themed idtech4 WIP project have been internally tested and further developed and once the MCS update is published I am looking forward to further delve back into developing those features into a full-fledged playable project, which is also why sadly I am currently not at will or liberty to share assets or code from the project, unless a new dedicated devteam (as unlikely as this may be) is formed with the goal to develop a multiplayer coop thief themed idtech4 project to completion.
Thanks for your interest and keep up the great TDM dev work.
Are you aware you are subject to the GPL tho? While you're not obliged to share code now, you will be, as soon as you put out something as minor as a test build. Either way, this feature is not that interesting for TDM either, although the animations, if your own, look pretty sweet.
-
Some recent nice videos:
All those underground torches either run on an expensive propane/kerosene bill, or they will be making it impossible to breathe there very soon.
-
1
-
-
Glad you liked it. 4 Steele missions have been released so far, 4 to go.
So 8 in total? Strange, I thought I remember seeing a previous series plan of 6 missions total, not 8. Do you have a name for the future episodes? Also since ep 5 missed the end of year release, will it be ready in the following months?
-
I hop so too
-
-
It was done in Thief so why can't it be done in TDM.
Not saying it can't be done. I'm asking how.
-
It could be interesting, but aside from the required textures, I'd require it would need a somewhat different gameplay. Perhaps a little more based on trap avoiding and surpassing objects than classic stealth?
As for the setting, how would one insert an egyptian-like temple into the TDM fluff?
One small suggestion, how about working something like an aztec temple to cut down the texture work a bit? Wouldn't require sandstone textures for one.
-
For the first time ever, I'll volunteer. I have a shitty PC, which I guess can be useful to test performance on low end systems.
-
I like maps that impose me certain limits, like not having lockpicks from the start, or having no blackjack and/or weapons of any sort, requiring me to be 100% sneaky and knowing how to escape pursuit well enough. I also like being allowed to take unorthodox routes , such as walking through roofs and such.
-
These look fantastic. We could, in fact, use most of the textures in this page. There's some really neat stuff here.
-
Man, I really like your loading screens, Grayman.
-
I'm not really a programmer or webdesigner, but what I would suggest to be done in a preliminary stage would be to create an official github repository.
-
I was convinced TDM's engine was named Dark Engine, because I had the impression I had read it once around here. I probably misread some post or whatever. My bad.
Anyway, regardless of the internal development by the team, I don't think having a separate project page and a main branch wouldn't hurt anything at all. People are already free to fork the engine as they want it, and a page wouldn't make it a lot easier for non-team members to submit fixes and suggest improvements. Given that TDM is clearly lacking on the performance side a little, this seems like a logical step to start smoothing out some rough edges.
*EDIT* changed thread name.
-
We should really implement some sort of tag system for the mission section. Too many people are getting seriously creeped out by TDM.
-
I've recently posted this into another thread, but I thought I might as well make a thread about it.
Regarding engine upgrading, I was wondering, it would perhaps be best to create a separate webpage dedicated to the TDM Engine, chiefly to document new features and updates that separate it from idtech4, but also to attract potential developers that can help improve it. Is there a github page for the code, or something like it?
-
2
-
-
I don't think TDM should be "harder", but I wish there were more missions with no blackjacks and a "don't kill anyone" goal, on max difficulty.
AI reactions and reasonable doubt
in The Dark Mod
Posted · Edited by zergrush
Another example, this one from Tears of St. Lucia, Expert mode, played with "Forgiving" AI vision difficulty. Staring down from this position at the street tunnel in the cityscape, this guard will go from spotting you to chasing you in about 3/4 of a second (I timed it with a chronometer). Hardly any time to react, and even if already moving out of the way you are still spotted! I find this case to be particularly punishing, since the distance from the guard does not even allow you to hear him make a warning sound.