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Now, with that beauty of a device, why shouldn't it be reusable? Rope arrows are just too damn enjoyable to become so limited. Just look at the outcry of them missing from T3 completely. I'd be willing to bet every Thief player loves getting to the top, crawling in a window or onto a beam, plucking it out, and thinking, "okay, where to next?"

I don't know, the gas would have to escape fast enough to actually drill the arrow into the wood. It's really coming out more like an explosion than a slow hissing. But I guess for game purposes, having it "silenced" would be okay. To me, that is no better than saying it's magic. I agree that my idea is pretty convoluted, but we wouldn't have to show the player pulling the rope thru or anything, it could just kind've happen automatically. The first cable would probably be too thin to see anyway, so maybe we would just show the arrow go in [and play a cable unwinding sound from the bow while the arrow is in flight], then a small weight drops from it and a thick rope is pulled from your side up to the arrow ring and through until it drops down to exactly the right height (our thief is actually really good at measuring, cutting and tying on the fly ).

I can suspend my disbelief as to whether or not the arrow could penetrate the wood. Honestly, it's no more difficult to believe than the 'magic' rope arrow. Making them non-reusable is also not really a problem. It's up to the FM author to ensure that there is access to enough tools and this also makes the player think a bit more before deploying a rope arrow. @oDD In reference to the arrow function. Cool, that's how I thought it should function. It's just when you said 'clockwork', I thought you meant some kind of mechanical device inside the arrow. I think it's cool and it differentiates our arrow visually. It's the same functionality in the end.

I don't care much one way or the other on whether they're re-usable, but if the main issue stopping it is that it would have to be rewound before it could be redeployed, maybe we could do this: The retrieved rope arrow goes into your inventory but is not immediatley usable when you retrieve it. It takes some 30 seconds or so before it may be used again, and it's assumed that the player character is resetting the mechanism offscreen. I don't know if that's really necessary or not, but might be a compromise.

You can't reuse a water arrow, or any other arrow for that matter. That's my point. Why are rope arrows singled out as the only arrows that are reuslsble. If you have 5 rope arrows, that should be enough for any beam traversing, and how often is that going to come up anyway. I'm sure there would be a lot of leet things you could do if you had endless supplies of the other arrowes as well, but you don't. The whole point of the game is that you have a limited inventory and have to use it strategically. Giving the player an endlessly reusebale rope arrow makes a mockery of that. A mechanism that unwinds the rope on impact is easy. Just a simple hydraulic pusher disc, which slides down the inside of the hollow arrow. THe weight of the rope is not a problem, thin cord is not that heavy, and as for it cutting into your hands, you should take another look at the leet bracers/glove combo I modeled for the thief, which are for exactly this sort of situation. # The entire arrow spins, NH, not just the head, and the forward mometum it recived from the bow pushing it forward. The arrow spins and burrows very rapidly, in a fraction of a second, and then the rope depolys from the head end of the arrow so the rope eminates from the place where the arrow shaft enters the wall - this means that it will be very sturdy. IF the rope eminated from the feather end of the arrow, it would bend or break with the weight. And yes, they should be more abundant and not reusable, just like all the other arrows, There is no case for a special exception for rope arrows.

Don't know who should have said this, because this was sure not coming from me. Actually, I'm amazed we're even still talking about this...it's something that would only be appropriate in one kind of map (city) at one time of day (dusk) and for one kind of light (lamps that the player can't even extinguish!). Are we really that desperate for things to do? No. But I think this can be even easily done in scripting. And I didn't say we should implement this right away, so just stick it in the ideas thread and case closed for now

Let's code regular AI to be able to relight normal torches before we start going on about how easy it would be to do this. I remember someone saying the lightgem was going to be easy too. Actually, I'm amazed we're even still talking about this...it's something that would only be appropriate in one kind of map (city) at one time of day (dusk) and for one kind of light (lamps that the player can't even extinguish!). Are we really that desperate for things to do?

Yes but all we can do is minimise those exploits - and balance the work involved with its "worthwhileness" - I think the work would be better spent on making them "wait there" in an inteligent fashion even if it gives the player chance to jump on the ladder (which is not that simple because they will all be ranged, remember), just because I reckon we could pull it off better than letting them climb ladders or swim.

Well if the guards stay guarding the player can do nothing, and will have to get out/down eventually and face the consequences. And in a lot of situations it's not an issue anyway.

The damage doesn't work like that, we have even more freedom than you think. There is no "per poly" collision detection for things that damage. With the exception of projectiles (which are point collision or bounding box collision, not sure), each enemy has some cool simple programming to say when the player should be damaged. Eg. if you're in front of the enemy, within this certain distance, at this particular time during the attack animation, then you get hit. The big soldier monster with the long tentacle - the tentacle polygons aren't what hit you - a cone is created with math in the programming, and if you are within range of this when the tentacle comes out, you get hit. All this is done in the script of the monster. This is much faster to process, and more reliable (than doing polygon collision).

I know that, that's how the bow and arrows work. I mean I didn't know you could flag specific parts of the AI mesh as being capable of damaging the player. I suppose you just use its bone name. I always assumed wepaons had to be separate world objects attatched to the AI model. So, I need to start modeling the AIs with their weapons included from now on.

I'd be willing to forget ladder climbing if we got AI mantling and swimming working. Far more commonly used exploits by the player.

It's possible to set ladders up so they can't be blocked at the top. IF the ladder goes up through a trap door (which they usually do) just make sure the ladder goes well above the floor level in the upper room. There's no way the player can block it with his body, since there will be at least 3 diections to jump off at the top. THere could certainly be several templates set up that would aviod this probelm, FM authors just have to build their ladders following certain rules. As for coming down the ladder, as domarius says the AI can have a slide animation for a quck decent. Whenever they hit anything on the way down, they detatch from the ladder.

RIght, so you dont just walk away, you chloro them to finish the job. I prefer to play with the "no kills" objective anyway, so it would not be so very different than that. A waking guard *knows* he has been KOd, so the whole place would go nuts knowing there is a thief about. Which to me seems a compelling reason to fail a player. And yes, I think setting off an alarm should fail the mission, at least in the missions Id like to make. The ten minutes was just an arbitrary time, it could be 10 seconds is a mission author wished. I just thought it would add an element of realism, black jacks arent going to KO someone for hours on end so you add the chloro to make it stick, but that brings its own risks, taking the time to do it and all plus the possiblity of running out of the stuff. But all that being said, it was just an idea, if no one likes it, fine, I just go and sulk. Hmmp. Im sulking. See above.

On the topic of chloroform, heres an idea: The Thief has both a black jack and some kind of KO liquid like chloroform. He can conk a guard with the jack, but the guard will wake up in like 10 minutes unless he also uses the chloroform on him which puts him down for the game. To avoid the problem of modelling a guard waking up and getting to his/her feet, the games objectives could simply be set so that the player fails the mission if a BJed guard is allowed to awaken. You never actually have to see the guard awaken, because if he does the game is over. This seems to me to be reflective of real life, if a guard wakes up after being cracked over the head, the hold castle is going to go nuts looking for the perpetrator of the crime. So here is how it works. I blakjak a guard, but then I have only about 10 minutes to drag him to a dark corner and apply the chloroform. If I do not, he will awaken and my mission is failed because now the guards will go bananas looking for me, making completing the mission impossible. I think this is valuable for two reasons: One it makes the blackjacking of guards a more complex proposition, you have to hide them and you have to take the time to chloro them and you only have about 10 minutes to do so before they wake up. I can forsee some interesting situations where you KO a guard with the jack, but then have to run and hide from someone else, and the clock is ticking while you wait to run back to the room and chloro his ass so he doesnt wake up and raise hell. Two it allows for the IDEA of guards awakening after being hit with the blackjack and having a real impact on the game, w/o actually having to model them waking up with all the attendant work and headaches. comments?

Ultimately if you were a guard valuing your life you wouldn't follow a mentalist (ie exploit using bow-mad knifer) thief up a ladder while they were there. Hence having them climbing ladders out of sight instantly, (cheat, natch) would be more sensible. When the player is there they could run and get an archer/musketeer (?....Please?) and start shooting.

I really don't know what the fuss is with AI climbing ladders. If a guard gets caught out on a ladder in RL, they have naturally left themselves exposed. So has the thief climbing the same ladder. It is realistic and natural to exploit somones vulnerability for your own advantage, so to call it an exploit as though it is such a bad thing per se is just silly. What would you do if someone was climbing up a ladder after you? You might decide to lurk at the top and push them off when they get to the top, or you might keep on running, but if you push them off and they fall to their death, you no longer have to worry about them running after you (if it is a lone guard). Conversely, if you were trying to pursue a thief and he nips up a ladder, you will either make the decision to follow him and try to grab his leg and pull him off or not based on your judgement as to whether they will be able to take advantage of you while you are exposed on the ladder. The ONLY question regarding AI climbing ladders is whether or not you can give the AI a reasonably realistic way of making the judgement call as to whether they should follow you up or not.. I have seen very decent AI botpathing with ladders and elevators in a few MP deathmatch games, and Splinter Cell does ladder climbing AI quite nicely, so I know it is possible to code, but if it is too difficult or too much work to code WELL then I can understand it not being included. Personally, I would rather have an imperfect and slightly buggy implementation of ladder climbing than none at all, as long as it works properly most (80%) of the time. Are you planning to make ladders just by having a texture flagged as a ladder? If so that will create more problems for your ladder. A better way to do it is to create a ladder volume, with an invisible entity at the top and bottom with a directional property, and to define ladder exit/entry points on the geometry where the player AI gets off - this is how most Unreal engine games have done it, and making ladders work in Unreal is quite easy by comparison with Quake based engines...

I would like that one, but... Well it would certainly catch the player by surprise the first time it happened, but players would soon work out what was happening. (Like the shell not hurting enemies off screen in Mario) We would end up with players deliberately hanging around and trying to pick the guards off, rather than keep running and face the result of being chased sucessfully.

Odd, it's not just a matter of exploits. It's immersion problems. The only problem with guards not climbing ladders is that it reminds you that you're playing a game. Well, if the guards don't act in a believable manner while on a ladder, you've just done load of work and have the same problem as a result. Aren't you usually on the other side of this argument? Besides, there's no reason guards can't use elevators. I think we'd also talked about a possible compromise, where guards could only climb ladders when the player wasn't directly nearby, but I don't know whether that went anywhere.

The only ladder exploit is the one you mention. I don't see it as an exploit. If a player wants to cheat and lure AI to ladders in order to kill them, them that's fine by me. IF they want to ruin ther own game with that sort of crap, good luck to them. I don't see how that should stop the rest of us having the extra thrill of knowing that we can't escape by simply climbing a ladder, like in all of the Thief games. You could do the same sort of exploits in previosu thief games, like lure AI into water and drown them, or under elevators and crush them etc Like I say, if some dumbass players, the sort who obviously like killing the AI, want to play the game like that, I don't give a fuck, but I don't want features not to be implemented on the basis that people like that will exploit them. I'd like to see them mantling as well, but thats a lot more technically tricky to do.

It looks like a wand, for starters. Secondly, if he wants to use a crystal for light he can always draw a fire arrow. And Atti is right, if the thief has some, why aren't they in common use? Everyone needs light, unlike noise arrows. It's pointless to invent new gadgets when existing equipment will do. Anyone having a problem the size of a lantern must be willfully ignoring the size of the thief's regular equipment. A half dozen flashbombs take up the same amount of space, as would three potion bottles or two mines. The player regularly carries that much and more.

Well I'm not a part of the Hive Mind I guess. One Thief player told me that when he got home from a frustrating day work, he would load up a Thief mission and go around whacking the helpless servents to death to vent his frustration of the annoying co-workers. I can't fathom how anyone could get a sense of satisfaction out of that. When I find myself in a similar mood, the most satisfying use of video games is to channel that pent up energy into playing better than I ever have, and beating something that has a purpose, especially if its about defeating some evil characters to defend some helpless people. I crave the excitement and action, but its the thrill of suceeding against amazing odds that I find entertaining, not inflicting suffering...

the game includes your source of fun.. then why is so painful for you if the game also includes those things you're not using? why does it bother you if someone is not having fun your way.. btw thats like saying 'i like playing games on my own only ...i dont need the Multi player option..get rid of it..those who'd like playing it on net should buy another game...

Well, however you slice it, you have to work a lot harder to keep loot quiet than you do to keep weapons quiet. We've discussed this, but again, it doesn't make much sense to slow a thief down for carrying a short sword, but allow him to carry fifty pounds of loot without penalty. The FM author can always limit the tools/weapons available, and the player can always choose not to take available ones with him, so people should be able to satisfy their own personal tastes.

"A short sword is not going to be quiet in RL if you keep banging it on things when you are sneaking about in the dark" With the scabbard bound to your leg it won't flap around like a wet fish, and being covered in leather it wouldn't make much sound even if it did. I find it hard to believe a cosh hitting a skull produces a "distinctive" sound. More like a soft thump, perhaps something heavy onto a carpet, or a book onto a desk. "and thesound of a person collapsing is pretty distinctive." The devs say we'll have to lower bodies to the floor anyway. "The bow and a quiver full of assorted arrows is a most cumbersome and bulky item for a thief to be carrying, and magic arrows aside it is pretty useless. Shooting someone with an arrow is unlikely to be stealthy unless you are lucky enough to get a head shot, and even then that is a gamble - many people have remained conscious after larger objects have embedded in the brain." From shortish range, the likelihood of both death and accuracy is high. Remember this thief is supposed to be a master bowman, not some joe off the street. "Arrows make a faily audible and distinct sound." Audible, yes. Distinct, no. Hitting wood, they tend to make a loud bang, as if someone knocked something hard against a wall. An arrow from long range tends to sound more like a knock or clatter While I've never heard an arrow hit someone's skull, I imagine the sound is quite similar to that of an arrow hitting wood. You have to remember that while a Thief may be acting suspiciously, those in the household will be quite used to bustle and noise, and would not be suspicious unless something occurred quite close by. "Engaging guards in any form of aggressive way attracts all the wrong kinds of attention." Engaging implies tackling head on. The surreptitious taking down of guards who are alone is something quite different. Incidentally, I wonder whether loadouts would be a good idea? A player could choose whether to carry weapons, and if so which. If they take too much gubbins then they become slower, as you did on TMA/DP when you took out the sword or bow. I think the idea was that you hid your weapons beneath a cloak when not in use so your profile was less likely to catch attention, but whatever - it would be an interesting choice to have to make, and might encourage people to take the stealthier option. If you thought you could manage without gas mines and so on, perhaps you could move very very fast and quietly...