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Yeah, I wasn't trying to add that much more on top of T2, just trying to get up to the level of T2 pretty much. If I'm not mistaken, you could execute different blocks by holding block and sort've moving your mouse opposite the direction of the AI's attack, and it would kind've choose an appropriate block for you. So if they slashed at you from your right to your left, you'd hold block and jerk the mouse from left to right. I swear I once did a sabre parry #1 in Thief (the parry where you flip your sword point down and block an attack to the lower left quadrant of your body, if you're right handed). As for the AI, I think having them do a parry + riposte is a good idea, maybe we can make use of animation blending to have it look right when they make an attack after blocking. It's hard to make general statements like they should always hit the player with their counterattack though. It seems like it will be hard to actually balance the combat.

On a similar note, I hope TDM doesn't get bogged down in "option frenzy" whereby the player essentially chooses what game they're going to play. As far as I'm concerned, it would take far too long to evaluate all the possible choices, then ascertain which is best. Hopefully enough design decisions will be made by you lot, and then the FM makers. At the same time, I hope we either and up with a lot of campaigns, or individual missions mostly sticking to the similar bunches of settings. One thing I wouldn't want is for you to end up being required to get used to a whole new game for every single mission. Naturally, this wouldn't be a problem for a campaign, where it may as well be a whole other game, and it is worth investing time in learning everything required.

At the moment we're only discussing the player arm animations, this is in preparation for the promotional trailer that is in the early stages. It will definately be useful for the AI when the time comes.

Good points Domarius, sometimes less is a lot more. Its true what you say, the AI conversations with the player were much more compelling than any q&a dialogue precisely because you never left the "moment" to read through an unconvincing list of possible responses. The AIs always said the right thing at the right moment, barring scripting errors and such, and it kept the flow of immersion moving right along.

I haven't looked in to getting an AF setting on the guard yet. I used the doom naming convention for this guard's skeltion though, so it shouldn't be too hard. Has death been coded in yet for our AI? I can put the player sword anims in, they're very easy to do, much easier than the guard anims, but they will need coding as well, it's not just a matter of doing the animations. I could take this opportunity to put the new arms in as well, but that might mean redoing the existing bow and BJ anims. I hope not.

Wow, that's excellent. I should have been more clear though when I asked though. I was referring to the sword animation and mesh for the player arms. It would be cool to have that in there if it isn't too much work.

Its important to get the essentials working first. T2 rope arrow is nice and simple in concept. I'm already having difficulty just working out how to detect collision with it, while still alowing the player to intersect with it. So even though it seems simple its already complex enough to try and attempt. You're not wrong. There is a reason we aren't taking on the huge task of trying to make a Thief virtual reality simulator and all the gameplay problems that will subsequently need to be dealt with. It's always like this - add more realism, break part of the gameplay, add more realism to compensate, break another part of the gameplay, etc. etc.

Yup, it will be a movie for sure. Been getting some footage with Dram's mansion but I'm going to wait until both he and BT have finished tweaking their maps. I think there will be a lot of great footage to get from both of them. oDD, since we're not in any rush to put this together, would it be a lot of extra work to put a player arm ingame with a sword? I think that would be a nice surprise as well. As for animations, a walking an idle animation would be cool. Lets just take our time and put together something really fun. When Spar comes back, we'll sync up with CVS and see what we have.

As we have pointed out in several posts, there will be no climbing gloves. There will be an alternative however...other than the rope arrow obviously. It will require a bit more skill to use this alternative and hopefully require the player to think. That's all. Nothing more to see here.

Using items an resources doesn't come free. It has to be implemented, and it has to be processed by the CPU. This is a VERY good reason to limit what a player can do and is probably one of the most deciding factors. That a crossbow requires no training and can penetrate armor, was exactly the reason why this weapon was outlawed for peasants. Because it could unbalance the political hierarchy which was based on warriors aka knights, using armor and having a big advantage in battle. Now considering that this was a real life issue, you can easily imagine that such a weapon would unablance a game much more if it were done realisticly.

In fact, the AI should have a map of the level with the player maked as a flashing red dot.

Yes sure, give the AI super abilies to balance out the players unlimted abilites, give them all unlimted uber weapons and gadgets to counter each other and you have a fun game, but this ins't Unreal Tournament we're making. Balancing the game in a realistic way means limiteing the player's equipment and abilites.

Here is what I picture the rope-bolt to be like, and why I think it could be made to work (given a lot of stretching for fantasies sake.) Imagine the head of the bolt to be four prongs, like one of those gardening tools you jam into the ground and twist to tear up a plug of dirt. The prongs would be arranged so that the points would form a square if you looked at em head on, equidistant from one another. These prongs would be the anchor of the bolt. Set in the middle of the four prongs is the corkscrew head, primed. You fire it, the prongs and the tip of the corkscrew sink into the wood lets say 3 inches, not impossible with a crossbow keeping in mind they have a lot more power than a similar sized bow. So now the prongs are set and the screw point is too. The second stage is triggered. A powerful spring mechanism, contained within the shaft (whichis why I recommended they should be made outta metal) is released and begins to unwind, driving the screw head into the wood. The four prongs are now acting as anchors to give the mechanism counter screw leverage against which to push, keeping the screw headdriving forward instead of it pushing itself out of the wood. So now we have four anchors 3 inches deep into the wood and the corkscrew mechanism driving lets say an additional 6 inches in. Considering that the Thief is a smaller sized dude, thats a lot of anchoring. Hell, rock climbers tap pitons into cracks a LOT less deep than. Finally, a small but sturdy ring holds the rope attached to the prong part of the head. As oddity pointed out, the player need see none of this but I wanted to describe it specifically to make it believable. Obviously, such a tool would be way expensive, this isnt the work of the local blacksmith I assure you, maybe gnomes or some mechanically inclined breed. The mechanism would not be retrievable though the rope could be, thus limiting them.

I'm workig out what the private guards will look like. We already have the basic hired thug, so these are the professional hired guard, and the elite guard for hire. You can see the professionl guard is pretty similar to the guards nobles hire in Thief 2. I wanted to give the elite guards some protection for the face. I'm still workig on a pauldron design, and maybe some armour plates hanging from the breastplate around the chain skirt. I'm not sure about armoured boots, since they'll need to be able to run as well. THey are well armoured and deadly with all their weapons, and I don't want the player taking them out with a broadhead from the shadows. The chances of hitting this guard in the face with an arrow at disance are now very small.

I may be confusing a discussion of rope arrows I read on TTLG with this list, sorry if thats the case. But it has been brought up once or twice here in the last few months I believe, in fact I think it was obscurus that brought up the point but maybe thats incorrect. And while the crystal arrows are unrealistic, the explanation that they are magical in origin goes a lot farther in explaining them than the rope arrows. To my thinking, the rope arrows, again I loved em too, demand too much magic to account for them. I can believe in a magic crystal that does certain things, hell most of the imbeciles that really believe in magic wear the damn things in their ears and around their necks, but the rope arrows never had anything to explain them. The crystals were elemental crystals, brimming with magical power, but where the hell did the rope arrows come from? They were just there. At least the vine arrows made sense, a magical plant based thingy that struck and wrapped tough vines around whatever surface available. They looked like they would work if they could really exist. All the other magical items in the games and FMs had some precedent in fantasy literature, magical potions, magical weapons, magical crystals, magical gems. But rope arrows? And to add to it, they didnt LOOK very sturdy when they stuck into wood, sometimes I would climb up a zillion feet to find my arrow had barely stuck into the surface of the wood. It detracted from the immersion. The rope bolt however has more going for it, crossbow bolts leave the bow with much more acceleration, therefore striking with greater force, and the clockwork screw head explains exactly why they would stay put in wood. Not that the player needs to see all that, but if he/she KNOWS it before hand it supports the immersive effect.

Absolutely correct, I just wanted to provide a solid description for the player to keep in the back of his/her mind. Perhaps the info could appear in a tome the Thief bumps into one night in Baron XYZs' library. The Thief would chuckle and say "Ahh, thats how these dang things work!" Maybe the bolts head would look a little funny or something, the shaft would be all metal, and there might be a kinda clockwork noise as the screw part drills in. This could be another penalty, a small odd noise, similar to the original noisemaker arrows, that would attract the alert guard down the hallway. Of course I leave any such details up to you and your magnificent Muse.....

One, because a rope-bolt that drills itself into 8 to 10 inches of wood is not going to be reusable by a thief who cant spare the fifteen minutes to work it back out of the wood. Two, because the spring mechanism that would drive such a bolt with enough force to penetrate wood would require some sort of leveraging device to twist it back into its armed position, I doubt the thief would carry around a work bench and the special tools necessary to crank it back into place, a task that only the craftsmen who made them would know how to do correctly anyway. Three because making them a one shot deal forces the player to use them sparingly, as does their cost. Also, they would naturally be bulkier than a standard bolt, taking up more room in the Thiefs kit and weighing him down a bit more. Also, the rope-bolts range would be reduced,as they have more mass, unless Oddity would like to construct a compound crossbow that could have different levels of tension for different tasks. You apparently missed the point that rope arrows are controversial. The problem with rope arrows, as much as I loved them, was that they were wildly unrealistic, even taking the presence of magic into account. My detailed description of a rope-bolt was meant to address that issue by presenting a much more feasible mechanism for letting the Thief put a rope where he needs one. Its still fantastic, but much less so than a simple arrow that barely sticks into wood and which spurts a fifty foot rope out of its ass when it hits. And which then supports a 100 plus pound person climbing up it. Good gameplay goes hand in hand with good immersion, with some exceptions of course, stupidly UNcomplicated critiques of the ideas of others, well, they really dont rate at all.

THe only possibility that it adds to the gameplay is that you can make it easier for yourself by eliminating all the AI I want to see some AI that can't be disabled or killed with your James Bond set of gadgets, and that you actually have to sneak around like a real thief.. What's the point putting an elite guard in if the player can just snipe at him from the shadows and kill him with one arrow.. Anyway, mines and gas arrows are not going to be removed form the game, so you get to keep your uberweapons and you can easily knock out or kill these guards.

They are not uber guards, they are expert fighters, and you, the player, are not. Obviosuly, compared to you they are uber, but thats mostly because you are shit. You are not out to kill elite guards, you are not a fighter, you are a thief. Yes, they can just use arrows, there's no reason to introduce bolts, they'd have all the same range of tips anyway,just shorter shafts.

As I said, the player can choose which to use. I have heard crossbows being mentioned as a weapon alternative over the years from fans at TTLG and the Ion boards. BT, there's a plugin you can get for lightwave which makes rope from 2 point poly chains. It's not free any more, but I have a verison from when it was in beta if you want it. THe word you wanted was 'strands')

You mean you want both options available, or are you suggesting replacing the player's bow with a crossbow?

Exactly, so no need for uber 'kill any AI on the map' weapons then... I was making this crossbow for the elite guard, and I'm thinking that I'd like to use this in the game instead of the shortbow. It's easy to do, just knock up a few crossbow animations alogf with the bow ones, and that's it. The player can choose which he wants to use. There's no need to go into the ballistics phyisics of crossbows Vs shortbows, it's just an asthetic choice.

THought I'd make a separate thread for the spider anims, since they're obviously completely different from anything else in the game. I've already built a pretty good animatable IK spider rig in maya, so I may as well do all the spider anims. There;s not that many anyway. List I can think of - Walk Idle Player spotted Attack Pain Death - a fully animated death of the spider rolling on its back wth the legs curled in, like spiders all do. An articulated figure will not work here, since the spider's body would just drop to the ground with the legs all spawled out and would look stupid. I'm not sure if we need a walk and a run, but even so the run can just be the walk played a little faster. Here's the walk/run done anyway. If you aren't using firefox and want to see this at full speed you'll have to save it and play it in irfanview (or whatever image viewer you use) IE and Opera slows all my gifs down to half speed for some reason.

A while back someone mentioned a "Spotted the player!" anim - could we do that "rear up front legs and bare fangs" position for that?? It sees you and goes "hssss!!" and does that freaky pose, and then darts toward you - normal run anim. Although I wonder what it would be like if it did a charge attack with its front legs still raised. Regarding the death anim, I would preffer to see it die the way a normal spider does, cause it's a sight we all relate to - with its legs all curled up tightly.

What has that got to do with an RPG either? This is a battle hardened war veteran, who killed 100 men in bloody face to face melee combat. You only survive that long by being fucking good. He's covered in plate and chainmail and wields a bastard sword, and you can be damn sure he knows how to use it. A skinny liitle thief with a short short would die in seconds, and that has to be shown in the game. No one in their right mind would even considerr attacking this guy, unarmoured, with a short sword. Would you start a fight with the world boxing champion or a martial arts expert? No, and this thief wouldn't start a fight with this guy either. The player has to learn that this isn't a shooter, and he hasnt got the automatic right to be able to kill everyone in combat. Unfortunately there are idiotic items such as gas arrow and landmines in the game, and we obviously can't make these elite guards immune to them. If it was up to me, landmines and gas arrows would be removed from the game, and they had no right to be there in the first place.