Things that could be improved

[Fidcal]

Looking at Jesps great tip for holding up objects to block arrows and even retrieving them if its wood gave me an idea.

 

A shield! This should be quite do-able and add to player tools gameplay. Make one of the existing shields inventoryable and carryable. When you are getting shot at then whip out your shield and hold it up. But a custom made thief shield would be better, small as practical. I nice unbreakable glass one would be good with a wooden frame so you can see through and get a few free arrows if you're lucky. There are occasional situations where you are pinned down (up?) say on a roof and want to go to the edge to judge where to jump to. I remember a situation in a Thief 2 FM where I was stuck for ages having to make a jump, a twist and run for a ladder down to another street all under a barrage from a sniper on another roof.

[LEGION]

Sorry but body awareness has been well discussed by the team and will not be implemented. We are generally all agreed on this.

 

Why is that? Too much work/effort or don´t you liked it?

I would love it, it´s very long that I played DS, but that was a really nice improvement, especially for the lockpicking part.

 

And about the shield-idea. Hmm, if it´s some small arm-mounted shield I would like it. But exactly for this idea the body-awareness-thing would be most fitting...

Ok, not really if the shield is shown on the left arm that comes in like the right sword/blackjack-arm...

[Fidcal]

Both. As I recollect the TDS implementation was not well liked by those of us who discussed it and it would be a lot of work. Personally I found it distracting in TDS. We don't even support the player shadow although you can set it. I like the shadow myself - or rather I am not distracted by its obvious flaws and the atmosphere it evokes overshadows those.

[New Horizon]

Well, I checked four death sounds again. I got big respect to vocalist (probably New Horizon), but I prefer doom 3 death sounds. I don't know the correct definition for it, but loud one sounds more like mouthwash to me. I would prefer a shrill? one which can startle me. Do community really afraid when they die in a mission? this's the question should be considered.

 

And yeah, there's no way to satisfy everyone in the community

 

The voice actor was Brodie Macrae. A very talented stage actor. When I recorded them with him, I wasn't trying to mimic Garrett...that really wasn't the point of creating them. You have to create a character that the actor is comfortable playing. Brodie and I discussed it, found the players voice and worked from there.

[LEGION]

Yeah, the PlayerShadow is great! It only doesn´t 'fit' while climbing ladders/ropes (or selecting weapons/leaning, but that´s not important). This is an animation-problem for the thirdperson-model, right?

 

Hm, as I said, I played DS a long time ago and actually I´m only available of remembering the promo videos that showed the body awareness that looked damn good, have to play it again to see how it 'feels'.

But at least for lockpicking it would be nice, wouldn´t it? Like animate the already existing Blackjack-arm and copy it to the left and well, in my mind it is so easy. Again I think about this 'convert-brainvision-into-DarkRadiant/ Model-program'-cable connected through my nose or some other openings, hope somebody is inventing this right now...

 

 

Erm, it wasn´t worth a bugtracker-entry, so I write it down here:

 

The skeleton-skull (as I saw it in Illusionist´s Tower by the 9-riddle-room1) has a flesh-sound when dropping.

Also the player-footstep-on-wood-sound is actually stone (or did I post this somewhere before?), that can easily tested in Fidcals Trainer.

 

edit: Oh, recently I re-adjusted my soundcard-settings(mainly Mixer (wav to 100%) and Mastervolume(36%)), now they are the same that I use in Doom3 and now the player-footstep-sounds are not too loud anymore, they are just perfect! It seemed, I had TDM adjusted too loud itself. The menu music isn´t that loud now, but it all fits now better, guard sounds too. Sorry, if I complained about the sounds-volume before.

Edited August 14, 2010 by LEGION

[New Horizon]

Why is that? Too much work/effort or don´t you liked it?

 

The team voted against it for many reasons, so no...you won't be seeing it. Sorry.

 

It's a completely different movement system, and we aren't willing to sacrifice player control for eye candy. It also introduces many new technical issues and limitations.

 

The amount of work to pull it off 'better' than TDS, or any other game out there would be staggering. We don't have a development team full of animators....nor the resources to produce 'motion captured' animations.

 

Long story short. We set out to rediscover the movement and feeling of Thief 1 and Thief 2. That was theobjective, and that's why we won't pursue body awareness. Someone may decide to make their own body awareness mod, but it's unlikely to be officially supported. A use at your own risk kind of thing...as we would have no way of controlling how it affected gameplay.

[Springheel]

But at least for lockpicking it would be nice, wouldn´t it?

 

How would you make the animation line up with the lock? TDS handled this by "sucking you in" to a specific spot when you tried to lockpick, something that was universally loathed.

[Tch]

This doesn't matter to me, since I'm accustomed to the telekinetic handling of lifting objects, opening doors, and picking locks without visible hands out in front of me doing it, but Morrowind handled lockpicking with a visible arm. When you equipped a lockpick, you'd see your arm holding it out in front of you, and if you were close enough to a door to use it, your arm would just sort of sweep forward in a vague gesture at the door and play either the success or failure lockpick sound. Very abstract. Not much different than the telekinetic approach.

[New Horizon]

How would you make the animation line up with the lock? TDS handled this by "sucking you in" to a specific spot when you tried to lockpick, something that was universally loathed.

...and also by placing locks in the middle of doors.

[LEGION]

Locks in the middle? My goodness, but this rings a bell in my mind. And sucking in view? I really should play TDS again...

 

Hmm, I was just thinking of the lockpick-arms being raised and adjusted to the lock. Or the view could be slightly centered to the lock? Or would that be too much?

I always make sure that the lock is in center anyway (because I lean forward while picking and then the sound can be coming from left or right depending on my position). Then again, the sucking-in-view could simulate my leaning forward. But you say it was loathed, not loved?

What if the sucking-in would be animated like leaning-forward, hmm. I mostly stay, say 45° in front of the door. Would the individual angle be preserved or would you always sucked in at the same defined angle?

Best would be the arms adjust themselves to the lock in all three (x,y,z) axes.

 

And if this arm-adjusted-to-object -thing could someday made be possible I would like to see an arm holding frobbed items, too. Or maybe the arm-position is fixed, and the items are adjusted to the hand...

 

The arm is already there, if I were a highly talented animator, what software whould I do need to achieve this visions I have?

 

But depending on your answers I´m allowed to dream of it, but it very likely will never be a feature of TDM, yes?

[New Horizon]

...but it very likely will never be a feature of TDM, yes?

 

Not an official feature at least. If someone outside the team creates a separate add on, they're free to try and make it work...but then they'll have to make it work within all the existing missions.

 

Hmm, I was just thinking of the lockpick-arms being raised and adjusted to the lock. Or the view could be slightly centered to the lock? Or would that be too much?

 

It's technically limiting. Yes. In any case, it isn't something that will be an official feature.

[rich_is_bored]

You don't have to dream about it. The source code is available and free modeling/animation packages exist. If you sit on your hands, it's only because you've chosen to.

[Fidcal]

...If you sit on your hands...

LOL subtle genius in the context. Nice one RiB.

[Berny]

I don't know if it came up here, but I have to write it.

 

Pleeeease, if your mission is not to kill anybody, let it be able to kill monsters like spiders! ;(

 

or separate between - don't kill servants/human/guards/anybody

 

it's a bit unrealistic if you are not allowed to kill spiders... ;(

Edited August 15, 2010 by Berny

[Fidcal]

This was never a policy - it arose because there was some problem setting the objective for humans only. I forget what it was or if it was fixed.

[gnartsch]

Having played a first set of ~10 TDM missions so far, I really enjoy the gameplay a lot.

 

 

There are just a few things that do not seem to fit:

 

- footsteps of the guards (especially on stone or marble) tend to sound like the guard-exchange in front of Buckingham Palace or some Sowjet soldiers doing a parade in presence of Stalin or maybe a board dropping down on the floor.

- some guys (when hit with the blackjack) sometimes fly through the air like having been hit by a truck with 30 MPH. I think I have seen some even doing a somersault.

- the voices of the guards: well, I would really prefer some stronger voices in general (some stupid, some with authority).

Most do sound like they just crawled out of bed still suffering from a heavy disease and lacking any power or aggression in their voices.

 

Some really good points:

- the lockpicking really requires your full concentration. Bad if you know that you have to hurry up. But hey, that's realistic !

- the climbing capabilities are much better then in any other game in this 'Dark' genre.

But how can you mantle down a ladder if you can't jump on it ???

I thought 'C' should to the trick, but it seems to work only if you want to go UPWARDS.

- nice object manipulation stuff (like lighting/dousing candles as needed)

[LEGION]

You should 'mantle' ladders automatically after you 'touched' them.

Can´t complain about any of the voices, only thing is that variety is missing.

 

I have to make a correction for my wood-footsteps-report: Not the player, but the guards have the stone-sound played.

And also, the slate-footfall-sound seems to be played at his highest volume possible, seems louder than on tile!

 

About the modeling-stuff: Well, where would I start? Where to seek knowledge and what software would I need?

And why would I have to adjust it for every existing mission?

[demagogue]

About the modeling-stuff: Well, where would I start? Where to seek knowledge and what software would I need? And why would I have to adjust it for every existing mission?

 

You could start with googling animation software, and think about whether you want something free (like Anim8or) vs. something you have to pay for (like Motion Builder or Maya). Then tutorials for all of these things will be on forums and YouTube videos; again you'd google for those. The rule of thumb is, when you're dealing with a popular software almost any question you have will inevitably have been asked by someone else and answered somewhere.

 

Then you can download the Dark Mod source code from the "Downloads" link on the Darkmod front page. Try to get as far as you can with the annotations in the code itself, on the wiki, and in forum searches, then if you have a question you ask it here. You'd start by exploring the files looking for anything that has to do with lockpicking and player animations, and that should get you pretty far, if not all the way. Then lots of testing will shake out anything you're still missing. (For the player model and some existing animations to use possibly as a base ... I don't know if you can get those from the DarkMod base; but if you can't you should ask a team member in a private-message about those files, what you want to do, and they can work with you if you're serious about it.)

 

As for adjusting it for every mission, that was Fidcal just hinting at some of the problems that can arise when you start dealing with alternate branches of a game, something we're all familiar with now dealing with the Dark Mod updates (1.01, 1.02, etc.) Sometimes a new feature changes how things were done previously, and old FMs won't work with them if you're not careful with compatibility issues and work around them. But you usually don't really know what might be broken until you start actually doing the work; so Fidcal was just telling you that as something to possibly look out for. I don't think he had in mind a specific issue he could already predict.

 

BTW, if we are going to recommend fans make alternate-branches if they really like some feature, it might not hurt to have a wiki page with some best-practice suggestions, like how to look out for compatibility issues, how to package your branch and make it easy for players to use it and still easily go back to the main branch ("vanilla TDM") without messing anything up, etc. I myself think it's very cool the TDM source code is open so fans could do some pretty major and cool game-adjustments if they don't mind doing the work. But it has to be feasible to use the branches to realize its potential. I mean for down the road, though. We have plenty of priorities to get to before getting to that. And I understand that some branch-features may be more feasible than others.

[Tels]

- the voices of the guards: well, I would really prefer some stronger voices in general (some stupid, some with authority).

Most do sound like they just crawled out of bed still suffering from a heavy disease and lacking any power or aggression in their voices.

 

Yeah, this is also something that irks me. The German voicework for the original Thief was much more agressive, with the "HALT! WAS MACHST DU DA!?" instead of the "ha, I am *snork* getting you..*trailing off voice*".

 

I guess German always sounds more authoritan, (papers please! issue aside) but it might also more a language issue (e.g. it sounds that way only to Germans), but as you said, more agressive voices (or at least voice lines) would be good.

[Bikerdude]

So how were the lines I did then..? I did a mixture of commoner, guards and builder... if need be I can do some more for Serps..

[Melan]

I guess German always sounds more authoritan, (papers please! issue aside) but it might also more a language issue (e.g. it sounds that way only to Germans), but as you said, more agressive voices (or at least voice lines) would be good.

What can you say about a language that calls butterflies "Schmetterling"? That sounds like a name for a flying death machine!

 

 

FWIW, I come from an ethnic German family on my dad's side, so don't take this as an insult.

 

[gnartsch]

No insult taken by everybody referring to the German language.

But this is not the point here anyway.

Having played "some other" games like T1/T2, I must say they have the proper temperament in the voices in the english version as well.

I haven't played them in german for quite a while, so I can not even say if they were different in that point.

 

Bikerdude, I do not know which lines were created by you, so I can't tell.

 

Some voices are good (e.g. the priest in St. Lucia), but others are lacking variety and both in speech (text lines) as well as commanding authority expressed by the voice itself.

 

"I'LL RUN YOU THE ORGANS, TAFFERBOY !"

"YOU'LL BE FULL OF HOLES !!!"

 

And I miss Benny !

Edited August 16, 2010 by gnartsch

[Mr Lemony Fresh]

I still think there should be an adrenaline mode, where you get a burst of energy that makes you move 20% faster, you could just take the out of breath swimming code except that when you run out of energy, you go back to regular speed.

 

Wouldn't it be great if you could sprint away from your impending doom rather than jog away.

 

Another thing, I reckon when climbing/mounting things, your approaching speed should effect how fast you can climb up.

It'd be good for getting away from guards, but in general it'd make getting around more fun.

[LEGION]

@demagogue:

Thanks, so I´m not limited to a specific software, at the end everything can be converted back right? I already have a software called 'gmax', that I wanted to use for some Doom3 weapon tweaking, but it´s very likely I´m lacking the skill and knowledge for now. Also when it comes to the source code I´m helpless. Oh hell, I can read the guide for C++ five times and I still don´t understand it...

I have highly respect for all you guys that you are so much talented and skilled...

[Fidcal]

Speed potions were discussed by the team and generally agreed not good. It certainly does not want to be implemented as a 'mode' in the sense of just selecting a key because that would break existing maps so it would need to be an 'adrenaline potion' or something in later FMs. I think that is something that might be done externally (not by the team) with a script but I'm not certain.

 

I think the idea of a faster mantle might be good if it is possible and practical. Hard to tell though the difference between being in a hurry and run jumping across to a ledge then silently and slowly pulling yourself up. I think it might have to be a manual selection somehow.

 

I think the existing voices are fine. Adding to them more aggressive voices would be good rather than change any existing ones.