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Things that could be improved


Berny

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Usually guards are not allowed to take food or stuff without permission. If you're placing an object right in front of their path they might get lured to look around first and check there's no one looking and take the fruit or coin. Cause they're always hungry.

 

For 2, scaring an AI out of a room might turn out to be too easy unless it causes an alert. It'd be hard to design a challenging map if the player can clear any room without effort.

 

 

 

 

 

Catching a rat takes effort as well. So if implemented wisely in a map it can sort of compensate each other. Besides it would only be one rat you can have in your inventory(bag).

Edited by Taquito
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What about Thief: Deadly Shadows-like lockpicking? That would be awesome!

 

I like it better than the classic lockpicking style. A lot more challenging than that, especially for the beginners (I remember having trouble with that when I first played Deadly Shadows, took me some time to figure it out). Feels awesome when you learn how to pick the locks, and it's a bit realistic too. "HOLD THE RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON TILL IT'S UNLOCKED" - The only thing that I don't like about the first two Thief games. I know that TDM's lockpicking is a bit different than the original one - you need to know when to stop holding the right mouse button. Still, I don't really find it interesting.

 

Of course, it could be offered as an optional feature. Anyway, I don't think this will ever happen though (You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one... :D), all the fan missions are likely to require a rework for locks...

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As PC Gamer put it:

 

“Unlike other tributes to older games, the mod's makers also weren't precious about reinventing Thief's systems to make them better. Every developer with an interest in creating professional pilferers should look to The Dark Mod's lockpicking system and, well, steal it. It's not tied to a minigame, but it's also not a canned animation you have to endure. Instead, you wait while your master thief does the job, and use sound cues to identify and mark the end of the sequence. The result makes you feel like part of the process, but also keeps you detached enough to listen out for approaching guards. It's a perfect balance of interaction and situational awareness, creating tension and rewarding advanced planning.”

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I was playing Dragofer's One step too far FM the other day. Almost all AI who sat down on their patrol routine got stuck, at some point, in the sit up/sit down/slide inside chair glitch.

 

I could have been extremely unlucky, but the glitch feels quite prominent. Anyone else seen it recently?

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Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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I filed this bugtracker issue back in March the first time I noticed this. Just put it on the 2.04 roadmap, since there have been more sightings since then.

 

We broke something in 2.03 when improving the AI animations, and unfortunately never saw this bad behavior during alpha and beta testing. The AI is getting his animations confused when alerted during the sit down / stand up cycles.

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As PC Gamer put it:

 

“Unlike other tributes to older games, the mod's makers also weren't precious about reinventing Thief's systems to make them better. Every developer with an interest in creating professional pilferers should look to The Dark Mod's lockpicking system and, well, steal it. It's not tied to a minigame, but it's also not a canned animation you have to endure. Instead, you wait while your master thief does the job, and use sound cues to identify and mark the end of the sequence. The result makes you feel like part of the process, but also keeps you detached enough to listen out for approaching guards. It's a perfect balance of interaction and situational awareness, creating tension and rewarding advanced planning.”

 

Each to his like, but i still think Fallout or Skyrim's system is way more fun. TDM's system is cool, but it's not like everyone should steal it, because it's the pinnacle of lock picking systems or something.

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Sure. If you look at it in a vacuum, it's a dumb boring quick-time event.

 

But if you consider the fact that the game doesn't come to a screeching halt whenever you attempt to lockpick a door, the genius becomes apparent. While you're listening closely to the tumbler, the guards are still doing their rounds. You must be forever alert to your surroundings or be caught at any moment. That's where the fun should be coming from, not some stupid popup minigame.

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Building off this post about the sound system (in reaction to the criticism it got on a recent review video), and to keep from dragging that thread off topic, I'll bring it up here.

 

Do we have any kind of organized agenda for improving the sound system? Including a bugtracker entry?

 

That can include better/more realistic directionality, sound attenuation, etc, the things Rich mentioned in his post I linked.

 

I recall reading about it here and there, although I wasn't sure how much was fixing individual issues and how much was having an organized & bigger agenda (like what's happening with rendering), but anyway just bringing it up here as something to remember.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Do we have any kind of organized agenda for improving the sound system? Including a bugtracker entry?

 

That can include better/more realistic directionality, sound attenuation, etc, the things Rich mentioned in his post I linked.

Getting EAX to work properly is the only "big" change coming for sound. There are no bugtrackers for occlusion or direction.

 

Should there be? I wasn't aware we had occlusion or direction problems.

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Wrt the video, a couple things:

 

1. His complaint seemed to be that the Thief AI made more noise than ours: whistling, coughs, ahems, idle barks. So it was easier to hear them coming.

 

2. Our AI can hear the player a lot easier than the Thief AI. W/o knowing whether he used the Hearing slider (or even knew about the Hearing slider), it's tough to react to that type of comment. The slider is there because people said "It's too hard" or "It's too easy" and we decided to accommodate both.

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Sure. If you look at it in a vacuum, it's a dumb boring quick-time event.

 

But if you consider the fact that the game doesn't come to a screeching halt whenever you attempt to lockpick a door, the genius becomes apparent. While you're listening closely to the tumbler, the guards are still doing their rounds. You must be forever alert to your surroundings or be caught at any moment. That's where the fun should be coming from, not some stupid popup minigame.

 

I don't see a reason why something like the lockpicking system in Skyrim and Fallout wouldn't be possible to be done in real time, maybe even with the possibility to look left and right if you heard something. The reason why it is not real time in Skyrim and Fallout is rather a gameplay decision. Opening the inventory ingame stops the game too, because you're supposed to heal yourself in the middle of a fight e.g.

Edited by chakkman
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Getting EAX to work properly is the only "big" change coming for sound. There are no bugtrackers for occlusion or direction.

 

Should there be? I wasn't aware we had occlusion or direction problems.

The sound system could use some love in my opinion. Perhaps some kind of filters would do the trick. For example, being under water "should" muffle all surrounding sounds. Perhaps a similar, more subtle, filter could be used on visportals as well?

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Regarding sound, I have another question: Is it possible to easily apply an effect to the sounds guards make? I am currently working on a ghost based on the commoner and would like some kind of echoing effect on the sound files. Do I need special software here or can it be done with simpler means? (Sorry, to change the subject here, but the current discussion fitted my question) I would also be happy if filters/effects can be applied depending on regions the player is in, like the_deep suggested. For the moment This would suffice for my WIP.

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The sound system could use some love in my opinion. Perhaps some kind of filters would do the trick. For example, being under water "should" muffle all surrounding sounds. Perhaps a similar, more subtle, filter could be used on visportals as well?

 

There is a bugtracker for underwater sound; haven't gotten to it yet.

 

Not sure what filter could/should be used on visportals other than mapper-controlled occlusion, which we already have.

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Regarding sound, I have another question: Is it possible to easily apply an effect to the sounds guards make? I am currently working on a ghost based on the commoner and would like some kind of echoing effect on the sound files. Do I need special software here or can it be done with simpler means? (Sorry, to change the subject here, but the current discussion fitted my question) I would also be happy if filters/effects can be applied depending on regions the player is in, like the_deep suggested. For the moment This would suffice for my WIP.

 

Isn't that what EAX provides?

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There is a bugtracker for underwater sound; haven't gotten to it yet.

 

Not sure what filter could/should be used on visportals other than mapper-controlled occlusion, which we already have.

Sorry, I didn't realize.

 

I'm thinking a simple low pass filter would suffice, with its intensity controlled by the mapper. Perhaps with a gradual transition between the outside and inside of the portal.

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I'm thinking a simple low pass filter would suffice, with its intensity controlled by the mapper. Perhaps with a gradual transition between the outside and inside of the portal.

 

A portal is a plane, so there's no gradual transition through it based on distance.

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I recall EAX comes with a lot of settings, like air pressure, reverb, room size, wall texture type, humidity, um, other factors that control how sound travels through air that I can't even remember because I'm not an acoustic engineer. You can tailor it to get some cool effects. (You can steal the settings from other FMs if you want to know how to get started.)

 

Edit. You set the EAX settings in an .eax text file, then you apply them to the room via the location_settings entity referencing it. Pretty simple. The wiki page explains it.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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