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Things that could be improved


Berny

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There is no visual feedback as to how much strength you will throw something with. A player may wonder how long to hold till they are throwing furthest? Put another way, you throw an item with x force, if you hold down attack (or use for some equipment), then x increases until max.

 

Player doesn't know when max is reached.

 

Player doesn't know how quickly max will be reached.

 

Is the strength even increasing according to some curve? No idea!

 

I've looked at other games, but of the ones that let you change the strength of the throw, I could not find one that doesn't outright show you a trajectory.

 

So here's the crux, what is the point of allowing the player this if it is so poorly communicated? What could be done to improve it?

 

Here's my 5 cent suggestion: as force is increasing, increase the FOV, when it stops increasing, max has been reached.

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If there's going to be any indication, I'd rather a tiny switch or bulb in the material of the lightgem frame popping out and moving along the bottom of it left to right for that kind of task.

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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It only takes a few seconds to get to full impulse. I'm not sure what the value of an indicator would be...if you're not sure, holding it down for an extra couple seconds is unlikely to be a hardship.

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Showing a glowing trajectory in the air before you throw it is the kind of modern hand-holding that TDM usually tries to avoid.

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Showing a non-diegetic 30 foot arc of bling light expanding and moving around in the air is about the worst kind of heresy to our minimalist & diegetic-if-possible design philosophy. I was worried that a minuscule knob popping out of the light gem might be too much. :laugh: (Granted we have the non-diegetic light up of entire doors... But that was already established and at least they're still real doors.)

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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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I'm not sure whether a FOV change indicating the throwing strength would really be that bad. It is pretty similar to the bow zoom, imho. In addition, the zoom doesn't have to be that strong. I guess this is one of the things one can best judge on when testing it, and like the bow zoom it could be something that could be disable-able (don't know the proper word here :) ).

 

I'm with Spring and dema, though, that any kind of trail would be a bad thing. Not only is it far from subtle, but it also shows you where exactly the object will land (if implemented properly), which completely removes the need of practise and skill currently accompanied with the act of throwing. To reuse the analogy to the bow, we also don't have a trail indicating where you'll hit there.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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I'm with Spring and dema, though, that any kind of trail would be a bad thing.

I agree with that. Also it there anywhere where you really need to throw a thing into an exact location? I only use throwing to divert guards and I hardly do it ever anyway...

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You need to in St Lucia for a puzzle, but you can also keep reusing the same rock until you get it. So mappers already take the uncertainty into account.

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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  • 2 months later...

In missions, I would like to see more grass in open, outside areas. Surely we can do that? There was a great looking demo map produced a wile ago with a grassy hill overlooking a river, with a building on the other side.

 

The cheapest way to do grass is to just use alpha planes with a texture mapped onto them.

Edited by kano
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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 3 months later...

Sorry to bump and old thread but I was wondering if an autowalk function could be added? It would be ccool for exploratory sort of maps, like in Betheda game where you can press Q to have the character walk around and you can "steer" with the mouse.

 

I know it's kind of a random suggestion but it would be nice to have it :smile:

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Can't you just put something heavy on your "move forward" key? :blink:

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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It wouldbe helpful to know how to do that (given that the post was the first given, I would generally presume less rather than more knowledge).

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Performance_Tweaks#Toggle_settings_in_realtime

 

 

bind "F11" "toggle _forward"

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Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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something else not wanted, the loot telling you what percentage of loot you've collected, and how much percentage is left to collect. Basically how would you know, does the thief have special powers and can pick up wavelengths coming from the loot telling him/her how much is left!!!!!??????

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something else not wanted, the loot telling you what percentage of loot you've collected, and how much percentage is left to collect. Basically how would you know, does the thief have special powers and can pick up wavelengths coming from the loot telling him/her how much is left!!!!!??????

No, thieves in general just leave the place when they don't expect there to be more to get, when the place becomes too dangerous (not in TDM) or when they can't carry more (not in TDM).

So from a logic perspective, the thief could be able to gauge the value of the loot already collected (already implemented in TDM by cycling through the inventory items until the loot overview is displayed) and compare it with his personal goal (implemented in TDM in the objectives screen for missions defining a loot objective).

 

But why should anyone want to add a reminder about the currently looted value. Most players will just taff around and collect what they find before leaving after they have visited all enterable places. Loot objectives are in general not hard enough to reach that the average player would need a reminder to search for more...

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  • 1 month later...

I do like the frobhelper (thanks to whoever coded it!), but I feel it still could be tweaked a bit.

 

1. To me, the "automatic" dynamic fade ins and outs are a bit unnatural and I don't like having to use it in that way (tweaking the delays didn't really help). The frobhelper should be something that I control. I feel like it should be a mode/keypress wherein I say to myself... ok I want to go into precision mode and stay there until I'm done.

 

2. One area I sometimes have trouble with is jumping to a spot. That is something a dot would help with, but the current frobhelper doesn't encompass this use case. Again, a modeful frobhelper would encompass this usage.

 

So, for a modeful frobhelper:

 

* One possibility is that turning on the frobhelper would force sneak speed until you turned it off. This would keep players from using the frobhelper 24/7 which I think is something developers didn't want to happen?

 

* Another option is having the frobhelper turn on when you lean forward and turn off when leaning back. I kind of like this option as it feels kind of natural, you're leaning closer and want to be more precise. This also doesn't preclude it from using it for standing ledge jumps... but makes it harder to use for running jumps... which "feels" like a good compromise.

 

I hope I've been constructive in my criticism. I really like the idea in general.

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2. One area I sometimes have trouble with is jumping to a spot. That is something a dot would help with, but the current frobhelper doesn't encompass this use case.

 

 

The frob-helper wasn't designed to help with jumping and I'm not sure how it could be...frobbing happens in the center of the screen, but jumping has no relation to that.

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The frobhelper should be something that I control.

 

That would mean another keybind and something to get the player out of the experience. Don't think it's a good idea since the player has already a lot on his plate. It's mapper's duty to set proper frob distances, biases or even turning off frob by script to make stealing items more seamless.

 

 

That is something a dot would help with, but the current frobhelper doesn't encompass this use case.

 

Not really. If anything, you'd need a completely different system that detects every ledge and measures the distance from player's feet to it, and uses some color coding to indicate whether it's safe to jump. Again, overcomplicated and rather unnecessary: practicing the jumps should either be a part of a tutorial mission, or it should be mapper's duty to teach player techniques needed to complete his mission.

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I'd prefer a dot that's toggle-able rather than comes on and off automatically too, although I'm ok with the automatic functioning being default and turning a toggle on by console or something since I don't have the same key-bind allergy in this case.

 

I understand the point about ledges too. He's not asking for a whole jump-help system. He's just saying it's helpful to know where the center of the screen is when you're jumping since you can more easily judge your jumps at different distances in terms of the center. For that matter, there's all kinds of instances when it could be useful to know where the center is, like, when I walk forward am I going to walk on this thin board or am I going to fall three stories to my death, or when I jump am I going to hit the rope or not, etc.

 

The point about mappers responsibility is misplaced, since this is the equivalent of large text for the sight-impaired... it's an assistance on top of normal gameplay. Maybe you're playing it on a different screen than usual, or you're a little drunk or sleepy, or you just don't want to double-think this one puzzle, or the mapper just didn't design it well, or it's just a small screen and a thin rope...

 

Edit: Some of his point was UI-philosophy related too. If one is going to have a more obtrusive UI element pop-up-able, for an immersive sim it's better to be able to toggle it on and off when you need it than have the system decide when you need it. That point works both ways, when you don't want it you don't want it popping up & are annoyed when it does/you can't stop it; when you do want it you want it popping up and are annoyed when it doesn't/can't.

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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IMO the automatic dot that is toggleable is the minimalist and best compromise here.

 

Speaking of things I noticed lately, I've been testing my models and materials against weapons and arrow sticking, and I noticed some differences between how broadhead and rope arrows react with the same surfaces. They both stick in the wood surface for example, but broadheads also stick into carpet and cloth, while rope arrows don't. I'm not sure whether this was made so in sake of "realism", but it feels inconsistent gameplay-wise.

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