Things that could be improved

[Berny]

Hey

 

I just wanted to create a Thread where everybody can post his improvement wishes.

 

I Personally love this mod. There are so many features in it, and because it is a mod created by a community, why not write what could be improved.

 

My wishes are:

 

Some special weapons. I loved T2X and the variety of weapons. Some really hard to find special weapons, like the confusion arrow or a special bomb would be cool. But they have to be very special, for example as a result of a side quest - or maybe a usable torch for easier killing the undead

 

More enemies, I think there will be an improvement, we just got spiders and zombies, but a higher variety is always good.

 

More (custom) conversation. Thats one of the main parts I'm missing - so much flair and atmosphere is getting lost without them. Also some comments from he main charakter would be nice. For example when a guard gets knocked out "hah, now who's the taffer" ...

 

better AI when the hear a voice. They start looking for you, but most of the time I just sneak into another room or a higher area and just have to wait, they should at least get someone with a torch or call other guards for help

 

 

 

These are only small parts of the game which could be improved and are only my points of view, maybe it's either not possible to create or it fits not in the design of TDM.

Edited May 14, 2010 by Berny

[Mortem Desino]

better AI when the hear a voice. They start looking for you, but most of the time I just sneak into another room or a higher area and just have to wait, they should at least get someone with a torch or call other guards for help

I actually custom-built this into anoott (NHAT 2/3). There's a mile-long script running where AI will determine the nearest friendly AI(s) within earshot, and shout for help. (It's not in regular TDM because it's very experimental and it's not very CPU-efficient at the moment.) You can probably see this happen most easily around the pub, by combatting the lonesome patrolling citywatch -- at the very least, the nearby guards will draw their swords in alert.

[ungoliant]

yeah maybe hold off on the complex AI operations until (if ever) multi-core support..?

[Berny]

hm, ok I thought that it's difficult to create..

 

couldn't it bee a possible that when a guard gets attacked, most of the times he cries for help and most guards in a certain area run to help him? 

 

 

[New Horizon]

yeah maybe hold off on the complex AI operations until (if ever) multi-core support..?

 

The functions of the script could also be incorporated into the source code, where the rest of the AI code is, and that way it could likely be handled a bit faster than the script allows. Our first run at AI was done with scripting, but we later realized it would be more efficiently handled in the source code. Thankfully, Greebo and Angua went to town on the AI and really delivered some outstanding work.

[mike mayday]

Hey guys! Just started playing the Dark Mod recently. Great work, many thanks for the loads of work you've delivered!

Well, now I can post some wishful thinking without sounding like an ingrate

My biggest wishes so far:

-guards noticing their patrolmates missing

-guards noticing doors being opened/closed (ESPECIALLY if it happens right in front of them!). If a locked room is left with a door wide open by the player, a guard should at the very least take a look inside.

-improving the AI. A situation from Sant Lucia- the old priest running in place in his bathroom shouting "help, thief!" and a guard in the corridor right next to it muttering "must be my mind playing tricks on me" and ignoring him.

-A more detailed door opening/closing animation

-Improving the sound (being blocked by walls, better dissipation with distance etc.)

Edited May 15, 2010 by mike mayday

[Serpentine]

-guards noticing their patrolmates missing

I have pondered this quite a bit, its something I like he idea of but cant justify as a game mechanic. If you make a guard notice a close patrol is missing, do you then send him off to join onto the missing path? does he actively search when walking it(and then, does anyone notice he is now missing? active search would be super slow, hit performance but also look a lot more "realistic") if you don't use the path method - how do you stop all the guards from getting caught up in the great investigation? What happens after the timeout, does he give up or go into an alert state? For a while I thought perhaps have it a "add this setting to a guard to make him look for missing guards", but then it becomes tricky and unexpected to the player - and thats something a lot of players really hate.

 

Typing up that, it actually sounds a whole lot more feasible than it did in my head a few nights ago, gah so much for my point!

 

-A more detailed door opening/closing animation.

Being light on team active team members at the moment, I'm sure we'd all like a few more door opening animations, perhaps locking/unlocking too but its just a matter of finding people who have some time to throw into animating or coding up these features. I seem to remember you were a pretty good modeler(or I'm just plain confused again)... ;D

 

 

 

And just on a general note to anyone else : If you want certain features (not that theres a 100% chance they will be used, but reasonable ones ) and have experience in the field, example modeling, animation or code - someone can always offer a hand in pointing you in the right direction and getting patches or resource materials in is not a problem as that for the most part doesn't take time and you don't require any special privileges to start building on TDM. It's also nice to give back even if its a single model, an fm or a hell, even someone looking over the wiki pages would be great!

[Springheel]

A situation from Sant Lucia- the old priest running in place in his bathroom shouting "help, thief!" and a guard in the corridor right next to it muttering "must be my mind playing tricks on me" and ignoring him.

 

Yes, for some reason AI don't always pay attention to other alerted AI...not sure why.

[Mortem Desino]

Yes. That was precisely the reason why I built that experimental script. I kept it anonymous to see how good it was, and so far nobody has piped up and found the behavior strange or different.

[Berny]

My biggest wishes so far:

-guards noticing their patrol mates missing

-guards noticing doors being opened/closed (ESPECIALLY if it happens right in front of them!). If a locked room is left with a door wide open by the player, a guard should at the very least take a look inside.

yeah, that's what I mean. Guards should be more playing together as a team and not as individuals, I know, this must be hard scripting work..

another thing is that guards should be able to use light buttons when they are looking for somebody

 

", but then it becomes tricky and unexpected to the player " - yeah - that's what I LOVE. I should be harder to hide when you make a mistake.

 

 

[mike mayday]

Hey Serp, yeah I can model a bit and I'm planning to supply some models in my free time. Animation and coding are way out of my field though :/

 

As for players hating the unexpected... well, I'm finding that hard to imagine but maybe leaving it as an option would be possible? Naturally if many guards start missing, their mates should start a general alarm.

 

This would greatly balance the overpowered blackjack and force the player to only use it when absolutely necessary, which would make the game all the more interesting.

[Fidcal]

The problem is that many players would hate to not be able to use the blackjack on every living thing. There are even some Thief players who will not play a Thief FM, no matter how good its reputation, if they hear that you cannot blackjack in it.

 

The answer is options. This is why I have tried to gain support for mapper options. These would be in addition to difficult options. So a mapper might create one that appears on the difficulty menu as, eg,

 

Guards notice missing friends yes/no?

[Serpentine]

Hey Serp, yeah I can model a bit and I'm planning to supply some models in my free time. Animation and coding are way out of my field though :/

 

Haha, no worries man - every bit counts and its great to see

 

The answer is options. This is why I have tried to gain support for mapper options. These would be in addition to difficult options. So a mapper might create one that appears on the difficulty menu as, eg,

 

Guards notice missing friends yes/no?

 

Thats actually a pretty decent compromise! Similar to the way it was done in Heart really.

[mike mayday]

If you manage to implement it, I will send you my firstborn... gecko.

[Berny]

some more little creatures would me nice, small mice, oder small non harming spiders, or rare snakes, or ravens... yeah a raven which flies away if you come would be very cool and spooky

 

I want some really scary maps - like F.E.A.R style or the cradle

 

 

[_Atti_]

I think Ai needs slower reactions to seem more clever, or slower movements would be nice.I think they are way too fast in determining if a noise or visual is a threat enough to wield sword and run toward it:)

 

I think they should also remain a lot more silent.. they comment their actions a bit too much, thief 1,2 had those moments of Ais, silently searching for you, and often noticing them a bit late because of that and that added a lot.. that and their slowness, it created a feeling that the guards are afraid a bit, and that made you fear too.

[mike mayday]

Personally, I found it waaaay too tiresome. If I had a hiding spot that was good enough, I had to spend a lot of time, waiting for the guards to finish their slow search routine. DM has it perfect- they search carefully but quickly enough to not make the situation boring.

Edited May 15, 2010 by mike mayday

[stumpy]

some frogs that can be placed on toadstools or big lillies on ponds.

[nbohr1more]

More GUI options to disable advanced visual effects (yeah, I know, just create an autoexec.cfg in the Fan Mission specific folder and drop in the cvar's but it's nifty to have a labeled GUI choice).

[mike mayday]

Hey, I got another idea for an option to make BJ'ing less overpowered Make it so that hitting a helmet is loud!

[ironpants]

I think Ai needs slower reactions to seem more clever, or slower movements would be nice.I think they are way too fast in determining if a noise or visual is a threat enough to wield sword and run toward it:)

 

I think they should also remain a lot more silent.. they comment their actions a bit too much...

 

I agree - particularly that AI need to be way more silent! AI barks are played too frequently and the relatively small selection of them exacerbates the problem. It's extremely jarring when a group of AI are alerted all at once because they just talk over each other in a bizarro cacophony of repetitive AI barks. It just wrecks suspension of disbelief. For the sake of immersion I heartily suggest lowering the chance and frequency of AI barks and restricting simultaneous talking.

 

I think the voice acting is quite good and would be easier to appreciate without barkspam. Less is more, in this case.

[Bikerdude]

Evening

 

I don't know if this has been discussed either external or internally, but tdm needs more of the items

 

Clothes:

folded items - trousers, tops socks, shirts, etc.

hanging items - coats, jackets, dresses, etc

 

Materials:

Folded - blankets, sheets, towels, etc

hanging - same as above.

 

Others:

Coushions, soft toys (we need something to use with the jorge sound)

 

Frequently I find when making a map there is nothing to put on shelf's, to help a room looked lived in. In fact what tools would I have to use to create this much need objects? and what the correct way to submit them..?

Edited May 18, 2010 by Bikerdude

[Bikerdude]

For the sake of immersion I heartily suggest lowering the chance and frequency of AI barks and restricting simultaneous talking

Mappers and Authors can do this manually btw... change the bark times for idle, talking, sleep etc.

[Springheel]

You should notice a slightly reduced number of barks in 1.02.

[nbohr1more]

Weapon-less Melee?

 

Like grabbing a sword-ed arm to prevent a slashing...

Kicks...

Punches...

Tripping...

 

(there was probably some raging debate about this idea already... sorry)