Things that could be improved

[wesp5]

I agree, one big line up of all the keys to be defined would be much easier to handle for the players.

Edited March 11, 2022 by wesp5

[Xolvix]

There is one advantage with how all the settings categories are currently listed - every available option per category is presented on the screen at once. There's no chance the player could miss that something could be set/changed because they didn't realise they had to scroll to get to more options.

That said, it does seems like the keybinds are where they are because while there's some overlap between Movement and Actions, there's literally no more space in the Movement subsection to put anything else so it kinda spills over into Actions. The game supports scrollbars, we know this in the mission downloader. Maybe a UI refactor is on the cards.

[DeTeEff]

This must have been discussed before, but I have no exact wording for it, but I will try to do it via this scenario: The player is sneaking around in a room with lots of humming machinery and loud sounds. It's very annoying that the AI has super hearing and can distinguish that THAT sound came from the player and thus, he is alerted to your positon. Would it be possible to add some kind of sound mask when designing a mission so you need to produce more noise to be detected?

I feel bad for posting this, as I believe this has been discussed before, but as I don't have any wording for the "issue" it's hard to do a search...

[thebigh]

It's probably possible to do this crudely with scripts: decide on which machinery noises you want to obscure your footsteps, identify the guards that patrol that area and then scale their audio acuity to your proximity to the noisy object.

Edited March 12, 2022 by thebigh
I can't type today

[peter_spy]

10 hours ago, Xolvix said:

There is one advantage with how all the settings categories are currently listed - every available option per category is presented on the screen at once. There's no chance the player could miss that something could be set/changed because they didn't realise they had to scroll to get to more options.

The problem is, that leads to incessant clickfest, because you might not remember which category given keybind belongs to. A clear-looking scrollbar will always indicate that there are more options available. Moving keybinds to the center of the screen and giving them alternate column for secondary bind could also be an improvement.

[Oktokolo]

12 hours ago, DeTeEff said:

The player is sneaking around in a room with lots of humming machinery and loud sounds. It's very annoying that the AI has super hearing and can distinguish that THAT sound came from the player and thus, he is alerted to your positon. Would it be possible to add some kind of sound mask when designing a mission so you need to produce more noise to be detected?

Player action audio masking could even be automatic.

The cheapest solution would be to reduce player-generated sounds by a factor determined from current overall ambient loudness at the player position. Sounds at the player position have to be calculated anyway, so the extra CPU load should be negligible.

Obviously, that would be a pretty naive solution, because noise at the AI location would not be taken into account.
But it would still be an improvement to immersion and mappers could still tweak the acuity of the common machinist working in the boiler room.

[thebigh]

The problem with that is that some sounds, no matter how loud they nominally are from their spawnargs, shouldn't interfere with interfere with guards being able to hear the player. Imagine a big city ambient speaker consisting of background hubbub like indistinct voices, crickets chirping, and a dog barking somewhere in the distance. That might have its volume set pretty high but it absolutely should not interfere with guards hearing your footsteps.

[VanishedOne]

On 3/12/2022 at 4:32 AM, DeTeEff said:

This must have been discussed before, but I have no exact wording for it, but I will try to do it via this scenario: The player is sneaking around in a room with lots of humming machinery and loud sounds. It's very annoying that the AI has super hearing and can distinguish that THAT sound came from the player and thus, he is alerted to your positon. Would it be possible to add some kind of sound mask when designing a mission so you need to produce more noise to be detected?

I feel bad for posting this, as I believe this has been discussed before, but as I don't have any wording for the "issue" it's hard to do a search...

Here's the earlier thread:

According to this, LGS tried adding a 'Loud Room' property to Thief 2 but it ended up unused.

[Oktokolo]

21 hours ago, thebigh said:

The problem with that is that some sounds, no matter how loud they nominally are from their spawnargs, shouldn't interfere with interfere with guards being able to hear the player. Imagine a big city ambient speaker consisting of background hubbub like indistinct voices, crickets chirping, and a dog barking somewhere in the distance. That might have its volume set pretty high but it absolutely should not interfere with guards hearing your footsteps.

The base ambience loop normally isn't loud at the player position (and every single time it actually was, it also was quite annoying). So yes, it should lead to an acuity adjustment factor of zero.

The acuity adjustment factor can be offset by a constant value to achieve that.
And a bonus would be, that volumes below that offset value would actually lead to higher acuity - matching real world experience.

So: Less acuity in noisy environments - but more acuity in silent environments.

[AluminumHaste]

This feature exists in the first Splinter Cell from back in the day.

When there was noise like from thunder or loud machines, your detection meter went up, indicating you could make more noise before being detected.

[thebigh]

There's also the issue of how to handle speakers with smaller radius than those of your footsteps.

[Anderson]

On 3/11/2022 at 3:19 PM, thebigh said:

Use the object handling controls to rotate it and touch the bright end on the candle or torch you want to light.

It's just like picking up a lit candle and using it to light another.

Thank you for the tip.

Ok, this needs to be in the tutorial. I don't remember the tutorial explaining this mechanic.

It's really counter intuitive to drop an item in order to use it. I usually drop items if I never want to see them again. Sometimes I can even do that with keys if I'm 100% sure I won't need them, or if I can unlock the same door with lockpicks. Because it's a real hassle having over 9999 items cycled through the inventory when I need something right now - such as a health potion or a lockpick and there's a guard coming. Especially with lockpicks, it's all about timing.

We should be able to use the slow match directly from the inventory rather than dropping it for use.

Edited March 14, 2022 by Anderson

[OrbWeaver]

4 hours ago, Anderson said:

Because it's a real hassle having over 9999 items cycled through the inventory when I need something right now - such as a health potion or a lockpick and there's a guard coming. Especially with lockpicks, it's all about timing.

You know you can immediately select lockpicks (and toggle between them) by pressing P, right? No need to find them by scrolling through the whole inventory.

I'm not in a position to test right now and I don't recall whether there is a dedicated shortcut for health potions, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was one. Maybe check your key binding preferences to see what inventory shortcuts are available and what they are bound to.

[Anderson]

1 hour ago, OrbWeaver said:

You know you can immediately select lockpicks (and toggle between them) by pressing P, right? No need to find them by scrolling through the whole inventory.

I'm not in a position to test right now and I don't recall whether there is a dedicated shortcut for health potions, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was one. Maybe check your key binding preferences to see what inventory shortcuts are available and what they are bound to.

The problem is that I have a memory of a chicken and don't play often. But I remember since the Thief games that the brackets change inventory selection.

[wesp5]

2 hours ago, OrbWeaver said:

You know you can immediately select lockpicks (and toggle between them) by pressing P, right?

Isn't that L for lockpicks and K for keys? And I bet this is never mentioned in the game itself as well.

[thebigh]

P is for lockpicks.

L activates the lantern.

now i sound like Baby Corbin's First Alphabet Book

[Wellingtoncrab]

While I think it is kind of cool, perhaps in addition to the slow match that “flint” tool which appears in multiple fms or some equivalent could be added to core as it’s a bit more intuitive when it comes to relighting light sources.

Also as someone who is also terrible at remembering key shortcuts I like to use the inventory grid to jump around items quickly - default key I think is tab - or at least that is what I bind it to.

It’s also good if you periodically like to use a controller.

[thebigh]

Maybe the reason the slow match is like that is that it can be used to light candles and torches that aren't themselves frobbable.

[Wellingtoncrab]

Maybe I am misremembering but I thought the flint tool in Snowed Inn/Written in Stone/etc also did this. Not sure how it works exactly- but since fire arrows can relight extinguished light sources I figured when you used the flint tool it just stimmed the extinguished light source in the same manner and throws some satisfying sparks in for good measure.

Edited March 14, 2022 by Wellingtoncrab

[Oktokolo]

21 hours ago, thebigh said:

There's also the issue of how to handle speakers with smaller radius than those of your footsteps.

My suggestion is to just use the volume of the sounds, the player hears - as that is, what has to be calculated anyways.

It isn't the most realistic way to do it. But it is cheap and easy to gauge for players as they can hear the noise level at their position.

[datiswous]

3 hours ago, Wellingtoncrab said:

but since fire arrows can relight extinguished light sources

I didn't know this.. How could I have known this?

6 hours ago, Anderson said:

The problem is that I have a memory of a chicken and don't play often.

Would be nice to have a notes file that can be accessed  in every mission in the inventory, in it you can write down the shortkeys and some general gameplay tips. I guess this can be done with a plugin.

[thebigh]

11 minutes ago, datiswous said:

didn't know this.. How could I have known this?

It's on the wiki, and from the original Thief games it's a reasonable expectation that it would work in TDM, but you're right- there's nowhere in the game or training mission that this is is mentioned.

[DeTeEff]

On 3/13/2022 at 8:59 PM, AluminumHaste said:

This feature exists in the first Splinter Cell from back in the day.

When there was noise like from thunder or loud machines, your detection meter went up, indicating you could make more noise before being detected.

Yeah, I remembered they had a meter that measured your noise, and a bar went up if the ambience sound was loud and you could create noise, as long as you stayed under that bar. Nice game, too bad they stopped making more Splinter Cells in that vein. 

[wesp5]

13 hours ago, Wellingtoncrab said:

Maybe I am misremembering but I thought the flint tool in Snowed Inn/Written in Stone/etc also did this.

In that case I am all for replacing the slow match with the flint, because the later makes more sense. Yes, TDM plays in a magical world, but why doesn't the slow match burn through your clothes or backpack? I never heard of one before playing TDM and it is more difficult to use as has been discussed. BTW, I think it would also be cool to add a magical dummy item called "loot sack" or similar to the inventory which is supposed to decrease size and weight of the loot !

Edited March 15, 2022 by wesp5

[Anderson]

47 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

In that case I am all for replacing the slow match with the flint, because the later makes more sense. Yes, TDM plays in a magical world, but why doesn't the slow match burn through your clothes or backpack? I never heard of one before playing TDM and it is more difficult to use as has been discussed. BTW, I think it would also be cool to add a magical dummy item called "loot sack" or similar to the inventory which is supposed to decrease size and weight of the loot !

Many FM's alredy use the slow match so I don't know. Each author would have to replace it manually. I never thought of the realism side of it. Maybe the PC can light or extinguish the flint every time. Idk.