Things that could be improved

[kano]

Personally I would really love to see the materials updated so that grates and things which are made up of a transparent texture can cast checkered shadows onto the walls, rather than blocking all light as if they are solid. I could swear I've seen this feature in one mission or two. If I understand correctly shadow maps are required to allow this, and also of course one must be careful to not break missions by making there be light where there shouldn't be, etc.

 

It is probably best left up to the FM authors to decide to enable this feature, rather than making it default on already-released missions. I imagine a tickbox or something that says "allow transparency for shadows" when a mapper adds a great to their mission.

 

PS: I love the new volumetric shadows (also exclusive to shadow maps), they look really awesome. I'm just thinking of other ways to milk shadow maps for all they can do.

Edited April 10, 2022 by kano

[wesp5]

13 hours ago, kano said:

Personally I would really love to see the materials updated so that grates and things which are made up of a transparent texture can cast checkered shadows onto the walls, rather than blocking all light as if they are solid. I could swear I've seen this feature in one mission or two. If I understand correctly shadow maps are required to allow this, and also of course one must be careful to not break missions by making there be light where there shouldn't be.

I never noticed this, but if it is true I am all for fixing it! Also I can't imagine a situation in which a mission author would use this on purpose and I think me must get away from the idea that we can't do thing because of earlier missions. As just discussed here with the open-on-frob problem, it's better to go ahead and fix the missions where this is a problem later!

Edited April 10, 2022 by wesp5

[thebigh]

I don't mind so much that the doors open automatically when you pick them. It's that they always seem to swing towards you. I'm in a lit, tiled hallway trying to pick a door before the guards come back, that's tense and atmospheric. And then the door swings in an annoying direction- that's just a nuisance and somehow reduces the tension while increasing the danger.

[wesp5]

5 hours ago, thebigh said:

It's that they always seem to swing towards you.

Hm, I'm pretty sure in Bloodlines they always swing away from you which is unrealistic, but better for gameplay.

[Oktokolo]

On 4/10/2022 at 9:57 AM, thebigh said:

I don't mind so much that the doors open automatically when you pick them. It's that they always seem to swing towards you. I'm in a lit, tiled hallway trying to pick a door before the guards come back, that's tense and atmospheric. And then the door swings in an annoying direction- that's just a nuisance and somehow reduces the tension while increasing the danger.

Yes, in a lot of missions, the architects are ridiculously ignorant about door opening direction. In general, doors should open into the rooms, not the hallways. And while there don't seem to be any regulations about that in "the city", that is something, authors surely could know from first hand experience as it almost always is that way in real life...

But we also see timberframed buildings with vertical beams cut by windows in most TDM missions, so i doubt that architectural realism is valued a lot in this community...

[thebigh]

I haven't exactly been innocent of that myself. But it's something I'll keep in mind for my next mission. I figure people plop down door prefabs and then forget or don't bother to check the direction.

[kano]

re: shadow maps and the awesome new volumetrics. Anyone else noticed that the sky is not affected by them? E.g. stand under a volumetric and look up at the sky. You can see it clear as day. Engine limitation?

[datiswous]

More sliding doors

[datiswous]

8 hours ago, kano said:

E.g. stand under a volumetric and look up at the sky. You can see it clear as day.

Can you post a screenshot?

[datiswous]

In file mainmenu_newgame.gui , windowDef ModInstallationNotesText change the textscale to 0.17   ( curently: textscale 0.21 ) .

This means more text is visible in the Notes window of new missions.

What I don't get is why nowrap  false  as described at https://iddevnet.dhewm3.org/doom3/guis.html does not work here. This would make the text scrollable if it is larger than the gui windowDef size.

Edited April 19, 2022 by datiswous

[datiswous]

I think the Notes window for missions should be listed in the main menu (when mission is installed), because previously it was accessible directly every time you start the mission. Now not anymore with the new menu.

[Frank Cotton]

Can the lockpicks be changed

The minigame is decent I am talking only about the design

A modern snake/rake and diamond pick are meant for modern tumbler locks

The keys and locks in TDM are mainly warded locks it would make more logical sense to have the appropriate looking tool a picking wire

here are two videos about picking warded locks

 

If there is interest I could make some icons and 3d models for the picks

Edited April 22, 2022 by Frank Cotton

[Wellingtoncrab]

Not sure if it would possible to remove or extend the 144 character limit for string variables (not sure if 144 is the precise limit, but I recall it being around there)?

I ran into this limit a couple of times developing my mission so I can elaborate on some potential use cases:

1. Dynamically appending text to a readable: At one point the player had a journal which would update with clues/lore/etc as they made discoveries in the mission. In this case the order in which text was appended to the file was important, as the player could uncover there clues in effectively any order so doing something like just swapping a xdata reference wouldn’t work well imo. This was relatively easy for even a weak scripter like myself to implement up until the point the variable storing the appended text filled up to the character limit (which was pretty quickly). There was a work around proposed in a bug tracker entry but it was beyond me and i could never get it working. 
2. When this didn’t work I pivoted to the objective system but ran into the same issue - there is a script event which allows you to dynamically update objective text with ease but of course you are also limited here. I could see a reasonable response here being “Why would you ever need more than 144 characters for objective txt” - to which I would shrug and say “sure” - but you do run into the character limit before filling the space afforded to the mapper by the objective GUI so why impose the limit?

Anyway - it may seem like a small thing really, and it likely is generally speaking, but text is such an important element of the game in my opinion I would at least appreciate and leverage the ability to do more dynamic and interesting things with it.

 

[Melchior]

GUARD BARKS!

THIEF!!!

YOU, TAFFER!

RRAAAGH!

ENGUARD!

HAVE-AT-YE!

DIE!!! , Ect...(need more of these - as they are non-existent for most voice sets)

Its also really immersion breaking, when they draw (whatever) weapon SO SLOWLY I had time to blackjack them twice...(not that it works)

Even if they just pushed back / kicked-punched, and then drew a sword.

[Springheel]

19 minutes ago, Melchior said:

DIE!!! , Ect...(need more of these - as they are non-existent for most voice sets)

Every voice set has these.

[demagogue]

On 4/22/2022 at 3:34 PM, Frank Cotton said:

Can the lockpicks be changed

The minigame is decent I am talking only about the design

 

 

I think the design is established now for the core game just as a matter of legacy.

But I think it would be a good idea to make ones with the other design and make them available for individual FMs to use if a mapper wants. Any asset can be changed for an FM, so the answer to your first question is yes.

I say go ahead and make them and let's see how they look in game. We're an open source game. Make what you want to see. That's always been the TDM way!

[thebigh]

One cool effect I'd like to see is a key ring. No more cycling through numerous keys in your inventory, keys you grab go on the key ring which then opens any door to which you have the right key.

[demagogue]

T2X did that trick I think. It's a bit non-diegetic for my taste, although people have different opinions on it. (I wouldn't like it if there were only a few keys, but when there are more than 6 or so it starts sounding better.) I think it's another good example of an alt mechanic people should be able to add in themselves.

Someone may have done it somewhere already as a mod, if you search the forum for it, because I know we've talked about it before.

You can at least press "k" to cycle through keys very quickly, click, click, click...

[vozka]

On the topic of guards, is anybody bothered by how they don't respond to noticing the player immediately but after a short delay? Seems like it might be intentional because most people don't have inhumane reflexes and it takes a moment of confusion to realize what's going on when somebody surprises you. But the issue is that between the moment when a guard has you in his line of sight and when he starts acting, he usually just continues what he was doing. This creates weird situations where guards just walk past you on their patrol after clearly seeing you and then suddenly turn around, yell and attack you. 

From a gameplay perspective obviously it's not a big issue, it just often looks wrong. So I was wondering if that's intentional or what was the motivation. I'm thinking that playing some sort of "confused, looking around" animation on the guard would make this situation look much better.

[AluminumHaste]

So guards used to instantly react to seeing the player and go right to level 5 combat alert.

Players complained this was unfair so it was made a little more relaxed.

 

Now, we have players complaining that guards react too slow.

 

[New Horizon]

58 minutes ago, AluminumHaste said:

So guards used to instantly react to seeing the player and go right to level 5 combat alert.

Players complained this was unfair so it was made a little more relaxed.

 

Now, we have players complaining that guards react too slow.

 

 

Depends on what situation the player is talking about.  The delayed reaction was supposed to be based on distance.  The guards 'should' react less quickly depending on 1. how well lit the player is 2. The guards distance from the player.

They may have also changed their audio and visual sensitivity in the main menu and forgotten.

 

1 hour ago, vozka said:

On the topic of guards, is anybody bothered by how they don't respond to noticing the player immediately but after a short delay? Seems like it might be intentional because most people don't have inhumane reflexes and it takes a moment of confusion to realize what's going on when somebody surprises you. But the issue is that between the moment when a guard has you in his line of sight and when he starts acting, he usually just continues what he was doing. This creates weird situations where guards just walk past you on their patrol after clearly seeing you and then suddenly turn around, yell and attack you. 

From a gameplay perspective obviously it's not a big issue, it just often looks wrong. So I was wondering if that's intentional or what was the motivation. I'm thinking that playing some sort of "confused, looking around" animation on the guard would make this situation look much better.

 

So what kind of situations are you seeing this delayed reaction?  How well lit is the player and how far away is the guard roughly?  Also, have you set the vision and hearing of the guards in the main menu settings any lower?  Have you tried increasing the AI's vision in the settings menu to something higher?

[datiswous]

14 hours ago, thebigh said:

One cool effect I'd like to see is a key ring. No more cycling through numerous keys in your inventory, keys you grab go on the key ring which then opens any door to which you have the right key.

It's interesting. I guess when you pick up a new key a key is created in your inventory which replaces the previous key based on what it is supposed to open (inv. icon might change as well) in combination of what you can already open. I guess you can have some sort of tracker that tracks your current keys and selects the correct key based on that info. At least that is how I think about it.

[Hooded Lantern]

for me its ambience, similar to the following link. most fms does'nt have this. some are just silencio.

 

[vozka]

On 4/25/2022 at 3:02 PM, AluminumHaste said:

Now, we have players complaining that guards react too slow.

Perhaps I was unclear because that is not the case. I am complaining that the way the delay is manifested in the game looks wrong, not about the delay itself. 

The delay itself is probably pretty realistic, but in real life the guard would not react by completely ignoring something he's seen and going on with is life for a few seconds before suddenly turning around and attacking the character. He would probably stop and be confused before realizing what's happening and then attack. 

 

On 4/25/2022 at 4:03 PM, New Horizon said:

So what kind of situations are you seeing this delayed reaction?  How well lit is the player and how far away is the guard roughly?  Also, have you set the vision and hearing of the guards in the main menu settings any lower?  Have you tried increasing the AI's vision in the settings menu to something higher?

I will have to focus on it next time I'm playing because this is just something that I realized now after reading this thread, not something that I focused on recently. I have not changed any of the AI settings and I think it happens when I'm partly lit and the guard is pretty close. 

[OrbWeaver]

12 hours ago, vozka said:

Perhaps I was unclear because that is not the case. I am complaining that the way the delay is manifested in the game looks wrong, not about the delay itself. 

The delay itself is probably pretty realistic, but in real life the guard would not react by completely ignoring something he's seen and going on with is life for a few seconds before suddenly turning around and attacking the character. He would probably stop and be confused before realizing what's happening and then attack. 

Not just a cosmetic issue in fact — it would be better gameplay for a guard to stop and enter a "Huh?" state for a couple of seconds, giving the player a cue that he had been spotted and giving time to run away, rather than have the guard act as if nothing was wrong and then suddenly enter a combat state.

Perhaps this could be solved fairly straightforwardly by setting different delays for the various levels of state transitions. I.e. transition from 0 (unalerted) to 1 (huh?) could be instant, but the further transition from 1 to 2 or more (actual attack) could be significantly longer.