KOs & Kills

[Aprilsister]

While playing "A Score To Settle" I have come to the realization that I need these questions answered definitively.

 

1. Can you KO someone with repeated blackjack strikes? Or is that, once you miss the opportunity afforded the nice, clean, unexpected first strike, you will only end up beating them to death?
2. If a shouldered ragdoll says "Body" as opposed to "Corpse" does this mean that the person has not been killed?
3. Is there an in-game TDM GUI way of checking stealth score while in the middle of a mission? Or maybe at least someone knows a console command to get at the things I am obviously interested in here (Kill-count, KO-count...)?

Thanks

[Shadowhide]

1.no,only clean neck hit . by repeated blackjack strikes you can beat AI to death

2.Corpse-dead , body - blackjacked

[Aprilsister]

Well that's why I have had to ask these question; I want a definitive answer.

 

...Because if what you say in response to #2 is true then what you say in response to #1 is not. I have just whacked a guy 3-4 times in the head with my blackjack and felled him... didn't want to kill him and hoped that I hadn't... picked him up and he was labeled "Body".

 

So I guess what would really help clear this up is an authoritative answer to the "Body" vs. "Corpse" question. The rest can be figured out with this info alone (I'd just like to have those other answers if they are something someone can readily provide).

 

Thanks.

[Springheel]

Can you KO someone with repeated blackjack strikes? Or is that, once you miss the opportunity afforded the nice, clean, unexpected first strike, you will only end up beating them to death?

 

It's possible to KO someone with repeated strikes, though you can't count on it.

 

If a shouldered ragdoll says "Body" as opposed to "Corpse" does this mean that the person has not been killed?

 

Correct.

 

Is there an in-game TDM GUI way of checking stealth score while in the middle of a mission?

 

No, there's not. Not sure whether there's a console command...I don't recall ever hearing of one.

[Fidcal]

1. I am not certain.If you hit an AI with the blackjack but they don't get knocked out but alert then I think you can still KO a commoner; I think you can KO them even if alert. Maybe this is on the wiki in the manual. But otherwise you'd have to wait for AI to go off alert and try a KO again. If not then yes, you can beat them to death.

 

2. By default, a dead body says 'corpse' when shouldered and an unconscious body says 'body' but the mapper can change these to eg, Jack's corpse or anything so theoretically a mischievous mapper could switch corpse and body around. In practice I think you can accept with 99.99999999999% certainty that body means KO and corpse is dead.

 

3. dunno.

[Aprilsister]

Okay, thanks. Those are what I was hoping to hear and also what I expected to hear. It's basically as I had imagined it. The bludgeoning method is a risky one because it's a matter of reaching a certain level of damage beneath the lethal level and this probably falls within a tolerance of about one good whack!

 

Knowing that, unless the mapper, as Fidcal postulates, would have to intentionally manipulate the built-in system to falsify these two distinct labels is good enough for me.

 

I'll find out about the console thing myself, I figure it's almost sure to be there somewhere in some kind of "count" variable.

Edited July 2, 2011 by Aprilsister

[demagogue]

[*]Is there an in-game TDM GUI way of checking stealth score while in the middle of a mission? Or maybe at least someone knows a console command to get at the things I am obviously interested in here (Kill-count, KO-count...)?

Thanks

 

The stealth score & Alert info is computed at the mission end in the GUI, so you can't get get the score itself during the game (before it's computed).

 

But there's a running global cvar, like an array (not sure what type of variable it is) called something like "AIAlerts(all_alerts)" which counts alerts, giving a number that can be further broken down into types of alerts -- by level (like AIAlert(Level1_alerts), level2, etc...); by type (vis alert, sound alert...); and some other breakdowns I think.

 

I don't know if you can read it from the console, but IF you could, this is the variable you'd call in-game to get the info you're looking for. You can get the specifics (the exact spelling of the variable & its parameters; e.g., I think AIAlerts is right, but I just used random terms for the parameters and you'd want to use the exact term) from the gui code for the stats_screen (with the other gui stuff) in the source code. [Edit: BTW, I believe there is another cvar for KOs and maybe kills, but these don't count towards the stealth score, which is just the alerts.]

 

BTW, I wanted to know how to get this info in-game myself because Level-5 alerts are a bit buggy and I wanted to know how it was incrementing; but I never got it working (I didn't think about getting it from the console). So if you do figure out how to track it, please post it. It's generally a useful thing for all of us to know how to do anyway.

[Aprilsister]

Oh, sorry didn't check back for a while there... Um... here's what I found out:

 

There is a console toggle command called "tdm_show_health". Default is "0" but if you set it to "1" it'll show the health of all such things that have a health property.

 

So, NB! Be careful that this might get you into spoilage trouble! Only turn "on" when looking directly down at character in question down and/or at the best angle you figure will be "backgrounded" by the void and not other AI "behind" the AI in question -- no matter how far off in the distance, no matter how many bits and pieces of mapped geometry (veils, windows, walls, mountains) there may be, you will see their health as well. Spoilage!

 

Anyway upon the gazing upon the slumpt character in question you will see a "Health:" and a number... Dead As A Doornail = -1

 

...

 

The Kills and KOs (and other mission stats obviously) are in an "SStat" structure instance in the code called "AIStats" which is a component of a "SMissionStats" structure instance called "m_Stats" which is protected in a class called "CMissionData" instanced as "g_MissionData" and pointed to by "m_MissionData"; So, I think it should be relatively handy enough to have an in-game GUI screen, much like the "Objectives" "pop-up" that came with 1.04(?), that could give the full array of mission statistics at the touch of a hotkey as we play along?

 

...

 

Also, if y'all are still here and still listening: I had a lot of come-back-to-and-find-them-mangled-up-and- having-moved-out-into-the-middle-of-the-street bodies in this one (i.e. Springheel's "A Score To Settle").

 

Just so you know. Whatever it was with whatever used to happen in other missions with, I guess, some of the earlier models... occurs here. Repeatedly. And dramatically.

 

I might narrow it down to the first 3-5 guys you'd encounter if you headed east (as apparently you are supposed to {I didn't; I did much as Fidcal did; I always choose LEFT! (politics ) when given the chance}) on your way north.