Slash tapestries?

[i30817]

Someone was looking for that hoary old t2 workaround (slashing tapestries to reveal secrets & passages), and i was thinking why not resolve the issue that lead the original t2 team to use slashes? Make a animation for "holding a tapestry away from the wall" and while it is thus "moved" access the wall - problems: doors that open outward.

 

You could even use it to "hide behind" a tapestry in low light or something like that.

 

http://bugs.angua.at/view.php?id=3014 I don't think full physics are needed.

[demagogue]

Your two main avenues of world interaction are frobbing stuff & swinging a weapon. What you're talking about sounds like you'd frob the tapestry, which would need it to highlight & sort of defeats the purpose of hiding anything behind it. The other option I guess is like curtains in some T2 FMs, where you can just walk through them and there may be a little animation as you're passing through. That's a possibility.

 

BTW, as I said in the comment of the bug entry you posted, this isn't really about coding anything in the engine. The engine can handle any of these options now. It's more about making the assets themselves & setting it up. Even a dedicated fan could make them. *hint* *hint*

[Springheel]

I had a slashable banner more or less working at one point years ago, so it can already be done with existing assets.

[Bikerdude]

ah yes that would be very handy, to have a slash-able banner hide a loot stash or secret passage way etc.

[Baddcog]

I made some for t2 that just pulled to the side.

 

I actually liked it better because you're not running around hacking stuff and destroying the place. In t2 they were all hackable and you barely ever found anything anyway. Did the original games ever even hide anything behind them?

 

Still, it's like loot paintings. For the most part you don't think to check them but... If they frob.

 

Kind of like non-frob doors with handles

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For t2 it was just model tweqs, 5 models in a row that animated.

 

We could simply have a couple bones on one and the player could pull it away, but they let go and it would fall back. If it was just an animation they could slide it sideways on the pole and it would stay out of the way until they frobbed again to close it. Best way to go imo. Also would'nt require an af, though an af for a simple 2 -3 bone object is pretty easy.

(ie: the af bucket I made for testing a long time ago.)

--which leads us back to, do we want to start having stuff like that around? It's not like a few jointed objects will kill performance.

[demagogue]

If you want a quick & dirty version that does the job, just take a regular tapestry func_static & covert it to a func_damageable, then set the spawnarg so it has low health & gets destroyed when damaged, and target a speaker with a one-shot hit sound. Or if you want to be fancy, get in blender and make a ripped version, then have the func_damageable replace the model with the ripped model, with a count of "1" so it stays with the ripped version. (To have an animated kick, you'd just make the damage model animated when it's spawned ending with the ripped static state.)

 

Here's where it's documented (i.e., tells you what spawnargs to use & what they do): http://www.modwiki.n...le_%28entity%29

[Sir Taffsalot]

I miss the slashable banners from the original Thief games. Please bring them back.

[SiyahParsomen]

it was absurd to slash banners with a sword in thief series. I prefer another approach as Baddcog suggested.

[Bikerdude]

it was absurd to slash banners with a sword in thief series. I prefer another approach as Baddcog suggested.

We could have both so the mapper has the option..?

[Baddcog]

I'm all for standardizing. Slashing banner sucks because if you don't do it but are require to in one map you'll never get it.

I never use the sword and try to be sneaky, pulling out a blade and hacking stuff up really goes against the core gameplay imo.

 

At least if they are frobable and you get close you'll know it.

[Sotha]

I'm all for standardizing. Slashing banner sucks because if you don't do it but are require to in one map you'll never get it.

I never use the sword and try to be sneaky, pulling out a blade and hacking stuff up really goes against the core gameplay imo.

 

At least if they are frobable and you get close you'll know it.

 

+1.

 

Why would a thief slash a banner, while he could just move it and peek behind it?

[nbohr1more]

I think that slashable banners kinda appeals to the same motivations as edible food.

 

You can eat the food; so it is a joy to do so.

 

You have a sword; so it is fun to use it for destruction.

 

Both of these can also count as a gleeful avenue of virtual vandalism where you can snicker at the aftermath of the mess you've created.

 

This appeals to the pranksters amongst us...

 

Though, it might be best reserved for missions where you are specifically instructed to damage and vandalize...

[Bikerdude]

You can eat the food; so it is a joy to do so.

You have a sword; so it is fun to use it for destruction.

This appeals to the pranksters amongst us...

+1

[Springheel]

It actually is pretty silly to be able to cut through banners with a sword. I'd like to see banners that had an 'open/close' animation like baddcog suggested. I've had that on my list of things to do for years but never get that far down the list.

[Baddcog]

Well, slashable is as easy as a model slash on damage stim.

 

Animated I suppose would need a new func? Frob_animate (or do we have that), which could be used for a lot of stuff.

It would need seetings for open/close, or On/off rather.

On would start animation 1 (opening- and would stop at the end), Off would start the closing (second anim). I think that would be best, it would leave it open to a lot of possibilites.

 

The banners are on rings and have plenty of mesh tessalation so they would animate great. I could do that but I'd need some files, they are all lwos I believe. FBX would be the best probably. Probably doesn't matter if they align with regular banners, an animated one would be a seperate entity.

[PranQster]

This appeals to the pranksters amongst us...

I couldn't agree more

But on a serious note, I'm divided on the slash-able banner issue. It does seem absurd to do so. But at the same time, in the very first T1 mission (non-training) Lord Bafford's Manor, there was a banner to slash to get into the room with the sceptre (through secret passage and rafters).

So the idea of slashing at a banner to reveal stuff behind it goes back to the very first Thief mission, causing me to slash at every banner in every game to see what's there.

Edited February 12, 2012 by PranQster

[Springheel]

In TDM, if you slash at a banner and hit the wall instead, you're going to alert every guard within earshot. That's another point in favour of an animated one.

[i30817]

My original post is not on support of slashable banners.

 

I mean, did you ever try to cut cloth, much less tapestries? It's ridiculous.

[nbohr1more]

I think Demagogue mistook you for Jaxa (the bug report submitter)...

 

Amongst the posited ideas in Jaxa's tracker I think the general idea that it would be fun to "destroy stuff with your sword" is the punch-line.

 

I kinda agree on those terms. Allowing players to arbitrarily destroy objects does add to immersion. It's not necessarily a vital play component

but it gives the same gratifying sand-box immersion as picking-up objects and rotating them or eating (etc).

 

Yes, noise should be a consequence of any of these "acts of destruction" ... but it would be a neat risk vs reward mechanic for something like

an old abandoned tunnel where you could slash through a boarded-up passage with the risk that unpleasant cave dwellers would be awoken (etc).

[demagogue]

Obviously it's a gameplay thing. I can see pros & cons both way. But I still think if a banner highlights it defeats the whole purpose of hiding things behind it IMO (or if they all highlight, then they're more like a cupboard door than a banner, just 99% of them are a cupboard door to a bare wall), so you should find some other mechanism of interaction IMO. I just don't think world items should highlight to frob unless it's for their main purpose, *especially* when we're talking about a "hide & seek" mechanic. (Tiny switches can highlight because they're tiny. But a huge banner all lit up just as a mechanic for "hiding" something 1/50 times... I don't like it.)

 

Maybe if they didn't highlight, but some of them you can blind-frob and they move anyway (but you don't visibly know which are "moveable" and which aren't until you actually try to frob them blind)... that might be cool. I think if you go down that track at all, that's the way to do it.

 

Edit:

My original post is not on support of slashable banners.

I mean, did you ever try to cut cloth, much less tapestries? It's ridiculous.

I think Demagogue mistook you for Jaxa (the bug report submitter)...

 

No I was responding to his original post. My original point to his original post was that, if you want to interact with tapestries you have 2 choices: 1. frob it or 2. physically interact (slash it with a tool. or run into it was another option I mentioned). And my point was the inherent point of the mechanic makes 1. a really dumb way to do it, defeating the whole point of a "hide & seek" mechanic. It was a counter-argument to that post, and then it added a proposition for a better way to do it, (physically walking into it, if you didn't like the slash part; but I did give instructions for how to set up a slash for the record, because it should be part of the discussion; people interested in this topic should know a mapper can set up a slashable banner in 30 seconds right now, without waiting for anything else to be done.)

 

Now the top half of this post has another proposition that I think might be the best of both worlds, you can frob it, but it doesn't highlight, so players figure out over time they can just try it & maybe they're lucky 1/50 times. That returns the hide & seek element that's the whole point of the thing. (Another possibility, not mutually exclusive, is that you are able to frob & move it, but you can still slash it and break it down too; it just causes noise so there's a cost, but for people that really want to rip down all the hammerite banners because they have an axe to grind they can do it.)

[Baddcog]

Well, frob highlight = useable.

 

That's why I see no point in not using doorknobs, it looks dumb, and the door not being highlighted already tells you what the deal is.

 

Sure, a banner is huge, most even larger than doors. But frob radius can be set pretty low (the entity center would probably need to be player waist high centered in banner). It would only highlight if you were close enough to your (pardon the expression) 'bat senses' were close enough to feel it.

 

blind fob would be horrible imo. Then you HAVE to go around and spam frob every banner. You can't just get close and look.

 

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I agree that destroyable stuff is cool, but that leads to an entire mod wide overhaul of objects that need damaged models, particles, fragments, entities...

You get to the point were if you start going down that road then everything needs to be damageable.

 

(I made lamposts for T2 that you could shoot the glass out of....the question is were does it stop, and it's all for a game where you are supposedly playing to be stealthy. I guess the key word would be feature creep)

[demagogue]

blind fob would be horrible imo. Then you HAVE to go around and spam frob every banner. You can't just get close and look.

 

What do you think "hide & seek" is? Also, your alternative is spam X'ing every banner ANYWAY (all that changes is what X is, frobbing, slashing, running up to...). But now either they all light up (dumb overkill IMO) or only the ones with stuff behind them highlight, which even with a short radius (which if it's *really* short isn't much different from a spam frob anyway) is a dumb hide & seek mechanic. Why don't we just write the words "Frob me. I've got a secret!" on the bottom?

 

But anyway, I semi-agree with you, frobbing without highlight is strange, which is why I liked something like hitting it with a tool or physically walking into it as opposed to banners being essentially glorified cupboard doors you frob to open. But if we hate slashing so much, and walking into it is out (I think there's more to that idea worth considering though), then I still think non-highlighted frob preserves the point of the mechanic more than a normal highlight-frob mechanic does.

 

Edit: Another option, while we're brainstorming, is only a small part of the banner highlights, like the corner & side edges that you end up lifting up, so then it's more like the hidden-switch game (not as hard though). You get up close and scan around the banner corners and sides for the highlighted bit. That'd be better than the whole thing lighting up IMO, and if we don't want to tolerate frobbing without highlighting that's another way to do it. Maybe we could make a mock-up of both ways (fully highlighted & only the lifted-edge) and see which one feels better in-game.

[Baddcog]

I had thought about that too, and it actually would be pretty cool. It could be anything from one triangle of the model having a frob highlighting texture while the rest of it doesn't. (which might have some bad smoothing artifacts, would have to test, as splitting it from the main mesh would break the smooth groups.)

Then the origin of the banner would just need centered around that area. Maybe even possible to have an alpha plane over the banner, same material and uv's (but frob highlightable) with the shape of a hand alphaed, so you'd only see a handprint shape highlight. (kindof like the lockplate and hinges (which don't highlight with a door either).

 

Or having a strip of 'trim' in the texture that would be another material. Easy to hide smoothing issues. Hard to fit into existing textures.

[Springheel]

But now either they all light up (dumb overkill IMO) or only the ones with stuff behind them highlight, which even with a short radius (which if it's *really* short isn't much different from a spam frob anyway) is a dumb hide & seek mechanic. Why don't we just write the words "Frob me. I've got a secret!" on the bottom?

 

I don't understand your opposition. What is the difference between getting close enough to see if it froblights and getting close enough to walk into it? In "hide and seek" terms they're nearly identical. Yes, if it highlights that probably means the mapper has put something important behind it, but the same would be true if it was nonsolid.

 

which if it's *really* short isn't much different from a spam frob anyway

 

Isn't that the best of both worlds?

[demagogue]

I don't understand your opposition. What is the difference between getting close enough to see if it froblights and getting close enough to walk into it? In "hide and seek" terms they're nearly identical. Yes, if it highlights that probably means the mapper has put something important behind it, but the same would be true if it was nonsolid.

 

Walking into it is probably the last option to make workable anyway, so I won't defend it. And I'm going to ditch the no-highlight frob idea; doesn't make enough sense or add value to justify the novelty.

 

But the difference between the whole thing highlighting & just a corner is that you could just be running along the edge of a hallway and the whole thing could light up like Chinese New Year. But if it was just a corner, then you'd have to actually look at the corner to see.