No Crouch-Run

[gx-force]

Hello there developers. I just wanted for you to know that you've constructed a fantastic mod which gives a first class

stealth experience for us Thief-fans.

 

I only have a small request for you. Please disable running while crouched in the next version, or at least give a function with

which we can do it in the difficulty settings, y'know, like what the bow aimer has (I'm using the aimer btw). It's unrealistic, and in Thief 3, this feature's absence can teach taffers a lot of patience and discipline. I believe it's too easy to crouch-run through missions. It's too fast without the disadvantage of being adequately noisy.

[gx-force]

Oh, and sorry for my bad English :-)

[Baddcog]

I doubt it will be removed or even have an option. Just stop pushing the shift key

 

I use it a lot, but I also alert a lot of ai when doing it so I've been trying to ease off of it a lot when I am close to ai.

[gx-force]

I don't know, thus far it seemed that I can do it without detection (OK when an ai is not nearby). In Thief 3, it's absence taught me to relax and really wait for that guard to go away and not bursting out risking him spotting me.

[simplen00b]

Hi gx, and welcome!

Please disable running while crouched in the next version, or at least give a function with which we can do it in the difficulty settings

As far as I'm aware, the default gameplay setting is you have to press 'shift' to run (whether standing or crouching). So not sure what you mean by 'disabling' it - like badcogg says, it should just be a question of 'don't hit the shift key'.

I believe it's too easy to crouch-run through missions. It's too fast without the disadvantage of being adequately noisy.

Gotta say I don't find it that quiet - like badcogg, I usually alert ai if I crouch-run near them. I think Garrett (oops) Farrell is noisier in TDM than in T3 but at least he isn't wearing his wooden clogs from T1/T2.

 

*gets coat

[nbohr1more]

I believe there was a discussion awhile back about this and someone determined that the speed was a perceptual effect due to being closer to the ground rather than an actual speed boost. Then (I think) someone said they'd look at changing it. It seems that other bug fixes or features must've taken priority? Occasionally such a thread will prompt "someone" to revisit an issue that's been back-burnered like this. That said, v1.08 is a big overhaul... It's likely that many feature changes will be postponed so that they can focus on ensuring the new executable build is stable.

 

side note

 

I'm probably as big a culprit as any but many folks are inflating the anticipation for better performance in v1.08. In reality, other than Serpentine's normal map compression work, I would not anticipate a big boost. I would even go as far to say there may be a little loss due to the removal of Carmack's reverse. The process to optimize TDM will take time.

 

(just saw a comment over at Darkfate asking whether parallel processing was done yet... )

[Springheel]

I see no problem with running while crouched. It makes less noise than running while standing, but more noise than walking while crouched.

[demagogue]

I can see the logic in it, or at least the running being quite slowed. Features are often about cost/benefit, and there's practically all gain and zero cost for crouch-running vs. upright-running, so there's no reason to ever upright-run. But it's not my call.

[Springheel]

Running while crouched isn't as fast as running when standing up...is it?

[Baddcog]

Nah, it's like quick walking. I can do that in real life, I think it's quite realistic. It does alarn Ai if they are with 8-10 feet, so it is pretty limiting anyway.

[Sotha]

Crouch run should not be removed. Somehow I think some of the values could use tweaking though. This impression comes from one of FenPhoenix's gameplay videos seen around here. He tries to sneak to a walking AI for a KO. I got the impression that walking is more silent than crouch-running.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prRE2_vFKm0&list=UUIvtuQRbEsG0bHquWQId7mA&index=5&feature=plcp

07:00 forwards.

 

It is a bit unintuitive, as you see from the video, the author automatically assumes crouch-anything is more silent stand-anything. This would be my expectation too, and I believe it is sort of a norm in stealth gaming.

One might expect, in terms of stealth, the following relation:

stand run < walk < crouch run < crouch walk

Also the speed should also be in the same order.

 

At present it seems to be

stand run < crouch run < walk < crouch walk

 

Also I've heard that there is a crouch jump exploit that allows the player move more quickly without making a sound. If such exploit exists, it probably should be removed. Landing while crouch should generate sound equal to a single walk or run footstep?

[Diego]

I've learned not to crouch and run, the guards always hear me. So apparently, in TDM, running = noisy. Even crouched.

[Serpentine]

If you've ever needed to sneak around in a hurry irl, this is exactly what you end up doing. It does make quite a bit of noise and is also slower than running - and cant be used very well for jumping. All in all, it's a very nice implementation I think, I'm sad its not in more games.

[STiFU]

stand run < crouch run < walk < crouch walk

Makes perfect sense to me. Running is always noisy, whereas when you go slowly, you can make sure you every footstep is silent.

 

You also have too look at it from a gameplay perspective. Usually you sneak up on someone using crouch-run, but when you want to blackjack him, you'll have to stand up. Making the standing walk louder than the crouch run could result in the detection of the player.

[Tels]

The only complaint I have with run vs. walk is that we don't have a stamina - which means you can do anyhing for infintely long, which also means you could crouch-run an entire mission in one go. I always thought stamina a bit silly, but it does force the player to not being an energizer-bunny and makes him choose strategies - no sense in running up to the guard to kill him with one stroke if you run out of breath just before you arive.

 

(Try this in real life: run for 10m. then walk back the 10m. then go down and duck-walk (crouch) 10m. then run-crouch the 10m back. You'll quickly see that running crouched takes a lot more energy (probably can be trained?) than either walking or running. Now imagine you lug around 20kg equipment on your back

 

But as far as I remember, stamina was removed and won't come back - and even if it did, it would bring only negatives for the player, so many people would just view it as restriction that they don't want. Its a shame that we can't simply enable it with a CVAR for these people who want it.

 

And for bonus points the stamina might not even restrict your movement speed that much, but instead could make you simply make more noise - being fumbly and heavy breathed, so to speak. But I guess this won't fly.

[i30817]

If you really want to see something, try to "crouch jump forward".

[Serpentine]

Stamina is a bad gameplay mechanic. Along with cover systems and the ever shit concept of automagic regenerating health.

 

I mean, where will you stop with 'realism'? when do we reach "Cripple Sim: Ultra Polio Edition"?. Do we need a new options menu for possible extra settings, "Left hand removed - fail mantling randomly" "Random chance to have a heart attack".

[Tels]

Stamina is a bad gameplay mechanic.

 

Do you have something to back that aasertion up? See below.

 

Along with cover systems and the ever shit concept of automagic regenerating health.

 

I don't see how cover systems (which I think are not good) or automatic health regeneation (which I neither like) relate to "stamina" at all except they are all game mechanics.

 

I mean, where will you stop with 'realism'? when do we reach "Cripple Sim: Ultra Polio Edition"?. Do we need a new options menu for possible extra settings, "Left hand removed - fail mantling randomly" "Random chance to have a heart attack".

 

I don't care for "realism" with stamina, I care for "restrict the player so he can't run all over the map while wacking with the sword and bunny jumping at the same time".

 

(Edit: And to elaborate this point: The game is largely about crippling the player first (otherwise you'd simply play in god mode), and then let the player overcome these restrictions with human skill (e.g. skill of the player in front of the keyboard) and equipment (e.g. the skill in selecting the right equipment for the right job). If you pull this off, it becomes satisfying, because the human knows he "did beat" the game. Removing all restrictions is as silly (and unsatisfying) as introducing too many random "failures and restrictions" (nobody really likes to lose because the dices rolled a 1 instead a 6, esp. if that happens 10 times in a row, that feels unfair) or introducting restrictions that make it too unforgiving and hard, like having millisecond timing to do simple things like opening a door.

 

You can see that Thief players (like Fen did!) complain that things are "too hard" in TDM because they are used to the super-easy (by now, because they trained a lot) game of Thief. The "blackjack him at the toe" comes to mind. So making things arbitrarily hard doesn't work - but keeping them the same doesn't work either, because THEN they complain it is too easy. It is all about finding a balance. And since you can never make everybody happy, you have to have a core-set of mechanics, and then some dials so users can adjust it to match their likings and their "abilities" (not everyone has a photographic memory, or a musical memory, or can do complicted jump sequences by mashing buttons).

 

However, discounting something just because you don't like it with nothing to back that up is just a silly thing in a discussion. End of edit.)

 

 

But your reply proves my point that any change to the game play mechanics will not happen simply for the fact that there are people who dislike it (for whatever reason) and they will be very vocal about it no matter what.

[Sotha]

Well, stamina is similar to the breath-o-meter. Why couldn't those be combined? When the player runs, jumps or strains the bow, the breath-o-meter would decrease. Too bad if the player gets submerged after a long running trip.

 

There is one important consideration. If the player had limited stamina, so should the AI. The AI would get tired fast running after the player in the heavy armor of theirs. This equals new barks and new animations.

 

Common tactics are running away and climbing. Frustration will occur if you manage to run away but are too tired to climb on top of a pile of crates to escape. Think about swordplay: you have end it is fast as possible with any health cost because you are sure to lose if you get tired during more careful combat tactics.

 

These combined, introducing fatigue to the game would have so significant impact, is it worth the effort? Think about getting it balanced... In my opinion, TDMs core focus is elsewhere.

[Springheel]

I pushed for stamina early in the design process but was out-voted. I still think it would be a great add-on for a "hard core" mod of the mod, but I agree it is probably too much for the core gameplay, especially when other similar things, like the ability to carry endless amounts of loot, are left entirely abstract.

[Serpentine]

The reason for me saying that it is a bad mechanic is simple to understand. When you evaluate gameplay ideas you need to weight up the attractors and detractors in the expected use-case.

 

Say for example in TDM, we focus on the stealth aspect and moving from shadow to shadow.

If the shadows are slightly spaced or need a bit of thought to navigate the player will feel rewarded by executing his move from one place to another, this is increased by the risks introduced from dynamic lighting, good mapping and sound.

On the other hand he might be spotted in which case he will be required to either hide or stand/fight or die.

Two of these options give a way out and have little/no barrier of entry, both have noticeable high points if executed correctly and only one which is really negative.

On the whole this makes a lot of sense as it's creating a largely positive experience (the same applies to things like patrols, relighting and a few others).

 

Then let us take stamina.

When do we have a positive feedback? When we 'just' manage to make it to the next place. However, remember that this same movement is already possible, and once at your destination it's unlikely that you will continue running, this makes the gain lower. The only way to improve this would be to make many brightly lit areas that need to be traversed... uhhh.

Should we not make it and get caught we're handicapped and escape/combat becomes far more problematic, while the higher stress will mean a good reward feeling, we have two outcomes which have an escalated chance of negative feelings.

Other times that we have negatives? When we're trying to navigate a known safe area and constantly get slowed down, dashing around patrols and failing, running and jumping to platforms with bad timing etc. Do any of these give positive feedback? Nope.

Overall, rather negative.

 

I'll give you a gold star if you can't remember playing a few games and while moving around safe areas, being annoyed that you needed to wait for stamina.

 

Realism is like pepper, a little bit is good on some meals - but once your meal is approaching that of a plate of peppercorns you arn't enjoying the experience anymore, no matter how much you lie to yourself.

[Baddcog]

I'd say the major reason to not have stamina in TDM is that you never really run that far anyway. if you run through an entire map you are likely to be chased anyway, giving up most of the benefits you gain.

 

In Skyrim however it makes sense that you can't run for miles and miles and never get tired. I think it's annoying in a lot of games because you run 10 feet, gasp for breath for 5, run for 10 which doesn't make running any faster than walking anyway. And it's unrealistic and annoying. At most it should only be used for hard sprints or long regular runs in that case.

 

Still, I do think that crouch running should be a little quieter. It can be really hard to quickly sneak up on a guard to BJ, it's usually easier to wait for him to come back around on patrol and be standing right next to him and ready to go. If he gets a few feet out they are hard to catch and BJ quickly. crouch is to slow to sneak up on and walk doesn't do it well either.

So crouch run, get busted...

[demagogue]

Just note that the complaint of the original post was that crouch-running makes things too easy and if anything isn't loud enough (though he seemed more worried about the speed than the sound).

[Tels]

Just note that the complaint of the original post was that crouch-running makes things too easy and if anything isn't loud enough (though he seemed more worried about the speed than the sound).

 

Didn't want to derail the thread with the stamina discussion - tho I think both tie into the same thing: make it harder for the player. Louder footsteps are basically just an obstacle - you can't run fast when a guard is near because he might hear you.

[Baddcog]

Just note that the complaint of the original post was that crouch-running makes things too easy and if anything isn't loud enough (though he seemed more worried about the speed than the sound).

 

 

But then he said this:

 

I don't know, thus far it seemed that I can do it without detection (OK when an ai is not nearby).

 

---------

But to me I can't hear my own footsteps while crouch running, making me feel silent, but the guard hears me before I am close enough to BJ. So maybe it's just a disconnect from what I hear to what I perceive he can hear.