First Questions

[RPGista]

Of course I wouldnt oppose to a difficulty slider of some sort (if the team is willing to find and define base "percentages" of the current values that would apply), but I for one have to agree with Biker and Sir that the AI in TDM is fine the way it is (and has been actually improved in recent versions) - right from the beginning playing on normal and having not played Thief in years I was able to enjoy every mission so far. Im not sure whats been planned if anything major, I dont have anything against the features New Horizon mentioned per se (though I didnt quite get the first one, I dont see anything wrong with how sensitive the AI is towards alert levels), but I dont see how is TDM turning anyone off due to out of the ordinarydifficulty, specially having a nice training mission that explains and gets you familiarized with everything the game has to offer (which I actually took the time to complete before playing any missions, by the way).

 

After you get used to the way AI react, its actually becomes routine to avoid and surprise the npcs in the game, and you basicly rely on smart or challenging enemy placement and routes by the mapper to give you a fun play. Some missions are in fact very "hard", in the sense that you have to spend time studying the surroundings and progressing with care, but most can actually be ridiculously easy to cruise through, specially if you can kill a good amount and clear your path, so sometimes your the one thinking to yourself, come on, lets not spoil this, stop screwing around and play fairly.

 

Sorry if this feels a bit of a rant, but Im actually hoping for even more subtleties and sensibility from the AI, things like what Grayman added to them in the 1.7 version (ability to notice doors that should be closed, or the inspecting rope arrow behaviour) which simply adds to the fun (they are more responsive and unpredictable, etc).

 

EDIT: Just saw that around 5 people answered before I finished my post haha. Seems a bit outdated now. Just to stress that I (and probably lots more) actually are hoping for more awesome AI features, and that the progress in that front is going really well. I also like the idea of an eye sight distance curve and of a chance to make AI "hesitate" and listen if you cause noise.

Edited March 12, 2012 by RPGista

[PPoe]

I also think that the guards are too good. Especially the blackjacking should be easier. If Im in the right position and still Im missing the head (or the special place on head) it is not fun. I know, you will tell me that I have to learn how to do that, but it is not for fun. We are forsing users to learn something which could work without learning. That is a mistake by my opinion. The fun part of the game is to get INTO the right position to knock a guard, not to AIM PRECIESLY after you are in position.

I think that we should extense the knockable spot.

[New Horizon]

The positioning for black jacking shouldn't really be an issue anymore. Those bugs were fixed. The issues people seem to run into more these days is not understanding that a helmeted guard can not be blackjacked if their sword is out.

 

If they are alerted by audio, they will eventually put their sword away...but if they have been alerted by seeing you, then the sword stays out for the rest of the mission.

 

The knock out point is actually quite reasonable.

 

I'll try to post a video demonstrating the system tonight.

[OrbWeaver]

They are tougher, and I'm fine with that. I got to a point where T2 was just a cakewalk. But I don't feel they are impossible and it seems like you do.

 

I am certainly willing to admit that I absolutely suck as a Thief player — although I played the original games on Expert, I never attempted ghosting, iron-man or any other kind of deliberately challenging play style, and my strategy was to knockout or kill (if monsters or undead) every AI in the mission until I had the free run of the place. I have therefore always assumed that any problems with the difficulty are due to my own lack of skill, rather than an issue with the game itself, but it seems that there are at least some other users out there who have the same experience.

 

I also don't feel it should be looked at as 'it's harder - tough it out'. But as stated, the ai are tweaked pretty well, it's just a few bugs left that make them seem too hard. I think with a little more fine tweaking they are going to be really well balanced, even if they are a bit tougher than T2. Key being tougher, not infuriating/impossible.

 

I think it's largely a result of selection bias: the majority of developers, contributors and mappers for this mod are experienced, serious Thief players who enjoy challenging gameplay and a sense that the AI are as realistic as possible, which means that the tweaking and development of the AI is naturally going to tend towards a high level of difficulty that does not appeal to the inexperienced or casual player. Conversely, the original games were commercial releases by studios that needed to appeal to the general public in order to make money, so their play testing will have been carefully done to ensure that the game is accessible to a wide range of skill levels. It may just be that it is not possible to please everyone.

[Melan]

Visually, the AI will react the same to a fully lit lightgem at 60 meters as they do at 1meter. Fully lit and 60 meters away, that's a "CHARRRRRRRRRGE!!!!" Whether or not that AI looks like a splotch in the distance to the player or not, they're going to go to full alert and attack you. Ideally, the distance would be taken into account so that the further away the player is...the less suspicious they are to the AI at long distances...to a point where, at 60 meters...they probably wouldn't even give you a second thought.

Thief solved it with overlapping vision cones. Is there an issue preventing this system from being duplic... ahem, inspiring the TDM method?

 

(Not that I have a problem with AI vision, personally.)

Edited March 12, 2012 by Melan

[New Horizon]

I think it's largely a result of selection bias: the majority of developers, contributors and mappers for this mod are experienced, serious Thief players who enjoy challenging gameplay and a sense that the AI are as realistic as possible, which means that the tweaking and development of the AI is naturally going to tend towards a high level of difficulty that does not appeal to the inexperienced or casual player. Conversely, the original games were commercial releases by studios that needed to appeal to the general public in order to make money, so their play testing will have been carefully done to ensure that the game is accessible to a wide range of skill levels. It may just be that it is not possible to please everyone.

 

I do feel the game should be challenging but if it's making players feel completely hopeless, then we're the ones doing something wrong. That's not to say the game should be as forgiving as Thief 1 and 2, but I do agree that some tweaking is needed.

 

Perhaps and AI hearing and sight slider is the answer...not a slider that would allow players to turn them off completely, but rather reduce them to 'near' Thief levels. I would prefer to avoid that though, I think if we do our job right then the game will definitely be more fun and less frustrating for everyone.

 

Thief solved it with overlapping vision cones. Is there an issue preventing this system from being duplic... ahem, inspiring the TDM method?

 

(Not that I have a problem with AI vision, personally.)

 

The vision system of the TDM AI actually functions fine, it's just that we don't have anything in place to give it some fall off distance. The AI currently have the vision of Superman at long distances. lol

[Tels]

I am certainly willing to admit that I absolutely suck as a Thief player — although I played the original games on Expert, I never attempted ghosting, iron-man or any other kind of deliberately challenging play style, and my strategy was to knockout or kill (if monsters or undead) every AI in the mission until I had the free run of the place. I have therefore always assumed that any problems with the difficulty are due to my own lack of skill, rather than an issue with the game itself, but it seems that there are at least some other users out there who have the same experience.

 

While others do have issues (just watch Fen's playthrough videos!), and the bugs NH described also play a role - I think your playing style also is a "problem". In some missions it is simply NOT possible to knockut everyone, plus, that leads to a acertain "one AI at a time" approach followed by careles running around.

 

You will find that if you treat AI as "do not approach" your playing style will suddenly become very different, you observe first, then sneak, then vanish and this in itself will make you a different player (not nec. better, but different). Not knocking everyone out can actually be a lot easier and certainly usually requires a lot of reloading due to failed KOs.

 

I find that when I am in a rush (even more some when coming from a shooter session or having been stuck in traffic for an hour I do not play as relaxed and make a lot more mistakes and the reload rate raises through the roof.

 

I think it's largely a result of selection bias: the majority of developers, contributors and mappers for this mod are experienced, serious Thief players who enjoy challenging gameplay and a sense that the AI are as

 

Not me, I am a baaad player and haven't touched Thief for a decade - and my playing time with TDM is also a LOT less than the time I develop.

 

realistic as possible, which means that the tweaking and development of the AI is naturally going to tend towards a high level of difficulty that does not appeal to the inexperienced or casual player. Conversely, the original games were commercial releases by studios that needed to appeal to the general public in order to make money, so their play testing will have been carefully done to ensure that the game is accessible to a wide range of skill levels. It may just be that it is not possible to please everyone.

 

That is true, of course :-)

 

 

Edit: Just in case this wasn't clear - I am all for the "give the player enough time to correct mistakes" - this makes for very tense gameplay, but also means you are reward for taking and surviving risks. Getting busted in a splitsecond (AI is 60m away) is not fun, as well as getting busted before you know it (AI appears silently behind you). So these issues need fixing. But I disagree on the general "lets make AI easier" front - they are already pretty easy if you know what you do.

[Springheel]

I see it. Thanks. I'll see what can be done w/o having to add new barks or animations. I don't know if those were mentioned wherever this was discussed.

 

Here are a few threads: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/10173-ai-reaction-time/page__hl__lightning__fromsearch__1

 

(more detailed:)

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/11630-visual-checks-how-often/page__p__252748__hl__lightning__fromsearch__1#entry252748

[nbohr1more]

I like the idea of a difficulty slider paired with this tweak. Many of the current missions are well tuned for TDM's current AI behavior and might suffer some balance issues if the AI were made more lenient. A slider would give players a choice to play in "legacy mode". It would be more work for mappers to tune for different difficulties surely but they could also specify to play the mission at "x difficulty" for best experience (etc)... or perhaps a spawnarg could force a mission to use "x difficulty" and override the player setting.

 

I wouldn't mind a little less acuity in the AI but I do think that might lead to *different design choices (*not necessarily worse). Talented mappers will no doubt make fine missions faced with any AI difficulty changes by simply increasing patrols, narrowing paths, and reducing safe shadowed areas.

[Baddcog]

I don't think there's any reason to map around a difficulty slider. that defeats the purpose of it. 'Oh, the player can make it easier so I'll just make it harder, etc.."

 

The point is to have one map (with differences per difficulty level- objectives) and let the player decide if they want it to be slightly more or less challenging. You can still decide to o the tougher objectives (ie, more loot, no kills, whatever the mapper decides), but if you don't like hard lockpicks that's your personal opinion, if you don't like jumpy guards, that's also a personal choice.

 

But making an ai so they can't see 5,000 units across the map isn't going to effect any current missions that I know of. It'll just make them play better. Having ai that don't go instantly ballistic won't change any maps either (there will still be existing scripted events, but the ai will just be better and more realistic).

 

I was playing a map the other night and got spotted at long distance and 3 guards charged me, I'm sure that wasn't the authors choice, that's just how they react atm. It was an instant load and frustration on my part because I barely got in the light and didn't think they'd see me anyway, I could barely see them.

It's like playing in the fog where you can only see 10 feet but your enemies don't see the fog at all.

[Xarg]

Is there any way to set up a brush that lowers the visual acuity of any AI that steps into it? For example, stepping into fog (with said acuity brush) lowering visual acuity by 25-40 but raising aural acuity by 10-15 and only affecting the AI in the brush? Perhaps even modifying the existing fog stuff to have those parameters (set to default values) to allow for easy map-maker adjustment (I place a brush here, turn it into a fog brush... hrm, lower visual acuity by 10)?

Edited March 13, 2012 by Xarg

[RPGista]

I never really thought of the spotting as faulty, I remember playing the other day, I waited for the zombie to get past me, turned on my lantern and was looking for some gems on the floor

(it was actually the Rift)

, when I noticed on the corner of the eye that the zombie had stopped (that unpredictable looking back movement) and was looking straight in my direction, puzzled. I turned the lantern off, and fled the area - he immediately came to investigate, but he was looking for me around where he saw me, so I was able to simply get past while he was busy.

 

Futhermore, reading the article on AI visual scan (http://wiki.thedarkm...tle=Visual_scan), I can see nothing wrong with it? (No codder though) You are very rarely in full bright light in any mission (unless you totally messed up, stepped right in the middel of the lit room while a guard is walking in, etc). I've been in many situations where I thought I would be spotted for sure but the AI remained puzzled and investigated instead. Even when you are spotted you can often escape while he's trying to figure out what he saw and/or is coming to investigate the area.

 

EDIT: If anything what I would suggest was a bit more support for AI senses editting at the spawnargs level and/or documentation on the variables and their values, so mappers could actually, just as with heads and gear, create AIs with varied acuity levels easier - you could set a guy to "distracted/slow" acuity level, make him play a lot of whistles or songs while walking around, and the player will see that he can get away with a lot more against that character than against the builder guards who are totally focused, on another area of the map - that type of thing).

Edited March 13, 2012 by RPGista

[New Horizon]

Futhermore, reading the article on AI visual scan (http://wiki.thedarkm...tle=Visual_scan), I can see nothing wrong with it?

 

The problem is that it's not doing what it's supposed to do. If you're gem is full bright, it won't matter how far away you are...the AI will see you and come charging. There is something wrong with that part of the system. It's something we've known needed fixing for awhile now but we were waiting for the full source to do it properly.

[SeriousToni]

 

Why not making it like in Thief 1 and 2. There you had a chance to get past, even if you were in full brightnes as long as you were quick and far enough?

 

So that means that if you've been spotted, the AI checks:

set timer 2 seconds
every 0.5 seconds
raise alert level +5 (-distance / 80)

 

I don't have much clue of these coding things but you might get what I mean. Some kind of routine that prevents the AI to snap to highly alertness in 0.001 miliseconds including some distance checking.

[New Horizon]

The code is probably already there, we just need to figure out why it's not doing what it's supposed to...or write some new code if it isn't there. Hopefully nothing too serious.

[Baddcog]

I'm really not a fan of authors changing acuities too much. Sure it gets done and sometimes you want a different ai to be dumb, or drunk.

 

But players don't expect it and it screws up the game experience. Obviously not too much if the guard is dumber, but if they are smarter.

 

Better to have good acuities in place and let player decide on an menu adjustment if we can do that.

 

It doesn't really matter if you aren't supposed to be in bright light or not, or if many maps are currently built like that or ever will be. If an ai is seeing you at half a mile away it's bad and just not realistic. Even in full bright, late at night at a long distance someone isn't just going to recognize you as a threat.

I don't see why people argue for keeping an obviously flawed part of ai behaviour.

[New Horizon]

I don't see why people argue for keeping an obviously flawed part of ai behaviour.

 

Well, it's possible that our explanations haven't been clear, but 60 meters is almost 200 feet. That's more than 3 times the length of my Mom's house. That's a heck of a long distance to have an AI charge at you because you're gem is full bright. lol In any case, we're not likely to be changing the acuity levels, just fixing the bug that lets them see you at Superman distances just because your gem is bright.

[Tels]

Also, just to repeat this: It isn't so much the problem that the AI sees you when your gem is bright, even from 60m away. The problem is they do it in 1/60 second (a frame), so you never have any chance to react - they will instantly charge at you. What NH is saying that instead the AI should make a remark, and only then charge if they still see you - so leaning around a corner does not immiditaley give you away without any chance of you to lean back.

 

And the distance here should play a role in that the further away you are, the longer the reaction time is, until at some point the AI no longer even recognises you. (like in 200m distance or whatever).

 

Currently, lean around a corner into bright light (or slightlly open a door and get hit by a beam of light from the split) and any AI even 100m away will sprint at you before you even said "huh?". And that's bad and nothing that mappers or players should have to (or even can) fix,.

[nbohr1more]

Well, I wasn't objecting to the fixes that are good overall such as the far distance fall-off. The "delayed AI response" for players close to AI (on the other hand) might become a balance issue for some existing maps. Though I'm sure the benefits outweigh the possible caveats anyway.

[simplen00b]

but if they have been alerted by seeing you, then the sword stays out for the rest of the mission.

I would love a sub-easy/ultra-noob level setting where they do eventually put their swords away, as I'd be more willing to try running & hiding when I do a failed blackjack attempt. At the moment I usually just reload, as trying to run & hide usually results in unblackjackable AI stomping around for the rest of the game. Reloading is so quick it isn't a huge immersion breaker for me and I still enjoy playing the game. But man, I'd love to be able to run and hide and still have the chance to blackjack AI, even if I have to hole up for quite a while (10 minutes? 20?) And I personally haven't noticed the AI super-vision.

 

And just so's this isn't just a 'TDM is too hard' moan, I want to make the following point: -

Climbing/mantling

Rope-arrowing

Crate stacking

- not just easier in TDM, they're an ABSOLUTE JOY (never thought I'd say that about rope arrows). And the mod is great.

 

That is all.

[Springheel]

But man, I'd love to be able to run and hide and still have the chance to blackjack AI,

 

You can. It's only AI with helmets that become immune.

[RPGista]

Or gas them, blind them, throw a stone the other side of the space and go for it while he investigates (an arrow against a wall will also do it), sneak under his nose, or draw your sword and face him in fair duel (or not, just jump out of the shadows hacking away) - there are many ways to go foward hehe.

Edited March 13, 2012 by RPGista

[lost_soul]

As a long-time Thief player, I do love the increased difficulty of TDM. No longer can I get away with running up behind guards and knocking them out. No longer can I cheat and blackjack when they're running at me from the shadows.

 

I do think sliders in the options for guard health/sight/hearing would help out some new players, but FM authors might object because it could ruin the experience they've crafted. I can see where they're coming from there.

[simplen00b]

You can. It's only AI with helmets that become immune.

I think I may have had a bad experience in a fairly early FM I played - very possibly Sons of Baltona – where every time I failed a KO (which happened a lot back then), running and hiding didn't really solve anything because in the process I usually alerted loads of helmeted AI who were then forever on high-alert and creeping past them seemed impossible.

 

So I may have got into the reload habit on an unrepresentative FM (there were a lot of guards in the first part of SoB) and other FMs may be more forgiving. Only one way to find out I guess . (Although KO'ing the last patrolling guard in SoB was still pretty satisfying, reload-overuse or not.)

 

Or gas them, blind them, throw a stone the other side of the space and go for it while he investigates (an arrow against a wall will also do it), sneak under his nose, or draw your sword and face him in fair duel (or not, just jump out of the shadows hacking away) - there are many ways to go foward hehe.

Yeah, I need to flexibilise my gameplay. My style for playing a level for the first couple of times has nearly always been to KO everyone if I can (I generally avoid killing) and then scamper around unhindered. I try to be more stealthy when I've got a bit more of a handle on the terrain.

 

As a long-time Thief player, I do love the increased difficulty of TDM.

I love most of it. Just have the occasional tantrum is all .

[elwing]

Yeah, I need to flexibilise my gameplay. My style for playing a level for the first couple of times has nearly always been to KO everyone if I can (I generally avoid killing) and then scamper around unhindered. I try to be more stealthy when I've got a bit more of a handle on the terrain.

 

I was playing like that at T2 long ago... try to ghost the mission is much more fun that way...