The lantern

[jay pettitt]

I don't know about you, but I certainly don't extinguish every flame I see. Maybe you should revise your style of play?

 

I'm not playing. I'm authoring a map. I'm thinking about people who do play. People have different play styles - Dark Mod allows for and encourages this. I'm sorry, but I don't share your enthusiasm for telling people that they're doing it all wrong.

 

All I want to do is tie up what are, to my mind as a mission author, some loose ends. The sky isn't actually going to fall in. I'm not going to start a whole new fork of TDM over a slightly different candle.

 

Not to sound rude, but perhaps I can refer you to your sig.

 

p.s. I already appreciate and thoroughly love the way fruit and the health mechanic can be used to encourage exploration - twas pulling your leg, mostly.

p.p.s. I would genuinely like to kill off one of the lockpicks though.

Edited April 24, 2012 by jay pettitt

[BlueSkyBullet]

I do extinguish every flame I see (except those that can't be, which pisses me off... especially if there is no indication as to why they are "different", like candles that look exactly like other candles that I can extinguish... especially in the same goddamned mission! but I do digress...)

 

I do extinguish every flame I see, and always have, all my Thief life which has been from the Gold old days. I do extinguish the light!

 

And as you might imagine, because it goes hand-in-hand with my Thiefy ways, I do not use the lantern much at all (read: twice, ever, maybe).

 

So, I just wanted to say that -- about the extinguishing -- because it gave me a chance to speak here in a thread that doesn't much concern me.

[Springheel]

I don't recall the player's inability to light candles as being an intentional design decision to create a 'challenge'. It was just never a priority to allow players to relight extinguished flames; it's not something players generally need to do, and in rare cases when the mapper wants them to, he can generally put other flame sources (or fire arrows) around so the player can do it.

 

That said, there's no particular reason why the player shouldn't be able to relight flames. The exact same game mechanic (ability to extinguish and then light again) works for movable lanterns and for the player's own lantern, so there's no good gameplay argument against it. Aesthetically, the player should have some kind of tool to explain how he relights flames. I'm not a fan of matches in this setting, but everyone else seems to be carrying flint and steel, so it's hard to argue that a thief wouldn't as well. The slow match also provides a good mechanism (though it isn't necessarly intuitive).

[Xarg]

I personally can't wait until some enterprising mapper creates a situation where you set a building on fire with the slow match.. wonder how the performance would be with that much fire going on (especially if the fire was shown to move "naturally", instead of the entire building igniting...)

[grayman]

I'd be against using an unlit candle/torch and having it magically come to life.

 

Game: use a grabbed candle and it goes out -> Real life: pinch it out between my fingers.

 

Game: use an open flame or slowmatch or match or flint to relight a doused candle -> Real life: ditto.

 

Game: use a doused grabbed candle and it lights up -> Real life: use my fingers to light it. (Wha?)

[Tels]

I don't recall the player's inability to light candles as being an intentional design decision to create a 'challenge'.

 

Then maybe I did not communicate this clearly enough. If relighting candles was in the "design" (which may have only existed in my head, tho), then you can be certain I would have added the feature.

 

It was just never a priority to allow players to relight extinguished flames; it's not something players generally need to do, and in rare cases when the mapper wants them to, he can generally put other flame sources (or fire arrows) around so the player can do it.

 

That said, there's no particular reason why the player shouldn't be able to relight flames. The exact same game mechanic (ability to extinguish and then light again) works for movable lanterns and for the player's own lantern,

 

No, the player lantern is "always on", you just use the hood to hide the light (that's how NH explained it).

 

The moveable lantern is a bit of an oversight of me, I explained it with an integrated "flinder mechanism" that lights up that lantern. (At that time I thought of it as an electrical lamp, which was a bit of silly, but then, our desk lamps are electric, too, and they don't have a power cord, either.)

 

Otherwise, the player does not have any method to relight a fire (and that is by design). If he should have, he needs to carry a slow match

 

We can of course change all this, but I am a bit disappointed that all the reasoning etc just goes out of the window, when in other occurances the "design" is all holy and we can't change a single thing. That flip-flopping gives me a headache.

 

so there's no good gameplay argument against it. Aesthetically, the player should have some kind of tool to explain how he relights flames. I'm not a fan of matches in this setting, but everyone else seems to be carrying flint and steel, so it's hard to argue that a thief wouldn't as well. The slow match also provides a good mechanism (though it isn't necessarly intuitive).

[Neb]

(was in reply to Grayman)

 

An audio cue with a small time delay might go a long way towards making that feel less out of place, perhaps?

Edited April 24, 2012 by Neb

[Tels]

Btw, here is a scenario why you don't want the player to be able to relight candles.

 

Build a map where it is dark and you wan't the player to be w/o light. The first part he has a candle, but the second part can only be reached underwater, and the candle goes off. Player emerges, and no light. (If the mapper denies him the lantern, which is easy).

 

But if the player can just relight the candle, bam! Map broken.

 

I do not think that the "oh it is too hard to relight candles on a fire" is a good enough reason to change that behaviour at all.

[Neb]

If a fire lighting tool were to be implemented, it could be an optional item so as not to break a map.

 

When I get a new PC I'll continue working on a mission that needs some kind of backup flame source that can't be extinguished. Maybe a valve controlled bunsen burner, or an electric spark?

 

Just asserting that whatever happens, it's possible to improvise.

[grayman]

If a fire lighting tool were to be implemented, it could be an optional item so as not to break a map.

 

Slowmatch.

[DeTeEff]

There was such a feature in Heart of Lone salvation...

 

Would be nice to make this a standard item that one can add at startup...

[Sotha]

There was such a feature in Heart of Lone salvation...

 

Would be nice to make this a standard item that one can add at startup...

 

The slowmatch is a standard item that can be placed in DR. Just give it the spawnarg that puts it into the inventory upon map start. Look in the playertools section.

[DeTeEff]

Is that so? Gotta get more familiar with all the new stuff...but this has probably been around for a while?

[Neb]

Did. Not. Know. That.

[Springheel]

No, the player lantern is "always on", you just use the hood to hide the light (that's how NH explained it).

 

Yes, I was only talking about the gameplay effects, not the explanation behind how it would work in the game world.

 

Just so we're not misunderstanding each other, I don't support the idea of players just being able to hit "use" and suddenly the candle comes back on with no explanation. That functionality would have to be tied to some kind of tool, either a slow-burning match type object, or some kind of flint & steel tool. It would then be up to mappers to include it in their maps if they wished. Which is essentially the situation we have now.

[jay pettitt]

The slowmatch clearly works for the lighting, but the way you need to select things, drop them (into your hands) and then use them in TDM ain't good. I'd rather have maybe a placeholder inventory item that didn't really do anything - and script a new candle so that as long as you had the tinderbox in the inventory you could light candles as well as extinguish them by 'using' them.

 

I dunno if it's possible - but that's the nicest way I can think of doing it. Unless a less convoluted way of using inventory items on things is possible.

 

But the slowmatch would do at a push.

Edited April 24, 2012 by jay pettitt

[Neb]

entity heldEntity() might get you started. I would check to see if it returns a candle, and then if there's no easy way to light it, then spawn a fire stim at its location? (But that would mean it wouldn't work on other lightables.)

 

(Second edit: These are just raw thoughts, and the naive way that I'd start out.)

 

I don't know much about creating or activating custom inventory items, though.

Edited April 24, 2012 by Neb

[jay pettitt]

The bit that scares me is the fact that candles are quite often fallen over. Lighting an upside-down candle seems kooky.

[Neb]

Only one way to find out. Build a kooky prototype.

[Glyph Seeker]

I love lamp. :-<