Important things new players miss?

[Professor Paul1290]

I think there are a couple important actions in TDM that new players miss to often and have a hard time managing without.

 

One is the "lean forward" F key. I think this might be too easy to miss given how important it is. It's easy to miss because this action isn't exactly common among first person games, but in TDM it's used for reaching into chests/boxes, reaching over tables, retrieving rope arrows, spacing for pickpocketing, and all sorts of other important things.

I almost feel it needs a specific example training mission because it's unusual enough to miss but is pretty much essential for smooth play. Maybe just pick one of the rooms and add a few chests and a shelf with objects that are reachable with the F key and put some text there.

 

Another thing is handling of corpses and unconscious NPCs. Some players don't realize that you can flip bodies by quickly picking them up and dropping them, and that's important for getting things like keys off of them. The first guard you take out with a blackjack in the training mission sort of handles that because he has a key on him, but that depends on whether he lands face up and doesn't just get pickpocketed while standing. Maybe one of the doors should have an already dead/knocked out guard next to it who has the key and is lying face up so the player has to flip them over to get the key and put some text there, that would probably have a better chance of getting this across.

 

Is there anything else important that you see new players frequently missing?

Edited August 18, 2013 by Professor Paul1290

[Obsttorte]

The easiest way to take out a hanging torch/chandelier is to fire a water arrow at the ceiling above it instead of firing at the light itself. Same thing basically applies for wall torches. Aiming at the wall above the torch is better then aiming at the torch itself.

[Springheel]

I played TDM for up until a year ago without ever using the lean forward key. I definitely like it now that I've started using it, but it's not essential.

 

As for flipping bodies, the training mission already mentions that.

 

This kind of tips would make a great TDM video, though.

[i30817]

Disengage from ladders / mantle without jumping.

 

I forget how it's done though.

[Springheel]

One thing I've been planning to do is add random tips to the main menu, the same way certain missions have in their loading screen. Won't make 2.0 though.

[ERH+]

Maybe something like that under F1 key?

Edited August 18, 2013 by ERH+

[gnartsch]

A few things come to my mind that are not that easy and as far as I know also are not mentioned in the trainer:

- proper blackjacking: aim for the neck and not the head

- lockpicking (Hard): you need to get a hang on the rhythm of a specific lock and release the lockpick before you hear the pause. Most people probably imagine you have to release it when the pause is there... and fail miserably, since they do not relaize the mistake

- swinging on a rope. Not sure if this concept has been entirely abandoned, but I seem to recall that in 1.03 you were asked to swing on the rope in the trainer to make it over the channel. I never figured out how to do that.

Edited August 18, 2013 by gnartsch

[Springheel]

You guys need to play the trainer again. It was updated for 1.08 and all of those things are covered.

[Obsttorte]

- swinging on a rope. Not sure if this concept has been entirely abandoned, but I seem to recall that in 1.03 you were asked to swing on the rope in the trainer to make it over the channel. I never figured out how to do that.

Left mouse button. Although it is not really needed in any FM (and the effect isn't that high).

[Sakonosolo]

Leaning forward was in Thief (though it was alt+shift+w in 1 and alt+w in two) so it's odd that anyone who would find this mod wouldn't think to look for it. Though maybe I'm overestimating the amount of people who played Thief before this mod. The controls are pretty much identical though besides a few things.

 

I can't remember what was covered in the tutorial, but creeping seems like something that would be easy to overlook.

[Springheel]

Here's a good candidate, and I don't think it's mentioned in the Training Mission.

 

Frobbing movables: If you're looking slightly above the object when you frob it, it gets lifted up silently. If you're looking below it, it gets slammed down onto the surface it's resting on when you frob it, creating a racket and alerting any guards nearby. This also applies to bodies (or will in 2.0).

[Sakonosolo]

I read that somewhere. Not sure if it was in the training mission though. That frobbing things will move them to the middle of the screen so make sure the middle of the screen is where you want the object to be when you're picking it up.

[i30817]

Knowing you can setup toggle crouch and toggle run . The creep key.

[AluminumHaste]

Leaning forward was in Thief (though it was alt+shift+w in 1 and alt+w in two) so it's odd that anyone who would find this mod wouldn't think to look for it. Though maybe I'm overestimating the amount of people who played Thief before this mod. The controls are pretty much identical though besides a few things.

 

I can't remember what was covered in the tutorial, but creeping seems like something that would be easy to overlook.

 

Yeah I always rebound Lean Forward to 'F' anyways in Thief 1/2

[Professor Paul1290]

Leaning forward was in Thief (though it was alt+shift+w in 1 and alt+w in two) so it's odd that anyone who would find this mod wouldn't think to look for it. Though maybe I'm overestimating the amount of people who played Thief before this mod. The controls are pretty much identical though besides a few things.

 

Having played Thief doesn't really guarentee that the player will remember to use lean forward right away. I've seen more than a couple Thief players who didn't realize they could lean forward right away, as odd as that might sound. I'm guessing it might be because good portion may not have touched Thief in years so less commonly used controls would have fallen out of memory.

There has been at least one Thief player who didn't use it at first and who at some point ended up believing that requiring players to jump on top of chests to get items out of them was some kind of weird design decision meant to slow them down and get them caught, but that of course is not the case.

 

To be sure, as Springheel mentioned, it's not 100% required in Thief or TDM.

 

However, in TDM not using it can lead to some frustrating usability issues for some people, particularly with the way containers like chests and boxes work.

Unlike Thief none of TDM's default chests or containers send their contents straight to inventory, you always have to frob the loot and/or items themselves every time. On top of that it's very common in TDM for mission authors to mix useful items with junk in such a manner that is intended to cause noise via physics if you don't manipulate and frob stuff carefully.

Edited August 19, 2013 by Professor Paul1290

[stumpy]

like gems in boots in chests, or gems under hats in chests.

[Lux]

like gems in boots in chests, or gems under hats in chests.

 

I love finding these little nuggets, and that's not sarcasm. People do hide things in their shoes and under stuff and I really appreciate when mappers do things like this.

[Mortem Desino]

Frobbing movables: If you're looking slightly above the object when you frob it, it gets lifted up silently. If you're looking below it, it gets slammed down onto the surface it's resting on when you frob it, creating a racket and alerting any guards nearby. This also applies to bodies (or will in 2.0).

 

Bleghch. I've always hated that moveables in the grabber "snap" to the center of gravity.

[Moonbo]

Though this only happens in certain FM's, having to bump two objects together to trigger an event ala Amnesia (for example, the opening of the crypt in Knighton Manor). I would *never* have thought of this if I hadn't read it on the FM threads. I guess that's not an "official" Dark Mod feature though...

Edited August 20, 2013 by Moonbo

[SirGen]

Though this only happens in certain FM's, having to bump two objects together to trigger an event ala Amnesia (for example, the opening of the crypt in Knighton Manor). I would *never* have thought of this if I hadn't read it on the FM threads. I guess that's not an "official" Dark Mod feature though...

That may be a spoiler, but I'm grateful for it