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Adjusted Door Handling


Springheel

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How about changing the default while letting mappers override it if they wish? Would that satisfy everything?

 

The problem isn't quite non-existent. Players being able to operate a door or chest with a light shining on it without stepping into the light thwarts mappers' designs. Like you say, most mappers won't change defaults, especially new mappers, and why should they have to? The learning curve is steep, so defaults that ensure "it just works like I meant it to" are good.

 

Looking at your list of frustrating things... There's a big difference between realistic frustrations and illogical ones IMO. Electric lights having accessible switches or not is something we all encounter every day. Likewise presence or lack of certain tools on different occasions. Not being able to lift a gold candlestick out of an open box without standing on the box, looking directly down, and crouching, is different. That's not realistic, it's immersion-breaking for me. Players should never have to fight the interface. I'm not sure how many maps I got through, leaving loot in boxes, before I discovered how to do it. Time we discussed that one in a thread of its own I think... not everyone sees the problem, and in prev discussions people have mentioned leaning as an alternative, but I for one haven't managed to get that to work.

 

Edit: crossed with Mr M, the "you"s are @ RJF

Edited by SteveL
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*nods at most your perspective except this part

 

The problem isn't quite non-existent. Players being able to operate a door or chest with a light shining on it without stepping into the light thwarts mappers' designs.

 

Erm, except in current designs, mappers have specified how far the light should shine, either by moving it, or adjusting it's radius. Why define those choices as a "problem"? If you can operate a door without stepping into the light, that was intended, or the mapper would have moved/increased the light. (See an earlier reply of mine for the game-play balance ramifications, likely there's frequent AI observation of that doorway.)

 

Making such a change (reducing frob distance for doors) simply means future maps will need to have smaller light radii if they wish to allow the player to grab the door from the shadows. Where's the net gain?

"The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out."

- Baron Thomas Babington Macauley

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Erm, except in current designs, mappers have specified how far the light should shine, either by moving it, or adjusting it's radius. Why define those choices as a "problem"? If you can operate a door without stepping into the light, that was intended, or the mapper would have moved/increased the light. (See an earlier reply of mine for the game-play balance ramifications, likely there's frequent AI observation of that doorway.)

 

Making such a change (reducing frob distance for doors) simply means future maps will need to have smaller light radii if they wish to allow the player to grab the door from the shadows. Where's the net gain?

 

Fair point. I still "feel" the balance is on my side, but of course my feeling is heavily biased as I only notice the occasions where it's obvious that I'm "cheating" the mapper's intention. I don't remember all the times where I've not been able to cheat.

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If we leave it to mappers, though, aren't we opening the door (so to speak) to widespread non-uniformity of how players manipulate doors?

 

This is a valid concern.

 

On the one hand, we want TDM missions to have a uniform "language", so players don't have to relearn how to operate their environment with each new mission. On the other hand, we want to allow mapper freedom, which is going to mean that some mappers won't follow the conventions, either because they're not aware of them or they disagree with them.

 

Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, we want to allow room for TDM to evolve--our first decisions are not necessarily always the best decisions.

 

Changing the way doors froblight (and limiting it only to the handles) is, I think, a significant change that could confuse some players. I don't think it should be the default, (though I'd be interested in seeing mappers experiment with it). I think it would cause problems with our existing assets, since door handles can be quite small and the froblight might not be clear enough--the doors would have to be created specifically so that the handle AND doorplate lit up to be really effective, I think.

 

The issue of being able to open doors by touching their hinges from four feet away is (so to speak) a bit of a stretch that probably bothers other players as much as it bothers me, and that might be something worth looking at. Since the handle and door have separate frob distances, it's possible to force the player to get closer to the handle without drastically changing how doors work.

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Due to the fact that this is quite a dramatical change in gameplay, I would leave it up to the mapper whether he or she wants to use it or not. Establishing this as default behaviour may only break existing maps. In addition, I'm not sure whether we need such standards, if the mapper does communicate a changed behaviour clearly enough.

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Due to the fact that this is quite a dramatical change in gameplay, I would leave it up to the mapper whether he or she wants to use it or not.

 

Which part is a dramatic change in gameplay? We're not changing anything about how doors work. We'd just be reducing the range that you can frob them from on the non-handle side.

 

Leaving it up to mappers wouldn't work in this case, as they would have to be aware of the problem and know how to fix it, which is asking a bit much.

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In 2.03, we'll be looking at "grab door, and while hanging onto it by keeping the button depressed, be able to swing it open and closed by moving the mouse".

 

If the spot on the door that's being grabbed is taken into consideration, then grabbing on the handle side will allow for much better door control than grabbing on the hinge side.

 

This might add some reality compared to today's experience of frobbing the hinge side and having the door move.

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Springheel, on 25 June 2014 - 02:30 PM]

I understand why you have to be closer while lockpicking, but I don't understand why that same logic doesn't apply to using keys.

I think this etting is on the lockpicks themselves. So changing the base class for keys to reach that effect may be possible.

 

Please do this! Otherwise it can happen that if you try all your keys and lockpicks on a door or chest you think you just don't have the right key when in reality you were too far away for lockpicking. The distances for lockpicking and using keys should be the same!

Edited by wesp5
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In 2.03, we'll be looking at "grab door, and while hanging onto it by keeping the button depressed, be able to swing it open and closed by moving the mouse".

 

Uh, I don't think I like that idea. What's the sense behind it? Will you be able to close it slowly and silent? Or not be seen if you only opened it partly?

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I'm lukewarm about the idea if it changes the way doors currently work, but it's worth looking at, and would be a nice thing if it can be an additional level of control for players who want it. It does get annoying sometimes to have to frob the door repeatedly back and forth to get it to the angle you want.

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Which part is a dramatic change in gameplay? We're not changing anything about how doors work. We'd just be reducing the range that you can frob them from on the non-handle side.

 

Leaving it up to mappers wouldn't work in this case, as they would have to be aware of the problem and know how to fix it, which is asking a bit much.

Personally I consider the frob distance of doors in comparision to light and guard placement when mapping, but I never considered the orientation of the door except for aesthetical / logical reasons. Other mappers may have done this as well, and iv the distance suddenly decreases because most players would try to open it from the hinge side, but have to get much closer after this change, this may increase difficulty.

 

This is just a concern. Whether this would appear in a mission already released and if so in how much of them, I obviously can't tell.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

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Yeah, I have. And they turn simple everyday things like opening a door into a complex process which I don't like at all!

 

Hmmm, never had any issues like that with the mechanics. I thought it all felt very intuitive. Maybe it has to do with mouse sensitivity, I keep mine pretty high.

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Hmmm, never had any issues like that with the mechanics.

 

It's kind of a principle. What comes next? You need to move two mouses syncronised to simulate putting an arrow in the bow? You have to actually move the mouse in the exact arc that your blackjack is going to move? Either it's one-click or mouse-moving, I don't like both things mixed! In Penumbra there were no weapons so you didn't get these problems...

Edited by wesp5
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It's kind of a principle. What comes next? You need to move two mouses syncronised to simulate putting an arrow in the bow? You have to actually move the mouse in the exact arc that your blackjack is going to move? Either it's one-click or mouse-moving, I don't like both things mixed! In Penumbra there were no weapons so you didn't get these problems...

 

You're kind of exaggerating to the extreme here, yeah? The thing is, you can't please everyone. Some say it feels better one way, some say it feels better another. You can argue either side of the equation but there just isn't a "right" way to do "some" things.

 

For me at least, I'd have to agree with New Horizon. I thought it all felt very intuitive and I keep my mouse sensitivity very low and have a large mouse pad to get more arm movement.

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I thought it all felt very intuitive and I keep my mouse sensitivity very low and have a large mouse pad to get more arm movement.

 

You mean Penumbra, right? I don't say it didn't work there, but I think adding something like this to TDM is basically a bigger change than everything I ever proposed ;)!

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As I said above, if it gets added, it will be an additional, and therefore optional, feature. It won't be replacing the current door-handling mechanics.

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But if it will be possible to close a door silently that way, mappers could build a map around this feature which would easily make it much harder for everyone not using this technique. I think here in this thread was a discussion about that there should be a common denominator to basic things like door frobbing and similar. I fear that by adding this feature you would move farther away from this than ever. In case this could actually be used to close doors silently of course. Nobody has yet confirmed this, but I guess it must have been the reason to add the feature in the first place, no?

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But if it will be possible to close a door silently that way, mappers could build a map around this feature which would easily make it much harder for everyone not using this technique. I think here in this thread was a discussion about that there should be a common denominator to basic things like door frobbing and similar. I fear that by adding this feature you would move farther away from this than ever. In case this could actually be used to close doors silently of course. Nobody has yet confirmed this, but I guess it must have been the reason to add the feature in the first place, no?

 

Please provide a specific example of why it would be bad to add this optional mechanic.

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But if it will be possible to close a door silently that way... ...Nobody has yet confirmed this, but I guess it must have been the reason to add the feature in the first place, no?

 

Not from what I've read. Only one single person has talked about noise/silence in relation to it. That seems to simply be an assumption.

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"The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out."

- Baron Thomas Babington Macauley

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I don't see how it's different from manipulating objects. If anything, mapping this new analog mechanic to the 'manipulate' button would make the doors behave more consistently with other frobbable+physics objects while leaving the existing mechanic in place.

 

Back to the original topic, I think we've all exploited the unrealistic frob distance for doors and containers in Thief or TDM at some point. The problem I see with making it more realistic is that you might get a faceful of door often enough for it to become annoying. The closer you need to get to an object in order to interact with it:

  1. the more claustrophobic the visuals become: lack of detail, uniform textures and inability to locate yourself in the environment might break the illusion of a 3D space for a few instants;
  2. the more jarring the animations and sense of place feel: a person seldom stares at a door handle before opening it because their motion is fluid and mostly hard-wired in the brain at that point. The fluidity of the motion also shows when opening a door towards you: you instinctively move your body so that it doesn't get in the way of it opening with the sort of fine-tuned movement that would be difficult to get right in TDM. Incidentally, this is one of the few things the new Thief game got right.

I'm not saying that these will be strong enough to break immersion, but there might have to be a lot of playtesting and fringe cases to take into account to get the frob distance right and not jam the player into the door every time they need to open one.

Edited by Briareos H
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The fluidity of the motion also shows when opening a door towards you: you instinctively move your body so that it doesn't get in the way of it opening with the sort of fine-tuned movement that would be difficult to get right in TDM.

 

That's exactly what I meant when I talked about turning a simple real world action into a complex one inside the game!

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