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Elentarien

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Ok, I've done a search on the forums and come up with a couple threads, but none of them contained any clear, definitive answers, so I've got to ask again, for those of us who are to fog-headed to make it out.

 

How does one deal with the various types of undead in the Dark Mod?

 

To date, I have avoided any and all missions dealing with the undead. After trying one, with disastrous results one evening, and finding nothing I tried seemed to effect them, I went through and played all NON-Undead missions I could find.

 

However, with a bunch of Halloween missions out now, my list of unplayed missions is starting to outweigh my played missions, so its time to start tackling those. But I still have NO idea how to efficiently deal with those nasty things.

 

Need I mention, I'm in the 'I hate undead' camp? :P

 

Last night I picked up a (seemingly) normal mission, only to discover it was a haunted one again. -sigh- Not sure what all is in there, since I can't get passed the skeletons - or, worse, flaming skeleton. :P Nor do I have any holy water.

 

So, what does one do to have to remove:

 

skeletons

flaming skeletons

haunts

zombies

<any others>?

 

Flashbombs used to be my favourite device, but since those don't work here. . .and I'm not *THAT* good at ghosting. . .

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Mines, fire arrows, or even swords will work, other than holy water, obviously.

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Or just avoid them. Sneak by while they look the other way.

 

Typically you can kill an undead with just your sword. Sneak behind them while they are stationary and backstab them to the head. They probably won't die immediately, but will play pain animation and turn to face you, which should give you the chance to land one or two more hits. If you hit their head, they will probably die. If you hit the body, they are at least wounded enough so you can finish them in normal swordplay. Just withdraw while they attack and counter attack when they have just finished attacking.

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Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Bah. Not nice for those of us who hate dealing with undead. :P Worse when the map only offers the sword and nothing else. *sniffs* After spending an hour trying to sneak up on one of these skeletons and knock its block off. . .yeah. . .isn't really happening. :P Never have been very good in fighting - neither in Thief nor in here. :P (very good? Thats an understatment. Have never won. :P)

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Never have been very good in fighting - neither in Thief nor in here. :P (very good? Thats an understatment. Have never won. :P)

 

Practice makes perfect... But anyhow: gamplaywise I believe undead is so tough and dangerous to promote stealthy gameplay.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Have there ever been considerations of "special hit points" for undead like zombies, or revenants? Like, in horror movies, where zombies can be killed with a head shot, or vampires with a peg in the heart, or silver bullets. I know, this is not present in the original Thief games, and actually the holy water thing is pretty cool, just wondering if there have been ideas in that direction.

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Speaking of holy water, I find them too ineffective. Sometimes I just dont dont have enough water arrows for them to be useful. It takes too many arrows to take down one undead and which makes the holy water timer pointless too. It would make more sense to just have the thief throw the flask at the undead or apply it to his sword.

 

Anyways stealth/running away seems to be the way to go

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Stealth is the way I've dealt with them in the past - though this current one I'm trying to do is making that difficult too, because of the flaming skeletons. . .which light you up and make everything see you. Bah. (Playing "The Rift" - only on the middle difficulty but as far as I've found there's a whole 1 water arrow for the whole game. Did buy some holy water at the loadout screen on the second attempt, but without more water arrows, thats not helpful!) Can't remember the other one I was playing where they seemed to hear me if I made the slightest move and kept trapping me in a tower because I couldn't move silent enough for them. lol Was really hoping I could just blow them up and make life easier. (Pity there's no cheat to let you give yourself a bit of equipment. . .)

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Playing "The Rift" - only on the middle difficulty but as far as I've found there's a whole 1 water arrow for the whole game.

 

 

Look in the pool of water where the broken bridge is.

 

 

(Pity there's no cheat to let you give yourself a bit of equipment. . .)

 

There is if you use the console: the `spawn` command.

 

Anyways stealth/running away seems to be the way to go

 

I find that TDM in general encourages a conservative/risk-averse style of play compared to T1/T2: it seems to be geared more towards offering a challenge for Thief veterans than towards room to experiment with risky stunts. Though it does let you turn the AI acuity down.

Edited by VanishedOne

Some things I'm repeatedly thinking about...

 

- louder scream when you're dying

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Haunts can be killed with a single large blow with a sword to the side of the head, but stealth and aim is everything.

Good to know, thanks.

I find that TDM in general encourages a conservative/risk-averse style of play compared to T1/T2: it seems to be geared more towards offering a challenge for Thief veterans than towards room to experiment with risky stunts.

I think so too. The original Thief games were already considered difficult by most of the press, and players, but TDM and the mission designs rather top that. I always thought that TDM is a bit too difficult for beginners, but that's another topic.

 

I especially found it hard to deal with the partly invisible haunts in "Requiem". Although i really liked the mission, i was happy when i left that part behind me, because i literally died a thousand deaths there. :laugh:

Edited by chk772
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I once won a fight against a junior citywatch guard, by some fluke. That's probably the full extent of my combat victories in TDM. Like the OP I don't tend to use holy water because I prefer saving water arrows for lights, and undead are easier to outrun or avoid. I'm not a monumentally skilled player so I haven't got many undead maps completed. Despite repeated efforts, I've never beaten one of Sotha's undead maps for example, although I did manage to complete Ulysses and the rescuing the fence one (not undead, but still very tough, for me), both hugely satisfying when I finally got to the finish line. I thought the invisible revenants in Requiem were excellent, and I didn't find that too hard. It forced you to really listen, and gave you a real dilemma about whether to put lights out. Super gameplay device.

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Ok, that works. *happily cheats her way through the haunted maps* lol Yeah, I know. . pathetic. But hey, even just damping the lights and sneaking through helps!

 

I DID try - really try - to get a grip on the fighting. But after spending two hours just trying to get through it in the training mission, I got too frustrated, and my stress level went way too high for playing a game. Pfft. Then again, I was *HORRIBLE* fighting in Thief itself, too. I'm much better at the sneaking/waiting/listening then darting around than I am with fighting. (Even playing something like Skyrim that has a huge amount of fighting. . .I had to boost myself enough so 'my' method of fighting works. . .first find a mod to remove the blood textures. I really don't need to be grossed out, thank you! We know what really happens when something is stabbed, we don't need to see it. :P . . .then whack things until they fall down and stay down. Or, better, get a bow, sneak around and snipe them from far. . .far away. Though, my favourite method was getting two dogs, making them immortal, and letting THEM kill anything that bothered me while I continued to explore! :D)

 

I think thats one reason I liked Thief in the first place - was killing/fighting was NOT on the top of the list. Even fighting nasties like undead.

 

Anyway, I do agree that Thief itself isn't that hard. Even new maps are, generally, only challenging in so far as the author makes it puzzle-wise. Or that hidden key/switch. The enemies are pretty mild, once you know how they work its fairly easy to avoid them/disable them and pull risks and stunts you wouldn't normally. You can - usually - get through using minimal equipment, as well. Few water arrows and not much else. Mostly.

 

TDM has been fun too, in so far as that there are plenty of really challenging areas - sometimes even sneaking through can be hard when it seems the AI has eyes (or ears) in the back of its head and any move you make they zero in on. But at least with most enemies, if they are *TOO* difficult, you can work on taking them out entirely. Whereas the undead. . .yeah. Not so easy. Might be partly cringe-factor. They're nasty, they're ugly, they're creepy. . .and I'd rather run than face them or touch them. lol

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Speaking of holy water, I find them too ineffective. Sometimes I just dont dont have enough water arrows for them to be useful. It takes too many arrows to take down one undead and which makes the holy water timer pointless too. It would make more sense to just have the thief throw the flask at the undead or apply it to his sword.

 

Anyways stealth/running away seems to be the way to go

I actually preferred the throwable holy water from thief 3, too. However, such an entity can be easely created and used by mappers, if they want this.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Have there ever been considerations of "special hit points" for undead like zombies, or revenants? Like, in horror movies, where zombies can be killed with a head shot, or vampires with a peg in the heart, or silver bullets. I know, this is not present in the original Thief games, and actually the holy water thing is pretty cool, just wondering if there have been ideas in that direction.

I think mumies and skellys should be simple fire; but most missions I played have no fire arrow;

 

but also, holy water should just allow us to craft "holy water arrow" that should be one-shot kill to a single undead (after they dance in holy-fire (considering it exists of course)). And, just for the fun of it, if shot at a torch or candle, even movable, it could create a circle of protection against undead for like 20s.

 

Or just avoid them. Sneak by while they look the other way.

 

Typically you can kill an undead with just your sword. Sneak behind them while they are stationary and backstab them to the head. They probably won't die immediately, but will play pain animation and turn to face you, which should give you the chance to land one or two more hits. If you hit their head, they will probably die. If you hit the body, they are at least wounded enough so you can finish them in normal swordplay. Just withdraw while they attack and counter attack when they have just finished attacking.

 

the skelleton swords-deadman is hard to fight (I find it hard). what I usually do is find a spot they cannot reach, jump there (like in the middle of a table) and hit them until they fall. I am not sure it could be considered as cheating, considering they are mindless, I am just exploiting their lack of mind :).

"truth is a pathless land" - read Jiddu Krishnamurti

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I agree that holy arrows should be a lot more powerful, with a wider effective radius. 2 shots should be enough to down one, and you should be able to affect a group with one shot. The reason is because the time limit balances the power.

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What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Methinks it would be better to have no significant area effect on the holy water arrow, but the direct hit effect on the undead should be an instakill on all unsuspecting undead.

 

Would be balanced, because water arrows are the most precious resource, and holy water is limited time use and even more rare.

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Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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I agree that holy arrows should be a lot more powerful, with a wider effective radius. 2 shots should be enough to down one, and you should be able to affect a group with one shot. The reason is because the time limit balances the power.

Methinks it would be better to have no significant area effect on the holy water arrow, but the direct hit effect on the undead should be an instakill on all unsuspecting undead.

 

Would be balanced, because water arrows are the most precious resource, and holy water is limited time use and even more rare.

I like the idea of buffing Holy Water because I never use it. It's never worth 3 water arrows to me to kill an undead -- it always seems a better deal to put out a light with 1 water arrow, especially as undead are usually found together with extinguishable lights. Would a change of that sort unbalance existing maps?
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Hehe, I recently made a thread asking how to remove giant spiders, since those scare me badly. I don't have a problem with the undead, unless I'm looking at some from way too up close perhaps... either way I know the feeling well.

 

All I know is that the official FM list on the website has a field mentioning which maps have undead and / or giant spiders. Not fully sure how to remove them yet, but this was discussed in my spiders thread... apparently you can nullify the entities to remove them, if you're okay with some cheating.

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Okay, I have a solution for op! I finally managed to get giant spiders removed, and the trick should work for any other entity:

 

First of all, create a directory named def in your darkmod folder, in it a file named whatever.def, and write empty entity definitions for all the undead AI. See this postfor how I did it with spiders, and simply modify the entity names to the undead characters... which you can find in the DarkRadiant entity list or if you open tdm_ai_humanoid_undead01.pk4 (as a zip archive) and look inside the def/*.def files for each entityDef line. Lastly, remove tdm_ai_humanoid_undead01.pk4 (move it somewhere outside the Darkmod folder) and the undead AI should now be gone from the map. I'm trying to make the addon not require removing the original file and just overwrite the default entities, but so far this didn't work for me.

Please keep in mind that doing this means cheating, because it removes enemies from the map! I only suggest doing it if (like myself with spiders) seeing undead triggers a strong phobia that prevents you from playing in comfortable conditions. In your case I'd seek replacing undead with soldiers... but since they have different properties, that might break things much more than simply removing them.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Could you perhaps change the model of the undead into a villager or guard in the def-file? I do not have it installed on this computer and am not sure if it is only one model, but this would be the first thing that comes to mind. At least with the undead it should be easier than with spiders, beacuse they are humaoid.

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That's not a job the team deals with, but it's something you can do locally in your own set up. Just have the zombie def inherit the AI you want and leave the rest out. You can look at other def files that inherit and just copy what they do, using the right AI name. Or another way is to just copy paste another def under the zombie heading. The def files are all in one of the pk4 files, which you open as a zip file.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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