Anybody else use a chronograph / stopwatch?

[Brianetta]

I've been playing Thief games since Thief was the only Thief game, and recently while sitting on the floor in the nave of St. Roderic's it occurred to me that life could be made easier if I didn't leave the timing to guesswork. There were three guards I had to worry about. Two were in sight most of the time, while a third patrolled othe rparts of the building before bursting in every now and then.

 

Turns out he showed up about every two and a half minutes. Sometimes longer, but never less than two minutes and fifteen seconds. All I had to do was coordinate that with the two guys I could see,

 

The solution? My watch has a chronograph function. It's one button push, and I can't believe I never used it for this before. Now, I knew exactly where I was in my two minute window, and just had to worry about two guards, rather than three. Smashing!

[STiFU]

I am NOT as patient as you are, when playing the game.

[Sotha]

...and nowadays the wretched mappers implement RITs that force the player to do statistical chronoanalysis which give them a certain time window upper and lower limits. The problem is, that you need many iterations to acquire enough data for reliable prediction.

[Brianetta]

Do you guys do speed runs or something? I can spend upwards of twenty minutes crouched motionless in the corner of a corridor listening to doors. I don't use sword or blackjack (I haven't found any glass that needs breaking yet) and I only put lights out as a last resort. Finding that path through the four-dimensional maze of gaps in the perception of NPCs is the climax of a mission - the build-up consisting of preparatory clue finding, note reading, exploring, etc.

 

Remember First City Bank &Trust in Thief 2? My first mission time in the stats screen was 6 hours, 45 minutes. That's excluding the two or three reloads on the way. I'm always getting my money's worth. (-:

[STiFU]

No, I play stealth games for the tension in the first playthrough, whilst saving as little as possible, and for finding some optimized route through the levels through hours of experimenting. ^^ But everybody may do whatever they fancy of course.

 

I actually have done quite a few speed runs, but in Quake 3 Defrag and not in TDM. However, that's obviously a totally different kind of gameplay, because you have to learn a lot of very advanced and difficult movement techniques there.

[stumpy]

I sometimes put a clock in my maps somewhere that sometimes shows the time to the nearest minute.

[demagogue]

I still remember counting out the passes in the Sword to time the window I could reach the sword.

 

BTW Brianetta, you almost stumbled into one of the biggest easter eggs in Thief 2. If you'd only waited another 75 minutes (a full 8 hours), then the bank vault would have opened automatically, because then it would have been 8 am when the bank was opening. Randy Smith, the designer, threw that in, then later teased us that there was an easter egg, and it took quite a while for us to find it.

[Professor Paul1290]

I do sometimes "time" guard patrols with a watch and/or clock, but not too often.

 

I only really do it if I don't feel like I have another good way to get some "warning time" on a guard. Usually I'll look into other methods that aren't timing dependent first.

When I do use timing I usually try to get at least 3 "sample" encounters to make sure it is consistent due to a lot of missions having semi-random elements to their patrols, and even then I try to leave significant margin for variation.

 

More often in order to avoid the random guard coming in unexpectedly in while searching around a room, I'll rely more on positioning and sound where it seems viable.

Where possible I try to minimize my time in the "fatal funnel" in front of the doorway such that if a guard does open it they'll likely have to step further into the room before they see me, which gives me some time to hide.

I also try to stay near potential hiding places most of the time even when there is no guard so I can hide quickly if one unexpectedly comes in.

Also, if I know I'm going to be in a room for a significant amount of time, I'll sometimes leave the door partially open so I can hear the guard coming.

 

It's worth noting that since you'll often have to enter a room via the doorway yourself before searching it for loot, you'll have a good picture of what a guard will immediately see when they open the same door. It helps to remember what you saw from the doorway when you came in because for larger rooms that info may reveal an additional safe spot.

Edited December 10, 2015 by Professor Paul1290

[Deadlove]

This is one of the main reasons I appreciate the beautiful architecture in TDM. There is a lot of patiently waiting and it's always nice to have great eye candy to help the immersive experience while you familiarize yourself with guard pateol patterns. I'm also one of those people who will spend hours up in hours in a single mission. It's such a rewarding experience.