Climbing down ?

[Garrett2014]

Hi guys, Not sure if this is possible but is there any way to climb down ? I'm currently playing around on the tower in Betrayal by Fieldmedic. Its kinda cool albeit a little buggy. Anyway I was hoping their's a mechanism to allow my character to climb down or over from window ledges until your hanging and then drop down onto the ledge below. Kinda Ala Lara Croft. If we cant do this then maybe we should think about adding it in the next patch as this mechanic would add a new dimension to map design !

 

Your Help is always appreciated.

 

Keep on Taffing and stick to the shadows

 

Garrett2014

[ERH+]

That would maybe require splitting present mantling action into two: "catch" and "pull up". And mantling already is merged with jumping, so "jumping" while looking at something nearby will cause problems with choosing the desired action in more restricted areas.

 

[Garrett2014]

Drink NASTY water ! >< LMFAO Shits n Giggles

[Anderson]

Atm climbing down in TDM is easier than in Source or Gold Source games. Just need to do it slowly.

[chakkman]

What i always wondered is how you jump down without making any noise. Seems to be a hit & miss in TDM. Sometimes crouching when falling down seems to help, sometimes it doesn't.

[Oktokolo]

What i always wondered is how you jump down without making any noise. Seems to be a hit & miss in TDM. Sometimes crouching when falling down seems to help, sometimes it doesn't.

Waste a moss arrow if you want to drop on marble right next to an elite guard.

But for almost all other situations, just crouching while slowly sneaking (not walking or running) over the edge works just fine.

[chakkman]

But for almost all other situations, just crouching while slowly sneaking (not walking or running) over the edge works just fine.

 

That's what i thought. Doesn't always work though. Kind of a hit and miss, like blackjacking.

[Oktokolo]

That's what i thought. Doesn't always work though. Kind of a hit and miss, like blackjacking.

It works pretty fine almost always. When it fails, you most often only get a bark (well, if you get hurt by the fall, a nearby guard might also start investigating).

The crouch-sneak-drop is much more reliable than blackjacking or even mantling. And for a long time i thought, that it makes no noise at all - until i tried dropping from a stack of crates on cobblestone immediately behind a guard...

[Epifire]

Source engine (HL2) ladders have a preferred dismount node for the top and bottom of ladders. When at the top or bottom, simply pressing use (instead of just walking off the ladder) will glide the player to the preferred dismount. I feel like something in this vain could be largely achievable in TDM but it really depends on how we implemented the ladder mechanic. Which from my knowledge is just a tool material with altered collision properties? TDM's current climbing is pretty organic, where the player just moves on a vertical plane to wherever they came into collision with said ladder. This would require some node entity work in order to function I think. Seems completely doable but I have no idea what that looks like from a coding perspective.

[Oktokolo]

Seems completely doable but I have no idea what that looks like from a coding perspective.

The TDM climbing works pretty well. Sometimes i get catched by a ladder by accident, but most often they just work as expected.

A mapper currently only needs to add a brush painted with one of the ladder materials to make something climbable (the material also defines the climbing sound). The player just has to touch that brush to be able to climb it. So it looks to me like it already is as easy for everyone involved as it can be.

Having to place special enter and exit nodes would make mappers' lifes slightly harder and someone would indead have to code that feature into the engine (wich seems to have accumulated quite a bit of history and looks like it is hard to maintain judging by the last pages of the TDM Engine Development Page thread).

As a result you might only get a tiny improvement in some edge cases for the player at best - and it could also introduce shiny bugs (it would make the climbing mechanic more complex after all) and/or make the player feel less in control (because of the mentioned sliding).

[chakkman]

I don't think there's much to modify about the climbing behavior in TDM either... i also think it shouldn't stray too far from the original Thief's in that regard. IMO, it's pretty much perfect the way it is.

[stumpy]

climbing down = rope arrow and carefully stepping off into the unknown void beneath you.