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Renaming "stealth score" to "stealth penalty"


darksilence

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4 hours ago, wesp5 said:

I agree, that the graphical representation might require too much work, but why not add this just in text form? I like the idea and it shouldn't be too difficult to find class names...

I agree, Wesp5 :)

 

4 hours ago, demagogue said:

The problem is that FMs are incommensurable. A "10" would be a fantastic score for a massive FM and a terrible score for a tiny contest-sized FM. So it means somebody would have to play through all of them and personally judge the fair rate of its difficulty in a way that's equal across all FMs, and keep doing it for every new one that comes out. That's a bit unreasonable.

What if each fan mission author could specify their own class-ranking values for their mission? A table that lets them manually specify the stealth score-to-career ranking relationships for their map? As well, over time, as more people play their mission, they could fine-tune that table based on player feedback; if there's a trend of people being outraged by carefully playing the hard or long map and getting "Clumsy Safe-cracker" for their ranking instead of, say, a "Nimble Boxman"

PS: I propose any art that accompanies the class characterizations should have a shadow over the face of the character so we can't see what their face looks like.

Edited by Darkness_Falls
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10 hours ago, Darkness_Falls said:

Similarly, for The Dark Mod, I think having ~20 classifications would be great

tenor.gif

Only 20 different words for thief or burglar? I can already see a long conversation about semantic ranges of subsequent words... :D

If you really want to communicate an idea to an audience, it has to be elegant and simple, at least on the high level. And, if you want to avoid mistakes of other games, you'd want to focus on positive experience and encouragement, rather than punishment (Hitman: Absolution's negative points vs. Hitman 2016). So that Pirates! naming system is bad too – no one wants to be a beggar.

For example, if player fulfills all main objectives without being spotted (suspicions are okay), they could get a Master Thief rank, similar to Silent Assassin title in Hitman. Ghost would be awarded for a perfect stealth score. Additional titles could be added for stuff like killing NPCs (anything from Thug for killing 1-2 NPC to something like Instrument of Chaos for killing all NPCs in the map) or getting loot (75% could result in a Thorough rank, 95% would probably deserve a Kleptomaniac). I wouldn't go for more than 4 names per category, so the whole thing is fairly clear and fun to have.

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English is not my first language, nevertheless I'll give it a go:

 

(~Quantity of smth)

 ---> "Liability: 0"

---> "Faults: 0"

---> "Oversights: 0"

---> "Alert escalation:0"

 

(Level of....), or simply as listed below as a single word

---> "Escalation: 0"

---> "Disruption:0"

---> "Disturbance: 0"

---> "Annoyance:0"

---> "Negligence:0"

---> "Sloppiness:0

--->"Carelessness:0"

 

Stealth score really is a weird one but it's oddly challenging to find something better.

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  • 1 month later...

The entire score system would be fixed simply by appending a negative in front of the score.

Like Golf, less is more and it immediately gets visually communicated.

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I like to record difficult stealth games, and right now you wonderful people are the only ones delivering on that front.

Click here for the crappy channel where that happens.

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On first blush that could be a good idea, and maybe even calling "0" some variation of "Perfect" or "0 (Perfect)". It'd be good to look at a mock up of different options to think & talk about it. For some reason I can't easily find a screenshot just now and I forget how much room we have there.

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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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  • 2 years later...
On 11/8/2020 at 5:21 PM, V-Man339 said:

The entire score system would be fixed simply by appending a negative in front of the score.

Precisely.

The Mission Statistics screens are a complete mess (imho) but on the subject let's simply call it "Ghosting Score".

GHOST

Ghost.png

KEEP TRYING

NoGhost.png

On the next page you can have all "stats for nerds" you like.

TDM Modpack 4.0

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When I say the statistics are a mess I actually mean the main screen is unspired, or at least, that's what I feel when I look at it: a bunch of words and numbers thrown at the screen.

Casual player: I just completed a long and cool mission! Let's see how I did!

Love-Me-Not.jpg

  • Difficulty level and Time: Cool, thanks!
  • Times saved and loaded: Do I need to know this? why are you hurting my feelings? I didn't ask for it > Stats for Nerds
  • Why the very first thing I get is the damage? What the? > Stats for Nerds
  • The health restored must be reaaaally important. C'mon. > Stats for Nerds
  • Pockets picked is apparently more important than the Loot, correct?
  • Finally! The Loot! How about an easy to grasp percentage?
  • Killed, KOed and Bodies: Ok.
  • Time seen > Stats for Nerds

Oh, and I would appreciate if I get the damn name of the mission at the very top. You know? For my records, social sharing and the like?

EDIT - In the above screenshot secrets are missing. Not sure if secrets get displayed in the next screen or since there weren't secrets in this mission secrets just don't show up.

Edited by snatcher
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TDM Modpack 4.0

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In the next page we can include all stats for nerds we want. We don't need long sentences or multi-line static paragraphs explaining nothing. If players want to know what something is about they go online and check and/or ask. There's plenty of room here for everything.

Stats-For-Nerds.jpg

Bottom line: the main stats page must include the relevant information casual players expect to find. Nothing else and nothing more.

Excuse the triple post.

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TDM Modpack 4.0

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15 hours ago, snatcher said:

In the above screenshot secrets are missing. Not sure if secrets get displayed in the next screen or since there weren't secrets in this mission secrets just don't show up.

Secrets only get shown in the stats screen if the FM uses the official system. Before that was introduced a lot of FMs used a selfmade system.

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11 hours ago, Dragofer said:

Secrets only get shown in the stats screen if the FM uses the official system. Before that was introduced a lot of FMs used a selfmade system.

Thanks, Dragofer.

Implementing such UI facelift is fairly easy to do with zero risk of breaking anything.

Target files:

  • game/Objectives/MissionData.cpp (source)
  • guis/mainmenu_success.gui (pk4)
  • strings/*.lang (pk4) - Optional?

Unfortunately there is little I can do on my own (mod) since this part of the source code is structured in an awkwardly linear, uncontrolled and strict way.

If there ever is an initiative to seriously discuss improvements and come up with suggestions and mock ups, count me in. Let's just make sure someone is available and willing to commit changes of MissionData.cpp.

Cheers!

TDM Modpack 4.0

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19 hours ago, datiswous said:

Did you edit the gui file?

Yes, a manual edit with bogus data.

This is what's left for a second page (plus anything else you can think of if technically possible):

  • Times saved: 25, Times loaded: 12
  • Pockets picked: 3 out of 5
  • Time seen by AI: 0m 2s
  • AI KOed: 3, AI Killed: 0, Bodies found: 1
  • Damage dealt: 0, Damage received: 203, Health restored: 187

A third page could include the current "Stealth score details" as is today but I don't personally find any value in explaining arbitrary decisions (an alert 4 is 3 points because of reasons).

TDM Modpack 4.0

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Higher-level alerts cost more to the score. It's not exactly rocket science. An extra point per level except the highest is even worse, and you can't count level-1 because half the FMs have the player spawn with level-1 alerts. Well more importantly it's not counted in the original rules for ghosting, which is what it's originally for.

But to your point, not knowing where the Stealth Score comes from makes it even more arbitrary to the player. It has to come from something, and it's going to be arbitrary no matter how you spin it, so may as well explain how it's made if it's going to be there at all. Anyway it's well out of the way.

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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Btw. why is there a button called Mission Statistics under the Mission Statistics screen. Is that for the details screen? I don't remember, but it seems unnecessary.

Edit:

I just tested and you first get a mission succes screen, where you can click on the Mission Statistic screen.

_mission1(2023-05-2411-41-31)(000).thumb.jpg.90c34b5bf1b3a5b9e341035b1aa86f81.jpg

But if you click on it, the button stays there, but it could be easilly removed from the statistics screen.

By adding code:

			set "statistics::visible" "0";
			set "statisticsH::visible" "0";

to windowDef statistics_select under onAction

_mission1(2023-05-2412-13-52)(000).thumb.jpg.3b77bc9f0a151912df5121ca4160dec9.jpg

Edited by datiswous
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6 hours ago, demagogue said:

Higher-level alerts cost more to the score. It's not exactly rocket science. An extra point per level except the highest is even worse, and you can't count level-1 because half the FMs have the player spawn with level-1 alerts. Well more importantly it's not counted in the original rules for ghosting, which is what it's originally for.

But to your point, not knowing where the Stealth Score comes from makes it even more arbitrary to the player. It has to come from something, and it's going to be arbitrary no matter how you spin it, so may as well explain how it's made if it's going to be there at all. Anyway it's well out of the way.

Yeah, we agree.

I am not criticizing that alert X is Y points. Y must be something and it is what it is. Getting "seen" could perfectly have a bigger impact, to encourage players not to be seen - in example - and drastically decrease the score, but this is a different topic altogether. What matters is that the Stealth score remains consistent across missions and among all difficulty levels, which is the case. A different story though is whether the difficulty settings (AI Vision, AI hearing) should play any role or not.

I think it all comes down to how the first page is presented, which feels kind of unfocused and therefore dull, and the second page doesn't improve things much. By having the "Mission Score" I propose players will normally always get a positive outcome based on facts. The outcome.

The Stealth Score implementation and perception is arbitrary and subjective and perhaps it doesn't deserve much focus not to confuse players. I haven't thought about the Stealth Score and all the variables much and I don't have any suggestion other than a negative "Ghosting Score".

TDM Modpack 4.0

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7 hours ago, datiswous said:

But if you click on it, the button stays there, but it could be easilly removed from the statistics screen.

By adding code:

			set "statistics::visible" "0";
			set "statisticsH::visible" "0";

to windowDef statistics_select under onAction

That works fine so I added it to my patch crediting you. I needed to upload a hotfix anyway...

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6 hours ago, snatcher said:

I don't have any suggestion other than a negative "Ghosting Score".

I agree with displaying as a negative but still prefer calling it "Stealth Score" since ghosting includes not using knockouts or kills and the score doesn't account for those. (And the term ghosting is a community meme which new players may not initially understand, but that's less of an issue.)

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I usually skip the Mission Statistics window, but after adding datiswous' fix I took a look and found it rather confusing. I arranged some of the lines into groups and also explained that the Stealth Score is reversed for an update of my patch.

statistics1.jpg

Edited by wesp5
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P.S.: While looking at the Mission Statistics, I noticed that the Mission_1_Final_Save name is too long for the UI and gets cut off. Does anybody know where this is stored, so that I could rename it to "final_save" or something similar instead?

Edited by wesp5
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On 5/25/2023 at 9:07 AM, datiswous said:

Btw. the Damage dealth and received part will write over the Times loaded part when the numbers are higher.

Which is why I tried to pair stats together with enough space inbetween ;). As for the mainmenu_loadsave.gui, it is possible to reduze the font there, but it looks weird! I found the name in the executable though and changed it :)! Does anybody know what the "Mission_1" is about? You can only play one mission in the current iteration of TDM. If this is not needed anymore I suggest to remove it in the next core release, so I won't have to blow up my patch size only for this detail ;).

P.S.: I just filed a bugtracker for this as the fix is quite easy and should be in the core game!

Edited by wesp5
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