Extinguishing candles

[Gerberox]

I wanted to ask how to do it but I just discovered quite randomly pressing enter does this. It should be mentioned in controls/actions.

 

[roygato]

This is explained in the Training mission. You hold the candle with your frob/interact key and pinch it out with the use key. In my case, that would be MB2 + F. Presumably your use key is enter.

On occasion, you'll find candles that can't be moved, but instead only extinguished with the frob key, but those are much rarer.

Edited March 13, 2021 by roygato

[chakkman]

Yes.

 

You pick up bodies in the same way, by the way. Just so you know, and don't realize after a year of playing the mod, like me...

[wesp5]

I added infos for both to the key definition options menu in my Unofficial Patch, I hope they will finally end up in the core game in 2.10!

Edited March 13, 2021 by wesp5

[joebarnin]

23 hours ago, chakkman said:

You pick up bodies in the same way, by the way. Just so you know, and don't realize after a year of playing the mod, like me...

I'm embarrassed about how many missions I played, dragging bodies around the hard way, before I realized this...

[ate0ate]

I'm a relatively new player to TDM and I found the training mission absolutely invaluable. Really explains all the little things that are not immediately obvious if coming from Thief. The candle thing is actually what drove me to try the Training mission in the first place. I kept trying to put the lights out quickly but ended up flinging the damned thing across the room instead. Funny, but it kills a ghost run. Might be worth mentioning somewhere obvious just how vital that training mission can be for new players. I found the blackjack and sound alert to be rather helpful as well. I cranked the AI seeing and hearing up to hardcore like a moron the first time I played and that particular training really helped me grasp just how that works. All the little differences and quirks that made me initially prefer Thief are now exactly what I find most engaging about TDM. So, yeah, don't throw candles and do the training missions.

[thebigh]

I played for six months without realising you can press F to pay respects lean forward. It makes grabbing loot out of chests much easier.

[Obsttorte]

2 hours ago, ate0ate said:

Might be worth mentioning somewhere obvious just how vital that training mission can be for new players.

Isn't that generally the case?

Once a player complained about not beeing allowed to kill someone on the highest difficulty level in my first FM, I told him to choose a lower difficulty level instead and the response was "I always play under the highest difficulty".

So if we tell new players to play the tutorial first the response will most likely be "I never play a tutorial".

Not wanting to offend anyone but if after encountering issues understanding basic game mechanic one still don't comes to the conclusion to play the tutorial/read the manual (there is none for TDM iirc but it's a general statement), then imho it's the players fault and not an issue with the game or its authors.

[datiswous]

I posted about this yesterday:

 

Edited March 18, 2021 by datiswous

[ate0ate]

59 minutes ago, Obsttorte said:

Isn't that generally the case?

Yeah, you're right. I apologize, that was a rather stupid statement and most players are rather set in their ways. I hadn't intended to imply that there was a problem with the game or that the author's had done anything that needed to be fixed. So long as I am familiar with the genre, I tend to skip over a game's training missions or tutorials unless I have a specific issue or the game states quite explicitly "hey you're gonna be completely lost if you don't complete this." Even then, many modern games offer a bare bones or poor quality training mission compared to TDM's.

8 minutes ago, datiswous said:

So in my situation the tutorial mission wasn't helpful at al for this...

The forum is definitely the only option for some problems. As a new player I've been able to find solutions to my issues at times without needing to post thanks to others who already had the same issue, resolved it, and discussed it here.

[Obsttorte]

21 minutes ago, ate0ate said:

Yeah, you're right. I apologize, that was a rather stupid statement and most players are rather set in their ways.

The question mark was set intentional No need to apologize. As you have stated yourself you actually played the training mission after you realized that the controls aren't obvious to you. It's just that the training mission is among the three missions shipped with tdm. So unless the first act of a new player is to download all missions before even taking a look at the mission list, I simple can't see how to make the existence of the training mission more obvious.

The only things that come to my mind are either a dedicated button in the start screen to directly start the training mission or a "First time playing the game. Wanna play the tutorial first?!" prompt.

And btw: As long as you are polite and try to back up your points with arguments, I have no objection on beeing criticized. All good

[wesp5]

1 hour ago, Obsttorte said:

The only things that come to my mind are either a dedicated button in the start screen to directly start the training mission or a "First time playing the game. Wanna play the tutorial first?!" prompt.

While this would be a much more complicated solution than to just add some more info to the key descriptions, which people could look up anytime, I also have to say that in my opinion the training mission is one of the most boring missions of TDM in the first place. Forcing players to do it could end up turning somebody off! I would rather suggest to add all necessary infos to "A new job" instead. Also for years I have pleaded to add some * to the name of the missions that ship with TDM so they get listed first as I do with the patch. Otherwise if you have downloaded several other missions the training mission will hopelessly get lost in between them.

Edited March 18, 2021 by wesp5

[Hooded Lantern]

11 hours ago, thebigh said:

I played for six months without realising you can press F to pay respects lean forward. It makes grabbing loot out of chests much easier.

yup. similar to swinging with ropes. just found out that it is possible to swing on ropes. my mind was blown away. don't know if it is fm related, but it blowed really hard.

[Obsttorte]

8 hours ago, wesp5 said:

I would rather suggest to add all necessary infos to "A new job" instead.

I can hardly imagine that to be possible. Said mission was never intented with that in mind.

However, it might be an interesting idea to create a new training mission, that contains all essential informations needed to play the game but in a more dense way and as an actual mission, not just an accumulation of rooms. It doesn't need to replace the original training mission, but could be an addition that contains the essentials, while the current training mission could serve as a reference and/or training parcour.

[geegee]

Somebody absolutely new dl'ing TDM won't be thinking of all this.

Just about all recent experience of playing first-person games like this will be of playing commercial "titles" like Dishonored or Deus Ex etc., where each game has a beginning, usually including an intro to the mechanics, followed by a buildup of story and a buildup of powers to some climactic ending - the whole thing done with money to burn.  So the concept "training mission" wouldn't even enter their heads.  They'll just start playing and yes, in the back of their minds expecting to be told someway in-game what to do, especially for anything complicated, which in TDM includes stuff like snuffing out a candle or manipulating a held item.  Can't fault new downloaders and players for this kind of expectation.

TDM is a loose group of individual missions mostly unrelated except in sharing a game world and a TDM "look", so the commercial AAA title route isn't possible.   

Perhaps at start of every mission could be a default 'on' screen explaining the need for playing a training mission?  Something like: you will need to know how to pick up and use, and sometimes manipulate objects in the game world.  etc.  A quick tutorial is here < >.  A training mission is here < >.

With a toggle-off (permanently) button saying screen won't be seen again.

I wish I could think of something better - that seems underwhelming

Perhaps a default mission could be already loaded at first run, so at mission start the new player just hits go.  In which case the mission should be both short and interesting, with intent to quickly immerse the new player in the game world and hook them.

Hey! It's easy posting ideas that others would have to implement!  I'm finished already!

 

 

 

[thebigh]

When you download the game, you start off with just three levels: A New Job, St. Lucia, and the Training Mission. Anyone who doesn't see the training mission there isn't probably going to pay attention to popups reminding them of it.

4 hours ago, geegee said:

Perhaps a default mission could be already loaded at first run, so at mission start the new player just hits go.

That's not a bad idea. Having the training mission autoloaded when you first download the game would get at least extra people to play it.

[datiswous]

If possible, it would be helpful to include some (or all) of the gameplay info from the Dark Mod Wiki as a menu entry in the game. It could also be a book you will always carry with you in every mission.

[roygato]

On 3/18/2021 at 1:53 PM, Obsttorte said:

The only things that come to my mind are either a dedicated button in the start screen to directly start the training mission or a "First time playing the game. Wanna play the tutorial first?!" prompt.

Yeah. When the player opens the mission selector, you could have a popup that says something like

"Welcome to The Dark Mod. It is highly recommended you play through the training mission first, in order to familiarize yourself with the game's mechanics. The regular missions assume that you are familiar with them.

[ ] Never show this message again."

Or something. Don't remember the original Thief games, but wasn't the training mission for the OG Deus Ex completely skippable, and you had to specifically select it in the main menu?

Edited March 19, 2021 by roygato

[thebigh]

The training mission for Thief 1 was skippable too. Games of that era really didn't hand-hold.

[Obsttorte]

I wouldn't call telling the player how to play the game or what the rules are hand-holding. Not everyone is playing video games for 20 years already.

There also people who had issues with the way tdm got installed, too, so someone made a graphical installer. Is that hand-helding just because you don't need it?

[thebigh]

2 hours ago, Obsttorte said:

I wouldn't call telling the player how to play the game or what the rules are hand-holding.

I wouldn't either. Those older games gave you the training mission as an optional extra and, if you chose not to do it, assumed you knew the mechanics well enough to play.

They didn't bother you with periodic messages saying, "Have you done the training mission?" Because that would be hand-holding.

[roygato]

8 hours ago, Obsttorte said:

I wouldn't call telling the player how to play the game or what the rules are hand-holding. Not everyone is playing video games for 20 years already.

The training mission exists, it's right there. Not only that, but the mission download page literally says that the player should start with it, as well as the other prepackaged ones. That said, I'm not opposed to making that notion more prominent in the game, since I realize some people may just use the in-game downloader at all times. I didn't until just recently, because when I started, it was practically unusable. Although even then, it comes with the download. Training mission = learn the game, this isn't rocket science.

At some point this reaches a point of willful ignorance on the part of the player. If they choose to ignore the training mission, and then come complaining about something that is explained there, that is completely unacceptable, and they should be shot into the sun out of a giant cannon.

On 3/18/2021 at 1:53 PM, Obsttorte said:

As long as you are polite and try to back up your points with arguments, I have no objection on beeing criticized. All good

I find it funny you say this to someone, when you argue your points with strawmen, like this:

8 hours ago, Obsttorte said:

There also people who had issues with the way tdm got installed, too, so someone made a graphical installer. Is that hand-helding just because you don't need it?

I concede it is an argument, just not a very good one. Installing the game isn't playing the game, this is completely irrelevant. "But it's a matter of usability or something". I have no idea how the game was installed in the olden days, so I can't comment on that. But making the software itself function like it was made in the 21st century doesn't seem like a big concession. I often hear people complain about modernizing game-design; I've never once heard it about software installation processes. I reckon most everything comes with a graphical installer. It doesn't translate at all into how the game should treat the player. It isn't trying to willfully obfuscate, the training mission exists, is pretty substantial and comes with the download.

If the mod came with no training at all, and there was no place to learn any of it, or if thebigh was trying to argue for removing the training mission, because he didn't need it, I'd give what you wrote here more of an edge, but as it is, it's just a fallacy.

Edited March 20, 2021 by roygato

[Obsttorte]

4 hours ago, roygato said:

At some point this reaches a point of willful ignorance on the part of the player. If they choose to ignore the training mission, and then come complaining about something that is explained there

This implies that the people asking for basic stuff actually haven't played the training mission. And although that may be true for some, how on earth do you know it is true for all of them. When I started playing TDM the first thing I have played was the Training mission, but still I wasn't clear about all basic aspects. Not because the training mission doesn't mention it, though. But you can literally spend more then an hour playing it. If you read an instruction that takes you an hour to do so, do you remember every aspect mentioned there.

It is just an reoccouring thing in the forum that people seem to oversee things. And yes, in some cases it may be there own fault. But if there is a simple possible solution to this and someone willing to give an implementation a shot (me), how does it come it causes those who don't need to bother with it and won't be affected by it at all (for instance, you) to argue so wildly?

4 hours ago, roygato said:

I find it funny you say this to someone, when you argue your points with strawmen, like this

I find it funny that you compare two things that have nothing in common. In the first statement quoted I tried to make clear that the previous post of the targeted indiviual wasn't taken as offensive by me, and that said person and others are free to criticise me (as long as they follow some basic etiquette).

The second quote was a reaction to a generalization that I wasn't agreeing with. The more I think about it the less I see where the connection between those statements of mine are.

[thebigh]

I didn't intend for this conversation to get so heated. Surely we can all be civil and respectful towards each other even when we disagree.

[quote]If you read an instruction that takes you an hour to do so, do you remember every aspect mentioned there.[/quote]

I'm about 80% sure that the thing I didn't know (being able to lean forward with F) is not actually covered in the training mission.

Edited March 20, 2021 by thebigh
add quote; I posted virtually simultaneously with above

[Obsttorte]

I don't know. If something is not covered then of course the whole debate about players not playing the training mission doesn't apply. My point was more that even if it is covered it can easely be forgotten due to the sheer size of the training mission and the therefore contained amount of information.