Project: Extinguish small lights with a blow

[snatcher]

Ok...

*My* flint is standalone, uses a different technique (no stim) and it only works with small flames. Both the original flint and the new skill can coexist. I don't think I will ever extend the current "ignite ability" to larger flames since lighting up torches, fireplaces... "on the go" doesn't seem very realistic to me.

When I started playing the game I would have liked to:

• Extinguish small flames without grabbing holders first, and
• Light candles back up

Regarding the second, I many times entered a room or area and put all lights off. After some time I realized the area was safe and I wanted to relit at least a single candle. Well, we can do all that now to some extent, and rather easily.

Edited July 22, 2022 by snatcher

[snatcher]

Forgot in the list above oil flames, of course

I am not done yet with this, in case you wonder. Before I go for a version 1:

• I don't think it will be possible to use the skill when no item is selected in the inventory and I need to find a good icon and a good name for the skill (I don't quite like "Flame Master" as a skill, any ideas?).
• I want to play some missions to see if I should increase some tolerances: when players decide to go for a flame, I want them to succeed.
• I would like to understand what mappers did with some custom small flames, and support their creations.

I think that's the wish list. Blowing up candles when carrying a body or holding an object is not possible, I am afraid.

Edited July 22, 2022 by snatcher

[wesp5]

14 hours ago, snatcher said:

*My* flint is standalone, uses a different technique (no stim) and it only works with small flames. Both the original flint and the new skill can coexist.

The problem to me is that your version does not fit into the game world. The player is a thief, not a firemage ;)! Also the flint already exists and is used in that form or as the original slow match in several missions which might be affected if you can always make fire as you wish...

[snatcher]

26 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

The problem to me is that your version does not fit into the game world. The player is a thief, not a firemage ;)

That's correct. How we perceive things is important and that's why the name and icon aren't right. Suggestions anyone?

26 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

Also the flint already exists and is used in that form or as the original slow match in several missions which might be affected if you can always make fire as you wish...

Make fire as you wish... is it difficult to accept in this world that one of the basic tools our thief always carries in his pocket are a tiny sparking stone and piece of steel? For larger fires we have the professional flint.

[wesp5]

5 hours ago, snatcher said:

Make fire as you wish... is it difficult to accept in this world that one of the basic tools our thief always carries in his pocket are a tiny sparking stone and piece of steel? For larger fires we have the professional flint.

Yes, that could be true, but what I mean is that some missions could have a story progression in which you need to find the match/flint first and having already one on you could break the scripting of the whole thing...

Edited July 23, 2022 by wesp5

[snatcher]

Valid argument but there is no way back! Mappers must come up with more elaborated tricks.

Here is v0.7 - What's new?

• The skill has been temporally renamed (in-game) to "Blow & Spark" (I can't make up my mind).
• I think I have identified all base small flames, including legacy or deprecated ones.
• I also extended the support to portable torches since this ability can come in handy. Portable torches can only be ignited though, you must drop them to extinguish the flame.
• Internal code optimizations.

I wanted to add support to (some) custom flames but I will not. I had a look and noticed some mappers instead of adding their own creations as a new class or instead of editing values of existing classes they decided to rename base class definitions, and the corresponding def files are being recycled in more and more maps.

I disagree with this approach because - as can be seen - it can impact other projects but I guess some authors want to have full control of their creations and I shall respect their decisions. The new Blow and Ignite skills will not work in their maps but hey, we have 95% of the missions and flames covered

Find the download below.

Cheers!

FlameMaster_v0.7.zip

[wesp5]

2 hours ago, snatcher said:

Valid argument but there is no way back! Mappers must come up with more elaborated tricks.

The problem is that the mappers only care about the core assets, they don't think outside that box unless they add new stuff themselves. So for the patch I must thread carefully to not break anything by the new additions, especially in older missions that will not be updated anyway! I will take the additional flame types from 0.7 and nothing else. But I have a request you might want to fix in your next version: if you blow at something that has no flame there will be a small sound effect of denial. If you blow on an extinguished light source though, you get the full blowing sound! That should be the denial sound then too, but you probably ignite the flame with your current version in that case so you never noticed it.

Edited July 23, 2022 by wesp5

[snatcher]

I don't know what you are doing there but if you want only the Blow then take the last version and comment this out:

// can it be ignited and is it not ignited already?
else if (small_flame.hasFunction("response_ignite") && small_flame.m_bExtinguished)
{
	// play flint sound, add propagation
	$player1.cacheSoundShader("tdm_flint_sound");
	$player1.startSoundShader("tdm_flint_sound", SND_CHANNEL_BODY);
	$player1.propSoundMod("bounce_small_hard_on_hard", 0);

	// add a failure rate for fun
	if (int(sys.random(3)) < 2)
	{
		// fireworks
		entity projectile = sys.spawn(getKey("def_projectile"));
		projectile.setOrigin(flamePos);
		// (origin, direction, velocity)
		projectile.launch(flamePos, playerViewDir, playerViewDir);

		// ignite a standalone flame or all flames in a holder
		thread small_flame.response_ignite(small_flame, 0);
	}
	return;
}

 

[wesp5]

I already merged the new 0.7 flames into the blow from 0.5 so everything is fine.

[snatcher]

Good.

I think I figured out an icon and a skill name most of the people will be satisfied with. I will be testing v0.7 for a few days and then we can go for an formal v1.0.

[Oktokolo]

On 7/21/2022 at 10:14 AM, wesp5 said:

But I would really like to fix the issue that candles you just extinguished by frobing get taken automatically, because the main idea behind the direct frobing was to remove possible sounds when picking them up.

The clunkyness of picking up stuff has been fixed in TDM version 2.04. I confirmed empirically, that even a clunky player can pick up stuff without making a sound since then.

On 7/21/2022 at 2:59 PM, wesp5 said:

Speaking of details though, to not get any silly connotations, shouldn't we rename it to Snuff?

How about extinguish?
One of the clunkier words. But it is a common one and not overloaded with different meanings or connotations.

[wesp5]

1 hour ago, Oktokolo said:

How about extinguish?

But this is what I would call the normal way :)!