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[Resolved] Allow mantling while carrying a body


Daft Mugi

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6 hours ago, peter_spy said:

Yup. Player jumping off a rope at 192 uu gets 0 to 5 damage, unconscious AI falls down and gets squished by a planet. Nothing to see here folks, just another day in the wacky TDMLand :D

I just dropped an unconcious AI off a 192 unit tall ledge, he got tiny damage and I took 5 dmg when I hit the ground. Seems normal

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I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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11 hours ago, Daft Mugi said:

Last example (for now), shouldering Lily in The Painter's Wife.

Here, the player can shoulder mantle onto the table, but the player cannot shoulder mantle into the vent.

painterswife-low-mantle-patch-2.jpg

 

Well... sorry to spoil the fun :(

painterswife-2023-01-31-15-45-51.jpg

 

And I am not sure Volta 2 is representative of anything because I just loaded an old save and noticed I ended up the mission with 4 rope arrows and 5 vine arrows, meaning - with some work - I can take the fella virtually anywhere.

cauldron-v2-2-2023-01-31-15-57-40.jpg

Edited by snatcher
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TDM Modpack 4.0

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2 hours ago, snatcher said:

And I am not sure Volta 2 is representative of anything because I just loaded an old save and noticed I ended up the mission with 4 rope arrows and 5 vine arrows, meaning - with some work - I can take the fella virtually anywhere.

Once again, its not about where you can bring Bellero its about being able to haul him up vine walls.

I need players to be able to carry bodies up vines and ropes  OR that mission will stay broken for a while until I can fix it. Thats the short of it really.

Edited by kingsal
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The second part of my post was for @Daft Mugi in response to:

13 hours ago, Daft Mugi said:

I'm going to post a series of screenshots to illustrate the current state of the work-in-progress patch.
I hope the screenshots help to get an idea of the patch better than numbers.

First example, shouldering Bellero in Volta 2.

@kingsal Does this look ok? Does it break your intended design?

volta2-low-mantle-patch.jpg

volta2-low-mantle-patch-2.jpg

I just didn't feel the need to quote everything.

In any case @kingsal I am confident those abilities won't change. The path being transitioned now is towards allowing mantling while carrying bodies.

TDM Modpack 4.0

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1 hour ago, snatcher said:

Well... sorry to spoil the fun :(

🤣 I'm glad you showed this example.

When I posted my screenshot of that, I had the same thought. The player could just stack objects to get in there. That's part of "immersive" gaming (451 games), finding solutions that the level designer didn't anticipate. That's what makes these games so much fun. :)

A really dedicated player could stack objects without the help of mantling as well. So, did the level design restrict the player from getting objects to stack and get in the vent? Probably not, right? So, mantling reduces time and effort but doesn't keep the player from going where they want most of the time. Thanks for showing this as it's important to be aware of this as we decide how mantling should work.

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9 hours ago, STiFU said:

I would say, just have the max height configurable via cvar, so we can fine-tune it later.

I agree. :) My patch includes a cvar for adjusting the max height. I found 41 units to be a good default, but I wanted to get feedback from others about that in case I missed a scenario. I also wanted to illustrate what can be done versus not done.

For those who are hesitant about mantling while shouldering a body and want restrictive mantling, I hoped this would help ease their worries, or if not, they could share their concerns based on what the screenshots show.

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2 hours ago, AluminumHaste said:

Ok I tried dropping him from 424 units up. I don't think he took any damage at all.

 

Hmm, I was able to reproduce it several times yesterday, but for some reason I can't do that today 🤨

I use simple settings, 1440p, Fullscreen, Vsync on, Uncap FPS off. Nothing unusual, 60fps at all times. I tried it with vsync off and uncapped FPS, and had the same results at ~250 FPS. I even went as far as to drop an AI from 2560 units – it kind of glides through the air, in slo-mo like fashion, hits the ground, and it's still an unconscious body, not a corpse :D

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1 hour ago, snatcher said:

Let's reevaluate a suggestion worth taking to your lab: allow mantling in all its forms but forbid jumps.

Do you mean forbid mantling after a jump or do you mean restrict jumping in general?

In released builds (i.e. TDM 2.10), jumping in general while shouldering a body has a reduced height.

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Restrict jumping in general.

With a crate in your hands you can do whatever you want (yes, ropes too!) except mantling and jumping.

This means that by restricting jumping alone while carrying bodies we are at the same exact position as if we were carrying a crate.

Since carrying a body should allow for more freedom of movement (free arm) mantling could then be allowed.

That's the idea.

TDM Modpack 4.0

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1 hour ago, peter_spy said:

Hmm, I was able to reproduce it several times yesterday, but for some reason I can't do that today 🤨

I use simple settings, 1440p, Fullscreen, Vsync on, Uncap FPS off. Nothing unusual, 60fps at all times. I tried it with vsync off and uncapped FPS, and had the same results at ~250 FPS. I even went as far as to drop an AI from 2560 units – it kind of glides through the air, in slo-mo like fashion, hits the ground, and it's still an unconscious body, not a corpse :D

What's the command to show damage AI take when hurt?

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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18 minutes ago, Daft Mugi said:

In released builds (i.e. TDM 2.10), jumping in general while shouldering a body has a reduced height.

Jumping, even if reduced, allows you to reach higher heights. By disallowing jumping you are naturally limiting what players can do. As you well say, players will find their way anyway but this simple change forces more elaborated strategies.

Should you accept the challenge everything you need is in "A New Job". Try carrying the poor fellow to the guards. There are four crates for you to play with. I managed to bring the boy to the rooftop with both jumping allowed and disallowed. The latter turned to be the most interesting experience.

TDM Modpack 4.0

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13 minutes ago, AluminumHaste said:

What's the command to show damage AI take when hurt?

I think you should just see it in a console, it's similar to player damage, e.g:

Clipboard01.thumb.jpg.99a85fef1a16c13e47c299f5ef47d7b8.jpg

Btw. that "51 landing damage" was actually dealt by a falling barrel, so this syntax is rather misleading. "Dealt" should rather be replaced with "received".

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My current implementation (5892 patch) is as follows.

"pm_mantle_while_shouldering"   default:"1"                                                         
Which restriction for mantle while shouldering?                                                          
  0 --- no mantling while shouldering a body (TDM original)                                              
  1 --- restricted mantling while shouldering a body                                                     
  2 --- unrestricted mantling while shouldering a body (Cheat Mode)

Option 1 -- Restricted mantle while shouldering rules:

  • The "pm_mantle_maxShoulderingObstacleHeight" cvar sets max height; default 41.
  • Obstacle height is based on the obstacle relative to the player rather than the obstacle relative to the ground.
  • No pull or hang allowed.
  • Must not be falling fast.

Thank you for all of the feedback everyone! That's really helped to define the rules.

Edited by Daft Mugi
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50 minutes ago, peter_spy said:

I think you should just see it in a console, it's similar to player damage, e.g:

Clipboard01.thumb.jpg.99a85fef1a16c13e47c299f5ef47d7b8.jpg

Btw. that "51 landing damage" was actually dealt by a falling barrel, so this syntax is rather misleading. "Dealt" should rather be replaced with "received".

Are you running a debug build? I don't get notifications in console for AI sustained damage.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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Nope, a regular one. That said, there is not much other damage info in the console (like when you attack AI or AI attacks you). When I hit an AI, I only get something like "AI  PAIN", and that's it. There is no info on damage sustained by the player either, just a "MISSION FAILED" message on death.

Having more verbose info on player and AI health and damage dealt/received would be quite helpful for debugging. Maybe an AI health value for g_showEntityInfo?

Edited by peter_spy
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Just read this whole thread, and here is what I learnt:

  1. Player can carry body up ropes, vines, and ladders. All of them are quite situational, but still it shows that it was never planned to restrict possibility of lifting a body up. Of course, we are not going to change this behavior.
  2. Mantling with a body: I think everyone is OK with allowing about waist-level mantle with a body. If you can put body down on a table and mantle on it, then it's surely safe to allow mantling with a body, although I wouldn't keep this 100% strict and minor bump in this height should be OK.
  3. Throwing body from rope: I'd say I'm OK with that. I personally hate that the game does not allow me to throw a body where I want.
  4. Fall damage: I think it is very hard to balance this, since it depends much on physics, and that is today also frame-dependent. In case of unconscious body it depends on ragdoll physics, which is very hard to control. How high player can fall without damange/dying should be more or less fixed, but as for body... I'm eager only to fix major issues, like "falling from any height does not induce damage".

 

 

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28 minutes ago, stgatilov said:

 

  1. Player can carry body up ropes, vines, and ladders. All of them are quite situational, but still it shows that it was never planned to restrict possibility of lifting a body up.

Letting the player carrying the body on ropes and ladders was definitely not an intentional design decision.  But given that it's been present for so long, it's too late to change it now.

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1 hour ago, stgatilov said:

Mantling with a body: I think everyone is OK with allowing about waist-level mantle with a body. If you can put body down on a table and mantle on it, then it's surely safe to allow mantling with a body, although I wouldn't keep this 100% strict and minor bump in this height should be OK.

That's the thing I've been thinking about the other day; how do you teach players what is waist-high exactly, and what margin of error is okay? In commercial games this is usually done with visual language; a set of distinct assets and decals that are immediately recognizable throughout the whole game. But TDM has all kinds of assets made by different people. My worry is that it would be more of an exercise in frustration for players, who will have to try and guess the rules by trial and error. And what is perhaps more important, you can't force mappers to recognize the new rules and use them consistently in their designs.

Hell, there are still veteran mappers that don't care about being consistent about a similar thing, but with the jump and mantle height, making objects like bookshelves that look climbable but are just slightly out of player's reach :D

Edited by peter_spy
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58 minutes ago, peter_spy said:

That's the thing I've been thinking about the other day; how do you teach players what is waist-high exactly, and what margin of error is okay?

Why not change that to mantling with a body is fine as long as you don't need to jump which you can't anyway? This would be more easy to learn.

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1 hour ago, peter_spy said:

That's the thing I've been thinking about the other day; how do you teach players what is waist-high exactly, and what margin of error is okay?

The player will learn through trial and error. They will learn that jumping to mantle while carrying a body doesn't work well with tall objects and a fall-mantle doesn't work well either. From a stealth perspective, the player will probably use the dedicated mantle key or do safe small-height jump mantles. The idea isn't for the player to do an exact 41 unit mantle. The closest thing to visual language is that if the player is looking down at the object, then they can mantle it while carrying a body.

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