[Feature Proposal] Frob to Use World Item

[wesp5]

1 hour ago, STiFU said:

Anyway, there is an incredibly easy way to solve the inconsistency while staying true to the original control scheme and that is to simply swap shouldering and grabber.

I've been suggesting this over and over, but some people here don't want to waste a second to lob bodies around ...

Edited November 22, 2023 by wesp5

[datiswous]

1 hour ago, STiFU said:

Anyway, there is an incredibly easy way to solve the inconsistency while staying true to the original control scheme and that is to simply swap shouldering and grabber.

I read it's not actually that easy to implement in code. But you're a dev so maybe you disagree.

10 hours ago, STiFU said:

Entity type

Short Press

Long Press

...Release Button

Lights                                 Exstinguish       Grabber              Release from Grabber

I think Exstinguish on shortpress is not good, because it's not a simple on/off thing. If you take out the light, you can't immidiatelly put it on again.

 

10 hours ago, STiFU said:

The only downside I can see right now is that, with the hold-type interaction, object rotation is a bit more finicky with the hold-type-grabber, because you have to press two buttons at the same time, but it's absolutely doable (I tried).

It's a pretty major downside. I think we shouldn't make the game control worse.

[STiFU]

9 minutes ago, datiswous said:

I read it's not actually that easy to implement in code. But you're a dev so maybe you disagree.

I think some things might have gotten mixed up there in the discussion and some implementation specific things have also changed since DM started with this project. It should be fairly easy to implement now. Especially, because it'd be consistent with the original control scheme.

[datiswous]

On 10/19/2023 at 10:00 AM, wesp5 said:

Does this mean you will revert frob and long-frob for bodies like snatcher and myself have asked for? Or what do you mean by "a body like that"?

 

On 10/19/2023 at 5:35 PM, Daft Mugi said:

There's no change regarding that. I would have already created a cvar to switch the behavior if it were simple. The code would almost double in size, become very difficult to read and understand, and it would be very hard to test all of the possibilities. I'm sorry this is the case. I spent time on it for you, but the code results were not good.

 

[STiFU]

Thanks for searching those quotes. Maybe @Daft Mugi can clarify, but it seems to me that he was arguing from the standpoint to keep the hold-type-grabber as an option in the code, whereas I propose to either drop it entirely or to embrace it fully for all entity types. Both options should be fairly straight-forward to implement, because there is no mixture of different grabber-control styles anymore, contrary to the current situation.

[Wellingtoncrab]

9 hours ago, STiFU said:

Entity type	Short Press	Long Press	...Release Button
Junk	Grabber	Nothing	Nothing
Food	Grabber	Eat	Nothing
Loot	Pick-up	Nothing	Nothing
Bodies	Grabber	Shoulder	Nothing
Lights	Grabber	Exstinguish	Nothing
Tools	Inventory	Nothing	Nothing

Unless I am missing something the only really difference in this table vs the current implementation would be inverting the shoulder/grabber behavior for bodies (I guess it also removes the fall back on long press to do the default action on things like junk - not sure if it is actually preferable for some reason to just do nothing in these cases).

Switching the body interaction to shoulder on frob is one of the foundational elements of this change and judging by the polling information is supported by a majority of players. The reasons for this change are well articulated in this thread, but the short version is that this has been confusing new players for years who actually think there is no shouldering mechanic in the game at all.

The first thing the game shows them is fine manipulation of bodies via the dragging mechanic, and they must learn to use an unfamiliar key combination to actually carry one. This is only described in a easy to miss readable in the training mission. I am myself only learned of this mechanic after playing several missions and by accident. You can read accounts of players literally giving on the game elsewhere in this thread. I imagine they would potentially support this change as well.

Which is the more common action a player must undertake in the game - shouldering a body or manipulating limbs and slowly dragging it around?

So if that is the only element of the implementation which is “inconsistent” (again I don’t think this is actually important - shouldering is the primary interaction with bodies in almost every other similar game and this confuses no one) then I think it’s a pretty small tradeoff for a pretty big pay off.

Edited November 22, 2023 by Wellingtoncrab
typos!

[STiFU]

1 hour ago, Wellingtoncrab said:

Unless I am missing something the only really difference in this table vs the current implementation would be inverting the shoulder/grabber behavior for bodies (I guess it also removes the fall back on long press to do the default action on things like junk - not sure if it is actually preferable for some reason to just do nothing in these cases).

Switching the body interaction to shoulder on frob is one of the foundational elements of this change and judging by the polling information is supported by a majority of players. The reasons for this change are well articulated in this thread, but the short version is that this has been confusing new players for years who actually think there is no shouldering mechanic in the game at all.

Thats the first thing the game shows them is fine manipulation of bodies via the dragging mechanic, and they must learn to use an unfamiliar key combination to actually carry one. This is only described in a easy to miss readable in the training mission. I am myself only learned of this mechanic after playing several missions and by accident. You can read accounts of players literally giving on the game elsewhere in this thread. I imagine they would potentially support this change as well.

Which is the more common action a player must undertake in the game - shouldering a body or manipulating limps and slowly dragging it around?

So if that is the only element of the implementation which is “inconsistent” (again I don’t think this is actually important - shouldering is the primary interaction with bodies in almost every other similar game and this confuses no one) then I think it’s a pretty small tradeoff for a pretty big pay off.

Thanks for summarizing the most relevant arguments. Saved me from reading this monster of a thread in its whole.  

It is obvious that a lot of thought from a lot of smart people has already gone into this. Still, it kind of rubs me the wrong way that the grabber-interaction with bodies is so fundamentally different than the rest and it frequently annoys me that I can't hold-type-grab junk objects as well. So maybe, to catch two flies with one stone, the hold-type-grabber-interaction just needs to be added to a few more entity types. In other words, stick to the frobbing-rules you guys developed in this thread, but additionally add hold-type-grabber-interaction to Junk and Tools, and if possible, Loot as well.

Entity type	Short Press	Long Press
Junk	Toggle-Grabber	Hold-Grabber
Food	Toggle-Grabber	Eat
Loot	Pick-up	Hold-Grabber??
Bodies	Shoulder	Hold-Grabber
Lights	Toggle-Grabber	Exstinguish
Tools	Inventory	Hold-Grabber

 

(Highlighted interactions in the table differ from the new control scheme)

[Wellingtoncrab]

4 minutes ago, STiFU said:

Entity type	Short Press	Long Press
Junk	Toggle-Grabber	Hold-Grabber
Food	Toggle-Grabber	Eat
Loot	Pick-up	Hold-Grabber??
Bodies	Shoulder	Hold-Grabber
Lights	Toggle-Grabber	Exstinguish
Tools	Inventory	Hold-Grabber

(Highlighted interactions in the table differ from the new control scheme)

Yeah, I do see some benefit to being able to pass items to the grabber with less inputs so I think it’s worth trying and getting a feel for.

That mix of some inventory items being moveables and others being static without collision meshes will kind of inherently make it hit or miss depending on the item, but it seems like a potentially nice addition.

[wesp5]

29 minutes ago, STiFU said:

Entity type	Short Press	Long Press
Junk	Toggle-Grabber	Hold-Grabber
Food	Toggle-Grabber	Eat
Loot	Pick-up	Hold-Grabber??
Bodies	Shoulder	Hold-Grabber
Lights	Toggle-Grabber	Exstinguish
Tools	Inventory	Hold-Grabber

In my opinion this is still a complete mess, just imagine to show this table to new TDM players! If this is only about making new players recognize that bodies can be shouldered, why not add a hint to the body name once it is frobbed? Snatcher already added the name of the body being displayed then and I also included this in my patch. Like "Corpse (Use or long frob to shoulder)" and "Candle (Use or long frob to extinguish)" and "Food (Use or long frob to eat)". Loot and tools go automatically into inventory so there is nothing needed there, as well as for junk which has no alternative action anyway.

Edited November 22, 2023 by wesp5

[Daft Mugi]

1 hour ago, STiFU said:

Entity type	Short Press	Long Press
Junk	Toggle-Grabber	Hold-Grabber
Food	Toggle-Grabber	Eat
Loot	Pick-up	Hold-Grabber??
Bodies	Shoulder	Hold-Grabber
Lights	Toggle-Grabber	Exstinguish
Tools	Inventory	Hold-Grabber

Players might hold Junk while moving it and be surprised when it is suddenly dropped on frob release, because there is no way the player can know which mode they are in. With bodies, there is a noticeable difference right away between dragging and shouldering. With lights, the light does not move on hold and will extinguish/toggle, so there's also a clear difference for the player to notice right away.

(Edit: It seems that a lot of the reasons I was '@'ed have been answered already, so I'll skip those.)

[STiFU]

9 minutes ago, Daft Mugi said:

Players might hold Junk while moving it and be surprised when it is suddenly dropped on frob release, because there is no way the player can know which mode they are in.

Granted, that might happen to a player once, but then the player will have learned that there are two types of grabber-interactions, the toggle-type which he/she knows from Lights and Food, and the hold-type which he/she knows from bodies.

Anyway, there is no harm in trying this, right? Even if we just end up hiding it behind a disabled cvar for the people who like it.

 

[STiFU]

56 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

In my opinion this is still a complete mess, just imagine to show this table to new TDM players! If this is only about making new players recognize that bodies can be shouldered, why not add a hint to the body name once it is frobbed? Snatcher already added the name of the body being displayed then and I also included this in my patch. Like "Corpse (Use or long frob to shoulder)" and "Candle (Use or long frob to extinguish)" and "Food (Use or long frob to eat)". Loot and tools go automatically into inventory so there is nothing needed there, as well as for junk which has no alternative action anyway.

I agree that this would solve many problems TDM has for new players, especially with our new mildly inconsistent control scheme, but it goes against the design philosphy of TDM, which is, to be as immersive as possible with as little HUD as possible.

[STiFU]

15 hours ago, STiFU said:

Entity type	Short Press	Long Press
Junk	Toggle-Grabber	Hold-Grabber
Food	Toggle-Grabber	Eat
Loot	Pick-up	Hold-Grabber??
Bodies	Shoulder	Hold-Grabber
Lights	Toggle-Grabber	Exstinguish
Tools	Inventory	Hold-Grabber

I quickly hacked this in yesterday evening and it actually worked quite well. Having the option to both toggle-type-grab and hold-type-grab junk objects is a nice quality of life feature to me. It actually worked for most loot and inventory items in the training mission as well, so that's also pretty cool. However, what isn't so cool is that food remains, unlit candles or candleholders (that never even saw a candle) are not treated as junk objects so the hold-type-grabber ist not applied. This requires some more coding logic, but should be fairly doable. So basically, above table would have to be altered in the following way. With this adjustment, long press would always execute a special action first and would then consistently degrade to hold-type-grabber.

Entity type	Short Press	Long Press
Junk	Toggle-Grabber	Hold-Grabber
Food	Toggle-Grabber	Eat
Food remains	Toggle-Grabber	Hold-Grabber
Loot	Pick-up	Hold-Grabber
Bodies	Shoulder	Hold-Grabber
Lanterns	Toggle-Grabber	Extinguish / Light
Lit Candles	Toggle-Grabber	Extinguish
Unlit Candles	Toggle-Grabber	Hold-Grabber
Tools	Inventory	Hold-Grabber

 

[wesp5]

This looks better, but still to me shouldering should swap places with toggle-grabber. Or to make it consistent with loot and tools, the body could also appear as symbol in your inventory. It clearly is the one things that sticks out in this list...

Edited November 23, 2023 by wesp5

[datiswous]

-

Edited November 23, 2023 by datiswous
confused with toggle hold-grabber

[Wellingtoncrab]

@wesp5 Make sure you skip thief, thief2, deus ex, dishonored, dishonored 2, etc.

Not sure what military grade hallucinogens they were smoking but they all have physics object you can pick up and bodies you can shoulder - tied to the same input! It was quite the scandal - all anyone could talk about at the time is “why don’t the bodies just float in front of my camera when I pick them up just like this potted plant does?”

What they didn’t have that the current build of TDM does was the ability for players like you turn this troublesome development off in the main menu.

Thankfully I am absolutely certain you’ve been spared the pain of playing of these games, as it is seemingly the only explanation I can come up with for you to still be posting the same comments over and over and over again in this thread. 

Seriously though these interactions in the game were never really the same thing, you do not drag most physics objects in the game slowly along the ground, you pick them up kind of like how shouldering the body is a non goofy way to display you have picked it up, so no idea how it is inconsistent and even why that matter so much.

[Amadeus]

I'm not gonna write a whole wall of text, because the shouldering topic has been done to death, but I will remind everyone of the poll taken on this subject. Respect the poll:

 

[STiFU]

1 hour ago, Amadeus said:

I'm not gonna write a whole wall of text, because the shouldering topic has been done to death, but I will remind everyone of the poll taken on this subject. Respect the poll:

 

Well, I hate to be that guy, but as a researcher who has done tons of subjective tests with big subject groups, I would like to jokingly comment that the used test procedure does not allow the conclusion that people prefer short press frob for shouldering.  What we can conclude from this poll is that people prefer short press frob for shouldering as well as various other actions AND long press frob for alternative actions in favor of short press frob for various actions as well as double-press frob for alternative actions including shouldering. This is the classic error of modifying too many determining factors between test cases and attributing the results to only one of the determining factors.  

However, I don't question that there is strong agreement with making shouldering the primary / short-press frob action. This has been criticism of TDM for a long time. We've had people coming to the forum asking for shouldering over and over again. So I concur to change this and set it as the new default even.

[Amadeus]

I didnt say "obey the poll"; I said "respect the poll". I realize that deciding things by majority vote can be problematic for game development. What I am saying is that this poll should be taken into significant consideration as it is pretty decisive. If the TDM devs decide to not do the shoulder on frob change then there should be a better reason than "it's not consistent" or whatever.

Edited November 23, 2023 by Amadeus

[AluminumHaste]

3 hours ago, Amadeus said:

I'm not gonna write a whole wall of text, because the shouldering topic has been done to death, but I will remind everyone of the poll taken on this subject. Respect the poll:

 

Yeah, respect the 17 people who actually care about this topic, and ignore the 10s or thousands of other people who simply don't care!

[wesp5]

4 hours ago, Wellingtoncrab said:

@wesp5 Make sure you skip thief, thief2, deus ex, dishonored, dishonored 2, etc.

...

What they didn’t have that the current build of TDM does was the ability for players like you turn this troublesome development off in the main menu.

I played all of these game and if I remember correctly what they didn't have, but TDM has, is the ability to move anything as a physics object in the game world.

[snatcher]

4 hours ago, Wellingtoncrab said:

@wesp5 Make sure you skip thief, thief2, deus ex, dishonored, dishonored 2, etc.

Didn't play Deus Ex, Dishonored 1/2 or etc but, can you manipulate body limps in these games? And, don't you have to hold frob to shoulder bodies in dishonored games?

Patiently waiting for a hold frob to shoulder / unshoulder bodies prototype. If anything, to prove how wrong some of us are.

Edited November 23, 2023 by snatcher
Typo

[snatcher]

Hold actions naturally translate as if making an effort:

• Get the BJ ready for the KO
• Get a timed sword attack or parry
• Keep an arrow on the release till ready to fire
• Launch a Flashbomb away from you
• Concentrate and extinguish a candle
• Manipulate the mechanism to turn on/off portable lamps
• Shoulder a body on your freaking shoulders
• ...

Edited November 23, 2023 by snatcher

[Wellingtoncrab]

7 minutes ago, snatcher said:

And, don't you have to hold frob to shoulder bodies in dishonored games?

You are correct in that is a partially unfair example in that dishonored 1/2 use a lot of “modern” gui conventions like text elements, progress bars, etc for a lot of it’s interactions and telegraphs pretty clearly to the player what context sensitive action will result on frob. There is a delay on some interactions, including picking up bodies, but this is to prevent unintended inputs, not to enable something like multiple control layers. The primary function of using frob on the body is to “pick it up” ie shoulder it. 

16 minutes ago, snatcher said:

can you manipulate body limps in these games?

No idea why this is material to an an argument that this should be the result of frobbing a body? No one is even suggesting removing this kind of manipulation from the game.

The examples I can think of this kind of drag mechanic: the modern deus ex and hitman games, both of which are interactions exclusive to bodies and don’t feature shouldering as a mechanics at all, and the fine grain physics manipulation modes you see in Bethesda games starting with Oblivion, which requires long pressing the interact key on a physics object to allow you to move it around.

1 hour ago, wesp5 said:

I played all of these game and if I remember correctly what they didn't have, but TDM has, is the ability to move anything as a physics object in the game world.

Incorrect: TDM does not have the ability to move “anything” as physics object and all of those games have physics systems which include objects the player can move around.

Also not material as to why a fine grain limb manipulation and dragging mode should be the primary function of the frob key. No one is advocating removing the feature from the game, and you can get the exact behavior you seem to want by disabling the hold commands in the main menu.

[wesp5]

I just played a bit of Cyberpunk 2077 and there too, to shoulder a body you need to long-press a button. Because it takes time. Primary function for bodies there is looting, isn't this planned for TDM as well?