[Feature Proposal] Frob to Use World Item

[Wellingtoncrab]

15 minutes ago, snatcher said:

Are you guys getting your core mechanics right or do I (as a player) have to decide everything?

It's getting out of control:

What and incredibly rude and unhelpful response to an attempt to make sure you and other players have some access to tuning this feature directly from the main menu to accommodate their needs.

Not a few pages back in this thread:

On 9/24/2023 at 2:14 PM, snatcher said:

PS1: Developers should never point players to anything that isn't available in the in-game settings. cvars should be there for 1) debugging 2) testing 3) very special cases, mainly accessibility / usability.

The fact that these types of comments which do nothing but promote stagnation and inaccessibility to the game get liked by arguably the lead developer of this game is disappointing to me.

[wesp5]

31 minutes ago, snatcher said:

Are you guys getting your core mechanics right or do I (as a player) have to decide everything?

It's getting out of control:

I see the problem, that my patch can't add SHOW FROB OUTLINE to that page anymore, because it is filling the screen. Could some of these options at least be moved to the DIFFICULTY tab? Like the helper and aimer options for example...

Edited October 18, 2023 by wesp5

[stgatilov]

I'm pretty sure this would turn into simple "frob hold delay" slider if this approach is taken as default.

[stgatilov]

2 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

I see the problem, that my patch can't add SHOW FROB OUTLINE to that page anymore, because it is filling the screen. Could some of these options at least be moved to the DIFFICULTY tab? Like the helper and aimer options for example...

Maybe it would be better if your patch created a new tab for all the settings you add?

[wesp5]

12 minutes ago, Wellingtoncrab said:

The fact that these types of comments which do nothing but promote stagnation and inaccessibility to the game get liked by arguably the lead developer of this game is disappointing to me.

I remember a time when snatcher and myself were blocked over and over by regulars here because we wanted to introduce new stuff. Now when new stuff is introduced that you like, it's suddenly fine...

[wesp5]

1 minute ago, stgatilov said:

Maybe it would be better if your patch created a new tab for all the settings you add?

I will probably have to do that anyway, but my patch adds only ONE setting. The screenshot shown here adds FOUR!

[Daft Mugi]

13 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

The screenshot shown here adds FOUR!

The recent dev builds include the work from:

 

[wesp5]

4 minutes ago, Daft Mugi said:

The recent dev builds include the work from:

Hm, the 2.12 dev build I use has much less options. Is this from the test builds only? Anyway, it seems there is one line left for SHOW FROB OUTLINE, so this shouldn't be a problem for me :)! I never understood why this was completely left out instead of added as an option. I really like the black version of it as it is less immersion breaking and does its job great.

Edited October 18, 2023 by wesp5

[snatcher]

15 minutes ago, Wellingtoncrab said:

What and incredibly rude and unhelpful response to an attempt to make sure you and other players have some access to tuning this feature directly from the main menu to accommodate their needs.

Shouldering bodies on frob is a legit proposal worth discussing.

I won't however take as a valid argument that "players" are dismissing TDM because "you cannot shoulder bodies in TDM" or "shouldering bodies in TDM requires two clicks". We know what kind of players we are talking about and these players won't embrace TDM for what it is for as long as they have a place in their current universe.

It is my impression that all this started on the wrong foot with a single goal in mind. No second thought or regard for anything else.

[Wellingtoncrab]

1 hour ago, snatcher said:

We know what kind of players we are talking about and these players won't embrace TDM for what it is for as long as they have a place in their current universe.

Actually it’d be great for you to clarify “what kind of players” you are talking about so dismissively?

[snatcher]

3 minutes ago, Wellingtoncrab said:

Actually it’d be great for you to clarify “what kind of players” you are talking about so dismissively?

I see TDM as its own thing in its own world so any other game would do but sure, I was dismissively referring to vocal players stuck (in a good way, I don't care) in the Thief 1 and Thief 2 universe.

I haven't played Thief 3 or 4 so I will not comment about these game or its players.

[Kopfrkingl]

Although I'm pretty used to the old controls, I'll definitely give this a try. Perhaps this way of frobbing will prove more convenient once I get used to it. Thanks!

EDIT: Gave it a try and it's really intuitive, fantastic!

Edited October 18, 2023 by Kopfrkingl

[snatcher]

2 hours ago, wesp5 said:

I remember a time when snatcher and myself were blocked over and over by regulars here because we wanted to introduce new stuff [...]

Mods is the answer. The scripting system in TDM is like nothing I've seen before. I hope it expands further and further...

Mods can bring new blood, new ideas, new mechanics, new sounds, new models, new textures... and who knows, new core features eventually.

[snatcher]

@Daft Mugi I just found a dead sleeping rat. The mechanic goes in line with the design but, is this the optimal result for players or do we make an exception?

Edited October 18, 2023 by snatcher

[ChronA]

Extensive customization options are appropriate during the pre-release testing or early roll out of a new feature. The people testing the feature can't know yet what configuration will work best for them, much less the people making the patch. My expectation is that by the time you have to make a final decision about including this patch in the next official update of TDM, there will be a rough consensus about the optimal parameters for the new mechanics, and you will only need one toggle for the new behavior.

Or, preferably, there would be no need for an option at all if we can only get over our OCD about preserving arbitrary semantic grouping in our key-bind allocations; and embrace a superior control scheme that's not designed around highlighting an old  gimmick feature whose trendiness expired with the Half-Life 2 era of FPS. But that's a pipe dream.

Maybe instead we can just all agree that the general>gameplay options are getting a bit crowded. Perhaps we could split some of them off into an "appearance" or "accessibility" tag. As more people make their own mods and we modernize our accessibility options it is going to become a problem regardless. Best to get ahead of it.

3 hours ago, snatcher said:

I see TDM as its own thing in its own world

I agree, and that is one of TDM's strengths. It borrows and combines many of the best features from the three beloved Thief games, but it also gives FM creators tools to expand their creative vision in new directions. To some Thief purists that will never be an enticing proposition. But I don't see this feature as throwing a bone to those Thief players specifically, but just player in general who are bouncing off our game because it deviates from some genre conventions for no obvious reason, which makes them think this is an unpolished product.

It is true that Thief was what set these conventions, and (shockingly/s) it is mostly Thief players who are interested enough in TDM to give it a try... but our responsibility to address these problems (if we can) is the same as if AMD or Linux players were having technical problems with TDM. They are people who we want to be part of our community because we never know if one of them might make the next FM like Iris, or do something crazy-innovative with TDM that we can't even imagine!

[Daft Mugi]

5 hours ago, snatcher said:

@Daft Mugi I just found a dead sleeping rat. The mechanic goes in line with the design but, is this the optimal result for players or do we make an exception?

Good find! There will be a fix for this.

[Daft Mugi]

On 9/27/2023 at 5:17 AM, thebigh said:

Also, this would ruin a mission like Heart of Lone Salvation, where you have to drag a body some distance because the ceiling is too low to shoulder it.

Thank you for pointing this out! This will be fixed in an update. A regular frob will initiate drag with a body like that -- just like TDM 2.11.

[wesp5]

3 hours ago, Daft Mugi said:

A regular frob will initiate drag with a body like that -- just like TDM 2.11.

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"?

[wesp5]

7 hours ago, ChronA said:

Maybe instead we can just all agree that the general>gameplay options are getting a bit crowded. Perhaps we could split some of them off into an "appearance" or "accessibility" tag.

As I wrote, I don't think this is necessary because there is quite some space in the "difficulty" tab and many of the "general" options make the game easier, like the helpers, and could be moved there!

Edited October 19, 2023 by wesp5

[snatcher]

This may very well be the solution to the riddle:

18 hours ago, stgatilov said:

I'm pretty sure this would turn into simple "frob hold delay" slider if this approach is taken as default.

Since there is no visual indicator of any kind long key-presses are subject to peripherals, software configuration and physical needs or preferences. If we want to prevent unintended actions players should be able to decide how long a long frob is. A slider that goes from 0ms (off?) to 1s should suffice.

Regardless, I still think the most reasonable approach at this very moment is to shoulder (and un-shoulder) bodies on long frob. See it, if you like, as a compromise that allows the introduction of a neat improvement that has a minimal impact and satisfies most parties. An intermediate solution, subject to further changes or improvements.

Edited October 19, 2023 by snatcher

[datiswous]

12 hours ago, ChronA said:

and embrace a superior control scheme that's not designed around highlighting an old  gimmick feature whose trendiness expired with the Half-Life 2 era of FPS. But that's a pipe dream.

what old  gimmick feature?

[Daft Mugi]

7 hours ago, wesp5 said:

Does this mean you will revert frob and long-frob for bodies like snatcher and myself have asked for?

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.

7 hours ago, wesp5 said:

Or what do you mean by "a body like that"?

At the risk of causing some confusion to some folks, here is the technical reason.

Both the rat and the body in Heart of Lone Salvation have their body entities set as (shoulderable 0). The "fix", or tweak if you will, is to only allow "hold frob" on body entities set as (shoulderable 1). The result is that regular guards and bodies use "hold frob", the rat and other non-human creatures get grabbed on regular frob, and that body in Heart of Lone Salvation gets grabbed on regular frob.

[ChronA]

Hold your horses everyone! We are going about this entirely wrong!

Consider: What is the most popular and genre defining immersive sim of all time? Obviously the answer is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim!

So how does TESV handle the functions we collectively call Frob, Interact, and Manipulate? Skyrim uses a single button called Activate/Use. A short click of the button always activates the target object's primary function if one exists (i.e. shoulder body, put out candle, put item into inventory, etc.), and holding down Activate/Use for a long click always makes the PC manipulate the object (if it's not too heavy). This is our solution!

We just need to get rid of the manipulate button and this archaic "Frob" terminology. Everything can be handled consistently through just a combination of short and long clicks. Short click to Activate/Use objects and long click to manipulate them.

That is the control scheme that will be the most accessible to the greatest number of potential players. It will make Wellingtoncrab and me happy by placing the primary interaction mode for every object on the easiest and most discoverable control input. And wesp5 and friends can be happy because the control scheme will go back to being 100% semantically consistent according to their interpretation of that term.

I bet Daft Mugi can knock this out in a jiffy. Then we can start working on bring the rest of TDM's controls into line with the objectively correct Skyrim standard! ...Unless maybe some of us are not being honest about what we really want in a control scheme...

[Daft Mugi]

2 minutes ago, ChronA said:

Skyrim uses a single button called Activate/Use. A short click of the button always activates the target object's primary function if one exists (i.e. shoulder body, put out candle, put item into inventory, etc.), and holding down Activate/Use for a long click always makes the PC manipulate the object (if it's not too heavy). This is our solution!

This was actually the inspiration for the current design. It was considered months ago, but matching Skyrim exactly wouldn't work well in TDM.

2 minutes ago, ChronA said:

I bet Daft Mugi can knock this out in a jiffy.

I am an old, tired, broken man at this point. This feature has aged me 14 years already -- at least.

[wesp5]

2 hours ago, Daft Mugi said:

This was actually the inspiration for the current design. It was considered months ago, but matching Skyrim exactly wouldn't work well in TDM.

I am an old, tired, broken man at this point. This feature has aged me 14 years already -- at least.

I think we are already there, except that some people, snatcher and myself, have other definitions of primary actions than others. But as Daft Mugi explained, swapping this for bodies seems to be not easy so we need to live with what we get ;).