[Feature Proposal] New Lean for TDM 2.12

[stgatilov]

I asked myself and my family: how would they lean into the doorway if they don't want to be seen?

All of us prefer to only expose head. And this is impossible for a human being to do with such a low rotation angle.
Moreover, my family members also suggested leaning horizontally, i.e. with full 90 degree angle.

As far as I understand, the main reason to love your change is because it simply makes leaning easier for the player. But I think it is wrong: leaning should only be used to quickly glimpse what is around the corner. If you want to look properly, just go around the corner with your full body. And most definitely, it is wrong to make shooting bow easy while leaning.

Of course, we are not some kind of spies/special agents, maybe someone knows better.

[wesp5]

I did some LARP bow shooting and would guess that's it would be really difficult to do this while leaning. Also doesn't the player basically get an full invisible shot if the enemies can't see him or can enemies see a leaning player?

Edited September 24, 2023 by wesp5

[datiswous]

3 hours ago, stgatilov said:

And most definitely, it is wrong to make shooting bow easy while leaning.

I think shooting bow should be made more difficult while leaning at least. The length of time that you can hold it decreased.

But maybe this is another feature discussion.

Edited September 24, 2023 by datiswous

[Wellingtoncrab]

I don’t really see why the best solution for the game should be some approximation of reality, nor do I think the old lean is more successful in this regard.

You are not controlling your actual head or torso, you are controlling a video game camera. The slide lean is a more comfortable and meaningful camera position and if you are getting granular with the tap lean it actually gives you more control over how much of your body is actually exposed.

With the angle tilt it can be hit or miss to gauge where you need to be in the game world relative to a corner in order to successful lean around it, especially when crouching. This leads to “lean, nudge position, lean” which I think is also not very realistic vs the real world where we have things like full body awareness and necks which allows us to rotate our “cameras” with a lot more flexibility. I find this also improved with the new lean.

The result was for me, in conjunction with the new frob behavior, was a game that feels more predictable and responsive to play. This is imo the “main reason to love the change”, not that I perceived the game to be easier (I did not on my recent play through of A Bridge Too Far).

In general my opinion is that making the game artificially cumbersome in pursuit of “realism” or less responsive to players inputs is a better way to make an experience more frustrating than it is a way to make it more challenging/rewarding.

Edited September 24, 2023 by Wellingtoncrab
omitted a word

[Amadeus]

I second Welli's opinion. Designing gameplay features for the sole sake of "realism" isn't really a great path to go down. Movement and combat should be fluid, immersive (a much better ideal to pursue than "realism"), and, more importantly, FUN. Lowering bow-draw hold time while leaning doesn't seem FUN to me, just a needless obstacle for the sake of "realism" (in a magical made-up steampunk world where vine arrows and manbeasts exist, guards and civilians are completely oblivious to a thief crouching right next to them in near-total darkness, and Corbin can carry dozens of pounds worth of inventory equipment and not make a sound).  Features should be developed to create the illusion of realism and not be focused on whether or not the human head can tilt this way or that.

Perhaps we should implement a feature where Corbin should hold his breath when AI is patrolling near him so they don't hear him breathe? [insert obligatory irony tag here]

EDIT: I should also mention that I think Daft Mugi's Lean Gold fits the bill of being fluid, immersive, and fun.

Edited September 24, 2023 by Amadeus

[stgatilov]

Ok, maybe we should just imagine that the head is rotated a lot but the camera is rotated less for the sake of player's convenience.
After all, it is much easier for a human to comprehend rotated view when his head is rotated accordingly (vestibular system tunes to the real-world gravity vector, not the in-game one).

[Skaruts]

7 hours ago, stgatilov said:

I asked myself and my family: how would they lean into the doorway if they don't want to be seen?

All of us prefer to only expose head. And this is impossible for a human being to do with such a low rotation angle.
Moreover, my family members also suggested leaning horizontally, i.e. with full 90 degree angle.

As far as I understand, the main reason to love your change is because it simply makes leaning easier for the player. But I think it is wrong: leaning should only be used to quickly glimpse what is around the corner. If you want to look properly, just go around the corner with your full body. And most definitely, it is wrong to make shooting bow easy while leaning.

Of course, we are not some kind of spies/special agents, maybe someone knows better.

We always have to keep in mind satisfying > realistic, when we're thinking gameplay.

But still, our natural tendency is to not lean our heads much, though. And on top of that, our brain does a good job at keeping our perception of the world pretty straight, up to a certain point. And we tend to avoid reaching that point because once we start seeing the world sideways we also start having trouble making sense of it (and this is true in a videogame too, and why rotating the camera isn't a great idea). You certainly don't want that if you're a thief on a mission.

And peeking isn't only about seeing what's around the corner, it can also be about trying to do something about it while trying to not fully expose yourself. We could have both functionalities, but that would require more keys (at least one modifier key for leaning). Or we can just have the latter, since it naturally serves both purposes.

 

4 hours ago, wesp5 said:

Also doesn't the player basically get an full invisible shot if the enemies can't see him or can enemies see a leaning player?

This depends on the lighting. In TDM you can get exposed while peeking, if there's a light hitting where your heads at.

Edited September 24, 2023 by Skaruts

[datiswous]

17 hours ago, Skaruts said:

This depends on the lighting. In TDM you can get exposed while peeking, if there's a light hitting where your heads at.

Does this mean the new lean will get you potentionally more exposed? Because it should be. I think with the current lean you peak your head around the corner, but with the new lean feature you just step aside. That's what it looks like.

If the new lean system is easier to use, shouldn't there be a trade-off?

 

I personally do like it when there's some realism in gameplay. If something feels wrong because it's unrealistic, then I notice it.

 

18 hours ago, Amadeus said:

Perhaps we should implement a feature where Corbin should hold his breath when AI is patrolling near him so they don't hear him breathe.

I think that could be actually cool, but I think first breathing sounds need to be introduced, music disabled.. Maybe something to try out in a specific mission build.

Edited September 25, 2023 by datiswous

[AluminumHaste]

I'm not sure if I understand your pov sorry, but right now, if you lean your lightgem level does increase, as you are exposed a bit.

 

[Skaruts]

4 hours ago, datiswous said:

Does this mean the new lean will get you potentionally more exposed?

No idea. What I meant was just that leaning can expose you (a lot) depending on the lighting, so presumably you won't get "invisible shots" with the new lean. I haven't tried it yet, so I could be wrong, but that's probably the case.

On a side note, personally I don't like that as it is that much. Getting so exposed makes leaning so useless in so many situations... I'm always scared of leaning because of that. I think it's one of those realism vs gameplay things where I'd rather favor gameplay. So much about hiding in shadows and sneaking is hyper unrealistic anyway. But favoring the player usually makes a more gratifying gameplay. Like when you're making a 2D game and you make the player hit box smaller than the sprite, to make it more forgiving and less frustrating.

[MirceaKitsune]

All in all I like the new mode judging from that video. Hope we can give it a try in the next dev snapshot!

Pro: More movement over rotation... more logical and realistic, before it's like your head was just falling to the side.

Con: The overall distance seems to be a little bit less than before, which may make leaning less efficient than it was.

[Daft Mugi]

23 minutes ago, MirceaKitsune said:

All in all I like the new mode judging from that video. Hope we can give it a try in the next dev snapshot!

Thanks for taking a look!

There's an Ubuntu/Linux build that you might be able to use here:

 

[datiswous]

21 hours ago, AluminumHaste said:

I'm not sure if I understand your pov sorry, but right now, if you lean your lightgem level does increase, as you are exposed a bit.

I know that, but is there a difference with that with the new method.

Well I was wondering if with the new lean, because you move more in view you also become more visible and there is a change in the lightgem compared to the old method.

There might not actually be a difference, but I have not tested it. Maybe people who played more can tell?

Edited September 26, 2023 by datiswous

[MirceaKitsune]

I was just thinking about this last night and mentioned it on Discord: One of the advantages of leaning should be that using it to peek past a wall shouldn't make you so visible to an enemy AI. If there's a light past the corner, leaning will currently increase your lightgem about as much as just strafing there, which begs the question why should you even use it instead of just strafing? A strong light should make you visible even when leaning, but only a fraction as much as walking there.

I'm thinking of it like this: Leaning should be like sticking just your head beyond a wall. It makes you a little visible if the area is well lit and the AI close by to see you, but far less than your whole body sticking out and being spotted.

[snatcher]

Sorry that I cannot provide a more meaningful feedback: the current lean feels good to me and your new lean feels good to me as well. I must have low standards in this regard and both approaches are perfectly serviceable. You have my support for this change if it is perceived as an improvement.

Something that's bothered me from day one though is that the left/right (and forward to a lesser relevance) lean buttons seem to have their own agenda. Freedom of movement is handicapped and you cannot lean left or right incrementally or left-to-right and right-to-left dynamically. For some reason you have to go back to straight every time before the next move. I don't know how to explain myself but just launch TDM and lean left/right repeatedly, you should understand what I mean.

[Daft Mugi]

7 hours ago, snatcher said:

For some reason you have to go back to straight every time before the next move.

Yeah, I somewhat improved this in the new lean.

7 hours ago, snatcher said:

Something that's bothered me from day one though is that the left/right (and forward to a lesser relevance) lean buttons seem to have their own agenda. Freedom of movement is handicapped and you cannot lean left or right incrementally or left-to-right and right-to-left dynamically.

I looked into some of this while I was originally writing the code. It seemed I would have to rewrite/rework too much. I didn't want to do all that work unless this new lean was agreed on. Perhaps something for 2.13.

[thebigh]

The new lean looks great, and still behaves as expected when leaning out of or into shadow.

[datiswous]

It bothers me that I asked a pretty important question (I think) and nobody is able to answer it.

[thebigh]

As far as I can tell the new lean behaves the same as the old one where the light gem is concerned. I didn't notice any significant difference.

[Daft Mugi]

On 9/26/2023 at 3:40 AM, datiswous said:

Well I was wondering if with the new lean, because you move more in view you also become more visible and there is a change in the lightgem compared to the old method.

8 hours ago, datiswous said:

It bothers me that I asked a pretty important question (I think) and nobody is able to answer it.

I looked into this. The lightgem code is quite involved as there are many factors that influence its final value.

I'm mostly sure I found the final value, and when I compared the two leans at the spot shown in the video in the training mission, the new lean had an increase of roughly zero to one lightgem unit. Rarely, there would be a two unit increase. The lightgem range is 0 to 32. So, where the old lean would be 15, the new lean would be 15 or 16 (or rarely 17). Would that actually make a difference in gameplay? I don't know. Also of note, if the lean angle is increased, the lightgem value decreases at that spot with that particular lighting. The old lean angle is more than the new lean angle, so that is why there is roughly a zero to one unit difference.

[Skaruts]

On 9/26/2023 at 1:52 PM, MirceaKitsune said:

I'm thinking of it like this: Leaning should be like sticking just your head beyond a wall. It makes you a little visible if the area is well lit and the AI close by to see you, but far less than your whole body sticking out and being spotted.

The way I see it, on top of that, you should also be harder to detect by AIs, since they're not seeing your entire body. Currently I don't think that is the case at all. I've been very easily detected by AIs when leaning around a well lit corner.

It's kind of prohibitive to lean in TDM, in lit areas. Iirc, in Thief there's at least a grace period. Guards will take a second or two before they notice you.

Edited September 29, 2023 by Skaruts

[thebigh]

12 minutes ago, Skaruts said:

It's kind of prohibitive to lean in TDM, in lit areas.

The new "tap" feature helps with that IMO. You don't have to commit to leaning all the way out, you can just take quick peeks.

Aside from that, I think the light gem behaves just as I'd expect. If you're in shadow and lean out into the light, your light gem brightens but not by as much as if you stepped out into the lit area. That's completely sensible behaviour and I wouldn't want to be able to peek around corners without any penalty at all.

Besides, it works the other way too. Lean away from light sources, or squash yourself into shadowy corners, and you become more concealed. In T1/T2 leaning never makes you less visible. It's one thing that I think TDM does better.

[Skaruts]

Yea, I think perhaps there not being a grace period, or the AI (seemingly) not having a much smaller chance of detecting you, might be the actual issue there.

 

 

[Skaruts]

By the way, to address the subject of the thread, I did test the new lean and I quite like it. The amount of view angle is small enough that I didn't even notice it at first, so, as far as I'm concerned, it feels natural.

Between the two I much prefer the new one.