[2.12] Increased Mantle Speed

[Daft Mugi]

I've been asked to post about the increased mantle speed in 2.12 as some folks have been curious about the change.

After a lengthy internal discussion along with testing and input by several mission authors, it was agreed internally to increase the mantle speed. But during 2.12 beta testing, we would like feedback on any bugs or issues that you find.

The reason for the change was to address feedback from players that mantling was "painfully slow", "slow and clunky", "mantling sucks - it's just slow", and so on. Several mission authors supported making mantling faster, and so the dev team decided to tweak the mantle speed.

There were multiple implementations with the final implementation being a compromise. Also, the dev team studied some parkour techniques to ensure that the mantle phases and timings were good enough. The changes include:

• The original mantle phases were kept as that is what longtime TDM players are used to, and only the duration of some phases were reduced.
• Changed the pull animation so that it has both acceleration and deceleration rather than just deceleration.
• Tweaked the swaying back and forth a bit to work better with the increased speed.
• When the player in forced into the crouch position at the end of a mantle, crouch near the end of the mantle rather than the beginning in order to remove the sudden "dip" of the player's view.

A majority of dev team members were against adding a menu setting, so being able to toggle between the old and new mantle speeds will not happen.

It is recommended that you try out different "Mantle Roll" values as some prefer "0.1" and others prefer "0.5".

We hope you all enjoy this adjusted mantle speed, especially the overhead mantle, which is now more consistent with the other mantle types.

Bug tracker: https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6343

[Daft Mugi]

If you would like the mantle speeds to be similar to 2.11, add the following to your "autoexec.cfg" file:

set pm_mantle_hang_msecs "750"
set pm_mantle_pull_msecs "750"
set pm_mantle_shift_hands_msecs "500"
set pm_mantle_pullFast_msecs "450"

[datiswous]

17 hours ago, Daft Mugi said:

A majority of dev team members were against adding a menu setting, so being able to toggle between the old and new mantle speeds will not happen.

So also no cvar? If I cannot change these easy, I cannot test it.

Edited December 22, 2023 by datiswous

[STiFU]

1 hour ago, datiswous said:

So also no cvar? If I cannot change these easy, I cannot test it.

Store the attached files in your darkmod folder. Activate old vs new speeds via "exec OldMantleSpeeds.cfg" or "exec NewMantleSpeeds.cfg", respectively.

I am surprised to find that pm_mantle_pullFast was actually decreased by 50 ms. I did not catch that during Code-Review. Why was this done? Now the regular pull and the fast pull are almost identical.

NewMantleSpeeds.cfg OldMantleSpeeds.cfg

[Daft Mugi]

2 hours ago, STiFU said:

I am surprised to find that pm_mantle_pullFast was actually decreased by 50 ms. I did not catch that during Code-Review. Why was this done? Now the regular pull and the fast pull are almost identical.

Looking at the code, the originals were "pm_mantle_pull 750" and "pm_mantle_pullFast 450". The new "pm_mantle_pull" value is "400". A "pm_mantle_pullFast" value of "450" would be slower than regular pull, not faster. With both being set to "400", they are at least similar.

Other than that, it's subjective and the feedback from playtesters was positive.

Also, referenced internally here:
https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22256-movementcontrols-settings-in-main-menu/&do=findComment&comment=489158

 

[STiFU]

Oh that was my bad. I had it the wrong way around in my head. My mistake, all good.

[chakkman]

On 12/21/2023 at 9:50 PM, Daft Mugi said:

The reason for the change was to address feedback from players that mantling was "painfully slow", "slow and clunky", "mantling sucks - it's just slow", and so on. Several mission authors supported making mantling faster, and so the dev team decided to tweak the mantle speed.

May I ask where you got that "feedback from players" from, and who the "several mission authors" supporting making mantling faster are exactly?

[Amadeus]

21 minutes ago, chakkman said:

May I ask where you got that "feedback from players" from, and who the "several mission authors" supporting making mantling faster are exactly?

I'm one of them. I support faster mantling and told daft mugi as such when I tried it out

[Daft Mugi]

2 hours ago, chakkman said:

May I ask where you got that "feedback from players" from, and who the "several mission authors" supporting making mantling faster are exactly?

The 2.11 (and prior) feedback came from TTLG and Thief discord servers. During early testing, several of these players and Thief FM authors expressed renewed interest in trying TDM and some have become regulars of TDM because of recent changes. I consider that a win for the TDM community, because more players and mission authors are good for us. More mission authors means more missions for us to enjoy; more players means a bigger audience for those mission authors.

(I'm vague here about who the players are for privacy reasons, but you can find them by searching TTLG, Thief discord servers, and TDM discord servers.)

As for the mission authors, the dev team got feedback from them during development of the increased mantle speed in 2.12. The main feedback that was listened to was that mantling should be faster, especially the overhead mantle. As for who they are, perhaps they can chime in here to let you all know.

[snatcher]

@Daft Mugi, Please spare us from this. You are entitled to your own opinion and vision but you aren't the voice of them players. You sound as if you felt compelled to do it. You decided to step forward now go and put yourself upfront, defend your position, address user concerns and acknowledge criticism. Be real, just like the old guard.

[Frost_Salamander]

1 hour ago, chakkman said:

May I ask where you got that "feedback from players" from, and who the "several mission authors" supporting making mantling faster are exactly?

I was asked to help test the mantling changes and I was neutral about them, but I am supportive of any changes that might encourage new players while at the same time not ruining my own experience.

Since upgrading to the 2.12 beta branch I've got used to the faster mantling and quite like it now.  Same with the frobbing changes, leaning and all the other stuff that's gone in.

[Daft Mugi]

24 minutes ago, snatcher said:

@Daft Mugi, Please spare us from this. You are entitled to your own opinion and vision but you aren't the voice of them players. You sound as if you felt compelled to do it. You decided to step forward now go and put yourself upfront, defend your position, address user concerns and acknowledge criticism. Be real, just like the old guard.

What are you talking about?

[Wellingtoncrab]

I was asked for feedback on some different mantle implementations. I liked the overall direction and the current 2.12 one not just because it is more responsive but because it also includes some other polish like getting rid of the kind of weird “double dip” mantle you would get when mantling into a crouched position with low ceilings.

There are small things I would change were it up to me, but I prefer it to the original. It’s nice that there is some accompanying control in the main menu in terms of the animation intensity. I always liked the mantle feel of TDM and think now it feels even better, but that is just me.

[chakkman]

11 hours ago, Frost_Salamander said:

I was asked to help test the mantling changes and I was neutral about them, but I am supportive of any changes that might encourage new players while at the same time not ruining my own experience.

In which way do you think that the changes made to mantling and leaning will "encourage new players"? I don't see anything about the old systems which would be a hindrance, or a discourage for people getting into the game.

Anyway, my main issue with this and other things which have been pushed here quite aggressively lately is something different. But, that's something the core team of the mod should address (and know), and is probably not something to discuss here in public (and not up to me anyway). I'm in good faith that it will be addressed, because, I don't think it can go on much longer like this.

Edited January 9 by chakkman

[Baal]

I'm fine with the new mantle animations. The only difference I even noticed is the increased speed. I didn't mind the old, slower mantling, but it is good the way it's now (my opinion of course).

Concerning the view roll:

In my experience, when moving around in real life, I do not really percieve small head roll movements. So exaggerated rolls "feel" off to me (that also concerns leaning). A default mantle roll of 0.5 seemed best to me.

[datiswous]

---

Edited January 9 by datiswous
I decided I am not happy with my post and it shouldn't go in this direction.

[wesp5]

1 hour ago, chakkman said:

Anyway, my main issue with this and other things which have been pushed here quite aggressively lately is something different.

I don't know what you mean by that, but I got the impression that several of the latest changes were made to get the old Thief community more interested in TDM. In that sense this isn't really about "new players" and I would like to see some numbers of e. g. how many people download each new TDM mission compared to how many people do so with new Thief missions to learn how big our communities are. Anyway back on topic, the new mantling speed and roll are fine for me!

Edited January 9 by wesp5

[Frost_Salamander]

1 hour ago, wesp5 said:

I don't know what you mean by that, but I got the impression that several of the latest changes were made to get the old Thief community more interested in TDM. In that sense this isn't really about "new players" 

yeah this is what I meant, sorry for any confusion.  Daft has mentioned this several times as motivation.

[Wellingtoncrab]

4 hours ago, wesp5 said:

how many people download each new TDM mission compared to how many people do so with new Thief missions to learn how big our communities are.

Yeah it would be cool to see some more detailed statistics and it’s a shame they aren’t really captured. Since we are talking about fan mission platforms, where players also make the content for the game, I feel like the best thing we’ve got is you can look at the number of content releases for the games. Keep in mind the graph counts campaigns as single missions - so for example NHAT and TBP both count as 1 mission. A good year for TDM has has approaching maybe 50% - mostly we’re 25-30%.

https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152494

You could also look at the number of ratings thief missions get on https://www.thiefguild.com/ vs TDM ones, but that is pretty iffy in that you could chalk that up to more awareness of the site in the thief community than TDM

4 hours ago, wesp5 said:

 In that sense this isn't really about "new players"

Out of curiosity is there a reason a thief player can’t be a new player? I kind of think a player is a player and new players would be ones who are playing the dark mod who weren't? Is there disagreement the base of players most likely to pick up the game are fans of the thief games? They are certainly the most fruitful place to find feedback on the game beyond the sphere of this forum that I have seen.

When we were trying to finish up SLL there was a lot of discussion on the forums about how long it had been since there was a release for the game. I am thankful that the stats show at least some stability over the years in terms of releases for TDM, but the trend for all of the games is decline.

Not doing anything is a valid response if that’s what the devs want to do - it is not possible to provide evidence that any effort will slow that inertia.

As a player and content maker I would just prefer trying to find feedback where it is offered from players who were willing to try the game but ultimately could not engage with it and see if there is anything that can be done within reason to ease them into the game. The game has a lot to offer imo.

All those players are potential contributors - contributions in turn attract players - it’d be nice to see the cycle go on as long as it can.

Edited January 9 by Wellingtoncrab
typo

[Daft Mugi]

5 hours ago, chakkman said:

Anyway, my main issue with this and other things which have been pushed here quite aggressively lately is something different.

In what way has any of this been "aggressive"? I ask, because I've tried to be the exact opposite of aggressive as much as possible. If I can improve here, I'd like to know. Have others been aggressive towards you?

5 hours ago, chakkman said:

But, that's something the core team of the mod should address (and know), and is probably not something to discuss here in public (and not up to me anyway). I'm in good faith that it will be addressed, because, I don't think it can go on much longer like this.

What are you insinuating here? I ask, because it sounds like you are either displeased with me personally, with the dev team as a whole, or with mission authors. What do you think needs to be addressed exactly? Would you mind making this clear, so we can improve?

 

If it makes you feel any better, all of the player control and movement issues that I'm aware of that can be addressed have already been addressed. So, I personally don't have anymore player control or movement changes planned at this time.

Regarding this mantle speed change, I proposed it internally and created the original solution. But the final solution was a dev team collaboration, and therefore I'm not the sole contributor of this change. The core team, including myself, already addressed this change. Are those the details that you wanted to read?

[snatcher]

1 hour ago, Wellingtoncrab said:

[...] but the trend for all of the games is decline.

Very interesting reading, Welli. Here is a different spin when it comes to new players.

The number one selling point of TDM within its genre is content. Thanks to talented and dedicated artists such as yourself we now have around 175 self contained stories. I would say TDM crossed the barrier from medium to high selling point with the 100th release. From this point on it doesn't matter if the game offers a hundred or a thousand maps. A hundred maps is A LOT already. Want content? Look no further. Requisite fulfilled.

The number two selling point is... you tell me. Free? Open Source? Multi OS? Map editor? Being maintained?

Just like with any form of entertainment people will either love TDM at first sight, tolerate it and even get to like it, or simply dismiss it. No amount of small tweaks can fundamentally change TDM and certain changes may end up dividing the community.

My ultimate goal here is to make this community aware of the potential of a healthy modding scene to attract artists and experts in all departments and feed hungry and demanding players. Mods can be the second selling point of TDM: thief it your way.

Edited January 9 by snatcher

[ChronA]

2 hours ago, snatcher said:

We now have around 175 self contained stories. [...] Want content? Look no further. Requisite fulfilled.

With that many maps what a lot of people are going to want is curation and quality control.

If you want to know why Thief FMs are still pulling more eyes, that would be my guess. It's not even that the quality of the best Thief FMs are better than ours (IMO they are not), or that they have better tools for recommending them. The big advantage is that Thief has an popular and established lexicon for having those discussions. People know their expectations and can communicate them; and when they communicate their preferences they can reasonably expect to have them understood and satisfied.

An excessive example (not biographical but a plausible hypothetical):

Spoiler

If you are someone with roughly 120 hours of free time over the next 6 months that wants to invest into a Thief-like immersive stealth sim, when you decide to play Thief2X instead of TDM you can be reasonably confident that you're going to have a better time. That's because with Thief2X you'll spend maybe 3 hours max and half the cost of a bad cup of coffee (which is utterly inconsequential to most people) getting the thing to run, and then 117 hours enjoying a high production value homage to the Thief setting, story, and games you remember so fondly.

With TDM how many of those hours are you actually going to spend on the fun bit? Sure it's faster and cheaper to install, but the movement feels off, and there are new gameplay systems to learn, endless difficulty and graphics setting to tweak. How many hours and sessions are you going to spend wading through uncharismatic tutorialization and non-diagetic guides, deciding this is not for you, switching to something else, and then coming back?

Then you have to find FMs to play. How many community theater tier false starts do you try before finding something truly masterful like a Grayman, or a Kingsal, or Moonbo's work? And when you finally compose your personal lists of promising TDM FMs out of the forums and play them through, will you really feel as satisfied once you discover that almost none of them share any lore or continuity except for a vague and dry design document you might dig up from the wiki?

Would you be wrong to say you tried TDM and the juice is not worth the squeeze? Not when there are still plenty of Thief FMs to play, and after them, endless commercial games that mostly provide hundreds of hours of gorgeous Skinner box cinematic for the cost of a fancy cheeseburger? Does 175 mostly-unremarkable, FOS missions piled under a ton of baggage actually compete with that as a value proposition?

The relevant point is that playing TDM is a major investment to the biggest demographic of people that might be interested in branching out. It seems like some people here don't recognize that dynamic. Some of us think that there are a bunch of quirky or vestigial irregularities in TDM that don't add much value to the established community and could be homogenized to to lower that barrier to Thief transplants. We are confused why you guys see it as so threatening. Personally I still feel like I haven't got a single straight answer.

 

All that said on this specific mantling issue, I am actually sympathetic to the reactionaries. I love that the new speed was calibrated off of parkour videos. That was super clever. However the opposition has a point that our play characters are usually hauling like 25 kg of loot, gear, and body armor during a typical mission, judging by the in game models. And they are generally not in any big hurry. It it were me I would split the difference between the old and new speeds, or maybe go 70-30 in favor of parkour.

[stgatilov]

I also hope the big pile of movement changes is finally over
All these changes seem minor but cause heavy reaction. First we got overly lengthy arguments about it internally, now the same continues publicly.

I'm not sure why everyone thinks parkour was the main motivation.
In fact, I watched parkour videos to understand how the hell it should be possible to do the wall climb up as fast as @Daft Mugi wants it.
Now I play Prey and its climb up is insanely fast, totally unrealistic... I guess in the end most people are annoyed by having to wait for the same boring mantling animation and prefer to regain control faster.

By the way, I believe 50% of reception to such changes boils down to plain habit.
When I took the first build of faster mantle it seemed crazily fast. But after we tweaked it (I don't think we made it much slower in the end) the reception gradually changed and I did not feel it that absurdly fast anymore.
That's why I even suggested accelerating mantle gradually (e.g. 100 ms per release) to avoid much negative feedback

[STiFU]

On 1/8/2024 at 11:40 PM, snatcher said:

@Daft Mugi, Please spare us from this. You are entitled to your own opinion and vision but you aren't the voice of them players. You sound as if you felt compelled to do it. You decided to step forward now go and put yourself upfront, defend your position, address user concerns and acknowledge criticism. Be real, just like the old guard.

To be fair, he has put forward a lot of evidence internally. There was a huge (and heated) discussion and we eventually landed on a compromise.

I totally understand, 'though, how you feel like this comes out of nowhere. I get it.

On 1/9/2024 at 10:17 PM, ChronA said:

With that many maps what a lot of people are going to want is curation and quality control.

This!!!!! Absolutely this! I have been arguing for something like that for years, but I do understand the arguments of those opposing this. At least you can sort by release date now.

[snatcher]

22 minutes ago, STiFU said:

To be fair, he has put forward a lot of evidence internally. There was a huge (and heated) discussion and we eventually landed on a compromise.

I totally understand, 'though, how you feel like this comes out of nowhere. I get it.

I didn't notice anything in this change (positive feedback I guess) other than the high mantle speed. Give us players more power (faster, better, insta, auto...) and most will embrace it without hesitation. Good, bad? I don't know. A choice in the design of your game. What troubles me is the motivation, justification and presentation of a couple of recent changes.

My perception is that all this is very personal. My perception is that this is more about Thief than TDM.