How I blackjacked an armed guard to death in 50 seconds, without him or his colleague even realizing I'm there

[MirceaKitsune]

Figured I'd post this for two reasons: The sheer hilariousness of the sequence and how satisfying it is to watch, and a potential bug report since this is likely not intended and should seriously not be possible. Enjoy the goodness

No cheat codes were used and targeting is enabled: I was just trying to annoy the guards after they spotted me, then noticed this is actually a thing I can get away with. What most likely happens is due to me standing on the table, they can't pathfind their way to my location, and since I'm also in total darkness the AI loses track of me. This means that if you climb on any tall object in a dark area, you can hit guards with the blackjack and they never realize you're there, they just stand around screaming in pain and occasionally go searching in a random direction. Obviously the TDM AI will never be highly realistic, but hopefully a tweaked algorithm can be used to prevent such uncanny sillyness from being quite as accessible

[Baal]

Must have been rats.

[datiswous]

Could you test the same when using a sword? Same behaviour?

I think the guard should have specific reactions to his colleage making those pain screams.

Edited January 11, 2024 by datiswous

[MirceaKitsune]

5 hours ago, Baal said:

Must have been rats.

Owww... just the wind, I guess. Argh... you'll pay for that, wind

4 hours ago, datiswous said:

Could you test the same when using a sword? Same behaviour?

I think the guard should have specific reactions to his colleage making those pain screams.

I overrode my save but can probably find circumstances to test it again. Also this FM doesn't give me the sword or broadhead arrows, likely to do with its non-lethal objective. Should be easy to test in any FM though: Just find a table in darkness, lure a guard near it, then if you lean forward and hit the guard without touching him they'll just sit there and cry without doing anything.

And yeah: Apart from the silly lack of awareness (they don't even move out of the way) the colleague also doesn't seem to care about the other guard being hit. The only time he said something like "I'll help you look" is when the second guard first saw the first guard alert, but since then they no longer interact at all. Wonder if this can be fixed without needing new voices, so while searching together guards will periodically ask each other things.

[datiswous]

I actually had a situation in Tears of St Lucia where I set notarget in the console, moved behind the guard standing in the tunnel leading to the church and then I blackjacked him on the legs constantly until he died. He didn't do anything about it, apart from making sounds.

[MirceaKitsune]

25 minutes ago, datiswous said:

I actually had a situation in Tears of St Lucia where I set notarget in the console, moved behind the guard standing in the tunnel leading to the church and then I blackjacked him on the legs constantly until he died. He didn't do anything about it, apart from making sounds.

Yes: That's normal and intended when notarget is enabled, it's funny to play that way when you want an easy and abnormal experience in a run. In this case I didn't use any of the cheats, this all happens by default. Posted this on the bug tracker just now as it seems like something to be aware of.

https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6436

The core issue appears to be that AI doesn't actually connect attacks to the attacker... hitting a guard does put them in alert, but doesn't also make them aware of the player's presence like seeing you does. A similar result can be observed if you shoot an arrow at guards from a distance: The guard never thinks of running to the location the arrow was shot from, only searching the area right in front of him which no self aware person would do.

[datiswous]

4 minutes ago, MirceaKitsune said:

Yes: That's normal and intended when notarget is enabled

Sorry, I forgot to add that when I was behind the guard I disabled notarget.

[MirceaKitsune]

Not quite the same issue and slightly less funny, but had some more fun testing how guards react in real situations. Somehow he doesn't notice the 4 people he's guarding flee the room in terror screaming about an intruder. If his reaction couldn't be chugged to AI errors, you'd think he hates the people he's guarding and pretended to see nothing just to be smug

 

[Xolvix]

All I can tell is the gamma is so low, how does one find secrets and details in the environment if you can't even see shit. But I guess you could justify the AI being dumb too if they also can't see shit.

[MirceaKitsune]

18 minutes ago, Xolvix said:

All I can tell is the gamma is so low, how does one find secrets and details in the environment if you can't even see shit. But I guess you could justify the AI being dumb too if they also can't see shit.

I keep it that way for realism. Video compression makes it look worse, normally it's a little better. I occasionally try to tweak the lighting to make it brighter but without making the whole world gray everywhere the way gamma does.