Played around with Door Control

[BoilerDunce]

While looking through the config I found a setting for door control. I can't find it anywhere in the in-game settings menu, so I will assume its an unfinished gameplay feature that may have been abandoned. 

Door control works similarly to Amnesia: the Dark Descent, ie. you can manually move a door with the mouse while holding frob on it. A few main differences that can probably be explained by it being unfinished:

-Only up and down mouse movements can control the door. 
-The maximum speed that you can move the door is capped to the same very slow speed that doors open with an unheld frob.
-When you slowly close the door, there is also a minimum speed.
-Seemingly, when using manual control, the door stops just short of being officially closed. It looks closed, and it suddenly stops as though it has been closed. No sound effect plays, and guards will still see the door as opened.

Supposing this is more fully implemented, we could see one or a few of these improvements:

-A variant of the door sounds that aren't so easily heard when you open and shut them slowly. (Probably should just be the sound of the knob turning and the latch clacking much more quietly.)
-The ability to much more quickly open doors, for instance you would want this while on the run, and it wears less on some player's patience than the current default speed.
-The ability to slam doors shut, either to create a noisy distraction, or to put a little distance between you and a pursuing guard.
-Creaking door and trunk variants that are more stealthy to open quickly than slowly.

In addition, for players who don't want to enable manual door control, these stealthy variants should still be accessible through the Held Frob mechanic, and lucky for us there is already an example of this mechanic in gloomwood. (as an aside, wouldn't we also like a customizable frob highlight color, which was also implemented there? I'd gladly set it to a nice blue color for Deadly Shadows nostalgia.) Possibly, we could also use the Attack key during a held frob to do give non-manual players an auto-slam. It would be great if a guard could be knocked out this way. If he's fully alerted and following too closely, he'd probably brace the door and push through pretty fast, though. 
 

[datiswous]

9 hours ago, BoilerDunce said:

-The ability to much more quickly open doors, for instance you would want this while on the run, and it wears less on some player's patience than the current default speed.

See section Fast Doors on this mod:

 

[snatcher]

Nice finding! I didn't know tdm_door_control existed at all

Speaking of a key + mouse combo (I don't use game controllers) I have yet to find a game with this mechanic where dragging the mouse doesn't feel sluggish and/or frustrating. The mousewheel sometimes does a better job but overall the mechanic slows down gameplay which is probably why it is employed in many slow-paced horror games.

TDM is a sandbox and each map is created differently and for this mechanic to work the environment must be built with the mechanic in mind: doors must open in the right direction (where the action is) and there cannot be obstacles to avoid constant re-positioning and leaning (too many keystrokes).

Based on the current implementation I can see why this was abandoned but this doesn't mean that the idea isn't worth exploring further!

[BoilerDunce]

Much appreciated

[BoilerDunce]

40 minutes ago, snatcher said:

Nice finding! I didn't know tdm_door_control existed at all

Speaking of a key + mouse combo (I don't use game controllers) I have yet to find a game with this mechanic where dragging the mouse doesn't feel sluggish and/or frustrating. The mousewheel sometimes does a better job but overall the mechanic slows down gameplay which is probably why it is employed in many slow-paced horror games.

TDM is a sandbox and each map is created differently and for this mechanic to work the environment must be built with the mechanic in mind: doors must open in the right direction (where the action is) and there cannot be obstacles to avoid constant re-positioning and leaning (too many keystrokes).

Based on the current implementation I can see why this was abandoned but this doesn't mean that the idea isn't worth exploring further!

To clarify, I don't mean to suggest that the held frob mechanic would have to apply for the fast mechanics (slamming shut and throwing it open). That 300 ms would be awful to wait for while mid sprint. It would only be required that frob be held first while attack is pressed to throw a door open or slam it. Like the melee and parrying system, the mouse should only need to be already be moving in the intended direction while the frob and attack combo is pressed in order to slam in the player's intended direction. The non mouse option to could probably be a check of which movement key is being held?

The player can still let go within a reasonable time to use the old fire-and-forget mechanic where the door continues opening while the player moves on to other things. I believe it pisses the fewest people off to add rather than replace. And that's why we would have to include non-mouse mechanics for everything that's possible just so that nobody feels left out.

 

[wesp5]

2 hours ago, snatcher said:

Speaking of a key + mouse combo (I don't use game controllers) I have yet to find a game with this mechanic where dragging the mouse doesn't feel sluggish and/or frustrating.

I completely agree, What would be next? That we would need to describe the blackjack curve exactly with the mouse ;)? Speaking of which, I just played the new Indiana Jones game and it has the same raise-weapon-when-in-knockout-position mechanism as TDM :)! Coincidence or was this used in other games already?

Edited February 3 by wesp5

[BoilerDunce]

1 minute ago, nbohr1more said:

Original topic:

 

I don't have permission to see it.

[nbohr1more]

Sorry, that is a developer thread. ( I thought it was public. ) I'll try to find the old public one.

[nbohr1more]

Couldn't find the public topic. Probably buried in another discussion.

Here is an old bug tracker:

https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=2316

[BoilerDunce]

 

20 minutes ago, nbohr1more said:

Couldn't find the public topic. Probably buried in another discussion.

Here is an old bug tracker:

https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=2316

It's all good. I don't have much else I can contribute. If this jogs some memories, it will do most of the good it ever will.

A very nice day to you all. May all that avails you be not far from remembrance.

[snatcher]

22 hours ago, wesp5 said:

[...] I just played the new Indiana Jones game and it has the same raise-weapon-when-in-knockout-position mechanism as TDM :)! Coincidence or was this used in other games already?

Thief 3, Deadly Shadows?

[GloriaPierce]

On 2/3/2025 at 4:25 PM, datiswous said:

See section Fast Doors on this mod:

 

Thank you.

Edited February 6 by GloriaPierce

[grodenglaive]

On 2/3/2025 at 4:33 PM, wesp5 said:

I completely agree, What would be next? That we would need to describe the blackjack curve exactly with the mouse ;)?

on the other hand, these interactions would be excellent for the VR mod (if using tracked hand controllers).

Edited February 7 by grodenglaive