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Played around with Door Control

BoilerDunce

By BoilerDunce
in The Dark Mod

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BoilerDunce

BoilerDunce

Posted
Posted

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

datiswous

Posted
Posted
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:

 

  • Like 1
snatcher

snatcher

Posted
Posted

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!

TDM_Modpack_Thumb.png

BoilerDunce

BoilerDunce

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Posted
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

wesp5

Posted
Posted (edited)
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 by wesp5
snatcher

snatcher

Posted
Posted
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?

  • Like 1

TDM_Modpack_Thumb.png

grodenglaive

grodenglaive

Posted
Posted (edited)
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 by grodenglaive

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