ai AI spotting player and getting surprised

[Arcturus]

I mentioned that Thief 1 & 2 have a special animation that plays when player surprises the NPC.

 

There was some work done in preparation for that mechanic in Darkmod. In tdm_ai_base.script file, there are lines referring to it:

void Torso_Surprise();
void Legs_Surprise();

void ai_darkmod_base::Torso_Surprise() {
PlayAnimationOnce(ANIMCHANNEL_TORSO, "surprise", 4, "Torso_Idle");
}

void ai_darkmod_base::Legs_Surprise() {
PlayAnimationOnce(ANIMCHANNEL_LEGS, "surprise", 4, "Legs_Idle");

 

When NPC spots the player they reset their animations for a split second before they start to search. I am under impression that they can see through walls. Do they see player's arm sticking out or something?

AI vision set to "nearly blind":

 

They can spot you when their had is turned around, even with AI vision set to "forgiving".

 

I don't think NPCs communicate their state through barks well enough. They often don't say anything until they attack.

[Taffingtaffer]

On 4/8/2026 at 12:46 PM, Arcturus said:

When NPC spots the player they reset their animations for a split second before they start to search. I am under impression that they can see through walls. Do they see player's arm sticking out or something?

Yikes. Where is the 1st person camera supposed to be at, the head/torso? That's what the AI should get alerted by, arms and legs should be left out of the equation so it doesn't feel cheap...

On 4/8/2026 at 12:46 PM, Arcturus said:

They can spot you when their had is turned around, even with AI vision set to "forgiving".

I don't think NPCs communicate their state through barks well enough. They often don't say anything until they attack.

I've also felt that the head turn doesn't really communicate their cone of view sometimes, but thought it was just a feeling. That's rough...
The lack of barks on full alert is the most obvious of these problems; even the frequency of idle barks/snores is too sparse. I included value decreases in my Sound Polish mod thanks to Wellingtoncrab, but it obviously doesn't fix everything else showcased here.

[datiswous]

On 4/8/2026 at 2:46 PM, Arcturus said:

Do they see player's arm sticking out or something?

That should be expected, no?

 

I think the "drop that weapon!" -bark should be fixed so that he only says that when you have your weapon out. He might still attack you, but not say that, because it makes no sense.

 

On 4/8/2026 at 2:46 PM, Arcturus said:

I don't think NPCs communicate their state through barks well enough.

This might be specific to a specific alert state, because if they see something, but not good enough, they do make a remark that they saw something

Edited April 9 by datiswous

[sullium]

I agree that NPCs should yell out more quickly/consistently when alerted, and it would be great if they did a surprise animation as well in some cases.

I don't know if anything is necessarily broken in the videos: to me it just looks like the player character is somewhat wide and the guard has peripheral vision. However, I do think TDM is a little over-tuned in this department. Maybe the AI Vision setting in the Difficulty menu should affect more things like this, it would be fun to have slightly more leeway to move in light behind a guard or hide behind thinner objects.

Edited April 9 by sullium

[Arcturus]

4 hours ago, datiswous said:

That should be expected, no?

If there was a body in first person perhaps you could see that your arm is sticking out. Right now it's a little confusing, even if not game-breaking. Are you sure that that's what's happening here?

There's this weird thing about NPC eye bones. In the skeleton and in animations they are were you would expect them:

But in game they are hovering two meters in front of the character.

I don't know where this comes from, maybe it's hard-coded. It means that even if we had proper eyeballs we wouldn't be able to use eye animations right now. Why was this done? Is this just cosmetic? Some kind of makeshift vision cone? Or does it serve a purpose?

4 hours ago, datiswous said:

This might be specific to a specific alert state

Yes, they should be saying something like 'who are you?' or 'what are you doing here?'