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Rope Arrow Concept


Springheel

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I propose that a classic T2 rope arrow also be created and added to the toolset. It's a given that people will want them, we should cater to them -- ESPECIALLY since it's a rope arrow; something that wasn't in T3 and was so hotly contested.

 

oDDity's is a neat idea, but I don't like that the rope is thin like string. (And that it can't be re-used. wtf?) Unless you're disproportionately strong or in very good shape and can do it all with your arms, climbing a rope requires your feet, too. Your feet need a nicely sized rope to rest on and grab onto to help propel you up as you push off with your feet. As well, you're legs need something to wrap around; this becomes somewhat of a seat whereby you can rest. (Remember, sometimes the thief will only climb partway up the rope and need to sit there for a few minutes. The user won't immediately climb to the top and get off the rope right away every time.) Using your lower-body would be virtually impossible with a thread of a rope to climb like oDDity's. I don't even want to call it a rope arrow anymore; it's a Yarn Arrow.

 

One like T2 that uses magic, has the serrated tip like Springheel's concept, has a thick (manly) rope to climb, that magically disappears when you take it still needs to be created, imo. This issue shouldn't be a mutually exclusive thing (oDD's way or the highway) with something as important as the rope arrow. It's fine to have oDD's version as one that could be used if the FM author wants -- but come on, we can't screw up the rope arrow, guys. We need a classic rope arrow for the Thief fans. I can't believe we're on the verge of messing this up.

 

That's a good point, a wooden shaft would be fine now, and helps the weight poblem a little more.

Which is why I had said Springheel's half-and-half concept would've been fine. All the rope was contained and fastened up near the head.

 

They're great models, definitely. Just not what I'm looking for if I were an FM wanting to use Thief-like rope arrows.

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Steam?  Where does enough steam come from to spin the head with enough force to drive it into the wood?  Does the arrow have a boiler in it somewhere?

 

It comes from the same source where the steam comes from that the steampowered bots get their energy to detect friend and foe. :)

 

It's not that hard to understand, is it?

Just put a pill of dehydrated water in the front chamber and some frozen fire in the other one. When the arrow impacts, the chambers are broken and the two ingrididents start to react.

 

You need sustained pressure behind a drill to push it through wood...at least five to ten seconds of force (and that's for a fairly small screw, not something that would hold a man).  After the moment of impact, an arrow has no way to generate that kind of force without also pushing itself -away- from the wood.

 

That's why I said use chemcials and vents.

 

I'm liking the look of the concept now though. :)

 

Yeah. It looks cool. :)

Gerhard

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You didn't read the ideas properly DF.

That thin cord is not for climbing. You tie that thin cord to your thicker rope, and the cord spools out as the arrow travels. The spooling action stores energy in a spring under the spindle, so when the rope hits its target, a pin blocks the spindle from spinning that way, and the energised spring makes it spin the opposite way, and it spools back up to the bow, pulling the thick rope up with it. The thick rope spins around the spindle a few times, enough to make it tight and sturdy. There's also no reason why this rope arrow can't be reusebale now.

 

There's no case for having two types of rope arrow, a magic one and an inventors guild one. They both have exactly the same functon.

Your obsession with having to have everything be a carbon copy of Thief, is really getting on my nerves.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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oDDity my reasons for wanting the rope arrow retreivable are based on gameplay. Realism alone isn't a good enough reason for anything in a game. It has to work in the context of the game. You'd be taking a huge amount of my rope arrow fun away if they became limited. It would just give me less options.

 

Guards wouldn't realistically voice their minds either but we need it for the gameplay.

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energised spring makes it spin the opposite way, and it spools back up to the bow, pulling the thick rope up with it. The thick rope spins around the spindle a few times, enough to make it tight and sturdy.

 

How would this affect the animation? I don't think we can reasonably have a trailing rope behind the arrow as it flies.

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I'm sure it's not beyond the scope of our collective brains. Even some sort of particle trail, or something like they did with the arrow trails in TDS would do to indicate the rope.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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Won't we get into the same problems we talked about for the grappling hook? If the rope is trailing behind the arrow, it should really drape believably over anything between the arrow and the thief. And then for it to be pulled up to the arrow itself.... That all requires some pretty significant physics.

 

I think we should just have a normal-sized rope fall from the arrow like everyone expects, and not worry about whether there would actually be enough room for the rope or not.

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Agreed that the thin wire doesn't have to be visible, we can just play a "spooling out" sound from the player when the arrow is in flight.

 

There may be some problems showing the thick rope going up to the arrow though, if we want to show that. As SH said, if the arrow arcs and falls below a railing or something, the rope going in a direct line to the arrow would clip thru the railing unless we made it follow the path of the arrow and drape over (actually, maybe that could be done with a particle effect.. it just has to follow behind the arrow, so a delayed particle trail that looks like a rope might work)

 

Just for the point of anal realism, conservation of energy means that the spindle would have to have some extra spring loading when it spins back the other way, because the thick rope is going to weigh more than the thin rope, and also it needs to spin around more times than it spun out to pull in the thin rope + a few winds of thick rope. That's no problem tho, we could just have another assist spring that's idle until the spindle unwinds the first time and it's going back the other way.

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Your obsession with having to have everything be a carbon copy of Thief, is really getting on my nerves.

No problem. Your obsession with anti-magic realism at every step of the way gets on mine, so we're even :)

 

And yes, I did misread your post. My apologies

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Agreed that the thin wire doesn't have to be visible, we can just play a "spooling out" sound from the player when the arrow is in flight.

 

I don't think this is a good idea, because it would have to get lower the farther away the arrow goes.

 

There may be some problems showing the thick rope going up to the arrow though, if we want to show that.

 

We should not. This is just an explanation and nothing more.We don't need to implement all the complicated details just to backup teh explanation IMO.

 

As SH said, if the arrow arcs and falls below a railing or something, the rope going in a direct line to the arrow would clip thru the railing unless we made it follow the path of the arrow and drape over (actually, maybe that could be done with a particle effect.. it just has to follow behind the arrow, so a delayed particle trail that looks like a rope might work)

 

How do we handle this anway? IMO the rope just deploys and falls downward. It is not going from the player to the arrow, unless we implement the ropewalking idea as well, which is a seperatre case though.

Gerhard

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I've been thinking about ways to make a particle trail work and I can't think of how it would reasonably translate into a hanging rope without looking strange. If it's not going to look good, there's no point in adding it at all.

 

I think we should do the following:

 

The arrow is fired like any normal arrow. As it hits its target the arrow makes an impact sound (thud) then there is the whir of a drill for a second or two. A click, and then the (regular-sized) rope falls from the arrow with the sound of the spool whirring. That will make it sound all nice and mechanical, so people who don't like magic can convince themselves it's all clockwork. We don't have to actually animate every step of the process.

 

When the player wants to retrieve the arrow, they frob it, there is a spool-whirring sound (of the rope being rolled back up) and then it disappears into their inventory.

 

If we get rope physics working, we can always come back and modify it later (though if we get proper rope physics we might as well go straight to a grappling hook and forget the rope arrow entirely).

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The arrow is fired like any normal arrow.  As it hits its target the arrow makes an impact sound (thud) then there is the whir of a drill for a second or two.  A click, and then the (regular-sized) rope falls from the arrow with the sound of the spool whirring.  That will make it sound all nice and mechanical, so people who don't like magic can convince themselves it's all clockwork.  We don't have to actually animate every step of the process.

 

When the player wants to retrieve the arrow, they frob it, there is a spool-whirring sound (of the rope being rolled back up) and then it disappears into their inventory.

 

 

I'm behind that. Sounds logical to me. There's no need to over complicate the process with fancy effects...that's just eye candy.

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  • 10 months later...

Not to beat a dead horse, but I was thinking about how to sync up the rope spindle with the rope. As of now, the spindle stays near the arrow head while the rope spawns near the fletching. So here's a design idea:

 

ropearrow_trigger.jpg

 

And once again, don't mind me, I think too much . . . :rolleyes:

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Well hell we've suspended belief in Thief with the whole elemental arrows and actually being able to hide in shadows, so why not this eh?

 

I don't actually care but just to clarify the problem with ropes being too close to walls - I have a dent on my desk because I could'nt get from one vine to another (in the mansion) reliably. You always either fell or grabbed (the former which was more popular), and jumping from one vine to another was a bitch. I'd say have it further from the wall for usability reasons.

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