Jump to content
The Dark Mod Forums

Lockpicking


MadhatteR

Recommended Posts

First of all, i would like to say that i appriciate all the effort you have put into this new mod, it looks stunning. (guess i'll have to opt for the doom3 engine now instead of the halflife2!)

I am really dieing to play it!!! (especially since i am on a thief diet ever after finishing all three games in expert modes, and splinter cell being a poor comparison)

 

Well after coming across your link in the thief 3 DS forum i decided to become a member of your forum... in order to give my opinion on some things i would like to see in the mod :D Now here it goes you might think ! another looney!

 

However some things have ever bugged me, for example the lockpicking, i found it lacking that whenever you picked a door with an AI standing behind would not notice you picking it. (it makes a hell of a noise in all three thief games, i wonder why the guards never heard it!)

 

Now here is something i wonder if its possible to implement that the AI reacts to you picking locks if they are standing close to the door thats being picked (i.e. on the other side) cause that would make it harder for garrett and the user would have to think of different ways to accomplish missions.

 

Another option towards doors is that if the user could skip to 3rd person view he could open a door stealthly and peek through the halfopen door, instead of opening a door full out as in the case of all 3 of the previous thief games

 

Furthermore on the topic of knocking guards out and garrett being to light build to carry a heavy bloke around, i cooked up (read: rip off from splintercell 3rd person) the next idea: wouldnt it be cool to give the user the option to Blackjack a guard or to grab the guard while sneaking up behind.

 

The grab option would mean something like the splintercell series grab only not a threat with a gun but hold the guard under threat of a knife then move towards a dark spot where you could knock out the guard with the pommel. This would then solve the problem of garret being to light build to carry a fully armoured guard as the guard would walk on his own.

 

One more question could the revive BJ guards option by other guards ... as in splintercell ... (damned i like the thief games much better but these options would compliment the thief series only to the max !!!) be implemented as well?

 

Well since i never have played anything running on the doom3 engine yet i really dont know what is possible and what is not... so i hope you could take that into consideration... (me being ignorant etc... )

 

Sorry about blameshing these forums by quoting/snatching good features from splinter cell, but i really think they would compliment the dark mod/ Garrett very well (and it really was something thief3 lacked in my opinion) :ph34r:

 

Greetzzzz

 

|M|adhatte|R|

 

p.s sorry for the long post :(

"Curiouser and Curiouser" cried Alice!"
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 59
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Hi!

 

Concerning 3rd person view, most of us consider it cheating. The D3 engine supports third person, but we will not put effort in it. This means that you probably can switch to it, if you feel like it, but we wont provide animations for it. I also don't know wether the camera will work properly, as I never tried the 3rd person in D3 for actual gaming, only for development purposes.

Gerhard

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi!

 

Concerning 3rd person view, most of us consider it cheating. The D3 engine supports third person, but we will not put effort in it. This means that you probably can switch to it, if you feel like it, but we wont provide animations for it. I also don't know wether the camera will work properly, as I never tried the 3rd person in D3 for actual gaming, only for development purposes.

 

 

If you do make lock picking, for the love of god, don't make it out to be even the least bit reminiscent of Thief 3's catastrophic rendition (In fact, avoid creating The Dark Mod with any references or similarities to Thief 3--the game is an insult to the Thief series).

 

I would also recommend making the least HUD possible. Perhaps if you want to check your ammo or something, you can hold 'R' to open your pouch or show your arrows holster. I actually know of a few mods that are doing something similar to this. One is an ultra-realism World War 2 mod for Half-Life 2: If you want to check how many clips you have, you actually look down at your belt (or whatever is holding it), and if you want to check the ammo in your gun, you actually have to take out the clip (Or you'd better count your shots ;). The mod really has something if you ask me: http://www.resistanceandliberation.com .

Edited by woah
Link to comment
Share on other sites

HMMMM ... alrighty then :D

 

This wasnt the idea i was getting at when i posted my message :D

I actually found the lockpicking in all 3 thief games (2 for the die hards... as i noticed some of you considered the 3rd one crap) funny... It kinda struck me as odd that you could make that much noise and not alarm anyone. I wasnt suggesting on a 3rd person there, just that if the guards were reacting to you picking a lock it would make the game a bit more difficult especially as to the different ways a guard(AI) could react. Besides that it would make you think twice about picking a doorlock for example and think of different ways to play the game.

 

About the 3rd person view ... well i read it in your FAQ shortly i posted my message ... sorry i can be a bit of a daft *censored* at times ... especially when its getting late at night and my brain stops functioning.

 

As i recall from splintercell however there was a possibility to grab characters in the game in 1st person view (its when you've grabbed the character and then aim your gun blah blah) Now i'm not saying that this mod should have gun in it :D I rather would like the option to go with the knife/BJ to grab the character then interact with him and get information about some treasures from the AI then move into the shadows somewhere and knock him out. So it would be a 2ndary attack sort of thing :D And of course an option to get even more immersed into the story of the Dark Mod :D

 

Now sorry that i tend to quote from splintercell quite often, but as you might recall, that what you get from being too long on a thief diet... You go out and try to find something that might replace Ye olde Thief of Yore

 

Greets

 

|M|adhatte|R|

 

p.s if you are in need of any help with old dialects of english ... I studied philology, which means i could be some help in Ye olde englissche department :D

"Curiouser and Curiouser" cried Alice!"
Link to comment
Share on other sites

i might as well answer your questions:

 

Yes, lockpicking will make noise and be heard by nearby guards, and depending on what difficulty you play at of course.

 

About the grab guards idea, its interesting, but it would'nt make you "fear" the guards much. I dunno, could be good, but i'd have to see it in action first.

 

This is all as far as i know of course, plus, im just a mapper. Ish is coding the ai atm.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It would be possible and pretty easy actually to make guards hear sounds from lockpicking. I'm not arguing against that idea, but I do have some comments on how 'loud' sounds are ingame:

 

IMO, the noise from lockpicking is similar to the noise from walking on different surfaces: It's artificially amped up when the player hears it, for gameplay reasons, to give the player feedback on how noisy they are being. To the AI though, these sounds are about equivalent to their real-life volumes.

 

In reality, walking on a carpet and delicately picking a lock would make sounds that are near the threshold of human hearing. The guards respond in accordance, not hearing you walk on carpet until you are practically right next to them. However, it wouldn't really work to play the sounds at actual volume to the player, because they'd be so quiet that it would be difficult for the player to get any sort of feedback on how loud they were being. Also, your footsteps would get drowned out by the ambient music.

 

What I'm trying to say is, if you took the sound of walking on a carpet from Thief, and played it from a speaker on the floor of the room, people would be able to hear it much further away than the actual sound of someone walking on a carpet. But if you used the actual volume of what your ears get when you walk on a carpet, the player would barely hear it and not get any info on how much noise they were making.

 

There's another reason for making lockpicking in particular artificially loud: The sound gives you feedback, telling you how close you are to opening the lock. In RL, lockpicking involves a lot of tactile feedback as well as audio. Since there's no way to translate the sense of touch, the audio is amped up to compensate.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ish, about the ambient music - will there be an option to turn it off, and if so, would it be possible to adjust (to be quieter) player footstep sounds and so on accordingly? I usually prefer to turn off ambient music in most games wherever possible, I find it gets annoying after a while, even if the music is quite good. I find it more atmospheric with just realistic ambient noises as appropriate to the map anyway, rather than actual music.

 

It would also be nice, if for example, there is a thunderstorm going on outside, that the noise of the storm covers quiet sounds...

 

I have a mission in mind where the player will have to predict when the noise of a thunderclap will arrive after seeing a flash of lightning in order to sneak past guards on a noisy floor, and it would be nice if ambient noises drown out player and AI sounds in a fairly realistic way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ish, about the ambient music - will there be an option to turn it off, and if so, would it be possible to adjust (to be quieter) player footstep sounds and so on accordingly? I usually prefer to turn off ambient music in most games wherever possible, I find it gets annoying after a while, even if the music is quite good. I find it more atmospheric with just realistic ambient noises as appropriate to the map anyway, rather than actual music.

 

It would also be nice, if for example, there is a thunderstorm going on outside, that the noise of the storm covers quiet sounds...

 

I have a mission in mind where the player will have to predict when the noise of a thunderclap will arrive after seeing a flash of lightning in order to sneak past guards on a noisy floor, and it would be nice if ambient noises drown out player and AI sounds in a fairly realistic way.

 

Hmmm, I'm not sure I understood that correctly..so forgive me but I don't think it would be a very good idea to give footstep volume control to the player. That's something that needs to be delicately balanced for gameplay...it should not be considered a feature.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think he means the volume that you, the player hear, rather than the volume the AI hear. If you really want to turn off ambient music and turn the footstep sounds down, you can. I don't know if we'll support an easy way to do it in the options screen or not (the final options screen is far far away in the future right now), but right now it's tweakable in a def file if you really want to.

 

As for environmental sounds masking suspicious sounds, it's planned, but no promises.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't mean footstep volume (as percieved by the player) would affect the AI's response - I simply mean that the player's footsteps seem louder as the ambient music volume gets louder, so that the footsteps of the player are audible to the player. You wouldn't even have to give the player direct control, just have it so that the volume slider for the ambient music also automatically adjusts the players footstep volume as the player hears it (but it won't affect the AI's perception at all).

 

This is entirely for the purpose of gameplay balance (and auditory aesthetics too I suppose) - if you have the default volume of footseps set on the assumption that the player will choose to have the ambient music at 100% volume, then it is logical that if the player chooses to turn the ambient music down to 30% or 0%, then the footsep volume will be accordingly reduced, so that the footstep sounds aren't overwhelmingly or disproportionately loud.

 

Does that make sense?

 

The other part of my question, regarding ambient noises masking player sounds is a separate issue regarding AI sound perception, I hope both questions are clear...

Edited by obscurus
Link to comment
Share on other sites

As for environmental sounds masking suspicious sounds, it's planned, but no promises.

 

Aren't sounds placed in the level going to mask the thief's sounds? If so, then how about making a trigger that fires off the light, then the sound, with the sound falloff being set to a sufficient area to cover the thief's movements? I haven't looked in the sound editor a lot, but I remember a tute using triggers to fire off a light.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Of course we can use triggers and all kind of extra requirements, but we prefer to have a robust solution, that works in all kind of environments. Requiring the map designer to place all kind of extra information is IMO only a last ressort if you can't do it better.

Gerhard

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The sound propagation to AI was pretty much entirely rewritten in our mod. In D3 it was just a distance check that went thru walls, and they either heard the sound or not. Sound masking will be done thru the new system, and I have plans for how to do it, we just have to make sure it runs fast enough.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ambients that are real exist a lot in Thief FMs at the moment. Especially rainy ones. Your mention of lightnight sent me back to Murkbell. Mmm.

 

Will crouch sneak, the equivalent of the slowest TII mode make noise even on SUPA-TAPPY-ANTI-THIEF-TILES so we have to do that annoying w w w w w w thing? Please say not! Thief Classic engine does have some far too loud areas and it's dull tapping w so as not to make a step (It's pretty messed up anyhow. Floating there, moving along, then slamming your foot into the floor if you float for too long in one go).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tapping w w w to progress silently is exploiting a bug in the Thief sound code and is considered cheating, I believe you will find. You shouldn't be doing it, so stop it. Use moss arrows or find a way around the noisy floor, or wait 'till guards have moved out of ear shot. As far as I know, TDM won't have the forward tap bug that plagued the first two of the Thief series, so you'd better get used to it....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ha, I was doing that too!

 

Only it was s s s...

May the Abyss rule!

 

Shadow of the Serpent Riders fan.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tapping w w w to progress silently is exploiting a bug in the Thief sound code and is considered cheating, I believe you will find. You shouldn't be doing it, so stop it.

Really? Why is that cheating? It seems to me that for any surface that doesn't actually break (like leaves and twigs), you should be able to move slowly enough that you don't make any sound (that anyone would hear). I generally find myself doing the w w w thing on tile or metal. Otherwise, there's no way to cross those surfaces without making a huge amount of noise. Shouldn't I be able to cross them without making any noise by going really slow (which is what w w w would be)?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


  • Recent Status Updates

    • Petike the Taffer  »  DeTeEff

      I've updated the articles for your FMs and your author category at the wiki. Your newer nickname (DeTeEff) now comes first, and the one in parentheses is your older nickname (Fieldmedic). Just to avoid confusing people who played your FMs years ago and remember your older nickname. I've added a wiki article for your latest FM, Who Watches the Watcher?, as part of my current updating efforts. Unless I overlooked something, you have five different FMs so far.
      · 0 replies
    • Petike the Taffer

      I've finally managed to log in to The Dark Mod Wiki. I'm back in the saddle and before the holidays start in full, I'll be adding a few new FM articles and doing other updates. Written in Stone is already done.
      · 4 replies
    • nbohr1more

      TDM 15th Anniversary Contest is now active! Please declare your participation: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22413-the-dark-mod-15th-anniversary-contest-entry-thread/
       
      · 0 replies
    • JackFarmer

      @TheUnbeholden
      You cannot receive PMs. Could you please be so kind and check your mailbox if it is full (or maybe you switched off the function)?
      · 1 reply
    • OrbWeaver

      I like the new frob highlight but it would nice if it was less "flickery" while moving over objects (especially barred metal doors).
      · 4 replies
×
×
  • Create New...