Your Shadow - Visible To The Ais?

[Supergreg]

I took it for granted that Thief 3 would have shadow detection in the AIs, to me that was the whole point with dynamic shadows. After a while it dawned on me, though, that this wasn't case. Garrett's shadow was just a cosmetic touch, not a gameplay element. How will it be in Dark Mod?

 

I love you Dark Mod guys for what you're doing here, by the way. If I were the praying type, I'd pray every day that you'll stick with it. I tip my hat at you.

 

SG

[Springheel]

You can choose to enable or disable the player shadow yourself. We've been looking for ways to code the shadow so it is visible to AI, but so far haven't come up with a workable way of doing that. Personally, I don't think I'll use the player shadow if AI can't detect it, but others might feel differently.

[New Horizon]

I took it for granted that Thief 3 would have shadow detection in the AIs, to me that was the whole point with dynamic shadows. After a while it dawned on me, though, that this wasn't case. Garrett's shadow was just a cosmetic touch, not a gameplay element. How will it be in Dark Mod?

 

I love you Dark Mod guys for what you're doing here, by the way. If I were the praying type, I'd pray every day that you'll stick with it. I tip my hat at you.

 

SG

 

We have discussed the pros and cons of doing this, but have made no 'absolute' decision yet. The main consideration is the gameplay implications. The simplicity of Thief style game play is the 'seen/ unseen' element, controlled by being hidden in the shadows. If the shadow were to act as an extension of the player and render them visible, when according the lightgem..they aren't, it will throw a sizeable wrench into the gameplay mechanics. Adding features that affect gameplay in such a way look good on paper, but require a lot of serious consideration before implimentation.

[sparhawk]

A major issue is how to code it. When Doom 3 is released under GPL, several things can be recosnidered and made better, but for now it would be pretty timeconsuming (in terms of performance) to do this.

[Ombrenuit]

Personally, I don't really see the reason for doing this unless one wants to frustrate the player more. The player has little control over his shadow and making sure it wasn't sticking out into corridors will be unnecessarily difficult and also frustrating for mappers who don't intend to make sections difficult (And the possability that one cannot ghost a section at all when it was made to be that way) due to the fact that the shadow might give the player away.

[DopeFishhh]

Well, if an ai sees a shadow it should be far less likely to set them off on the "have i seen the player" line, than seeing the player themselves. A stationary shadow should really be of no interest to a guard, they have to watch out for people, not shadows. Moving shadows like moving players should attract more suspicion but the guard would either need to have been previously alerted, or they would need to be some elite guard.

 

As far as gameplay goes it's one of those hard to master bits of the game, but either way i wouldn't bother until doom3 was GPL'ed before trying.

[sparhawk]

Also you should not forget that a mapper can't force it on you. After all, you are free to switch it off and there is nothing that the mapper can do to prevent it.