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Npc Armor And Headshots?


Ombrenuit

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I have no problem if a penalty is imposed on shouldering that takes most of the fun out of it

 

How much fun did you find it before? :)

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How much fun did you find it before? :)

Not sure what you mean. Ishtvan was making the claim that penalising shouldering as a means of balancing it with dragging would make for non fun gameplay (eg, he felt that a delay where the body is picked up and shuffled was not interactive enough and therefore not fun (I hope I'm not misprepresenting you there, Ish)). Int TDS there was a noticible delay of this sort when picking up a body, which I felt was more or less appropriate. It was a little annoying, but that was a good thing in my view, because it was an incentive to avoid having to move a body. It was relatively realistic, and since there is no way to really simulate the balancing act and effort of hoisting a limp, unconscious body onto one's shoulders with a mouse and keyboard, a short non-interactive moment where the activity is simulated for you seems quite acceptable to me. In either case, dragging or shouldering, it should certainly impose a heafty speed penalty if nothing else (since this was how Thief 1/2/3 did it, I will assume you are also going down that path), and moving a body should be just as annoying in the game as it would be in real life. One of the ways you could differentiate the two methods of moving bodies would be to make dragging a quick release method, with no major delay in grabbing or releasing the leg/arm of the body, so that the player can easily make a run for it when dragging, while shouldering enables more varied options for body placement. Perhaps.

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@Obscurus:

Yeah that is pretty much what I was saying. Although I was trying to make an overall point that if we penalize dragging too much with noise and blood trails and whatnot, people are just going to carry all the time unless carrying is heavily penalized in some other way.

 

Yes, the advantage of dragging would be that it's very fast to grab hold of and let go of a body you're dragging, so one way to make carrying less desirable would be to insert a time it takes to pick them up. I was thinking of a large delay, like 20-30 seconds. No matter how worthy the cause, staring at the ground for 30 seconds while waiting for your character to complete an action is just not that fun. Maybe something shorter like 10 seconds would be okay. The other advantage of carrying is that once they are shouldered

 

The other way to go though would be not to penalize dragging so much, so that we don't have to penalize carrying a lot in order to make dragging a viable option. I don't know if that makes sense or not. :)

 

Also, yes, we do want to have a realistically reduced speed when carrying and dragging.

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...No matter how worthy the cause, staring at the ground for 30 seconds while waiting for your character to complete an action is just not that fun...

 

 

Quite, and in my view this is exactly why you should put such a delay in, as it makes the process irritating enough that it will discourage the player from doing it except when they absolutely have to. I think one of the most powerful method available to focus the gameplay onto a purer form of stealth is to make other methods of gameplay possible, but nowhere near as fun by putting in annoying (but realistic) penalties for activities involving ecessive violence, or dealing with the aftermath of said violence.

 

On a slight tangent, one of the best ways of discouraging the player form getting into fights is to give him/her a limited amount of health, and absolutely no healing potions or health packs, or any other means of recovering quickly from injuries (you could have health restore itself very, very slowly if you can't handle having health packs taken from you cold turkey). This would mean players would either have to be very skillful in avoiding combat, or very skillful at surviving it. No doubt there would be howls of protest from those who would find fun in bashing people with impunity, but it would put the gameplay focus where I would argue it should be for this type of game.

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The other advantage of carrying is that once they are shouldered

 

... ??

 

Evidentally I'm more a fan of carrying than obscurus because my intuitions are running in the other direction. But I haven't played Hitman, though, so I grant I don't have a feel for dragging.

 

What I like about the classic Thief method is that it really freed up the PC to go anywhere once he started carrying, so e.g., it was very easy to mindlessly decide to run up/down stairs or a ladder, or jump off a short ledge ... and because Thief gameplay makes placement of bodies rather important at times, and generally speaking there's a culture in FM-making of using more z-axis gameplay than most games, so I wouldn't like restricting this sort of freedom and really wouldn't like dragging only. Anyway, I liked it and not to have to think about the carrying except insofar as it slowed the PC down.

 

And, that said, I'm not liking the idea of two body-moving mechanisms as a gut reaction, but would be willing to be persuaded if I saw it worked in game. My gut is saying like was said I'd just want to always carry to have the freedom to drop nearby or be able to make a fast decision to keep carrying further or down some stairs and I don't see what's added by adding a gratuitous functionality (in this case) that does the same job, or what would be the point of artifically adding a burden to one to try to jury-rig a reason for having two different ways. I realize there are lots of situations where this kind of redundancy adds richness to gameplay ... I'm just not personally feeling it here like I would for other examples. Also (not necessarily an argument against but a consideration), there'd be a grey area in between where someone wants either dragging or shouldering and gets the other result, to then have to throw the body back down and try again. Anyway, right now my intuition is just favoring straightforwardness for this function without the "hassle" or redundancy.

Edited by demagogue

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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@Demagogue

Whoops, forgot to finish that thought. The other advantage of having them shouldered is that you can carry them through doorways, tight corridors, up short ledges or something else they might get stuck on if you were dragging them. I don't think we should allow carrying bodies up ladders or mantling while carrying a body though, that is pretty unrealistic.

 

My gut is saying like was said I'd just want to always carry to have the freedom to drop nearby or be able to make a fast decision to keep carrying further or down some stairs and I don't see what's added by adding a gratuitous functionality...

There are some reasons for adding dragging:

1. It's faster to start and stop moving the AI, no matter what we do there would be some delay moving them to the shoulder, whereas dragging is pretty much instant as soon as you frob the extremity and go.

 

2. It allows better positioning of the body. For example, if there's a shadow along the wall, but the AI won't fit in the shadow area lying down, drag them into a sitting position sitting against the wall. If you're trying to hide the AI out of sight somewhere like a large crate, you throw them in but their feet get caught on the ledge and are sticking out, grab the feet and push/pull them the rest of the way in.

 

3. It's "immersive." In RL you would expect to be able to manipulate individual parts of the AI, and the technology to let you do it is already ingame, so we might as well make it all the more believable by including that option.

 

Also (not necessarily an argument against but a consideration), there'd be a grey area in between where someone wants either dragging or shouldering and gets the other result, to then have to throw the body back down and try again.

I think you're making some assumptions about the control scheme that aren't true. There are ways of making it very easy to input which you want to do.

 

@Obscurus:

We'll hopefully be able to reach some sort of compromise. Maybe the noise of dragging an AI isn't that loud, as in it can only be heard within a 1-2m radius, and maybe shoulder an AI takes 5-10 seconds (trust me, that will feel like a very long time ingame).

 

Re:Health potions

 

The FM author has complete control over what's available in the pre-mission loadout and what objects are in the mission for the player to pick up. If the author doesn't want to put in any health potions, they don't have to.

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5 - 10 seconds ... hrmm, sounds dreadfully long in game. Is there any PC function that takes that long so the player can do what s/he wants?

Just quick note, I don't think I like the idea that if a body was knocked out or dropped into an area only accessible by ladder or mantling that there would be no way to ever get it out of the area. I can think of a number of reasons: there's been more than a few FMs where carrying a body to a certain location is an objective. Some people just like collecting bodies together as part of the game (or to do something like the Silent Project); and sometimes it would be important to ghost a mission; etc. Anyway, you can carry bodies up ladders in TDP and I don't recall anyone ever crying foul, since you largely never notice it and it's only there when you need it.

Edited by demagogue

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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5 - 10 seconds ... hrmm, sounds dreadfully long in game. Is there any PC function that takes that long so the player can do what s/he wants?

Just quick note, I don't think I like the idea that if a body was knocked out or dropped into an area only accessible by ladder or mantling that there would be no way to ever get it out of the area. I can think of a number of reasons: there's been more than a few FMs where carrying a body to a certain location is an objective. Some people just like collecting bodies together as part of the game (or to do something like the Silent Project); and sometimes it would be important to ghost a mission; etc. Anyway, you can carry bodies up ladders in TDP and I don't recall anyone ever crying foul, since you largely never notice it and it's only there when you need it.

 

 

It should seem dreadfully long so as to discourage you from doing it all the time.

 

As far as body carrying objectives go, well that is entirely up to the FM author, and if the player can't carry bodies, obviously there won't be many FMs with that as an objective. Personally I think the "carry the body from x to y" type mission is pretty boring and not worthwhile. Just because people like doing wierd things that are tangential to the main gameplay mode does not mean that a great deal of effort should be spent on doing it, unless not doing it would detract from the realism of the game. Since carrying bodies around for long periods of time, & up ladders etc is highly unrealistic (I'd like to see you carry a heavily armoured guard up a ladder, or even lift them onto your shoulders for that matter), and given that the PC is supposed to be a fairly small, thin, not overly strong person, it makes it even less realistic for them to be transporting hefty limp bodies around, and even less reason for the player to be able to do it. Dragging bodies is much more realistic in the context of the PC, and with ragdoll physics, it would add a nice touch of immersion to the game, if not fun.

 

BTW, IIRC, T:DS did not allow you to jump with bodies or carry bodies up ladders.

 

 

 

Just to give you an idea how unrealistic it would be for the player to be carrying bodies:

 

In most parts of Australia, the critical requirement for recruitment into the urban fire department is the ability to carry an 80Kg unconscious body a distance of, IIRC, 50m. The number of applicants who fail this test is around 95 -99%, and it is for this reason that there are almost no female fire fighters in Australia (excluding the Bush fire fighting services, which have a somewhat different requirements). So few women with the necessary strength apply that most (if not all) fire departments are an all-male environment. Most active fire fighters are exceptionally strong, muscular men, with strength in the top 0.05 percentile of the population.

 

Now, take our 70 - 80Kg average male, add 20 - 40Kg of armour and the number of people with the strength to even lift, let alone carry them any significant distance drops to a vanishingly small number.

 

It would therefore be completely unrealistic for the PC of the Dark Mod to be able to carry bodies. If you make the player strong enough to shoulder corpses, you might as well give them a claymore or a battle axe, because they would be one of the few people strong enought to wield such a weapon successfully.

 

Carrying=totally unrealistic,

Dragging=plausible to realistic depending on the size of the body vs the strength of the player.

Edited by obscurus
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We will definitely allow for kidnapping objectives (KO/carry body), and the intent is to allow both dragging and shouldering of bodies, but nothing is certain.

 

I have mixed feelings on the combination of ladders and carrying AI objective. It's very unrealistic to carry a body up a ladder, and I was bothered by it in T1/2. It seems that if the FM author puts in an objective to move a body somewhere, they should insure that it can be done without having to go up ladders. If the player goes out of their way to drop someone they're supposed to kidnap into a pit with a ladder as the only access, tough luck. It's not our job to make sure every single dumb decision the player can make can be recovered from. :)

 

On the other hand, if a person absolutely had to get someone up a ladder IRL, they could probably rig a makeshift hoist with some rope, which our thief does carry around. Since we can't model that ingame, but it is a realistic option, maybe we should allow carrying bodies up ladders as a representation of that option.

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It's just my preference it seems that realism should take a backseat here to tightening gameplay. The need to move bodies to was touted as a core part of the original gameplay paradigm. I'd just like to see it kept in the tight functional package it was in the original games. And ladders is one thing, but stairs?

 

so as to discourage you from doing it all the time.

 

I still don't know why this should be a bad thing that a burden should be put on it. I can see you said before it encourages sloppy thieving ... but so could flashbombs and water arrows and for that matter almost every tool at your disposal. The whole point of having extra functions to play with is that you are allowed to play with them; don't like the idea of punishing or discouraging a PC for trying to do what he wants. Anyway, it seems the proper way to do that is with a knockout limit objective.

 

Re: ladders, the fact that TDS didn't do it only encourages me; it must be right. :P For one thing, it was abysmal with z-axis gameplay compared to T1/2 and many FMs.

 

Personally I think the "carry the body from x to y" type mission is pretty boring and not worthwhile.

 

Rowena's Curse? One of the most popular there's been. I have the exact opposite attitude here, because I think FMs with little to no NPC interaction are something less than ones with much NPC interaction. It adds a lot to a FM to not only build a relationship with or get background knowledge on an NPC over the course of it, but to actually get to engage with that NPC in a real gameplay sense. But there's only so many ways you can really do that; and carrying a body anywhere you need to is one of them (a staple, I think). So I wouldn't like to see one more element of NPC interaction narrowed.

 

And maybe I don't ever go around trying to carry people around in my life, so realism here doesn't really bother me, no more than the idea of solidified water arrows. But the gameplay function kept in a tight package in both cases is a plus for me.

 

Edit: and sorry Ish, started writing before you posted. For the record, of course I *noticed* that carrying a body up a ladder was unrealistic. I just thought this was one place where the service of gameplay trumped, because it's only in the rare case that you ever need it, but when you need it you really need it (e.g. like you say, IRL you'd try to figure out someway to jury-rig a way to get it up one way or another that trying to model accuratelly in game would be OTT; for one thing, many times the interesting gameplay aspect of body-carrying-objectives is that you are very slowed down and have to think of other creative ways of avoiding enemies other than running away). So I thought it didn't really get in the way of realism 99% of the time but is a great convienence 1% without being the most serious violation of mimeosis, or maybe how you put it in the last paragraph is the better way to explain it.

 

As for dragging, I guess if you put it in game and everyone turns out to be a big fan then I'd be willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. It'd be interesting to see it at work, anyway.

Edited by demagogue

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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As for dragging, I guess if you put it in game and everyone turns out to be a big fan then I'd be willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. It'd be interesting to see it at work, anyway.

 

This is essentially what happened among the mod team. We had mixed feelings about dragging initially. Lloyd implemented it, we tested it, and we all liked it. It still needs some tweaking though, as does everything.

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@Demagogue

 

Well, I am in favour of thieving without resort to tools that give the player away - the guards should ideally have no idea you were ever there until they realise what is missing... Look, I've been saying for a long time that just because they did X in the original Thief series doesn't mean it was good or that it should be carried over to the Dark Mod, and KOing people and carrying bodies are such things.

 

To me, a stealth game is about avoiding direct NPC interaction at all costs (although if you consider carrying an unconscious body NPC interaction I'm a little lost for words). If you want NPC interaction, play Morrowind or something...

 

And you can't on one hand say "the player can't use weapons like swords and hammers effectively because they are too weak and small to do so" and then say "but they somehow have the tremendous strength required to carry bodies around like were a small bag of potatoes". You have to be consistent. If the player is strong enough to carry bodies around, even up ladders, it follows that they should be able to pick up a hammer or a two handed battle axe and attack any NPC with ease.

 

For me, carrying bodies is so unrealistic that it shouldn't be included, only having dragging as the option for body transport.

 

If an FM author has a mission involving the transport of a body, then they could make the map so that any obsticals were navigable, and that they provide mechanisms (eg a functioning hoist) to elevate bodies where otherwise not possible.

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I don't think realistic carrying capacity is a can of worms we particularly want to open. We have a thief who carries six or seven goblets, gold plates, rolled up rugs, a few gold statues, not to mention several bags of coins and god knows what else, still able to run around without penalty (or making noise, for that matter).

 

Compared to that, carrying bodies over your shoulder doesn't seem so out of place.

 

 

As for it encouraging certain types of play, the team as a whole doesn't see ghosting as the only valid way to play a stealth game.

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I don't think carrying bodies is that unrealistic either. It is humanly possible for someone to carry someone who weighs more than them, and we are going to slow down movement appropriately when carrying a body. I know you wouldn't be able to carry them for very long IRL, but implementing that would require a stamina system and slowing down your movement speed to a halt, something we've decided against. As for the heavy armor adding to the body weight, you could probably strip the armor off IRL and make two trips to move the armor and the body.

 

Also, it's a realistic option to counter situations that could come up when dragging. If you're dragging someone and they can't quite make it around a corner or doorway, a real person would pick them up and carry them over/through that obstacle. It's nice to have that real option ingame as well.

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there'd be a grey area in between where someone wants either dragging or shouldering and gets the other result, to then have to throw the body back down and try again.

 

Actually, now that I think about it, I think we had said that shouldering the body would be the second part of a two step process. First you have to frob the body (at which point you can immediately drag it). If you then hit 'equip', it hefts the body onto your shoulder, where the 5 second (or whatever) delay kicks in. So unless you hit 'equip' by mistake while dragging, there wouldn't be any confusion.

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I don't think carrying bodies is that unrealistic either. It is humanly possible for someone to carry someone who weighs more than them, and we are going to slow down movement appropriately when carrying a body. I know you wouldn't be able to carry them for very long IRL, but implementing that would require a stamina system and slowing down your movement speed to a halt, something we've decided against. As for the heavy armor adding to the body weight, you could probably strip the armor off IRL and make two trips to move the armor and the body.

 

Also, it's a realistic option to counter situations that could come up when dragging. If you're dragging someone and they can't quite make it around a corner or doorway, a real person would pick them up and carry them over/through that obstacle. It's nice to have that real option ingame as well.

 

 

Sure a person can carry another person who weighs more than they do (for a limited distance), but there is a huge difference between balancing a limp unconscious body versus a more rigid conscious one.

 

I have no problem with a stamina system (in fact I think it is a very good thing to have as it would add another dimension to gameplay, in many ways, not just in reference to carrying), but if you have no desire to implement it, perhaps you could have the player take health damage if they shoulder a weight too long to simulate the damage to their spine (if you insist on giving the player that ability).

 

Are we going with the idea of the player being a slightly below average sized male, around 60 - 65 Kg or so? If so, it is unlikely that they would have the strength to carry anyone much bigger than 80Kg more than a few feet before they lost their balance and crupled in a heap. Olympic weightlifters can lift a very heavy rigid bar over their heads for a few seconds, but give them an unconscious person only marginally heavier than them to lift and I think you'll find the story quite different. And the carrier would be exhausted by the intense effort involved, and would need a while to rest, so a stamina system should be your first port of call if you are going to allow shouldering.

 

On the other hand if you feel that the player is built more like Vin Diesel, will you then be allowing the player to pick up a Builder's Hammer and wield it with devastating force, as would be appropraite for someone strong enough to carry limp bodies around effortlessly?

 

You need to be consistent and balanced here, and once again, don't do something just because that's how it was in Thief

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We're not doing it just because it was in Thief. I'm speaking for myself here, but if you ask me, solving a puzzle where you must think about where to put the body so it won't be detected, and how to time your actions so you evade AI patrols while carrying the body, when to time the initial KO if the AI is standing in a well lit area visible to other AI, etc, is more fun than solving a puzzle like "how much can my character lift?" or "how far can I take this body before some arbitrary timer kicks in and my character poops out and drops it?" So I would choose somewhat unrealistic body dynamics but tighter AI patrols and more lit areas to go through, to make the player think about how to stealthily move and hide the body rather than think about how much their character can lift for how long.

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I applaud the option to drag bodies in addition to shouldering. I weigh 150lbs and am 5"10' - I can easily shoulder people who weigh more than me; the problem is getting very far. I have to go slow, or else my legs begin to give out. While I like the idea of a stamina system, having the player move slowly is a perfectly reasonable substitute.

 

If I needed to mantle, I'd first unload the body up where I'm going, mantle up, then re-shoulder the body. However, carrying them up and down ladders does not seem realistic unless the character is very (firefighter level) strong.

 

Granted, I'm a martial artist - but I imagine darkmod's thief character has a similar build from running and climbing about, using a shortbow, etc.

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I applaud the option to drag bodies in addition to shouldering. I weigh 150lbs and am 5"10' - I can easily shoulder people who weigh more than me; the problem is getting very far. I have to go slow, or else my legs begin to give out. While I like the idea of a stamina system, having the player move slowly is a perfectly reasonable substitute.

 

I'm 5'9" (175cm) and 220 lbs (100Kg) (I was into bodybuilding/powerlifting until a couple of years ago, so my muscle mass is slowly shrinking and my fat mass is rapidly expanding due to lack of excercise, but that is another story), and I have no trouble shouldering a conscious person who weighs about 120Kg (264lbs), is not completely limp, and walking a few metres with them. It is quite another thing to get someone who is completely relaxed onto your shoulders - it takes a lot of practise to learn how to posiiton the weight, and it requires much more effort to keep them from flopping onto the ground or losing your balance. I'd prefer a stamina system over moving slowly for an indefinite distance.

 

@Ishtvan: If you are going to have shouldering, it is frankly ridiculous to not have some kind of stamina system. You can still have the same puzzle solving elements you are talking about, they would just have an added dimension which the player would need to consider. Those puzzles would have a lot more depth if you had to periodically put the body down and rest, and would really IMO be a lot more fun than just being able to move slowly for an unlimited distance.

 

An arbitrary limit on how far you can carry a body before running out of steam is far better than no limit. Carrying bodies also unduly unbalances the game in favour of the player, as it puts the AI at an unrealistic disadvantage if the player can pick NPCs off and easily move them several hundred metres to a spot the AI won't find them. The player should really have to consider if it is worth it or necessary to KO someone and move their body, or just find a way around them without disturbing them.

 

Thief actually had a stamina system for arrows - if you notched an arrow in your bow you had a limited period of time in which to fire before your aim went haywire. It is a shame they didn't implement a stamina system in general; it would have been a better game for it.

 

I can only remember a couple of parts of Thief where carrying a body was essential, and I thought it was frankly a bit silly. I want a game where I get to use stealth to rob people without being detected, not bash them and slowly cart their bodies around.

 

If I needed to mantle, I'd first unload the body up where I'm going, mantle up, then re-shoulder the body. However, carrying them up and down ladders does not seem realistic unless the character is very (firefighter level) strong.

No argument there.

 

Granted, I'm a martial artist - but I imagine darkmod's thief character has a similar build from running and climbing about, using a shortbow, etc.

 

This is where the Dark Mod seems to be taking an inconsistent approach. Never one to flog a dead horse, but it is just silly to say the player can't use swords or hammers or shovels or whatever weapon like thing happens to be lying around because it is too heavy for the player to use, but to then say that they can cart people around on their shoulders over indefinite distances.

 

If having a stamina system that means the player must drop a shouldered body every 30 ft or so (we'll be generous with his strength and endurance) makes carrying bodies less fun, then so be it - it will add spice to the core gameplay and discourage players form excessive violence. I'm really not sure why people are getting hung up on body carrying puzzles, they seem like a pretty daft form of gameplay to me, and I certainly wouldn't miss them.

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We don't want a stamina system. The main argument against it being that having to sit and wait some time for your character to "rest up" before you can pick up a body again, mantle again, climb a rope again, sprint again, etc, is simply not fun. Maybe if we were a true simulator with "time compression," it would be okay to wait for a stamina "recharge," since you could jack up the time compression and wait longer in a shorter realtime amount, at the risk of being caught by AI who would be moving around at a compressed speed, but we're not planning to do that.

 

I don't think anyone is going to be able to argue us into having a stamina system. We considered it thoroughly, and pretty much heard it all in our internal discussions before deciding against it. At least some people will accept moving slowly instead of stamina. :)

 

This is where the Dark Mod seems to be taking an inconsistent approach. Never one to flog a dead horse, but it is just silly to say the player can't use swords or hammers or shovels or whatever weapon like thing happens to be lying around because it is too heavy for the player to use, but to then say that they can cart people around on their shoulders over indefinite distances.

It's not so much that the player is too weak to use a sword or hammer, it's that the character doesn't have any training with those weapons. Our character spends their time practicing being a good thief, not practicing longsword parries, warhammer swings and armored combat. If we had infinite time to work on the mod, we would allow picking up longswords and hammers, but model very crappy combat skills when using them. I.e., your parries wouldn't work most of the time, your attacks would be slower, clumsy, and not where you want them to go, and the AI would easily be able to beat the sword aside and hit you, or manuever around your crappy guard. But we don't really have time to animate and code all that, so this is one of the rare cases where the player gets a decision made for them in that they don't try to use the weapon. Maybe a 3rd party can implement all that stuff after we release, or maybe we'll find time to make some sort of generic attack animations that work with a variety of objects, but don't count on it.

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If you are going to have shouldering, it is frankly ridiculous to not have some kind of stamina system.

 

Your opinion. However, it's equally ridiculous for a thief to be able to carry 20 pounds of metal loot without making any noise, or to get shot in the back with an arrow and ignore it while continuing to rob the mansion for another few hours, etc, etc. The only way to fix all these 'ridiculous' situations is to create a reality simulator, which wouldn't be 1) feasible, 2) popular, or 3) fun.

 

Carrying bodies also unduly unbalances the game in favour of the player, as it puts the AI at an unrealistic disadvantage if the player can pick NPCs off and easily move them several hundred metres to a spot the AI won't find them.

 

It is not going to be easy to 'pick NPCs off' (nor does that have anything to do with shouldering). Shouldering will not be an 'easy' way to move a body 'several hundred meters' either--since you will be moving slowly and will be much more visible. Since you could just as easily drag the body if shouldering were not included, I fail to see how shouldering puts the Ai at any disadvantage.

 

It is a shame they didn't implement a stamina system in general; it would have been a better game for it.

 

This was endlessly debated early on by the team (I was the one who initially proposed it), and the majority decided that a stamina system would not be a benefit to tdm gameplay. I've come to agree.

 

it is just silly to say the player can't use swords or hammers or shovels or whatever weapon like thing happens to be lying around because it is too heavy for the player to use

 

When did we ever say that? You WILL be able to pick things up and use them as weapons, you just won't be able to do anything interesting with them, since you're not a trained warrior.

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On the issue of carrying bodies up ladders--

 

Why not give the ladders a property that allow FM authors to determine whether it's possible to carry a body up it or not? It should be pretty easy to implement. On the same note, why not enable "body shouldering" to be toggled on or off in the mission editor? Let the mission designers decide how realistic they want it to be.

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  • Recent Status Updates

    • Ansome

      Finally got my PC back from the shop after my SSD got corrupted a week ago and damaged my motherboard. Scary stuff, but thank goodness it happened right after two months of FM development instead of wiping all my work before I could release it. New SSD, repaired Motherboard and BIOS, and we're ready to start working on my second FM with some added version control in the cloud just to be safe!
      · 0 replies
    • 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
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