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Mission Failed Concept


Springheel

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PS, does anybody like/dislike the chains? I think I might like it if there were more moving things throughout the gui, but not by themselves...

 

I think the chains might be a little dark at the moment, making them stand out too much. If they were faded into the background, then the movement might not be so bad. You're right that they do distract from the skull at the moment.

 

Any thoughts about some swirling smoke?

 

I love the way the skull comes in, though I'm with Ish that it could stand to be sped up a bit. There's something about the balance of the whole thing that seems off, as if it's shifted to the right a bit, but I can't tell what's causing that. I'll have to check a screenshot to see.

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I've added a small swirling background test to mission_failed.gui. Right now, only a small part of the screen is swirling at any given moment. It'd be a lot of work to have everything swirling at all times, but I wanted to check what people thought of the general effect. (currently, I'm not sure I like it) Another thing I'm thinking of trying, is looking for a way to use a partical effect on a model or something.

 

Also, I've doubled the speed of the skull and lightened the chains.

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Domarius wrote: Heh, Darkness's one looks scarier.

 

Domarius wrote: Yeah I still find Spring's one more scarey - but perhaps something about the way its lit and shaded could make it even more scarey.

 

:wacko: I'm confused... :)

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Yeah I changed my mind 3rd time around, when went back and had another look at Spring's.

To me, yours is more "Woo! Scarey!" while Spring's is more chilling on a primal level.

 

I was thinking of adding a touch of "Woo! Scarey!" to Spring's one - only by affecting the lighting, not the geometry of the skull.

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Cool. I wasn't really trying to affect the geometry; it was a by-product of the quick burning I did. I hope you try tweaking it. From this experiment, I've learned it doesn't pay to do quick touch-ups or mock-ups on anything, unless it is very close to how you want it to look in the end. So if you try to enhance it... spend time on it. To communicate ideas to the team, it seems you have to go 'all or nothing'. Spend an hour making a bang-up job, or else forget convincing anyone.

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I won't be able to give any feedback for the next while as I sort out my latest computer mishap. :angry:

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Jumping in to give some feedback (almost done with my exams.. soooon..)

 

First of all, the font, I'd prefer Carleton. It's just cooler. (Plus I think you overdid it a bit with the photoshop filters, but I see the problem here: you can't use a one color font since the background looks the way it does. And having the text be solid orange would probably look pretty weird.)

 

When I think about it, do we even need text? Thief had text for mission success, but none for death.

 

Anyway, the skull: I like Spring's, but I agree it should be rotated correctly, it does look pretty funny the way it is now :) Like he's kinda, I dunno, happy or something. Hm. :)

Not sure about the glow in the eyes, can't decide if I like it or not. Heh..

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@Gildoran: For a swirl, wouldn't this work: Create a new image in photoshop and render->clouds it (black & white). Add it ontop of the background in the GUI and use whatever blendingmode you used for the characters on the menu screens. The rotate/move the image.

 

It sorta looks like that's how ID did their animated "creepy" textures.

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I like the way your skull seems to leap off the screen at the end, that might be a nice touch. We could go with Carleton if people prefer, I don't mind either way. As for not using text at all for the fail screen...I think I'd still vote for text of some kind, though we could always make it more subtle than it is currently.

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If this is for 'Mission Failed' anim, then there shouldn't necessarily be a skull. The skull should only appear if you die. Why? Maybe an objective states you can only KO 5 guards, but you end up KO'ing 6. Why would a skull appear for that? That's just one example. So for a 'Mission Failed' animation, I don't think there should be a skull.

 

For a death animation, I like Pak's skull and the animation looks good. And there doesn't need to be any wording. The skull is enough.

 

For the Mission Success animation, I'm not too fond of the audio. Seems to go slightly flat in one part toward the end, too; but it might be because of compression.

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there shouldn't necessarily be a skull....there doesn't need to be any wording...

 

What do you want, just swirly fog and some music? :P

 

Maybe an objective states you can only KO 5 guards, but you end up KO'ing 6. Why would a skull appear for that?

 

That's why there are also chains and bars in the background. Even if you didn't die during the mission, if you're caught, you're going to be tortured or imprisoned until you're dead.

 

There are rare cases where you might fail the mission but not be caught OR dead, but the only way to cover every circumstance would be to have no pictures at all.

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What do you want, just swirly fog and some music? :P

I had said for a 'mission fail' there shouldn't necessarily be a skull. Skulls inherently imply death. And since the mission sometimes ends without the thief dying, there shouldn't be a skull in those instances.

 

And then I went on to say that for the 'death animation' -- which is often different than just a 'mission fail' -- (e.g., where you fall off a cliff or get pummeled to death) that a skull should be used and there doesn't need to be any wording for that since skulls imply death and that the mission has ended.

 

That's why there are also chains and bars in the background. Even if you didn't die during the mission, if you're caught, you're going to be tortured or imprisoned until you're dead.

I wonder if we should program it so if the mission ends without the player getting killed that the skull does not appear. This would solve the primary concern I have and would eliminate th need for the player to have to put two and two together to figure out why they saw a skull for accidentally KO'ing 6 guards instead of 5.

 

Maybe we should just have a few different scenes: One for if player dies. One for if player gets caught. One for if player simply screws up ... where we see him contemplating life back at his apartment. Or something.

 

There are rare cases where you might fail the mission but not be caught OR dead, but the only way to cover every circumstance would be to have no pictures at all.

Or have a few pictures that would cover *most* or *many* cases. Just having one ending is very limiting and makes it that much harder to kill every bird with one stone (figuratively speaking).

 

In T2, the fail movie was the same wether you died or just failed an objective, and I had no problem with it. Failing an objective is as good as dying. Failure is the end.

I know, and I picked up on it, and it bothered me. Sorry!

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@Gildoran: I'm not trying to be an ass, but I honestly don't understand why you don't want to rename your mission failed GUI to restart.gui? I know the name isn't as descriptive, but restart.gui is the one D3 is hardcoded outside of the SDK to play, and now there are two versions: Your mission_failure one and the one people actually see ingame when they see a mission. Isn't that going to cause some confusion about not knowing whether people are commenting on the older version in restart.gui or the newer version you've been working on?

 

That's why I initially merged your GUI into the restart.gui, keeping only the placeholder D3 buttons so that we can still navigate back to the main menu when we die.

 

@Others:

I agree a single mission failure screen is fine. When you die, you fail the mission. I think we can spend our time on more important things than an endlevel GUI for every possible way to fail the mission.

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There are rare cases where you might fail the mission but not be caught OR dead, but the only way to cover every circumstance would be to have no pictures at all.

Maybe that's not such a bad idea. Pak's 'Mission Success' animation doesn't have any pictures; just the swirling fog and verbiage... and it's effective. I wouldn't mind if there was just the opposite of this if a mission failed: swirly fog, music, and 'Mission Failed' verbiage. Simple, effective, and works for every instance that the player messes up.

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Oh, we can't use those videos, way too low-res, and I don't have the source material anymore. Plus I think we should stick to the parchment theme like everywhere else.

 

@Gild: Well, rotating is spinning, I think? :) I just reacted to you saying it would take a lot of time to do the swirling.. How are you creating it now?

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I think we can spend our time on more important things than an endlevel GUI for every possible way to fail the mission.

 

Agreed.

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@Ishtvan: I don't object to renaming it to restart.gui. However, restart.gui has a lot of unnecessary code (for example, the merged restart.gui fades the edges of the screen to black and occasionally flickers) and I figured it'd be easier to try to get everything looking ok first, then add a minimal set of replay/reload/quit code and copy mission_failure.gui over to restart.gui after that. I guess what it boils down to, is that I didn't want to replace restart.gui until I had something close to the final version. If it's really a big deal, I'll be happy to work with restart.gui.

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