Difficulty

[Maximius]

Would it be possible to make a set of AI that are sleepers, wearing nightgowns and saying sleepy things, that mappers could use? They could have a few special features, for example each sleeper has a unique relationship with its particular bed. The sleeper can awaken, look around and cause trouble for the Thief, but when he KOs them, and puts them back into their bed, and only their original bed, that particular situation does not trigger the AIs reaction to seeing a body. Of course I have no idea how to do that but it doesn't seem impossible on its face.

 

It just seems that if a guard, who would know the sleep habits of the castle back and forth from being up all the time watching people at night, would have a good idea if someone was sleeping in someone elses bed. If he sees the Captain of the guard sleeping in the scullery maids cot, he is going to know something is not right at best he would wake the captain, assuming he was drinking, and take him to his quarters. So I have no problem with guards alerting when they see a body in a bed, even if you could "arrange" it properly.

 

But if a sleeper is KOd and then placed back into his or her own bed, that should not really be something that would set off the guards right away. I would not even see the need for arranging the body, as long as its on its own bed it would be cool. Again this is supposing these things are possible.

[Fidcal]

That is maybe possible for the mapper with a stim/response setup. But perhaps it is borderline worth doing except in a special case. I'm thinking a guard would alert anyway if they see a KO or body even on the bed and it would not be unreasonable.

[bob_arctor]

I still like the idea of sleeping AI entity (in PJs) who starts off sleeping, you just whack em into the beds, sorted. I'd really like that.

[Springheel]

Would it be possible to make a set of AI that are sleepers, wearing nightgowns and saying sleepy things, that mappers could use?

 

Any AI can be put into a 'sleep' state, where they will playing sleeping barks and the sleeping animations. I doubt anyone is going to model an entirely new model for the purpose, however. You could do a new texture that looks somewhat like bedclothes, but that wouldn't remove the shape of any armour, etc.

[Crispy]

Any AI can be put into a 'sleep' state, where they will playing sleeping barks and the sleeping animations.

We haven't actually implemented that.

 

It is in the AI design document, so one hopes that it will be implemented at some point.

[Springheel]

It is in the AI design document, so one hopes that it will be implemented at some point.

 

You could even do it right now, in a hacky way, but I assume we'll implement it properly before TDM 1.0 (though one never knows....)

[Ombrenuit]

I think stealth games are a tough balance because there is often no middle ground in terms of difficulty. I definitely think that the more clever the AI, the more dynamic the game play when it comes to games like this, and therefore the more rewarding. Foiling clever, immersive AI is a bit more tactical than simply "the marble floor tap trick" to scuttle across without a sound.

 

It's just that on one end there is the blackjack options that can make the game far too much of a cakewalk, and on the other end there is the no blackjacks at all, which can make game play far too frustrating. Usually I play in a "Blackjack as necessary"; Garrett would have no qualms about blackjacking someone if he needed to, but he would want to avoid it--taking out patrols would create suspicion that could rouse an alarm.

Edited September 26, 2007 by Ombrenuit

[Domarius]

Hm... well the ideal stealth game would actually cause that to happen, removing the need for you to handicap yourself.

[Sam]

öhm..hi =)

im not sure if im right here..but ill try

are you using different spawn-places for the guards in the levels? i think that could improve the difficulty and the worth of playing the game again. (i always liked the feeling of playing a level i never was before. that deadened after playing the level again and again =/. running through the whole level and just starting to sneak when you remember where a guard is .. well that ruins the atmosphere i think .)

(however i didnt read anything about the AI. so im not sure what the AI is able to do. but that was just a little idea

Edited November 27, 2007 by Sam

[Macsen]

I don't think pyjamas were invented back then. That's why its called the Dark Ages, people had to turn the light off cause they went to bed in the nip.

[Komag]

I liked the bunny rabbit pajamas in Calendra's Cistern!

[Crispy]

I don't see any reason why mappers couldn't place more AI than they were going to use, and then write a script (or get someone else to write a script) to randomly delete some of the AI on map load if they wanted to. That sounds quite doable.

[Domarius]

That wouldn't give you much control over the gameplay though.

 

I imagine the ideal interface would be to place a guard, and then link it to several spawn points just for HIM, which are randomly selected on map starts.

[Crispy]

True, that's probably more intuitive. And it could be done with a map script too.

[Tels]

True, that's probably more intuitive. And it could be done with a map script too.

 

In the same line of reasoning, I would also like to see random loot (with either min/max values or different spawn places). It gets boring if the same coin is always in the same place

 

Do we have yet something to randomize spawnplaces?

[Crispy]

No, we don't.

 

You can write it.

[Komag]

We definitely need at least some sort of randomizer. Then we can just link it to whatever in a million different circumstances.

[sparhawk]

I'd also vote for a randomizer to replace walls and doors. After all, it's pretty boring to run through the same map again and again. If mapper could randomly replace doors and walls, that would be cool and would offer so much more replayabillity.

[Crispy]

 

Well, if the walls and doors were entities then you could just use the same system...

[Vadrosaul]

So could a mapper circle spots on their maps where they would like loot to be randomized, and possibly have control over the list of random loot objects in a certain spot, so as to avoid, for instance, a gold fire poker appearing as silverware on the dinner table?

 

 

EDIT: On second thought, what Tels mentioned sounds unimportant to the extreme.

Edited November 29, 2007 by Vadrosaul

[sparhawk]

I don't know about others, but having root randomized gives me exactly zero incentive to replay. same for randomly spawning guards. What makes a map good to play, and thus invite to replay it, is not the placement of guards, or the particular type of loot, but the overal concept of the map.

The last Thief FM from Otto is a good example IMO. I didn't really like the visual style of the map, because I felt that the chinese stuff was tagged on. Understandable, because you would need almopst a TC to make a fully chinese map. But even so, I liked to play the map a lot and keep playing it, because the overal concept is a good one and interesting to keep me playing. Knowing that an AI would spawn in a different place, or that the loot is suddenly somewhere else, would certainly NOT achieve this. Needles to say that it would be virtually impossible for players to give tips to other players when they are stuck with the loot objective.

[Nyarlathotep]

I'd also vote for a randomizer to replace walls and doors. After all, it's pretty boring to run through the same map again and again. If mapper could randomly replace doors and walls, that would be cool and would offer so much more replayabillity.

Actually, this would be kind of cool to do for a maze within a level. A simpler way for the mapper to make it though would be to have short blocks and randomize portals between them (we'd need to implement portals first, though ). Ooo, would players ever hate you for it though!

[Komag]

Is there no way to make something random? It's something that is very useful in a variety of circumstances.

 

In Dromed I resorted to random patrols of frogs, who then hit bounds triggers linked to other things!

[Tels]

So could a mapper circle spots on their maps where they would like loot to be randomized, and possibly have control over the list of random loot objects in a certain spot, so as to avoid, for instance, a gold fire poker appearing as silverware on the dinner table?

EDIT: On second thought, what Tels mentioned sounds unimportant to the extreme.

 

Erm? I am not sure why you say this. I found it always quite boring that you could predict that the same vase was always in the same place.... but if you want, I can easily add an option "don't make the loot random" especially for you

[Nyarlathotep]

Is there no way to make something random? It's something that is very useful in a variety of circumstances.

 

In Dromed I resorted to random patrols of frogs, who then hit bounds triggers linked to other things!

Yes, yes there is. For example, it would be trivial to expose something like rand() from stdlib.h to scripts. Is there already something like rand() exposed to D3's scripts?