Success screen

[Springheel]

And what happens if I want to mess around on a map?

 

That's why an "exit the map area" objective should be standard. Then you can mess around all you want, and when you're ready to leave, you physically leave the area. Best of both words.

[oDDity]

Well, no, actually it's the worst of both worlds. Not only are you forced to always make your way to an exit whether you want to or not, but you still get a patronising mission complete screen for the trouble.

I don't know what the problem is with simply letting the player exit the map at any time after the real objectives have been completed, and simply having an option on the main menu to display the stats screen for that mission if you so wish.

That's the best of both words. Freedom of choice. You guys seem obsessed with these pedantic gaming conventions.

[Crispy]

There are valid reasons for following conventions. If the game doesn't end, it will look sloppy and people will think it's a bug.

 

Also: In a stealth game, "exit the level" is not necessarily a trivial task, so implying that it should be treated separately from "real" objectives is just silly.

 

I think you're just going to have to accept that you're very much in the minority here.

[Fidcal]

I'm for the conventional Mission Complete and exit but how about a player option? 'exit game on completion'. Then everyone's happy. It sometimes happens that a player has completed all objectives but loot and wants to find all the loot but only 3/4 is needed. As soon as the player gets 3/4 he/she is thrown out. On the other hand, mappers often have an exit to complete, say a gate or door, but the exit leads to a small area and round the corner is not very much at all but the movie ends so it doesn't matter. If there is no auto-exit then either the mapper has to do extra work, perhaps quite substantial, to make the end section look realistic AND make it so doesn't go anywhere but looks sensible even so OR the player who choose no auto exit has to accept blank areas. (I plan an area like this myself BTW!)

[sparhawk]

There is no need for such an option. If the player wants to find 100% loot, then he can simply opt to not finish all objectives. Usually, there is the "Go to X to exit" option anyway, so this shouldn't be to hard. In original Thief, there were some maps without such an objective, and then I simply don't take one of them. Easy.

[Domarius]

Ultimately the mapper is in control of all this. You got missions where completing all objectives might trigger a cutscene, missions where it makes perfect sense to "go to the exit", and missions where there is no exit because it takes place in a city or something.

 

I think we should just have an "end mission" script function and leave it to the mapper.

[Ishtvan]

I'm kind've baffled by why you'd want to hit escape to end the mission. In Thief there were numerous missions and FM's where it was understood that if you just want to mess around after completing all the objectives except leave, all you have to do is... not leave. That's the most immersive choice to me: If you want to stay and mess around, your character stays in the area and messes around. If you want to leave the area and end the mission, your character goes to one of the exits out of the area.

 

Not to say that it's a mandatory objective to leave the area, the FM author could still set up the mission to end at an earlier point (e.g., the horn of Quintus, or supposing your character gets knocked out in the storyline when he gets to a certain area, then wakes up in the next mission).

 

The great majority of Thief missions made you exit the area to end the mission (on expert at least). I never had a problem with that. Successful exfiltration was part of completing the mission and surviving to do the next mission, and if you wanted to stay and mess around before leaving, you were free to do so. Otherwise, just saying "Mission Complete! Hit Escape at any time to magically whisk yourself away to safety!" doesn't make much sense to me.

 

... and missions where there is no exit because it takes place in a city or something.

If you're talking about multiple missions given in the same city-hub with no breaks inbetween them, that's kind of outside the scope of our mod right now. To handle that, IMO we would need another level of hierarchy to the objectives, like a list of multiple ongoing missions or a "quest journal," then each mission is broken down into its own set of objectives, and when the mission is complete it's removed from the quest journal.

[sparhawk]

If you're talking about multiple missions given in the same city-hub with no breaks inbetween them, that's kind of outside the scope of our mod right now. To handle that, IMO we would need another level of hierarchy to the objectives, like a list of multiple ongoing missions or a "quest journal," then each mission is broken down into its own set of objectives, and when the mission is complete it's removed from the quest journal.

 

No it's not, because the mapper can do this via scripts and mess with the objectives himself.

[Ishtvan]

Yes, I'm sure given enough time an FM author could hack something together with scripts, but I'm talking about a user-friendly system for the great majority of FM authors who don't do much scripting.

 

The easiest case is a hub where you can't actually do anything except go on to other missions. Then you'd just have to set a list of objectives in that hub, each one representing a mission, and adjust those objectives each time you come back to the hub from completing a mission.

 

It's not always that simple though, you could have missions that can be completed without leaving the hub itself, and you might want to display multiple objectives under the subheading of that mission. The objectives code only supports one check-box per objective, so you couldn't have multiple things checked off one by one within a single objective that was representing a mission. Sure, they could edit the objective text by hand, but that would be a huge pain and it would be better to have a system for this where we just keep a list of missions that contain their own objectives.

[oDDity]

I'm kind've baffled by why you'd want to hit escape to end the mission. In Thief there were numerous missions and FM's where it was understood that if you just want to mess around after completing all the objectives except leave, all you have to do is... not leave. That's the most immersive choice to me: If you want to stay and mess around, your character stays in the area and messes around. If you want to leave the area and end the mission, your character goes to one of the exits out of the area.

 

Not to say that it's a mandatory objective to leave the area, the FM author could still set up the mission to end at an earlier point (e.g., the horn of Quintus, or supposing your character gets knocked out in the storyline when he gets to a certain area, then wakes up in the next mission).

 

The great majority of Thief missions made you exit the area to end the mission (on expert at least). I never had a problem with that. Successful exfiltration was part of completing the mission and surviving to do the next mission, and if you wanted to stay and mess around before leaving, you were free to do so. Otherwise, just saying "Mission Complete! Hit Escape at any time to magically whisk yourself away to safety!" doesn't make much sense to me.

 

What's the difference. When you have to make it to a certain area to end the mission, you are also magically whisked away to safety, even if you are trailing 10 guards behind you.

The only map where I remember this idea working well, was Life of the Party, where they actually added more guards looking for you on the way back, thereby making it a different challenge.

Normally, you just have to retrace your steps, back through the same map with the same guards, and let's face it, most people play the game by blackjacking everything in sight anyway, so they're just running back through an empty map to get to some arbitrary area so they can finish the mission. 99 times out of 100 it's not a real objective with any meat on it, just like the stupid loot gathering objective.

[Tels]

Well, no, actually it's the worst of both worlds. Not only are you forced to always make your way to an exit whether you want to or not, but you still get a patronising mission complete screen for the trouble.

I don't know what the problem is with simply letting the player exit the map at any time after the real objectives have been completed, and simply having an option on the main menu to display the stats screen for that mission if you so wish.

That's the best of both words. Freedom of choice. You guys seem obsessed with these pedantic gaming conventions.

 

I think that the option "leave now" should only be there in "Easy" mode, but not on "Normal" or "Hard", where you always have to go to the exit.

 

E.g. on "Easy", you have one more "cheating" option, but you can still go manually to the exit, so to speak. On Normal or Hard, you have to make it to the exit. (Heh, it is not easy mode, right?)

 

Giving the player choices is good, but it shouldn't be made too simple

 

Tels

[sparhawk]

Yes, I'm sure given enough time an FM author could hack something together with scripts, but I'm talking about a user-friendly system for the great majority of FM authors who don't do much scripting.

 

Something like this is certainly not something for a casual mapper, so I have no problems if he would have to do some scripting.

 

The easiest case is a hub where you can't actually do anything except go on to other missions. Then you'd just have to set a list of objectives in that hub, each one representing a mission, and adjust those objectives each time you come back to the hub from completing a mission.

 

Yes, and this is something most certainly done by a bigger team, not by some newbie mapper who doesn't have a clue. A certain level of scripting can be exepcted in such projects.

[Ishtvan]

What's the difference. When you have to make it to a certain area to end the mission, you are also magically whisked away to safety, even if you are trailing 10 guards behind you.

Sure, I agree that's unrealistic. It would be nice if the game could let you play the escape all the way out ot a massive, detailed and populated city where you can lose anyone who's chasing you, but the technology isn't really up to that. That's no reason to make it even less reaslistic by just ending the mission when you pick up some object you need to get, and not even playing the escape out to one of the exits of that area.

 

The only map where I remember this idea working well, was Life of the Party, where they actually added more guards looking for you on the way back, thereby making it a different challenge.

Normally, you just have to retrace your steps, back through the same map with the same guards, and let's face it, most people play the game by blackjacking everything in sight anyway, so they're just running back through an empty map to get to some arbitrary area so they can finish the mission. 99 times out of 100 it's not a real objective with any meat on it, just like the stupid loot gathering objective.

I remember quite a few missions where, during the escape, some alarm was set off to make it more challenging. Or the escape route was not the same as the route of ingress, and you went through a different area with guards you hadn't enocuntered yet in order to escape. I agree it's boring if you KO everyone and run back through an empty map, but I don't think "most" people do that. Ghosting reports were pretty popular.

 

Again, I'm not saying that every single mission should have an objective to exit the map, I'm just arguing with Odd's contention that no mission should ever exit it by leaving the area, and instead we should hit the escape key on our keyboard. How are people even supposed to know when the mission has ended and they can hit escape, do we flash "MISSION ENDED, HIT ESCAPE TO LEAVE" across the screen?

[Ishtvan]

Something like this is certainly not something for a casual mapper, so I have no problems if he would have to do some scripting.

 

...

 

Yes, and this is something most certainly done by a bigger team, not by some newbie mapper who doesn't have a clue. A certain level of scripting can be exepcted in such projects.

Whoever ends up doing it, I would prefer if they edited the SDK and added in a general, user friendly way for keeping track of multiple missions within a city hub, rather than hack together some scripts that only work in one case.

[oDDity]

Sure, I agree that's unrealistic. It would be nice if the game could let you play the escape all the way out ot a massive, detailed and populated city where you can lose anyone who's chasing you, but the technology isn't really up to that. That's no reason to make it even less reaslistic by just ending the mission when you pick up some object you need to get, and not even playing the escape out to one of the exits of that area.

I remember quite a few missions where, during the escape, some alarm was set off to make it more challenging. Or the escape route was not the same as the route of ingress, and you went through a different area with guards you hadn't enocuntered yet in order to escape. I agree it's boring if you KO everyone and run back through an empty map, but I don't think "most" people do that. Ghosting reports were pretty popular.

 

Again, I'm not saying that every single mission should have an objective to exit the map, I'm just arguing with Odd's contention that no mission should ever exit it by leaving the area, and instead we should hit the escape key on our keyboard. How are people even supposed to know when the mission has ended and they can hit escape, do we flash "MISSION ENDED, HIT ESCAPE TO LEAVE" across the screen?

 

Come on, polarisation was never your style.

You surely remember the loot objective from Thief? The very discrete 'objective complete' text that came up on the bottom of he the screen, accompanied by a loot-like chime?

That's all that's needed to say 'mssion complete' as well. There's no need to make a song and dance about it, a separate screen flashing up a neon MISSION COMPLETE!!! YOU DA MAN!!!' sign, with a horde of angels singing a chorus of 'hallelujah'. (two can play at that game)

Mappers should not just throw in a 'get to a x area as your last objective' as a matter of course. Only if they actually put some thought into it, such as the Life of the Party ending, so then it's actually worth doing and a serious part of the mission. That's very rarely the case.

I can assure you that the majority of people who've played Thief, blackjack the crap out of anything that moves, and quite a high percentage play it like a bow and arrow shooter. Ghosters are by far the minority.

[Ishtvan]

Come on, polarisation was never your style.

You surely remember the loot objective from Thief? The very discrete 'objective complete' text that came up on the bottom of he the screen, accompanied by a loot-like chime?

Sure you could make the sign more discrete, but I think you'd still need to put "hit Esc to exit" in that discrete sign, otherwise people won't know what to do in order to actually end the mission.

 

That's all that's needed to say 'mssion complete' as well. There's no need to make a song and dance about it, a separate screen flashing up a neon MISSION COMPLETE!!! YOU DA MAN!!!' sign, with a horde of angels singing a chorus of 'hallelujah'. (two can play at that game)

Authors could put in whatever debriefing they want. Ideally it would be something advancing the story and segue into the next mission, if there is one. If it's just a one-shot FM, then pretty much anything works to segue into the screen where you check mission stats.

 

Mappers should not just throw in a 'get to a x area as your last objective' as a matter of course. Only if they actually put some thought into it, such as the Life of the Party ending, so then it's actually worth doing and a serious part of the mission. That's very rarely the case.

I agree they shouldn't put it in if it's not any fun to escape, but that kind've falls into bad FM design. Personally I think it just adds to the immersion that you have to get in, and you also have to get out. If we were making a hostage rescue game, you would have to get in, get the hostages with you, and leave the area safely without getting you or the hostages killed. Those games would be pretty boring if they just ended when you got to the hostages.

 

In our case we have to get in, get the loot, and get out with the loot. I wouldn't want the game to end when I jump into a pile of gold in the middle of a mansion with 10 guards chasing me. It's just like how running to an exit to complete the mission with 10 guards chasing you is rather lame, only this is a lame-ness that we can do something about, by requiring that you at least safely transport the loot to a map exit.

 

I can assure you that the majority of people who've played Thief, blackjack the crap out of anything that moves, and quite a high percentage play it like a bow and arrow shooter. Ghosters are by far the minority.

Well, those hostage-rescue games did automatically end the game if every enemy was incapacitated (although that's a bit unrealistic since it assumes your character magically knows that there's no enemy hiding anywhere else). We could always have the mission end without having to get to an exit if the player completes the main objectives and then KO's or kills every AI (assuming that's allowed by objectives). In that case though, it also becomes pretty boring to complete your other objectives in an empty map, so we might as well just auto-end the mission if the player KO's every AI.

 

However, I don't think it's worth our time to code that. If the player wants to run through an empty map by KO'ing every person in there, that's up to them. In fact, I remember reading posts from people who actually enjoyed being able to run around in an empty, once-threatening map after they painstakingly KO'd everyone in it. I think it's just another player choice, and we shouldn't do any song and dance to auto-advance the plot if the player empties out the map of AI.

[oDDity]

Well, it's an easy solution to that. You can still have a final objective of 'get to exit point', but when you get to the exit point, the map doesn't have to auto-end. The only reason for doing that is tradition, and thats' the worst reason or doing anything.

This is to make sure the player isn't being chased by AI when they reach the exit area, and are therefore using it as an exploit. The player should have to get to the exit, and then leave the map when they choose.

The mission is only counted as complete when you exit.

Exiting the map or loading should be disabled when AI are chasing you. If you get spotted, you should be forced to escape or die.

[Crispy]

As a compromise, perhaps the mission could end as normal when all objectives are complete (because that's exactly what people expect and it gives mappers flexibility), but the mapper can optionally specify that the mission cannot end if any AI are chasing the player; they either have to be evaded or disabled before the mission will end. Though mappers should be encouraged to indicate this requirement in the final objective (if any) if this is the case; e.g. "Exit the mansion safely".

 

That removes the exploit but avoids looking sloppy and confusing players.

[oDDity]

Adding on to my previous post, the worst reasons for doing anything are:

1 - It's traditional

2 - It's what people expect

3 - x game did it like that

 

Sums up the current shambles of a games industry, which consists entirely of about 6 game ideas being endlessly repeated with slightly better graphics each time.

That's also a perfect description of the current Dark Mod of course...

[sparhawk]

As a compromise, perhaps the mission could end as normal when all objectives are complete (because that's exactly what people expect and it gives mappers flexibility), but the mapper can optionally specify that the mission cannot end if any AI are chasing the player; they either have to be evaded or disabled before the mission will end. Though mappers should be encouraged to indicate this requirement in the final objective (if any) if this is the case; e.g. "Exit the mansion safely".

 

Actually that's a pretty good idea. Don't know if the objectives can already handle this. Can we also have objectives like "Don't get spotted" or "Don't get heard" or "Don't get noticed"?

[Springheel]

I'm pretty sure they track the number of times spotted already though I could be wrong. A simple time delay since the last time spotted might work...if an AI hasn't spotted the player in the last fifteen or twenty seconds (or more, depending on how harsh we want to be), they are allowed to leave the map. That would eliminate the possibility of reaching the 'exit point' with a horde of guards on your heels but still succeeding. Don't know how you would apply that restriction to a particular objective though, technically speaking.

[Ishtvan]

Regarding pressing escape to end the mission, the reason I don't like that is not because it hasn't been done before. It has, it felt very sloppy and unprofessional. IMO it's always better to do things within the game world if possible. If you want your character to move from one place to another, it feels more natural to actually use the movement controls and move your character, rather than leave your character standing there while you go hit some key like escape to move on.

 

Crispy summed up what I was going to say already, that it should be an objective to get to the exit with no AI on your tail, if the mapper wants that. It might be a little tricky defning that. How many AI is too many AI tracking the player? How close do they have to be? How alerted do they have to be? Yes, objectives do track alerts caused by the player, although it's currently not broken up into sight/sound/tactile alerts (it could be). It is currently sorted by the level of alert (alert state 1,2,3, positive ID/combat).

 

So yes, it might be possible to set up an objective to get somewhere with no AI nearby tracking you. However, I have some concerns about even that. In an ideal world, the entire game world would be modeled. It would be one seamless experience from the mission, the places you go inbetween missions (although it would be boring to do 45 minutes of uneventful city-walking to get back to your appartment), and the next mission. We can't currently do that, so we artificially define some entrances and exits for each area.

 

Now, what if the artificially defined exit opened up into some place where, logically, it would be very easy for the player to lose enemies, like a forest or a warren of caves or something? If I were the player in that case, I would feel cheated if the game wouldn't let me end the mission if 2 AI were following me to this exit that led into a place where logically it would be very easy to lose them, and indeed I could lose them if the technology were up to rendering the whole of what happens outside the mission. But instead you're forced to run around the artificially constrained area to lose the AI, when logically there's a whole open area out there.

 

Since we're not able to render that huge open area, I actually prefer the mission to end at that point. That's more immersive than saying "We can't render the huge city past the invisible barrier right in front of you, so you have to lose the AI that are chasing you in this area of two alleys that we can render."

[Tels]

Adding on to my previous post, the worst reasons for doing anything are:

1 - It's traditional

2 - It's what people expect

3 - x game did it like that

 

Sums up the current shambles of a games industry, which consists entirely of about 6 game ideas being endlessly repeated with slightly better graphics each time.

That's also a perfect description of the current Dark Mod of course...

 

But sometimes you can counter this by "don't fix what ain't broken" :-) I still like red wine, even tho the basic concept hasn't changed much in the past x thousand years

 

Tels

[Crispy]

Adding on to my previous post, the worst reasons for doing anything are:

1 - It's traditional

2 - It's what people expect

Except in user interface design, where they're good reasons. And this is essentially a user interface issue: Move the player to exit the map, or press escape?

 

Since we're not able to render that huge open area, I actually prefer the mission to end at that point. That's more immersive than saying "We can't render the huge city past the invisible barrier right in front of you, so you have to lose the AI that are chasing you in this area of two alleys that we can render."

Yeah, that's true. Hence why it should be a mapper-selectable option, and off by default.

[Fidcal]

Because this is even being considered and sounds unnecessarily difficult to me, I re-submit my suggestion of just an autoexit cvar that the user sets to exit/not exit - by default exit.

 

As each objective is completed a text message should flash on screen for a few seconds - 'Objective Complete!' accompanied by a sound trill.

 

When all objectives are completed a text message should flash on screen for a few seconds - 'All Objectives Completed!' accompanied by a sound fanfare then a few seconds later...

 

If autoexit cvar is default 1 : the mission exits to the graphic screen MISSION COMPLETE! * with access to stats, debrief with exits to menus and (possibly) return to game.

 

If autoexit cvar is 0 : The player stays in-game and accepts whatever results from this, eg, exiting a door to a blank designed room blocked by a corner that the mapper never intended the player to see instead of a beautiful street that takes a month to design and the player sees nothing or only a glimpse of it.

 

It is so easy to cheat in Doom that most players will be able to access anywhere anyway.

 

Advantages:

 

1. No sane player should object because it's an option and the default is as most would expect.

 

2. Mappers should accept that in Doom, players can access the inacessible anyway

 

3. Should be easy to set up.

 

4. No player is faced with the puzzlement of the game not ending because they would have had to define set the option themselves.

 

 

* MISSION COMPLETE screen - I'd like this to be mapper-changeable map my map if possible so the mapper can have a different screen for multimaps. My own T2 4-map campaign was one mission - one night out for Garrett - and I wanted the first three to end with something like 'End of Part 1' or 'You have yadayada, now you must...' and 'Mission Complete' only appear after the final map. But I could find no easy way to do that in T2.