Dark Mod Pre-Beta Download links and discussion.

[Diego]

one thing i was observing in the demo was the mantling. it feels very natural! so i got curious, how hard was to implement that? and how hard would be to add more control to that? like grabbing an edge, wait for a guard to pass and start going up. or even more movements maybe.

most of the fun in stealth games like thief are in strategy, planning and timing, and a little less on the skill part.. that's probably the wrong term but i mean when you have to run through a small bridge jump on platforms, grab edges.. that sort of stuff. it would be cool to be able to use the character's agility.

[New Horizon]

one thing i was observing in the demo was the mantling. it feels very natural! so i got curious, how hard was to implement that? and how hard would be to add more control to that? like grabbing an edge, wait for a guard to pass and start going up. or even more movements maybe.

most of the fun in stealth games like thief are in strategy, planning and timing, and a little less on the skill part.. that's probably the wrong term but i mean when you have to run through a small bridge jump on platforms, grab edges.. that sort of stuff. it would be cool to be able to use the character's agility.

 

I'm sure it could be done, but not for a 1.0 release. We have far too much to work on with the AI to even think about making the mantling system more complicated. One way that comes to mind is to have the 'jump button' mantle still do it automatically, but make the dedicated mantle button a two step process. Press once and it pulls you onto the ledge, press again and you are pulled the rest of the way up. As it stands, we're happy with the current mantle system and have more than enough work in higher priority areas.

[STiFU]

I just want to say that I really like that idea! Makes it a little bit like prince of persia in first person. I'd love to see more mantling options. Although another problem might arise with that. You'd have to show the player somehow that he is hanging on an edge. It would look really awkward if you just hung there and pulled yourself up later. I guess an animated mesh for the body or at least arms would be necessary here and I assume that makes it quite difficult to implement. Also as a substitute you could do it with some kind of grapnel. Well, just some random thoughts basically...

[New Horizon]

I just want to say that I really like that idea! Makes it a little bit like prince of persia in first person. I'd love to see more mantling options. Although another problem might arise with that. You'd have to show the player somehow that he is hanging on an edge. It would look really awkward if you just hung there and pulled yourself up later. I guess an animated mesh for the body or at least arms would be necessary here and I assume that makes it quite difficult to implement. Also as a substitute you could do it with some kind of grapnel. Well, just some random thoughts basically...

 

No, I don't think that's necessary to start complicating things by adding animated meshes. That would open a completely different kettle of fish. The first button press would pull the player into the starting position, the second press would implement the climb. As I said though, we're happy with the current implementation and have too many other issues to deal with. Also, though it only took me 30 seconds to type out how I think it would work with a keyboard...coding it, and working out all the bugs it would introduce would be more work than it's worth at this point as it would be introducing two mantle systems.

[Inimitable]

At this point the mantling system is already awesome.

[STiFU]

Sure man. Of course this has no priority. As I said, I was just throwing up some random thoughts.... I have been thinking about it a little and you could also indicate the "grabbing of the edge" sound-wise. Like two hands hitting the wall, or a subtle "ugh", which would be a much easier solution. But Inimitable is right, the current mantling is very good already. Basically like classic thief only with a little more headbob and I really love that you can mantle without jumping now, which creates no sound at all. That's cool!!

[Komag]

It could be done with little icon, such as a tiny ledge with hands or something, small and down low.

[nobody]

Ok I know the conversation here has drifted a bit but I haven't been able to post for a few days because I was underway. I want to know if this is a feature, or a bug. I shot the street guard with a moss arrow while he was standing in the recesed doorway he goes to right away. A clump of moss formed around his head and he acted like he was trapped by it. "cool," I thought and strolled over to check him out. yup, he was stuck so I started to taunt him by running up close then running away. he got all excited and told me he was gonna get me, but the second time I did it, as he tried to persue me he suddenly jerked back wards and up and got stuck to the door. feet hanging above the porch choking and jerking he died. I hadn't hit him with any weapons other than the initial moss arrow. I've tried to duplicate this many times with out any luck. the best I have done is trap him in the porch, that's not too hard but I've never killed him again. so what can y'all tell me about moss arrows? is this supposed to happen?

[Springheel]

No, moss arrows aren't supposed to impede AI in any way. If they are, it's a bug.

[nobody]

Ok I know strike that. sorry about the double post with no info, my conection sucks to say the least. cool I found a bug! still it's kind of a bummer since I thought the moss arrow kill was crazy cool, I laughed my ass off for five minutes over it. not to mention the 4 hours of replay fun I had trying to recreate it. thanks for the info, I'll not count on it when I start playing the real thing. I'm worried that Broadheads kill too easily too. I have been able to get the arrow-in-the-eye-ball kill quite easily for about two days now. I can kill all the AI without loosing a single arrow (since I can recover the killing arrow) pretty much every time.

I have also confirmed that rope arrows do approximately the same damage as broadheads when used as a weapon. I can't recover them because they break since they are hitting a non-compatable surface (someone's face! or maybe "Sir-face"?), but one rope arrow to the face = one dead AI.

 

water arrows do no detectable damage as expected.

Edited January 26, 2008 by nobody

[Komag]

Yeah but that story is funny as heck!

[Crispy]

Which makes it an undocumented feature... right...?

 

I'll check it out.

 

Edit: Yeah, confirmed, definitely a bug there. Thanks for the report!

[plasticman]

i remember in TDS shooting moss arrows at guards/people was a feature. if you hit them in the face they act like having a mouth full of moss, spitting it out and cursing you. it can buy you about five seconds: three for lauging and two for better get running.

 

i also tried that in thief's den. after the impact maybe the first piece of moss stuck in the air, the other pieces got distributet the usual way. but the stuck one remained as a static object, making the AI walking around it.

 

another thing i noticed you implemented: shooting moss with a water arrow makes it grow. nice.

 

about mantling: at first it seemed to be the bestest (i. e. wow that's a good one) mantling system ever. it has a far more controlled feeling than the only ones i encountered so far (T1, T2, TDS, DX:IW). but unfortunately i tested it with some sort of a "my first room"-map, where it gives me the magic ability to climb a structure that is about 5 meters high. it's more like floating up the wall there. since it is only brushwork it could happen in any FM, so i think it still needs bugfixing.

 

trying to keep this post short: a BIG thank you to the team. you really are doing groundbreaking work here.

[Tels]

i remember in TDS shooting moss arrows at guards/people was a feature. if you hit them in the face they act like having a mouth full of moss, spitting it out and cursing you. it can buy you about five seconds: three for lauging and two for better get running.

 

 

i also tried that in thief's den. after the impact maybe the first piece of moss stuck in the air, the other pieces got distributet the usual way. but the stuck one remained as a static object, making the AI walking around it.

 

This is some sort of defencies on the moss, they are effectively static objects. So they will also "cling" to moveable objects and then remain in the air when you move the other object out of the way.

 

Me thinks moss blobs should be moveables with a really really high friction. This way they could also carried away by water streams or float in water etc.

[STiFU]

But unfortunately i tested it with some sort of a "my first room"-map, where it gives me the magic ability to climb a structure that is about 5 meters high. it's more like floating up the wall there. since it is only brushwork it could happen in any FM, so i think it still needs bugfixing.

Yep, I observed that bug in my testbuild too, but I remember someone saying it was a general problem with Doom 3 and that you're going to fix this. I hope, I remembered this right! =)

[Komag]

Yes the mantling is too high right now, but will get fixed

[Ishtvan]

about mantling: at first it seemed to be the bestest (i. e. wow that's a good one) mantling system ever. it has a far more controlled feeling than the only ones i encountered so far (T1, T2, TDS, DX:IW). but unfortunately i tested it with some sort of a "my first room"-map, where it gives me the magic ability to climb a structure that is about 5 meters high. it's more like floating up the wall there. since it is only brushwork it could happen in any FM, so i think it still needs bugfixing.

 

Yeah, mantling still has some known bugs where it can cause the player to clip into things, and then you start rising up (sometimes out of the map!) once you have clipped into a solid. There are also still issues with mantling moving objects causing you to clip into things.

 

Would you be willing to post your map somewhere so we can look at the specific geometry that's causing the clipping problem? It might help us diagnose where the clipping test failed so we can fix it faster. D3 maps are essentially just text files, so depending on how long it is, you could just copy/paste your .map file into to the forum (maybe in a new thread if it's really long ).

 

@Komag: I don't think it's the mantle height that's an issue in this case, if he says it's a 5m structure and you float up, that sounds like the clipping problem.

[Komag]

Yeah you're right I see, the clipping can indeed do that.

[STiFU]

Here is my bridge that caused that bug exported as a prefab. Just plant in on the ground and step into the irongate ingame. Aparently the form woun't let me upload the prefab so I am just going to post it in code tags. Remove it later on if you want.

 

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[Crispy]

i remember in TDS shooting moss arrows at guards/people was a feature. if you hit them in the face they act like having a mouth full of moss, spitting it out and cursing you. it can buy you about five seconds: three for lauging and two for better get running.

We won't be doing that. Too cheesy.

[plasticman]

Yeah, mantling still has some known bugs where it can cause the player to clip into things, and then you start rising up (sometimes out of the map!) once you have clipped into a solid.

Hey, that's precisely what's happening in my map! You must have been watching me!

 

Would you be willing to post your map somewhere so we can look at the specific geometry that's causing the clipping problem?

I isolated the "structure", put it in a box map and reconfirmed it happening. You should be able to find it here:

 

edit: link removed, it's outdated.

 

If you jump/mantle the window from the outside (determined by looking at the roof) it makes you clip in it an moving way up to the top of the brush. while mantling the window you can step forward and get deeper into the brush. giong inside the wall makes you "mantling" up to the roof of this two-storage high building.

 

I hope you will be able to find a good solution for this. Something makes me fear some sort of mapper-dependent mantle-brushes...

 

Edit: Just played around with it a little. Think it has something to do with the no-draw-material I used for the unused planes of the window-glas. I can jump and stick there even in Doom. Making my glas-brush smaller and therefore unreachable kinda solves the issue. So maybe it's just basically a way I shouldn't do windows.

Edited December 11, 2008 by plasticman

[Tels]

We won't be doing that. Too cheesy.

 

Agreed. In TDM, they'll say "Hmmm, tasty, I believe this is a southern CrunchyMoss with just a hint of arrow timber flavour".

[Mr Retarded]

Is it possible for me to set it so that crouch isn't a toggle, and that creep is using console commands? If so, how?

[Crispy]

You can make crouching not be a toggle using this console command: (It's from Doom 3 itself, we didn't implement it ourselves.)

 

in_toggleCrouch 0

 

I don't believe the creep key can be made into a toggle at present.

[Mr Retarded]

Cheers for that. Any plans for Creep to be a toggle option? I think it could be quite useful.