Third Person View

[linfosoma]

I really like this mod, but I was wondering if you could include a functional 3rd person view perspective (like in Thief: Deadly Shadows).

 

I know you can switch to 3PV on Doom 3 using the console, so I think ist not such a crazy idea.

 

What do you think?

[Crispy]

It is technically possible to switch to third-person mode, using the same method as in Doom 3. You can try it out in Thief's Den if you like (though it looks pretty bad because of the lack of animations; see below). We didn't bother removing that functionality.

 

However, we're not supporting or recommending it for a few reasons. e.g. We don't have the time and manpower to produce a full set of animations for the player. Doing so is a much more complicated task than you'd think at first glance. For example, mantling is very complicated because it's so flexible; it's basically impossible to come up with a mantling animation that looks right in all possible mantling situations. We could probably fake it with multiple variations and some kind of arm IK, but that's a huge chunk of time and effort that we'd rather spend on other areas of the mod.

 

In short, the cost of properly supporting third person is not worth the benefit of having it, especially since (as the FAQ says) we believe that a true stealth experience is a first person experience.

[New Horizon]

I really like this mod, but I was wondering if you could include a functional 3rd person view perspective (like in Thief: Deadly Shadows).

 

Crispy summed up mostly everything, but I'll chime in with my own words as well.

 

If you have been following our mod for any length of time, you must know that we have explicitly stated that 3rd person will not be supported, as it pretty much undermines the whole 'stealth' aspect. Third person allows you to see far beyond where you're supposed to see. The idea behind Thief was that you were supposed to see through the eyes of a Thief...not control a 3d representation of one. We aim to be true to Thief 1 and 2...not TDS.

[Domarius]

Above all else - 3rd person lets you see around corners with no penalty. You essentially have a floating invisible camera out on a stick behind you, which you can rotate around a corner to see around it without leaning out and exposing yourself.

 

That's reason enough alone.

[oDDity]

It could just be a mechanical eye/camera the thief has attached to a transparent helium balloon though, and he can adjust the length of the string when he wants to look down on things, and it could have a little fan attached for x and z movement. That technology is all available in the Dark Mod universe, so this can all be done from within the game as another tool for the thief, rather than it being an external game mechanic.

[Vadrosaul]

We already had the scouting orb, and I don't know if you guys are implementing it, cuz my gut feeling is that it rarely got used in T2MA.

[Komag]

I nearly never used it, but I liked it

[New Horizon]

We already had the scouting orb, and I don't know if you guys are implementing it, cuz my gut feeling is that it rarely got used in T2MA.

 

Nope. Our Thief isn't Garrett, so he doesn't have a mechanical eye...he does have a small telescope for seeing long distances though.

[Domarius]

It could just be a mechanical eye/camera the thief has attached to a transparent helium balloon though, and he can adjust the length of the string when he wants to look down on things, and it could have a little fan attached for x and z movement. That technology is all available in the Dark Mod universe, so this can all be done from within the game as another tool for the thief, rather than it being an external game mechanic.

 

Nah, if the rope arrow is impossible, there's no way that would work either

 

TDS fails.

[ZylonBane]

I nearly never used it, but I liked it

I suspect the scouting orb would have been used a lot more (compared to practically never), if it had an automatic retrieval function. Knowing that wherever I tossed that thing, I'd have to go pick it up to use it again, made it fundamentally unappealing.

[oDDity]

None of the tools should be 'free'. Ideally, they should all have some risk attached to them. You should have to think about it before blithely using them.

[ZylonBane]

Pffft, that one's easy. Just make the scouting orbs noisy, and trigger high alert when found. Maybe add a recharge time after each retrieval.

[Domarius]

Well the retreival penalty worked for me fine, I used them quite a bit. Even having 2 at once. The plan is, you know that once you throw it, you're committed to wherever it lands. If you don't throw it right, too bad. If there's nothing up ahead, you can go get it, and work your way forwards like that. Once there's finally danger, you have the option of doing something about the danger, getting it back at a safe moment, or just dealing with it later, or even losing it forever in the very worst case. I can't ever remember not being able to get mine back though.

 

It's a great "preventative" tool.

[ZylonBane]

The plan is, you know that once you throw it, you're committed to wherever it lands.

And that's why they suck and nobody uses them. If you have to go pick the orb up, just go there and don't even bother throwing it.

[Crispy]

I found them useful for timing when to emerge from a patch of shadows which had limited visibility. It made it easier to time my movements when I could see what was going on. Once I'd used that information to KO everyone in the immediate vicinity, I could go and retrieve it at my leisure.

[Domarius]

And that's why they suck and nobody uses them. If you have to go pick the orb up, just go there and don't even bother throwing it.

And be seen and killed, now you're thinking!

 

People do use them, actually.

[Mr Retarded]

I think the scouting orbs should have been used in a more "puzzle orientated" manner, such as rolling one into a guards room to see a code for a door that you wouldn't be able to see otherwise or some such similar situation. They were a little unnecessary in the final game, and when they're not in a mission or my inventory I don't even notice they're gone. I know there are situations you can use them in, but it's never really necessary to.

 

In short: I never find myself thinking "I wish I had a Scouting Orb right about now," so I shall not be missing them from TDM.

[Dram]

I'm one of the few that voted to have it in TDM. I enjoyed using them and they did have a nice strategic element. Of course, just because they are not in TDM now, does not mean that noone can implement them.

[Subjective Effect]

I used them in T2 and I found that the very penalty that Zylonbane is lamenting made them all the more interesting to use.

[Komag]

They were fun to toss to places you couldn't go, like a tiny ledge up high somewhere, or in the fire, or ...

[Mr Retarded]

One thing that could have made them more useful (as far as I'm concerned) would have been to make it possible to connect back to the orb's view after you'd broken it. So you could place one in a certain area, it would go to the orbs POV, you could 'disconnect' from it, move somewhere else, and then reconnect as and when you chose to, until the point that you picked it up again, thus turning it into a portable surveillance camera. If this was too much they could have incorporated a distance setting, so the further away from it you are, the worse the signal quality you'd get would be.

 

I say could as I doubt it was possible to implement this (or other similarly technical features) at the time. I'm not too hot on my technical hoozits of the "olden" days. That's right! I said "hoozits"!

[demagogue]

Well, as long as we're on this bizarre topic, may as well run with it...

 

I think you could reconnect easily enough if you just had something in your inventory to frob to reconnect, like a remote, which triggered the view-orb script of a particular orb. It would not be much different from the periscope in the Cetus or the FM "Of Ill Repute".

The only catch would be if you threw out more than one orb. It would have to know which one to connect to, so you'd need like a remote for each orb. And a frob inert until you deployed the orb.

 

And as for the signal weakening with distance, the S/R system allows an author to change things as a function of distance, one of which is the properties of an object ... so you might have a series of orb-view art pieces with varying degrees of "interference" that could vary by a distance stim? Anyway, something like that.

 

Anyway, point being, I think someone could do it right now if they were so inclined.

 

I only recall a few times I've used it ... in Hedgerows and Hammerites of course, to see the dancing zombies easteregg in one of the OMs, and a handful of other times just to try it out. There don't seem to be that many situations where there's a blind corner where an orb will help and leaning won't. But maybe I'd use it more if I were keeping it in mind. I should do that sometime.

Edited April 10, 2008 by demagogue

[SneaksieDave]

I can't say I ever really made real use of one. There didn't seem to be a need, when you could lean into full light with impunity. That said, leaning in TDM is not as forgiving in that regard. But also, wasn't the point that the mechanics of the thing were linked to Garrett's mechanical eye [edit: ah, as suggested above]? There's no such connection in TDM, so that'd be one fiction issue to overcome. Also, I'd hope it'd be more easily believable than "let me just throw this giant, metal, round thing right at those guards' feet; they won't notice."

 

Edit: oh, and the fact that the player model is not being refined for anims and whatever else is needed, so the player seeing it would be undesirable.

[oDDity]

We did have the mirror-on-stick idea at one point for checking round corners. Did that ever get developed?

[Springheel]

No. Mirrors on moveable objects turned out to be much more difficult than it sounds.