my suggestions for dark mod

[eigenface]

First off, this is fantastic work. Beautifully crafted, atmospheric, interesting gameplay. I feel redundant saying that, because so many others have already said it more eloquently. Perhaps some of my suggestions will be redundant also, but I wouldn't feel I had done the right thing unless I brought them up. As a long-time thief fan, the dark mod is very exciting and important to me, and I want it to be the best it can be. So here are the things I noticed could use improvement.

 

1) You can't knock over candles by running into them. You can pick one up and toss it, and knock over another one with it, but they might as well be brick walls when you run into them. I think small physics objects should be knocked around when you collide with them. This would add to the realism factor, and it would also add to the gameplay, because you'd have to be careful not to bump into things and knock them over, making noise.

 

Remember the cool (but kinda cheap) moment in the T2 FM Ominous Bequest, when you're sneaking up behind someone dozing on a couch on the second floor, and suddenly the floor creaks and they wake up? Instead of scripting the floor creak, put a physics goblet on floor for the player to kick, and now the moment is both cooler and less cheap (because it's avoidable), and also more integrated into the overall game mechanics (there are lots of kick-able physics objects instead of one unique scripted floor creak).

 

2) You should be able to put out candles by hand, without a water arrow. This is a great addition to T3 (and some T2 FMs). Maybe have the flame of the candle frobbable as a separate object, which puts it out instead of picking it up.

 

3) Picking up physics objects sometimes moves them, or at least it appears so. When you grab something, sometimes it immediately hits the surface it was previously sitting on and makes noise. As a thief, it's important to have a "light touch" and not have to worry about a candle immediately making noise as soon as you touch it.

 

4) You can crawl on ladders. Meaning, if you're crouching and start climbing a ladder, you'll climb slower, whereas if you're standing and start climbing a ladder, you'll climb faster. You should climb the ladder at the same rate regardless of whether or not you were crouched when you started. This is a small thing, but I found it pretty annoying when I got stuck in "slow ladder mode".

 

5) You can run while swimming. Sure, a person can swim at different speeds, but as a gameplay element, this seems pointless. You don't make any less noise swimming at a slower speed (contrary to walking at a slower speed), and I didn't notice any lack of control with the faster speed. Why would you ever not want to swim at the faster speed? People will just end up habitually holding down the run button while swimming, so why not do it for them?

 

6) You have to hold down the run button and the walk button at the same time in order to run. I much preferred the classic thief control scheme of 2 separate buttons, one to walk and one to run, plus a creep button you can hold down at the same time in order to slow down further.

 

I can sort of understand the logic of making walk the default speed in a stealth game, and making you also hold down another button to go faster. But let's face it, even in a stealth game, and especially in thief-style levels in particular, a lot of people are going to spend a lot of time searching through large areas full of already-knocked-out enemies for whatever McGuffin they've missed. True, the stealth part is what the game's all about, but in reality people spend just as much if not more time running around looking for things. They'll just end up habitually holding down the run and walk buttons at the same time, so why not give them an independent run button?

 

7) Guards don't drop their weapons when they're killed or knocked out. This was a nice touch of realism in T3. It's jarring when the hammer remains glued to the model's hand and sticks up at a funny angle.

 

8a) Door opening is not realistic. This has always been a problem in the thief games, and most people have probably gotten used to it, but why not take this opportunity to improve things? When you open a door into an unknown room, what you'd want to do in reality is first peer through the keyhole if possible, or open the door only a little and peer through the crack. What you currently do in thief is stand out of the path of the door and open it, then lean around the edge, and guards on the other side don't bat an eye when a door opens to reveal no one there. They also don't seem to care if they come across an open door, and then it closes without any visible cause (because you're hiding).

 

Here's what I think should happen. If a guard sees a door begin opening or begin closing and doesn't see the person who made this happen within some short period of time, the guard should go and investigate (but not for as long as if he'd actually seen you). Also, if you open the door part way, the guard should be less likely to notice. Keyhole-peeping would be a cool addition also!

 

8b) The current method of interacting with doors, while more precise than the classic thief way, is still clumsy and not terribly realistic. The ideal thing would be to do it like Penumbra, where the door is a physics object on a hinge, and you can grab it at any point and drag that point to move the door at any speed you want. This might be more trouble than it's worth to implement with doom 3 physics.

 

A good compromise might be to do it like Rainbow Six 3, where you frob a door and go into "door mode", and you can then use the mouse wheel to gradually swing the door open or closed. This would parallel how picking up objects already works in the dark mod, where you frob an object and go into "pick up mode", and you can then use the mouse wheel to gradually move the object closer or further away.

 

9) In some way, the dark mod should address the chronic thief ladder problem, that is, the fact that you can climb ladders but enemies can't. This has always been such a popular, obvious, effective way to escape from enemies, and at the same time it's laughably unrealistic. I can see how it might be a difficult problem to implement enemies climbing ladders in an intelligent manner, incorporating this into their path-finding and making them go about it in a smart enough way so as not to make themselves easy targets for your attacks in the process. I don't have a solution, except to encourage a mission-design philosophy that prefers stairs instead of ladders, and only uses ladders in situations where you won't have enemies on your tail.

 

10) You can't change your weapon while climbing a ladder. I understand why you can't use your weapon on a ladder, but you should at least be able to change the icon at the bottom left that indicates which weapon you'll start using once you get off the ladder.

 

11) Physics objects and water don't mix. After picking up an apple core, I was able to move it underwater using the mouse wheel, but as soon as I turned with free look and the core touched the water even the slightest bit, it went flying out of my hand and splashing off through the water.

 

12) You can grab stuff through walls. Get in the fireplace in the kitchen and try grabbing things on the counter.

 

13) The water splash effect is blinding, and should be toned down a bit. When I fell in the water, the whole world looked white-tinted and washed-out with odd edges highlighted - should get multiple opinions on this, it may just be my graphics card (ATI Radeon X850).

 

14) The game does not have focus when it starts, by which I mean on the start screen I don't get any sound and the mouse cursor doesn't move until I click. This may be something particular to my installation.

 

15) There are AI path-finding problems, which you may already know about. The guard in the tunnel that leads to the front of the cathedral kept rising several feet off the ground while he search around for me, as if he thought he was standing on a surface at a higher elevation. Maybe he somehow got up on the edge of something sticking out of the wall?

 

Later, the same guard came into the vestibule, and got stuck on the front, right corner of the altar (facing inward from the church front doors). He spun around and around on the same spot at the corner of the altar, until I alerted him.

 

16) The enemy door-opening animations are a cool addition, but sometimes the enemy's hand stops a few feet away from the door knob.

 

17) Body dragging is clumsy. Cosmetically, the model twitches too much, and control-wise, it's too difficult to make the body go where you want without losing hold of it. It would be nice to be able to pick up bodies like in T3 (but with a more liberal rule for determining where you can drop them - I always felt like I should have been able to drop the body when T3 told me I couldn't).

 

18) There should be an option to auto-search bodies like in T2. In the dark mod, it can be especially hard to get the key off the back belt-position of a knocked-out guard laying on his back, and you can't turn him over.

 

19) Drawing and sheathing your sword is a slow and cumbersome process compared to T2. It's a small detail, but it's constantly in your face.

 

20) You always lean in the same direction when you climb. Another small detail, but such a ubiquitous part of the experience, I can't help but notice. It shouldn't be difficult to make the player randomly lean one way or the other.

 

21) There's an inventory item stacking problem. When I used up my last flashbomb, the flashbomb icon was still in my inventory. When I cycled to my next inventory item and tried to cycle back, then the flashbomb icon was gone.

 

22) Flashbombs drop straight down, instead of being thrown forward in a small arc. This greatly limits the situations in which you can use them. Many times, I found myself wanting to fling a flashbomb into the path of a guard, but was only able to drop it at my own feet.

 

You already have the perfect system in place for using flashbombs, that is, the same system you use for manipulating and throwing physics objects you pick up or items you decide to discard from inventory. Unfortunately, when you try to throw a flashbomb this way, it becomes inert and does not go off when it hits something. Then you can find it and pick it up again, but I can't think of a situation where you'd actually want to do this. When you throw a flashbomb, it should go off.

 

 

I hope my humble suggestions are helpful to you. I'm offering them with the greatest respect for what you've accomplished so far, and full appreciation of how difficult it is to implement all this. Any feedback from anyone is welcome!

 

P.S. How is the lock-picking coming? Have you already planned out how it's going to work? I have a system I've come up with if you're interested. It's a simplified version of modern lock picking, and I've made a little flash game to illustrate.

[Ishtvan]

Thanks for the really great feedback. Those are pretty much all valid points IMO. Some things like the separate run key may be limited by the Doom3 engine (although we could probably hack something in given enough time). Many of the things were WIP at the time of Saint Lucia but are finished now, and some are supposed to happen in Saint Lucia but don't always happen. I'll try to list those things so that we can talk about only the remaining issues.

 

This applies to:

You can't knock over candles by running into them.

You should be able to, unless they were set not pushable for some reason. We had problems when the player kick applied way too much force to light objects, but this is more or less solved now. Maybe they were set unpushable at the last minute trying to avoid that bug.

 

You should be able to put out candles by hand, without a water arrow.

Done, but not in SL.

 

Guards don't drop their weapons when they're killed or knocked out

Supposed to happen, sometimes doesn't due to a bug. They can only drop them if they have drawn them.

 

8a) Door opening is not realistic. This has always been a problem in the thief games, and most people have probably gotten used to it, but why not take this opportunity to improve things? When you open a door into an unknown room, what you'd want to do in reality is first peer through the keyhole if possible, or open the door only a little and peer through the crack.

Have you tried frobbing the door while it is opening? This lets you stop its motion and keep it open a crack. Your visibility is reduced in a sense, because the AI test to see if they see your shoulders and stuff. However I think it's currently an all or nothing test (angua will correct me if I'm wrong), they see you fully if they see some part of you.

 

You can grab stuff through walls.

Like in Thief, you can frob a short distance (~5 inches) through walls as a consequence of the system that makes frobbing easier. We looked into a lot of designs but didn't find anything that offered both ease of frobbing in all situations and didn't go through solid barriers in some cases.

 

17) Body dragging is clumsy. Cosmetically, the model twitches too much, and control-wise, it's too difficult to make the body go where you want without losing hold of it. It would be nice to be able to pick up bodies like in T3 (but with a more liberal rule for determining where you can drop them - I always felt like I should have been able to drop the body when T3 told me I couldn't).

 

18) There should be an option to auto-search bodies like in T2. In the dark mod, it can be especially hard to get the key off the back belt-position of a knocked-out guard laying on his back, and you can't turn him over.

Done, done and done. These things are all in SL, hit "use" while dragging a body to shoulder the body. If it's possible to "equip" something or carry it differently, hitting "use" while dragging it will do that. Currently this is only implemented for bodies.

 

There is no auto-search, but you automatically flip the body over each time you pick it up and drop it (unless there isn't space to fit it if it's flipped over). This is all documented in the gameplay instructions.

 

22) Flashbombs drop straight down, instead of being thrown forward in a small arc. This greatly limits the situations in which you can use them. Many times, I found myself wanting to fling a flashbomb into the path of a guard, but was only able to drop it at my own feet.

I believe you can hold down "use" longer to throw the flashbomb farther. This is not yet implemented when using a hotkey to throw them though.

[HappyCheeze]

6) You have to hold down the run button and the walk button at the same time in order to run.

 

uuuuuh, what?

[Crispy]

uuuuuh, what?

In Thief there were separate "run" and "walk" controls. Instead of WASD you had SZXC (same keys but shifted down one row) and W was the "run forward" key.

 

Unconventional, yes, but rather handy in a game where you need such fine control over your movement.

[Ishtvan]

Yeah, and unfortunately the "run" control and the direction controls are in the closed source part of Doom3. We can read it but we can't set it AFAIK, otherwise we could simply make a new key that sets the run control on before executing the walk forward control.

 

With the closed source limitation, we would have to make our own run control that's normally read in from D3's run control but can be set to other things, then replace all instances of reading the run control with that new variable. We'd probably also have to rewrite how walking forward is handled because this control is also closed-source. It might work, but it's time consuming and prone to bugs.

 

[EDIT: If any programmer out there wants to give it a try, please do, but us existing programmers are stretched pretty thin on higher priority tasks.]

[eigenface]

Have you tried frobbing the door while it is opening? This lets you stop its motion and keep it open a crack.

 

I did try that, and it's a definite improvement over T2. Gradual mouse-wheel opening would be an even bigger improvement, but to me the most important thing is how the enemies react to seeing a door open. Even if they don't see you at all, but they see a door opening or closing and don't see a guard doing it, they should be suspicious.

 

When playing T2 FMs, situations come up frequently where I open a door, see a guard walking directly toward me (but he doesn't see me because I'm in shadow), so then I close the door, and the guard doesn't think there's anything unusual about this.

 

These things are all in SL, hit "use" while dragging a body to shoulder the body.

 

Wow, cool, I didn't realize. I figured I could pick up the controls from the settings screen.

 

I still think auto-search would be useful. You don't need to pick someone up, turn them over, and look at the other side in order to determine if they're carry anything there - you can just reach around and pat them down. Auto-search isn't necessary, but it would be more convenient than fumbling around with rag dolls, especially in confined spaces.

 

I believe you can hold down "use" longer to throw the flashbomb farther.

 

That's good, I didn't realize that either.

 

However, that brings to mind another classic-thief gameplay element I think could be streamlined. How many times do you fire an arrow without pulling the bowstring all the way back? I can probably count the times I've done this on my hands, and the successful outcomes on one hand. By pulling the bowstring some fraction of the way back, you can put the arrow places you can't put it with a full pull, but the situations where this is useful are few and far between.

 

I tend to pull the string all the way back, and then vary the angle in order to aim my shot. This is because it's hard enough to get the angle right on a full pull, let alone to understand where the arrow is going to go at any angle at any fractional pull. Learning to aim is much easier if you only vary one factor (angle), instead of two (angle and force). I ended up holding the force constant to simplify things. Should get other opinions on this.

 

I bring this up because the problem is the same for throwing objects (like flashbombs) in the dark mod. It might be easier to learn how to throw objects accurately if force is constant, that is, no matter how long you hold down the throw button, you always throw the object with the same force. When throwing objects in Saint Lucia, I found myself always holding the throw button for a sufficiently long period to ensure maximum force, and then varying the angle in order to aim my throw.

 

Using the period of time you hold the button to input the force (instead of say, mouse-wheeling a needle up and down a force meter) is also problematic, because then you have to coordinate the time you're holding the button with the events going on in the game in order to decide when you want to release the throw. You have to think, "Where will that enemy have walked to after the period of time I'm going to have to hold down this button in order to make the flashbomb go far enough to get there?"

 

As fan of stealth games over shooters, I'm all about more complex gameplay and mastery of subtle skills. But there's no point having complexity in the dark mod that the players will just work around and ignore anyway. Maybe you should always throw things with the same force. Then you only have to think, "Where is that enemy now, and will the flashbomb go that far?"

[Dram]

Wow, long post. But an interesting read, especially in the sense of getting insight into how others experience the mod.

 

With regards to the bow pullback, I actually quite often find myself only pulling back about halfway and releasing it in rooms where the target is too low to directly shoot at (eg: top of a staircase down at a torch beneath the stairs). It is difficult with our quick-draw animation, admittedly, but is nonetheless possible.

 

As for doors, I like Nightblade's approach - if you are normally walking or running, then frobbing the door is loud and the AI can hear it (a la Thief), but if you are holding down creep and frob the door, it opens about half as fast, and makes a much quieter opening noise, more of a creak really. If we get the time to do something like this then IMO it would be the best option, as you could open the door nice and quietly, and would actually help keep immersion imo. Just thoughts really.

[HappyCheeze]

As for doors, I like Nightblade's approach - if you are normally walking or running, then frobbing the door is loud and the AI can hear it (a la Thief), but if you are holding down creep and frob the door, it opens about half as fast, and makes a much quieter opening noise, more of a creak really. If we get the time to do something like this then IMO it would be the best option, as you could open the door nice and quietly, and would actually help keep immersion imo. Just thoughts really.

 

I highly agree with you Dram. Thats makes sense. We should pitch this to internal affairs

[Springheel]

Having AI react to doors is already planned, but not yet implemented.

[SneaksieDave]

Creep while opening doors sounds like a very cool idea.

 

As for grabbing stuff through walls, mappers are free to set up "frob-blockers" to handle such cases. It's basically just a frobable brush between the player and the goods, and it works.

 

Is your flash lockpicking demo up on a website? I'd be interested to see.

[eigenface]

I'm not sure how much you know (or care to know) about lock picking, but if you consider a stylized version of the process in which 3 assumptions always hold (in general, they only hold sometimes)

 

1) pins bind in a random order

2) pins lifted out of order false bind

3) a false bind requires you to completely release the torque

 

then you end up with something like the game Simon, except you have to figure out the sequence by trial and error.

 

Reload the following page to get a different, random number of pins between 3 and 7. The fewer pins, the faster and easier the lock is to pick (and the easier to figure out how this minigame works - hopefully, if you start with few enough pins, it will be self-explanatory). 3 pins is trivial, and 7 pins takes a fair amount of time.

 

http://www.zshare.net/flash/508240693455b3c6/

 

The torque wrench is omitted for clarity. It would probably fit better into a 3D version. In the dark mod, I'm imagining you'll frob a lock to get the lock-picking minigame.

 

The lock cut-away would fade and blur when you turn away from the door (to watch your back), and then fade back in and sharpen when you turn back to your work. If you move away from the door, the lock minigame ends, and the pins are reset by the time you go back and try again. This way, you could partially pick a lock, run and hide from a patrolling guard, then return to the lock and have to remember the order of the pins you'd figured out on your first try, and then figure out the rest.

 

I wanted this to be more interesting than lock-picking in T1/2, but not have every single lock reduce to a trivial 1-second non-element once you get good at it, like in T3. In my version, being smart and systematic helps you open locks faster, but locks with more pins still take you longer than locks with fewer pins. It's a pretty simple task, but regardless of how good you are, there's some minimum amount of time it will take you which depends on the number of pins.

[SneaksieDave]

Enjoyable; that's like Oblivion, correct? I just got a 7 in 3 tries.

[eigenface]

I haven't played Oblivion. Is the lock picking exactly the same?

 

One more suggestion for Saint Lucia: you shouldn't be able to block doors with candles. I don't know if this is due to the "unpushable" setting or not, but the door should have enough force to knock away small physics objects. It might make sense to have doors push away all physics objects you can pick up, and only get blocked by the ones you have to push.

 

Also, to clarify, I like having to draw the bowstring back for cosmetic reasons, and for gameplay balance - the bow is a powerful weapon capable of one-shot kills, so it should take some time to prepare for a shot.

 

But I think it would make sense to simplify throwing physics objects (such as flashbombs) by using a constant force. Cosmetically, there's no bowstring to pull, and gameplay-wise, throwing small objects should be quick and simple. You want to be able to use a flashbomb at a moment's notice to escape an alerted guard, without having to "charge up your throw" and put a lot of thought into where the flashbomb is going to land.

Edited November 3, 2008 by eigenface

[Ishtvan]

But I think it would make sense to simplify throwing physics objects (such as flashbombs) by using a constant force. Cosmetically, there's no bowstring to pull, and gameplay-wise, throwing small objects should be quick and simple. You want to be able to use a flashbomb at a moment's notice to escape an alerted guard, without having to "charge up your throw" and put a lot of thought into where the flashbomb is going to land.

 

What if you want to toss the object a short distance from you and have map geometry around you restricting the angle at which you can toss? For example, you're in a low ceilinged room with a high counter and you want to toss a mug into a sink set into the counter. You can't angle up to shorten the distance because you'll bounce off the ceiling, you can't angle down to shorten the distance because you'll bounce off the counter. Pretty much the only way to get it in would be a light toss.

 

If you think of games that require precise throwing of things like grenades, they almost always give you an option to change the force of your throw, 'cause it's just not possible to do certain precision throws like bouncing in to a window a short distance from you with the same large force used for throwing it across the room. I guess you could argue that we never need that much throwing precision in a stealth game, but who knows, maybe some FM author will implement the Holy Hand Grenade.

[eigenface]

I do realize that with fractional force, you can put the object places you can't put it with full force. I think the situations where this is useful are few and far between. In thief, how many times did you find yourself in a blind-lob situation analogous to the one you mentioned?

 

Also, it takes time to calculate the force you need to get an object to go a certain distance. When you're throwing a flashbomb, or even a guard-distracting candle, time is of the essence. Better to know the distance right away because force is constant.

 

Also, I don't think it's a good idea to make the player input the force by holding down a key for a specific period of time. During this period of time while they're inputting the force, the guard is walking, and the distance and therefore the force they need to be inputting is changing.

 

Imagine a guard walking toward you. You hold down the throw button, but the guard moves closer, and now not only is he closer, but you've been holding down the throw button all this time, so now you have to throw the flashbomb farther when you let go. As you hold the button down, you have to imagine the point where the flashbomb will hit the floor getting farther away, at the same time the point where the guard is walking gets closer, and then time your release so that these two points coincide. Whereas if the force is constant, you already know the point where the flashbomb will hit the floor because it remains constant, so you only have to think about where the guard is.

 

In most first-person shooters I've played, you don't get to change the force with which you throw a grenade, probably for just this reason. In a frantic action game, it's even more important to be able to quickly judge where the grenade will go off.

 

If you feel fractional force is essential, maybe it would be better to hold the throw button, and then spin the mouse wheel to adjust a force meter, or even better, spin the mouse wheel to adjust a dotted-line showing the future path of the object, like in Splinter Cell 2.

Edited November 4, 2008 by eigenface

[Komag]

I think you have some good points and ideas, but I think it's not really a problem and may just be a case of getting more used to how it works. It already works fast enough I think; you only have to hold it very briefly to get full strength, just hit instantly for low strength.

 

Flash bombs just need to go off somewhere in front of the AI, it should be pretty easy to manage this. If the AI is moving toward you, then you should anticipate he will be closer to you within three seconds, so don't hold the throw so long, or just do it instantly and you'll be fine.

 

It's really not a problem, and can be very useful to throw items the distance you want.

 

Perhaps we'll add this to the "training" map we're planning, a section where players practice throwing objects various distances, like toss balls into various distance boxes or some such thing.

[DrSpock]

I do realize that with fractional force, you can put the object places you can't put it with full force. I think the situations where this is useful are few and far between. In thief, how many times did you find yourself in a blind-lob situation analogous to the one you mentioned?

 

Also, it takes time to calculate the force you need to get an object to go a certain distance. When you're throwing a flashbomb, or even a guard-distracting candle, time is of the essence. Better to know the distance right away because force is constant.

 

Also, I don't think it's a good idea to make the player input the force by holding down a key for a specific period of time. During this period of time while they're inputting the force, the guard is walking, and the distance and therefore the force they need to be inputting is changing.

 

Imagine a guard walking toward you. You hold down the throw button, but the guard moves closer, and now not only is he closer, but you've been holding down the throw button all this time, so now you have to throw the flashbomb farther when you let go. As you hold the button down, you have to imagine the point where the flashbomb will hit the floor getting farther away, at the same time the point where the guard is walking gets closer, and then time your release so that these two points coincide. Whereas if the force is constant, you already know the point where the flashbomb will hit the floor because it remains constant, so you only have to think about where the guard is.

 

In most first-person shooters I've played, you don't get to change the force with which you throw a grenade, probably for just this reason. In a frantic action game, it's even more important to be able to quickly judge where the grenade will go off.

 

If you feel fractional force is essential, maybe it would be better to hold the throw button, and then spin the mouse wheel to adjust a force meter, or even better, spin the mouse wheel to adjust a dotted-line showing the future path of the object, like in Splinter Cell 2.

 

The problem you describe is characteristic of any gameplay mechanic in a real-time environment. You could make the same argument about aiming a bow, or a blackjack, or picking a pocket. The player has to adjust very quickly to a changing situation, just like in the real world. Learning how long to press a key is just a matter of getting used to the system, as with anything else. I think when there is an option between giving the player more freedom or less freedom with what they can do, it's always more fun in the long run to have the extra options, even if it adds to the difficulty.

[eigenface]

The difference is that tapping a button takes negligible time, during which the game world doesn't change. Holding down a button to charge up takes some nontrivial amount of time, during which the game world is changing. Do you see what I mean?

 

When you tap a button, you look at the state of the game world, decide the correct input, and input it. When you have to hold a button, you look at the state of the game world, start inputting, and continue to look at the game world to decide how to modify your input as you're inputting it. When the time you have to hold the button is short, the difference between this and just tapping it is small and perhaps not important, but there is a difference.

 

What do you think about the lock-picking minigame? I just realized I described it wrong; there is not some minimum amount of time to open the lock which depends on the number of pins. There is some average amount of time to open the lock which depends on the numbers of pins (which you'd approach if you were to pick the same lock many times), but on any given attempt, luck plays a role in how fast your trial and error goes.

[Ishtvan]

What do you think about the lock-picking minigame? I just realized I described it wrong; there is not some minimum amount of time to open the lock which depends on the number of pins. There is some average amount of time to open the lock which depends on the numbers of pins (which you'd approach if you were to pick the same lock many times), but on any given attempt, luck plays a role in how fast your trial and error goes.

 

I like the concept of keeping track of where you are in the lock, and it does require skill to remember the order. However, I don't really like that a good part of it comes down to luck and trial and error. I'm also not fond of GUIs popping up and would prefer if you had to move the pick while looking at it from the outside of the lock (like in reality) and it made a sound when you passed over each pin to tell you where you were in the lock.

 

Without revealing too much (?), our current lockpicking is more of a skill-based game for setting each pin, but doesn't require navigating the lock (i.e., it sets the first pin that will set, then the next pin that will set, etc). My personal ideal system would be combining our current system for setting each pin with a non-GUI system for navigating the lock to find the pin that wants to set.

[STiFU]

"Slow door-opening while creep", I like the sound of that. But combine it with the mousewheel technique like eigenface suggested and I'd perform a naked raindance for you! Free movement while slowly opening the door via mousewheel, triggered by simply holding creep during frob? -> Awesome!!

 

This was also done very well in Splinter Cell, but in first person without bodyawareness you can't implement it that way, I guess.

Edited November 5, 2008 by STiFU

[eigenface]

Going back to the mantling, I noticed something else looked strange about it, in addition to the fact you always lean in the same direction, but earlier I couldn't put my finger on exactly what else was strange. Now I have it.

 

I appears that once the mantle action is triggered, the camera always starts at the same height relative to the surface you're mantling onto. This makes sense when you're mantling onto a surface higher than the current height of the camera. But it looks strange when you're mantling onto a surface lower than the current height of the camera.

 

Many times I mantled onto a table or low wall, and it looked like I got down on my hands and knees before climbing up onto the table. It looked especially strange when the mantle action got triggered by a very low surface like a step on a staircase, and I got down on my stomach before climbing up onto the step.

 

Maybe the camera should only go up while mantling, and never go down first. That way, it would look like you're stepping or hopping up onto tables and low walls, instead of first crouching down and then climbing up.

[Rek]

Damn that's an amazing pick locking in the flash game. That would be really great to use the same technique of pick locking in DM.

[Mr Mike]

In line with the door frobbing discussion, are there plans to implement the Thief technique of putting your ear to a door to more clearly hear noises the other side of it?

[SneaksieDave]

Actually, that's already in there, give it a try. It does currently have a limitation in that, when you are listening to "that" zone (the other side of the door), you no longer hear "this" zone (the one you're standing in) very well. As I understand it, you are effectively pushing your ear into the other zone, so this is to be expected. Hopefully fixable someday, but it still works well for the most part.

[Winkler Oszkár]

Three little questions/tips:

 

1, When the player looks at a pickable/usable item, it highlights. This effect should be a 25% gamma gain or the item's contour would become visible and it's name (in pitch-dark).

2, It would be nice if the player could hold some items in his/her hands that could be set (like by double activating it) to have no physical characteristics and would be very close to the player. I mean, when the player picks up (frobs) a burning candle stick to use it in pitch-dark, it often bumps into other objects and finally falls out of the player's hands.

3, Inching would be nice.

 

Thank you!