A Couple (practical) Ideas

[Dario D.]

I've been playing The Dark Mod in my burn-out time (that gap between work and work, when I just can't work anymore), and am really quite impressed. I think this is the Thief sequel that Ion Storm meant to make (just with less missions at the moment). There's the old-school Thief that everyone loves, and then there's a pile of new stuff that brings a load of freshness to the game.

 

Well, I just wanted to drop a quick idea or two for the devs. One is "quick-rats", and one is "marking-dough".

 

 

Quick-rats

 

This would be a new, very, very, very simple implementation of rats that would make them close to 100% realistic (and kind of scary at times), with almost 0 CPU usage. The idea is that the mapper just places a stationery rat-spawner in a corner (requires no AI or anything) and when the player gets within X feet of it (let's say a random range between 10-40ft, re-chosen each time you boot up the mission) a rat just spawns, and darts forward (FAST), then disappears.

 

The mapper would ideally put these at the bases of walls, pointing along the corners where the walls/floor meet, so that the rats always run against the base of a wall (or up in the rafters, or wooden beams above a hallway).

 

So, the effect would be this: you're walking through a dark kitchen, and ahead of you, through a doorway into a pantry (food, you know), you see a rat dart across the base of a wall, behind some rubbish. And that's it.

 

Ideally, I think it would be best if the quick-rats were placed plentifully in maps (you just point them in the direction you want the rat to spawn/run), but had a VERY low chance of actually triggering a rat... (perhaps, upon load, they could all do a calculation to decide whether or not they should just delete themselves for this run... and that would just leave a few of them active... or even none at times, so that they're more of a treat)

 

 

 

If you wanted to get fancy, you could add another completely sound-based object called "rat-scuffling" (rats suddenly scrambling)... and/or another called "rat-scratching" (rats digging at something), which respond to sounds you make. (ie, "rat-scuffling" would trigger when you make a loud noise somewhat nearby, and "rat-scratching" would start up playing at random times, and stop whenever it hears a sound) Maybe guards could notice these (just pass them a glance... or even stop for a second, and stare), and say their "darn rats" bark, on occasion. (the sounds would have to be infrequent enough to not stop EVERY guard, EVERY time he walks by. In fact, maybe the scratching sound could NOT alert guards most of the time, because of the noise they make while walking (at least on loud surfaces). Imagine how cool it would be if you were hiding in a shadow, and noticed that the scratching sound stopped every time a noisy old guard walked by)

 

 

Marking Dough (or whatever type of marking substance, such as chalk)

 

Marking Dough (which could be like ground Mushrooms, shaped into a white chalk-looking stick... except more gooey and squishy) would give you the simple ability to add tiny decals to doors/walls/etc, so you can mark up places as an easier way to remind yourself of things (like which doors to returned to later). Ideally, a Thief would put this marking stuff on his map, but most of us taffers usually just end up running around in circles, trying to remember which doors were what.

 

Here's some Photoshop:

 

 

I was originally thinking of gum or chalk (this idea has been floating around in my head for years) but mushroom pulp would be harder for guards to spot than gum, and easier for you to clean than chalk (also easier to draw on smooth surfaces, like marble floors, and glass windows). Oh, and mushrooms are Thiefy, for some reason... but this is an open issue, so you could use anything for this.

 

I guess you'd just frob decals to remove them... and maybe there'd still be a faint mark there, just for realism.

 

Other details might be:

-Guards might stop and notice them. (maybe they can start snooping for you if they spot more than one)

-Maybe have 2 or so different decals to choose from (unless there's some easy way to let the player draw freely, like with a little spraying device, or something)

 

 

 

Matches

 

Pretty soon here you'll have to implement a whole Deus Ex inventory screen, but my last idea (which isn't important to gameplay in the slightest, but fun) is carrying a small Matchbox that you can use to light candles... just for romantic purposes... and putting into Benny's shoes.

 

Excuse my enthusiasm, but Dark Mod is just really good.

 

 

Thread updated:

 

Smaller Player Footprint (as in collision box/cylinder/whatever)

 

I noticed I had a hard time squeezing into some corners that really looked like a person should fit in them (I love the sense of feeling "real" in Thief games, experienced - by me, at least - when you're able to slink around in a very agile, realistic manner... It kind of made me wish there was prone, I noticed while playing). You can notice the issue here by trying to press up against a table or dresser; you're blocked at quite a large distance. So, I guess this is more like a bug report about the player being kind of fat.

Edited October 19, 2009 by Dario D.

[Springheel]

The rat concept you describe is already possible. It was done almost exactly that way in our St. Lucia demo. It's up to the mapper to set it up, however. The rat in Chalice is not set up that way.

 

Not sure about the chalk idea. It's certainly a unique suggestion.

[Tels]

The rat concept you describe is already possible. It was done almost exactly that way in our St. Lucia demo. It's up to the mapper to set it up, however. The rat in Chalice is not set up that way.

 

Hm, I like the idea of the "temp. rat". My idea to do it was to have "hidden tunnels", then add real rats and then let them wander around the map. The problem are however:

 

* mapping the tunnels takes an awful long time

* the rats eat performance, even when you don't see them

* they are not very rat like yet, they don't dart into darker areas, they dont go to food and nibble on it etc.

 

Not sure about the chalk idea. It's certainly a unique suggestion.

 

It reminds me a lot on the "spray decal" function in Counter-Strike - walk to a wall, press button, decal appears. Actually, we could implement this, select the "chalk shroom" in your inventory, walk to wall, press use, and the decal is sprayed on.

[HappyCheeze]

A while ago, I asked greebo about the possibility of some kind of marking system. I was working on a hedgemaze map and I was thinking about the movie, "The Labyrinth". I said:

Hey Greebo,

 

In your expertise of coding,

 

how possible would it be to create an item that when used, the player can make a drawing or a quick mark, to show hes been there before. I got the idea thinking back on that old movie, The Labrynth.

 

Nothing too crazy like Half-life spraypaints, something that prehaps has a piece of chalk or something that you can manipulate, and when one end drags against the wall, it leaves a trail.

 

I figured it would help make complicated places easier to navigate, prehaps it would only be available in select missions or something.

And he said:

Hi,

 

I think it's possible to do this with the Doom 3 render functions (which are exposed to the SDK) to project a decal onto a surface, but I don't know if it's possible to let the decal stay forever. I never tried to use that function, that's why I'm unsure.

 

I project this to be a work of a few days or maybe even more, it's difficult to say.

 

--greebo

[Tels]

Ah yes, in D3 the decals vanish either after a set of time, or never. That is why greebo came up with the clever idea to have the blood decals to vanish and be redone every 5 seconds, but when you wash them away, the updating simply stops so they fade away.

 

Similiar could be done for the chalk marks.

[Fidcal]

Matches

 

Pretty soon here you'll have to implement a whole Deus Ex inventory screen, but my last idea (which isn't important to gameplay in the slightest, but fun) is carrying a small Matchbox that you can use to light candles... just for romantic purposes... and putting into Benny's shoes.

 

Excuse my enthusiasm, but Dark Mod is just really good.

I've already made a slow match for my next FM due possibly January. It's basically a glow fuse taper. These were used centuries ago to light cannon and firearms long before the modern match. Use it to light anything. Hopefully it will be taken up as a Dark Mod feature. I'll just have to push a bit harder.

[Dario D.]

The rat concept you describe is already possible. It was done almost exactly that way in our St. Lucia demo.

Ah. Never seen that mission. I guess the key thing here would be making the rat placement brainlessly easy, so that there is no rigging needed by the mapper. (but perhaps, later, you could add manual controls - like trigger-distance, or event-based-spawning - in case someone wants to make something like, say, a noisy event that triggers a whole ton of rats to suddenly scurrying out from behind something).

 

Hm, I like the idea of the "temp. rat".

Yeah, my whole problem with permanent rats is... well.. when do you ever SEE rats indoors? (except when they just bolt by for a second)

 

Ah yes, in D3 the decals vanish either after a set of time, or never. That is why greebo came up with the clever idea to have the blood decals to vanish and be redone every 5 seconds, but when you wash them away, the updating simply stops so they fade away.

 

Similiar could be done for the chalk marks.

Yeah, the idea was to first think about just regular decals, and then, engine and time-permitting, see if it would make sense to allow the player to draw freely. (it might be taxing to have the engine keep track of 500 tiny dot decals, but maaaaaybe there's a way to bake them into a single decal after each mouse-stroke, or create an on-the-fly projector texture, or something. No idea how the D3 engine works)