Cerebration on 26/6/2009 at 14:23
I'd agree with Chade's point #4 - you need to give the player a hint about the noise a surface will make otherwise they'll get frustrated. If you start changing the way a surface behaves without any other indication the apparent randomness will get annoying.
In special cases you could use an NPC to demonstrate a particular obstacle like a creaky floorboard. IIRC in TDP's Assassins! there's a point where the two guards walk over some loud metal grating that's quite hard to see in the dark. This hint gives the player a chance to use their wits and put down some moss arrows to soften their footsteps.
TheGrimSmile on 26/6/2009 at 14:49
I like the idea of certain surfaces making noise (at least, if I'm understanding this right...) but I'm not so hot on the idea of creaky floors. What happens when I want to bash someone over the head only to be foiled by them hearing Garrett's (or whoever) tap shoes combined with an old floor?
And I'll want to knock out everyone :ebil:
To me, it just means quicksaving/loading more...
If there is one idea I'm firmly against, it's customiseable difficulties. For a few reasons, it's just a bit of a turn-off.
First, I always liked choosing the difficulty to be a quick thing. It just let the missions flow from one to the next, which kept it from feeling like just a game. Also, changing the difficulty didn't primarily mean that the AI would act differently, but instead meant that you had a little more to do, or that there were a few things you had to keep in mind. It supported that beloved immersion.
What happens if you tailor a difficulty that you don't really like? Back to the drawing board, have to fiddle around some more, then start over.
I don't want the main point of choosing my difficulty to be how the the AI acts, or to say how I'm going to play the level. I want my difficulty to signify how much I'm going to do in the level. Concerns about how careful I have to be around enemies or how I want to get through the level, well... that's part of the mission, not the difficulty.
Stath MIA on 26/6/2009 at 18:21
I think I'm mostly on the same page as Chade. On point #1, definitely correct, if there is increased variability, which I'm all for, it will have to be obvious to the player, I wouldn't like having to listen for faint variations to figure out whether a guards going to be freaking out or not even glancing at me. Point #2 is way beyond me so I'll skip to #3. I really have to disagree with you here dude, checking out the floor has always been key to Thief and if someone isn't willing to examine their environment then they're not going to be playing Thief for long anyway. #4, while some degree of randomness adds to the game and allows for players to have unique experiences, too much is just going to piss them off. If I can walk across a stretch of carpet without making any noise one time then I'm going to assume I can do it again, if it doesn't work I'm not going to think "oh, what great replayability" I'm going to think "dang, this game is buggy". Sorry ascottk, but if it's done it has to be consistent, different carpets should have different noises, different kinds of dirt should have different noises, however these noises shouldn't just randomly vary without any visible reason.
ascottk on 26/6/2009 at 18:32
Quote Posted by Stath MIA
Sorry ascottk, but if it's done it has to be consistent, different carpets should have different noises, different kinds of dirt should have different noises, however these noises shouldn't just randomly vary without any visible reason.
You're reading way too much into this :p I'm not talking about randomness. Boards creak in unsupported areas. Period. Boards are stronger near walls. Less creaking. Period. I have no idea where randomness came into the picture :confused:
Stath MIA on 26/6/2009 at 20:06
Quote Posted by ascottk
You're reading way too much into this :p I'm not talking about randomness. Boards creak in unsupported areas. Period. Boards are stronger near walls. Less creaking. Period. I have no idea where randomness came into the picture :confused:
I wasn't talking about boards creaking. :p I was talking about visually homogeneous textures which make different sounds for no visual reason. Players need to know which surfaces are going to be noisy and which aren't.
Now, if you really want to talk honestly about my issues with your floor boards then here are my top 5:
1. It would strongly interfere with gameplay and pretty much force the devs to build the missions around the floors of all things
2. It would annoy the average player to have floor boards in the middle of the rooms creak as it would cause knocking out any guard who's not mysteriously leaning against the wall to be too challenging
3. It's not actually realistic, only the most dilapidated structures would have creaking floors as most floors, even medieval ones, were well supported
4. It makes it so that it is easier to make enough noise to attract a guard than it is to be attract a guard by visibility, which is very unrealistic
5. It really adds nothing to gameplay
Beleg Cúthalion on 26/6/2009 at 20:59
Every wooden floor creaks. Thinking that you'd have to solve the issue with different floor textures is rather narrowed computer game thinking. You solve this by letting the player see the whole room. Once he's introduced to the phenomenon he will have no problem dealing with it; it's not about creating another artificial indicator like a different texture or a new HUD, it's about transferring real life experience which every sane person will have into computer games. That's not random or at least not more than reality. Plus, IMHO it would be a really poor thing if Thief IV employed the same limited (!) stealth/realism elements of ten-years-old TDP.
Quote Posted by Stath MIA
It makes it so that it is easier to make enough noise to attract a guard than it is to be attract a guard by visibility, which is very unrealistic
It might be imbalanced, but making one feature more realistic than the other doesn't make the whole thing significantly unrealistic. I mean, there are surely a lot of imbalancies of this kind in the game and still you don't consider it surreal (Garrett can take more arrows in the chest than guards etc.).
Quote Posted by Stath MIA
If I can walk across a stretch of carpet without making any noise one time then I'm going to assume I can do it again, if it doesn't work I'm not going to think "oh, what great replayability" I'm going to think "dang, this game is buggy". Sorry ascottk, but if it's done it has to be consistent, different carpets should have different noises, different kinds of dirt should have different noises, however these noises shouldn't just randomly vary without any visible reason.
Again, it's not about random; but just in case – a carpet on both a stone and a creaking wooden floor would provide exactly the kind of challenge I'd like to see as a Thief. I
want the game to play a "realistic" trick on me, I
want to be forced to find an alternative, I feel better playing a hard game which challenges me in a very realistic way and thus requires my real life experience than playing a pretty game with its own simplified mechanics which lead to non-realistic self-runners like blackjacking through doors or from the hip, knock-outs while airborne (but not from falling down but from sprinting and leaping), just because it's possible and makes things easier.
And heck, I don't want all the difficult stuff for NORMAL, I want it for EXPERT.
Chade on 27/6/2009 at 14:15
Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion
Already the Keeper Training mission forced you to look at the floor. I wonder how you play Thief with ignoring the material you're walking on. Heck, I guess ascottk never suggested to add something completely confusing to the player. It just uses the own experience of everyone and turns it into gameplay. Like cracking floors, like rustling foliage, like e.g. silhouettes in front of a window or light shaft.
Plus, you never know ho quickly people get used to it just like they got used to looking at the floor and hiding in real shadows.
Yeah, obviously I mean that the player should completely ignore the floor he is walking on ... come on, man ...
You'll note I say that I would "tread carefully", rather then "this is completely out of the question". It's definately worth considering, but for the reasons listed, I would be scared of diving in and jacking up the complexity. Mainly because of the feedback you get (my first two points): it's either fuzzy or affected by other factors.
My third point seems to have the least support in this thread. That's fair enough: I put a lot of question marks in there myself. It's just this fuzzy notion about how different game elements should attract the player's attention.
For example, picture the following scenario in thief 1 or 2:
The player is in a dark corner of a room with wooden flooring. There is a patch of carpet in the middle, surrounding a table with golden goblets. There are wooden supports around the room, so while the player can perceive the pattern of carpet and wood in the room, the columns and table stop him from actually seeing the entire floor. There is a door into the room on one wall, and a busy corridoor into the room on the other. There are sporadic shadows along the walls of the room. One guard is looking out a window, with his back to the player, on the other side of the room. Other guards patrol through the room from time to time, or cross the neighbouring hallway.
In this scenario, a new thief player already has quite a bit to worry about. The player is not yet adept at dashing to and from the center of the room to grab loot. The speed at which he can safely dash across the wooden floor changes depending on how close he is to the guard ... he doesn't have a good handle on this yet. Neither is the player confident at predicting when a guard will appear. He doesn't yet have a good mental map of the surrounding area. When the player ventures into the center of the room to grab a goblet, he will have nervous eyes glued to the door and corridoor, watching for the first sign of an approaching guard.
But it's not all bad news. The player can dash around on that carpet without much worry. Even though he can't see all the carpet, he can extrapolate from what he can see, and assume that it extends a certain distance away from the table is all directions. That's safe. When he goes to grab those goblets, he can have his eyes firmly fixed on potential guards. He doesn't need to keep his eye firmly fixed on the carpet.To me this raises two questions.
1) Is it desirable to require the player to pay more attention to his environment then he does already?
2) If the answer is yes, what game elements should attract the players attention?
I won't go into any detail on the first question, because it's really beside the point. On the one hand, thief is already a very detailed stealth simulation. On the other hand, thief is the "finest" brand in the stealth genre, and should blow people away. I think you could reasonably go either way on question one. For the purposes of argument, I'll just say "yes". We want to blow people away with a detailed simulation.
That leaves us with the second question, and I'm much more inclined to go "no" to this one, because floor isn't all that interesting. At the moment, a thief player enters a room and immediately scans for loud floors and bright lights. The environment becomes a background against which the player outsmarts guards who fight better then he does, steals money from people who are wealthier then he is, and uncovers hidden secrets (or artifacts!). Notice that all this stuff is super meaningfull and is all about subverting existing power structures.
If you are going to make the simulation more detailed, I would prefer not to put too much focus on environmental factors. Shadow and sound are two of the most core mechanics of thief, but they are not terribly meaningfull concepts. If you require the player pay more attention to the volume of floor surfaces, what does it give the player the oppurtunity to do? The player now has more oppurtunity to avoid accidental mishaps. It's boring on two counts: aesthetically, it has nothing to do with subverting power structures, and mechanically, it doesn't put any power in the player's hands. It's not exactly awe inspiring stuff.
Beleg Cúthalion on 28/6/2009 at 06:57
Of course it would be merely an obstacle unlike shadows, but being heard by guards in the first place or weapon exposure doesn't give the player any opportunities either - except for attracting guards more easily, which on the other hand would be possible with creaking floors, too. I'm not sure if you need to find a huge gameplay explanation or mechanic to justify it, I think of it merely as one of the many things you have to care about in Thief. And again, it's not an artificial obstacle but one step closer to reality. Likewise I'd vote for more sophisticated AI behaviour and movement improvements which will also make the game more challenging (e.g. if they don't ramp down when there's a dead body in the house or if they will find an alternative route if you get somewhere they cannot get themselves etc.). Things like these wouldn't "give" the player something either.
Chade on 28/6/2009 at 22:13
Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion
I'm not sure if you need to find a huge gameplay explanation or mechanic to justify it, I think of it merely as one of the many things you have to care about in Thief.
Yeah, that might be a good counter-argument: "stop making mountains out of molehills ... people like sneaking around, they'll enjoy a few more things to sneak past". And you might be right. As I said earlier, this wasn't my main point, and it's not something that I'm all that confident about. I'm just worried that the player's attention is a
finite resource. Spend it wisely!
Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion
And again, it's not an artificial obstacle but one step closer to reality.
Reality is only real in real life. ;)
This is a good oppurtunity to quote Randy Smith, replying to a fan who obviously thinks along similar lines to yourself (emphasis mine):
Quote:
Jonathan: You know, originally I figured it [stealth gameplay] would hit a higher plateau [get more detailed] first before unraveling into other forms.
...
Randy: Well, there are plenty of things we could have done to make the stealth in thief higher fidelity.
For example, it probably wouldn't have been impossible for A.I. to detect silhouettes - when the player is in darkness but framed by a bright light, for example.
Jonathan: Exactly, or when the player is framed by a back wall that reflects light.
Randy: However, the greater challenge we kept bumping up against was how to get the player to understand why they were caught or detecting in the first place.
Even lower fidelity stealth seemed to confound players, which makes sense - a guard from across the room can see you when you are looking the other way, and
it feels like the game cheated.
So adding more ways to get caught didn't seem like a smart direction to go in unless we could do a better job solving more ways to feed that back to the player and give the player even more tools for hiding.
5tephe on 29/6/2009 at 03:44
- I really like this discussion: we are getting into some very detailed and well thought out arguments! -
I think Chade's main point about immersion/attention/difficulty balance is a really well made one, and the point about the Themes of Thief being about subverting existing power structures is Wonderful!
I'm gonna side (again) with Beleg and ascottk, in saying that players would be gently introduced to these ideas throughout the game.
The training mission would mention the variances in wooden flooring when teaching you to walk across it, and give you hints about looking for lines of nails, showing you where the beams ran under the boards.
Then in the early missions, there would be fewer complicated areas that really involved using that feature. Later missions would have a more complex layout, and challenge players more (hopefully using a realistic in-game excuse, like the fact that the mansion you are robbing tonight is older, and therefore more run-down.)
I would be surprised if they didn't include silhouettes in this version of Thief, because frankly it has always felt quite artificial being able to stand in the middle of a room, under the shadow of a crossbeam, and remain undetected. Perhaps they won't make it 100% realistic, but small improvements like shadows falling from AIs and Players, silhouettes, and variable sound levels from environmental items based on a couple more conditions would make the game
a) more immersive, and
b) actually give the Thief more tools to use as well.
If you can see a guard's shadow falling across an intersection ahead, you can figure out how to blackjack him or avoid him much earlier. It could make you a lot more powerful.
