Jarvis on 15/7/2009 at 20:35

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I get really frustrated with predominantly tile and metal flooring in TDP and TMA. For one thing, the slightest movement sends all the guards in the area in a flurry. For another, both tile and metal are *very* quiet floor types in real life. Seriously, go wear your heaviest boots and try walking quietly across tile. Easy.

Wooden flooring actually is the most challenging indoor floor type in real life. Especially when it's covered in carpet and you can't see where the wood looks warped or old. Thief has actually always been completely backwards when it comes to the noise floor types make. It's really quite rudimentary, illogical, and could really stand for a re-vamping. Us Thief veterans would have to re-gear ourselves and learn something new, but what's wrong with that?

So let's flip it back around hypothetically. Let's say the new most challenging floor type is wooden floors, and tile and metal floor are brought back down to be about as challenging as stone flooring (though metal would be very loud at a run, of course, and perhaps tile as well. I'm talking about a slow stalk here.)

In TDP, when encountering an all tile floor you must either moss arrow, or crouch walk at a pain-stakingly slow pace that might still alert every guard in the house.

With creaky wooden floors, at the very least the player knows they can move silently at a decent pace around the walls. I'd argue that moss arrows wouldn't work here, but that's sort of a different issue. You could still have moss work and still get away with it, after all, carpet has always worked in the past. I'll also add that a slow stalk reduces the sound of creaky floors in real life, and slow movement across the center of the room in game should still be effective.

So if you make the changes I suggest, here's what you'll have:
-Wooden floor = Silent at a slow stalk, creaky at faster paces in the middle, safety around walls and other support structures.
-Tile/Metal = Silent at a slow stalk, noisy at a run.
-Carpet = Perfectly silent on tile/metal/stone, still suffers from creaks on wooden floor. (All completely carpet rooms should probably always be with out creaking, as to avoid player confusion).

Something like this is no more or less challenging than Thief already is, is no more or less confusing or consistent for the player, and makes the most challenging indoor floor type more of a thinking game than a standard "moss or bust" sort of challenge.

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Another topic: a potential new form of audio feedback for the player.

A talented sneak in real life knows how to place a foot before shifting weight to test for sound. This allows them to lift their foot again and place it elsewhere to avoid breaking sticks/creaking floors or whatever. The faster you move, the more difficult this skills becomes.

This sort of thing can be translated into a game. I'm not a console fan myself, but just as an example, when moving at a slow stalk the controller might rumble before a step, indicating that the step may be noisy. It would require some form of indication as to when each step happens, but if you pay careful attention that already happens is TDP and TMA. At a slow stalk you can tell when Garrett puts each foot down.

Though obviously we'd need a different form of indicator for the computer, and there are a number of ways to do it. It could be a visual cue of some kind on screen, but I'm opposed to that idea. It could be an audio cue as well, like maybe a slight grunt of disapproval from Garrett (Since already likes talking to himself anyway), or something else like that.

A system like that would allow a player to have some idea of the noise a ground type will make before they actually bungle it by stepping on it and alerting guards (perhaps easing the concern everyone has for confusing the player with floor types). Obviously it would only work at a slow stalk. The only real trick is making it unobtrusive as to not be annoying. I wouldn't want Garrett grunting with every step across noisy surfaces, so maybe he'd only do it on the first step onto a noisy floor type? I don't know how difficult that would be to code.

Anyway, just a new sort of idea. What do you guys think?

Mortis on 28/7/2009 at 01:47

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One way for the floor creaking to be more forgiving on te player would be "discounting" the first step. It is slightly unrealistic but atleast it wouldnt be immersion breaking if the first step Garrett takes onto a creaky beam produced a sound that the NPCs dont hear but alerts te player to the fact that the board is unsafe to walk on.

What about levels that take place in mansions with multiple levels ? Maybe sound from above could alert guards below you who could come up to investigate, possibly bringing other guards with them or checking with them, finding out that there was just a guard patrolling te room at the time and then going back to his post. This mechanic could be used in a "chance" based manner i.e. the guard hears the noise and either checks it out or thinks it is another guard or doesnt give a shit cos hes Benny and hes drunk as usual and cant give a shit !!

One thing that I found lacking in the AI is a lack of communication between them. They could tell each other if they saw/heard something putting more of them on alert, maybe a few band together and comb the place. There could be a guard captain that does a full check on everyone from time to time maybe he sees some guards missing or others report seeing/hearing stuff and he decides to increase the patrol or change the positions of guards to fortify an area. This could add some much needed randomness to missions and would be more realistic.

I also feel that te AI needs another alert level. Instead going back into 'everythings fine' mode they should go and stay in 'looks ok for now but I should pay more attention to things' mode. You could also have some guards at are actually trying to do their job well.These guys check dark corners, closets. etc regularly on their patrols. This can work really well with communicating AI who notice missing stuff and actually try doing stuff about it.

Please leave some feedback on my ideas because I really feel that AI communicating with each other and dynamically changing positions would really spice things up.

Chade on 28/7/2009 at 02:57

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Ignoring for a moment any reserves I have about making the sound system more complicated, the idea of surface volumes not scaling uniformly with player speed is interesting. It would actually add something genuinely new to the gameplay, which I like.

Surfaces without much volume difference between running and walking would encourage running, and therefore should be used sparingly. The player would be encouraged to "sprint from shadow to shadow" while still paying attention to how much noise he is making. This is a slightly different flavour of stealth then anything we are used to, and it might be a fun diversion.

Surfaces with a huge volume difference between running and walking could be used as "bait" ... the player would be encouraged to sneak across these floors, but would be unable to manouver quickly if something unexpected happened. They would be "high risk, high reward" surfaces, and I am not sure whether I like the idea or not.



Sound already travels vertically ... are you saying you would like sound to occasionally leak between walls? Would this be a one-way or two-way leak? Sounds mighty confusing to me, and it would just feel like the AI was cheating. I am not a huge fan of the game being more random.



The AI already does both these things. As an aside, this is a nice example of the dangers of providing mechanics without adequate feedback. You have probably been playing thief for years and not noticed that they have a 'everythings fine but I am still slightly suspicious' mode. Unfortunately the AI doesn't give any obvious sign that they are in this mode.



I have some misgivings about this, mainly because thief currently situates the player firmly in the "here and now", and this would screw around with that. But I think it is possible to implement some variation of this idea in a good way.

Some things I potentially like about this idea:

1) Giving the player a more "meaningfull" guard to deal with ... if the captain is exiting the players room with some information that will change other parts of the level in some way, the players decision of how to deal with the captain becomes more interesting. (Note that this assumes the captain is in the same vicinity as the player, which constains the implementation.)

2) Procedurally generating patrol routes has the potential to be really crappy, but it also has the potential to make thief less of a puzzle game, which is nice if you are sneaking through the same area more then once

Some things I potentially don't like:

1) Important shit happening without the player being aware of it. Blergh.

2) Negative consequences even if you successfully "take out" guards seems to make the path from violence -> assassin -> blackjack -> ghosting a bit rocky.

3) Encouraging the player to make strategical decisions about what order he should tackle different areas of the mansion would discourage the whole freewheeling exploratory thing thief currently has going on. Exploration is one of the key reasons that people are attracted to thief.



Just be carefull not to underestimate how powerfull such a guard would be. Normal guards, even when alerted, they will typically not find the player if he is in a dark corner.

In many situations, if an "enthusiastic" guard came into the room, it would be literally impossible not to get caught (e.g., other guards prevent the player from sneaking away from his hiding place). Either avoid such situations (lots of shadows, low guard density, etc), or give the player is given plenty of advance warning that such an AI is coming, and that he needs to get out of there!

Syndef on 29/7/2009 at 03:46

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Remember, we are bad-ass, elite, stealth-gamers. It is our nature, and we are totally used to difficult stealth sections. We are always looking for more realistic, and thus more challenging experiences. It's way too easy for us. For US. And only US.

Other gamers won't have a damn clue. They'll fail or die within seconds while playing a stealth game that implements the things mentioned in this thread. Any gamers that do stay and try to play through won't adapt soon enough to enjoy the experience.

If the devs do all the stuff we mentioned so far, they'll end up making a game for us, by us, and us alone. It'll alienate the other gamers, believe me.

Mortis on 29/7/2009 at 03:59

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True enough. For some reason, I alwayys seem to post these just before bedtime so I just lazily put some suff out there. Let me know what you want me to expand on and Ill work on it tomorrow in the daytime :)