addone on 23/5/2009 at 18:34

---

It'd be interesting say...having something like a rat running from a wall and the guard turning around briefly and watching it.. or have a guard scared of rats/spiders, screaming if he sees one and some other guard running around very alert? It'd make things a bit more unpredictable. You could be sneaking very close behind a guard about to blackjack him, and then a rat suddenly runs out from behind you and he turns round to see what that was...

I dunno how easy it'd be to implement, though.

rainynight65 on 24/5/2009 at 15:04

---

Interesting thread. My main gripe is that a lot of suggestions seem to be aimed at making the game more difficult, but not necessarily more interesting.

To be honest, the last thing I would want in a new Thief game is more undead or monsters, or monsters that are even more difficult to dispatch. I like it tense, but not necessarily scary.The undead were overdone in TDP already, TMA and TDS had a better balance. At the end of the day Garrett is a thief, not a Witcher. So as far as monsters, hive minds and sense of smell go - yes, by all means, but there must be ways around it. I mean, how do you get away from a monster that has smelled you? In my opinion there must never ever be a situation that forces a retry by design. Meaning, whatever situation the player gets himself into, there must be a way to get out of it (except of course, if he dies). The solution doesn't necessarily have to be obvious but it should be there. If there's one thing I hate in a game it is repeated trial & error procedures.Every measure must have a countermeasure.

I agree with the points made about the AI having to be more aware. Way more. I am just replaying Thief 3 and, at the docks, made two people slide into the water by means of an oil flask. The third guard was about ten metres away but noticed neither the shouts nor the splashes. That needs to be changed. Open doors, doused torches, missing or moved items - right now they provoke a verbal reaction but nothing else. Have the guard close the door again, and relight the torch. Have him look around for missing items. It would certainly add to the game if the player had to consider - do I take this guard out or is it too risky because there's others around that might notice? Add less predictable paths and behaviours to it, and it could be a good challenge.

I think that creating a gaming environment that truly appeals to a wide audience, with variable difficulties to accomodate both novice and expert players, is a true challenge. I'd love to see them get it right with Thief 4.

Nephthys on 21/11/2009 at 02:37

---

I think smell would be good in small doses. Just to give the creepy vibe. Like you know what they are thinking.

In Dark Shadows when you could hear the enforcers talk telepathically, about me, that freaked me the hell out.
I think the idea of knowing the awareness in a more creepy way than "What was that" would be good. But not over used.

The Shroud on 21/11/2009 at 06:20

---

I think AIs being able to smell is generally a good idea, but I think it should only be given to creatures like burricks, apemen, and hounds - the sorts of AIs that could realistically differentiate your scent from the scents of their pack-mates or companions. All humans can smell, obviously, but our sense of smell isn't acute enough to tell the difference between "friendly" scents and those of strangers or intruders - if we even smell each other in the first place, which usually doesn't happen outside of extreme circumstances.

So I propose to keep TMA's "pseudo" smelling for human AIs (i.e. the occasionally muttered "Damn, it stinks around here." type comment) - perhaps even have it be a conditional trigger that activates if the current room brush is set to "Roomstink = True" or something along those lines. Make it more of an environmental awareness where humans are concerned (as opposed to an awareness of Garrett, who under normal circumstances shouldn't be giving off a strong smell).

Creatures with superior senses of smell, like those cited above, should be the ones the player has to watch out for. The only way the player could avoid being smelled by these types would be either to keep their distance or hide in water, both of which would be easy to code.

For these AIs, "smell" would function pretty much the way hearing does - causing the AI to enter a search mode when the player's scent-stim goes off within the AI's smell-radius, and begin following the player's trail, starting from the nearest scent-marker (the actual agent of the scent-stim) and moving toward the "freshest" (highest valued) scent-marker (meaning each marker's value would be set to count down at a regular rate over a specified span of time starting from the instant that marker is created, until the value reaches 0 - at which point the marker would delete itself and disappear from the world).

Unlike noise-beacons, which the player triggers only under certain conditions, the player's "scent" would be active constantly no matter where they are or what they're doing - unless they enter water. All water has a water-stim. This stim can be made perpetually active (occurring every second), and would be given a function which sets the player's scent-property to "off" for 1 second (i.e. the player stops creating scent-markers for 1 second, then the property automatically turns back "on" - but is instantaneously turned "off" again by the next occurring water-stim, and so on). This would mean that as soon as the player exits the water, the water-stim would cease to contact the player and their scent-property would reactivate 1 second later - and begin producing scent-markers again.

The Shroud on 21/11/2009 at 07:08

---

Lol. True. In other words, humans shouldn't smell you - only the environment. Whereas certain other creatures shouldn't smell the environment (i.e. Burricks aren't going to grunt that their cave stinks) - just you.