Bakerman on 18/9/2009 at 02:33

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Neb - I see your point. I also like to play games empty-handed when possible, if only because I don't like having an arm attached to the camera. I don't think that it's necessarily the case that your body has to always be there and getting in the way - there's really no reason why you should see your body, unless you're looking down, or doing something like picking up an item. I find I like to see my character doing things like that, as opposed to the TDP/DX route of seeming telekinesis.
I know it's an abstract representation, just like everything else in the game, and was probably the best way to do it back when animation tech was limited. But the tech isn't such a limiting factor now.

jtr - I may have failed to ignore you, but I still don't need to respond. Nice pic, though :thumb:

...


Oh, heck, I may as well take the bait. Body awareness, like Ostriig has said, has nothing to do with freedom of movement if you do it well. I would far prefer the devs take their time and do body awareness with freedom of movement, than be lazy and just do one or the other. They can take some time out of multiplayer dev to get it working right :P.

Also, where does wussification come into it?



Unless your entire post was a big tongue-in-cheek rant and you've actually come over to our side. Hmm.


EDIT
Oh, I forgot:

You are not a floating eyeball.

jtr7 on 18/9/2009 at 06:03

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Lazy devs not doing both, Bakerman? How about finite development time and one being more important than the other. Gamer wussies want their hand-held, need to see where they put their feet to take a step, need to see their hands to pick something up. Not important. Frob and flow. Doing a good job of integrating it takes a huge chunk of development time on a few animators and the playtesters, and will definitely impact level design. For Thief, I really could not care less for body awareness. My imagination is more powerful in placing me in that world. Heretics! Ruinators of the basics for dev time subtracted from what matters! Haters of the LGS legacy!:sly:

...And I can't leave out...:

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i106/jtr7/MonkeyHeadsImpaled.jpg

Tongue-in-cheek, but not false, only amplified.

jtr7 on 18/9/2009 at 06:45

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Other than the time taken away from better things to build it in and make it a separate code so the body doesn't move the camera during player movement...ever...? Guess what? As we see in TDS (groan) what is invisible still casts a shadow. Garrett wouldn't need to be visible or animated to cast a shadow that the AIs are dialed down not to notice anyway.



The ashes of the long dead T1/G/T2, eh? Screw you, taffer!

Don't be a 'tard! We DON'T have to go back to LGS days--DAMMIT!--But let's ADVANCE the game, and not degrade the basics by doing so. ADVANCE, not add visual Garrett coolness to show shit off. Dummkopf! I keep finding out how inferior TDS was, a step below the rough realism of the older titles, undermining the advancements. Once again, what are you doing on the Thief forums, Beleg? "New" should be "BETTER", and the past should not have more advanced code and conceptualization! Screw you for continually not getting it. You're...not..getting...IT, or what I'm saying. I'm begging for advancement and YOU are not following me into the future. YOU are adhering to tropes of the past that Thief NEVER NEEDED to change our worlds! I wanna go FORWARD without shitting on the past, but building up from it. Taffhead! Homogenizing Thief to be more like the other games, the "better" games. Taff the hell off! Making Thief "better" by packing more shit into it from mainstream games to make EM money? WTF?!


But then, you are on the list of Incorrigibles when you aren't doing truly lovely things with T3Ed. How is it, after all this time, you can still assume it takes no more time, nothing is sacrificed, to make your wishes come true? You could at least frame your wish-list in knowledge of timeline and budget and staffing as a way of demonstrating you know adding stuff requires more time to do it, and that's less time spent on getting a fundamental right for the first time, when even LGS and ION couldn't do what they wanted. I want to see what has only been hinted at come to life, finally. A basic, a fundamental, an essential ingredient of Thief, perfected--NOT SCREWED OVER, AGAIN, FOR A BORROWED GIMMICKY SELLING POINT!!



Perfected essentials must not be hamstrung, or be inferior to what worked well enough in the past, for things that seem like the cherry on top, but take more programming and animation time than the basics. The new game should take everything that made Thief an industry-changer and perfect it, and do it again! If you don't like THIEF than shut the hell up. You don't belong here.




Oh, and I cannot relate to the "floating eyeball" hubris. Never noticed. I have an imagination.







Let's try an analogy. I can't wait to hear how you grossly misinterpret this one, and with a wise-ass retort (make it entertaining and nuke another bag of commercial trans-fatty popcorn).

Okay. What I want...
...An advancement built on basics that were damned good to begin with:

http://spitfirespitroast.co.uk/images/barbeque_burger.jpg

LGS had the best ingredients they could get, which weren't the best but they did miracles with 'em. EM could bring the highest quality of those same ingredients, where the meat is so good, condiments are not necessary, nor missed, by people with working taste buds and no bad habit of automatically dumping condiments on great food anyway--never knowing or understanding what crime they've committed, what insult to the cooks.


What you want...:

http://www.taste.com.au/images/articles/burger08130956.jpg

Mc-Taffin'-Donalds bloat, with ingredients so inferior you have to make up for it by piling on lots of different flavors to make it seem good. You're addicted and actually crave this crap. You don't care if it's kiddie fare, with clowns and goofy-ass characters, as long as it seems real enough and you had fun. You like the crinkly labeled wrappers and bright colors to tell you what's inside, and the Happy Meal makes you happy, and the glossy graphics on the box make you happy, before you've taken a bite. You don't notice, or you tell your conscience to shut up about, the tasty-yet-degraded 'food' inside. You admit it gives you diarrhea, but you state it's no big deal and that we should stop whinging about the smell. You're sick and you don't care, and you don't like the guy reminding you about moderation, and healthy servings of the ingredients, and the healthier higher-quality versions of those ingredients, which usually get raves and awards and are very satisfying and create memories, and not built of plasticized inferiority with consistent color and shape to fool you. Another fast-food game. Or can you just frikkin' explain why you loathe Thief so much you feel a great need to pile on the condiments to make it more palatable? :laff: Is Thief so unsatisfying that you actually blame the game for your lack of enjoyment and dissatisfaction, rather than walking away and trying something else more suited to your tastes?



I wanna see the next game move up in the world, rise above, blow minds, and blow the trilogy out of the water! Homogenizing it to fit in with the rest of the same old damn thing out there is NOT the way to go! And don't frikkin' tell me that we gotta support EM's need for profits. WTF? No we don't. Shame on you. And don't tell me it will introduce more players to Thief, when we all know damned well that TDS didn't bring a lot of people to the trilogy but created a sharp division. A departure from the strengths, or a smothering of them in Kool-Whip bells and whistles, is not a good way to introduce anybody to Thief. It won't be an intro to Thief, but one game they like and the rest to be scoffed at, with TDS getting a little more forgiveness. Taff off! You dump on us saying we want the old games with a make-over, while contradicting your dumb selves by extolling the superior exterior of TDS! :laff: So much time spent on appearances. Plastic surgery can be abused and addicting, you know.


[CENTER]Crap games.
Over 100-billion served![/CENTER]


Don't tell me we can have both kinds of hamburgers in one, or that I shouldn't step all over your fun with your double-standards.




LGS made Thief in 30 months--a long development cycle. EM's goal is Thief 4 in 24 months, which they consider a long development cycle. Thankfully, and this bodes well for Thief 4, EM was given an extension for Deus Ex 3. I hope Thief 4 gets more time, especially for all the extra extra cheese.

jtr7 on 18/9/2009 at 08:20

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Multiplayer Thief (oxymoronic) needs to be a separate thing than what I install on my drive (someday...maybe). What I mean is, Thief 4 should be Thief, and anything else should be expansion packs and things that don't eat up Thief 4's development and playtesting time. This is not against multiplayer in The City with those game mechanics, it's against Thief 4 coming with it built-in. I don't want to know it's there in Thief proper by the way the world is built, and through seeing something that could've been better if the devs had more time.

jtr7 on 18/9/2009 at 09:30

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Read past the first two paragraphs.




To which I say... At least head-bob can be toggled off without affecting anything but head-bob. Yeah, that's a good option for the motion-sick taffers that can't fully enjoy the game (Laura Baldwin was one who got motion-sick, too). 3rd-person cannot be toggled off or exist in the game at all without impacting 1st-person. And again, floating eyeball is your personal problem, not Thief's. Until TDS came along, the complaints about 1st-person in Thief were negligible. It wasn't an issue, and I'd like to see it not be an issue again.