ffox on 17/12/2010 at 16:34
(The real old-timers may know this but it was an interesting discovery to me.)
I've been going through the original T2 missions to determine the correct total of pickpockets in each one and couldn't make the numbers tie up in Bank. Certain AI were sometimes absent from the scene! Checking in DromEd I found these AI were controlled by the LongRangeTrolKiller script.
I googled this and found a quote from the Thief designer Randy Smith in (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12745&p=186046&viewfull=1#post186046) this 2001 post.
Quote:
The CameraKiller, and other Killer scripts do just that, they delete objects when the mission starts. the cool thing is that it deletes them randomly. it deletes more on normal and slightly less on hard, and only a few on expert. so if you play on normal twice in a row, you're very likely to encounter a different set of obstacles, and ideally, have pretty different experiences as a result. i really wanted the bank to be replayable.
There are actually 4 Killer scripts in Bank:
CameraKiller, linked to 9 security cameras
WorkerBotKiller, linked to 5 workbots.
LongRangeTrolKiller, linked to 8 guards
HXTrolKiller, linked to 3 more guards
Some of the guards that are randomly killed before the mission starts carry keys and/or arrows, or purses. Because of this the pickpocket "out of" total may well be different every time you play!
d'Spair on 19/12/2010 at 14:53
Yes, and I wonder why only Bank and Eavesdropping missions have random elements, and not all the others in the game. It's such a cool feature.
TheGrimSmile on 20/12/2010 at 17:20
:laff: This makes a lot more sense now!
Not that I've played the Bank mission many times (I hate that mission) but a very interesting find. Thanks for sharing!