Baldur on 30/8/2013 at 10:33
A long time Thief Fan and enjoy games on a harder difficulty and challenging atmosphere. Thief has got the atmosphere but before the latest patch announcements used to love playing Thief Gold and Thief 2 with Ultimate Difficulty Mod made by James Martens, in fact, it was mandatory for me to have this little mod.
Unfortunately Tfix and Tafferpatcher are not compatible with James Martens Mod :(
I am not so sure whether TFix and Tafferpatcher modify the difficulty raising it to level of James Martens Mod because from what I have played so far with TFix/Tafferpatcher installed game doesn't appear that challenging as it was previously with Ultimate Difficulty Mod installed.
So, friends can you please suggest me what can be done to raise difficulty in game OR Mods that are compatible with TFix/Tafferpatcher and allow challenging difficulty by tweaking AI as seen in James Martens Mod fixes??:confused:
Psychomorph on 1/9/2013 at 16:52
Good question.
In fact I played Thief Gold the first time with a mod (forgot name) that made AI awareness better which felt much more real and was a better gaming experience overall. The problem was, that moving on tile floor Garrett sounds like a walking horse and AI did percept it like this, which is unacceptable for me. It's not about the challenge, but the idea that a sneak wears such poor shoes is something I just refuse to accept (has been always my harshest critique toward original Thief). So I had to remove the mod.
My wish would be a mod that allows you to chose which features it affects. I want to make the visual perception of AI much harder (game becomes more awesome), but keep the sound as it is. In fact I'd love a mod to rework the AI sound perception a bit. Making foot steps a bit more noticeable on stone and less noticeable on tile and metal, but keep it about as it is on wood and carpet. Even change the tile foot step sound to something less high heels shoes (I love how it sounds, but it doesn't fit).
What you think can I hack it like that somehow?
kdau on 1/9/2013 at 19:30
With NewDark, we can now create .DML patch files for existing missions and gamesyses. These patches can add, change, and remove individual properties and links on game objects. (They cannot add or remove entire objects or object types, however.) Since they're narrow in scope, it's much more likely that they will be compatible with other patches.
If Northon were making the Ultimate Difficulty Mod now, I'm sure he would create it as a .DML instead of a full gamesys. It should be possible to recreate the UDM in this new form, though it would take a careful comparison of Northon's gamesys against the original. Anyone interested in doing that should have a good DromEd background, review the NewDark documentation on DMLs, and expect to need thorough beta testing if not copying the UDM exactly (and some testing even if it is exact).
Psychomorph: Yes, you could create a set of DMLs where each one adjusted a different set of properties. For vision, look at the properties AI→AI Core→Vision description and AI→Attributes→Vision on AIs and AI→Utility→Visibility control on Garrett (how visible he is). For the sound issue you described, your best bet is to alter the volume settings (in the Schema→Play Params property) on the player footstep schemas (under Sound→Schema→FEET→FOOT_PLAYER in the hierarchy). (You might also want to replace the WAV files themselves, though of course this would have no effect on what AIs heard.)
(Note: if you're editing missions themselves, never make edits to the Schema hierarchy in DromEd; always edit the schema files and reload them. For a DML, however, this way is fine.)
