Randy Smith interview posted at EvilAvatar... - by Jandar
sparhawk on 16/7/2006 at 21:48
Quote Posted by jermi
Dark Engine style rope arrows and water seems almost like a trivial addition.
Since we have both implemented already I can assure you that rope arrow is definitely NOT a trivial thing to do, while adding third person is most likely a matter of a few minutes.
Well, getting the camera right is also not trivial, but the core concept is much easier to do. :)
sparhawk on 16/7/2006 at 21:51
Quote Posted by Gestalt
I'm sure you enjoy going off half-cocked about how easy one feature or another would have been to implement in a game engine you've never touched the code for, but you're talking out of your ass.
In fact some things can indeed be analyzed and compared by not even seeing the code as long as you know how the concept works. I had an interview where the boss wanted to test me and showed me a bug in his software (the one I was applying for development) and he claimed that his former developer did not find the bug. Just by looking at the behaviour of the software itself I could tell him what caused and where he must look for, and never even touched the code for this app. And it was also not just a interface error either. ;)
Ishtvan on 16/7/2006 at 22:49
Quote Posted by Krypt
It was planned since pre-production to have both climbing gloves and rope arrows. Rope arrows had a lot of work put into them before they were cut due to the difficulty of implementation, whereas climbing gloves were already working at that point. As I said, no one wanted to cut them. We got in a tough situation where something had to be cut and we had two features with overlapping functionality, one of which was already working ok and the other bordering on impossible to implement in our engine. The choice, while difficult, was the only practical one to be made at that time.
Out of curiosity, were the rope arrows going to be Articulated Figures, i.e., ragdoll ropes with several joints and straight sections?
Krypt on 16/7/2006 at 23:15
Quote Posted by Ishtvan
Out of curiosity, were the rope arrows going to be Articulated Figures, i.e., ragdoll ropes with several joints and straight sections?
We wanted rope physics, but we never got that feature. It was another physics thing we couldn't get working in the engine. I'm pretty sure that was one of the contributing factors to cutting the rope arrows. Even with a straight rope there was a host of other problems, though.
Eye on 17/7/2006 at 00:32
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZylonBaneBut if I could change just one thing, it would be the way Garrett's feet lag behind his head when you're turning. I still can't believe this wasn't disabled in first-person mode.
i'm tempted to say the lurching headbob, but i think for me it's the slow sidestep crouch that replaced the lean that got you seen anyway and made you fall. for me, TDS had no lean, essentially. i just strafed out and back real quick, just like i would have in any other FPS (didn't feel right to use 3rd person to look around the corner). i know it's more "realistic" to be seen when leaning into the light, but it was less thiefy for me. i guess that's why i didn't mind the wall hug because it was the only way i could get that fly-on-the-wall, i'm-closer-to-this-guard-than-i-should-be feeling of TDP and TMA.
was there ever any definitive word on whether the player movement was dictated by the introduction of third-person mode or if it had nothing to do with it? i've heard reasonable folks argue it both ways.
Krypt on 17/7/2006 at 00:57
Quote Posted by Eye
was there ever any definitive word on whether the player movement was dictated by the introduction of third-person mode or if it had nothing to do with it? i've heard reasonable folks argue it both ways.
The jerky movement was a result of the player's view being attached to Garrett's model and therefore was limited by the speed of his animations. For example, turning was slow because it had to wait for Garrett to shuffle his feet around and visibly turn. This would have been the same even if there were no 3rd person view, because the body awareness feature was planned for first person and the view would remain attached to the player model regardless. I personally would have preferred less precise-looking animations in favor of more responsive controls, but that wasn't my call.
Eye on 17/7/2006 at 01:32
ahh, got it ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by KryptI personally would have preferred less precise-looking animations in favor of more responsive controls, but that wasn't my call.
me to. seeing your feet is cool and all, but so is being able to leap up onto a window sill and lean over the edge to spy on unsuspecting guards in one fluid move. using the rafters in "Casing the Joint" was sublime. Using the rafters in the Pagan Sanctuary was frustrating.
Tony on 17/7/2006 at 02:14
Quote Posted by Krypt
The blue smoke was a convention meant to show the player where the map transitions are.
I didn't mean the smoke, I meant the lighting in all dark areas. There was no true blackness in the game, the darkest shadows were merely a very dark blue. This was even advertised by Ion Storm as somehow being a positive aspect.
Krypt on 17/7/2006 at 05:13
Quote Posted by Tony
I didn't mean the smoke, I meant the lighting in all dark areas. There was no true blackness in the game, the darkest shadows were merely a very dark blue. This was even advertised by Ion Storm as somehow being a positive aspect.
Oh, my mistake. The blue lighting was both a technical and art direction decision. We could afford very few sourced, shadowcasting lights (usually limited to 5-7 in any given scene) and maintain a decent framerate. Because of this, we had to rely on cheap ambient light to provide much of the illumination. If the ambient light were removed, you would think Doom3 looked like a sunny day in comparison. Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration, but the game would have been either extremely dark or would run very slow because we would have been forced to use more lights than we could afford. We used the blue color because it fit the night-time setting, plus it still gave the feeling of being in darkness even though you could see fairly clearly.
Goldmoon Dawn on 17/7/2006 at 05:23
Quote Posted by Gestalt
Goldmoon: You're already an expert at logical fallacies...
Okey dokey.
It is for the first time obvious to me that your main concern here is to attack me. You win. I'm not gonna sit here and try to take part in some strange TTLG fact finding argument. I already told you.
If hostility is all you are after, you are barking up the wrong tree.
When I say "custom engine", my limited thinking is a complete pre-existing engine that was modified, hence customized.
The classic LGS games used engines that they created and *obviously* customized, again, at the time periods in question.
Sorry, I'm not a big technical thinker. I'm more of a sound guy...
