Thief (4) Features. What we know is in, what we know is out. - by SubJeff
Hamadriyad on 3/5/2013 at 09:23
It always feels funny to me, how guards react (or don't react :) ) to water arrows, even If wood burns, and leave no trace, they should be very suspicious when all the lights out. They don't know about water crystals and what they can do? I am sure they know.
I will try to fire a water arrow to Pagan Sapling, to see what happens, If I play TDS again.
jtr7 on 3/5/2013 at 09:25
Hahaha! I might beat you to it, then.
Hamadriyad on 3/5/2013 at 09:33
:) Quite possible.
jtr7 on 3/5/2013 at 10:01
Just checked, using MrWynd's savegame that was conveniently made with Garrett wallhugging, looking at the sapling while the guards talk about it. (I had to turn the HUD back on, having had them off for ages for making clean screen captures, heh heh.) :D
Nope. It doesn't grow.
Hamadriyad on 3/5/2013 at 10:48
Ah, it would be good If it grows.
I didn't know we can turn off the HUD by the way.
jtr7 on 3/5/2013 at 11:18
Yeah. In all the games, the HUD elements can be switched off or moved in the cfg/ini files, or modded altogether. :cool: In TDS, the gears, the purple glow, the items, the different kinds of texts that pop-up, the compass, and the light gem, can each be turned off or moved individually.
It occurs to me what I may have seen with the Sapling when I shot a water arrow, was the frobbability-shine (like the loot glint without the sparkly particles above the item). The transparent pixels on the model light up, so groups of little leafy branches become blue flat squares the size of a sheet of paper for a split-second. If I timed it so that the frob-shine lit the tree up when the water splashed, I'd see the Sapling appear to react and get larger outside my fovea. :p
Hamadriyad on 3/5/2013 at 11:33
That's good. I don't have any experience with cfg/ini files, but I hope Thief 4 gives that choice to players too.
Huh, that would be the explanation. :) Human eye can easily deceive and see what we want to see after all.
Springheel on 3/5/2013 at 12:47
I think the reason for ditching the crystals is fairly clear...if you're going for a low-magic world, you can't just have magical crystals lying all over a map.
In TDM, we went with mechanical arrows just to avoid looking too similar to the original. I was a bit disappointed with that decision at first, but I quickly got used to them and now I actually have a slight preference for the mechanical designs.
More important than the T4 designs is how the arrows are worked into the game world. Are these special tools that only Garrett has? If so, where does he get them from? I hope he's not going to be some Batman character building his own tools. If they're not unique to Garrett, what are the reasons for them existing in the game world? TDM came up with story-based reasons for the existance of most of the specialty arrows...water arrows, for example, contain some kind of "super water" that was developed by alchemists to combat greek fire. The solution is now mass produced and is attached to special arrows used by fire brigades, which is why they're relatively inexpensive for our thief to purchase.
SubJeff on 3/5/2013 at 16:08
See, now there is the thing - the arrows in TDM fulfil the same functions as those in Thief 1/2/3 and yet the "reason" for them working is completely different?
Does this make TDM any less awesome?
No.
Vivian on 3/5/2013 at 16:12
As I said, if the game is still good, doesn't matter, yes.
