gunsmoke on 22/9/2011 at 19:19
Poison Arrows, schwaa.
And Assassin's Creed there were HUGE sprawling cities and an insane amount of between-city countryside. Why can't Thief?
jtr7 on 22/9/2011 at 22:57
Because Thief uses up processing power with sound propagation and light/shadows more than other games, and the Thief explores and travels on and especially within buildings, not the great exterior sprawl that is usually a lot of generic rubber-stamping or empty of interactable detail to punch up the appearance of mostly visual detail, with little gaming going on. The gamespace of Thief should mostly be on or within the buildings, and less on or merely above the streets, so the emphasis is on infiltration and trespassing, and exploration of someone else's property, and getting away with it and the goods, not travel. It really should not feel like any other game most of the time.
Ombrenuit on 23/9/2011 at 21:47
Quote Posted by gunsmoke
The Garrett storyline is done. It was told from start to finish. There is no reason a future Thief game cannot contain a new main character, one who isn't superman from the word go.
Agreed. Especially in the hands of yet another studio. I'd rather they go with a new character than screw up a classic.
Quote Posted by JTR
Because Thief uses up processing power with sound propagation and light/shadows more than other games
Crysis and it's ilk have to process far more then Thief games. Come on, the processor has to keep track of every bullet in the air for every frame for up to dozens of players / npcs. I'd wager that's far more CPU intensive then one guy sneaking through a mansion with a handful of guards.
Quote Posted by schwaa2
I remember doing assassin quests in Morrowind. Always wanted to get a one shot bow kill from a distance. But that would just piss them off and you'd have major combat to deal with after.
Which is hardly how an assassin would deal with the situation.
That's the beauty of character building. If they did it right, you could build a bow user that could one shot guards. You'd just need the right support items, bow, and skills.
jtr7 on 23/9/2011 at 22:37
The sound propagation and light/shadow are running heavy and you don't notice it like the objects. Players have no idea, and the better the occlusion and dynamism, the less the players are conscious of it.
gunsmoke on 24/9/2011 at 05:10
Have you even played the Assassin's Creed games? The sound is one of the stars in that game. The lighting is incredible as well. The PC ver. of the 1st one had insane system requirements for a reason.
negativeliberty on 25/9/2011 at 04:47
Quote Posted by jtr7
Because Thief uses up processing power with sound propagation and light/shadows more than other games, and the Thief explores and travels on and especially
within buildings, not the great exterior sprawl that is usually a lot of generic rubber-stamping or empty of interactable detail to punch up the appearance of mostly visual detail, with little gaming going on. The gamespace of Thief should mostly be on or within the buildings, and less on or merely above the streets, so the emphasis is on infiltration and trespassing, and exploration of someone else's property, and getting away with it and the goods, not travel. It really should not feel like any other game most of the time.
Not to say I don't agree Thief shouldn't be open-world like Oblivion (because, for one thing, Thief has to feel dangerous and for lack of a better word "claustrophobic" most of the time, which is simply impossible in an open-world setting with plenty of space and even lots of NPCs with which you can trade and stock up 99999 water arrows, start your own Thieves Guild).
However giving sound propagation as a reason pretty much sucks; this could easily be coded so that it only does it within a certain range of the player (exceeding the maximum range for the loudest sound possible). That's not to say it'd be easy, but then I don't know which aspect of making a good game is easy. Also I think it'd be an excellent use of a single core on a multi-core processor, it's high time sound design and programming came back to the spotlights of game development (in general). Thief is mostly incompatible with open-world gameplay but not because of its sound propagation needs. That's not to say missions (or City sections) shouldn't be as huge as necessary, although I don't know what I'm talking about now, Thi4f? Because I'm not expecting much there.
