Soul Tear on 12/6/2020 at 10:14
Is it possible to implement a delay for using blackjack after stunning to exclude cheating combo stun?
nicked on 12/6/2020 at 11:58
Probably not without changing the motions.
I wonder if you could change the blackjack to use sword motions, and you can only knock someone out with an overhead swing.
Problem is, any change like that to the game's basic mechanics is likely to be frustrating for players who are expecting things to work a certain way.
I did put a few tweaks into Violent End - it's now much harder to knock out an alerted AI, but I scaled back my changes a lot after beta testing.
On the whole, I wouldn't worry about it. If people want to cheat, that's on them.
PinkDot on 12/6/2020 at 12:51
What is a combo stun?
trefoilknot on 12/6/2020 at 13:15
You can use a flashbomb to blackjack guards regardless of their alert status. Suppose 3 or 4 guards are attacking you all at once— throw a flashbomb and dispatch them all in short order. Easy peasy.
vfig on 12/6/2020 at 14:16
That's not cheating, that's by design!
If you don't want the player to be able knock out a bunch of guards at once while they're all stunned, then replace flashbombs with a different item that only stuns a single guard at a time. Don't try to weirdly nerf the stock tools so they work in confusingly different ways.
PinkDot on 12/6/2020 at 16:52
Quote:
You can use a flashbomb to blackjack guards regardless of their alert status. Suppose 3 or 4 guards are attacking you all at once— throw a flashbomb and dispatch them all in short order. Easy peasy.
Sounds like the correct use of the flashbombs to me - I have never seen this as a cheat. Having said that, I don't think I have ever BJed a group of guards this way - max 2, so I never over used it.
trefoilknot on 12/6/2020 at 16:58
Yeah, I agree- not a cheat. But [I assume] that's the mechanic Soul Tear is concerned with.
vfig on 13/6/2020 at 00:11
Quote Posted by vfig
If you don't want the player to be able knock out a bunch of guards at once while they're all stunned, then replace flashbombs with a different item that only stuns a single guard at a time.
Probably worth noting that NewDark 1.27 added the AI.Stun() script functions to Thief, so making objects that can stun single AIs is much more straightforward now. A squirrel script that converts a stim to a flashbomb-like stun effect is only a couple of lines (which I'd be happy to provide).
Coming back to Soul Tear's original question:
Quote Posted by Soul Tear
Is it possible to implement a delay for using blackjack after stunning to exclude cheating combo stun?
You could achieve this with a bunch of S&R chaining I think:
* LightBright receptron: for two seconds, add a new receptron on self for Knockout
* new Knockout receptron: add source on self for OnlyOneCheapKO stim, radial, firing once. And don't cancel the stim, so this first AI still gets KO'd.
* OnlyOneCheapKO receptron: disable knockouts on self for two seconds.
This way, the first guard in the flashed group to get KO'd will cause the other nearby flashed guards to become invulnerable to KO for two seconds. You'll need a bunch of metaprops to make this work. And off the top of my head, I forget how to make a metaprop that removes itself after a short time, but I know it's been done before; at the very least some more S&R could do it.
Soul Tear on 13/6/2020 at 09:45
It's not only flash bombs that saddens me, but also the opportunity to knock out several guards from behind standing next to each other, or following one another.
If I'm not mistaken, in Thief Gold if you knock out one of the two guards, then the other immediately reveals the player. Maybe it was a bug. In Thief 2 these guys seem to be mentally retarded.
Quote Posted by vfig
Probably worth noting that NewDark 1.27 added the AI.Stun() script functions to Thief, so making objects that can stun single AIs is much more straightforward now. A squirrel script that converts a stim to a flashbomb-like stun effect is only a couple of lines (which I'd be happy to provide).
Thanks for clarifying. I would really appreciate it if you could help with the script. There are many places in my new missions where two guards protect the passage. I would like to exclude the possibility of using the "native features" of the Dark Engine. The player must build a strategy, buy / look for equipment, distract enemies, but do not expect to lure ten dudes into one corner, neutralize them in a couple of seconds, and then be happy to run around on an empty level.
I would like to think of introducing more flexible mechanics into the gameplay. Last time I acted more rigidly, adding to the level many NoKO guys. This was not a problem if the player had a sufficient supply of gas arrows. But some players did not know what they needed to buy.
Unfortunately, I have never used a squirrel - what should I do with it? Do I just need to install it as a gen, convict, and others in my fm, and then add a script to each guard?
nicked on 13/6/2020 at 13:32
One of the things I tried was making the Blackjack knockout noise slightly suspicious, so you get level one alerts when knocking someone out near another AI.
