ultravioletu on 16/9/2025 at 08:04
Ok, roger that, thanks!! I'll update the report, we are thus one bust short of Perfect Thief (and three busts short of Supreme Ghost).
Now, on Old Gods: the supreme bust at the white chair is without doubt, so the mission is not supremeable, but perhaps the ghost status could still be saved. As such:
[1] One of the objective is specified as "disable the new security system". However, it's not a matter of on/off. Instead, the intended procedure is something disallowed literraly by rule 5b "you cannot use a device to create friendly AI that start attacking enemies for you". The objective says "disable", not "destroy all patrolling bots and all turrets". I tend to consider this as bust, but perhaps it goes down to how freely we interpret 'disable'.
[2] Garrett "dies" (by a scripted arrow, shot when taking an objective item) to progress with the story. Later on, having passed some sort of 'integrity test' in the afterlife, he's returned at the exact same spot, and the remark "that shot was meant for me" and the sound of an arrow hitting stone both hint to an alternate branch of reality in which the character does not die. I used to consider this as bust, but by the same "busted by events beyond control" argumentation, it could be excused. This is an integral part of the story.
klatremus on 30/11/2025 at 19:56
I have a question for the ghosting community. I am currently ghosting The Painter's Wife for The Dark Mod and a situation occurs in the room with the main objective (heavy spoilers ahead!!). I am unsure if this should count as property damage or not.
We approach Lily (the wife) from a vent shaft, but in order to get in there we have to frob some loosely assembled bricks on the wall (picture1). From the inside (I clipped through the wall to show this), it looks like in picture 2 before frobbing. We don't use any equipment or force to do this. In fact, the screen fades black, then fades back in with the situation as seen in pictures 3 and 4. You can see the bricks have been removed and fallen into the shaft, while the panel that held the bricks in place from the inside has fallen the other direction and has now broken. This feels very much like a scripted event, but the result is still visual damage. What do y'all think?
Inline Image:
https://www.klatremus.org/uploads/painterswife1.jpgInline Image:
https://www.klatremus.org/uploads/painterswife2.jpgInline Image:
https://www.klatremus.org/uploads/painterswife3.jpgInline Image:
https://www.klatremus.org/uploads/painterswife4.jpgmarbleman on 30/11/2025 at 20:35
No, it shouldn't.
Should we discuss the whole noisemaker spawning thing? I think playing TPW you might run into situations where you'd be tempted to do that, and I still think it's the worst possible way to unstick guards.
klatremus on 1/12/2025 at 02:14
Quote Posted by marbleman
No, it shouldn't.
I agree for 3 reasons:
1) You are not using equipment or force. In the original ghost rules, every example of property damage uses equipment like a sword (bashing doors and breaking the lock), blackjack (breaking glass), or crates thrown by force (not just dropped).
2) The wall is already semi-broken or at least heavily compromised, enough for you to simply frob it and not needing to use equipment/force. Plus, this implies Marlow already uses this entrance to bring Lily back and forth to the torture chamber, or at least have used it in the past.
3) The sequence seems scripted, since the items don't fall apart to become broken, but the screen fades black then comes back. It almost reminds me of a mini-cutscene where the engine causes the original items to vanish and then new ones appear. The game thus makes it appear as if you broke it, while in reality the game doesn't register anything damage actually happening.
I compare this in my head to Sound of a Burrick In a Room and the wall that you push out there. I would actually say this is less intrusive as a) you only need a single frob, not several as in that mission, and b) there is no fade-out needed to reorganize the objects.
Quote Posted by marbleman
Should we discuss the whole noisemaker spawning thing? I think playing TPW you might run into situations where you'd be tempted to do that, and I still think it's the worst possible way to unstick guards.
So what marbleman is referring to here is a way to fix the notorius problem in the Dark Mod of stuck guards. It seems that in every medium to large mission, several guards tend to get stuck walking into a wall along their route. It seems more frequent later on in missions, perhaps after a lot of reloading. Sometimes this can be game breaking for ghosters. I would argue that if there is a way to reset the guard's patrol path, without taking advantage of it, then this should be acceptable, and any busts taken during that process should be excused. Specifically what was suggested was using the console command to spawn a noisemaker arrow and use that to make the guard start searching for you, then when he gives up, his patrol route would be reset. I think
any method used to free such a guard to its original patrol should be ok. I like the noisemaker method more than others, because it doesn't affect the stealth score or any stat whatsoever. Marbleman suggested triggering a 'suspicion', as that also does not affect the overall score, but it does free the guard. I like the former, but I am ok with either. I welcome others' comments on this also.
marbleman on 1/12/2025 at 09:49
I dislike this method for two reasons:
1) It is quite literally cheating. To me, spawning in any item is comparable to just using "notarget" or "noclip" to get past the problematic guard. Would you be okay using those commands instead?
2) Noisemakers are extremely loud. Would you excuse it alerting not only the problematic guard but everyone else in the area?
I don't think the stealth score should be the deciding factor here as it is rather arbitrary. It was even deemed OK to have suspicious from sleeping AIs for Supreme since there is no way to gauge them except with a stealth tool.
klatremus on 1/12/2025 at 13:52
Quote Posted by marbleman
I dislike this method for two reasons:
1) It is quite literally cheating. To me, spawning in any item is comparable to just using "notarget" or "noclip" to get past the problematic guard. Would you be okay using those commands instead?
I would be ok with using any console command yes. But just to clarify, I wouldn't use any of these methods to
get past the problematic guard, as you put it. That would indeed be cheating. I would use it to
reset the guard's patrol route, then return to the point I was at when discovering the issue, and go from there. Then I would use normal sneaking to get past the guard. I wouldn't call this cheating because a) I am not using it to my advantage, but simply resetting the game to whatever situation it was supposed to be in. And b) the game already "cheated" in a way, messing up the engine and preventing me from getting the intended gaming experience. So I'm just getting back at it.
Quote Posted by marbleman
2) Noisemakers are extremely loud. Would you excuse it alerting not only the problematic guard but everyone else in the area?
I don't think the stealth score should be the deciding factor here as it is rather arbitrary. It was even deemed OK to have suspicious from sleeping AIs for Supreme since there is no way to gauge them except with a stealth tool.
I would probably prefer to use a method that only alerted the guard in question. Hopefully it doesn't happen that you have to alert multiple, but if it does, so be it. They will all reset and stealth values still won't be impacted. To me the stealth stat is one of the deciding factors because we've decided some of the updated ghost rules for TDM around it. We've even included links to multiple stealth tools in the rule set. Plus it's there in black and white at the end of the mission even though you don't necessarily see it through the gameplay. We only excused the sleeping guards' suspicions because we didn't want to force the use of such a tool.
marbleman on 1/12/2025 at 14:22
It's a slippery slope argument, I know, but it does pave the way for even more creative ways to unstick guards. In Thief, if you find a stuck guard, you can make a save, load it in Dromed, manually move the guard back to his intended patrol route, save it, copy the save back into Thief.exe to continue playing. Would that be allowed?
klatremus on 1/12/2025 at 14:56
Absolutely, but only if it is a game breaking bug, as in it busts your ghost/supreme run. This would directly compare to .dmls made to fix game breaking bugs that prevent you from completing a mission. The only difference is there you apply the fix before you start the mission instead of importing the save into dromed like you explained.
In my opinion, you can already break that slippery slope if you'd like to, and nobody would know about it, like using cheats. I think this would set a precedent that if you can reset the guard's patrol without taking advantage of it, that should be allowed. That's why I argued for this in the first place, based on the comment Sneak made about early days of ghosting it was an unwritten rule to be allowed to unstick guards if that allowed you to continue your ghost run. Back then they didn't have dark mod with console commands, or .dmls to fix issues ahead of time. I'm sure if they had those things they would be on board with this when the game breaks the run for you.
However, I am not in favor of implementing this into the official ghost rules. This should be more of a community accepted way around the engine messing you up.
Cigam on 2/12/2025 at 14:24
I think that examples of a rule break are examples, and probably shouldn't be taken as a complete and exhaustive set of the actions that break the rule.
In other words, I would take the stated 'visible' property damage as the rule-break, and draw no inferences from the given examples as to the need for force or equipment use?
So can this visible damage be excused as a scripted event? My first inclination would be to say probably not.
The rules use the phrase "Melees that occur beyond Garret's control, as part of a game script, are allowed."
It is one thing to excuse the archer fight as being 'beyond Garrett's control', due to the large gap between the ingame action (walking across a rooftop) and the events that have been programmed to follow this action (guard fight).
Whereas a player action that blatantly intends to damage an object having the effect of damaging the object, is a bust?
That is my first thought here. That the effect is too intrinsically linked to the action to be able to consider it as some extra scripted happenstance?
P.S. On another note, and much as I do not like commenting on typos, shouldn't "Garrett" have two ts? That quote I copied has only one? or am I spelling it wrong?
