jay pettitt on 30/10/2013 at 18:05
Quote Posted by Starker
Nobody argues that the movement has to be as realistic to real life as possible. Yes, it is always an approximation, or more accurately it is an independent system with rules and constraints. However, the new one seems decidedly more restrictive...
It might
seem to be that. But is it. Is there less agency or more (by having a greater palette of movements available to you, for example.) Are you very sure that exchanging the freedom to do some actions in some circumstances isn't compensated by the ability to do others?
Are you very sure we can't peek down wells in T4?
Quote Posted by NuEffect
Are you really this thick?
Don't make me draw you a picture...
Inline Image:
http://www.home.jaypettitt.co.uk/images/angles.pngNote eye shadow ;)
Tomi on 30/10/2013 at 18:21
Quote Posted by Brethren
You're going to force me to lump you in with Tomi, Beleg, and SneakyJack as over-reactionaries.
Heh, this coming from the guy who called me "EM's personal defense attorney" when I don't even like a lot of things that they've done with the new Thief. Perhaps you should try actually reading my posts sometimes. :erg: Just because I don't always agree with you or the ridiculously biased (or even false) views of the Hatekru doesn't make me "over-reactionary".
Starker on 30/10/2013 at 18:38
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
It might
seem to be that. But is it. Is there less agency or more (by having a greater palette of movements available to you, for example.) Are you very sure that exchanging the freedom to do some actions in some circumstances isn't compensated by the ability to do others?
It is possible that maybe they have all these wonderful systems in place to compensate for all the limitations, but they haven't shown them to us so far. In fact, the information that has come out seems to point the opposite way, to a more scripted and constrictive design, like the bit about not allowing you to jump down a high ledge by accident.
Here's a nice video with Harvey Smith talking about the issue: (
http://criticalpathproject.com/?v=66688488)
jay pettitt on 30/10/2013 at 18:55
Beleg, whose actually played the thing, reports that you can jump down from a high ledge and hurt yourself. Just that the game gives you a moment to check yourself. T4 isn't, as far as we know, a game on rails.
Starker on 30/10/2013 at 19:39
I said by accident. This is exactly the dungeon master behind the curtain in the Harvey Smith video. Imagine if the game did it everywhere -- stop, are you really sure you want to shoot that water arrow at a spot where there is no fire? Okay, go ahead then.
jay pettitt on 30/10/2013 at 19:50
What makes you think you can't fall off by accident?
But I also remember that most occasions when I fell to my doom in video games it was more often than not down to a clunky control system and poor feedback. So I'm not convinced that the old ways can't be improved. The way Mirror's edge did balance beams I thought was very good for instance. In truth though you could fall it was very forgiving. But it was fun and managed to retain and perhaps even heighten the sense of peril.
Starker on 30/10/2013 at 19:56
If we are to believe the reports, the game actually prevents you from falling down a high ledge unless you press a button.
Starker on 30/10/2013 at 20:20
Oh, and also:
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
Beleg, whose actually played the thing, reports that you can jump down from a high ledge and hurt yourself. Just that the game gives you a moment to check yourself. T4 isn't, as far as we know, a game on rails.
Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion
The other major issue to be tweaked is the movement. When they said every edge was to allow mantling or climbing, I had hoped the contextual jumping stuff wouldn't be so bad, but at least this demo felt heavily on rails.
Choo choo -- all aboard the Thief 4 train! :P
yxlplig on 30/10/2013 at 20:25
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
Because you're only ever going to get a restricted, compromised, crude approximation of movement in video games. That's the nature of keyboards and game-pads. Your freedoms
are restricted. The question is, why this particular freedom - the freedom to jump up and down in the middle of a room, is all of a sudden so deal breakingly important. Of all the compromises you have to accept, why isn't this one of them.
It's not 'as decided by EM' - they've just designed a system. You do all the things you want to do - like navigate and explore - using the system provided.
Why could I only stand and crouch in the Looking Glass era games? Why not lie on the floor and hide under beds? Oh no my freedom is curtailed! Why can't I skinny up drain pipes? Or shimmy along thin ledges? Or open all the windows? Or do all the other things the game's systems don't support. Why aren't we screaming blue murder at all these restrictions to our precious freedoms?
Just because freedom of movement is always restricted to some degree doesn't mean we should be accepting of further restrictions. The game developer should not be the immersion police. If a player wants to break character, as long as it doesn't provide a gameplay advantage I don't see a problem with it. Not wanting the player to gain speed from bunny hopping like in Thief 1 is a legitimate position to take. But to say that because somewhere out there someone might jump around like an idiot, we should limit everyone's ability to jump is misguided. It solves a non-problem, and as a consequence decreases the depth of the game. What do you gain from this system being in place?
Song of the Caverns for example would be a completely different mission if you couldn't jump from carpet to carpet. Jumping in the earlier games was used frequently to avoid loud surfaces. Maybe that's not relevant anymore since you can just silently swoop across everything. But I think the main thing that would be lost would be the ability to traverse the levels in creative ways that the developers didn't consider. For me personally I find that when a solution to a movement problem is something that I thought of and executed on my own, as in it wasn't patently obvious that a level designer intended that as the sole way to do it (or one of two possible choices), it makes the game world feel more authentic. Even if it is something that ventures into possible game breaking territory like climbing on a torch and strafe jumping to something just barely within reach. That kind of stuff makes games more interesting to me and I would argue that is the audience most of LGS games were original targeted at.
Finally I'd just like to nitpick some of your other comments. I believe in System Shock there were two levels of crouch or a prone mode or something. Not that it was used to great effect. I agree it would be nice to be able to hide under or inside more objects. But the thing is, in 1998, I don't believe any games included such mechanics, so nobody was getting less than what they expected, which is the case now with Thief 4. All the other things you mentioned are things that the Dark Engine supports and appear frequently in FMs. They are limitations of individual missions level design. There were systems in place to support all of those things.
Chade on 30/10/2013 at 21:53
Quote Posted by Darkness_Falls
Yep. Near a wall or crate type object, it seems. And the videos show that before being able to lean, you first have to press a button to "Peek" when you're contextually within proper distance of the wall/object; and this engages a Peek mode. Engaging Peek gets Garrett closer to the wall/object where he presses his hands up to the wall/object (and it looks like it locks your feet in place to some extent), and only then can you lean left and right.
Or over things, I believe. E.g., a well. Under things probably not, unfortunately.
It's not definitely less freedom then earlier the lean implementation (although I suspect it will turn out that way). Earlier leans gave you three discrete points you could lean your head to, but you could do it at any point in the level. This peeking could potentially give you the freedom to put your head at any angle/position you want, but only at a restricted range of points throughout the level.
The questions are: how much freedom do you actually have to move your heard freely about when peeking? How many surfaces can you lean around? And how much does it matter in practice compared to removing your ability to lean at any position?
I think that with the right implementation, the new style of leaning could be better overall then the old style. From what I've heard, I don't get the feeling that they have the right implementation, but we'll see.
Quote Posted by Starker
If we are to believe the reports, the game actually prevents you from falling down a high ledge unless you press a button.
Afaict, falling down has not been uncommon, and most people do it because they jumped in the wrong spot.
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
Because you're only ever going to get a restricted, compromised, crude approximation of movement in video games. That's the nature of keyboards and game-pads. Your freedoms are restricted. The question is, why this particular freedom - the freedom to jump up and down in the middle of a room, is all of a sudden so deal breakingly important. Of all the compromises you have to accept, why isn't this one of them.
I appreciate the point you're trying to make, and in theory I agree that a contextual movement system doesn't have to be worse then then old system. In practice, however, Beleg's report made it sound like the movement system we will actually get was quite arbitrary.
EM mentioned that they're still working on it, so it's good to know it could get better, but that's what they said at E3 too, and it doesn't sound like it got all that much better between E3 and GamesCon, so obviously they're not finding it easy going. No-one knows what will happen in the future, and I don't think it's at all impossible that the game could ship with an acceptable system, but you have to be skeptical at this point.
