Chade on 17/8/2013 at 11:36

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Err ... if the sound propagation is so screwed up that people can't hear you jump, then they're also not going to be able to hear your footsteps, or your "blunt" arrows, or whatever else you like, which iirc pretty much directly contradicts everything we've heard about sound in this game.

Re contextual jumping: I'm going to be interested to see how much the contextual jumping restricts you on a practical level, and an emotional level.

On a practical level, probably somewhere around 80% of jumps in previous thiefs are to move around the level. There's no particular reason thief 4's jumping should restrict your movement around the level: it's at least conceivable that they could be simulating jumps from every point in the level and automatically including any jump that takes you somewhere that a swoop wouldn't. I'll be interested to see how inclusive their contextual jumping spots are.

Then you have 19% of jumps being used to make or avoid noise. Swoop will be used to avoid noise, and there's plenty of ways to make noise.

Then there's another 1% of the time where you might be jumping to avoid traps or whatnot. I don't see any analogue to jumping being employed here, but I doubt it matters very much.

On an emotional level, jump has been a standard movement command for decades. How are people going to react to the command being taken away?

Chade on 17/8/2013 at 19:11

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That's historically been true of mantling too, and is a significant pita, mostly because you make noise if you jump when you wanted to mantle.

Thief 4 could definitely be worse in this way, it's very easy to imagine . On the other hand, the default action, swoop, not making any noise, might reduce the frustration from getting it wrong.

Chade on 17/8/2013 at 22:23

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I don't agree, actually. I think mantling in the dark engine is quite flaky. Thief 3 improved significantly on it, and then The Dark Mod improved on Thief 3. But even now, I don't think I could tell you the "rules" behind when you can successfully mantle in TDM. What angle slope? How much room do you need? How do architectural details affect things? I have an intuitive feeling for this, but I can't tell you the exact rules, and I can't predict whether I'll mantle with 100% accuracy. In TDM, I use the exclusive mantle button wherever possible, to avoid the possibility of accidentally jumping instead. In situations where I have to jump in order to grab onto something, I do occasionally attempt to mantle ledges which can't be mantled. Presumably I make the opposite error even more often ... but how would you know?

Now that I think about it, the way mantling is done in previous thief games, it's impossible to avoid this sort of contextual mix-up. There's a black box in the engine that determines whether my jump will be a mantle or not, and it only kicks in after I've already started a jump. The way thief 4 calculates your action before-hand is the only possible way to avoid the problem. Of course, then they go and roll all possible actions into one button and re-introduce the issue ... !

Springheel on 18/8/2013 at 00:44

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Yes, that's a valid point. As you noted, TDM tries to address this by splitting the two actions to two separate keys (while still allowing you to use jump if you prefer). T4 compounds the problem by adding a third action to the same key.

It's quite possible that the contextual movement is so well done that it will barely be noticed. I have a hard time believing this, however, since even one of the EM mods (Jerion) who played the game brought it up as something he hoped would change.

SeriousCallersOnly on 18/8/2013 at 01:17

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Psst: there is a 'up' button. It's like mantling, for when you don't require jumping. Use it.