Brodieman on 5/3/2005 at 08:34
First Person control was fine infact i preferred it over previous games, you had weight and purpose to your movements. It took no time to adapt to it and for all those who altered their controls i feel missed out on a little something. I tried it with "tweaked" controls for my second run thorugh and found it too "rail shooter" for me. I think the new method makes the game a lot greater an experience, Garrett felt like he was ambling along, felt human. Well imho.
Frob in this game never bothered me and loot glint was simply a neccessity, it didn't make looting too easy at all. There was still a good deal of times where you really had to look and search for loot, and honestly if a master thief scans a room valuables will show up like that in his vision.
mol on 5/3/2005 at 08:37
Nah, the devs are pros and can handle constructive criticism, and they know that there're always going to be features in a game that some people like and others don't. We're merely discussing why we felt the way we felt about certain things, and there are many people who liked the loot glint, and many people weren't bothered by the loading zones -- so it's all relative. It's nothing personal against the devs. :)
Erm... Devs? Hullo? Anyone there...? *gulp* :sweat:
jermi on 5/3/2005 at 10:33
Yeah, I think they're gone now. But just in case they're not, I'd like to ask what's the story behind the adoption of 3rd person?
ZylonBane on 5/3/2005 at 16:21
Do you even have to ask? X-Box.
Sah on 5/3/2005 at 18:55
Quote Posted by jermi
Yeah, I think they're gone now. But just in case they're not, I'd like to ask what's the story behind the adoption of 3rd person?
I remember an interview with W. Spector - he said he didn't like the idea at first, but the team 'hacked' it in (it was easy he said, because the body awareness was already in place) and decided to include it.
X-box or not, it seems most of the people like it...
ZylonBane on 5/3/2005 at 19:32
Quote Posted by Sah
I remember an interview with W. Spector - he said he didn't like the idea at first, but the team 'hacked' it in (it was easy he said, because the body awareness was already in place) and decided to include it.
Warren said a lot of things around that time. He basically transformed from Fearless Hardcore Gamer to Shameless Marketing Wonk at the precise moment that the DX:IW demo was released.
It's obvious from several design decisions that third-person was the primary development focus. Why the drunken, lurching, imprecise first-person movement? Because it works well in third person. Why the auto blackjack/dagger raise? Because it's harder to judge distance in third person. Why the replacement of leaning with sidestepping? Because leaning is useless in third person.
Twist on 5/3/2005 at 19:43
The polarizing nature of these design decisions indicates their fundamental flaws.
Two years ago, nobody debated frob styles. Nobody debated player control and feel in Thief. Nobody debated the virtues of playing in third-person.
Now these three topics polarize the community and create devout followers on opposite sides of each issue (and I recognize some issues are less evenly divided than others).
Regardless of which side you choose in each of these matters, the fact that choosing sides even exists represents some poor design decisions.
Krypt on 5/3/2005 at 19:53
The first person movement wasn't really a design decision, per se. The design decision was to have the ability to switch back and forth between 3rd and 1st person on the fly in the game, and 1st person controls ending up how they are was an unintended result of that. Since we had the body awareness thing anyway, the programmers handling this decided to make 1st person the same as 3rd person, except the camera moves to where your eyes would be. This ended up making the 1st person handling a little wonky because your view follows Garrett's animations and you have to wait for his actual body to turn when doing a 180 and so on. I personally never liked the body awareness thing very much. I think responsive controls are more important than the ability to look down and see Garrett's feet. I agree with you all that it would have been better to create a custom control mechanism for 1st person that is closer to standard FPS movement.
New Horizon on 5/3/2005 at 20:33
How realistic is it to consider trying to hack a more traditional First Person perspective into the game now that we have the editor? Not sure how flexible the editor would be in that regard.
I suppose we could just create a new set of animations for the Garrett model in first person.
Twist on 5/3/2005 at 20:49
I would guess this isn't possible with this version of the engine -- or at least with our limited access to it -- but I'll ask anyway. :erm:
Can we import a standard, traditional collision cylinder for the player avatar, then attach the Garrett model and his animations to this cylinder? Thus we could define the first-person player control and feel independent from the player animations.
My guess is that we can't do this because of the existing lighting and body awareness code, but I thought I'd ask anyway. :sweat:
