Goldmoon Dawn on 26/3/2013 at 21:23

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These are the first (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140951&p=2173809&viewfull=1#post2173809) pictures Ive seen now of this game, thanks clearing! Well, I must say, details aside it appears that this team is at least focused and cohesive in their designs. It *would* be nice if they were to spank the salt and pepper shaker over it though! Overall, I think it looks pretty damn good. I just hope that it will still allow for slower movement throughout the game, oh yeah, and not lie about it not being a primarily 3rd person game like Deadly Shadow did to us.

:ebil:

SubJeff on 26/3/2013 at 21:55

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I like the grey. I hope it's dark and grey as hell. I don't want colours everywhere just because, they should exist where they would exist. Grey streets and buildings and dingy pubs are perfect just grey.

Goldmoon Dawn - making no sense since 1985.

Judith on 26/3/2013 at 22:29

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I vaguely recall that devs had a problem with setting up camera in 1st person. Or that it's really a 3rd person camera hacked into a 1st person view. That's why the movement is a bit jerky when you're strafing and looking around. Personally, I got used to it after a short while. Naturally, that doesn't mean that TDS was a primarily a 3rd person game, only that devs had problems with implementing 1st person camera.

Goldmoon Dawn on 26/3/2013 at 22:59

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My bottom line for Deadly Shadow is that I played the game most of the way through and it really was quite an experience. But, and there is a big but here, after falling off simple beams trying to turn around while attempting to explore whatever I could in the game, I realised that I wasnt going to be able to play the game like I had wanted. I then played through as much as I could, not sneaking and exploring, just absorbing the environments and music. Did I miss any secrets? :p

jtr7 on 27/3/2013 at 00:24

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The camera was slave to the body, not the other way around, so you couldn't just point in the cardinal direction you wanted to go and immediately move that direction. The body had to rotate like a compass drawing around a center point, which wasn't between the feet, but seemed off-center on one foot, causing the model to walk in an arc right off a narrow path if you didn't take the time to overcompensate first. Thankfully, there's only one spot the devs almost forced you through where it was a real detriment, but it really put off exploration off the intended mission path. All the automated and locked in moments were related directly to controlling the clumsy body. Ladders on rails with the mouse-control inverted from the previous titles, and devoid of sideways movement, borked leaning that was really a side-step that wouldn't return you to where you were standing before and would make more of the body visible to AIs, and lockpicking, and maybe blackjacking (don't know why they felt the need to have the blackjack raise itself). In 1st-person, if the system wasn't running at full speed, the key-frames of the body animation the camera was locked rigidly to, made the jerkiness very visible. Crawlspaces were enlarged to cope with the Garrett model. I don't know if a lack of animations is why they eliminated some interactivity of the previous titles with world objects, like crates. I had problems at first where the camera would get knocked out of the head into 3rd-person, or starting a saved game would undo my crouch or yank the camera out, and I'd be trapped until I pushed a couple of buttons.

Thief[4] shouldn't have these problems, but I've seen players struggling with arcing forward movement throwing things off in Red Dead Redemption, and seen the camera yanking in and out of the model's head in playthroughs of Batman: Arkham Asylum, by "expert" players, so I just hope Thief shares no similar coding choices, for whatever reason they are made. Old Thief provides feedback where there is no body awareness, but only if you aren't in too much of a hurry to notice and work with it. Playing slower is rewarded in many ways, even though I myself often have little opportunity to play, so I play impatiently, and only blame myself when my impatience clashes with the design.



If climbing can return to a 3D experience (or LGS's "6D" experience), as a baseline, and get improved greatly from there, where Garrett can climb as easily as a child, with the strength and agility of a person who's been doing this for many years, it will be a blast.

Ropes, chains, cables, cords, trellises, ships' shrouds, pipes, and ladders should all work the same way in regard to moving up or down and looking around, with the primary difference being width, but the model shouldn't stop players from moving sideways, around, and to the back of a ladder, only terrain in proximity should hinder free 3D movement around a climbing surface. Get it back to TMA but evolved, progressed, better!


I hope if they include wall-hugging, instead of just modifying visibility in Garrett's favor standing next to a wall as in the old titles, that they make it so it's not a button you press. It should be as simple as walking Garrett into a wall for a second to activate it, and it shouldn't spin the body so the back is only ever against the wall.




FOGGY LIT MAPS:
We've gone from Life of the Party's broken fog making it look like smoggy daytime, and a fan-fix for that, to a good portion of the gameworld being overlit and not at all looking as a night time game. And we've gone from a Dark couple of games encouraging a common quick-fix of turning up the gamma for the whole game, to a new game that will probably prompt a relighting mod if turning down the gamma to make it seem as night time. If fans do seek a mod for turning down the brightness of the new game, I hope the author doesn't name it the Dark Mod. :p It doesn't look like a night time city with the lights of the place and celestial bodies diffusing through fog. It looks like an overcast day in a cold month, with foggy elements. It's not even smoggy looking in the images we've yet seen. I hope we see an example of how dark it will get by default.