jay pettitt on 2/7/2013 at 21:38
I'm hoping ladders will be inventory items that you can pick up and place at will.
Starker on 2/7/2013 at 22:00
Quote Posted by Springheel
I think if I were designing it, I'd treat pick-pocketing like T/2 lockpicking, minus the tools. You frob the item and hold down frob, and the object jiggles slightly back and forth to indicate your progress. You don't know to the second how long it will take but you can tell pretty much how close you are to success.
Hmm... I wonder if you could work some sound cues into that. Slight rustling, perhaps?
SubJeff on 2/7/2013 at 22:02
Yeah, but what does jay think?
jay pettitt on 2/7/2013 at 23:51
Slight rustling might be okay.
Perhaps precariously balance pick pocketing speed against pick pocket rustling volume.
Thanks for asking.
Springheel on 5/7/2013 at 12:14
Quote:
Quote:
EDIT: I'm much more concerned about reports that using a door (or maybe it was lock-picking, don't remember) in the E3 demo could reposition Garrett. I hope they fix that.
I heard a report about someone sliding into position when they opened a door.
Here it is, from the EM mod thread:
Quote:
Once you move to open that door, there is a very brief moment for a guard to spot you where you can't really do much of anything about it. That sounds bad. Yet from my experience, the pacing of it all is such that if you allow that to happen, you've already messed up. The fact that the guard could spot you while opening a door is no different from the idea that you could be spotted while picking a lock: it's already part of the risk of moving to undertake that particular action, and the speed at which you slide into the action and then resume having complete control is prompt enough that in practical terms it is irrelevant.
I don't think anyone is going to argue that losing control of the character is a good thing?
Quote:
Quote:
The part that most interests me is hearing from a player at E3 that, when they tried to pickpocket some purse through a guard (as per the earlier games), Garrett put his arm out to take the purse, bumped into the guard, and got caught.
And that's the problem with body awareness. In real life, you could do something novel like reach your arm around the guard. But there's no way for a game to portray all the ways you could move your arms and hands in real life.
I found that quote too. It wasn't pickpocketing; it was reaching for something on a crate "next to" the guard.
Quote:
I look back at the guard captain and see a piece of loot next to him on the crate he was using as a table. Instinctively I swipe it, but Garrett moves to actually grab it and shoulder the guard captain out of the way.
I want to do something fairly straightforward, but I'm caught because the puppet I'm controlling moves in ways I didn't expect. This does not at all sound like a positive thing to me.
Chade on 5/7/2013 at 12:47
Hey, thanks for finding the quotes. :D
When I think about losing control, I think back to Mirror's Edge, which had a fantastic control scheme wihch is praised by everyone who played the game afaik. The control in that game always felt good, yet the character was often out of your control for very brief moments of time, as a direct consequence of actions that you had taken. Rolling, kicking a door, recovering from a fall, that sort of thing. Always initiated by you, always kicked off a brief moment where your character did what you had just told them to do. Clearly losing control is not a problem if it only occurs for short periods of time (0.1 secs? 0.5 secs? 1 sec?) and it only happens as an immediate result of your actions.
The arm movement still sounds positive to me. I would hardly call extending the arm to grab something you just told Garrett to grab "unexpected". It seems pretty logical and a nice little tweak to the gameplay. (Ok, so it was unexpected the first time it happened ... that should only occur once.)
Springheel on 5/7/2013 at 12:58
Quote:
The control in that game always felt good, yet the character was often out of your control for very brief moments of time, as a direct consequence of actions that you had taken
Never played it, so I'll have to reserve judgement. It doesn't
sound particularly appealing to me, though. It's one thing when you're jumping or rolling or mantling, since you would be "out of control" briefly in real life too--you can't stop yourself in the middle of a jump. But in real life I can abort opening a door instantly if I change my mind, and I'd like that kind of control in the game as well, especially a game that revolves around making split second decisions to avoid detection.
Quote:
The arm movement still sounds positive to me. I would hardly call extending the arm to grab something you just told Garrett to grab "unexpected".
I'm referring to the "shoulder the guard captain out of the way" part. That obviously wasn't the player's intention.
Chade on 5/7/2013 at 13:26
Well I think the key thing is how long the animations take. It needs to be fast. The way I interpret the door opening animation in the E3 video is that it's designed to be fast (that said, worth noting here that Shinrazero for one interpreted the video quite differently to me).
Thief can obviously be played at a pretty fast pace when you're good, but I don't think it's so fast paced that what I saw in the E3 demo will be a problem (and Mirror's Edge is just as fast). On the planning side, I don't think it will spoil anything to be subconsciously factoring in half a second to open the door. On the reaction side, to be honest even on expert I don't think that some small fractions of a second will make much difference. We're not playing quake here.
How do you interpret "shoulder the guard captain out of the way?". I'm imagining that Garrett's arm just pushes him aside as he reaches for the loot, alerting the guard. Are you imagining that Garrett enters a whole new "shoulder guard" animation?
Springheel on 5/7/2013 at 14:22
Quote:
Well I think the key thing is how long the animations take.
That's certainly important. The quote from the EM thread says that the duration "in practical terms it is irrelevant." However, the same quote also states that you can get caught during this period--the animation creates "a very brief moment for a guard to spot you". So I'm not quite sure how to interpret that. If you can get caught during that period, how can it be "irrelevant"?
Beyond the speed of the animation, however, there's also the control issue. Can I open doors while crouched off to the side in a shadow? Or will the animation slide me out of the shadow, creating a "moment for a guard to spot [me]"? Even if it was quick, I would still dislike that a lot.
Quote:
How do you interpret "shoulder the guard captain out of the way?". I'm imagining that Garrett's arm just pushes him aside as he reaches for the loot, alerting the guard. Are you imagining that Garrett enters a whole new "shoulder guard" animation?
I'm assuming that the quote "but Garrett moves to actually grab it and shoulder the guard captain out of the way" means that Garrett
moves, when the player wanted to just
reach. I see this as the same kind of problem that body awareness in TDS caused--like falling off ledges when leaning--because your puppet body moves in more limited and restrictive ways than a real body would. Are you interpreting it significantly differently than that?
Chade on 5/7/2013 at 14:45
Regarding the door animation, I imagine that you're just as visible while opening the door as you would be just standing there. So if you click to open the door, you know you'll be in that spot for whatever fraction of a second the animation lasts for. Which, if the animation is as quick as I believe it is, would probably be "in practical terms irrelevant".
As for Garrett being moved out of position to open the door, they did say that this happened in the E3 demo (at least once). They mention it as a negative. It sounds negative to me. I hope it's fixed.
I interpret "shoulder the guard out of the way while reaching for the item" as: when Garrett's arm extends to reach something, and a guard's body is in the way, EM have decided that the guard should be moved out of the way and should be alerted (rather then Garret refusing or failing to pick up the loot or reaching through the guard's body). Garrett himself does not do anything different from what he would normally do to reach the loot.
I don't have any particular evidence that my interpretation is right and yours is wrong, I just think this is the simplest and most sensible possibility.
