Visibility of Thieves

[MrEricSir]

I'm thinking that in order to make guards actually GUARD stuff, instead of running around like a pack of rabbit monkies, they should have more visibility of thieves when they stand still or walk than when they run. This way, guards would have some incentive to slow down and do their job instead of running through the entire map with a flare.

Any comments, objections, etc?

[Yenzarill]

I concur.

[BobTheDog]

I also concur.

[Nachimir]

Oh, when the guards stand still.. read like you meant when thieves stand still.

Yeah, sounds good. Perhaps thieves could have zonelight increased too, so they're better at seeing in the dark than guards?

[LaughingRat]

Someone posted a rather lengthy post on the other forum about this, and how it could work. I thought it was an excellent idea then, too.

[Kiech Bepho]

Cool, but how to implement? As I understand now, visibility is determined only on the thief's actions/location, and the guards just see what is there. Are you going to have the guards vision just darken when he moves, or make an actual script for it?

LOL...with all of these suggestions the dev team should have enough ideas to make the next 10 patches!

Kiech

[MrEricSir]

Cool, but how to implement? As I understand now, visibility is determined only on the thief's actions/location, and the guards just see what is there. Are you going to have the guards vision just darken when he moves, or make an actual script for it?

I don't think the vision should darken, I think that the amount of light it takes for thieves to be visible should change.

[BobTheMad]

I second the motion (3rd, 4th, 9th?.. whatever!) I like the idea.

[Kiech Bepho]

Cool, but how to implement? As I understand now, visibility is determined only on the thief's actions/location, and the guards just see what is there. Are you going to have the guards vision just darken when he moves, or make an actual script for it?

I don't think the vision should darken, I think that the amount of light it takes for thieves to be visible should change.

Hmm, you didn't get what I was saying. Right now the guard just sees what is rendered by the game engine. Now you want to take the images of ALL the thieves, and altar thier appearance from each guards point of view, consantly calculating for each whether the thief is in the area or not. Just sounds like my processor is being eaten alive.

Kiech

[Mr.K.]

About that lenghty post, after making a TON of numbers, i found out that it'd not work really well with the postulates mol made (at least with my interpretation of those postulates). I'm still trying out numbers and stuff, but i won't post about it again until i see how transparency affects the gameplay in 1.3. Dalai says not much because of the way maps are shadowed, but that would mean that anything would be futile, as if thieves are basically almost always either 100% visible or 0% visible, you don't really have a lot of room to play with parameters.

The basic stimuli for visibility change would be, anyways:

1- Vision focus: if a thief is in the middle of your screen, you see him/her better. If they are not, you might see them "normal" or worse.

2- Guard speed: Different "vision accuracy" modifiers depending on guard speed. Could be either always improving (running= see 100%, walking= see 110%, still= see 120%) or centered around "walk" (running= see 90%, walking= see 100%, still= see 110%).

The original thread is here:

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=63315

Some proposed solutions can be found along the thread. Mine is the closest one to a "physical implementation", but i ditch it, it'd not work.

As i said, when 1.3 is out, i'll think about it again.

[MrEricSir]

Cool, but how to implement? As I understand now, visibility is determined only on the thief's actions/location, and the guards just see what is there. Are you going to have the guards vision just darken when he moves, or make an actual script for it?

I don't think the vision should darken, I think that the amount of light it takes for thieves to be visible should change.

Hmm, you didn't get what I was saying. Right now the guard just sees what is rendered by the game engine. Now you want to take the images of ALL the thieves, and altar thier appearance from each guards point of view, consantly calculating for each whether the thief is in the area or not. Just sounds like my processor is being eaten alive.

Kiech

How would it be any more processor intensive than the current system? The only difference is figuring out if you, as a guard, are running or not. That doesn't sound like it requires a supercomputer to me...

[The_Dan]

Nice idea, but what degree of invisibility are we talking about?

If a guard could become 100% invisible then the balance is completely lost, since there is no point in thieves stealthily scouting out an objective & they may aswell run around the map like lunatics, to avoid being caught offguard

[Kiech Bepho]

No no no...not invisible guards - just guards that can see better when standing still!

[Mr.K.]

I think you misunderstood what i meant. See 100% means a guard sees thieves with their normal lightgem transparency value. See 110% means that thief is 10% more visible to that particular guard. Guards don't turn invisible.