If you look at http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/9549/22583597.png video capture, you can find out some disturbing facts.

There are only three states of stealth, one of which have two sides.

• Detected.
  
• Undetected.
  
• Caution.
  
• Danger.

But basically Danger mode and Detected mode are the same, the difference is who has detected us: An enemy or otherwise?

In the capture screen, you can see the icons that they have designed for the stealth states, but decided that they were wrong, so they crossed them off and in a box below the cross designed three new icons that showed a covered sun, a half covered one and a shiny exposed sun, with a line that suggests: (? Separate "I'm sneaky" from "I'm detected").

Then they saw that with three icons, you can not find out if an enemy has detected you and you are in danger, or you are detected by a non-enemy pawn.

And they suggested: (? "How to tell difference between DETECTED | DANGER?"), and then they decided that: (THE people try to kill you.).

So we can not tell from the icons if we are really in danger, but maybe from the change of the music?

I say that it adds to the immersion, if we can only know that we are detected and I do not worry about that, it really bothers me that we have only three states of alarm in monsters, "Undetected, Caution, and Detected", and I hoped there would be more alarm states, like this:

• Unconscious: Can not detect anything. :sleep2:
  
• Distracted: Attention caught by something else. :violin:
  
• Unaware: Idle, whistling, mumbling and the like... :whistling:
  
• Alarm level 1: Heard a sound, and looks toward the direction. :shifty:
  
• Alarm level 2: Saw a something and comes looking for it. :stare:
  
• Alarm level 3: Find something bad like a corpse and start actively searching. oo:
  
• Alarm level 4: Found the target but lost it and looking for it. :flame:
  
• Alarm level 5: Actively pursuing/attacking the target. :gun:
  
• Alarm level ?: Fleeing from the target. :bolt:

What do you think?

I agree, although I think some of them might be hard to distinguish much. But there definitely needs to be more than just an on/off button. Being a fan of the Metal Gear series also, I always loved how the guards worked in those games. I know it's completely different, especially because it is a stealth specific game, but I mean if you look at the things that were done in the first Solid game in 1998 with sounds and awareness of the guards, you ought to be able to implement something in the likes of what you say in a modern top notch game like Skyrim is likely to be.

Well. Unconscious probably exists, but wasn't mentioned. Distracted probably does not exist, but would perhaps just influence how likely the switch to "caution" is. Alarm level 1-3 would all fall under "caution" in that the enemy is looking for someone, although you make a difference between just looking around and actively searching, something I'd agree with. Alarm level 4 would basically just be falling back to alarm level 2/3 after having been in level 5. Level 5 is "danger", obviously. And fleeing probably also exists.

But yes, the system could be more complex than it probably will be. Splinter Cell did it quite well (at least in the earlier games, didn't play the recent ones), where the enemy would at first be distracted, doing their own thing, some being on guard and more likely to hear something. When they hear something, they'd mostly not really care and just be "Did you hear anything?" "Yeah, bet it's nothing." Then if they heared something that sounded dangerous or repeadetly heared footsteps or something they'd be more like "Wait, I heared something again... Something isn't right." and turn on light sources and go looking for something, but eventually they'd just return to "Must've been nothing". You could repeat to freak them out more and more until they'd shoot as soon as they thought they heared something. (Like, you'd toss a rock against a wall, which'd then be lit up by guards). Plus the alarm levels influencing how ready they are to begin with, from working on fixing a machine over standing guard over standing guard with weapon drawn and being nervous to constantly searching, full equipment on, weapon at the ready etc...

A system like that would of course be awesome.

Edit: Yeah, Metal Gear is probably similar. Haven't played it, not a console gamer.

I think they just drew that board for the sake of the video
they aren't that dumb to leak information like that

Detected = Non hostile can see you

Danger = Hostile is comming for you

Caution = Hostile thinks you are there somewhere / Knows you are there somewhere

But it would be odd if the enemies only stood still, they should be looking around.

Or since it is all concept as Todd pointed out maybe they didn't care? Everything we saw on that board was revealed in the GI cover story for the most part. As for stealth most people expected that and as you can see just people seeing those three states doesn't really give us any real information on how complex it will be. :shrug:

the thing is, even if they implement 8 states as OP said, as a player how are you going to catch that during the game? are you expecting the game to display message boxes saying "the enemy is now in stage 1! Click OK to continue" "the enemy is now in stage 2! click ok to continue" and so on?

It seems like a mix of text stages (FO3/NV) and an opacity icon (Oblivion)

not bad.

I think some of those are redundant, and I think the whiteboard was specifically a discussion about sneaking, while you're appearing to seeing it as general states.

I think your states are already included, but simply as AI behavior.

Basically:

Undetected:

• Unconscious: Can not detect anything.
  
• Distracted: Attention caught by something else.
  
• Unaware: Idle, whistling, mumbling and the like...

Caution:

• Alarm level 1: Heard a sound, and looks toward the direction.
  
• Alarm level 2: Saw a something and comes looking for it.
  
• Alarm level 3: Find something bad like a corpse and start actively searching.
  
• Alarm level 4: Found the target but lost it and looking for it.

Detected:

• Alarm level 5: Actively pursuing/attacking the target.
  
• Alarm level ?: Fleeing from the target.

as a player, all you can see is
1. you are hidden (hidden)
2. the enemy is alerted (caution)
3. the enemy has seen you (danger)

even if there's all those complex mechanisms, they all just seems like the 3 steps above. so, why bother?

what they really need to implement is better ways to go from Danger back to Caution and Hidden. in Oblivion, once you are in the danger stage there's almost no way you can get back to hidden.

Isn't this just the same system as Fallout..? :sadvaultboy:

i can't remember but did fallout have icons as well as text - like on the drawing board? either way both are better than oblivion's setup..imo.

My question is where you got that image.

@ people saying you couldn't tell more than 3 states from eachother as a player, that's simply not true. I spent most of my time playing the Splinter Cell games just freaking out the AI and seeing how they would react. It was extremely immersive to see them and especially to overhear their conversations, from casual talk about the weather to them yelling at each other to stop yelling. They felt very much alive, and that made stealth much more interesting.

The thing is why should you automatically know you've been detected. You are as psychic as the oblivion guards then. If a bandit on guard outside a cave sees you sneaking up on his mate wouldn't he then sneak up on you. As it is you know he's there as the music changes the icon changes and a maniac charges you. Surely more icons would make your character even more psychic.

I really hope you are right, and it seems probable.


From the beginning f thread that discussed the behind the scene video.


If something like that was implemented in the game, the Stealth archetype would find his rightful place in the game.

In the previous games, it did not have equal opportunities like the other two archetypes.

Edit:


I think, the game engine can be smart in this era and compare the parameters to see if you can detect being detected, and only shows tha icon after the check, but it would probably end up being buggy and would not result in a good game-play.

Fallout just stated it in text such as [HIDDEN] and [DETECTED] in green

and

[CAUTION] and [DANGER] in red but danger flashes.

As they have designed only three icons, I think there would be no text, just the icons.

I admit that at first I frowned when I saw the stealth detection statuses but then I started thinking about it and what was the problem in OB/FO3/NV. The problem weren't the statuses, but the actual behavior of the NPCs/enemies and stealth gameplay.

As others have said all your detection levels can be summed up by the existing 3 (or 4). If they make NPCs smarter and behave in a believable manner and enhance stealth gameplay(creating distractions for example) then I'm happy .

The behind the scenes video on GI website.

its at 1:38 I think or around that.

TES games are jacks of all trades and masters of a few things but not all . The AI reaction to stealth will never be as good as a purely stealth game but I think it's safe to say as they've been working on it , things will be improved from Oblivion, where stealth was the poor cousin. I think Hellknight has it spot on you can have as many icons as you like, it won't matter if the AI isn't there.

I personally hope you(the player) don't get told if you've been detected while sneaking in Skyrim. Only have an indicator to let you know your in sneaking mode for first person where you can't see your body, not to let you know if you're detected or not(e.g. in Oblivion DON'Tt make the dimmed eye light up). Or maybe for Syrim hardcoe mode..

This way you'l be full of suspense since you don't know if the NPC's have seen you.

This way, you would be full of suspense, but as a honorable thief of Skyrim, you would have a really hard time, if you do not know whether you are seen or not, and have to use the save/load trick a lot of time.

I like the idea of not knowing when you are detected, but agree that this might be tricky to implement. Let me have a stab at an idea for how to make it work:

So at present the mechanic is that there's a detected icon which shows up when you are detected (or lets suppose it's pretty much that). But why not make the chances of this icon showing up dependent on your Sneak skill - in the sense that as your Sneak skill increases, you are more likely to be shown the detected icon if you are detected, and you are more likely to not be shown the detected icon if you are not detected.

One problem is that this might make it very difficult to level up your Sneak skill naturally. So perhaps make some additions to the mechanic: make it also depend upon the number of NPCs in the vicinity, how close they are, perhaps what they are wearing, the environment you are in (are there lots of things to obscure vision, is it dark, and so on). In that case, you could perhaps improve your Sneak skill more naturally by sneaking more judiciously - that is, you'd pick more sensible situations in which to sneak, because the risk of getting a false positive or negative would be lower.

But anyway, I think the main point people have been making about NPC and monster AI is spot on - that's what really needs to be fixed for stealthy characters to be a much more viable option.

thief stealth or I won't even bother with a stealth character