Sneaking is a PITA

[chronathan]

Hey people, new guy here. So I looove stealth games, and I have modded Skyrim into a stealthy characters paradise. The thing is though, it never exactly feels "right" the way it does in say Thief: The Metal Age, or a Splinter Cell game. I've personally been messing with the creation kit and have been tweaking settings and creating a few perks that work out great for my stealthy guy. I've got my game set-up so the stealth gameplay is extremely similar to Thief when playing a high-level sneak. I've got water arrows, I've got noisemaker arrows, I've got rope arrows, and I even have my own blackjack. But it still doesn't feel "right", like a good stealth game should.

 

The problem is: no visibility meter. There is absolutely no way of knowing how exactly hidden you are at the moment. This means that when I am trying to sneak through a fort full of bandits, my gameplay consists of, "Ok, there is two bandits facing me there. No problem, I'll just creep along this dark looking shadow on the opposite side of room." And then the bandits detect me, because turns out the shadow wasn't dark enough. Leading me to reload and try a different way. Not a huge deal, but slightly immersion breaking. Not to mention, less fun.

 

SO, I would like to attempt to fix that. I've got a few ideas on how to best do it but I would LOVE some feedback from similar stealth lovers. Ideally, I would very much like to implement a meter on the HUD similar to Thief's "light gem", or even a simple bar that fills up as you become more visible/hidden. However, from what I have seen, working with adding stuff to the HUD is difficult so it sounds unilikely I would be able to do that. If anyone else has experience editing the HUD and would be interesting in something like that, I'd be more than happy to work with you.

 

Otherwise, I'm guessing I'm limited to some kind of visual effect, much like this mod Light Meter . But I dislike the strong effect from that mod as it overrides the night-eye I use. I'm interested in something more subtle. The best way is perhaps to have status updates on the HUD. Create a spell that when toggled, reads the light level on the player, and displays messages based on how visible you are. So when light level is < 10, "Not Visible" update. When < 20 and >10, "Barely Visible" would display. And so on.

 

Is it possible to display Lightlevel as a percentage of it's total value as a status update? Have it update in real-time? I am very interested in your ideas on this. Do you prefer a visual effect, or a status update? If I get no feedback, I'll likely continue with the easiest route I find. If I am able to create a fairly reliable way to show visibility then I will upload this mod to the nexus. And I will continue to update this topic as I make progress. So, please, let me know what you think of this idea.

[steve40]

I'm rather sceptical that stealth uses light level at all. I think it merely uses line-of-sight and distance. The longer that LOS is established with the player, the faster your "stealth points" will be depleted. Light level doesn't affect line of sight afaik, but maybe the game sets a shorter detection distance at night. That's my impression, anyway, so if that's the case, then a light level detector would be placebo.

[acidzebra]

I'm rather sceptical that stealth uses light level at all. I think it merely uses line-of-sight and distance. The longer that LOS is established with the player, the faster your "stealth points" will be depleted. Light level doesn't affect line of sight afaik, but maybe the game sets a shorter detection distance at night. That's my impression, anyway, so if that's the case, then a light level detector would be placebo.

 

From personal experience in the dungeon I am building, light does affect detection speed. I had scaled my torches' lights nice and big because it look purty, and then on test runs wondered why my character got detected instantly even at ridiculous distances. Once I had scaled down the lights detection was much slower (and once I figured out removable torches, slower yet). Of course this is inside - but I suppose they would have a similar night/day light level thingie in place for outside.

 

The creation kit wiki has a ridiculously detailed page on detection

http://www.creationkit.com/Category:Detection#Visual

Edited October 4, 2012 by acidzebra

[IsharaMeradin]

To the OP. Doesn't the cross hair when in stealth indicate whether or not you are hidden, they are looking for you, & you've been found? I like to play stealthy too and that's been sufficient for me. Just pay attention to the "eye" and when it is partially open, don't move or move back around a corner and wait.

[StayFrosty05]

@ Chronathan....would you mind if I track your progression? sadly I am no modder myself....but love stealth play and the more realistic the better....a light meter would be brilliant.

[AnkhAscendant]

Like Ishara, I was wondering what was wrong with the default crosshair eye. I know it's not particularly detailed, but the more open it is the more detected you are (granted that's detecteded, not detectable). I'm a squishy mage who doesn't wear armor, so the only reason I'm alive is because of sneaking, and it works fine for me. Maybe I'm just missing out from not having played thiefier type games.

[chronathan]

@steve40 and anyone else curious about sneaking.. The calculation for detection take in 4 main factors, the visual factor, the sound factor, the actor skill factor, and distance from hostile npcs. If the resulting number from this is >0, your stealth points start dropping and you will be detected in a short time. If it is <0, however, you are, and will remain, undetected. Here is the formula for the visual factor. Visual factor = Attenuation * VisualContact * Light * Movement * Blindness * Invisibility. If enemies have no LOS on you, visual factor is zero. If they do, light plays a very large factor in this calculation. You will remain undetected as long as the light levels are low enough. Below is the entire visual factor calculation for anyone that is interested.

 

_{Visual Contact: If can't see target, visual element is 0}

_{Movement Multiplier: 1 + Moving * fSneakLightMoveMult + Running * fSneakLightRunMult}

_{Light: ( fDetectionSneakLightMod + light level ) * fSneakLightMult}

_{Blindness: ( 100 - blindness )/100}

_{Invisibility: If Invisible== 1, multiply by fSneakStealthboyMult}

 

_{Visual subtotal:}

 

_{Visual factor = Attenuation * VisualContact * Light * Movement * Blindness * Invisibility}

 

@Ishara & AA.. I do agree the game is completely playable with the original stealth eye. I still would prefer a meter that will allow me to know if someone can see me. Mainly for role play purposes as I like to attempt completely undetected assassination and stealth runs. I guess my goal is to get this game as close to an open world Thief as I can, and this would go a long way towards helping.

 

@stayfrosty05 and anyone else interested.. You are more than welcome to track my progress. Howver I should have mentioned that I am extremely new at modding. This would be my first mod. So it may take me awhile to figure things out before I'll even be close to releasing anything. I fully intend to eventually though.

 

Here's a couple things I've figured out. First there is a console command to get the current light level of the player "player.getlightlevel". Using this, I've been able to determine that light level remains around 0.11 in the darkest corners indoors, around 20-50 on moonlit night, around 80-100 when standing in candlelight, and exactly 180 when carrying a torch. It seems, for my character, yours will likely be different, that around 60-70 is when I become detected. So atleast I have a good basis for what light level is what. I will likely be attempting to create a spell, that when cast will display the light level as a percentage. I would prefer to have it display constantly when sneaking; but the notifications are not fast enough for that and I can't think of any other way to display a value on the HUD. If anyone has any ideas, I'd be more than happy to hear them.

 

EDIT: These Lightlevel values are with me using Realistic Lighting W/C, if you run this command on a vanilla game or other lighting mod they may be way different.

Edited October 4, 2012 by chronathan

[steve40]

Ah, so the stealth detection is more sophisticated than I thought, that's good to know :)

 

Well, you could consider hacking "hudmenu.swf" if you know a little about Flash and ActionScript 2, but it is hard work if you have to learn from scratch. You will need access to Flash Professional and a tool like SWiX or Sothink SWF Decompiler.

 

You can get the decompiled and corrected Flash files and ActionScripts from here. Just click the ZIP button near the top of the page. The ActionScript online reference is here. I understand it is very similar to javascript (although I've never scripted in java myself).

 

Minimally, you might be able to speed up the Skyrim message display to near real-time, as it is basically a sort of flash movie using a "textfield". Ideally, you might be able to create a new light meter animation and pass the lightlevel values into it.

 

Good luck.

Edited October 6, 2012 by steve40