Illustrated Thief Mechanics

First off, I'm going to admit that I'm embarrassingly proficient at paint, because I always use it to do stuff like this. These are some quick diagrams showing some of the Thief attention states that I was talking about yesterday:


Case 1: The Thief has walked in front of the door to his right, and noticed that an awareness bar is filling up. Quickly, the Thief ducks back into the hall to prevent a chase.

Case 2: The player has walked in front of the room in front of him and was seen briefly by the guard there. Normally, the player would not be able to see the guard, but since a guard is aware of the player, an awareness icon is displayed where the guard is standing, and is even seen through walls.

Case 3: The player allowed a guard's awareness to fill up completely, and is now being chased. The guard behind the player has called for backup, and the guard ahead and to the right is close enough to answer the call. While the player is seen by at least one guard, all guards chasing the player will be represented by a red 'chase' mark. In this case, the Thief has a few choices available to him: duck into the room on the right and hope the hacker can help lock the door in time, run down the hallway to the left, or duck into the room in front of him. The chase should be a moment of quick thinking, and displaying all guards chasing the player will allow them to make more informed decisions more rapidly.

Case 4: Once the player has stepped out of the view of all his pursuers, he enters the "search" state. Guards are still shown through walls via their awareness meters, but it will gradually decrease to nothing while the player is not seen. In this case, the Thief's best option seems to be to jump into the room on the right.