My pleasure!
2. I see. Is it intended that the player's weight should break the beams after eating just a few guards or is it just there for the test purposes now (so we could see beams breaking) and we are going to have a completely different set of rules for weight and beams breaking under the thief's weight in the future?
2.1 Most probably this. The funny thing is you can potentially litter the entire hallway with these splinters if you continue to reset the level and break the same beam over and over. The splinters do not have collision, but it looks funny how the guards casually walk through the hallway like "Yes, another day walking through a bunch of broken wood back and forth". Love some fun that is to be gotten from bugs.
3. No, it does not seem to be caused by noise and their hearing. It seems as if they have some kind of a hivemind or maybe they see through walls. For example, there is a guard, I guess, who is supposed to patrol the area in the third room (wine cellar), but I am not sure, maybe he is supposed to be in the second room. The fact is, everytime I go to the second room, I swallow the guard in the corridor from behind the corner (which I call "swallowing through the wall", because animation looks like this is what is happening), nobody is alerted. I go to hide in the shadows on the second floor to the right to digest, and then another guard goes there, to the spot where the torch and sword lie, to comment on how somebody is missing or should have passed them by now. And the door to the third room appears to be opened. So I suspect it is either some guard seeing the lying sword and torch from the wine cellar through the walls and door and going there to look at them, or some guard who somehow gets triggered by swallowing this specific guard in the second room. Because other guards in the same room do not seem to always be affected by this: sometimes the guard on the left, the one who patrols near the boxes, notices the leftovers and comes to investigate too, and sometimes he doesn't. The guard on the right does not seem to notice it at any playthrough, since he does not really end up close enough in accordance with his route to notice, it seems. I actually feel like testing it a bit more, so I might soon try and update you on this one.
3.3 I see, thank you! Indeed, icon legend is a good thing to have, especially if there is going to be some "tutorial" in the future updates.
4.1 I have not seen the guards really clipping through anything, they are good boys and do not seem to break the laws of collision. However, the player model may be behind the wall near a corner or near an open door, and when the guard is close enough, they may swallow the guard, technically through the obstacle, but at the same time it may be seen as swallowing them from behind the corner, which is a valid stealth game tactic. So I am not really sure it is a real issue, because it would be too hardcore without such forgiving hitboxes. So I think it is actually cool, no need to look into it unless it proves to be an issue in the future.
I hope it helps a bit.
2. Good question, I think beams will get stronger as the game progresses to account for the thief gaining weight through the levels. They have a random weight tolerance to introduce some randomness into each playthrough, but I am not sure how well this works out in practice.
3. There is a guard patrolling the upper walkway in the wine cellar, directly below the second room's floor. I suspect he hears the guard being swallowed through the floor and by the time he reaches the spot to investigate, you're gone into hiding. See if you can spot the guard's "I heard a noise" exclamation through the floor as you swallow the guard in the second room? You can also use Z to check where he is, and see when he gets triggered to investigate.
4.1 The swallow attack's collision check originates from the camera, not the player character. I see how this can cause around-the-corner swallows, and will see if I can implement an extra collision check from thief to guard.
Thank you again for the feedback!
Sorry, I had to attend to some affairs and respond only now.
So, turns out the guard that patrols the wine cellar indeed is triggered by the slightest sound from the upper floor, and it is no surprise. In fact, the player can see this guard without the cat sight ability due to the fact his torch emits the smoke that goes through the second room's floor and can be seen quite well. It looks very funny, so I had my laugh.
I had also tested the weight system and, yes, I see very subtle changes in the model. Beams seem to withstand the player who has eaten and digested three guards, so it is alright for the current version of the game.
While testing it I have found out a very overfed (through debugging P button) player can make the entire map very anxious and bothered by the loud sounds of gargantuan gut that cover the entire map and trigger even those three guards at the very bottom of the map in the wine cellar.