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Fan Mission: The Glenham Tower by Sotha (2010/07/17)


Sotha

The Glenham Tower by Sotha (2010/07/17) Summer FM Vertical Contest Entry  

126 members have voted

  1. 1. 1. Gameplay: Enjoyment. Fun duration. Smooth flow, ect. Versus Bugs. Frustration, Boredom, framelag

  2. 2. 2. Appearance: Vertical use, Visual pleasure, lighting, visual style, deduct bad texturing etc.

  3. 3. 3. Story & Text: Story. Text. Briefing. Graphic storytelling



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Yeah, thanks for the insight, Sotha!! smile.gif I´m joyfully looking forward to finally play Beleaguered Fence...

 

Nice. Remember to let me know what you think of that.

 

Only one question is left: what means the latin text in the objective-book? Or is it just a placeholder for the players imagination? happy.gif

 

Well, naturally it is fully geniuine grimoire I translated into latin to reward the enlightened players who pursuit the knowledge of dead languages.. ;)

 

 

I first wanted to write a few pages what De Vermiis Mysteriis would contain, but I suppose that would have been great injustice towards Bloch and Lovecraft. It would have also consumed so much time to do it right so in the end I resorted to a simpler approach.

 

I thought that since the book is dealing with dark arts, the knowledge is protected by a hidden language. It is not latin. The hidden language was simply created with one of the gibberish language generators abundant in the net.

 

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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So, you mean there is no meaning at all in that text, do I get it right? Or do I have to learn latin in the next two days (or more)? ;) (referring to the first part of your answer)

If I confuse you now, that is because I wasn´t able to translate 'geniuine grimoire', but I guess it´s like 'nonsense'. ;)

 

 

 

edit: I found what 'grimoire' is, black magick stuff...

 

So, I´m still confused, sorry. (But it´s 10 in the morning (really, 10? Couple of minutes ago it was just 7) and I haven´t slept this night.)

You first wanted to write the black magick-stuff in latin but then you decided to 'translate' some text into äh, let´s say, non-translatable text? Meaning there is no meaning? :unsure:

I think I go to bed and maybe in a couple of hours I can see things more clearly... :)

Edited by LEGION

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Just finished.

 

The dark, creepy atmosphere was excellent.

 

I really liked the

flaming revenant, I was going to do something like that once. And also that glowing sphere of undeath reminded me of an idea I had planned for an another FM, which the player had to enter a part of the plague ward and retireve a sacred builder artifact, but it gave off holy light, thus making the player always lit, so it would be a challange to get back to the start. Great minds think alike? :D

 

 

Speaking of

the orb of undeath, I climbed all the way back up the tower only to find it blocked :(, so I couldn't finish the optional objective

 

 

I found a bug.

 

 

In the room with all the revenants and the orb, I was being chased by them all, I ran down, got in a corner and all the AI froze in place. Than I took out 1 by 1 with my holywater arrows. Haven't tried to repeat it, but just thought you should know.

 

 

 

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@Legion

 

I tried to be funny in my post. The contents of the book in the mission is just gibberish generated with an online generator. Similar to lorem ipsum. http://www.lipsum.com/

 

 

Alright, thanks for your patience. I just wanted to be sure that I don´t miss some important dark arts that I could use... ;)

-> Crisis of Capitalism

-> 9/11 Truth

->

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I really liked the

flaming revenant, I was going to do something like that once. And also that glowing sphere of undeath reminded me of an idea I had planned for an another FM, which the player had to enter a part of the plague ward and retireve a sacred builder artifact, but it gave off holy light, thus making the player always lit, so it would be a challange to get back to the start. Great minds think alike? biggrin.gif

 

The control of the orbital mind control satellites gives me the the benefit of stealing other peoples ideas right from their minds! Just remember, do *NOT* wear a tinfoil hat the next time you get good TDM ideas. Okay?

 

Speaking of

the orb of undeath, I climbed all the way back up the tower only to find it blocked sad.gif, so I couldn't finish the optional objective

 

 

 

Hm. Exterior, right?

For some reason people do not spot the attic collapse, even when they hear the crumbling noise in the upmost floor. The door is blocked because the attic collapsed. There is no way out that direction and also no way in.

 

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Hm. Exterior, right?

For some reason people do not spot the attic collapse, even when they hear the crumbling noise in the upmost floor. The door is blocked because the attic collapsed. There is no way out that direction and also no way in.

 

 

 

Yeah, I thought the explosion came from downstairs

 

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happycheeze.deviantart.com

 

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I just played this mission and voted - it's VERY GOOD! I enjoyed it very much. I got frustrated a few times trying to sword fight the undead, but that was mainly because I don't like the difficult sword fighting of Dark Mod (I prefer the easy Thief style). So after accepting that I HAD to sneak around more, I got over that. I LOVED all the great detail of the rooms and the notes and objects and little things

(like the gouged out eyes in the paintings, that was a good eerie touch)

. I actually got a bit tired of ALL the false platforms and had to reload way to many times, but overall I seriously loved this mission. Excellent work, makes Dark Mod look very good!

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Oh lord! :D

 

 

Just finished this haunt infested sucker and boy was it an experience :D Took it on expert and destroyed the blue crystal of undeath. Optional? Heck, you must do what the objective table says, right? :) This mission ranks along Heart and Tears. Truly awesomeness! You'll get full score on all three aspects, Sotha. And you finished this mission first of all us other contesters and under a month? You, my lord ARE a haunt :D

 

As I said in my PM, I almost browned my pants in the beginning with the loud bangs of the attic collapsing. And when I sat in the corner and tryed to read the book the zombie lurched up on me and disturbed me in my reading!

 

And the crypt with the haunts :D I just dropped any plans for ghosting/lurking here and just jumped up on the railing and started to unleash holy H2O on those suckers below! I also used the mines at the end of the stairs but somehow they just ran past it! Must be a TDM-bug or something because I tried the effectiveness of the mines afterwards with my face and that demanded a reload afterwards :)

 

As my computer is quite new, just a few years, I didn't experience any FPS-drops (I have the counter on but there was no visible effect in game) even in the crypts with all that shit going on! :)

 

Three thumbs up!

 

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Finally burnt out on starcraft2, got laid off from the farm i worked on, coming back to TDM full time I hope. First FM i've played in a while, and very excited based on reviews in a couple threads.... but.....

 

rope arrows will not deploy?! i've tried hitting just about every wooden block and the wooden roof that covers the basement section outside. no rope. some of the blocks fall off when struck (nice effect) and some don't, but no rope will deploy off any wooden surface. Playing TDM 1.02. Help...?

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I loved the design of this, though my old computer barely kept up with the detail.

 

 

 

I was doing well on Expert until I fell into the water and climbed out into the room with 5 Revenants. That's where I quit, because they spotted me right off, holy water hardly dented them, and my computer froze with everything it was being asked to do. It can't handle more than 2 AI on the screen at the same time, let alone 5. I ditched Expert and restarted on Easy, but am running into the same framerate problems before even getting into the tower. So I'll try it on my laptop, which is a bit faster but still a couple of years old. Hopefully I'll be able to finish it there.

 

 

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Hope this is not too far off topic, but I have a question for you, Sotha: In the TDM wiki the Beleaguered Fence is mentioned as Thomas Porter 2 and The Glenham Tower as Thomas Porter 3. I can't seem to find Thomas Porter 1 anywhere... Does it exist? Or is it some kind of prequel you have yet to do? Just wondering, really...

 

Only just started The Glenham Tower - slowly, but steadily - never been a fan of the horror genre or being scared wittless blush.gif But I will play it! Loved the Beleaguered Fence - worked so well for me in every sense! Good job! smile.gif

 

Summer

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Thanks, Summer!

 

Thomas Porter 1 on currently in the works. It's going to be the heist of Captain Knighton's Manor, which was mentioned in the Beleaguered Fence. It'll be finished in the next 1-3 months.

 

Also, remember to cast your votes for both missions!

 

I hope you enjoy The Glenham Tower! Remember, the undead are powerful, try to sneak past them rather than fighting them face to face. :ph34r:

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Sotha, I gotta say, you're a natural talent. I played both Porters, and I loved them a lot. In fact, The Beleaguered Fence might be the best thought-out FM to date. The fact alone that you have at least 2 (maybe three) ways to enter the City Watch reveals your mastership. Or the fact that every lock is pickable... I loved that!

 

I'm looking forward to your next FM, and I sincerely hope that all the other FM makers will learn from you.

 

P.S.: I used the explosive mines against the undead in Glenham, however, I hoped for a larger set-off radius. If there is any way to chance that - realistic or not - that would be great. 

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

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Thanks, Summer!

 

Thomas Porter 1 on currently in the works. It's going to be the heist of Captain Knighton's Manor, which was mentioned in the Beleaguered Fence. It'll be finished in the next 1-3 months.

 

Also, remember to cast your votes for both missions!

 

I hope you enjoy The Glenham Tower! Remember, the undead are powerful, try to sneak past them rather than fighting them face to face. ph34r.gif

 

Thanks for the info, Sotha! I thought I might have missed something somwhere... Can't wait to play the upcoming mansion mission cool.gif

 

Voted for the Beleaguered Fence wub.gif Not yet voted for Glenham Tower, 'cos still in the middle of it (these new zombies are really scary...).

 

Summer

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I like this mission pretty much so far.

Unfortunately I can not continue due to the most disgusting framerates I have ever experienced in a TDM mission.

It is down to a constant ~1 fps and opening an unlocked chest takes 9-10 seconds !!

The problem started right after

the first set of stairs collapsing and 2 zombies entering the room.

 

I read about the so-called Quicksave-problem earlier in this thread.

Might this be related to this ? Would it help to use hard-saves instead or no saves at all ?

I reduced the resolution to about 1/2 and disabled most rendering options and restarted TDM.

But except for the graphics looking like sh*t it does not seem to have any effect on fps.

Any ideas ?

I have an old fashioned Intel Celeron 3.2 Ghz single core and an old ATI Radeon X1300.

But although this is really not up to date I have no problems with any other TDM mission so far.

And I double-checked by loading some other missions and reloading this one.

Only with this mission and only with the quicksave I get these terrible problems.

Unfortunately I did not do a hard-save earlier.

I will retry tomorrow from scratch, but would appreciate any advice nontheless.

 

Thanks

Edited by gnartsch
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I like this mission pretty much so far.

Unfortunately I can not continue due to the most disgusting framerates I have ever experienced in a TDM mission.

It is down to a constant ~1 fps and opening an unlocked chest takes 9-10 seconds !!

The problem started right after

the first set of stairs collapsing and 2 zombies entering the room.

 

 

How very odd. I've never encountered this in my numerous tests in this map.

 

The collapse does nothing, but

plays the collapse sound

adds debris in the attic

adds dust emitters, which then are turned off after a while.

puts the zombies in motion.

 

 

Therefore I can't see how it would trigger a low fps. The dust emitters may cause lag on slow computers, but they will get turned off after a few seconds, thus removing the performance load.

 

Maybe it is a TDM bug? I never use quicksave myself. Typically I save rather seldom, only when I make major progress, and even then I do a normal save.

 

When you restart from the beginning, try to avoid quicksave and save a bit less often?

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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I gave it another try this morning and got well past the point where I had to give up yesterday !

No problem at all this time. Very odd.

A general TDM question : any technical reason to prefer normal-save over quicksave in TDM or entirely avoiding to reload ?

 

Thanks !

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A general TDM question : any technical reason to prefer normal-save over quicksave in TDM or entirely avoiding to reload ?

 

I am not sure. I've seen people complaining about a quicksave bug. I've never encountered such problems, as I do not use quicksaving. Normal saving has always worked for me, but I think it may be due to the fact quicksaving is fast and easy. People save and load often, thus expressing a rare bug more often. But as I said, I'm not sure.

 

Reloading shouldn't have any issues. Only thing I've noticed is that the ambient music stops upon reload. You can easily resurrect the music by going to audio settings and move the ambient volume slider a tiny notch.

 

Avoiding saving and loading improves the game experience in my personal opinion. The game gets more exciting as you have to deal with failures rather than just load a save.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Avoiding saving and loading improves the game experience in my personal opinion. The game gets more exciting as you have to deal with failures rather than just load a save.

 

Yeah, I did that as I played Doom3 recently (because the nice blood was gone after reloading!) and I´ll finally adopt this playstyle to TDM. Hmm, because I play with gamepad, on TV and now this rare saving, TDM will feel more like a console-game I guess... Hey, don´t hit me, in fact it would be the best looking consolegame I played so far...

-> Crisis of Capitalism

-> 9/11 Truth

->

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I just got finished with this one, and...wow.

 

I have avoided reading this thread, since I didn't want to spoil anything, and I'm so glad I didn't! I haven't read it yet, either, but I will after I write this, to see if anyone posted about finding something I missed.

 

I'm doubly glad I didn't spoil anything first, because there are things I really tend to avoid that are unavoidable here...but I played it anyway. I'm so glad for that.

 

 

I really don't like undead, in any of the Thief games OR here, in TDM. Well, no, I love Haunt sound files in Thief, and I'll sneak up on them just to hang around and listen for a while (I GREATLY miss it here, and mourn the inability of the authors to use those files in TDM), and Haunts are ok enough since they can be blackjacked (my modus operandi vs. any opponents that can be), but I still hate undead. I haven't even tested yet if the skeletal-Hauntish-undead in TDM can be blackjacked or backstabbed yet, I just go out of my way to avoid them whenever possible!

 

So when the attic collapsed and undead were everywhere I squealed and hid in a corner until I could screw up enough courage to continue. I am SO happy I did.

 

The sounds in this mission were fantastic. The creaking, the wailing, everything- fantastic. Having the floor drop out from under me, panic attack...and still, fantastic. The story, the flaming lich, getting the sphere AND getting it back to the top WITHOUT being detected...my heart's been pounding, and I think I'll give it a rest now. We both need it!

 

 

Thank you, Sotha. I played this mission way out of my comfort zone, and I greatly enjoyed it in the end.

Edited by Shaz
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I hit a brick wall with this on Expert on my slow computer, so I switched to the slightly faster laptop, on Easy.

 

I thought the story and visuals were excellent. Having to get past zombies and haunts and deal with collapsing platforms was a bit too much for me, though. Not my cup of tea. Ran out of weapons, and never did have time to figure out how to exit, with a zombie right on my tail who wouldn't leave me time to puzzle it out.

Edited by grayman
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