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Fan Mission: The Knighton Manor by Sotha (2010/11/09)


Sotha

Fan Mission: The Knighton Manor by Sotha (2010/11/09)  

88 members have voted

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

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

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



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7020459.png

 

The Knighton Manor is a small/medium sized map in which aspiring thief Thomas Porter steals a valuable scepter from a city watch captain named Godfrey Knighton. It is the first mission in the Thomas Porter series. The mission was created by me, Sotha and I wish to thank Bikerdude, Ungoliant and Xarg for playtesting. An enormous thanks goes also to the fine people who created TDM and are still working hard, bringing it ever closer to perfection. Thanks also to the community for helping with my mappinge efforts.

 

Briefing:

Few weeks ago my fence heard a rumour about a particularily valuable scepter that was awarded for meritous service to a city watch captain named Godfrey Knighton.

 

The captain's scepter is told to be of solid gold, with ornate jewels and diamonds, in other words valuable materials which we could break and sell separately without drawing too much attention to ourselves.

 

Last few days I've been monitoring the good captain's luxurious manor, which is located just north of the City gates; an easy place to sneak in during the dark of night.

 

The manor security seems lax: an archer by the main door, few guards patrolling the grounds and a couple of servants.

 

It shouldn't be difficult for me to sneak in undetected, grab the scepter and other loose valuables and get out unnoticed.

 

It is getting dark, I'll make my move as soon as darkness falls. This is going to be a rather simple night, with the exception of better than normal booty..

 

LINKs:

Use the ingame downloader to get it.

 

 

Enjoy!

 

Now that this mission has been completed, I will take a long break from mapping. I hope the mission I've created will bring a lot of joy to the community and perhaps even inspire others to create new and better missions.

 

Warning! There is ALWAYS someone who fails to use spoiler tags appropriately. I recommend you read this thread further only after playing the mission! Avoid spoilers.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Mirror: http://bloodgate.com/fms/knighton_manor.pk4

 

Thanx for the mission, Sotha, looking forward to playing it. Shame you want to take a break from mapping, tho!

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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And right after St. Albans another great one !

Loved the secret area of captain Casanova there; found it only by luck :)

The distant countryside/city visuals made it feel quite right like an mansion outside but near town on a hill.

Nice little side story.

However, I missed clues or were not clever enough to detect them on how to bypass the security device in the first round; only after "trying" and seeing what moved where in the mechanism I could block it.

I came out only short a few dozen gold; it's the loot I left with the card players probably, but I saw no possibility how to grab those coins from the table undetected.

Thought there might be undead (I eyed a certain skeleton very suspiciously during looting) but they kept sleeping :)

 

Great mission, it's such stuff I play thief for.

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Plato

"When outmatched... cheat."— Batman

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SPOILER

 

Yeah, I couldn't find a way to avoid alerting the card players. I just made some noise and blackjacked them when they came to look for me, one at a time. I guess that is practically cheating though.

 

A gas arrow would have done wonders there. *shatter/hisssssss thump thump thump thump* lol

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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I haven't felt this much like a thief or intruder in a long time. What excellent gameplay! And the rest of it is top notch too really innovative things like the briefing system and the opening cinematic and the skybox...

 

 

Its just really well done. I had to talk myself in to quitting at points when I needed to. :laugh:

 

I sincerely hope this is recognized and that Sotha your talk of a long hiatus is some kind of ruse.

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Thanks for another gem, Sotha !

Just finished.

 

 

knightonmanor.png

 

Voted excellent for gameplay, as allways with your FM, i had lots of good ol´ thiefy fun. Only good for visual and story though, as compared to others, there was not so much greatness. But i understand you finished this up in a hurry, and personally, i rely on gameplay more than those two ;)

Also i had strange game freezing at the start (outside), but after restart it didn´t happened again.

 

I specially apreciated the fact i was able to complete mission without getting stuck an rush here to begging for spoilers :D but...

 

I did main objective by grabbing scepter and running like hell, i did not managed how to disable weight security system. Can you disable it ? It does sounds an alert when disabled... did i missed something ? Also, i did not figured out how to get to basement outside of house, looks like the disc has to be inserted next to doors, but i was not able to insert it there ...huh ?

 

 

Yes i will miss your great missions while you´ll take a break, wish all your RL issues gets solved soon. Thanks.

Edited by Trickster
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@Trickster

 

Select the disc in your inventory, 'r' to drop it to your hands, and when it's close enough it'll snap into place, opening the door

 

Intel Sandy Bridge i7 2600K @ 3.4ghz stock clocks
8gb Kingston 1600mhz CL8 XMP RAM stock frequency
Sapphire Radeon HD7870 2GB FLeX GHz Edition @ stock @ 1920x1080

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Voted excellent for gameplay, as allways with your FM, i had lots of good ol´ thiefy fun. Only good for visual and story though, as compared to others, there was not so much greatness. But i understand you finished this up in a hurry, and personally, i rely on gameplay more than those two ;)

 

Thanks Trickster and everyone! Glad people seem to like this mission!

 

I just want to comment that the mission was not finished in a hurry. I got it ready and sat idle on it quite a long time and then decided to release it instead of waiting 1.03. The reason was that the longer I waited, the more difficult it was getting back to mapping as I forgot where I was and what I was doing with the map. I map best in obsessive streaks.

 

The mission was designed to be roughly typical burglary heist, without grand story twists. Just plain sneaking fun.

If every mission had huge plot twists, they're soon expected from all the missions. (As it seems to be the case.) Sometimes a heist is just a heist and there should be more of that kind of missions, at least in my opinion. Think about it, not all of the original thief missions had soap opera plots. ;)

 

And my graphical style is not to create photorealistic scenes, but to make manageable scenes with good playability and good performance. It is an intentional style decision. Player imaginations typically fill in the gaps.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Gongrats with the release of this brilliant littel gem of a mission Sotha smile.gif

No problems at all with this one ohmy.gif (no need to cheat rolleyes.gif )

 

NiceView.jpg

What a great view from top of a tree cool.gif

 

This is how I disabled the alarm wink.gif

 

SillentAlarm.jpg

 

 

Has any body else found the

way to the attic by flipping this switch WayToAttic.jpg

 

 

Her´s my mission stats

Mis-Stats.jpg

Thanks for another great mission Sotha happy.gif

Edited by Nielsen74
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OMG what an excellent mission. At first I didn't like the outside, too bright, then I started actually "playing" instead of "looking" and my god, what a wonderful time!

 

Question though

 

 

 

I found the crypt key along with the disk, but I had previously lock picked the crypt door, is this by design?

 

 

 

 

Also loved the secret room, I spent I think 15 minute in there just reading stuff and looking at loot and imagining all the things our good Captain has done.

 

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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I found the crypt key along with the disk, but I had previously lock picked the crypt door, is this by design?

 

 

 

Yep. I my missions the player character is a master thief and *CAN* pick all mundane locks with enough time.

If he couldn't pick a lock, he wouldn't be a master thief now would he...? :P

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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I have completed the mission for the first time. Since there was still a good 2000 loot to find, I will have to play it again soonish. Good fun; the AI patrols were not overwhelming, but enough to challenge, and the way to get the main loot object was inspired. In fact, I could also (probably)

frame the killer for the job by leaving a lot of evidence next to this wall panel - so no need for poor Lark Butternose to be arrested for the next mission! laugh.gif

 

Some of the light placement was also very nice and dramatic in the map as lost_soul has written; that's always good. Some of the surfaces may have used a few more dirt decals, but I don't intend to bring this up as some tremendous error or something - overall, I liked the level a lot!

 

Take your time off from editing, but don't forget that TDM will draw you back... eventually! :ph34r:

Edited by Melan

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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