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Fan Mission: The Transaction by Sotha (2011/03/04)


Sotha

  

76 members have voted

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

    • Poor
      2
    • Tolerable
      2
    • Good
      16
    • Excellent
      39
    • Near Perfect
      17
  2. 2. Appearance: Visual pleasure, lighting, visual style, deduct bad texturing etc.

    • Poor
      0
    • Tolerable
      1
    • Good
      14
    • Excellent
      45
    • Near Perfect
      16
  3. 3. Story & Text: Story. Text. Briefing. Graphic storytelling

    • Poor
      0
    • Tolerable
      1
    • Good
      10
    • Excellent
      35
    • Near Perfect
      30


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7622850.png

 

The Transaction is a small/medium sized map in which aspiring thief Thomas Porter delivers the cryptic book, 'De Vermis Mysteriis' to a bookstore owner named Victor de Grenefeld. It is the fourth mission in the Thomas Porter series, continuing from where The Glenham Tower ended. The mission was created by me, Sotha and I wish to thank BrokenArts, Melan and Ocn for playtesting and Bikerdude, BrokenArts and Ocn for voiceacting. 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 mapping efforts. Extra thanks to freesound.org -contributors who make excellent quality sound effects available for free.

 

Trailer (thanks to ocn!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBdEsKoqWl4

 

Briefing:

Ah, the town of Glenham. I never really thought I would be happy to see its shabby wooden miner dwellings, but after the nightmares of the Glenham Tower I'm happy to see any kind of civilization.

 

During my return trip from the tower the ghostly mist veil transformed into an intense thunderstorm and heavy rain. My clothes are soaked and I'm dreadfully tired of the harsh tribulations of the past few days.

 

My task for tonight is simple. All I have to do is to get the strange and incomprehensible book I obtained from the tower, 'De Vermis Mysteriis,' to the bookstore owner Victor de Grenefeld. And more importantly collect the hefty sum the bookstore owner promised to pay me. With that kind of sum I can sit back and relax for a while.

 

I'd better stay in good terms with my customer and not steal from him. I have the hunch that de Grenefeld is a well connected man so staying on his good side might be beneficial for me in the future: maybe they'll need a skilled adventurer like me and I could turn legitimate. I could earn my keep and I wouldn't need to constantly hide from the city watch.

 

At any rate, I've got it all planned out for the remainder of the night. I'll visit the bookstore, drop the book to de Grenefeld and collect my fee. After that I'd better hide in the basement of an abandoned building I've spotted near the town north gate and get some well deserved rest.

 

I don't think the city watch would think a cloaked and armed person like me would be on honorable business in a stormy weather like this so it would be wise to avoid all confrontation with the guards. I do not need any misunderstadings with the city watch right now.

 

The undead horrors in the Tower forced me to expend most of my tools and I desperately need more equipment if I intend to continue my budding adventuring career. I should get some extra gold for new gear and maybe a few holy water potions just in case. There is a Builder church nearby where I might be able to find some. I suspect those fanatics might have gold hidden there as well..

 

It is time to move in the town and get the things done quickly. Somehow I have a bad feeling about all this. It's probably nothing, probably I am just jumpy because of the horrors in the Tower and sleep deprivation. Tomorrow I'll sleep long, relax and eat well.

 

UPDATED LINK:

Use the ingame downloader to get it.

 

Bikerdude was added in the author, I forgot him. No other chages. Could The Powers That Be make sure that this version ends up in the ingame downloader? Thanks!

 

Known bugs:

One betatester experienced an error ("ERROR: Failed to spawn player as 'atdm:player_thief'"), which drops the player back to main menu upon map load. If you experience this scenario, please turn EAX off in the options menu. That cleared the problem for the tester.

 

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://www.bloodgate.com/fms/transaction.pk4

 

Congratulations on the release! I am sure it is a worthy FM!

 

@Sotha: The PK4 file contains "sound/transaction.sndshd~" (a backup file) which can be deleted from it.

"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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Bloody awesome, an Fm for me to play that I no clue how it was made...

 

Dammit, Biker, I'm so sorry. I can't believe I forgot you from the voiceacting credits! I'll make a new pk4 tomorrow, now gotta catch some z's.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Dammit, Biker, I'm so sorry. I can't believe I forgot you from the voiceacting credits! I'll make a new pk4 tomorrow, now gotta catch some z's.

LOL Sotha, thats not what I meant. I have helped out and tested so many FMs latley thats its nice to be able to play one as just a player.. btw I forgot I actually did some lines for you..

^_^

Edited by Bikerdude
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Damn, I've had a bit of a bad start with this one.

 

 

The first time I got into the bookshop, a citywatch saw me and chased me inside, killing me. The second time, I was also spotted going in, but only enough to get them to start searching. The cutscene started, which was marvelous, but it was spoiled a bit by the fact that one of the guards came into the room just as the revenant was taking some gem or something. The guard started trying to attack me through the bars. Then, when I was released, the guard and the rev started fighting, but after one swing they stood there facing each other, with the guard floating off the ground and throwing rocks at the rev. Another guard came wandering in and stood in the middle of the flames talking about how he had "seen something strange a while back." Stranger than your buddy throwing stones at a flaming skeleton? Really? :laugh:

 

 

Anyway, a tip for the future might be to spawn some monsterclip or something to keep non-actors out of the scene while the player is immobilized. I'm heading back in to see what is actually supposed to happen.

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Huh. I must be missing something obvious here, but I'm not sure what. :mellow:

 

 

Getting into the bookstore unseen has proven difficult for me...I was spotted the first four attempts. Finally I managed to get in safely and watched the cutscene without interruption. However.... at the end of it I'm stuck with an angry revenant and seemingly nowhere to go. :huh: One door is nonfrobbable and the regular way out is barred. If there's any other exit I haven't had time to find it while being chased around the room. I doubt I'm supposed to fight the revenant to get out,

so what am I missing...?

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Hark!

:D

 

I'm almost thinking I'm overly hyped (my own fault*) on this and will be expecting too much; it's just that so far every SFM has been great, and each one has had at least some fantastic innovation, and *these innovations are semi-telegraphed (or outright spoken of) by the discussion that goes on in Sotha's FM thread, and Sotha's FM thread has had a lot of various Q&A as prelude to this mission...

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Release article:

 

 

http://www.moddb.com...action-released

 

 

(As usual, it will likely take a couple of days to be authorized by Moddb.)

 

:)

 

Edit:

 

Also... Wikified! :D

Edited by nbohr1more

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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holy crap this mission was great!!!

 

This one really felt story driven, which I :wub:. Not just having a great story, but being driven by it. Most FM's no matter how beautifully constructed and how well the AI are placed, my primary concern is "where have i not searched yet" and systematically peruse all areas for "stuff".

 

This FM, i found myself wanting to know "what happens next?!" Wonderfully long readables with both very cool background info, and

useful clues inside.

. I love that kind of stuff. I've seen a lot of complaints about too much text in TDM/Thief FM's, but I say bring it on! write a damn novel if it makes the FM more interesting!

 

This will be the first FM that I give Near perfect rating on story/plot. fantastic.

Edited by ungoliant
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Very nice FM. I especially liked the

scripted sequences like the cut-scene in the shop and the one when the guards found me after I lit the fire. I haven't seen anything like that in TDM up until now.

 

 

My only suggestion would have been to have more places in the town be enterable.

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

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My only suggestion would have been to have more places in the town be enterable.

 

If i had to guess, I'd say this was done purposefully to save on performance for the

lightning effects and many torch-wielding guards

 

I think it worked very well. The gameplay was uniquely challenging as a result.

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Awesome! I had a really great time playing this one.

 

I finished with 7670 loot, missing less than 300. I was afraid to face the city watch at first. Since there was no actual objective saying not to confront them, I did end up getting a bit... naughty. The only guards left standing at the end did not appear to have any coin purses on their belts, so I think I missed a secret somewhere. I loved the dungeon scene with the tortured wench. I might go back in and take another look at the 'portal' and the book of incantations... did nothing but get burned when I tried to use the portal.

 

 

I did discover that...

 

I had to aim my water arrows much lower than before to extinguish torches, hitting them quite a bit below the flame. I used to either hit torches directly on the flame or just above to put them out. That did not work in this FM.

 

Edited by PranQster

System: Mageia Linux Cauldron, aka Mageia 8

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Just finished this, gotta say if this mission has had prettier graphics it would have gotten near perfect across the board, as it was it was mostly excellent. Well done Sotha , the story and scripted sequences were awesome.

I loved lighting candles and placing them around the place and the basement was just genius design and placement.

Edited by Bikerdude
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@Everyone:

Thanks for the generally favourable comments thus far.

 

I added an updated link. There is no changes, except Bikerdude was added to the readme credits.

http://www.mediafire.com/?6nwc3h8gblr1x84

 

Could people hosting it remove the old and replace with this one? Thanks!

 

@Spring:

 

 

In principle I agree that alerted AI's getting in the store is a big problem, but I could see no way to fix it. Basically there is only one guard with the cinematic 1 property. All the other guards should freeze for the duration of the cutscene.

 

If you have difficulties getting in the store, just use a water arrow to douse the torch. Then the door way is pitch black and entering is easy as pie.

 

The lich queen has trapped you. Fight or die.

 

I wanted to insert a story driven combat scene, since I realised that many people never do combat. They just load if they get caught. Or run away. With this FM people can try combat with good conscience, there is no way to avoid it. It's part of the plot.

 

 

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Could people hosting it remove the old and replace with this one? Thanks!

 

Will do, should be up in a minute or two.

"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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Wow.

 

As anticipated whole new layers of gameplay powered by the ?what-can-I-do-with-this-engine? engineering that you build upon...

 

 

 

Problem is my typically unorthodox (typically unorthodox?) ways got me into some trouble.

 

I went about things completely backward and ended up at the bookstore late -- after going through the streets, entering the abandoned house, and the cloister, and freeing the prisoner... and generally (completely, ITBT) having it out with the Watch... so by the time I did get there for the coming of the Revenant, I was in no shape to deal with it at all. And was stuck in a death sequence/reload/die/reload/die... 10% health on sitting to talk to the book dealer, 100% dead the 2 seconds after I regained control and had the Rev charge and slay me... not a chance:laugh:

 

So I admit I notarget-ed to deal with that bastard.

 

There was just nothing I could do but go way back in saves. And I was too intrigued to go back.

 

 

 

Aside from that everything pretty much worked out okay. Very nicely done.

 

 

 

A couple of the new objectives (the freeing the prisoner, and the he's-dead-help-yourself) come to mind clicked off before they clicked on, if you know what I mean, but this too may have been due to my methods. I don't know. Doesn't seem that that can explain all of it though...

 

 

 

 

 

Love that you took the Undeath subject and gave it ...life.

 

And not only that you did it with aplomb. And an apple.

 

 

 

Looking forward to more episodes!

 

I know you said you'd lay off for a while but don't leave us hanging for too long; you know this setup deserves to be set forth.

 

Thanks!

Edited by Aprilsister
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