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Fan Mission: Old Habits (Rebuild) by Obsttorte 20/05/2013


Obsttorte

Mission Rating  

31 members have voted

  1. 1. Gameplay

    • Poor
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    • Good
      4
    • Great
      4
    • Excellent
      14
    • Near Perfect
      9
  2. 2. Story

    • Poor
      0
    • Good
      8
    • Great
      13
    • Excellent
      9
    • Near Perfect
      1
  3. 3. Aesthetics

    • Poor
      0
    • Good
      3
    • Great
      6
    • Excellent
      19
    • Near Perfect
      3


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I have only played this mission now since my memories of the earlier version were too fresh when it was first made available. I am generally not a fan of remakes since I'd rather see that effort go into something new... but this is one of the rare exceptions. The original Old Habits was obviously a newbie mission, often unrealistic and sometimes very frustrating (alerting the guards and getting them to calm down was hellish) - while this remake is polished, one of the best straightforward mansion missions for TDM.

 

It looks very good (although hilariously opulent), the gameplay is challenging but not as blatantly unfair as it used to be, and the clues are set up very well - they offer just enough info to go by. This is one mission that's very satisfying to explore, plus the routes to navigate the mansion are varied and make for varying types of challenge. There was one unfair gotcha moment, which I later circumvented the same way as Thiefette. Would suck for an iron man player, though. There was a bit too much loot in the mission, so I was starting to wonder where our thief was stuffing all that swag, but this is a stylistic thing. Any mistakes are more than made up for by the ingenious little tricks, the solid aesthetics and the sheer variety of guards to evade. That aspect very well done and tense in the right way. I broke my ghosting and knocked out two AI (the priest and the cook), although I needn't have bothered. There was one obvious area I didn't find a way into

 

(a locked wooden door under the church),

 

and I ended up with 500 loot still missing from the tally. Maybe next time!

 

So, all in all, this is a great mission and I hope to see more like it!

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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Thank you.

 

 

The key to the door can be found in the priests chamber.

 

 

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

I just did a run of this mission and it's definitely a huge improvement over the original. Heck, I think it's one of my favorite missions now.

 

Just a couple bugs/odd occurances though:

 

 

-The guard sitting at the stairs leading up from where you enter is sitting back too far into his chair. If you try to knock him out while he is still sitting then he will be brutally murdered by his own chair!

 

-Is it intended that the note inside the chest full of stolen goods doesn't into inventory?

 

-The little shack outside with the chapel key can cause freezes and/or crashes if abused. I think it has something to do with one or more of the small objects all over the floor. It caused my game to freeze twice, one when I attempted to use a detonate a mine on the door (hey it was worth a shot!) and another when I took the wood blocking the hole in the back and tossed it onto the floor scattering the bottles and debris. Perhaps one of the pieces on the floor might be in a bad spot and is doing something nasty on impact.

 

 

Edited by Professor Paul1290
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Thanks for the feedback. Regarding point #2 the answer is yes. Regarding the bugs I will take a look once I've found the time.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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Thanks.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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I've been having fun with this...very challenging in spots and a good stress test of AI acuity under 2.0. However, I have no idea how to get into the

priest's room, or the metal door under the church. I heard him behind a wooden door in the basement, but he doesn't seem to come out, even when I shoot a noise arrow outside the door and alert him. I've only found two readables...the noble's journal and the guard captain's log,

and neither of them seem to include any hints.

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The priest leaves his room every now and than to pray in the church. You can use this to enter the room. An alternate way is via some air shaft. When you walk down the stairs to the basement, watch out for a noise.

 

The key for the metal door is hidden inside the priest's room. It's not mandatory to get down there. it just provides a nice little extra :)

 

 

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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Very interesting mission, very hard to ghost -- didn't succeed in the end.

 

 

The wandering guards with flames are always tricky when you can't knock them out, and I felt I'd failed when I had to put one guard's torch out with a water arrow. I was intrigued at the way you made water arrows in such short supply, particularly as one has to be spent right at the start of the mission! The worst one for me though was the high priest, who'd spontaneously keep plucking a lit torch out of nowhere, so I knocked him out and completely wrecked my ghost :(

 

Climbing onto the roof rafters over the staircase below the church was extremely difficult, I only kept trying because by this time I'd come here for clues and had spotted the switch in the ceiling. I was beginning to wonder if there was a rope arrow I'd missed!

 

Had to come here for three things. Getting into the priest's room (he came out once, right at the start, but never emerged again); activating the statues (I probably should have thought of the answer) -- amusing just how tight the supply of water arrows is; and those blasted torches in the crypt. The moss arrow still sprays everywhere, and on my penultimate attempt it relit the water torch as earth.

 

 

An excellent mission.

Worth getting killed several times at the end

 

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Nice you liked it. Regarding your spoilers:

 

 

particularly as one has to be spent right at the start of the mission!

If you mean the first staircase, then you don't have to use a water arrow there.

who'd spontaneously keep plucking a lit torch out of nowhere,

The nowhere is the torch hanging on the wall ;)

Climbing onto the roof rafters over the staircase below the church was extremely difficult, I only kept trying because by this time I'd come here for clues and had spotted the switch in the ceiling. I was beginning to wonder if there was a rope arrow I'd missed!

There is no rope arrow in this mission. And yes, I know that climbing there is a bit messy. I've tried fixing that as best as I could, but it is still not optimal. :(

 

Regarding those three things you have looked up here. All of this is only needed to get the crown from the crypt, which is optional.

 

 

I've always aim for making my missions a bit more difficult, as I think that most of the FM's are a bit to easy. This is obviously very subjective. And I never plan them to be ghostable (except Builder Roads, of course), so don't feel sad if you don't manage that. Although I think it is possible. ;)

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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Regarding the first staircase, I went back and tried again, and hadn't realised that

yes, I can climb up between the two pillars without been seen. Without being heard is a bit more tricky, of course...

 

 

I need to dig into the optional goals because I was a few hundred short on loot (and I like to finish these things properly if I can).

 

 

Can I steal the priest's torch before he lights it? That would make ghosting his room a bit more feasible.

 

 

I do like to ghost, it's really the only way I enjoy the game now, so I was roundly cursing your

guards with torches!

There's definitely one room where I can't see a way to properly ghost the loot that's there. My stealth report for this mission was embarrassing.

 

By the way, I encountered a strange bug. One of the guards is quite a nasty thug and

carries an interesting scroll,

but when I tried to

pick pocket it

later in the game I ended up picking up the guard instead and briefly carrying him around! Um. Never seen that before. I was able to

pick pocket it and read it

earlier in the game, but had to reload that life.

 

I've seen a handful of references to TDM 2.0, but can't see it on the main website. Are people building this from source, or is there a test download for this version?

Edited by Araneidae
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2.0 is currently in the making. Access is currently mainly granted to the people working on it and the mappers who have to make sure there FM's are workin properly under 2.0.

 

 

 

The priest uses the torch outside of his rooms only (at least that's the desired effect). And no, you cannot steal it.

 

 

The guard thingy must be a bug, never heard of such behaviour before.

 

Which room do you mean that you can't ghost?

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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Just a side-note, I recently did a complete re-install and I don't see this mission on the in-game downloader (unless it's named something different and I'm just totally missing it), so someone might want to check on that.

 

Wait nevermind, it is on there but there's a different issue. When it's in the "Download Missions" list it shows up as the old "Old Habits" and has the old mission details (Old Habits 1 release date and that sort of thing).

After it downloads it shows up in the mission list correctly as "Old Habits 2".

Edited by Professor Paul1290
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The priest uses the torch outside of his rooms only (at least that's the desired effect). And no, you cannot steal it.

That's a shame. Then there must also have been some kind of bug: he never moved out of his room after I saw him once upstairs in the church. While I was in his room he'd sit down (beside, not on, his chair) then get up, light his torch, look around, put it out, and sit down again. Obviously if he'd cleared off I'd have had an open field! I gave up and clonked him in the end.

 

 

Which room do you mean that you can't ghost?

 

 

There's a room rather like an attic with a couple of chests and some other minor loot patrolled by a guard carrying a torch. Although it has a couple of side rooms, one leading to the balcony over the courtyard, the other blind, his erratic patrol and bright torch make the entire area unmanageable without quenching his torch. Maybe I didn't try hard enough?

 

The other room that wrecked my ghost was the priest's room, but it's looking like that was a problem with the priest's behaviour, he seems to have got stuck.

 

 

 

Another odd bit of behaviour is at the first entrance to the inner courtyard. There's quite a bit of traffic there, and I did keep seeing guards colliding with each other and very slowly pirouetting around each other. I imagine that's a core engine issue...

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  • 1 month later...

Erm - is this meant to be the original? Cuz it is. (Which I'm not complaining about as I prefer the original.) But the fact that it's called oldhabits2 makes me think it's meant to be the rebuild.

 

Just checked the fms folder in darkmod and there's a darkmod.txt file saying it's the first FM, and a readme.txt saying it's the rebuild. :wacko:

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Ahh, bloody, my mistake. Thanks for pointing that out.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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Yes, apologies.

 

Due to some confusion on our part, the original version was on the server. I have replaced this with the latest version and replaced the old screenshots.

 

@Thiefette, please delete your old "oldhabits" folder from your FMS folder and re-download.

Thanks, will do. Are both missions going to be available now as they are both so different and so good?

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Thanks, will do. Are both missions going to be available now as they are both so different and so good?

I have just asked Obs this very question as it less confusing to have the FMs called Oldhabits 1 and Oldhabits 2. Once I get the nod from him I will sort the FM pages and download links out.

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