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Fan Mission: Exhumed by Kyyrma and Airship Ballet (2014/11/04)


Airship Ballet

Poll: Exhumed  

46 members have voted

  1. 1. Gameplay

    • Poor
      0
    • Tolerable
      0
    • Good
    • Excellent
    • Near Perfect
  2. 2. Appearance

    • Poor
      0
    • Tolerable
      0
    • Good
    • Excellent
    • Near Perfect
  3. 3. Narrative



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Wow, for two weeks this was *very* well done. Visuals were excellent, with lots of details and organic patchwork everywhere - really impressive. And the building of suspense and use of readables was also top-notch. Overall, I'd actually go far as to say this is one of the better Dark Mod FM's I've played. Good job both of you!

  • Like 2

But you should walk having internal dignity. Be a wonderful person who can dance pleasantly to the rhythm of the universe.

-Sun Myung Moon

 

My work blog: gfleisher.blogspot.com

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Congrats AB!

 

I didn't think we'd see a mission from you so soon, but your WIP stuff was always top notch.

 

I misunderstood your PM and attributed this one to Kyyrma thinking you were an assistant beta tester on this one

... gotta correct a few more image descriptions at Moddb when I get a chance. :blush:

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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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Congrats AB on your first FM release! and Kyyrma of course, congrats! :)

 

Make sure you right click the download link > save as, if you open in new tab you get a page of encoded nonsense.

 

 

 

vzEUHta.jpg

 

 

Edited by Lux
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This was a ton of fun to build, and hopefully it will be a blast to play as well. To give a bit of background on how this was made:

 

We first came up with a basic concept and layout, roughly decided what purpose each room should have, and then came up with a loose timeline of events in order to be able to make consistent readables and details in the map. After planning we simply passed the map back and forth hot-potato building it segment by segment. Once the general build was done, we continued through a number of detail rounds until we had the map in its final state.

 

There were naturally a number of setbacks along the way, including sudden refusals of the map to compile and infuriatingly hard to locate leaks possibly caused by merging maps by copy-pasting large numbers of brushes. Still, this would probably be my preferred method of working on FMs in the future. It's absolutely fantastic to know that when you hit a slump or are too busy to work on the map, someone else will pick it right up.

 

Once more thanks to AB, who was able to put so many hours into this during such a short timeframe. It was intense, but the results were worth it.

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I agree with Moonbo that this did a great job of gradually building suspense. You got a real sense of the presence of

 

 

the malevolent spirit before you saw it, and towards the end there was a real feeling of being hunted.

 

I wasn't so keen on the traps. After I heard a noise in the crypt and turned around to find a pit behind me, I started running around most unstealthily, which was how I evaded the second one.

 

The unfrobable holy water was a bit perplexing. Initially I recalled the readable about geists, and assumed they were too incorporeal to be affected by holy water. Then I found the readable that refers to the use of holy water. Then I got an objective to purify a skull with holy water. By this point I was finding it very curious that I couldn't frob the vials of holy water.

 

 

I love the internal name readables/exhumed21/clunkyexposition :) -- but I seem to have missed superseriousambience.ogg if that was actually used anywhere...

Some things I'm repeatedly thinking about...

 

- louder scream when you're dying

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By this point I was finding it very curious that I couldn't frob the vials of holy water.
I did that to let the player know they couldn't fight back against the haunt. Really I saved your life by making you run rather than stand there shooting holy water arrows.

 

I seem to have missed superseriousambience.ogg if that was actually used anywhere...

It was used! There's a hint in the OP.

Edited by Airship Ballet
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Hi, just tried and finished your mission.

I must say, I'm quite impressed. Too bad it was so short!

Nice atmosphere, clever placement of NPC's, great plot sound and music, you gave me a great evening!

 

One question though:

Who exactly were the people inside and around the Cathedral? Were they pagans or just marauders?

 

By the way the skull was nice.

Edited by Anderson
  • Like 1

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

badge?user=andarson

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Who exactly were the people inside and around the Cathedral? Were they pagans or just marauders?

Just looters, ones that got their comeuppance in hanging around for too long.

 

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Edited by Airship Ballet
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Just looters, ones that got their comeuppance in hanging around for too long.

 

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

 

 

Ah, that explains it. I just wasn't sure, since some of them seemed to be canniabls (you know the meat on the table of that hut outside).

 

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

badge?user=andarson

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Ah, that explains it. I just wasn't sure, since some of them seemed to be canniabls (you know the meat on the table of that hut outside).

 

 

 

Cannibals? Well you never know, there is always a shortage of food in the frozen wastes... :P

 

The idea I had when placing the tools was that the graverobbers use them to pry rings, bracelets and other valuables from the frozen stiffs they pull from the ground. The easiest way would be to hack off an arm or leg and just bring it to the cabin to thaw.

 

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Cannibals? Well you never know, there is always a shortage of food in the frozen wastes... :P

 

The idea I had when placing the tools was that the graverobbers use them to pry rings, bracelets and other valuables from the frozen stiffs they pull from the ground. The easiest way would be to hack off an arm or leg and just bring it to the cabin to thaw.

 

Oh yeah, that makes sense.

Thanks for clarifying!

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

badge?user=andarson

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For two weeks of building, this is a seriously excellent mission! First, the desolate winter environment and the ruined church both suggest a sense of being alone. Second, the - suitably nasty - activities of the current occupants and the story about the mission's fate give the FM its "authenticity" - it is well-written, well-paced, and uses foreshadowing neatly. The little touches like the forces of nature reclaiming the stonework, the handles on the boarded up windows, the lights in the bell or the melted wax around the candles are icing on the top.

 

As for the freaky, freaky undead, there goes my idea for a future mission! But, more than that, they were very well presented with the effect around them!

 

For a while, I actually thought I'd have to defeat them by lighting the various candles around the church, but turned out not to be the case. My second thought was that the mission would end on a darkly ironic note, with our protagonist stuck on the top of the tower, freezing to death like the last Builder. Well, I do suppose those things caught up with him in the wintery stormy, anyway. ;) The speculation only shows that the mission is well done, and invites this kind of thinking.

 

As a Halloween mission, I found this one especially nice since good horror is not easy to do, and even harder to maintain. Here, it just works. Could it be bigger? Maybe, maybe not. So, it was probably just right!

 

(The "making of" GIF is also cool.)

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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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Loved the music, very atmospheric! Did anyone else find a certain little somethin' somethin'?

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Loved the music, very atmospheric! Did anyone else find a certain little somethin' somethin'?

 

All credit on that goes to Kevin MacLeod, whose royalty free music collection I would suggest to other mappers as well.

 

Also, might you be implying you found a certain super spooky secret? B)

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For a while, I actually thought I'd have to defeat them by lighting the various candles around the church.

Well, if you had gone on a candle-lighting spree you may well have discovered the aforementioned "somethin' somethin'". Thanks for the feedback: it makes the mad rush worth it knowing the map's being enjoyed ^_^

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Here was me thinking I had looked everywhere - nearly 500 loot missing

 

We decided to make the loot placement a bit trickier then in most missions, because it's not a mandatory objective. This way those who enjoy scrounging for secrets can have a self-imposed challenge trying to find all the 500 loot, but no one will get stuck because of a loot limit.

Edited by kyyrma
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