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Fan Mission: La Banque Bienveillante by Airship Ballet (2014/11/22)


Airship Ballet

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A bank job in TDM?! Oh I am looking forward to this.

 

Thank you!!! :D

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Really picky and I have no idea why it has happened - screen resolution 1680 x 1050

There is a line in the description missing from the bottom of the first picture or the top of the second

"it makes sense to start small,"

 

post-8491-0-83058400-1416649897_thumb.jpg

 

post-8491-0-26576500-1416649902_thumb.jpg

Edited by Oldjim
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Unfortunately I can't see your screenies posted, but the description sounds promising. Congrats on the release.

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

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Unfortunately I can't see your screenies posted, but the description sounds promising. Congrats on the release.

Ficksed, probably something to do with Dropbox permissions.

Really picky and I have no idea why it has happened...

This is also ficksed: I changed it last minute because it was duplicated across two pages, but removed the wrong one so it didn't show at all.

This map is good and you should feel good.

How dare you presume to tell me how to feel.
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Just played through this. Where's our FM voting board at the top of this thread! :P

 

 

 

B2XLTD6.jpg

 

 

 

Wow, what a fun little mission! A few really neat concepts in here too. Congrats on the release. Architecture and detail work were above adequate and really fit the space. Music was a bit loud for my taste but only in certain rooms which you probably did just for effect. In any case the majority of the audio was spot on.

 

The only objective I had an issue with was the incriminating evidence and that's the only spoiler of yours that I read. It wasn't cruel as you stated, IMO, and it would have worked much better if you'd had a readable that she'd wrote on her nightstand or something that at least *hinted* as to where to look. As it was it turns in to a player jump-frobbing all over the place, all over the walls, etc. which is really out of place considering the remaining part of the FM really was immersive and put you in the bank robbers shoes, it felt excellent other than this moment.

 

 

 

I just went ahead and knocked out everyone save for the woman sleeping in her bed. Then I could run about at my leisure and do whatever I liked, search everywhere, etc. The chests full of money/jewels in the vault! Amazing idea! grab the loot, sounds of shuffling through it and then a bag appears containing the booty. I loved this idea and it was really well executed and believable, nice job.

 

The black-as-night closet where the light comes on when the door opens, eEK! Haha, another cool idea although if you lean against the door to listen the player leans through the edge of the brush creating this effect and the door is easily visible which seemed a bit untested. Neat idea though, maybe expanding the brush a touch to within 1 unit of the door or similar could fix that.

 

The letter that talked about the secret passage in the vault floor was a bit misleading. It talked about "an easy way" to get to the loot drop. I was expecting it to come out the back of the building and be a quick short route however it really only avoids the office area. I didnt attempt carrying a box up the ladder but I'm assuming that it was possible. In any case, I did traverse the passage but I could move much quicker just sprint-crouching through the office area with everything. So it wasn't a shortcut but it was nice that there was an alternate route and it was properly "back dirty hallway" decorated and looked good.

 

The carrying of the boxes/bags one-after-the-other-over-the-same-areas-doing-the-same-things-over-and-over-again was a bit tedious but I'm sure it would be much more tense if you ghosted the mission and decided not to knock anyone out. I'll have to replay the FM and do it that way as I think it would be way more fun.

 

The only real thing that bothered me was a basic player usability/immersion thing. When you open something you should be able to close it. When you flip a switch to turn the lights on you can turn them back off. I'd like to see this always implemented on everything. When you play as a thief you want to "leave no trace", put everything back the way you found it, and when you move a painting, open an electrical door, etc., the player should be able to close these things and put them back the way they found them so, "no one suspects they were there". You get the point.

 

I stumbled on this when I opened the electrical panel to clip the wires in the vault. Clipped the important wires as per the readable, and then looked left to close the door but instead of the door closing, one of the left most wires on the right of my screen was highlighted and it cut the wire tripping the alarm. The door won't frob at all and there's no way to close it. Also, why is the alarm going off when I disabled it in the cellar? A little inconsistency there. If they're on separate loops there should be a readable at least explaining that to the player. Its a small niggle though and not really anything that detracted overall from the FM.

 

I also did have an issue, not sure why, with the first of the crates. I picked it up and moved around to get a feel for its weight and how I would negotiate the hallways with it. Then I sat it down on the vault table. After sitting it down it would not frob highlight again for the life of me! Haha... I moved all around it moving my camera around in circles for maybe 3-4 minutes trying to get it to frob highlight and fiNALLy there was a quick glimpse of highlight which I then had to keep searching for over and over until I found the exact spot and then I could pick up the crate... something wierd about the frob box or interaction there or the table I sat it on, maybe an engine issue, not sure. Just thought I'd mention it.

 

 

 

 

Overall, tONs of fun and a great first individual FM from you, Airship! Lots of originality, suitable architecture and detail that added to the experience, and an intriguing story.

 

Thanks for the experience!

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[snip]

 

Valid points, valid points everywhere. To clarify a few things, though:

  • The shortcut is intended as a means for people to get around the guards, as you suggested, but it's fiddly and doesn't dump you out in the clear, both of which are intentional. That said, I highly recommend that you buy the alternate loot drop, the reason being that it opens up a vent at the very bottom of the ladder that you can use to have all the loot secured within a couple of minutes. As I said, it's heavily inspired by PAYDAY 2, and in the missions with preplanning like this, the vanilla loot solutions are utterly useless, as in carry-20-bags-of-bank-notes-through-the-whole-level-while-under-fire useless. There are alternatives you can buy that make it considerably easier and less monotonous, and the same goes for this.
  • I figured the alarm would probably trip regardless if you cut a wire leading straight to it, tamper detection and whatnot. Besides, I really wanted people to see what happens when you trip it: it took forever to set up!
  • I made a lot of things unfrobbable after use simply because it was far too much to keep track of if I wanted to allow the player to undo it. Put simply, the vault looks like this in the editor, and you'd have to double that if you wanted to have it revert on closing or re-pulling whatever you interacted with. I agree with you: it annoyed me in Thi4f that I couldn't leave the place as I found it but at least here I have an excuse!
  • All the ambience is at default volume, though I do tend towards pervasive ambience to avoid having nothing but the sounds of clearing throats and scuffing boots.
  • Again, sorry about the lame painting button placement. I was going to move it after I saw that neither Xarg nor Kyyrma found it, but I figured at least one of the objectives ought to be difficult.
 

Thanks for the great feedback. I'm glad you had fun, and well done on getting all the loot you possibly can ^_^

Edited by Airship Ballet
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The last 100 is the alternate coins in the safe. If you buy the objective they're worth a ton, if not they're only worth 100 because you sell them at face value rather than as antiques. Basically what you got is the maximum possible, although I didn't go to any great length to hide regular loot.

Edited by Airship Ballet
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Thanks for this nice mission!

It is definetly worth a couple of replays, with all these optional quests.

 

Now, since I had not read the opening post carefully reagrding that, I didn't buy anything in the shop on the first run and just went for the 'Hard' difficulty.

 

And ran into a few issues. Maybe they can be sorted out in an updated version some time.

 

- Managers office: I frobbed the secret compartment blind without having found the button. I simply frobbed the pating and got the loot.

- Vault: Same here. I looted the 2 'secure stores' without opening them at all.

- Vault: the 'fuse box' does not highlight, although you can frob it and raise the alarm.

- Escape from vault: if your butt blocks the hatch back up near the engines room from opening, then you are busted, since the hatch can not be frobbed manually and the switch is frob inert as well.

- Dropping boxes out of the window: the crates can get easily stuck in the window if you are not carefull. And you have no chance frobbing them again and retry. They are simply out of reach then.

 

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- Managers office: I frobbed the secret compartment blind without having found the button. I simply frobbed the pating and got the loot.

- Vault: Same here. I looted the 2 'secure stores' without opening them at all.

- Vault: the 'fuse box' does not highlight, although you can frob it and raise the alarm.

- Escape from vault: if your butt blocks the hatch back up near the engines room from opening, then you are busted, since the hatch can not be frobbed manually and the switch is frob inert as well.

- Dropping boxes out of the window: the crates can get easily stuck in the window if you are not carefull. And you have no chance frobbing them again and retry. They are simply out of reach then.

 

Egh, they're all problems that cropped up at one point or another that I thought I'd fixed. A huge problem while mapping was that I kept crashing when opening various UI elements in the new DR version. It's a far better version so I didn't want to change back and just saved compulsively instead. I added and tested working set_frobables in the deposit boxes, got rid of the unfrobbable fuse box problem and changed the clipping on the windows. They were all found to work at some point while testing but they've since been removed in the confusion. There are some things that I couldn't find a solution for anywhere (really considering writing a more comprehensive .pdf guide for DR due to the inconsistency of the wiki) and had to improvise with. The vault door and alarm lever, for example, would always stop if blocked by the player, even if set to keep moving and be unstoppable. As a result I just had to spawn clip walls to stop the player touching them because they had to go unfrobbable after use. The same applies for that hidden door out of the tunnel, though I tried really hard to stop it moving entirely but it always ended up open in the end so that was bad luck for you. It seems that under certain conditions the box may not frob properly but I never got to the bottom of it. I'm gonna have another run-through of the map when I'm not sick of the sight of it. Unless something game-breaking crops up here, I'll just take notes of problems and include the updated version in the next release once it's a two-part campaign.

I'm glad you enjoyed it, hope you saved to get around the faults on my part.

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Dont worry Xarg, Airship is just ribbing you :-)

 

Congrats on the release young lady.

 

Haha yeah I know, I doubt she'd have liked the post if she thought I was trying to tell her what to do.

 

Srsly though, this should have a poll... perhaps one with a sixth option, that says something like "Boom! How's that for a deposit, Benevolent?!"

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"Boom! How's that for a deposit, Benevolent?!"

"Pour une fois, nous sommes aidés par un cochon!" Seriously though, I'm not a fan of polls. I understand the need for them in contest releases but there's a bunch of reasons as to why I think they're unnecessary and inaccurate. For one, I'd much rather people have to articulate what they liked and disliked so I can build on it, and for another people will most likely be afraid to vote honestly if they thought it was bad but everybody else has voted positively. Nobody wants to be that guy, but if it can be done via constructive criticism I'm much more likely to get the honest critique I need.

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I'm actually really liking all the cool little things you added, but you needed to test this map a bit more. I've been running into tons of little things that I would have brought to your attention.

I'll put you in my little black book for the next one.
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Just finished playing, really enjoyed it Airship! Thanks for this fantastic mission.

 

Good

 

 

The level design was fantastic and to me felt Thief 2 inspired, you had a lot of little quirky things here and there that I just loved and your overall level design skills are fantastic, the layout of everything was really well done.

 

The payday 2 elements were very cool as well, I loved running the bags back and forth, but it did give me small ptsd nightmares from so many failed deathwish shadow raids :P

 

I loved all of the hidden compartments you had and just unique ways you placed loot, from flipping over the writing board thingy on the desk to reveal the keys to just placing a book over a bin. It was nice to feel like I actually had to discover the loot

 

Also in the bedroom upstairs having that illusion of really being in the second story was very nice, placing that city skyline texture behind some trees was a very smart idea so props to you!

 

 

 

The bad

 

 

Some texture work especially in the hallways seemed very stretched and you could visibly note the lower quality, I think if you just set the scale down a bit it would have improved that quite a lot.

 

There were a couple of bugs like when the guard entered moreleys (spelling?!) room and got caught on something and just bugged out there for a while, also in that same room I believe the desk in the middle of the room needed to be lowered as it was hovering a bit

 

The ambient music was a bit monotonous at times so perhaps for your next FM change it up a bit or have something more than just a flat consistent drone for most of it. I know the mission did have different songs but the main one was just that flat drone (but hey that could just be personal preference coming out here)

 

 

 

Overall I really enjoyed it and I can't wait for your next FM! :D

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Pretty good. For a small mission, a lot of things to do and some replay value. I'm not sure how ghostable this is with all objectives and getting all or all possible loot. Dropping off the key back in the desk for example, and getting the loot in his room seems impossible without knocking him out. And of course in the offices there is that one guard in the middle sitting on the chair, definitely needed to use some water arrows to create darkness for getting past that that.

 

One issue I had was that the

sealed boxes of gold bars in the vault became unfrobbable after I had bagged up the other loot in the chests and on the table

.

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Pretty good. For a small mission, a lot of things to do and some replay value. I'm not sure how ghostable this is with all objectives and getting all or all possible loot. Dropping off the key back in the desk for example, and getting the loot in his room seems impossible without knocking him out. And of course in the offices there is that one guard in the middle sitting on the chair, definitely needed to use some water arrows to create darkness for getting past that that.

 

Water arrow the wall lamp to his right, lockpick the desk, mantle the desk and ko him, 1 arrow ;)

 

 

One issue I had was that the

sealed boxes of gold bars in the vault became unfrobbable after I had bagged up the other loot in the chests and on the table

.

 

Due to some limitation, it seems only one box can be active at a time, starting with the top left one, just take 'em one at a time

 

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