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Fan Mission: Ulysses 2: Protecting the Flock by Sotha (2015/05/28)


Sotha

U2: Flock rating  

34 members have voted

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

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    • Tolerable
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    • Excellent
    • Near Perfect
  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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3) The bell tower would have needed some kind of purpose and a reason to be built.

Sniping and tracking enemies :D

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Task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody see. - E.S.

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Sniping and tracking enemies :D

 

Sadly, in my books this benefit will not justify the cost of the implementation. You can snipe and track enemies from the ground level. :D

 

EDIT: that said, making a tower sniping focused mission might be a different thing entirely. ;)

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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I have had the pleasure of playing this mission last evening, and like the first part, it is another smoothly executed, solid gameplay experience. There is a nice variety to the challenges; the kill/don't kill dynamic makes it particularly tricky, and you have to manage your assassinations carefully to avoid the bloodstains (at least the masked men fight and go down silently). There are plenty of reasons to dislike the people you are killing - the graphical storytelling makes sure of it - and there are a lot of potentially great situations when dealing with them.

 

I particularly loved executing the leader - who, by the way, had a totally creepy "satanic Teutonic knight" appearance. I cleaned out the church, and, swinging from the chandelier, blasted him with two fire arrows. Epic gameplay moment! Then a gas arrow into the balcony doorway to take care of the followers who came running, right into the poison cloud. B)

 

Ulysses really comes into his own in this episode, and he is an interesting character as a crazed/inspired sneaky Builder assassin. :ph34r: I like that people are exploring ideas like this, or Moonbo's "paranormal investigator", and hope there will be both more to the story, and more off-the-beaten-path experiments with TDM's base gameplay.

 

If there is something I am getting second thoughts about, it is the AI relighting behaviour. It is realistic and looks good, but it reduces the strategic questions of extinguishing lights into gaining momentary convenience. In a mission that's already lit up very well, it is maybe a bit too much.

 

Freeing the hostages is an interesting challenge. Fortunately, it doesn't become an escort mission, but it also breaks the suspension of disbelief a bit that they just flee through umpteen guards without getting cornered and chopped down. No easy way out here, though.

 

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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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Finally finished.

 

Needed the help of DarkRadiant though.

I love assassination missions, and this one had some high points, and a few low ones too, all in all it was worth it, but I think I like Ulysses 1 better.

 

 

 

I had to look up the location of the lady hostage (hostage location next to that dining area). I looked around slowly in that room. I once ran around in there with a light to see if there was something interesting.

I have no idea how, but everytime I missed the door to the other room, where the final (for me) hostage was. Even with noclip I missed that room. I found it finally in tdm, because of the trigger name I think, and I had a hard time seeing the door even as I knew it was there.

 

Also the location felt a bit forced after a while, every new spot screamed more of "lighted so you have nearly no room to move around, and many people come in here, so you have no peace"

 

Also, that knockouts against people you kill after that, count for the knockout limit was sad. I tried knocking out people first, and then killing them were no one noticed the blood, but I had to stop that after a short while because of the knockout limit. Not sure if thats fixable though.

 

What also nagged me a bit, but I don't think thats easy to fix, was that I couldn't let blood stains be, where the bloodstains of the dead builders were. I thought that would be a perfect spot to kill, but they got noticed.

 

 

Now the positive highlights :-) :

-) Killing people - quite some of them (I killed 9 I think? 8 Plague Masks and their leader?)

-) Killing people and staying undetected, with some tension and taking my time

-) People that are "easy" to kill (Once I found their motivation)

-) Wonderful environment, not small, not big, a bit cramped - seemed to fit the location

-) Custom conversations, a big plus

 

 

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I don't know if it's just me, but the mine explosion effects on this and your last mission were THE ABSOLUTE, BEST MINE EXPLOSION SIMULATION I'VE EVER SEEN/HEARD on a video game. It was so very awesome and realistic.

 

Oh, and the mission was excellent too. Thiefy in every way.

Edited by ajm786
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Thematically not as impressive as Ulysses: Genesis with the theme of the whole automaton experiments but did offer I think an improvement in terms of map layout and patrol routes setting up the gameplay when it comes to assassinating targets which is a large part of what Ulysses: Genesis was about as well. If you didn't want to be seen when killing the plague-mask targets you really had watch patrols and wait for the perfect moment to strike, and then often clean up afterwards by moving the body and dealing with any potential messes (blood stains if you sniped them with arrows, that kind of thing) so that the others who would often patrol through the areas the plague masks would inhabit wouldn't see any of that and go into an alert. Whereas in Ulysses: Genesis it was incredibly easy to just knockout the targets (gas mine the platemail guy), bring them to a secluded area and then stab the unconscious bodies with your sword or blow them all up with a mine if you were feeling fancy.

 

There were plenty of alternative routes (small water tunnels or air ducts) to get into and out of places, as well. Pretty solid mission and perhaps more compelling in story than the Thomas Porter series since Ulysses is still very mysterious in that we don't know much about him and how he ended up in that cell in the first mission. There's definitely room for continuing that story if you make more missions about him.

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This mission was superb, like all Sotha missions.

 

 

Quite challenging too, as I knocked people around in the courtyard, which immediately garnered lots of unwanted attention. Plus, the hostages were hard ro rescue without creating noise, as I couldn't easily maneuver behind the bad guys to take them out.

 

 

All in all, a great mission. Liked it a lot :) Can't wait for your next one, Sotha.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I finally completed it now I've got my arm back! I loved the rest of the mission just as much as the start. In most TDM missions I feel morally obliged to leave the people in peace, so it's wonderful to have free licence to become a stealth assassin in TDM :ph34r: Hiding the bodies in such a bustling monastery made for great puzzles too.

 

A couple of minor points: the loot goal was trivial. I didn't have to search, I hit the objective (playing on max difficulty) about 3 rooms in to the monastery, after killing just 1 plague mask in the bathroom plus the leader, and before I'd found even a single hostage. And I didn't use any gas mines on my first playthrough because of the 3-knockout limit. I think I'd have used them if the limit didn't apply to plague masks, allowing a knock-out-then-kill tactic. I'll do that anyway on my next playthrough,

to help with "runners" after I've freed a hostage

.

 

You did a wonderful job on the backdrop -- the blooded bodies of the builders in the church for example -- and the drunken conversation in the wine cellar was inspired! Likewise the daytime scenes in the intro video. Were they all rendered in TDM? They look so good that I can't help wonder if there isn't a way to do a daytime mission in TDM, relying on cover rather than shadow outdoors à la Splinter Cell.

 

Overall I loved it, and I'd *really* like to play more of this style of mission.

 

p.s. This is only the 4th mission of yours that I've completed, after Knighton's, Fence, and Ulysses 1. I'm not a thief veteran and your Thomas Porter series was frankly too hard for me when I tried it last year. That's a good thing: tough missions give the game long-lasting appeal. I completed the first two by save-spamming but didn't feel I was doing them justice, and I couldn't complete any of the others after multiple attempts. By now though I reckon I probably have the skills so I'm looking forward to having another go at your series :)

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Thanks for playing, I'm glad you liked it.

 

Yep, all the scenes were made in DR. Daylight missions are possible to do: check out Fieldmedic's Reap as You Sow. Daylight makes it very difficult, though. The AI is brutally observant when the lightgem is at full illumimation.

 

Yep, TP series is very hard. With my later missions I've become more soft. ;)

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I had time to play this last night, and I had much fun with it.

Visuals, story etc. I found to be quite good, I am almost sorry to say just "quite good" because the general level of quality in most missions made here has become high enough that a very decent mission is almost the new "normal" and

seems to induce less praise somehow than probably would be deserved.

Therefore I will just mention the new special game mechanic that Sotha has introduced here - and that I liked it - hostage-freeing was a new interesting aproach to DM and brought about pleasurable challenges in clearing the path for the fleeing.

My only minor issue was that I would have found it better if I had been somehow informed beforehand about the fact that when I approach the hostage, the killing/fleeing starts on its own - I was surprised by this in my first try and had to reaload. But this was only a very minor inconvenience.

 

Thank you again for a great time sneaking through the night, Sotha.

"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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  • 3 weeks later...

Just got around to this mission and Once again Sotha, It was a great if slightly frustrating mission. I enjoyed the

 

 

Water tunnels and loot hidden in them. I had to use the health potions as I could not find a breath potion.

 

 

At the start I was not shore where to go but by the 15 min mark I realized it was a tight small map which took me longer than I thought it would.

I did find one bug. I could see through the wall the third pic is of the wall that is invisible ( between the Stand and arch directly above the light gem) :

 

 

post-20393-0-99845700-1438413792_thumb.jpg

post-20393-0-19926000-1438413800_thumb.jpg

post-20393-0-17210000-1438413809_thumb.jpg

 

 

 

Disregard if some one has already noted.

 

Congratulations on the release and thanks for the mission I loved it in the end:)

Edited by Tr00pertj

Laptop:Metabox P370SM3- Intel Core i7-4800MQ- 2x GTX780M SLI- 16G 1600Mhz- 500G Samsung mSata-1TB Hitachi HDD- 120Hz LG 1080p.Desktops:i75930k-2x GTX980 SLI-16G 2133Mhz-Evo120GSSD-Swift PG278Q1440p Gsync.Spare:AMD A10-7850K-APU-8G 1866Mhz-seagate 4TB-120G ssd. LoL Old:P75-1:1FSB-8M ram 512MB Maxtor HDD-1MB Cirrus Logic video chip-still got the parts somewhere?First PC-Tandy 512K Color computer.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I must say, having to kill someone (required by a story) as oppose to sneak past them was a refreshing change :)

 

Just out of curiosity, if player would use gas arrow on the boss of the usurpers, would that still count as kill?

 

Also, dev team, would it be possible to implement option to remap key binding for console in the next patch/update?

I always have to press ctrl+alt+ tilde, whereas I would like to press just tilde for quicker access.

 

If it is possible to remap it even now by modifying some file, please, do show me how or point me to link dealing with this topic.

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Also, dev team, would it be possible to implement option to remap key binding for console in the next patch/update?

I always have to press ctrl+alt+ tilde, whereas I would like to press just tilde for quicker access.

 

If it is possible to remap it even now by modifying some file, please, do show me how or point me to link dealing with this topic.

 

Heh, we were just discussing this in another thread.

 

Put this line in your darkmod/autoexec.cfg file:

 

seta com_allowConsole 1
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  • 2 weeks later...

I played the first mission and now on the 2nd. I was very pleased with everything going on. But there seems to be a problem. Like others mentioned, blackjacking before killing the masked guys did me in early on as I forgot about that objective and wound up getting my 3 right in the beginning. But no problem as I've been going through the mission stealthily. That is until all of a sudden I'm getting the objective failed for knocking more than 3 people out. I dropped no gas mines and have not used any other things that I can think of which will knock someone out. So I'm stuck, which I'm not pleased as I've spent the past 1 1/2 hours going through the mission. I may try to load an earlier save and see what happens, or else I'm giving up on this for now.

 

Phil

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  • 2 weeks later...

I finally got around to playing this and I really enjoyed it. It's a cool twist on standard Thief/The Dark Mod gameplay and very well executed.

 

Pros:

  • Your targets are easily recognizable and I love the mask model.
  • The layout (placement of ai, lights etc) of the map is interesting, challenging and fun.
  • The story and how it justifies the kill goal. Here it is a central gameplay element where it normally would be considered failure.

Cons:

  • I really don't like the yellow tone of the default lights. The mission would look much better with more varied lighting.
  • You can simply knock (most of) your targets out, drag them to a dark corner and stick your sword in them. This made it a bit to easy.
  • When rescuing a hostage, I had no idea if I had to escort them out or free an escape route. The (only) one I freed seemed to escape on his own but I'm still unlcear on how it is supposed to work. I didn't like the way he just started to run and maybe alert everyone when I tried to be stealthy and unnoticed.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I've routed the level, and there are JUST enough water arrows to ensure you can do a stealth score 0, all loot run without ticking off any AI with blood stains.

I'll be doing a video on it in due time.

I like to record difficult stealth games, and right now you wonderful people are the only ones delivering on that front.

Click here for the crappy channel where that happens.

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As stated, the stealth score 0, all loot run of the level has been finished.

Hope it does your level justice, Sotha.

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I like to record difficult stealth games, and right now you wonderful people are the only ones delivering on that front.

Click here for the crappy channel where that happens.

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You did find the hidden letter in the Abbot's bedroom, did you?

 

I have some ideas for continuation and the letter does some foreshadowing. Now I am very burned out and have a long backlist of FMs to play. But later, once the mapping bug bites again, I think it is very probable that Ulysses will kill once more.

 

 

 

I can't seem to find it.

 

Edit: Sorry about the triple post but I'm tired and cannot find any tool to delete posts.

Edited by V-Man339

I like to record difficult stealth games, and right now you wonderful people are the only ones delivering on that front.

Click here for the crappy channel where that happens.

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@V-man,

 

 

In the abbots bed room, check the floor near the fireplace. There is a false floor piece in there, between the window and the fireplace.

 

 

Many thanks. Looking forward to more of Ulysses.

I like to record difficult stealth games, and right now you wonderful people are the only ones delivering on that front.

Click here for the crappy channel where that happens.

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As stated, the stealth score 0, all loot run of the level has been finished.

Hope it does your level justice, Sotha.

 

Great playthrough! You really are very good at this game. I've never finished a mission on 0 stealth yet. Nice video style by the way. No talking means the viewer gets to hear what you the player hears -- very important in TDM.

 

I'd not thought of using moss arrows like that, but it seems obvious now I've seen you do it. I've only ever used them to make quick dashes possible.

 

The one tip I can contribute is that you can drop bodies down the drains much more quietly by simply manoeuvring them into the hole instead of shouldering them -- not that you needed to given your good timing!

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