Fan Mission: The King of Diamonds by Spooks (2016/05/13)

[teh_saccade]

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Edited July 17, 2016 by teh_saccade

[teh_saccade]

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Edited July 17, 2016 by teh_saccade

[Oldjim]

yes that is the optional objective referred to

Edited June 30, 2016 by Oldjim

[Spooks]

Indeed it is, and I don't know why you crashed when you completed the joke paining objective. My best bet is that the 2.03 "more than 16 objectives" bug is still manifesting somehow, even with my patchwork fix for it. Hopefully the proper bugfix that comes with 2.04 will eliminate that.

[teh_saccade]

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Edited July 17, 2016 by teh_saccade

[Lex]

Hi Spooks, I'm yet to complete the mission, but I already like it, especially the narrative design. I'll post here my impressions upon completion later.

 

But now I'd like to point out that I've encountered a cosmetic issue. At first I thought that smth might be wrong with my videocard\in-game settings, but the guys here said that it's a mission design issue. Here's a link to the related thread.

 

Upd:

 

I finished the mission, it's really awesome, especially considering it was you first TDM FM. I like city missions very much. I think it has a pretty good vertical use. Also the narrative is interesting, you get new objectives and it prevents you from getting bored. I think the main achievement of the author is how narrative interacts with open, non-linear mission space. You go to one place, get objectives, go to another, find readables, look for keys, etc. It's all logically set up and well done, so the gamaplay really grips you.

 

Thank you, Spooks!

Edited July 29, 2016 by Lex

[Ankai]

Good good stuff. I wouldn't have expected this to be your first FM.

 

I couldn't find the ingredients for the ritual, and decided to leave it alone for this first playthrough. Then I read the spoilers here, remembered things I'd read and seen, and went "ohhh. oHHHH" The ritual bit was interesting, I'll try it when I play again.

 

The graveyard gate was odd. Not frobbable when standing, and a solid object. Not frobbable when crouching, but the lower bars were apparently ethereal.

[Bikerdude]

Those bars were locked, and t once you make you way into said graveyard the reason why is explained..

[Ankai]

I found what was in the graveyard and I get why the graveyard was accessible, but the gate was still weird. Why not a pickable locked gate?

[Spooks]

Originally there wasn't going to be anything in there, so the graveyard fence still maintained its status as a wall. I think I didn't bother making the gate lock-pickable because the fence was so low you could jump it without much effort, and if you spent time unlocking the gate only to find out you could just jump the fence later you'd feel jipped out of your time.

[Ankai]

I see ... it sounds like you didn't mean for the lower half of the gate to be passable, like a hole in the wall. Just an glitch, I guess.

[Dobian]

Great mission. Never found that room over the kitchen though. It's not an objective, does it really exist?

Edited August 20, 2016 by Dobian

[Spooks]

Thank you! If you mean the one mentioned by Thomas' diary, yes, it does exist, the door to it is next to the hole in the fence between Marissa's house and the maintenance station.

[Kerry000]

I've created an account in order to thank you for this awesome FM. Your lighting is by far the best I've seen yet, and I loved the atmosphere of the environment. This is definitely somewhere in my top five missions. Loved every minute of it!

 

Please, PLEASE make another one. I know it takes a lot of time and effort and that you don't get any financial reward out of it, but I'm selfish and I want you to make another one for MY enjoyment! Lol.

[MirceaKitsune]

This is a pretty okay and fun mission. It had good parts and bad parts: My biggest critique would be that the overall feel and environment didn't seem as appealing, and there were several collision issues (invisible walls). I did however enjoy the good story with the additional voices and comments during objectives, and my favorite part was the tavern area with the guy singing there.

[Sotha]

This was a good mission.

 

What I didn't like:

*defocused. Big town, lots of meaningless places. Good thing I had a map. I find it appealing to have a single location that is well focused. Here you had maybe little too much of everything.

*keyhunt. This is also related to defocusedness. Lots of keys, lots of doors that cannot be picked. When I started the mission, I headed directly to the main location, but could not get inside, because the gate was locked. Frustrated, I started wandering around. I knew what I needed to do, but I could not get to the location. I wandered in locations I didn't feel I would even want to go, but I had to because I could not go where I was supposed to. I was irritated not being able to make progress, but I had to wander aimlessly.

 

Finally, about to give up, I wandered back to the compound I was supposed to go to... AND THE GATE WAS NOW OPEN. I didn't have any clue why it was open, and I had not found any key for it. But at least I got back into the mission. Those felt quite critical problems for me, but good thing I didn't quit.

 

What I liked:

*Ultra-high detail. Windows, vistas from apartments. Wow factor indeed.

*Use of light. This mission, in indoor areas, shows specialist quality level in the use of lighting. Lights of different color, custom locale fitting ambient light. Cool candy. Very well done!

*Good AI patrols.

*Custom conversations and player remarks.

 

There is so much stuff to love, so I cannot give it a poor grade for gameplay. But the aimless wandering and keyhunts almost killed it for me.

[brethren]

Great missions Spooks, I personally loved the mazelike structure and figuring out where to go and how to get there, but other's mileage will vary on that. Really good narrative too with lots of backstory and little sub plots. I clocked over three hours on this one, and that doesn't include any reloads. Gotta admit, I get frustrated with many TDM missions because the difficulty can be more ramped up than standard Thief, but I thought this one was challenging without being unfair - good places to hide, good AI patrols,etc.

 

Lots to do too, good objectives and all that - my only comment there would be that I think would have made the

Leopold

objectives mandatory, as players could potentially miss out on the entire

Ritual

part of the mission - I almost did. Considering the title of the mission, that just seemed odd.

 

Anyway, great fun, one of the best missions I've played, looking forward to your next one.

 

[teh_saccade]

Spooks, here's a heads-up that I've found some crazy stuff in this mission after replaying it again this evening.
I'm gonna put the video here: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18795-i-like-the-missions-like-this/ when it has finished encoding and get around to upload.

Found a way to skip a massive section of it (pretty much everything but hidden objective and loot and items which doesn't take long - surprisingly without chairs (although there were some chairs involved in finding the holes...) - using a simple broadhead and a candle.

 

// I think the only key required was the attic key to complete. Maybe maintainence one too, icr... it was more than an hour ago...

Great fun.
I learned a lot - thanks:)

Edited May 3, 2017 by teh_saccade

[Spooks]

Hey! Today's the one year anniversary of the release of King of Diamonds! To commemorate the occasion, I'll do what I said I would in another thread and publish the beta version of the map from before it entered public testing.

 

Here it is!

 

I've always loved looking at video game levels in various stages of completion and seeing how the process of iteration shaped the final product. There isn't nearly enough historical preservation like this in video game circles, so I'm being the change I want to see in the world.

 

I hope you'll have fun figuring what things were changed, moved, or cut and replaced wholesale (Do you remember this screenshot? Yeah.) I even did a run of this version last night and it's technically beatable, so if you wanted to you could do that too! If you want my personal opinion - I've said it before but I still prefer the final version over this for its considerably extended narrative and gameplay content. Maybe you can come back to me with your own opinion, I'd love to hear it.

 

A couple of things:

 

The "Fancy Key" is the master key used in debugging to open any lock. Use it only if you want to.

 

I had to assemble this .pk4 from several versions of the map. Therefore, you'll be getting the near-final versions of the readables and voice lines. This is why the "Directions to Tavern" map still has a bell tower drawn on it, for instance. It would've been a more authentic experience if you could hear all the placeholder lines done by me and all the first draft readables, but oh well!

 

The readme and loading screen aren't joking. Boy is there some bad framerate in certain spots.

 

 

Here's to FMs past and future! *clank* Cheers.

[lowenz]

That's the spirit.

 

Waiting for the same thing about Volta FM.

[lowenz]

Can you open a dedicated thread in the beta testing section?

 

[nbohr1more]

Can you open a dedicated thread in the beta testing section?

 

 

LOL. The post Spooks made was about a early Beta version. The one in the downloader is the fixed version. He posted the early build so players and mappers could see what it looked like before fixes were applied.

 

Eg. This is not King of Diamonds 2.0

[lowenz]

LOL! Ahahahahah I played a little repeating to myself "Why that strange version number Spooks, why???"

Edited May 17, 2017 by lowenz

[esme]

Excellent mission, lots of places to explore one minor quibble though

 

 

I disagree with your definition of "out of bounds", if you can get to an area without resorting to noclip then it's not out of bounds and you did 'signpost' the way

 

[Ursuburgo]

Hi everyone!

Its a very enjoyable mission. I really liked how the city is and the way the mission progress (with the "optional objectives"), its seemed very natural.

It costed me a lot to figured out the "secrets" so, also thanks for the hints you posted here.

My spoiler commentary/critic/piece-of-advise

May be its that english isnt my native languaje but it was really hard to find out whos Leopold was. Also, I never realised what was about that "fence" and the horse and the "out of bonds"... perhaps I missed something!

Edited July 25, 2018 by Ursuburgo