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Fan Mission: Volta and the Stone by Kingsal (05/26/2016) V1.3


kingsal

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Secrets

 

Has anyone found more than 3 secrets ? Also, there were places that I thought for sure would register as a secret but didn't.

 

Great mission.

 

Its been a while, but I think there are only 3 secrets in the mission. I agree, there should definitely be more.

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  • 2 months later...

Hello KingSal, I'm a bit late to the party but this mission is absolutely top-notch work. Played it a few days ago, took my time. I LOVE the atmosphere, I LOVE the architecture and I LOVE the story. Started Volta II but right at the beginning, and already it is a step up in quality versus this. Top job good Sir!

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  • 2 months later...

The new version is coming along steadily but slowly as real life obligations are soaking up a lot of my time. Its turned into quite a project. Its the same mission, but with revised architecture, all new vocals, and quite a few new areas to explore. ;) The next mission is still the primary focus. Here are a few in progress shots of volta v2:

I'll be putting off a video of the mission if this is still incoming.

Care for balance critique?

 

 

Assuming you don't change any lighting or sound conditions too much the mission is damned near perfect.

Only thing I would change is that you give the player the ability to almost reasonably finish the mission with all loot through found water, rope and moss arrows, but you give the player one or two two many rope arrows and one too few water.

This is working under the assumption that the one water arrow and three rope I found are the only available aside from the one moss I found.

 

 

Absolutely in love with the mission, did an absolute 0 stealth score full loot run for future routing before I noticed you would be uploading an updated version and I can't say I regret it in the least.

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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The EFX settings with OpenAL works great on my potato laptop! Congratulations!

Will give more feedback as I can bring my settings to normality and play properly with more time.

Thus far, with all candor this is a promising FM.

Edited by Anderson

"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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I'll be putting off a video of the mission if this is still incoming.

Care for balance critique?

 

Absolutely in love with the mission, did an absolute 0 stealth score full loot run for future routing before I noticed you would be uploading an updated version and I can't say I regret it in the least.

 

Hey thanks!

 

Unfortunately, I will not be releasing the "redux" version as planned. It became a pretty big project with new areas and lots of re-work. After a bunch of consideration, it just makes more sense to put that effort into Volta III :D. It wasn't all lost work though, as some parts will be folded into the new mission(s).

 

However, I am working on a 2.06 update to Volta: The Stone (the new campaign name of this mission) with minor bug fixes, new vocals, and a new high res version of the intro.

 

Thanks for playing and for your patience!

-Kingsal

Edited by kingsal
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This was a very enjoyable mission to play.

Gameplay was enjoyable. Good patrol routes, and shadows. It was perhaps a bit on the easy side, but for someone like me who is out of practice as far as TDM goes it was just what I needed.

It is always nice to find secret rooms.



The story was enjoyable, and it is always nice to listen in on npc conversations.

Climbing the tower and getting to the top gave me the impression that it would build up to more, especially that the guards would have noticed something was wrong.



Visually the mission is very high class. The architecture, while a bit blocky reminded me of Thief, in a good way.
Light and shadow where very well done. I especially liked the reflection of light in the water.
It did feel a bit strange the way that the light level changed when entering some rooms. This could have been more subtle imo.

The audio was very high class and I especially liked the ambient sounds. This also felt very Thief like.

Overall, this mission is very high up in the list of best missions for me. And there is no doubt which mission will be the next one I play: Volta II.

 

P.s. The name of the mission keeps reminding me of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VoLTE

 

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Another place where we can get stuck is right at the entrance to the closed grate that precedes the pumping unit in the start of the game. If it is closed and getting into it while crouched - there can be a risk to be blocked.

"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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Another place where we can get stuck is right at the entrance to the closed grate that precedes the pumping unit in the start of the game. If it is closed and getting into it while crouched - there can be a risk to be blocked.

 

I'm not sure what area you are referring to. Are you talking about the pump house in cauldron?

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I'm not sure what area you are referring to. Are you talking about the pump house in cauldron?

 

Sorry. My mistake.

Yes, the pump house in Volta II - Caudron of the Gods.

"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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  • 4 months later...

I can't sem to find ver2 of Volta:The Stone. Below are the copied mission details

 

Mission Details Title Volta 1: The Stone Released 2016-05-27 Version 2 Author(s) Kingsal Mission Type Single Mission Size 102 MB Description Volta and the Stone is a fairly large Thief-style mission (Lord Bafford's Manor). It is the first mission of a campaign that follows the Thief and his encounter with an archaic and powerful force. The campaign will span from robbing noble houses to being hunted by malevolent creatures from beyond the Veil. The emphasis is on creating a mood and tone that will hopefully feel familiar to fans of The Dark Mod and the original Thief games. Mission Download Locations: Volta 1: The Stone #1 http://darkmod.taaaki.za.net/fms/volta1_1.pk4 #2 http://www.southquarter.com/tdm/fms/volta1_1.pk4 #3 http://www.fidcal.com/darkuser/missions/volta1_1.pk4

 

 

The links all point to ver 1.1.

Is 1.1 really ver2 ?

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Yeah so version 2 is simply the update number on the server. So 1.1 is the 2nd update made to the mission.

 

Speaking of this mission, I sent in a request for a minor update, but it may have been overlooked. Ill ping the team again. For now here is the latest verion:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e6ozmhhh8587iy2/volta_v1_2.pk4?dl=0

- This version is really a hotfix for 2.06 that fixes a few minor bugs.

- The upcoming 2.0 version will be a proper update to the mission (when I finally get the time)

 

Hope this helps.

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11 hours ago, Shadow said:

 

Just replayed it. Great expansive mission as always. Volta is surely vying for most ludicrously overindulged mega-mansion in TDM. Only thing missing is the giant flat screen HDTV in his quarters.

 

Haha, it is a bit ridiculous. I hadn't played the mission in a long while and was thinking the same thing.  Thanks for playing!

Goldwell was kind enough to upload this on to the in-game downloader and do some last minute bug hunting.

 

 

Edited by kingsal
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Another very good FM. The mapping and atmosphere was rather unique compared to the vast majority of missions, I loved the design you went for! I only noticed a few minor issues, such as missing menu music (I hear a series of beeps when I start it up) and there's a space across the hinges of doors through which you can see the skybox when a door is closed.

If licensing permits and the authors are okay with this, I'd encourage including this lovely skybox into vanilla TDM, as it's very high quality and sets a beautiful theme. Also the high quality textures for the objectives page, IMO they look far better than the current default ones.

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  • 7 months later...

I've updated this mission to 2.08.

Note: old saves will not work with this version. Please delete the old .pk4 file and re-download this mission

Available with in-game downloader or HERE

Thanks!

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  • 4 months later...

I see wrong stencil shadows near setviewpos -88.3 907.08 -907.75   18.3 27.2 0.0.
They disappear if I set r_useOptimizedShadows 0 and do reloadModels. Which means they are caused by the precomputed shadow volumes in .proc file.

Also, I see that the mission was last-modified and last-dmapped at 16.10.2019 (timestamp inside .zip). Which is pretty strange because @kingsal's latest post about 2.08 update was much later. I have downloaded it afresh in in-game mission downloader.
Now that I look on mirrors, the pk4 file was really updated on 06.08.2020. I have downloaded one such pk4 manually: it is different from the mine, but I guess that's due to mp4 recompression only. The .map and .proc files are exactly the same. So it looks like the pk4 that was uploaded in August 2020 is the old one.

The reason for bad shadows is most likely this (2.08 changelog):

Quote

4) Fixed bug in stencil shadows computation, which was introduced in 2.07 (#5106).
   It affects all parallel and projected lights when mapper runs dmap on a CPU with AVX.
   It is strongly recommended to re-dmap all FMs dmapped with 2.07 if they contain such lights.

So I think the version dmapped in 2.08 should not have this issue.

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