Fan Mission:Dragon's Claw by b1k3rdude (31/10/2011) updated

[raymeld]

Thanks both of you , I've learned something there !

[raymeld]

In spite of the best efforts of Bikerdude and Flanders I've not been able to finish the mission but have played it enough to rate it. Will perhaps try again when more time. I don't intend to assess my rating it because of any frustrations I've encountered because I think that's just just my inept playing ability. I didn't find the console too user friendly in

finding the loot and that was my ( just mine I guess ) chief frustration with the mission. Somewhere I was missing loot big time only finding 130 being a chalice behind a wall near the well in the plague area and the stuff round the claw.I found the claw easily enough , perhaps too easy.

. So , again ( just me ) problems with loot. Areas I'd like to get into but couldn't. Odd area with

a lot of guards which just proved to be a distraction. I jumped into the water and tried to get through grills , shot rope arrows up to get to the Hammer , swam to the area with the boat , nothing.

I think this will be a wonderful mission when it is expanded as Bikerdude intends to do and i look forward to playing it again in that form. I really loved the areas to explore and the feel of the whole thing. I know Biker dude was rushed with this , also difficult to rate the very first mission you play in a competition when you haven't played the rest. Thanks again for the experience Bikerdude !.

[Bikerdude]

Every vote counts, but as you say you cant let your playing skills effect your scoring.

 

If you PM me your save game, I will see how far you have go and then I can help you find the rest of the loot..

[raymeld]

Every vote counts, but as you say you cant let your playing skills effect your scoring.

 

If you PM me your save game, I will see how far you have go and then I can help you find the rest of the loot..

Thanks for the offer , very helpful as usual. I'm determined to finish it myself though when I've more time. Also I wouldn't dream of taking up your own valuable time. I have rated it now but have certainly not included any of my personal playing frustrations in this rating . Thank you again , i always enjoy your missions and input.

[Bikerdude]

heh, no probs, anytime.

[jaxa]

Second mission so far of the Halloween missions.

 

 

 

Cool arches + columns across from beginning location

Dragon statue is neat

Jumped into the water when I got detected, couldn't climb out onto angled grates...

 

 

[Bikerdude]

@Jaxa, its designed to be hard to get out of, but most players dont know how to play TDM fully yet. if you go right up the the wall between the inner/outer section of the cistern, then hold the spce bar untill you stop bobbing in the water and keep holder the space bar you will slowly climbe out of the water onto said wall.

[jaxa]

I don't think we've had enough maps to have the moment where that feature is useful O_O. I'll try it thanks

[Bikerdude]

I don't think we've had enough maps to have the moment where that feature is useful O_O. I'll try it thanks

ive been using ir fior years in Theif2, just came natural when I fell down there.

[raymeld]

I finished this , finding the requisite loot . How on earth I

missed the chalice in the attic I don't know , could blame the lighting , but I think I'll settle for my own stupidity.

Thank you again for a fun mission and I'll certainly look forward to playing the revised version in due course. Lots of scope for developing this mission , plenty of areas to explore.

[Thiefette]

I finished this up last night and did enjoy it.

 

I'm sorry I had to give lower mark for frustration. I had so many freeze up's, it was becoming frustrating to play. I managed to get all the loot because of your little "clues" (open lighted roof, ropes and things to climb for what seemed no reason etc.) There was so many places to search that it was a little disappointing to find nothing.

 

 

As Raymeld said, among others, I look forward to the update of this map, it's going to be awesome. Thanks for your hard work Bikerdude.

[Diego]

So far the mission looks fantastic, as I've learned to expect from biker. But it freezes completely here:

 

the tavern.

 

Tried it a dozen times already. There's no way. I even noclipped through the walls! I can see everything inside, but the moment I enter the area it freezes.

[Bikerdude]

Hmm, I was really hoping the freezing was a texture related issue, as in this mission has lots of custom textures which account for 3/4 of .pk4 size.

 

Diego, what are you system specs? and is the HDD activity light flashing a lot when it freezes..

[Flanders]

Whether the textures are custom or not doesn't make any difference, the freeze ups are caused here when people go in new visportal areas it seems (?). So whatever is loaded when you go in a new visportal area, we have too much of it. Does anyone know what kind of things are loaded at whose times?

[nbohr1more]

Given the strange ambient light zone behavior (popping) before, I am now more convinced that this might be a Zone overlap issue. The first thing I would check is for duplicates. It seems that there was a duplicate light entity in "Let Sleeping Thieves Lie" at the same location that was crashing v1.07. These weird DR entity corruption events could have duplicated or damaged the info location entities... Then look at the bounding areas for those info location entities...

 

(I'll look at this tomorrow if nobody sees or fixes the issue sooner.)

Edited November 10, 2011 by nbohr1more

[Diego]

A little update on the freeze issue: It turns out it's not really frozen, but in a very very very low fps. Like, half frame per minute (decided to wait for a while before ctrl alt del)

[Sir Taffsalot]

Would it be fair if I voted on this map? I did the readables so I I was responisble for a lot of the storyline.

[Bikerdude]

@SirTaff - I voted on my map, so why would it not be fair for you to. :-D

 

A little update on the freeze issue: It turns out it's not really frozen, but in a very very very low fps. Like, half frame per minute (decided to wait for a while before ctrl alt del)

You never told me your system specs..?

[Diego]

Oh right! forgot about it..

 

Windows 7, 64 bits

Intel core 2 duo 2.80 GHz

4 GB of RAM

Geforce 9600 GT

on board sound card

 

Anything else could be relevant here?

[Bikerdude]

The 9600GT is a bit of a low end card, but I will check the draw call count as the polayer enters the tavern to see if thats the cause..

[Diego]

Not anymore.. it's almost two months old! belongs to a museum

[Bikerdude]

I suggest a cheap upgrade at the £50-60 mark.

 

- nVidia GTS250 has 128 cores compared to the 9600GT's 64

- AMD Radeon 570 w/800 cores, this is better value as it has 1.5-2x the perf of the GTS250.

[SiyahParsomen]

It was a nice piece of work. Luckily there wasn't any freeze on my run.

 

 

 

I think this mission needs more halloween elements. Such as scary moments, traps. Or did I miss them? Zombies were no problem at all and finished the mission easly. I was expecting more challenging gameplay.

You have no problems on visuals.

 

It was nice mission in general. Thanks for bringing Flander's dragon and other stuff to light!

 

Rating:

Halloween -> 4

Gameplay -> 3

Aesthetics -> 4

 

 

Edited November 12, 2011 by SiyahParsomen

[Bikerdude]

@SP

 

Yeah it was a time issue, I didnt have the time to do everything i wanted, which is why version 2.0 will be much improved!

[nbohr1more]

I didn't get any freezing but the pub was pretty heavy on my 4650... Around 5 to 7 fps. It was manuverable but not much else... There were quite a number of light sources in there so the risk of light overlaps was there. Lots of AI too... I will checkout the place with killmonster and see if the light or AI are the main issue. One of the largest active pub scenes to date so it may be an expected drop...