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WIP : Winter Harvest v3 by Bikerdude


Bikerdude

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Afternoon

 

Thought I might as well start a wip thread for this as I have reached another milestone. The new castle is 95% built and functional, ist has 4 floors atm Cells, basement, gnd floor and 1st and finished all the connecting stairs today. The last last will be the outside roof section. I'm considering building a front facade with a courtyard and also some caves.

 

Here are links to the screenshots I have already posted in the forum, will post some more soon.

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You must have seen some real potential in WH to keep at it like this

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You must have seen some real potential in WH to keep at it like this

yes and no, if SH had done as myself and springheel suggested with the story it would have got a much netter score than it did. My main reason for upgrading it is I dont want to see an FM that poor in the list of FM's for our mod. And as you know I cant just do a simple upgrade to an FM....

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Ok, but lets put sth clear. This FM is very progressive in terms of setting scriptting standards and you should give credit to shadowhide for that. Its really unfair to say that its a bad FM.

 

I think Biker was trying to convey that this mission is relatively poor compared to the community standards rather than being an absolutely bad mission. True, that is a subjective take.

I personally feel that the FM was too harshly criticized because of ShadowHide's jackass behavior, but it certainly has numerous glaring flaws so it's not as if this is a "slighted masterpiece".

Not too shabby for a first effort, but it was rightly knocked down a peg to address the hubris of the author.

 

I enjoyed the mission for it's bizarre effect on my mood. If nothing else, it has some sort of emotive artistic conveyance and maybe that is why it has captured Biker's imagination too.

 

It must also be said that this mission is possibly the most RPG-esque in the catalog with it's use of dialog with friendly AI. In spite of it's other failings, that alone marks it as a pioneering technical example.

 

If Biker can salvage the good elements in this creation it could even be considered a showcase mission.

 

I guess that's worth the baggage of having to credit the original author when mentioning this FM? ^_^

 

(Can't wait 'till Biker returns to working on his own missions or one of the abandoned missions in his possession though :wub: )

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Either way, having played the original version, and the v2 release, I look forward to seeing what one of TDM's masters can achieve with v3 :D

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Can't wait 'till Biker returns to working on his own missions or one of the abandoned missions in his possession though.

On that front the trouble is I cant turn away anything tdm related, I have more maps, textures, prefabs than I know what to do with LOL.

 

I have made a start though in that all of my prefabs and the current wips (3 of them) are now on the betamapper repo. I have made a start making accompaning images for each of the prefabs and when thats complete they will be released for everyone to use.

 

Back to WH, the castle is progressing nicely, in addition to the other 4 levels i have now started building a small sewers. I have already built the joining rooms on the basement level and as of today have another bedroom based on Sotha's sit map.

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Why so few Arcturus?

I usually get bored before completing all objectives. I want to be immersed in the game world and forget that I'm roaming virtual 3d environment. Scripted conversations and other events are a must. Even one can turn maze from pac-man with ghosts patrolling mindlessly into a real place. Poor design doesn't help neither. Buildings that contradict the law of gravity or simply common sense, lots of rooms without windows, wall textures on ground, or models that I would never use, like those guard NPCs turned into statues.

It's only a model...

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Just wanted to share my thoughts. Bikerdude, your existing updates to this mission made it much better than it originally was. I especially mean the area near the end. (lighting always helps)

 

I'm with the folks who enjoyed WH because of the story telling, changing environments, character interraction, and good voice overs in spite of obviously being made by a beginner mapper. WH was something out of the ordinary. If WH had been my first TDM mission though as a player, I would have been confused, to say the least.

 

My only suggestion is to consider the amount of time you put into fixing this one up. Not that I'm trying to tell you how to spend your time or anything, but I just think there are fundamental aspects of this mission that can't be fixed without major reconstruction. There were aspects like the forest, which some players found frustrating, and the very square buildings were another.

 

It was a flawed piece of art, but a piece of art nonetheless.

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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yes and no, if SH had done as myself and springheel suggested with the story it would have got a much netter score than it did. My main reason for upgrading it is I dont want to see an FM that poor in the list of FM's for our mod. And as you know I cant just do a simple upgrade to an FM....

I have already voiced my disagreement on the need to update Shadowhide's FM, so I will say something about community standards instead. I think we should not even give the illusion that we are excluding peoples' contributions if they don't conform to the arbitrary standards of experienced editors with a lot of time on their hands. That leads to stagnation, decline and a small circle of contributors. Let's be realistic: beginner efforts, even missions from experienced editors will not be perfect. They will have bugs or poor visuals or design problems. I could go through the mission list and tear about 3/4 of the entries into bloody shreds if I set myself impossible reviewing standards. But I don't, because I know about those limits.

 

So I would rather have 200 flawed missions and 20 gems and a living community than three Calendra's Cisterns, five Ominous Bequests, one Mission X and the sound of crickets in the forums. In a living and inclusive community, people will learn, new talent will emerge and replace those who are dropping out. There will be plenty of boxy mansion missions, but that's normal. There will also be things like The Black Frog or The Seven Sisters or Rocksbourg because the community will be large enough to attract or train those people who can do those mega-projects (hint, I am no longer one of those people; my free time is getting way too scarce to build anything like Disorientation again).

 

And back to Winter Harvest -- I will be frank, and I will say this as someone who respects you and your skills: if you think it belongs in a category called "an FM that poor", you plain should not be working on it. Because if you don't respect a work of art, you cannot do it justice with your efforts. Right now, it seems to me you are creating an entirely new mission based on Shadowhide's work, and once it gets uploaded, this new mission will deny us the opportunity to enjoy Shadowhide's original contribution on its own merits.

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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+1 to the above. I never could bring myself to finish WH because it simply was so crappy. I am a bit perplexed why on earth would someone want to stain their hands and waste perfectly good time on improving it. I'd rather see a new Bikerdude mission instead of bikerdude improved SH mission.

 

Oh well, we are all in this because some facet of the topic is fun and interesting for us. If someone enjoys fixing something that is broked, so be it.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Hmm something to think about, maybe I could use the new castle I built in a new mission. Im thinking then one idea is to make it the inside of the castle facade that Arcturus built that he already gave me permission to expand.

 

@Arcturus, that entrance to the castle in your demo, would that be considered a rear or front entrance..?

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So I would rather have 200 flawed missions and 20 gems and a living community.

I would rather have one gem instead of 200 flawed missions, because honestly there are some good ones but none that I would call a gem. People who could make a masterpiece are either gone like Pinkdot or Squill, or are not interested like DrK. I still believe we will see quality maps some day. Map by Johannes looks promising. If active community means more of speed buiding contests than I'm not that interested. I often hear that one can make a good TDM map in a month. No, you can't,

It's only a model...

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@Arcturus, that entrance to the castle in your demo, would that be considered a rear or front entrance..?

Probably rear, since the only way in is through a narrow cave. Unless you change that. But I didn't think of it that much.

It's only a model...

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I am a bit lost here.

 

We have many pundits who claim that TDM is too "undefined" and are (for lack of a better metaphor) agoraphobic about all the free-wheeling possibilities offered by such an agnostic "platform".

 

Others are concerned that we are holding standards too high and defining the mod too tightly.

 

Of course, the funny part is that Melan's very statement about holding missions to an unreasonably high standard is the very thing that ShadowHide did.

He (ShadowHide) would be the first to recommend we aim for less missions but ones which have higher quality.

 

Having his mission become some expansive work is exactly what he would've wanted.

 

I agree, however, that if Biker has no real interest in WH of it's own accord then perhaps any rework or revision should be left to the original author or a more sympathetic contributor.

 

....

Edited by nbohr1more

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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