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Fan Mission: Vengeance for a Thief Part 1 by Sir Taffsalot (06/09/2012)


Sir Taffsalot

  

33 members have voted

  1. 1. Appearance

    • Poor
      0
    • Could be better
      1
    • Average
      11
    • Good
      21
    • Excellent
      2
  2. 2. Gameplay

    • Poor
      0
    • Could be better
      4
    • Average
      13
    • Good
      14
    • Excellent
      2
  3. 3. Story

    • Poor
      0
    • Could be better
      2
    • Average
      11
    • Good
      19
    • Excellent
      1


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Just finished!

 

I liked your mission, Bravo! :-D

 

Only one one notes:

 

<p><br></p><p><br></p><p>The Jail part of the mission, the beginning, it's really very well done, challenging with a great balance. The outside part (the city part), was not so good (not like the first part).

</p>

 

 

Another time: great mission for me, a pleasure to play and finish ;-)

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I was very happy and excited to have a new mission to play so congrats on the release!

 

Unfortunately I am not able to finish it. :(

 

 

The prison was a nice challenge and I made it to the streets. Some areas I found to be bright so it was hard to tell where the shadows were. I made it to my place, got my stuff took out a few guards to make the streets a bit safer.

 

Performance wasn't great but everything was doable until I climbed my first balcony. As soon as I jumped onto the rope performance dropped. Everything was in stop and go motion (guards were walking like chickens) I got all the plates and climbed back down thinking it would stop. It didn't. I had left the door open so went and closed it - nothing changed.

 

 

So I'm sorry but I don't know what else to do. Maybe will try and figure out what to do and try again later. Thanks for your effort though.

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Hi Thiefette, i had performance-problems, too. Have a look at this thread:

 

http://forums.thedar...-some-missions/

 

There are some good tips, that have helped in my case.

 

At the moment i have no problems. But i need to test it for a longer time, because this problems don't occur every time.

 

 

Good luck

 

Went back into the game to try out some of the suggestions and everything seems to be working as it was before I had jumped onto the rope. I'm not sure why I had the trouble as I hadn't had a chance to change anything yet. :unsure: Oh well will try and finish up now. Thanks for your help and will keep the above thread in mind in case it happens again.

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Sorry I can't be of any help with the performance. I never had this issue while I was testing and nor did my beta-testers bar one who was using a low end system. However that area that has a balcony which leads to a room with gold plates in it is where the frame rate dips the most. If you can get past that bit then the rest of the map should be fine. Thanks for playing my FM.

"I believe that what doesn't kill you simply makes you... stranger"

 

The Joker

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Finished up the mission today. Had the performance problem again when

 

 

I went down the alley towards the "frame me" objective and it got really bad at the balcony. So I quit the mission and then went right back in (on a whim) and everything worked again. Wierd.

 

 

The mission over-all was okay. I already mentioned the lighting and performance problems I had which kinda broke the mood for me. I appreciate all your effort and look forward to more from you.

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Finished now. sure a good mission but

 

i expected more interactivity with the city. for example, some houses on the ground floor explorable. And, I would have added a way to go back to the prison from sewers.

 

 

I found a small texture bug:

post-8412-0-71019000-1348318839_thumb.jpg

Edited by ECHELON
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Played this now.

 

 

Overall:

The prison part was interesting and felt pretty solid. Some RIT magic, different vocal sets and one or two custom conversations for the guards would have really brought it a bit to life. If the mission was only this prison part, it would have been great! Small, smart, challenging, fun.

 

But alas! I am sorry, but the city part was absolutely abysmal for me. Shortish ambient looping 30 seconds over was maddening after two minutes. The streets went on and on, they didn't look particularily great with the 90 degree angles, lighting was bleached, guard patrols were uninteresting, every street was of standard width. Too wide, so AI avoidance was trivial... Performance wasn't great. "Explore the city without a map and find out what's going on..." Yugh.. No thanks. Why didn't any alarm bells ring when this came up in an idea level? I noclipped around but did not indentify the area I was supposed to go to. Then I quit.

 

It is sad really. I really saw you had put a lot of time and effort into the city part. This mission is sort-of lesson for all mappers about the mistake called "runaway mapping project." If you had stayed small it would have been great. Now you tried to get too much and it backfired badly. If you had put your city area mapping effort into another similar sized map as the prison part was, you'd made two missions of very high caliber. I'm puzzled why so many people want to make these unfocused city missions. Why not focus into a single location and do it well?

 

Misc:

I was spotted by a sitting guard in the prison middle level and he followed me a bit and then sat in air, in the middle of a doorway.

The grate opening with the knife was a bit buggy as the grate was too big to be rotated graciously sideways onto the floor.

Sparklies! I saw sparklies a lot in the prison part. I suspect this is due to light leaking from behind the walls and it is really difficult to avoid. Maybe the renderer must be fixed or something?

AIs on patrol did not have problems, but AI looking for me got stuck. I suspect incomplete monsterclipping. When you test your work, it is a good idea to freak up some AI and see that they don't get stuck.

 

 

 

I hope I wasn't too harsh. If I was, I apologize. :mellow:

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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It's not the criticism, it's the method. Calling something "abysmal" or "sad" and saying "Yuck, no thanks" isn't going to exactly motivate a new mapper to get right back to it. How about some constructive criticism and/or some helpful suggestions on how things could be improved? There's some of that, but there should be more from such an experienced mapper, as opposed to insults.

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For me the mission was good. The city was ok. And it's not the only mission, where one have to find something without a map.

 

 

There are missions, that are badly balanced. Where one have to try many times and it is more a question of "hit the right moment per chance", rather than by patience and planning. But this mission don't belong to this category.

 

For me this mission is well balanced. I enjoyed it and will play it again :-)

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It's not the criticism, it's the method. Calling something "abysmal" or "sad" and saying "Yuck, no thanks" isn't going to exactly motivate a new mapper to get right back to it. How about some constructive criticism and/or some helpful suggestions on how things could be improved? There's some of that, but there should be more from such an experienced mapper, as opposed to insults.

 

Well for me, the city area was abysmal and I justified my claim. I was saddened because the city area ruined the otherwise good start. The "uyk, no thanks" remark was exactly what I though after I had wandered around a bit. I gave constructive improvement suggestions and an overall recommendation that it is better to focus into one location and do it well. I am sure there was no insults towards the author's person in my posts.

 

If honest feedback is not allowed and is interpreted as insults, how can one ever improve their works based on feedback? Should we all always say "Hey, great mission" even if we did not enjoy it due to some downfall?

 

Oh well, luckily I apologized already in advance.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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This happened to me, too. I didn't found the right words in the past, as i said something. And so some people felt offended. (My english is not the best and so maybe some words sounded accidently harsh.)

 

We (in the future i want to participate) all are working for free on an phantastic topic.

 

Without honestly criticism (positive and negative as well) there are no improvement.

And the good thing is, if someone doesn't like a mission: somebody else will like it.

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Finally got around to finishing this one up. First playthrough:

 

When this was first released, I tried it and threw it away after the all the buggyness in the prison and the prisoner mechanics, and dropping in the sewer before picking up my gear (I was mad).

 

On the second round, I decided to ignore the parts I didn't like first time, and get through the mission. Glad I did. I wish most of the misson was

 

more like the city watch area. Some good stuff there, but predictable patrol routes.

 

The overall objectives concept was good, I just wish it was compacted into a smaller area.

 

The city area looked good, and the balconies mixed in provided a good excuse to look up and enjoy the architecture, but it got repetitive. I had no trouble finding the objectives in the city area, but I can definitely understand why some will gripe about this.

 

A solid start for a first FM, its clear your interested in experimenting with different objectives, inventory items, indoor and large outdoor areas, and not just trying to put something together that compiles properly and is completable. As you got some solid experience now, I think you'll be able to refine your mapping technique into something awesome next time round ;)

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Thanks for the comments. I appreciate all feedback even criticism. So no need for any apologies. I'm still proud of this FM despite it's flaws and judging by the votes it seems to be a healthy 4 out of 5 which I'm very pleased with.

 

In my humble opinion there is no such thing as a bad FM. Instead there are FMs that are stepping stones for authors to go on and make bigger and better things. I will endeavor to make sure that part 2 proves part 1 to be the case.

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"I believe that what doesn't kill you simply makes you... stranger"

 

The Joker

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This was great! :D

 

 

 

The prison part was awesome in all aspects! The gameplay was smooth and fun.

 

Although simple, the city is very good looking, I like how you tinted everything the same color as the street lights. Looks nice. It became boring too soon though, it's big and all look the same, took me forever to find my own home and another forever to find who framed the character.

 

 

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