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Still playing this mission but great impressions so far. Just a minor thing in case it gets the FM gets updated at some point - It seems like your personal consolehistory.dat has been embedded within the "black_mage.pk4" file, so it messes with my own console history. So now I know you typed noclip/notarget/quit wrong several times.

This must have been discussed before, but I have no exact wording for it, but I will try to do it via this scenario: The player is sneaking around in a room with lots of humming machinery and loud sounds. It's very annoying that the AI has super hearing and can distinguish that THAT sound came from the player and thus, he is alerted to your positon. Would it be possible to add some kind of sound mask when designing a mission so you need to produce more noise to be detected? I feel bad for posting this, as I believe this has been discussed before, but as I don't have any wording for the "issue" it's hard to do a search...

You have to

A virulent and deadly illness afflicts the children of Bridgeport. One brilliant but greedy physician can treat the disease, for an extortionate fee. Burgle his house for the cure your daughter needs. Hello sneaksies! I'm happy to announce my new mission. A sequel to my first map, The Factory Heist, this is a smallish mansion heist that's turned out to be somewhat tricky, and I hope you enjoy uncovering the house's hidden secret! Promotional pictures here. Big thanks to my beta testers: datiswous, madtaffer, acolytesix, and wellingtoncrab. Without their input the level would be an unbalanced mess. V1.01 available in the mission downloader.

NOTE (3 March 2024): This mission has problems running on DarkMod 2.11. Be sure you are running the DarkMod 2.12 or later. A rare artifact, the Builder's Chalice, is available for the taking. Looks pretty straightforward, but looks can be deceiving... Yes, another mission for 2022. I think this makes eight this year already; we had eight for all of 2021! Great work, everyone! This is a smallish mission. It does not have any spiders or undead. It is a puzzle-heavy mission, with a built-in hints system in case you get stuck. This mission contains a couple of small homages to Grayman. This mission requires TDM 2.10. It uses some 2.10 features (subtitles, secrets, volumetric lights). Note that the volumetric lights are used in a specific way, such that your "Shadows Implementation" can be either Maps or Stencils, the volumetric lights will work either way. Version 2 of the mission is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pbz6spmqpo4vrg4/byanyothernameV2.pk4?dl=1 This fixes the "Open Doors on Unlock" problem. Have fun! Special thanks to JackFarmer, who created some wonderful and appropriate ambient sounds. He also did some Alpha testing to catch some early mistakes. Also thanks to the Beta testers, who struggled with some frustratingly-hard (or impossible) early variations: Cambridge Spy, Acolytesix, wesp5, datiswous, Bienie, Shadow Thanks to Chloe for some great voice work. I made plentiful use of sounds from freesound.org: https://freesound.org/people/HerbertBoland/sounds/75194/ https://freesound.org/people/craigsmith/sounds/482781/ https://freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/403005/ https://freesound.org/people/rhodesmas/sounds/322930/ https://freesound.org/people/fisch12345/sounds/325112/ https://freesound.org/people/BockelSound/sounds/489507/ https://freesound.org/people/ultradust/sounds/167747/ https://freesound.org/people/Crinkem/sounds/496328/ https://freesound.org/people/LucasDuff/sounds/467697/ https://freesound.org/people/RuidosoSoundFX/sounds/507161/ As always I've used some of Springheel's modules and Orbweaver's ambient sounds. And finally, huge thanks to the developers of The Dark Mod, especially 2.10, another milestone in this fantastic game. A few more screenshots

I came across this site: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en They offer incredible quality pictures of art. I emailed them about including their images free of charge under CC license and they replied with: They are pretty amazing quality, just for testing I made one with a pretty picture and threw it in the game. They have a ton of stuff that would fit our time period I think. https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio

Story: Thanks: Thanks to peter_spy for creating the wonderful Builder Complex module set used in this mission. Thanks to my beta testers: Cambridge Spy, Mezla, kingsal, Amadeus, manzanita-crow, Kerry000, Shadow and Suave Steve. Downloads: Gallery: Thank you for playing! What did you think of the mission? I look forward to your honest feedback! Hints, Tips, Walkthroughs, Spoilers(!): - This mission will greatly reward those taffers who like to explore a mission thoroughly. It is possible to go directly for your objectives, but you will be missing a lot of content. - Many windows are openable, leading to new areas or private residences. - If an area seems hard to navigate due to patrols, chances are you can circumvent it. - Those who like a challenge and some extra replay value owe it to themselves to visit the cultist's apartment on Vicolo Torcere.

Great! Glad you enjoyed the series! I see your point about the secretary, but if I remember you can get in there without being spotted even without messing with any lights. We'll see if CoS4 will ever materialize. I kind of made the prequel to be done with the series but I can't rule it out. Been taking a bit of a break from mapping but hoping to get back into it soon, in that case I'll be starting something new or doing a stand alone thing.

Another cool city mission! I've really enjoyed the whole COS series. I finished this one with 5/13 secrets and 7114 gold on the hardest difficulty. I never found the keys to the other two safe deposit boxes so that's something I can look forward to on another playthrough. I found the room with the challenge scrolls but I am not even going to consider attempting those until next time! The guard patrols were harsh but fair. The ground floor of the bank I found most troublesome; that and the lady in the office upstairs in the council building who never looks away from the only entrance, which is brightly lit. Loved the use of verticality. The street with the many balconies was very satisfying. I'm really looking forward to COS4!

I think my entire answer has to be a spoiler:

I enjoyed this, was very well built. Some really cool things in this map, the switching around of rooms was cool, though I'm not much into Puzzles, it was still very well done and quite enjoyable. Thank you.

Hello Jeff! Congratulations on the release! A premiere, the first mission with pure focus on puzzles!

I finished it. It's a fairly good puzzle mission with some physical timing/movement puzzles with the colored orbs, light zones etc. Nothing quite as frustrating as some older puzzle heavy missions for Thief/Thief2. Just a few things I couldn't figure out:

Hint needed. Nearing the end I think and I'm in the area patrolled by

Absolute top notch FM Jack! Loved it from start to finish. Quality is superb!! Absolutely nothing to take away from it, so you only get praise from me Super, hyper-galactic, mega-thanks!!!

You're a genius:) SOLVED!

Since people are talking about leaning, I have to say I use it a fair bit as well. For example, sometimes I need to lean to get a good shot with a water arrow at a lamp that's near a doorway I want to enter. If I get too close I'm illuminated enough for the AI in the room to respond, however if I lean a bit I can often get the shot I need without being lit so much that I get seen. Additionally, there are times where there's loot on a table or something that if I get too close I'll be spotted, but if I lean forward I can just reach it with only a moderate increase in visibility. These are just some scenarios I've encountered where leaning has proven useful, and it's one of those tools in my bag of tricks that I'd hate to lose. As for other improvements, I just want to give a shout-out to those who improved load times in 2.10. It's seriously noticeable just how much shorter loads are, not just for initial loads but also especially when loading quick-saves. EDIT: Oh and another thing - the download servers for both the main game as well as the in-game downloader for missions seem to be much, much better than they were. I dunno if slow servers were removed and/or bandwidth was increased, but regardless I'm getting fast downloads for the most part with the vast majority of mirrors.

It's trivially easy to shoot charging guards in the face, so if you let arrows kill alerted AI, the player never has to worry about them. They can even take the arrow back and do the same thing on the next one. Originally I wanted to have AI shield their face with their arm when the player aimed in their direction, but that was too challenging at the time.

I just completed the mission on Expert. What a great way to end all my FM playthroughs with TDM 2.09 with this seemingly finale-feel to a mission, since the FMs thereafter (2022) are made for TDM2.10. Kudos to the JackFarmer & friends in continuing with Grayman's work where he left off. Definitely a splendid & a touching dedication I would say. I did encountered one issue; Other than that, the mission ran fine. Packs quite a challenge escpecially the 2nd half of the mission. On a side note; Great job guys!

I think it's better to rush it than to procrastinate because there is no limit to perfection and it bogs everything down until it's never finished. You'll return later to polish it or you can let someone else do it and you may just approve the changes or modify, reject them as you please. The most painful is when something is left unfinished and it's never released IMHO.

I think I did run into this once, but couldn't reproduce it later and therefore didn't post about it during beta.