Goldwell

Thanks for playing! It's hard to say when Act 3 will be released. The majority of the mission is done, except for two buildings that need an interior, one being decently sized. The briefing video, readables, patrol routes, voice acting and objectives are all finished, in game, polished and ready to go. It's just a matter of finding the time to get that last little bit done. Progress is happening, slowly but surely

Difficulty is an interesting one to tackle, like most things it is highly subjective. I have had people complain that a mission is both too easy and others say it's too hard before, much like some people will enjoy a mission and some wont. It all comes down to tastes and playstyles. The route I like to take is somewhere down the middle with a little more leaning on the easier side. I would rather people have an enjoyable time in a mission than not. However I do offer up more difficult tasks within levels. So for example @Obsttorte the meat factory you mentioned is an expert contract. So for those I don't offer as much hand holding and expect the player to figure out their own way forward. If this was a main objective you would have things more directly telling you what to do and where to go, there would be less AI down there and it would be better lit. But because it's not a main objective, it's an expert contract, I wanted to provide more of a challenge to folks. Perhaps I could convey that some areas are tougher by having an onscreen text read "You are in an expert area" but I feel that takes away from the immersion of the level so I just leave things as is. In regards to there being an unnecessary amount of gear, that's another point I don't agree on. As TDM is an immersive sim, I feel it's important to give the player as many options as possible. So say while you may not find any of that gear necessary another playstyle might. Do you want to go in with just a black jack, go ahead, or if you want to go in heavy then you can stock up on mines and fire arrows and wreck havoc, or maybe a flash bomb. Perhaps the roof is better, so a rope arrow will make that easier, etc. You did mention the issue of spending 15 minutes in the manor but 45 minutes outside. That's because the mission was originally only the manor, it felt too short so I decided to expand the things to do in the mission by building the city around it. I can see the argument that the logical pathway is to improve the main objective aka the manor, however I wanted to make things more interesting and give folks more side content through the contracts. That way if you want a quick and easy mission you can just break into the manor and get out and that's maybe a short 20 minute mission. But if you want to go the completionist route then it's going to add a lot more content. That's why in games the main storyline takes 15-20 hours to complete but a completionist will take 100 hours to complete. Again it's all about giving the player more choice. Re: the performance. Well you got me there, dead to rights. I wanted it to look pretty and fancy with loads of custom textures and sounds. I tried as hard as I could to optimize the area, but there definitely is some sluggish performance in certain areas.

Thank you and congratulations on your release! This looks bloody brilliant! Going to jump in tonight

The duality of man!

Inside the Silent Dagger you'll find a tip right here This note reads Deciphering the note "Skip the BS and tell me the code riddler!" Thank you very much! I did take a lot of inspiration from T2X as well as Dishonored and a few of DrK's incredible Thief 2 FM's.

Re: the Grayman shrine. I specifically didn't want to tie anything to that area. Originally there was loot and it was marked as a secret area, but I felt that was in poor taste. So it just became an area solely dedicated to just him. As for 1, that's hilarious 2. That was a decision I was conscious of. There's always a battle, especially in immersive sims of whether you force the player down a path or give them options. I treat it kind of like Dishonored how you can kill or not KO enemies while playing the game, but in the sequels the canon story is always the pacifist approach. Clara only interacts with him if you frob the body/corpse after you're done. In retrospect I probably should have added that narration line after the contract completes. Oh well!

I agree, it's important to give players control over whether they want headbobbing or not. I think that takes priority over any customizations that may exist in missions.

Thank you both for the kind words, glad you enjoyed it

Thank you for bringing it to my attention! I will mark that down as something to fix for the next version release.

Hey Xolvix! Yes there has been a long wait between act 2 and 3, longer than I would have preferred. But between personal events that have popped up and taken my time away from mapping and also big world issues, it has just extended that time even further. Work is being made though, in fact I actually just took a break from working on Act 3 to check the forums and saw your message. The wait should be over soon Re: your spoiler question

Taking a guess i'd say that was probably the stuff inside the safe then. Definitely need to have a look at that.

Re: I'm not sure what treasure you're referring to sorry. What gave you a hint that Lord Balcon had a big treasure? I haven't played this mission in many years and have forgotten a lot of the finer details haha Re: the bugs you found, those are quite interesting! When the mission was released there was an issue with that safe I believe, but the shadow bugs weren't there. That does appear to be a problem with running an old mission (I think this was a 2.03 mission) on 2.10. However I do plan to go through and update all of my older missions for 2.10 at some point, so i'll add those bugs to my todo list, thank you!

Thank you for the kind words! I am hopeful that the wait won't be too long

Congratulations @Wellingtoncrab Your mission is absolutely incredible, one of the most refined and well built city missions in the entirety of TDM (imo). The visual fidelity, style and gameplay flow is absolutely top notch and while I did enjoy every entry in this contest, I thought yours did stand out as the top of the bunch!