Goldwell

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!

It already is obvious that my missions belong together by the fact that they say “by Goldwell” next to them.

Yes you're spot on! Dishonored was the reference point for the pickup animation/sound.

If the team wants to do that then the easiest way to do that would be asking whoever has the source files of the original intro video and then re-render it at a higher quality.

Thanks for leaving your feedback! Firstly with the mention of continuity. My missions since Shadows of Northdale Act 1 have very much strayed from the standard core of TDM. There are design and game choices in the core game which I personally am not a fan of, so for all of my missions I decided to flow a certain way adopting changes such as using Kingsal's arrow models and animations, to implementing Epifire's custom models and of course to my own tweaks and feel. I always set out to make missions that I personally want to play and prefer, now with that I completely understand it's not for everyone. Some people find my missions bad, some find them great, and some just okay. And that's completely fine, just the nature of games and mods. We are all entitled to enjoy or not enjoy whatever we want. I just make missions the way I like them and prefer them to be made, and among my missions I try to keep a strong sense of continuity among my design/game choices. If people dig it, sweet, if not, sweet! Now as for your other points: It was awesome doing a brand new protagonist. This was the first TDM mission with a female protagonist and it felt quite refreshing when writing dialogue and how she would interact with the world. There are about 60-80 custom player sounds I had to implement as well as narration lines of course. But to implement the player sounds I think you would need to do quite a lot of work to get them into the core mod. Firstly some of the sounds aren't the best pick for the action they're doing, good enough for my mission but not good enough for a core asset imo. Additionally there are some other unknown issues which need to be beta tested, such as one other poster pointed out of the guards using the same sigh vocal as the player which means sometimes they make a noise that is meant for Clara haha. So there would have to be some changes to the core vocal definitions to address that as well as what ever other issues come up. If someone wants to do that, they have my blessing but I don't have the time personally to do that. This is another Goldwell FM feature, one that I don't think would be appreciated if it was in the core. You'll have players ask "well why can't I pick up food anymore? I wanted to throw it to distract a guard". That animation was originally scripted by Obsttorte, and then optimized by Grayman. Complaining that sometimes objects fly through solids is not something i've ever experienced with the script, and it is a bit nitpicky and doesn't really matter or negatively impact the overall effectiveness of the animation, that's my personal opinion on that. As for it being added into the core game, because the script in its current form alters how frobability works it would need to be changed so as to not break previous missions. For example if you frob an object that is targeting another entity, the script breaks. Which is why all of my missions use a S&R system. You would have to either change the script to support that, or go through and retroactively change every mission that has such an action. It could be done, but it's a lot of work. This is a personal preference of mine and one that I actually saw in a few Thief 2 FMs. Having two lockpicks doesn't add anything of value, it just makes it more annoying having to switch back and forth. When the actual action of lockpicking remains the same, I figured okay lets just simplify this down to just having one lockpick. You still need to engage in our lock picking "minigame", so you still need to listen to the clicking and time it so that they click on the right time to get the door/chest open. So nothing has changed on a technical front. As for why would the lockpicking be different in this mission? Well again because I prefer the system of just having one set of lockpicks instead of a snake and triangle lockpick. Additionally I recieved very positive feedback during beta on that so I decided to keep it in. This doesn't feel like a big deal to me. If I had a full water arrow sitting in the basin of Lady Volta's bathroom for example, instead of just the arrow head people would complain "well why is there a full arrow in the basin?". I think that falls down to a matter of preference, because opening it up to the realism critique just opens a whole can of worms that neither side can win. And extends even beyond that, why can our thief carry so much? why can they hide in a shadow when being right infront of a guard? why can you fall from a great distance and not sprain your ankle? etc. There's a lot of choices you make whether to gamify something or make it realistic. Of course you can't go too silly, but I think having just an arrow head for the water arrows in area of waters is well within acceptable limits of being gamified. The player sees a source of water, they check to see if there are water arrows. I personally love and prefer the new sounds along with the loot animation, I feel the two go together great. But there is no right or wrong opinion on that, just opinions! I see what you mean! I definitely could have improved the new menu screen there. Fair point! Blasphemy! The sword is mightier than... the shadow? Thanks once again for playing and leaving your input

I did actually make a prototype which I thought was an improvement. But it wasn't liked and then we discussed adding more complexities which started to expand the time it would take me. Couple that with a lot of real life commitments taking up my time, it became hard to devote time to this. Now all of my spare time is put into finishing off the Shadows of Northdale campaign.

These are the settings I play with and took the screenshots with

There is no key for that chest as it is able to be lock picked open. I just tested this ingame and was able to use the lockpicks to open the chest.

Yes they are!

re: question 1 I play with my gamma set to 1.2. I did use a lot of darker custom textures with this mission so you might even need to tweak the gamma further depending on your monitor brightness settings. re: question 2 Definitely recommend playing with the shadow maps, I don't think the performance hit is too major and you get to see the beautiful new volumetric lights! Some of my beta testers had 1060's and were running the mission without a hitch. So fingers crossed you should be right! If you are finding performance issues, there is an experimental feature you can turn on called "Frontend Acceleration" (Settings -> Video -> Advanced). Apparently that helped massively for those having performance problems during the testing phase. Have fun!

That animation effect is specific to my mission.

Thank you for the kind words, glad you enjoyed it! Re: faster loading times, that's a 2.10 feature I just tested this in game and couldn't replicate the issue. I tested the room Infront of the produce merchant (cart guy) and the metal in there sounds like metal and the wood part sounds like wood.

Thank you for the kind words! I don't know what T2SOTM is sorry! But this was my first time personally working with Joy. Re: Cryo chamber, I too was surprised to find something that was not complete existential dread among their library! haha. But having gone through quite a few of their albums they have a lot of amazing ambients that branch beyond their typical style of dark ambient. LOL that's too funny! Well I know now what bug I have to fix for version 1.3 I was expecting a lot more issues implementing a brand new female protagonist then I had run into. And while I think some volume tweaks and maybe a couple of different sounds could be improved (and the issue you mentioned :P) overall it worked out much easier than I was expecting. And for a first attempt I am very happy with how it turned out. Re: the voice actress, I too think she did an incredible job. I gave her barely any guidance other than "you're a badass thief" and she just pulled the character from that. I am glad that she is being well recieved because it was fun to just have a brand new protagonist, made the experience feel fresh.

LOL thank you! I poured a lot of blood, sweat and tears into making this mission. So it’s very much appreciated. Possibly the first time I’ve had a mission be described as a “Geneva War Weapons Convention” level of quality too hahaha

Ohhh right! Yes it's okay to be up there in that area, I thought you meant you could open the door that was up there. But being able to get up into that area is fine because it allows the player to jump over to the rooftop of the manor and access a way in via the vents. Which is why I didn't try to stop the player from getting up there. Thanks for posting the screenshots!

How did you get inside the factory topside? Btw what does "PD" stand for?

I assume you're referring to the factory side entrance? (should have a sign outfront with some gears on it). If so that door is meant to be unfrobable until after you pickup the contract for Unwanted Guests (which takes place in the factory). AI shouldn't be able to open that door however, so that's a bug! But as is always the case in immersive sims, it can be hard to keep the player not getting into places they shouldn't be just yet! I do admit, that's a clever way to get around the door without starting the contract for it though

The AI will freak out if it hears a mouse farting 20 miles away. Possibly one of the most irritating parts of TDM. For that reason I actually play with the AI sound difficulty setting set to “forgiving”. Because the standard setting is ridiculously sensitive as you mentioned. Thanks for the kind words too, glad you had a good time

Re: the safe there is a tip inside the silent dagger which gives hints there. Or if you're looking for a more direct hint Re: breaking into the fences shop, you'll find that key during the contract called Unwanted Guests Or a more direct hint

I have updated the mission to version 1.2. Download link is in the OP. And thank you everyone for the kind words!

I have updated the mission to version 1.1. Download link is in the OP.

IMPORTANT It is highly recommended that you play with shadow maps turned on to get full use of the new volumetric lights in 2.10. Go into Settings -> Video -> Advanced -> "Shadows Implementation" set to "Maps". Additionally it is recommended that you play with EFX and HRTF turned on. Go into Settings -> Audio -> Turn "OpenAL EFX" & "OpenAL HRTF" set both to "On". Author note Noble Affairs features a brand new female protagonist named Clara who comes with a new female voice set. Originally this mission was meant for the connection contest which is why you will notice a lot of references to Kingsal's Volta universe. Due to time constraints this mission was not entered into the contest and instead I decided to release this as a standalone mission. This mission takes place after the events of Volta 1: The Stone but before the events of Shadows of Northdale Act 1. This mission is dedicated to Grayman, may he rest in peace! - Goldwell. A big thank you first up to Epifire for his very helpful advice and putting in some really hard effort and creating some amazing custom models! Please check out his art station page: https://www.artstation.com/epifire I wanted to thank Amadeus, Dragofer, Epifire, Kingsal & Skacky for helping out by providing custom models, readable/text improvements and also general mapping advice. You guys have been incredibly helpful, thank you! I also want to thank my A-Star beta team who helped to squash many bugs: Amadeus, Epifire, Kingsal, Moonbo, Nbohr1more, Random_Taffer & Skacky. And I wanted to thank the fantastic vocal cast: Clara - Joy Hayward Shop keeper - Andrew Bartmess Produce Merchant - Epifire Citywatch guard - Random_Taffer I wanted to thank someone who often doesn't get enough love and that's Greebo who works very hard to create the tools that myself and all other mappers use. Dark Radiant is a fantastic application which is always finding new ways to innovate and improve the mapping experience. Without the work you put in Greebo there would be a lot less missions made, so thank you! Thank you to the Cryo Chamber label for granting permission to use their music throughout the mission. Please check them out at: https://cryochamber.bandcamp.com Thank you to Michael Ghelfi for his audio ambient tracks. You can find more of his work at: https://www.youtube.com/user/MichaelGhelfi And if you wish to support him he also has a patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/MichaelGhelfi And finally thank you to you, the player for playing my missions and providing all the wonderful support and feedback over the years! DOWNLOAD HERE (Requires 2.10) Version 1.2 File Size: 465mb