Melan
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Posts posted by Melan
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It is a confirmed bug.
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Obsttorte: Fair point! I got a whole lot of my ideas from pictures of Victorian slums, not to mention London: A Pilgrimage, and it is precisely because of their sociological angle.
This is an image where the architecture could be 100% translated to TDM. It would even visportal well.ERH+: Yup; look at the kid to the left in the second carriage. The little miscreant moved his head!
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Berlin, 1896
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Oh... that crown!
That's the price of building something in such a small amount of time. You try to think up the story and implement features as the clock is ticking, race furiously to correct a host of problems, scrap a part of the mission you had in mind, test, retest, revise, retest again, hit the release button, sigh in relief, then slip on a banana peel and break your neck. 
Some smooth taffing there!
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Maybe the objective could be modified so the player has to frob a lever instead of walking into the room?
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Thanks, Lex!
I can see both points. PD2 was a less conventional mission, while this is a new iteration of techniques and ideas I have been doing since my first FM. I personally consider Erasing the Trail conceptually weaker than All the Way Up, and a flawed project in many ways - I stalled a third of the way through building it, and while it wrapped up decently I think, something is still "off" about the end result. Which is why I will not make new city missions for a while now, and focusing on other kinds of thieving. (Helping others is a different issue.) On the other hand, AtWU is not a very accommodating mission, while this one is fairly easy below expert (where the loot goal forces you to explore and be very attentive - it is kinda too strict). I can easily see how they can appeal to different people. And of course, PD4 will once again be another kind of mission.
I forgot about including the high-res map, but will do when the mission is revised (watching Fen's LP, the ghostly voices need a bit of a toning down
). Actually, my very first mission back in 2007 came with a printable player map to pore over while playing the mission - it's time to revive the tradition! -
Lex: Thanks! Both of the main objectives can be completed without killing your targets (directly or indirectly), or indeed, even setting foot inside their respective residences.
In Grunt's case, you are on one of the right tracks to complete the objective, but that's not one of the non-lethal solutions.
In the Almsmaster's case, doing it non-lethally requires some lateral thinking and a bit of careful cross-examination of what you have at your disposal. As far as I know, it hasn't been done yet, and I'd rather let someone from the community discover it on their own before spoiling it.
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I had an offer from Yandros, and I would like to honour it if he feels ready (plus he is very well suited to do it).
If you don't mind, I'll ask him if he can still take it. If he passes, it is yours.
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There is a blackjack, though.
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Summer, I am sorry to hear that, but thanks for posting your honest opinion. I hope PD4, which will be in a different style (again) will be more to your liking.
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The good old times:
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Very moody. You have stuck to a common theme and brought out the best it could offer.
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Ooops... forgot to check the thread for a while.
The enigma of the Lion's Head should be read quite literally - you have to get behind the relief.
Outright spoiler:
...by checking the floorboards in the tenement room where you found The Book of Enigmas.
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I like what I'm seeing... and not seeing.
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See the Texture Guidelines article on the wiki. The best size for diffusemaps is 1024x1024. You can go 2048x2048 for a few textures, but these result in enormous file sizes, while you are losing detail with 512x512. Still, sometimes even 256x256 is okay, for small detail.
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I found copies of the line drawing, but no labels. The labels are the problem.
It looks like I forgot to include the high-res map in the mission archive! Here it goes (I have also added it to the OP):
Something about the tangled layout of the streets could also get one feeling paranoid about missing an area by not finding just the right way to it, although I think if one is methodical and paying attention to the map and the streets that shouldn't be a problem. I'm personally finding the map really useful for seeing how to get around, actually; it's better than most.
Could be. Slight spoilers follow on the mission's design:
The construction of game space in this mission is intentionally oblique; it is an experiment in designing an environment where a lot of things connect, but not always in a way that would be the most straightforward or easy to navigate. There are ways through the mission which need to be opened up to become useful (permeable), others which can be easily traversed at one stage of the mission but not another (i.e. carrying someone, or if you have alerted a group of AI), and connections which are one-way entrances into other areas. So a certain amount of misdirection is present, and intentional as part of the greater puzzle.
On the other hand, I tried to leave plenty of landmarks and signposts to get your bearings at any specific point, and generous options to escape a pursuit or draw away your opponents.
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I am not quite sure I understand. Cinder's End is the name of the quarter featured in the mission. Or are you referring to something else?
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That's a lot of water arrows.
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Holy crap, that's actually not the solution I had in mind. But it is definitely the best one.
Congratulations, you beat the level designers!
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Thanks for the detailed commentary!
For now, I will touch upon one point: the mission deliberately avoids repetition by making the majority of its architecture customised. I used prefabs, but where possible, it is hand.made on the spot. The idea was to rather have one room that stays in the memory than three that don't. (And now it is easy to guess why it took so long even with tons of help from Bikerdude - it went from a three-month project to a 10- or 11.month one.)
Many of the assets will definitely be in 2.05. This includes in particular gigagooga's sound work, but also painting skins, and some of the textures (although we will have to make a selection there).
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There are some on the mission download page. Also, these preview images (might have slight differences to final content):
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From initial post to the Darkfate front page: 2h 21 min. Impressive!
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By way of introduction, Penny Dreadful is a fan mission series dealing with the exploits and misfortunes of Gerald Foxley, lowlife and common opportunist. To stick with the theme of lurid and disreputable pulp literature, these missions were planned to be nasty, brutish and short, which sort of worked in PD1, was not entirely working in PD2, and went out the window with PD3, which ended up much bigger than I ever expected. The series also allows me to experiment with gameplay ideas which do not completely fit TDM standards: Foxley is slightly worse at stealth than the TDM baseline, and can't pick locks: you will need to find different ways of getting into places.
In the first episode, The Grail of Regrets, what started out as a routine case of extortion ended with Gerald in the possession of the eponymous Grail. In the second, All the Way Up, these newfound fortunes proved to be shorter than anticipated, as Messer Montrose, a corrupt nobleman, and his ally, the local Bailiff conspired to rob Foxley of the prize to further their own ends. The Grail is now in the hands of Archibald Flint, a powerful crime boss ruling from a mansion on Fiddler's Hill, an infamous den of thieves. However, to get close to him, Foxley has to remove a few obstacles in the way...
Erasing the Trail
"Kill a man and take his life; wound him, and restore his pride." -- alleyway proverb.
"In a city where every window is an eye and every doorway a whispering mouth, it is hard to keep a secret. When I learned of crime lord Archibald Flint's involvement in robbing me of the Grail of Regrets, I knew I'd have to strike quick, and strike first. But I failed.
By the time I got near his place on Fiddler's Hill, every gate to his hilltop mansion was locked, every alley patrolled by thieves eager to kill. Two days later, I watched my tenement go up in smoke and flames. The hunt was on, and it wouldn't be over until they'd have their quarry dead or captured.
Flint's main enforcer is a man named Grunt, known to communicate in written orders after his throat was cut in some altercation... a real bloodhound. I will have to deal with him one way or another to get the heat off of my back, and allow me to reach Flint himself...
Flint is also looking for my dead body, and I'm planning to have it delivered right to his doorstep. Another underworld figure, Almsmaster Quandt, lives a few streets from Grunt's mansion, and he is said to be my spitting image, an uncanny resemblance. Wonder if Flint will recognise the difference... well, time to find out.
Sometimes the only way to deal with a hornet's nest is to kick it over. This night, I am back in the middle of it. I have already run into a pair of sentinels, but I slipped into a small garden and jammed the lock behind me with a bit of wire. Hope they don't raise the whole neighbourhood, or this will be over real quick. Time to get moving."
Download links:
- Mega (200 MB)
- mission downloader!
***Performance warning***: as usual, this mission pushes the limits a bit (although less than PD2). The hardware requirements exceed the TDM baseline, and the loading time is fairly long. Optimalisation should be credited to Bikerdude, while the remaining problems are all mine.
High-resolution player map (for printing, etc.):
Notes:
- Erasing the Trail is intended to be an open-ended city exploration mission, where you can approach your objectives from multiple angles, and discover multiple solutions to complete them; some more straightforward, some more obscure.
- Gerald Foxley is a rank amateur who can't pick locks. You will have to find alternate means to break into places.
- There is no poll to rate the mission because I do not believe in them. Your comments are welcome in writing, however!
- You can find my concept art in the PK4 file. These images obviously contain heavy spoilers.
- This mission series predates, and is thus unrelated to the Penny Dreadful TV series.
Special thanks:
- to our testers, Aluminumhaste, Kingsal, Nbohr1more, Oldjim, Skacky and Premier;
- gigagooga for several new ambient sounds, and sound conversions (Fabrice Hautecloque from Ishar III, tension loops from Golgo 13: the TV series);
- Yandros, Bikerdude and Goldchocobo for voice acting;
- epifire! for custom models;
- The Canon Texture project for texture work.
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So, what are you working on right now?
in TDM Editors Guild
Posted
ERH+: That's a really good-looking place! It would be a real pity if someone... broke into it.