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Melan

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Posts posted by Melan

  1. From what I understand, T3ED is rather hard to get into - it relies on jumping through some hoops to design levels, and still carries forward some critical issues which can't be fixed. However, I have never tried to make a mission with it, so this is all based on what others have said.

     

    Dark Radiant has been a very pleasant experience:

    • It has a good learning curve: you can learn to make a simple, reasonably good-looking mission within a few weeks.
    • It is intuitive: the editor is straightforward to use, and has seen several upgrades which make it easy to use.
    • It scales up: from small, simple mission to fairly grand affairs, it can accommodate different level sizes and levels of detail. You can create BSP-based (brushwork) architecture, use premade architectural modules (a bit like like LEGO pieces), or combine the two.
    • It comes with an expansive asset library. By now, the range of textures, models and AI has become fairly impressive (although it is mostly humans and undead).
    • Once you understand the basic rules, asset creation is not a big hurdle (note that generally, textures are easier than models, and models are easier than fully rigged custom AI - making those require skills which few people have).
  2. Ah, that helped! Thanks - found him shortly afterwards. :)

     

    This was truly an excellent mission! It was a bleak, hopeless place, and the story continued to be intriguing. It felt natural, but had proper drama with its sinister killings and startling discoveries. A good compromise between detective work and plain exploration. I must mention the visual storytelling especially, which is remarkably strong here. Also, the various characters felt interesting, with their side-stories (although a few more bystanders might not have hurt). Tracking down the killer to his lair was a tense sequence, and the payoff was well worth it. The "look" is also very nice; you could feel this quarter was abandoned in a haste, and the decay was creeping in. I am fairly sure I didn't find some places, even though I only missed about 500 loot. However, I never found the map! The opening convo mentions it, but I couldn't spot it, and later just wandered around, gradually exploring the place.

     

    One thing where the mission is a bit weaker is the sound. Too much of the territory is covered by that one single loop, which gets repetitive after a while. Giving places a more distinct audio identity would have been an improvement.

     

    All in all, the WS series just keeps being excellent - I eagerly await the next part.

  3. What a cool tribute to Sir Taffsalot! I really enjoyed the atmosphere of the mansion, which was as "painterly" as the task itself - lit up just right to be gloomy and challenging. This is an excellent use of the architectural modules. I am not entirely a fan of the guarded loot mechanic, but i stuck with it, and although I had to brute force a few places with KOs (including the entire upper floor!), I walked away with most of the stuff in the mansion. It was good how the place felt alive even at this late time of the night, and how you brought a sense of "reality" to it.

     

    Thank you!

  4. 2. A community that releases only a single, perfect mission every three years is highly unlikely to survive. A community that releases missions of varying quality on a regular basis is far more likely to maintain high levels of traffic.

    I have been thinking about this for a while. We have a lot of finely polished gems out there (when I finally loaded up Volta II - I saved it for Christmas :laugh: - I had to gather my jaw from the floor multiple times while playing it), but we could really use that steady churn of small, unassuming heists. Time and time again, I like to load up Thieves or Special Delivery or any of the smaller FMs. I wouldn't complain if we had one of those every month or so, to play something between the big missions.

  5. New authors should accept that their creations will not be perfect. They may have worse than optimal performance, they may not have the best visuals out there, or they may have other design issues. That's fine; accept it and move on. Enforcing an unrealistic "technical proficiency" threshold is precisely the toxic behaviour you ascribe to others, and it is a good way to make sure good missions get lost in a cycle of endless revisions.

     

    Not to mention the specific FPS threshold is entirely arbitrary. A mission that runs at 34 FPS is a mission that runs well enough for people who are in it for the gaming instead of the technological dickwaving (which, granted, describes some of the online "level design" community). Complaining about a mission running at 50 FPS, however, is plain nonsense by any standard.

    • Like 2
  6. I am content to remain a walking, talking mediocrity. However, my approach has still resulted in a bunch of released, playable missions, flawed as they may be, and that's seven more than yours. Happy to be outclassed by people who can do it better (why not? A good mission is a good mission!), but they have to show more than a few nice models and tech demos to qualify.

     

    So, bring out those missions, even if they are imperfect!

  7. I really like the new version (and wish we had it from the beginning), but yeah, it needs testing. The flatness of the original means it could be used in fairly unorthodox ways - I recall using only one or two panels' worth of it. That said, it would be worth including as a completely new texture!

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