Sotha

Okay dokey. Here goes. This mission had so much potential, but unfortunately it did not live to it's full potential due to some issues. Make no mistake, this really is a good mission. But it could have easily been excellent or outstanding, but sadly just missed the mark. As an ending remark, I truly have to say that Bikerdudes missions seem to evolve at a mind staggering rate. I just had to fire up Business As Usual just to compare this mission. You mapping technique developes very rapidly! I'm eagerly waiting your next map.

Argh! Getting utterly frustrated here. I've completed all objectives, and been looking the exit for too long now. EDIT: nevermind. Found it. Writing a review now...

I also put medium in my map. Also, took the liberty of changing "Size (MB)" -> "Mission Size"

Thanks, Summer! Thomas Porter 1 on currently in the works. It's going to be the heist of Captain Knighton's Manor, which was mentioned in the Beleaguered Fence. It'll be finished in the next 1-3 months. Also, remember to cast your votes for both missions! I hope you enjoy The Glenham Tower! Remember, the undead are powerful, try to sneak past them rather than fighting them face to face.

On size: I can not see any benefit in estimating file size in this list. Instead it would be fun to know the size of the mission the mapper is aiming for. Some suggestion comparisons: Small: thiefs den 1, outpost Medium: beleaguered fence, builders influence Large: the heart, the alchemist

I updated my release date. For now, I am using Thomas Porter as the name of the series, according to the player character.

How odd! I have the keys CURRENTLY like in Fidcals before screenshots. It is really difficult to see the keys. Fidcals brightener certainly looks like a big improvement. The keys probably should look like that by default. I personally find AI bound objects so difficult to see, that I usually blind frob everything, a habit which certainly should not be necessary! EDIT: oh, and I am using default tdm settings. Only thing I've changed was the screen resolution and gamma according to the trainer.

Cool. Is there a before and after brightener screenshots? Would love to see how it brightens them...

Okay. Tried to get my work in DR, but I am running into trouble here. Arcturus' tutorial says: I have installed the scripts, but the exporter does not have the option "UV image as material!" When I open the file in a text editor, there is no reference to TDM materials I can change manually. Assistance, bitte? I tried ASE exporter versions 0.6.9 and 0.6.10, but neither has it. I cannot proceed since I cannot get the darkmod materials set up on the model.

Ooh. Got an eureka-moment for the uv mapping. Now textures are aligned much better. The cylindrical parts were easy: I just added one seam according to Arcturus's tutorial and unwrapping provided nice results. The pointy parts are difficult though. If I add a seam and unwrap, the faces are not rectangular in the uw editor. They are rotated so that they are aligned circularly. The only way to get them rectangular was to first make the pointy parts cylidrical, then apply uv-map, the then make the cylinder back pointy again. So much to learn... But it's rewarding to make progress every now and then..

Hm. Making progress, I suppose. That above scepter took few hours to create. And it uses subsurfs. To keep practicing I started again from scratch. This following work was done in one hour. It was created by extruding a cylinder, so the vertices are 'real,' not due to some applied modifier. I put some textures in but it still looks rather weird. This time I remembered to unwrap the object, but it still does not look right. I mean it looks weird. It is difficult to assess the form of the object. Maybe it is due to lack of shading, I not certain. Texture stretching is probably okay with this newest one, since I unwrapped it. The Blender version is 2.49a. In the game-menu, right? Okay, now I see some shading, when I start the game-engine. Thank you for help! I'll check that out. One basic question. If my object has subsurfs, will it look round in the TDM, or should objects have only 'real' vertices as in a cube or a cylinder.

I don't know what the official opinion on this is, but.. If your computer is very old, then it probably would be fair to not vote at all. It is not the map's fault if you choose to play with technologically redundant equipment. It would mean that a player could choose to play all missions with a slow computer and then denounce the maps totally. It definately would not be ethical from a map contest participant, in my humble opinion. However, if your computer is rather new, then it would be fair to give poorer grade, since poor performance suggest poor visportalling, etc poor mapping. I use the words "choose to play with ," because computer hardware is so cheap nowadays that even a student can afford to buy a modern computer with little saving.

Got bored in DR. Needed some change. Wanted to try Blender, my old nemesis, instead. It thought it would be nice (pitifully attempt) to create a custom loot rod/scepter for my next FM. Something like this: I thought that the shaft and the sphere could be easily gold, for a blender newbie like me. After reading yet another tutorial and few hours of work I got this: The solid rendering looks decent and I'm quite proud of that if taken into account my limited skills in this area. I wanted to texture the thing. I extracted some gold.dds texture from the darkmod .zip's and applied it on the rod. Looks like crap. I'm sure I'm missing something, but I'm not entirely sure what. If someone knows, please tell me. I'm happy I can now make simple blocky objects like chairs and simple round objects like rods. My lack of ability in texturing is a huge problem.

Oh my. What a nice mission! All in all. Really good mission. I am quite sure this mission will fare very well in this contest. Congratulations Grayman!

This would probably indeed be the best solution. It benefits everyone, basically. Other thing is, that can the comment be enforced on this forum system.

I like the current 1-5 grading system. Adding more steps probably solves nothing. It just brings the problem to a new scale. Keeping the current system also means that older missions gradings still match with the new ones. The problem with the current system probably is, that people feel reluctant to give "poor" or "near perfect" evaluations. It is the choice of words, you see. Someone suggested change of words, but I'm not sure that changes anything. When considering the gaussian curve, AVERAGE is not the lowest possible grade. That way the horrible crap missions would be average. They should be poor and rightly so! My suggestion would be: a ) stick to the 1-5 scale b ) remove the words. So the questions would be like this. Gameplay: On a scale of 1-5, how much did you enjoy the GAMEPLAY aspect of this mission. (5 is maximum, 1 is mininum) Appearance: On a scale of 1-5, how much did you enjoy the APPEARANCE aspect of this mission. (5 is maximum, 1 is mininum ...and so forth. From the numbers people easily see that missions with grade 1 are poor. 3 are average. And all above that is good/excellent. Note the choice of words: "how much did YOU enjoy the ..." People probably do not have difficulties in intuitively choose a number corresponding to their subjective FM experience. And they do not get a bad feeling of calling other people's hard work "poor." (Even when effectively it does mean that, if they give a 1.)

I vote for public! Reasons: Public system avoids misuse and it confers openness and transparency. It is nice to see who voted what. And most importantly: public system increases the possibility of giving the justification for the grades given. If I know everyone will see what grade I am giving, I should be able to explain why I'm giving that particular grade. Personally, I'd prefer if everyone gave the justification for the grades they give. Learning the reasons people liked or did not like a mission would be an excellent opportunity for the mapper to learn. And for other mappers to learn from the mistakes of others.

Congrats for the release! Mission downloaded. The image you have on the post looks fantastic. I hope I have time to play this tonight.

Eh? Whazzat? Science has revolutionized everyones day to day life.

http://modetwo.net/d...ion_Design_Tips Fids, could it be possible to have a link to this wikiarticle from the first page of your A-Z guide? Might be useful.

*Sigh* Those were the days... Also, I loved Betrayal at Krondor, which I am sure Mortem Desino likes according to his avatar over this forum. BAK still works modern computers with dosbox. Try it.

Fidcal, it is not just you. When betamapping, I found the lockpicks only accidentally because I have the habit of blind-frobbing suspicious objects just to be on the safe side. This way I found the lockpicks. My betamapper recommendations was to put a light on the lockpicks, but FM chose to put a light in the room. Thoughts: Putting a small light on the toolbox would point to the player that there is something useful in the toolbox, if the toolbox was glowing a bit. Frobbing the lockpicks would shut this light down.Putting a hint that the lockpicks are in the mint. But I generally think that objective-system should not be used for hints. It's for objectives.Preventing the player from leaving the lower mines without the picks. Mappers and players should not rely on habitual blind-frobbing! If mappers would put simple small lights shining on mission critical objects which are easy to miss, a lot of frustration could be avoided. I'll add some insight on this to the mission design tips wiki article when I have time.

Oh, and howsabout mines? Some people complained about them in the Glenham Tower feedback. Glenham is one of the few maps which have mines available for the player. Mines probably should have some kind of proximity sensor instead of step-on-activation. It really difficult to place a mine so the victim AI truly steps on it. And it would be nice to be able to pick up the mine if it's placed in the wrong place. In previous thief games the mine could be disarmed by sneaking up to it and picking it with the lockpicks. Also a gas mine would be also cool addition to the player's arsenal, and more commonly used than the explosive one because of it non-lethalness. It would provide interesting opportunities for map design, if LIVE mines could also be placed by the mapper. This issue surely is know by the team, but I'm just checking.

Citizen! Please wave at the nearest security camera! Internal Security is watching. I suppose old style ID cards will be redundant in the future as subdermal ID chips installed after birth will replace them. Naturally these chips contain gps tracking for the citizens convienence... And the licence agreements sell your body and soul to the stockholders.

-Yeah, it should. You sure you're not playing the betatest version? In that the door was locked. But as LEGION said it should be open in this final version...