Baal

I finally got around to playing this and I really enjoyed it. It's a cool twist on standard Thief/The Dark Mod gameplay and very well executed. Pros: Your targets are easily recognizable and I love the mask model.The layout (placement of ai, lights etc) of the map is interesting, challenging and fun.The story and how it justifies the kill goal. Here it is a central gameplay element where it normally would be considered failure.Cons: I really don't like the yellow tone of the default lights. The mission would look much better with more varied lighting.You can simply knock (most of) your targets out, drag them to a dark corner and stick your sword in them. This made it a bit to easy.When rescuing a hostage, I had no idea if I had to escort them out or free an escape route. The (only) one I freed seemed to escape on his own but I'm still unlcear on how it is supposed to work. I didn't like the way he just started to run and maybe alert everyone when I tried to be stealthy and unnoticed.

Thanks for the feedback. It's appreciated. Thanks, glad you enjoyed it. To address some of your points: The generator can not be turned off mainly because that would have made the scripting a lot more complicated and I didn't want to put more time into it.I like backtracking in games. A map that is not too obviously laid out for the players convenience is more believable and interesting, in my opinion.Even with 3 difficulty levels it is impossible to suit every players preferences. I'd rather make a mission to challenging than to easy. I think the starting gear is fine for a small mission like this. There are a couple of arrows (mostly water) to be found in the mission, though.I agree about the readables concerning the cook. We should have trimmed that down a bit because it was just ambience.

Sometimes things take a little longer. You can always ask Bikerdude for help; he's used to working with obsessive germans.

Ok, but what is the reference?

Oh right, I forgot that it's a german mod. I don't know. But it seems to be very popular so I guess it must be playable for non german speakers.

Thank you. It's not the first map I built. There are earlier attempts but they were too ambitious and/or went nowhere. What is the Dufford reference? I never played that mission...

I'm also looking forward to this. Nehrim (the Oblivion mod and successor) was fantastic. This is the reason I do not regret having bought Skyrim.

Thanks all.

I am not speaking for everyone here. And please don't take my post too seriously bassmanret. It was just a joke. But I still think you're acting unnecessarily confrontative.

We don't hate you either. We just think you're a dick.

Luftputebåtet mitt er fullt av åler! @jay Sorry for derailing your thread. Can you tell us more about this game? I'm too lazy to watch a youtube video.

Your german is as good as Obsttortes english was a year ago.

Why? These are pointless and can even take away from the game (by removing challenge bit by bit) in most games that add them just because. I want a pure shooter without that nonsense. They should rather bring back the nonlinear maps of the old games.

I'm available.

Ok, Glenham was the mission were I noticed that. I think a good compromise would be zombies only opening doors but not closing them behind them.

Here's one thing that bothers me about the zombies: they should not close doors behind them. That doesn't fit their mindless nature in my opinion.

Thanks, guys. I'm not sure what it is that riles them up but we'll check it for the 2.04 update. Could be the keys they are wearing or some loot. Good.

It's a trap!

That was the intent, because I like map nonlinear map design like this. But you're right that we shouldn't go overboard with it. I didn't do much on the city areas (except for a bit of performance optimization). That's all Bikers work.

What a cool new word.

If only it were made up. It's a real annoyance. But thanks for the kind words. Great to read that from one of the Dark Mods most accomplished authors. Yes. No other difference between Hard and Expert. Nope, that is supposed to be a secret. My pleasure. I have no concrete plans yet, just some ideas, but the next one will continue this story.

Thanks, gnartsch. Lowenz, the knockout objective is only mandatory on Expert. The mission doesn't end if you fail it on the other two settings. Hard is exactly the same as Expert except for this. Normal has a couple more small changes to make it easier.

You have to take into account that writing a book is not nearly as expensive as making a videogame, so used books are not as big of a problem. A least that's my barely educated guess.

Ha! Not even Biker knows where it is. Hint: In the following room:

I can fully understand that experienced mappers don't want to switch to another toolset and learn everything again from scratch. There is not that much of a benefit in doing that. The Dark Mod is not clearly superiour to Thief; it's better in some ways, but Thief beats it in others. I'm not sure which is more popular now but I get the impression that it is Thief.