kyyrma

Sotha, all of that sounds very bizarre. The level was very rigidly beta tested, you can see for yourself down at the beta forums. More than that, all the issues you have laid out have not been reported by anyone else is in this thread. Could there be something else than sloppy map building at work here? You wouldn't happen to be running some not yet public build of TDM? Nevertheless, my apologizes for such a terrible experience. I'm afraid I can't offer much solutions yet, but I'll round up the beta testers and see what could be wrong here.

Yup! Not sure if it will be the next one I'm putting out (I'm working on two maps concurrently). The train one will be a stand-alone mission not related to In a Time of Need.

I'm going to replace the carpet with a custom texture later on. While you make a fair point - and I'm pretty sure we have pretty much the same reference pictures by the way! - I think Biker might be right in that having those metal strips could make for a more visually pleasing design. I'll try out both and see which one I like best, periodical accuracy be damned! Any chance of sharing screenshots of your design? I'd be interested to see what you are doing with the train idea. Drop me a PM if you are not ready for public yet!

Good suggestion. I agree that currently the border where the wall and carpet meet looks unrealistic. Architecture has so far been my greatest weakness, so I'm working hard to get better

Posting this from my other FM thread: A slightly updated view from my previous train scene.

Thank you flood! It's fantastic when someone takes the time to write such an detailed review, much appreciated I agree on all points, and I'm glad you could appreciate my less-than-stellar geometry. I'm currently working on an FM where I'm trying to practice my architecture skills. If you are interested, you can see an early screenshot here.

Worldspawn has its origin in the middle when converted to an entity. Select the entity in Dark Radiant, press V and then V again, and now you can move the origin from the center of the entity to where the hinge should be.

Airship was invaluable during the testing of of my latest FM, especially because she was willing to record her first blind playthrough which gave me more information than any detailed forum post ever could.

This was really interesting, thanks.

Here's one for the inner child: "Panna" is both put (on) and have sexual intercourse in Finnish. We screw on the lights. Yeah. Let that sink in for a minute. Also, Finnish people never waste words. "I am considering going to the store." in Finnish would be "Menisinköhän kauppaan." This is because we modify and inflect words based on their use in the sentence. This does cause one very awkward problem, especially for foreigners trying to learn our language. To give an example, let's take a look at all the different modifications of the word "dog", shall we?

This is related to the spoiler in the OP post (Under the Help! I'm stuck! header) later on, so refer to that if you are still stuck.

Thanks, both of ya'! I'm planning on rolling out a sneaky update at some point, but I'll wait some more so I can catch all possible issues with one patch.

Thanks for the kind comments! It's the best thank you a mapper can get to hear that others are having fun with the level

I guess he's who I'll get in touch with then, if I need help with that

I just googled it and found this Is the map / MasterOfConspiracy still around? This could be really useful to look into And yeah, there is just something about old trains. I guess its the class, craftmanship and engineering of the Victorian era all coming together, which naturally makes it unsuitable for the offical TDM setting which is more medieval. But maybe its set somewhere further down the timeline!

Really? We should compare notes! Have you already started thinking on how to solve the moving scenery outside?

Trying out Sotha's modular building technique and I'm really enjoying it so far. Oh, and my next FM takes place in a train. That is all.

No problem. Oh, and if you didn't solve the safe combination yet, you can find a series of hints posted here. It's a bit tricky, but once you get it you'll probably be surprised at how obvious it was The glass I like myself as well, especially because it gives the player the option to either break the glass and cause a commotion or find a sneaky but more complicated way to get those goodies. That sort of choice is what I enjoy most in this type of games.

Just listened to your demo reels, cool stuff. I enjoyed your chiptune reel the most, and I mean that as a compliment. You can really hear you have a lot of love for those bleeps and bloops! When it comes to audio, I'd recommend working together with FM makers, providing new ambient tracks, sound effects, etc. suited to their needs. Maybe create a track or two and offer them for free use in FMs? I believe the team is not looking to add any more audio to the core files (with the exception of some missing stuff, like a Pagan voice set IIRC). This is to avoid bloating the filesize further. But I'm sure someone like Sprinheel will stop by soon and clarify.

Heh, thanks again Unfortunately the poll can only have three questions (forum limitation) so these are the three generally used to evaluate FMs. In this case you have to think of AI as a part of the gameplay category. The way alertness works in TDM is basically there is a number that represents how agitated a guard is. Seeing suspicious things raises this number (depending on the severity) and once certain thresholds are passed the AI behaviour changes (from relaxed to suspicous, searching, pursuing etc.) The initial stage after relaxed is actually much like you said: the guard goes Huh? And ponders a moment, as if second guessing what he saw. Now the problem is, the ramping up from that point to full on search / pursue happens very quickly, so it might feel there is no time to react. This is preferred by most TDM players, especially because the crowd is mostly made out of old Thief veterans who yearn for a bit of a challenge, There are no differences between the visual and aural acuity of guards between difficulty settings by default. This however is something a mapper could change if he so wished, for example by making guards on easy much slower to react to suspicious activity. So again you are pretty much at the mercy of the mapper. In fact some levels might already implement exactly the kind of guard behaviour you are describing! I know it might be a bit annoying that there are no set rules to even things like difficulty settings, but the moment you start limiting mapppers is the moment you lose the creativity that has given us all these amazing FMs. You have to accept both the good and the bad.

Finally had the time to play this. Congrats on your first mission Goldwell, and what a sweet little mission it is. Now I know you had Biker giving you hand, but still massive kudos on the visuals. The design of the sewers, streets and the house are fantastic, and the placement of lights, fog and particle effects are impeccable. Makes for a very immersive and visually pleasing experience. I wish I had half the talent that has gone into building this. The level flowed well up until Before that everything was very logical and well hinted at. The scripted sequence in the beginning in addition to the custom voice acting was really cool. All in all the whole map felt very professional. Some slight uglies though, like some of the custom brush-built objects (the magnifying glass upstairs come to mind). I never had any trouble with the guards, unlike some others had reported, and getting in the house was tense but not too demanding. Finished with 4 coins missing, although I think I know where they were left.

Thanks for the detailed comments During testing RJFerret suggested that I should have a second key available, or even make the shut off area lockpickable to avoid player frustration. In hindsight I should have taken his advice, but I didn't want to make that area too easy either. This is something I might address in a patch later on. I'm really glad to hear that a lot of people liked the atmosphere in the sewers. I've never tried making that kind of thing before, so I'm surprised it has turned out to be effective. You are right about the common heritage with Doom 3 making it pretty easy to create scary places. Setting up creepy lighting and ambient sounds is surprisingly easy in the editor. The reason why the guards might feel "more alive" is the way their paths have been built. IIRC I saw you asking about the robotic AI in the general "What could be improved" thread. As you can see, the mapper can influence how the AI appears quite a bit. In many early FMs AI was simply set to follow rigid paths, but the popular method these days is to create several smaller paths that the AI can then switch between on the fly. This causes the AI to appear much more random and realistic. Regarding Mr. Beggar...

Thanks for voting! You can solve the main objectives in any order. Regarding the issue with Terry being missing: Regarding the items you asked about:

Has anyone actually used this in a FM? Mirrors I mean, that would be a really cool lighting setup for a ruin or something. If not, I might just consider stealing this idea! Too bad not even mirrors cut it in real life. I think they tested it in Mythbusters to some lacklustre results.