Digi

Cool. The WS series is on my list. I tend to compartmentalize; I'm working on my FM, then I have some other projects that will take me away from TDM. But once I'm back, I'll be sure to give it a thorough look-through. I really want to be able to make a true Thieves Highway mission eventually, but it's also currently the hardest for me to wrap my head around.

Makes sense. I understand the underlying concept; it's just the layout part itself that gets to be confusing (outdoors, at least. indoor missions seem much more straightforward with visportals, imo). Like, I'd love to make a Thieves Highway mission someday. But making a non-linear, open Thieves Highway map that is properly visportaled boggles my mind. I'd likely need to research some existing missions to see how they do it.

Lots to consider. Thanks for the info. Visportals seem much more intuitive in indoor environments. My level is small enough that it's not going to be a big deal, but visportaling a city mission seems like it would be a much tougher task. I have, but thanks. And yes, it was very instructive.

Next on the noob list: Visportals! This one isn't quite so bad. They're working for me (mostly), and I don't actually think I need to do anything else with visportals on the map I'm currently working on. I just have a couple questions that have arisen. I didn't see these in the tutorial pages I've read (I also watched the video), though it's always possible I missed something. Anyway: 1. Do see-through windows need visportals? I read something in the tutorial that suggested "no", but when I don't visportal the windows in a house, a couple of the door portals don't register at all when I display visportals while testing. 2. Do all visportals need to be "sealed" like they are with door openings? Like, I wouldn't want one just sitting on a street somewhere, right? 3. Similarly, the seal doesn't need to be perfect, yeah? I'm cheating a little and having them be slightly bigger than the doors and/or windows they're portaling. 4. I have a visportal in a window (not a brush or entity, literally just a hole in a wall that acts as a window), and the visportal is completely sealed relative to the opening (again, it's actually a tiny bit larger). There are no other openings to the room. But the visportal doesn't show up when I do the "show" script while testing. 5. I've also had a door portal not show up when it's right next to another door (I have it set up as double doors for a mansion). Can I use one portal for both doorways, since it's really just one hole in the wall? And is it a problem that it doesn't show one of them when I have it as two portals, one for each door? There's something basic that I'm missing here in my understanding of visportals, I'm just not quite sure what it is. Sorry for all the questions. I promise I'll be done soon and won't be in this thread every day. :-)

Haven't played it yet, but now I will! Actually, I should probably do the Thomas Porter stuff in order. Having already played Glenham out of order, I should go back and do it proper.

{edit} answered my own question that was here earlier. Anyway, I'm glad I stumbled onto this thread. I want to play Builder's Blocks now just to see what the "unusual" fuss is about.

.{edit}

Welp, some good suggestions, and thanks all. As expected, I have a bit more work than anticipated, but still don't think I'm too far from calling it ready. Decorative stuff like the suggestions I got above are most of what is left. I'm ironing out some things with visportals and objectives, but a lot of the big stuff is already done.

No worries. Thanks for taking the time. I'll get the chance to fix it this evening.

Thanks! I'll probably take your advice on paintings, but the walls that are most in need of it are actually ones I didn't screenshot. I've been trying to "decorate" as much as possible, but I'll have to give some thought to what else I might use.

The entity I was referring to is the Objectives entity. The brush isn't an entity. At least I don't think it is, but I'll double check to be sure.

Below, I've linked an album of screenshots from my in-development FM. It now has an official title: Poets & Peasants There should be nine pics in all. Constructive criticism is appreciated, but please keep in mind that this is my first time doing, well, anything. Prior to this mission, all I'd made were a couple generic rooms from pgs. 1-2 of Fidcal's A-Z tutorial. Specifically, I haven't "noshadows"d a ton of things yet, so there are occasional shadows being cast in some of the sceenshots that won't be there in the final version. I know there are other skills I have yet to learn that will help with my mapping, but I'm happy so far, and it's been fun. http://imgur.com/a/lopZj Enjoy! {edit} Bah! I'm already nitpicking my shots, and I've found a couple textures that need to sync with one another (shots 3 and 9).

Newbie Objectives questions: So my mission is fairly straightforward. Steal {X} loot, then return to the start. I might add in a "no kill" rule for the hardest difficulty, but one step at a time. So I set up both objectives according to Fidcal's tutorial here: http://wiki.thedarkm...ge_6#Objectives The problem came with the ending location, the "exitLocation" entity. My first objective entity was a mess, so I deleted both it and the "exitLocation" brush and made new ones. But then I got a message when I tried to make another "exitLocation" brush, saying it already existed. I hit 'J' in DR and pulled it up, and it highlighted almost every damn brush on the map. Now if I create a new brush it's named "exitLocation" by default, and if I try to rename it, it renames every brush, so I can't create a unique brush for the objective entity to point to. Needless to say, I haven't been able to get the objective to trigger in the mission. My last backup save wouldn't kill me to reload, but it would set me back maybe 30 minutes. But I'd rather figure out how I screwed up. Any help is appreciate, as always.

Is the transition to 2.02 going to affect FMs in development? I ask because I'm probably not too far from completion on mine...maybe a couple weeks or so.

That was one of my biggest complaints about T3. For all its faults, T4 actually managed it better, but still not ideally. And half the equipment I acquired in T3, I never even used, because I was saving it for some epic "rainy day" moment that never came. By comparison, some of the best moments I had in T1 and 2 came about because I blew my equipment early, and the level was more complex than I anticipated, and I had to get very creative in the latter half of the level.

Everyone is welcome to their opinion. I do disagree strongly with you melrief, but I hope my comments are taken respectfully. Beyond the gameplay and coding nightmares this would entail (detailed well by Springhell on page 1), the logistical and storytelling issues of making all of this seem coherent would be impossible to juggle, even if the devs were getting paid for this. In the end, we'd have some tacked on features that neither add to any individual missions nor tie things together better than they are already. Also, this thread frames the lack of continuity as a fault. I've always seen it as a strength. Campaigns end. TDM doesn't. T2 has a story arc. T2 FMs are limitless. Standalone missions also require less of a time committment. I love that aspect of TDM. I can knock out a 30-minute mission on a free night, jump right in without having to worry about gearing up or finding clues or locating an entrance, and can leave the game for weeks afterwards without any loose plot strands to tie up or navigating to do. It's also allows you to build your own world and story. Your "steal and go to jail" idea for a prison mission might work for some prison FMs, and I'm sure we could think of other ways to tie things in. But many FMs have elaborate backstories with multiple plot points. I'd rather craft the back story and weave things together in my mind. I can appreciate the sense that this is all tied together somehow. I love that feeling as well. But "the City" in my mind, with all of these characters and missions and campaigns going on at various points, paints a richer image in my mind than any in-game attempt ever could. Also, in T1 and 2, we couldn't build up cash to buy more equipment, and couldn't save equipment from mission to mission, and the overall balance was better for it. By the end of T3, with a city hub and ability to prep, I had so much stuff that the last few missions were a joke. Any attempt to let us steal and prep between missions would either have to be negated once missions start (and thus pointless) or could severely damage mission balancing. Lastly, city hubs are fine in games that take ~20 hours to complete. Hell, it acted as a nice filler in T4, which would have been woefully short otherwise. But how will we feel about our headquarters when we're navigating it on mission #60 and hour #100 of our TDM experience? But beyond all of that, this discussion is (likely) entirely academic; a hypothetical. I can't imagine the development needed to make it happen, but I'd guess it's beyond the scope of even TDM's considerably talented team.

Lol. But yeah, improvements to TDM don't come as quickly as improvements to technology, so it's (slowly) becoming less of a problem. Personally, working on my first map, I'm going to go through the optimization tutorial, do what I can, but probably ignore anything that's beyond me. It helps that it's a small map, I realize, but what Spring said about frustration in newer mappers is very relevant.

Thanks all around. I know there are resources in the wiki that will answer some of my questions, and I do search there before coming here. But sometimes it's just hard locating a specific piece of information. As always, though, the info is appreciated. The doors are more confusing, because it's as if I'm frobbing them a 2nd or 3rd time, while only clicking once. I've doubled checked their surroundings and I'm not too close to them. This morning I opened DR/TDM again and noticed that I had no problems when I held the right mouse button instead of clicking it quickly and releasing it, which means it may be a mouse sensitivity issue. I'm not sure which I'd rather it be...a fluky DR problem or a hardware issue on an expensive mouse. For now, I'm going to assume it's a fluke on my end, and will take a harder look if others encounter it during beta.

Two quick questions: - How do I get the FPS to display when I'm testing? - Is there anything common that makes doors act funny? I ask because I have two that should just act as normal doors, but seem to get "stuck" opening and closing a LOT. I don't think it's a brush overlap with the surrounding walls...that would prevent it from opening altogether, yeah? There's a chance it's my mouse, which is equally as worrisome (it's a $70 gaming mouse, so I'm not keen to replace or fix it). It's not a big deal, but if anyone's encountered similar problems, I'd be interested to hear about it.

Can the Thief games themselves be considered inspiration? Below is a great, if jaded, comparison image that reminds me of what's great about the old Thief games (and why T4 failed creatively compared to T1-2 and even T3). http://i.imgur.com/5XVAlbS.jpg Now, in fairness, that's the opening sequence in T4, but it wouldn't fare much better against the opening level of T2. And that's far from the most intricate level in T2 (though it's a good one). But the point is about linear gameplay. Often, T4 would have "choices" but it only served to provide brief diversions before putting the player back on a linear track in most levels. T1 and T2 aren't entirely innocent of this, and would occasionally become one-tracked. But "choice" is often misunderstood. It's not just, say, a back entrance to a mansion (though those are always good too). The best Thief levels, to me, were open playgrounds. Yes, there were goals and paths. But trying to pinpoint "choices" was impossible due to the variety of ways the level could be tackled. Maybe you disagree with my assessment of T4, but that's beside the point. This isn't a review, and don't want to start that discussion up here. But I enjoyed this image, and the reminder it gave me about missions. {edit} ...to all of which I'm going to add the disclaimer that my currently in-development FM isn't ambitious enough to escape this same criticism (it's too small to be anything but linear). I can appreciate how difficult it is to create "playground" levels, and hope to be there eventually.

You guys will appreciate this. So I'm testing my map and checking out my latest additions, and I have music from the Thief games playing on my computer to keep me in the right frame of mind. So I'm checking stuff out, and I start to hear footsteps, and suddenly a guard says "Who's there?!" and I hear louder footsteps of a suspicious guard. My mind started frantically trying to figure out what was going on. Never mind that I have no guards in my level yet; I snuck into a dark corner and started looking around for him. It took me a good 10 seconds to realize it was the music. Tail between my legs, I laughed and closed out of the map, having received quite a scare. I'll just chalk it up to being fully immersed in what I was doing.

Originality is likely pretty hard. I know there's variety even in the same mission type, but a lot of times we're just splitting hairs when we make distinctions between, say, mansion, cathedral, castle, fortress, museum, bank, etc. missions. Thief isn't necessarily about enormous diversity, though, but about the feeling of being a master thief. The levels themselves usually boil down to the same basic formula. But that's nothing to be ashamed of. Compared to the main Thief games, though, the one thing that stands out to me is the amount of undead/horror levels (I include ghosts and spiders in this too). The Thief games have, what, one or two per game? Same with T2X, which only boasts two. About 40% of TDM FMs have some combination of those. I'm using the Wiki list of FMs for the percentage. To me, it seems like one of the biggest strengths of TDM is vaulting, scaling, climbing, etc. As such, I think that compared to the overall FM total, we're lacking Thieves Highway FMs, which could shine on TDM in a way that they can't in the other games. I've seen levels that incorporate Thieves Highway elements. But, to date, I've encountered only one that truly feels like traveling via rooftop (William Steele 2).

Let's call it 6 and a half. I'll be surprised if mine feels like a full mission.

True. But as it's on the low end for T2 and high end for TDM, it's probably too early to call it a trend. Just prior to that period, T2 had 13 released in a single month. I'm not trying to be a downer, just provide proper perspective. I hope TDM continues the positive trend upward with FMs. I like it better than T2, which was incredible for its time but shows its age even with graphical and design innovations in the years since. TDM isn't perfect, but in my opinion at least is the best Thief experience out there right now (including the recent commercial release of T4).

Ok, I just ran new calculations, and it turns out I underestimated T2 a bit. In about 14 years of existence, T2 has 811 FMs, for an average of 57.9 a year. Even with some moderate slow-down, they did over 40 in 2013, so it's not exactly dying. T1 is at 13.2/year over a slightly longer period of time (it has 198 total). But with T1, it's frontloaded in its first few years. In the last five years or so, TDM is healthily outpacing its output. So yes, T1 has more missions, but it had a 9-year head start. TDM is more active these days, so it's in better shape than some might think. Only T2 is more prolific in both total missions and recent output.