Tarhiel
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Posts posted by Tarhiel
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Congrats, joebarnin, this is not your first mission and one can see all the experience you applied from your previous missions - well designed, fresh, with lots of interesting ideas.
SInce many before me already said what was good and bad + I am lazy today and don´´ want to write much, I will just say:
SpoilerI really liked the fresh take on the peeping-tom "mechanic", that was great!
Also all the flats were well done - player always knows where is he and where the other flat, which is mentioned in the readables, is and there are enough subtle hints about the secret switches.
Though I have to say, I had to noclip to 2 of them - both in the Hammerite cathedral, one up on the roofbeam, the second on the light - how were the player supposed to know they are there?The only reason I found them was because I have the "highlight loot" button bound, otherwise I would have never found them, since they are not mentioned anywhere + pretty invisible.
Also the travel back to past - was that inspired by Back to the Future movies? Because I would say it was, even down to the diction and vocabulary used by the inventor himself in the readable!
I thought it was clever homage, only to read here, it is probably not so?
Also, one other thing: player should not be able to tinker with the date setup on the time-travel machine, as this might disrupt the time continuum - I was able to set a different date on the machine, only to end up again in the future where I came from, which doesn´t make sense.
When the player can´t use the date settings in the future, because the machine is broke down, that make sense.
But player shouldn´t be able to do that even in the past, when the machine is functional - player voice should stop himself from changing the date, warning him about the repercussions, in the similar way as when the protagonist stops you from returning to the future without the picture, when you try to frob the lever on the time-machine.
Congrats again, this was a blast to play!
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Hi guys,
How do I find the map to the underwater facility?
SpoilerIf it is the map you will acquire be copying the weathered map, that didn´t trigger the objective for me.
All the other objectives are done.
EDIT:// Nevermind,
SpoilerFound it in the warehouse building, in the same room where the inventor talks to some other guy about the underwater suit and submarine thingy, right on the table with the base model.
Must have miss the frobbable scroll before. -
6 hours ago, MrMunkeepants said:
he had a few I didn't, but it reminded me that he lists the clock tower on Bell Street when it is on Hill Street (in case that is confusing anyone else) and that the map has the clock tower in the center but it is actually by Marlow Manor - unless there is a second one?
There is not, but there is one tower which looks like Belltower and it kept confusing me as well, until I realized those are two different towers.
The one I am speaking about looks like it´s smoking out of it.
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On 7/5/2020 at 4:31 PM, mmij said:
Congratulations on putting together this epic-scale map with some interesting and frustratingly, fun missions. I can tell a lot of work went into it from many different people.
I enjoyed the main storyline, the idea of the player being more than just a simple thief. And how you can choose the method of exacting revenge on the villain makes it more than just a Mario World level —collect coins, free the princess... Oops! She's in another castle.
And as much as I enjoyed the missions, I do feel the need to share my critic of the map.
Humans build cities based on a geometry for planned growth or asymmetrically for natural growth. This map uses neither and is difficult to navigate. All the buildings have near identical exteriors in the dim light, there are no landmarks to reference. And the street signs are dark placards sitting in the dark, of limited use on the ground, but definitely not helpful if you've gone vertical.
Another issue with the mapping is that, because of the hodgepodge of structures, there are many areas where you can literally walk on air (Hill Street is a good example), or get pushed sideways during a jump by an invisible wall. The latter is a feature found throughout the map. I have no suggestions on how to fix this other than through a walkthrough in Dark Radiant.
But about the layout of the city, I do have a suggestion. It's based on my past work within government public works. And I give it as advice, to be regarded or disregarded —not for me to be a know-it-all or an attacker. I know a ton of work went into this project.
Any building that was constructed by the government, a church, or wealthier faction should be part of a geometry. It can be part of a grid —polar or Cartesian— a militant triangle, star, diamond, etc. (as long as it's pointy), or your choice of polygon. Poorer areas, or places where the sprawl has grown with the city's population, are normally going to be like tree branches or rivers. The passageways flow around larger buildings (connecting to but not overpowering geometric ones) and natural formations.
So for this map, the area around the church, the clock tower, and all major buildings housing the wealthy or government services (electrical and water centers) should be on a geometric pattern. This includes the verticals. The pipes and lines should radiate out in the same pattern as the ground-level roads.
The "sprawl" is not random. There is a pattern to how sprawls develop, and often it grows like a tree. main branch of traffic forms, and the smaller branches bud out after that. If the sprawl is growing out of decay, the original large structures will look more like rocks in a river if you take a bird's-eye view.
In areas where geometrical growth meets asymmetrical growth, in a newer city (only a couple hundred years old) you often find its a no-man's zone. There's not really any established business or housing from either side that seems to be permanent. It's in flux. Older cities will still maintain the line, but there is a mix of well and poorly funded architecture.
Two of the biggies for navigation are the facades and the roads. In an area around a well-funded, high-profile project such as a church, the church will decide the look of the area. If its design is sedate and dark, many of the major structures in the neighborhood will to reflect that. And the road, which is normally funded by the builder, will be uniform in that area and wider than those found elsewhere.
So around our theoretical church, that's in an older city, the buildings should show signs of having started out from the same designer. The roads should all be the same material and wide enough for high traffic or parades.
A more recently built clock tower nearby our church will have it's own sycophantic buildings, but in better condition, and its own unique, wide pavements. If the structures' properties meet, then there is a distinct border. More often than not though, there is an intermediate section of sprawl that connects the two areas. Where sprawl sits closely between two properties, it leans more towards one design or the other.
This is not really important for smaller maps. Smaller maps are tiny sections of larger geometry or asymmetric growth and can be treated independently. There are fewer high-level patterns to consider, and the above topics won't affect a player's run. But on a large map such as this one, consideration to city planning and growth can drastically increase a player's ability to navigate.
One last note. This advice is given based the growth of a city considering material wealth only. Vying political factions and wars will change the footprint of various parts of a city in different ways than I described above. Asymmetric and geometric patterns will still arise, but density and direction will be different.
Thank you for this unexpected and interesting bit of trivia, I´m intrigued!
Is there any book or article you would recommend to read to learn more about all this?
Because this would be important reference material for area level design. I remember @Melan once wrote about the book he recommends about design of houses and how it informs his approach to design certain missions.
It would be interesting to read your material as well.
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Congratulations again to the creators of this mission, mission like this has not been done yet, both to the scope and complexity.
This was a blast to test and anybody playing this is up for a ride
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Hello OGDA,
Very nice first mission!
I enjoyed a small mission after playing certain gargantuan mission in making.
Can I just ask
SpoilerHow am I supposed to go to the hidden bar? I must have missed a hidden switch or something.
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Hello everybody,
I am currently betatesting Painter´s Wife and this strange crash occurs - it happens to me and also user Krillmar and I was recommended to post it here:
Once I am trying to use key to unlock secret (the small showcase with mini Smurph-like houses in a library) it always crashes - i was tried to delete darkmod.cfg and use freshly created one - to no avail
I have updated my Nvidia drivers from 26.21.14.4274 to the latest ones - still, no avail.
Edited://
It turned out not to be a 2.08-specific bug and has already been fixed/worked around by creators of the mission.
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I try to ghost as much as possible, and even though now I do understand how the score works. but I wouldn´t be against making it vice versa - now the smaller number is better, but it would be easier to understand if 100 (percent) would be optimal and lower score means worse rating.
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In no particular order:
1. The Heart of the Lone Salvation
2. Requiem
3. A House of Locked Secrets
4. Volta 1: Volta and The Stone
5. Volta 2: Cauldron of the GodsHonorable mentions(because we can´t write more than 5):
Glenham Tower
Return to the City -
Hey, Amadeus,
This is your first mission? Impressive!
All the typical mistakes of upcoming mappers are not here - too vast spaces with nothing to do or unclear goals are not present; level-design is concise, micro-stories of its inhabitants gave it life-like feeling and it was very well optimized!
The main villain twist on how to get rid of him was original
I also liked the way code was hidden - if player found just one half with a little bit of combinatoric you could still open the safe
All in all, awesome little mission
SpoilerI was missing cca 700-800 gold, probably form the last secret which I didn´t discover:
I had:
- Windowsill
- Secret black magic tunnel in the store
- And 2 more which I don´t remember, I have no idea where the last one could be.
EDIT:// I found the last secret - it was in the bookshelf of man who is watching you, near your flat. I also missed some loot on the streets and the one in the maintenance sewers.
I also experienced the same reflection bug as Bluehawk and I thought the moor is un-blackjackable, until I have read the forum - it would not have occurred to me to steal the bracelet right form his arm, but it should have, since it was glowing green.
Also, I would have welcomed the possibility to cure the hammerite, since he writes in his letter that he feels his powers is draining while he stays here and player will find a voodoo doll in moors´s apartment, I definitely wouldn´t mind a hidden objective of curing him by tossing the doll into the holy water, just like the bracelet - because I did it and nothing happened.
Also, it would be a nice hint to players as to what to do with a bracelet as well
I also hope you would release another stories of your protagonist.
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Congratulations on the release, looking forward to play it!
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3 hours ago, peter_spy said:
Actually, looking by the MSI Afterburner stats, current TDM soft shadow implementation eats up a lot of GPU performance, not only GPU memory. At this point stencil shadows with soft shadows option are more performance efficient than shadow maps with decent quality/resolution.
Do you think it will be optimized later on?
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What a wonderful little mission released at the end of the year!
Really nice surprise, Golwdell and Kingsal, I will just reiterate what Shadow said:
SpoilerThat shrinking "bag of holding" was a brilliant idea and I think this was the first mission ever in Darkmod to use this. And just today i was thinking about it that i haven´t played for a long time Thief or Darkmod FM with this mechanic - and what do you know
I was able to get on the roof of the house Garret´s room is located in, by opening the metal window shutters and climbing upon them. I wouldn´t count it as bug, even though I could access areas which should be off limits - this is something I love about Darkmods mission - freedom to go everywhere you want and not being tied down by invisible walls.
I will refrain from my typical longer posts today and will just say this was a pleasant surprise, from poster collecting (not overdone, for which I am thankful) to snowballs throwing
Merry Christmas everybody and a happy new year!
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Very nice compact little mission;
I hope our hero´s journey will continue and that he will
Spoilertake on the gang
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21 hours ago, MirceaKitsune said:
I know this is an ancient thread and aren't looking to upset anyone by necroposting. Just wanted to bump this one more time, since it's still an initiative I think is valid. Most FM's look very similar, especially the urban ones... I've been eagerly awaiting more missions taking place in different themes and representing different cultures. If anyone plans on creating a new FM anytime soon, maybe this inspires them to give this a shot.
Well, if you haven´t played Cauldron of Gods, you just might be pleasantly surprised
I think many of those assets might be reused in an wholly Egyptian-styled mission
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Fanatastic mission, joebarnin, I enjoyed it alot!
There were few thing at the end that baffled me:
Spoiler- First, there was no clue as to where to look for the third part of the key - I ASSUMED I have read every readable and I haven´t missed it but I was worried that it might be still somewhere in the cathedral instead in the tomb, that maybe I have overlooked some clue. So giving to player a small hint, maybe in the second Niemath´s journal, that the third part still haven´t been found, wouldn´t be bad.
- Second thing which confused me was the note about "the water of the Saints" - all the time I thought "Of course, you need to use holy water on it" - so when I opened the tomb, I immediately, without touching the stone itslef, dipped water arrows to holy water and shoot the heart with it - only to be really surprised it didn´t help as the curse was still triggered.
So I took the heart, drop it on the ground and then repeated the process - to no avail.
Then I had to look into your clues, because I was baffled
The layout of the mission is well done, maybe some rooms could have been smaller (like forge or storage area), but overall it was nicely done.
Cathedral was majestic, I enjoyed walking in it just like that.
- Also, good job with the optional objective of helping the cook with Vincent - I thought I have to look for some evidence to discredit him, some dirt on him (usually in Thief/Dark mod missions it´s like that), but it didn´t occurred to me I have to frame him, so I had to look this one up.
But this is just me not being able to think out of the box, so this was a good puzzle.
- I really liked the rat´s + ring puzzle, it would never occur to me to follow the rat, only after I have read the readable - nicely done
I also like that Garret (I still call the main protagonist Garret, no matter what) had option to return it to the grave instead of keeping it.
- There´s one chest which I couldn´t open throughout the whole game - down in the church basement, it is in the room where there are 3 chests, 2 of them can be opened and the third I wasn´t able to find a key for.
And I must say your mission is well optimized - throughout the whole time I had stable frame rate of 120FPS, maybe even more, but that´s the maximum my monitor can draw.
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On 9/14/2019 at 10:44 PM, Melan said:
This has been a cool mission to get reacquainted with TDM after a long pause. Challenging, consistently well written and atmospheric, and always top notch in appearance. An excellent continuation of the nautical themes in your previous missions. Good to finally see Wrecker's Reach put to use, too. I hope the other side of town (which was not featured in this FM) also sees the light of day some time.
I concur, Doragofer, would not have said it better myself
I have only 1 question:
SpoilerThat lady on the boat, is she a cannibal or something? Is the threatening message on her table, held by severed hand, which disappears after reading, something which will be more developed in the upcoming missions or is it just some mystery never to be explained?
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On 9/15/2019 at 9:50 AM, JackFarmer said:Spoiler
I have discovered the pond outside, the freezer and the broken robot.
Hm, I will have a look then. If you mean that the picture is frobabble and opens secret entrance to the chapel, that I know.
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Hi JackFarmer,
Congratulations on a mission release!
I am stuck at these two points and help with them would be appreciated.
Spoiler1.) first clue of 4 of Applefinger - i have the other gems but for the world of me I can´t decipher what does it mean "where one cannot breath"? i thought it´s the pond, but that was the second gem.
2.) Where are Brother Gilbert´s funds?
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2019 Upgrade (ready for Cyberpunk 2077 now):
Intel Core i7-6700K,
Motherboard: ASUS Z170 PRO GAMING - Intel Z170
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX Black 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3000
GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 2080Ti GAMING X TRIO 11G, 11GB GDDR6
HDD: Samsung SSD 970 EVO PLUS, M.2 - 500GB Seagate Desktop SSHD - 2TB
Blu ray: ASUS BW-16D1HT
Skriňa: CoolerMaster Storm, Trooper Edition Cooler: Zalman CNPS9800 MAX Source: Be quiet! Straight Power 10 800W
Monitor: Dell Alienware AW3418DW - LED monitor 34"
Win10 Pro -
I have already registered, I was missing terribly some good aggregator of missions since ttlg.de is defunct
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This is probably your biggest problem:
seta r_fboResolution "2.62"
That's probably left over from 2.06 where MSAA didn't work with soft shadows.
Set it to 1.
Also, 16x MSAA is still pretty expensive. Try lowering to 8x.
Finally, try increasing your lightgem interleave:
seta tdm_lg_interleave "3".
Oh my goodness, thank you, nbohr1more!!!
Finally I can enjoy darkmod missions again - I had no idea this might be the case, I just thought my machine is not powerful enough.
Even with MSAA 16, it runs majority of the time like a charm now, thank you a alot
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You're not supposed to put the ledger in the spy's room, you need it for yourself. You have to put the Dead Drop Correspondence in the spy's room.
Thanks! I would never thought that´s the proper item, because in his diary he mentions he would like to lay his hands on a ledger, so I assumed the ledger it´s the correct item.
I haven´t been able to find 2 out of 3 perches, but that doesn´t bug me as much as this did
Flash arrow: Yay or nay?
in The Dark Mod
Posted · Edited by Tarhiel
I, for one, would then definitely start using them.
I am never using bombs neither mines in any of my playthroughs.
I think it is also more coherent with the gameworld concept - having arrows as a viable means of solution. This, and only this, out of all the other objects at player´s disposal should have been remade to an arrow in the former Thief games as well.
Bombs and mines should definitely stay in and it should be up to designers whether they would want to use it in their missions.
Similarly, I would also welcome keychain as an optional purchasable object at the beginning of the mission for those of us, who does not want to scroll through many keys in their inventory and are afraid of dropping them in case they might need them.
Keychain would act as 1 object which you can use on the doors, and if you have the key to the right doors, they would open after the use - it has already been implemented the Thief COSAS fanmissions - it´s neat little thing.
All the keys should stack on the keyring and not take place in the inventory, if the player had purchased it, with the exception of special keys (ancient runes/non-typical shaped keys).
These two Quality of Life improvements I would welcome with the open arms