Petike the Taffer
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Posts posted by Petike the Taffer
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Thanks for sharing!
Oh, my pleasure.
It's been a good and not too frustrating mission, there was plenty of suspense involved with guarding patrols.
Unfortunately, on one of my loads, I've still seen some minor errors in guard pathfinding when it comes to
their usage of the elevator
, but later on, it didn't really reappear. I suppose the occassional glitch is still par for the course even in the final version of this mission, but truth be told, I didn't find it game-breaking, so it wasn't an unsolvable annoyance.
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Demagogue's Story and Plot design article on the wiki has already been recommended here, but reading through the various tutorials on the wiki, I think sotha's Mission Design Tips article is also worthy of a mention. It focuses on the non-technical, but still gameplay-related challenges of designing a mission. Naturally, this also relates to how the basics of the mission are plotted out and how the objectives of a mission are presented to a player. I especially like the "always bet on stupidity" remark aimed at overly vague or overly complicated puzzle/secret design.
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Glad you're one of those people who have an interest in developing games like this. From the trailer, it looks quite neat.
I hope this will get a good reception from the target audience and they'll find it fun enough as a learning accessory. Children can be actually quite demanding and choosy when it comes to edutainment quality. But that's part of what I admire about them: They won't be fooled by an adult's notions of "good enough" and will usually wear their hearts on their sleeves.
Good luck with this, it seems to be shaping up nicely.
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Erm, nevermind, I've just figured out where to get the rest of the loot for the 4000 loot objective.
One of the tips mentioned earlier actually helped with that. Now to finish and take a look at my statistics... 
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Most upgraded FM ever
Indeed !
I've been playing this in two gos so far, during the last few days, and it's a splendid mission, even if its complexity makes it an easy target for being rife with the occassional bugs. I admire PranQster's resolve to keep bettering it.
My only current gripe with the mission is that I am just a few hundred loot (about 400) short of completing the 4000 loot objective on Medium difficulty. I think I've looked absolutely everywhere and there isn't much more to find at this point. Is there some hidden cache somewhere in the basement area of the mission ? Maybe I've overlooked that.
A humorous experience I had later in the mission: I shot a noisemaker onto that open wooden floor where the drawbridge controls are located. After luring the guard away, I quickly hid, then doused the torch above the control lever. Sure enough, he went from search mode to tinderbox mode and started relighting the torch. At first I didn't want to try blackjacking him, but the temptation was too great.
To my surprise, it worked, and he dropped like a stone before he could relight the torch again ! 
Talk about effective use of your tools... Noisemaker, water arrow and blackjack in accord. I'm leaving the pulling of the lever for my escape sequence, though. I've been stealthy as can be, but I mostly didn't ghost, so a bit of a dramatic getaway is fine with me this time around.Another funny experience was me jumping down from the ramparts into the moat, climbing back up and looking around in the baloon basket just out of curiosity, whether there's any loot. It was then that I finally realised, with great embarassment, that the baloon is actually controllable and not just a part of the scenery !
Excellent work with the coding, PranQster. From what I've read in the old thread, the baloon has been in the mission since its earliest incarnation. No mean feat ! -
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Oh, and I liked the candle-related set dressing, with the different sizes and different states of decay. It looked very naturalistic and authentic for a small, presumably monastery church. The ruins of the belltower were also furnished convincingly. In terms of atmosphere and sense of place, it was an excellently designed mini-mission.
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Finished this mission yesterday, and it was a hoot.
Excellent example of a suspensful horror mission put together within a minimalist setting and with a minimalist plot. Before I played the mission, I had no idea it would take place in a winter setting. I loved the sense of isolation offered by the whole level, it was spot-on.The ending is effective and technically creative, even if a bit excessive. I didn't have a problem with
the chase sequence
, I paradoxically died more often due to jumping off the belltower than anything else. Then I finally figured, to my sudden embarassment, that the best way down is to simply climb onto the roof first and then escape by bypassing the problematic section.
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Since we're showcasing historical houses one could take inspiration from, Plas Mawr in the Welsh town of Conwy is as good a place as any if you want to get inspiration for 16th century interiors and furnishings. From the Elizabethan era, it now serves as a museum of period living and furniture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plas_Mawr
http://cadw.gov.wales/daysout/plasmawr/?lang=en
Of all the interiors in the building, I especially love the period kitchen.
A simple coating of straw on the floor (for insulation, cushioning and soaking up spills) and most of the ingredients are hanging on the walls or that harness above the table (to prevent rodents from getting to them). If someone could find a convincing straw-covered floor texture for TDM, I think he could build a kickass kitchen for some more rustic townhouse, farmhouse or less-solvent manor house. Here are some videos of the building, including the interiors:
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As others have already noted, nothing to be ashamed of. I've known about Thief since the times it was still a relatively new series, but I only played the games for the first time roughly a decade ago and have been playing them ever since. I've added TDM to the list as soon as I remembered last year that it's already supposed to be standalone by that point.
I've never played the second System Shock, but I intend to do so in the near future, just to complete my collection of Dark Engine games. 
Welcome and have fun with TDM.
P.S. The old Thief games are still playable on modern machines - you just need to install fan-made patches to make them fully compatible, but otherwise, they're the exact same games they were back during their release. (There are also some additional patches and packs to improve the graphics and so on, if you're interested in that sort of improvement.)
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The old electric powerplant in Poprad. Nowadays used as a regional art gallery.
With a bit of a Gothic Revival tinge added to it, I think it could work well as a pattern for the more industrial-themed, red brick buildings in TDM.
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This guy's YouTube channel about period archery is awesome.
I'd especially recommend watching the two-part tutorial video on making an arrow bag. It even goes to the length to explain how to build a spacer for the top of the quiver. There's even a note on the spacer's design that makes you think a bit about broadheads and how you'd store them comfortably to avoid damaging the fletching !
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Glad to hear you've liked that suggestion, guys.
I wasn't expecting this big of a response. -
One style of mid 19th century housing that is mostly forgotten: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octagon_houseWhile the concept was a North American fad of the period, I suppose someone could use a variation on the octagon floor plan idea while designing some unusual housing for an FM. Probably with some of the more "Victorian" styling of TDM in mind.
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Though I'm a bit late to the party, I just want to say that I'm glad they reconsidered this move and cancelled the current effort after public pressure. I'm not sure what the future will bring on this front, but I'm relieved that Steam saw reason and understood that it would be running into enterprenurial and legal issues if it kept this idea in place for weeks and months to come.
Since all the maps, textures, models, def files, audio assets, and all other non-software components aren't under GPL, then this statement isn't exactly true, is it? Without any of the aforementioned assets, you don't really have "The Dark Mod". You have a bunch of code that won't work.
So no, someone could not legally sell TDM.
Looking at it this way, you're right.
Sorry I spoke too soon. -
Not an outright "inspiration" thing, but I've thought this could be a useful little resource for those who are building FMs with various fortified architecture:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Fortifications
I think it's handy to have a mini-dictionary of sorts on the various common typologies of castles, forts and other fortifications. If nothing else, you can at least do some fact-checking about whether a certain type of fortified structure would seem realistic enough from a real world perspective.
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Awesome.
Keep up the good work. -
I'm only worried about us not being credited, that's all.
Well, and I obviously want TDM to stay a freeware project and not get abused by anyone who would want to con money off of more gullible players.
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I swear, if someone steals TDM, puts it on Steam and Steam will then pretend we have no right to compain, I'll go ballistic. The Greenlight scandals were awful enough. Steam just seems to be taking the piss by this point. I hope this whole mod monetisation scheme fails, crashes, burns and explodes. It's an outrageous spit in the face of all hobbyists who have been tirelessly working for years to create cool independent gaming projects and share their talent with other people worldwide.
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I've run into this on another forum I frequent and it's really terrible news.
While we're okay, I too am really worried how this is going to affect the modding scene at large. I could imagine that communities like ModDB are up in arms about this.
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I've been thinking about triggered voice overs a bit too, as I'd like to incorporate some into my own FM. The story won't work without the two main characters exchanging some banter, so I'll need to figure it out.
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Oh, this looks really good !
Thank you. -
Ah, that explains it !
I'll be trying to port my translation this evening from the original file to the updated one. I just hope not much has changed about the structure of the scripting in that file. (Probably not.)
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If I am not too late, I propose naming the fellow represented by the bust as "Imperator Athanasius II. (741-792), great reformer of The Empire".
Alternatively, some shorter version, like Athanasus.
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OK, tested the gameplay again (though in a different mission) and now it seems to be working. I think it might be just a file mismatch thing. I was trying to port a language file with the translation I made in the previous version, but it's probably better to port the translation directly into the 2.03 version of that language file instead of using the older one. No biggie, I'll try it. Hopefully it'll work just as well as previously. Which reminds me: It's high time I checked that translation one last time and sent it to the devs for final approval.
P. S. I'll admit, I was surprised to see my previous save games weren't deleted automatically from the game after the update. I was expecting that to happen. Oh well, live and learn...
[Updated] FM: The Siege Shop (v4.4) by PranQster and lowenz (2020/3/16)
in Fan Missions
Posted
Haven't witnesssed that, and I hope I'll avoid running into it in future playthroughs.