grayman

Is there a TDM standard for what qualifies as a secret area? I have one in Cleighmoor (Oops, I shouldn't have told you that!), and it's a "find the secret switch and open the secret door and the secret room has secret loot in it" kind of place. But I was wondering if Thief players had different expectations. I haven't progressed beyond the beginning of Heart (need to get back in there), so I haven't seen how Heart's secret area(s) were done (yet). Back in the DOOM days, it was expected that a secret area could be spotted because--say--a wall or door texture was purposefully misaligned, providing a visual clue. (Providing clues became de rigeur after the wall-banging frustration we all went through in Wolfenstein.) So I was wondering whether there was an expected way to present secret rooms in TDM. Thanks.

I've encountered the non-release problem. I think I get out of it by clicking the mouse wheel (or third button if you have one).

I would also be happy to do this. The problem I ran into beta-testing this mission was whether a readable was supposed to read the way it did. So if someone proofreads readables in the future for any author, the author should note the literacy of the writer. For example, I didn't suggest corrections for many of the guard readables (lower literacy), but I did try to straighten out the priest's journal, since I assumed he was a literate person.

This was reported during beta, but the ticking clock didn't allow time for a change. Workaround of noclipping through is prolly acceptable for now, especially with a new version coming that will most likely deal with the problem. EDIT: Reading backward through the thread, I see Biker has already dealt with this.

There was a local bicycle rider who was a big safety proponent. Gave talks and demonstrations to kids, spoke about it at town meetings, etc. And then one day he decided to do a U-turn right in front of an oncoming car that had the ROW. All it takes is one mistake.

So why is this bug picking on my entry?

I didn't think I had control over the HUD fonts. Is there something I was supposed to do to make sure fonts showed up after a savegame reload? Thought all this kind of stuff was standard "comes with the game" stuff.

Nicht Deutschland. USA. Thanks, though.

An excellent entry. Well done, Biker!

Agreed.

This is the only contest entry that's unplayable for me. I have older computers, but I've worked through every entry so far but this one. Since this map is designed for faster computers than mine, I'll abstain from voting.

Done. http://bugs.angua.at/view.php?id=2346

I corrected the spelling on mine and added a "release date" comment. Question re: Size. Is this the size of the *.map file, or the size of the complete *.pk4 file with all the goodies in it?

Well ...

Yes. Wrt monster clip, I read that if the player is inside a MC brush, AI can't see him. So if you put MC around a table model to make it easier for AI to avoid it, and you're thinking of running the brush all the way to the ceiling, be aware that if the player jumps up on the table, AI won't be able to see him. I tested this and it appears to be true.

I like group part select also, but I found a slight problem with it. Select a part and--say--shrink it along an axis. Hit ESC to unselect it. Select another part and shrink that. If you go back and look at the first part you shrunk, you'll see that it was still selected and it was shrunk AGAIN along with part #2. The solution is to hit ESC twice after you've made a change to a part. Then you know you're clear of the previous part before you do something to the next. This is particularly nasty if you unknowingly shrink a part out of existence. It simply disappears. This happened to me a few times before I figured out what was going on.

I have a voting question. With my older computers, I sometimes find myself slogging through a mission because of low FPS. RTTC is the only one I've been unable to even start, though. Wrt the contest polling, if I find I can't make any progress because of this problem, should I not vote at all, or should I give a Poor score for gameplay/lag? I've had to abandon one of the contest missions near the start because of this. It's unplayable for me. The problem is that I'm sure the mapper created it on a fast computer and it's meant to be played on fast computers. Why should I ding the map if it won't play on a slow computer? I see that more of my problem than his. Thanks.

All in all, a good mission.

Well, I have a love/hate relationship with this nutty mission. Climbing on the chests to get what's in them drove me nuts. And I had no clue what to do here: And here I am back again because now I'm stuck here: Got all the loot I need. I just need to accidentally come across the fabolous treasure.

I'm publicly voting that they should be public. (Is 'publicly' a word?) I'm too damn old to care whether people are nice or vindictive or whatever in public or behind the scenes. The maps are made for fun. Both the mapper's fun and the players' fun. Maybe the only poll question should be "Did you have fun playing this?"

I'll be more than happy to return the favor. I have a low-end computer (hard to believe it used to be top-end!). I have my "I started it last February" FM to get back to, but I'm burned out on mapping at the moment and testing someone else's work would be a nice change.

Thanks for the good comments. My maps have to have few guards because my computer is 5+yo and I can't play/test with more than 2 on the screen at a time. If/When I get a new computer, I'll be able to do better in this area. The voices are all me. I wasn't happy with how they turned out, but I didn't have time to redo them. My son does some pro voice work in Hollywood, and he volunteered to do voices on real pro-grade recording equipment, but I just didn't have the time to get him involved. Every mushroom was hand-planted. Every ... effing ... mushroom. That's one reason why I was so perturbed that DR can't properly rotate a group of objects; origins go flying every which way, and I had to take the time to go fetch each one of those suckers. I was very happy when the mine was finished and I could move up into the building. Using jdude's tutorial on mines as a model, they turned out pretty nice. That, and some eerie pictures of a slate mine in Ireland. My apologies if the ending is confusing. If I had it to do over again, I would do something that was easier to figure out.

I loved the design of this, though my old computer barely kept up with the detail.

I enjoyed this one, though I had a rocky start. I will admit to hating picking locks (I just can't get the hang of it) and having to do it underwater at the start of the mission nearly caused me to quit after 15 minutes of failure. Once I got past this I liked the rest of it. It played okay on my old computer. Worst framerate drop was in Bryce's room. Had to restart TDM to overcome the problem (this is standard with my system; if FPS drops to 0 all is lost). I satisfied the Expert loot objective with the last loot I picked up in Bryce's room. I'm glad I didn't have to go back through the mission looking for some tiny ring or whatnot. Nice job.