Bienie

Wow, I'm impressed seeing so many fellow metal heads on the forums! Moonsorrow was mentioned by several members, definitely in my top 10 bands. Though I would probably classify them as black metal (with folk and progressive influences). Shout out to Devin Townsend too, I mostly know him from listening to Strapping Young Lad, but an excellent musician in general. In general I'm an equal fan of death metal and black metal, and mainly Nordic bands, but there is good stuff from all over the world. I'm particularly a fan of the early Swedish death metal scene with bands like Entombed, Dismember, Grave, Grotesque etc, and the later Gothenburg scene of Melodic Death Metal like Dark Tranquillity, In Flames and others (both of which I've hung out with at concerts, Gothenburg is a small town ^^) For Black Metal it's mainly Norwegian and some Swedish and Finnish bands like Darkthrone, Immortal, Gorgoroth, Lord Belial, Bathory, Dissection, Moonsorrow, Impaled Nazarene and many more. But when it comes to mapping in DR I tend to go for something that's a bit more chill and puts me in the zone. I usually listen to some kind of Dungeon Synth or similar, for example:

Thought I'd post some teaser shots for CoS 0: To Catch a Thief. Still WIP of course, but I'm thinking release before the end of the year. It's going to take place just east of where CoS 2 was set, and a few months earlier.

There hasn't been a halloween contest for many years. Sometimes authors will release a halloween themed mission on their own (like this one two years ago), but I don't know if there are any in the works this year. There is a contest announced for Christmas but it's not necessarily Christmas themed...

I don't know about approval, but it would definitely give me a good chuckle! Exciting that there is a new contest out, haven't had one of these in a long time! I like the theme of connecting storylines too. We'll see if I have time to participate, been rather quiet from me lately unfortunately, but I am well on my way creating a prequel to the CoS trilogy. If all goes smoothly with that perhaps I will have time to flesh out an unreleased 3-mini mission campaign I've put on the shelf for this contest, but I would definitely have to put my nose to the proverbial grindstone to make the deadline.

Same here. I've only visited the forums fleetingly of late, but I'm sorry I missed this bit of sad news. Grayman's missions, specifically the early William Steele missions were so amazing to me when I first played them, that it inspired me to try my hand at mapping. Without that experience my own catalogue of missions might never have existed either, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Additionally, I echo the sentiment that he was always a kind and helpful fellow, truly a great asset to the Dark Mod community. R.I.P. Grayman, you absolute legend!

Congrats on the release! Will be playing this one soon!

@ddaazzaa seems several people have left if you're making an update to this mission consider adding the spawnarg "notPushable" "1" to the key to keep this from happening.

It was actually more of a general thing in the Inn and bottom of the apartment house, which could have been a conscious choice. I'll show you a few pics of what I mean.

Finished it, excellent stuff! Very high production values with the intro/outro videos, and a very engaging storyline with rich worldbuilding. Will definitely be looking forward to part 2! Anyway thanks for making the mission, I had a blast playing it!

Awesome! Congrats on your first release! I've been avoiding spoilers for this one, going to play this tonight.

Thank you so much for going out of your way to say thank you, it means a lot to us mappers to know our work is appreciated!

I can agree that the S/R system seems unstable, but I think it might just be a bit limited. A lot of times when I try to use it I just have to abandon it because it often won't react to the stim I'm using, and I have to find a different mechanism...

Wow, that simple huh? I enabled ongoing and it works a charm! I remember having issues with the no-kill objectives in Pearls and Swine because of this same reason, but with very different symptoms. I think the startmap pack has a functioning no kill objective which I normally keep but must have overridden it this time I guess. Thanks for finding the fault!

Well since the objective completes but mission simply doesn't end I don't that code is the problem. Hopefully it's not a bug like JackFarmer is describing... Maybe deleting and remaking the objectives could help, haven't tried that. I can upload just the map file I guess, if you would like to take a look for me: dropbox

I didn't realize that was a thing. It's completely empty though so I'm guessing that's not the problem.

I'm running in to a weird problem where my map doesn't end when all mandatory objectives are complete. I've never seen this bug before... When I playtest it and go to the exfil area it says "objective complete" and continues on instead of getting the "mission complete" screen. I've triple checked all my objectives to make sure none have the mandatory flag that shouldn't have it. Any one have other ideas of what might be happening?

Thanks for your feedback, I'm satisfied with a rating of average considering how quickly it was put together!

There is now an update available in the in-game downloader that fixes a few bugs that people have been running into. Most importantly the map should now be completable with the "open on unlock" setting turned off. There are a few quality of life changes as well, but objectives, loot and geometry were left untouched.

There is now an update available in the in-game downloader that brings the mission up to par with the sequels. There is now a second exit from the sewer system at the start, since the toilet entrance seems to have been problematic for some people. Aside from that there are a few patrol fixes and quality of life improvements. Objectives, loot and geometry are untouched.

Thanks for the feedback! Pretty good timing with the hints there, I just updated it today to add that part in!! I was watching someone struggle with that on a play-through on YouTube and it occurred to me that many people will have never used a slow match before, so I should write it into the hints. As for the lights, I take it from many players that it was a bit too hard, since quite a few lights are electric, but at least you can switch most of them off on lower difficulties. I feel like the highest difficulty is up to the mapper to make however deviously hard they want to ^^ I'm glad you liked this good, traditional mission! I love making them!

Thanks, that worked! It seems to. I changed the guy's team back to normal and the only custom thing about him was that "AI_Use" was set to "AI_ANIMAL" and the guards couldn't care less about him, at least when knocked out.

Quick question, is there an easy way to make an AI invisible to other AI? I want a specific AI to not garner any attention if the player knocks him out. Kind of like the AI_see spawnarg on lights but for bodies. I tried changing his team to 14 (rats) since AI don't react to dead rats but it seems a body is a body in their eyes...

Just finished it as well. Very tense overall, and dripping with atmosphere, and a compelling if slightly sparse storyline. TDM can always use more creppy / spooky missions! An impressive mission for a first release! Will look forward to playing any future missions you make!