Bienie

Hm, yeah I've gathered that many players found it hard to figure out which windows are openable. I'm working on adding some tell-tale knobs that will distinguish them a bit better. The Bishop's Palace is meant to be hard, so I guess I succeeded there ^^ Though I don't feel like I was too stingy with shadows in there, every room should have shadows to hide in, even if you have to wait for a patroller to leave sometimes. Don't worry about timed challenges, I don't do anything like that. I mostly build my missions to be slowly but thoroughly explored! I am thinking of adding a new challenge though with the update, but I can't promise. It may be worth waiting until the update for the replay.

Congrats on the release! Excited to try this one out!

Thank you for your kind words! Hopefully you had a nice haul of loot!

Glad you enjoyed it! Sounds like you have a lot of other content to go through when replaying it. What was the most challenging part? The sneaking or the searching? As far as the bug is concerned:

Sounds like there is a lot of resistance to the idea, not surprisingly. I don't think it's something you should force on the player, if anything it would have to be only applied to the highest difficulty of a mission and communicated to the player beforehand. I mostly find the idea appealing from a challenge perspective, and it is reminiscent of the weight system in Escape from Tarkov which is a super challenging game. I'm happy with the default loot system though so it's no loss if this is never implemented.

I was a bit afraid people would find the deed, be confused and then toss it in the trash. Hopefully the window knobs will help with that. It's also the reason for the bread loaves not being frobable before you find the objective, but I can try without that and see if it works/makes sense. I have quite a few bugs already it seems so I will likely make an update pretty soon.

Thanks for the detailed feedback, and glad you had a good time! (A little too good by the looks of the screenshot!) Very strange bug with the killing, I'll have to take a look at that one. And yes, the asset pack for the Bishop's Palace is loaded with eye candy, and we have peter_spy to thank for creating it.

I usually use that spawnarg as well, though it means that the portal is left open which can affect performance. I think the knobs are good enough in perf-sensitive areas.

Awesome, I'm excited to try out all the new changes. Will see if I have a chance to give it a run this evening. I think you're right that it would be great to have a short list of "recommended" or "vetted" FMs to provide to the end user that have good performance and flow well in VR. Might require playing a few different missions, but that's hardly a chore

Unfortunately I wouldn't have the foggiest how to actually make this system (or if it's even feasible). Coding/scripting is definitely my weakest skill in regards to mapping.

I've thought about this before, and feel like I've read a discussion on the topic but I could be mistaken. I think it would be quite cool to have a weight system, but it would probably have to be mission specific. I imagined the system as follows: The player has a sack where the loot goes when frobbed, this sack can be put down on the ground but doing so will only allow the player to steal a couple of items (maybe size restricted), and they would then have to return to the bag to drop it off. Carrying the bag makes the player move slower the more loot is in there, and the bag functions similar to shouldering a body when it gets heavy. Perhaps there is even a maximum weight forcing the player to only steal things with a higher value per weight. The bag would function like the inventory grid allowing the player to then take something out that's not worth stealing.

I'm glad you found the mission enjoyable and that Santa Letta didn't pale in comparison to Mirkway Quarter, I was a bit afraid it would seeing as that mission has been worked on by multiple people over several years. The number code didn't work? That's strange. I assume you opened the door first? Did the lights turn on in the room when you entered the code, but the grate didn't open? Maybe try flipping on and off between the right and wrong code and hope it fixes itself, otherwise you may have to reload to a save before you tried it. Sometimes those things are a bit frail but I feel like I tried to mess it up and couldn't. You're quite right about the windows... I already had to add knobs to the windows in CoS 2 to signify that they are openable. That was silly of me to forget. I'll put that on the list.

Thank you for the detailed feedback! I guess I can see how the villains are cartoonish, but the funny (or sad) thing is that it's really not that far from reality today either. It seems I forgot to delete the Archives key. I initially had several more keys in the bank for individual doors, but my beta team wisely advised me to simplify the setup. I should have probably also mentioned in the ledger in the foyer that only the deposit box keys can open the door to that room, I can see how that could be confusing. Surprised that you felt the electric lights were too hard, I toned down the difficulty a bit even on Master before release, and the lighting is far more forgiving on lower difficulties. Most doors have keys, or can be circumvented, which is something I kind of expect of the player on Master difficulty. Granted, there are very few light switches available on Master difficulty, which can make some interiors harder. You seem to have found a lot of the content littered across the map! I see you are summarizing some of your findings. I feel like I should point out though, that there is an FAQ section at the bottom of the OP that covers most of this. Though putting in other words is never a bad idea. It might be useful to you should you replay it to find what you missed and get all the secrets! I'm thinking though that maybe I should add a section to the FAQ pointing out all the easter eggs in the mission, since there are quite a few.

Enjoy your Chronicles of Skulduggery marathon! That's an endorsement worthy of the front of the box! Thanks.

Glad you enjoyed the mission! One of my main goals was to make a convincing web of intrigues and stories that kind of resemble the politics of today, so I'm happy that you found it compelling!

How's this for a setting for a horror mission?

Loving that presence lamp setup! That could be very useful to mappers. I've wanted to make a lost city style map for a long time, and that is one piece that I wouldn't have to worry about, should I pursue that idea!

Story: Thanks: Thanks to peter_spy for creating the wonderful Builder Complex module set used in this mission. Thanks to my beta testers: Cambridge Spy, Mezla, kingsal, Amadeus, manzanita-crow, Kerry000, Shadow and Suave Steve. Downloads: Gallery: Thank you for playing! What did you think of the mission? I look forward to your honest feedback! Hints, Tips, Walkthroughs, Spoilers(!): - This mission will greatly reward those taffers who like to explore a mission thoroughly. It is possible to go directly for your objectives, but you will be missing a lot of content. - Many windows are openable, leading to new areas or private residences. - If an area seems hard to navigate due to patrols, chances are you can circumvent it. - Those who like a challenge and some extra replay value owe it to themselves to visit the cultist's apartment on Vicolo Torcere.

spawn atdm:playertools_health_potion That should pop a health potion in front of you I think

No, I can confirm that. I'm also experiencing head bob from walking around, which feels a bit unnatural in VR and potentially nausea-inducing. I will try your method of autocommands as a stopgap measure, thanks for mentioning it. Since I'm posting now I may as well mention a few other things I've noticed so far. Apologies if these are already known bugs. 1. At the start of the mission where you get the prompt "press attack to start the mission" you see a world-spawn only view of the map, where in standard TDM the screen is black all around. I assume this would be the case in standard TDM if it weren't for the black background added on, maybe that can be done here as well? 1. The spyglass only creates a flat overlay which doesn't actually zoom. 2. The compass shows up as a big black square when you bring it up in the inventory. I know the compass is notoriously buggy, as even the flatscreen version has had problems with it not showing correctly. 3. In-world text is unreadable (fuzzy and "double vision syndrome"). By in-world text I mean the GUI that is on open notes, books etc. 4. The text in readables is transparent to the background. It looks pretty dark but when you read something and have light source behind it it's obviously shining through the text and makes it hard to read. 5. I had a bug that suddenly started happening where visportals weren't drawing correctly. It's really hard to explain and it didn't show up in my screenshots unfortunately, but essentially it was cutting out large swaths of things that were mainly around the rim of the portal and just showing skybox there instead. Saving and reloading didn't help but restarting the client did. Not sure if it's reproducible, but if it happens again I'll try to figure out how to explain it more succinctly. And, echoing BuckleBean's sentiment, this is a huge improvement and quality of life things have really helped a lot. Huge kudos for the work you are putting into this! The only thing I can't confirm is the performance increase, but I will have to try different missions in order to confirm or deny. So far it seems to be 120+ fps in low complexity scenes, but hitting low 30's in medium scenes that the flatscreen mode runs just fine. But like I said, I will definitely need more data points (missions played) and will look a bit deeper into the graphical settings (though they looked good at first glance).

Awesome! I will definitely give this alpha a swing!

Wow they don't call it Newbie DarkRadiant Questions for nothing... thank you, that makes them relight it!

Thanks! That worked a charm! I'm also struggling with making AI use switch lights, again. I had this same problem in CoS 1 and never found a fix. I have electric lights that are controlled by atdm:mover_button entities. When I turn them off in game the AI just mutter that they can't relight it, eventhough I have set "canOperateSwitchLights" "1", and "chanceOperateSwitchLights" "1" to take out the randomness. It seems they don't operate it because they can't tell where the switch is? Is there a way to tell the AI to operate a specific atdm:mover_button entity to relight this particular light? Or the targeting of the light from the button should be enough in that regard?

Wow, that's quite a surprise. I was hoping to get my mission rolled out to help out with this beta a bit before release, but you beat me to it! Congrats to the entire team! Will definitely have to play the final version of this!