thebigh

It's occurred to me that it has been quite a long time since I released anything. Meanwhile I've started and abandoned three largeish, ambitious missions because I got stuck, or I made something that I just couldn't get looking good, or whatever, and just gave up on it. But not everything has to be a big, sprawling epic. There's lots of smaller missions that remain fun to play despite their modest size: Thief's Den 1, for example. Even Closemouthed Shadows is still enjoyable. So... I am going to challenge myself to create a small mission in under 24 hours. Maybe I'll fail, but why set yourself a challenge you're sure to achieve? Where is the ambition in that? Whatever happens, at the end I will have at least a few serviceable areas done and that's better than the pointless fussing I've been doing lately. MY RULES: From the moment I post this thread I have 24 hours real time to produce a mission from scratch, playable from briefing to finale Implement three difficulty levels Include a small tribute to Grayman Include at least one secret The 24 hour limit does not include beta testing, a title screen, or producing cool promotional screenshots. I just need a mission to show after 24 hours The level will feature zombies, which is no doubt how I will feel this time tomorrow. Good thing I had a nap this afternoon. Well, here I go. Wish me luck.

Another old but very fun little mission, one I always enjoy replaying, and that it forms a sort of a prelude to the whole Thief's Den series is a nice bonus in itself. This time I challenged myself to a semi-ghost playthough: no dousing of lights, get all the loot, don't clobberize anyone, and don't get caught! But using inventory items is OK, and no need to put boxes, keys etc back where I found them. The guard patrols are tight enough to be challenging but regular enough to be predictable with observation, just how it should be. Even for such an early mission there's good use of ambients and atmospheric sound. And the familiar Bridgeport city skyline, with surrounding buildings! Finished with 1189/1189 loot and a stealth score of 2. I didn't make the two guards inside so much as murmur so it must have been If this mission ever requires an update, there is a Z-fighting ceiling beam: the one furthest to your right when you climb up the ladder to the attic. I think that whole beam has been duplicated.

Thank you. Mine is working without issues.

Can I please get Wiki access? Initially I would restrict myself to my own user pages and the one for my mission (I want to add a loot list). And typo fixes because they make my eye twitch and I can't stop myself wanting to de-typo them.

I'm familiar with it and use it on other projects. I don't do anything spectacular. I just use the "save a copy" function of DarkRadiant to make numbered copies as I go. Occasionally I will plop a zipped copy on my Dropbox. Maybe it's the wrong way to think, but I can't help feeling things like Git would be overkill for this sort of thing. I have only ever worked solo. I'm that bad a mapper that I feel I couldn't contribute anything useful to a team.

What horrible news. RIP grayman. I shall include a small tribute in my next mission.

I know in Sons of Baltona the guards can re-light the torches on the outside of the mansion.

Yep, it compiles now. Cheers.

No problem, I'll wait for the next update :]

DarkRadiant is not compiling for me: In file included from /home/thebigh/Games/DarkRadiant/libs/math/AABB.cpp:4: /home/thebigh/Games/DarkRadiant/libs/math/Matrix4.h:18:10: fatal error: Eigen/Geometry: No such file or directory 18 | #include <Eigen/Geometry> | ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ compilation terminated. make[2]: *** [libs/math/CMakeFiles/math.dir/build.make:63: libs/math/CMakeFiles/math.dir/AABB.cpp.o] Error 1 make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/Makefile2:430: libs/math/CMakeFiles/math.dir/all] Error 2 make: *** [Makefile:130: all] Error 2 Is Eigen now something I need to obtain on my end? I'm on Ubuntu 20. I already have libeigen3-dev installed.

I don't think there's anything wrong with breaking something on purpose when you're still learning. It's a good way of familiarising yourself with the things that can go wrong. Seeing what happens when you leave the roof off your house makes it easier, later when you're actually making a real map, to understand a leak that's poking out through the tiniest little sliver because you resized a brush.

Do you have any .lin file in that directory? If so, rename it to man1.lin and load it. If not, try dmapping again in Darkmod. (You'll need the renaming trick later anyway when you get up to portals and they start dropping, so it's probably a good idea to become familiar with the process.)

Hmm... another build fail In file included from /home/thebigh/Games/DarkRadiant/radiantcore/shaders/TableDefinition.cpp:1: /home/thebigh/Games/DarkRadiant/radiantcore/shaders/TableDefinition.h:15:1: error: expected class-name before ‘{’ token 15 | { | ^ make[2]: *** [radiantcore/CMakeFiles/radiantcore.dir/build.make:3469: radiantcore/CMakeFiles/radiantcore.dir/shaders/TableDefinition.cpp.o] Error 1 make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/Makefile2:838: radiantcore/CMakeFiles/radiantcore.dir/all] Error 2 make: *** [Makefile:130: all] Error 2

Well, that's unfriendly. And IMO not even particularly accurate.

Another nice little mission. I especially liked the flooded tunnel and the outdoors section leading up to the inn. Finished with a stealth score of 2, zero KOs, and all the treasure except for the purse on the torch guy's belt. There doesn't seem to be anywhere on his patrol route you can plausibly get it off him.

That sounds like a great idea. Hopefully the original training mission doesn't disappear for good though- as rough as it is I still do like it. Perhaps incorporate it as a hidden secret in the new one? (that would actually be a good way to introduce the concept of hidden areas ) Making the new training mission finishable would be good though. It would allow a nice compromise between those of us who want to encourage people to play it, and those of us who don't want to have reminders spammed at us: the reminders could get turned off once you've earned that little green tick for the mission.

I didn't intend for this conversation to get so heated. Surely we can all be civil and respectful towards each other even when we disagree. [quote]If you read an instruction that takes you an hour to do so, do you remember every aspect mentioned there.[/quote] I'm about 80% sure that the thing I didn't know (being able to lean forward with F) is not actually covered in the training mission.

Cool little mansion level. I really liked this one. Issues with getting the front gate open and finding the secret passage to gain access to the mansion have been mentioned already so I won't go on about it. The guard patrol routes outside were very effective. Having the two torch guys moving in opposite directions worked pretty well; sometimes I had oodles of time before one of them appeared, other times I found myself squeezed between them coming at me from opposite sides. Very tense! Finished in just under an hour with a stealth score of 0 (21 suspicious) and 2087/2087 moneybucks.

I wouldn't either. Those older games gave you the training mission as an optional extra and, if you chose not to do it, assumed you knew the mechanics well enough to play. They didn't bother you with periodic messages saying, "Have you done the training mission?" Because that would be hand-holding.

The training mission for Thief 1 was skippable too. Games of that era really didn't hand-hold.

When you download the game, you start off with just three levels: A New Job, St. Lucia, and the Training Mission. Anyone who doesn't see the training mission there isn't probably going to pay attention to popups reminding them of it. That's not a bad idea. Having the training mission autoloaded when you first download the game would get at least extra people to play it.

I played for six months without realising you can press F to pay respects lean forward. It makes grabbing loot out of chests much easier.

Aha. I have it. To get this to show up I need to do two things: first, I had to create a fancy_document_world.gui to go with fancy_document.gui so that the text would show. Second, I need to skin the sheet with a texture that includes the picture I want added. That second one is going to be tricky...

I think I have it more or less figured out. I extracted the .gui I needed to modify from the pk4s that come with the game, along with the texture the gui uses, and put them into my fms directory with suitable names. Then I just drew the picture I wanted onto the background, edited the .gui file to use the new background, and edited the .xd file to use the new gui for that document. It works just how I wanted when I read it, but the sheet in-game looks blank and I cannot figure out why.

Another classic old mission that I finally got around to playing. What impressed me about it was the way it gradually got darker as it went on. Starts off as a simple "rob all the buildings in the neighbourhood" job and ends up with everyone turning out to be a murderous asshole. The finale was SUPER creepy. Just a few little bugs I found while playing: * There is a headless dead guy in a green smock on top of Harlan's house. * The globe in Damuddy's house drops through the floor if I frob it.