BlueSkyBullet
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Posts posted by BlueSkyBullet
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rich_is_being_silly
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News?
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Hmmm... I know I've seen at least one pagan chicka. Was in one of Fidcal's missions. Locked in a room. Maiden made mad.
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Maybe they're all too exhausted busily trying to trump each other on who can have the biggest freak-out over the Thi4f logo? Or who can be the most outraged by the surely inevitable and undeniable demise and ruination of all that is holy what with the utterance of "more than just stealth"?
Hope. That's just optimistic hope.
No. It's denial. This is no coincidence.
We all realize what this cruel "more than just stealth" has wrought: a mess of slit wrists from sea to shining sea.
The Core! The betrayal! The Canon! The evil! Our Precious! Fiddled with!
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Oh, by the way, I've been meaning to mention this since I think I might have had a different experience than everyone else:
The guys sitting at the end of the 1st road you are set upon (continuing through the gate/door at the very opening? There are 2 of them camping by a fire. At one point an eye-patched guy comes from around the corner past them, he was hostile without provocation, I found out. I had to dispatch of him before finding out what a lumpen lump he was... que sera sera to him and all that; but the 2 guys camping? They were not hostile to me at all. I didn't sneak around them. I approached them and they left me alone and so I left them alone.
Were they meant to be part of the gang? They might have been meant to be a lookout for the hideout around the bend there, but I didn't experience that with them. I went down, approached them, tested if I might frob/talk to them. No. But no aggression either. The hoods around the corner in the hideout, them I knew were trouble and them I took out gladly. But the 2 guys camping on the street were alright by me and I was alright by them.
Is that the way it was meant to be? Because that added to my enjoyment actually.
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For me, needless to say, I'm sure.
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Yeah, I didn't experience the problem grayman had... I heard her "haughtiness"... and, therefore and thence, thusly and whence, I too, had no qualms knocking her out after she started moving about and getting in my way of things.
Although Sotha retiring from mission making would surely be a shame, I wouldnt say the same about me.I would say the same.
The mission you made really was quite enjoyable. If there are things about the process you dread going through again, then perhaps you needn't do those particular things? I think the essentials (gameplay, a bit {or a lot! yes! yes!} of story, & an inherent, stylish visual cohesiveness) are something you understand and enjoy?
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(what follows between these ellipses is not directed at you or anyone in particular but just a bit of a rant that sort of fits here)
Much of the rest (bells and baubles) is usually not only unnecessary and burdensome on the creator but actually, in the end, a burden on the system. I think maybe there is too much over-reaching, over-stretching over-ambition going on. Not every mission needs to be a masterpiece of expansive, detailed, epic saga. The limits do not need to be pushed! TDM affords plenty of opportunity for great missions with out having to constantly try and break it's goddamned back.
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You were under time constraints... and in a competition... and it was also an every-single-step-along-the-way-is-a-study kind of thing. Next time can be purely at your own pace, with nothing to prove, and you've got heaps of know-how now!
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I'll say this here instead of in the threads for each of the 3 FMs we have this contest to thank for (so far {still hoping to see one from Xarg? No? Eh?}):
There is some criticism going on and some opinions being expressed; and that's good stuff; just I would hope that the authors don't take it all to heart and "adjust" their design/style/approach, rather, to mission building. We certainly will not all like Raspberry Ripple or Rocky Road, but some of us will. So let's let the different authors provide us with different flavors.
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Consider:
These things you discuss...
They are quite obviously...
Going to be more than tweaks. Game-changers, very muchly so. And... further, heavy, heavy weights on a system already much weighed down.
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alright, lets say in the foreseeable future then
For someone who created a mission with such an obvious love for the crafting of gameplay and story and elegant beauty... I give your statement about not doing any more of it... about as much weight as I give Sotha's latest pronouncement of retirement.
Y'all both love it.
You get exhaunsted -- and who wouldn't, even and with the additional in the aftermath of responding to the praise and criticism --- but y'all both love it!
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But I don't want PayPal to have anything on me... not a CC; not a bank account; nothing aside from me sending them a money order which is as good as gold (I pay everything else in this world that way when I can't simply pay cash)... It just such a pain in the ass, every mutherfucking thing about the way the money-grubbing money-shifting money-lenders dictate the system.
Ya know?
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Cape Ahsa?
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All the participants deserve LordSoth's Darkmod mugs. I don't mention this lightly
Seriously, I think we might all agree on that. I have not a penny to spare or an "agreeable*" way to get the money I don't have online if I did.
But if some system can be worked out wherein this New Fan Mission Authors Contest (xxxx-Annual Tradition!) might be run with this as a part of it, I'd be willing to listen and try a bit harder to get over the disagreeability of getting some dosh online. I bet you the coffers would fill and the only problem would be that they might fill up to much and ruin things the other way round.
*My problem with getting money online: Apparently I can't just send effing Paypal a money order? And be done with it? Gotta tie some CC to it? Or -- just as bad, if not worse -- my other option is to buy some "service fee" gouging nonsense from WalMart or some such as an alternative to PayPal? I tried once half-heartedly (see: "not a penny to spare" after all, really) to get some money stashed online and ended up NOT BOTHERING because it was sucha hassle...
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No. I didn't.
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I do extinguish every flame I see (except those that can't be, which pisses me off... especially if there is no indication as to why they are "different", like candles that look exactly like other candles that I can extinguish... especially in the same goddamned mission! but I do digress...)
I do extinguish every flame I see, and always have, all my Thief life which has been from the Gold old days. I do extinguish the light!
And as you might imagine, because it goes hand-in-hand with my Thiefy ways, I do not use the lantern much at all (read: twice, ever, maybe).
So, I just wanted to say that -- about the extinguishing -- because it gave me a chance to speak here in a thread that doesn't much concern me.
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I really think RPGista's mission deserves to be in there, and accepted as an entry. Let's not be dicks about exact deadlines.
Oh, and I was thinking that in the future contests we should add a note that the rules are not that strict. Let's give the deadline and say that two weeks of extra time is possible in special cases, but the mappers should aim at the main deadline.
Someone will always complain, were it mapper releasing too early or too late.. Some people are fast, some people are busy. This is a fun voluntary hobby, people contributing should always be rewarded rather than punished with strict rules.
Maybe next time we will just define the rules as accurately as possible, and make it clear that the mappers have certain amount of room to maneuver. Putting it on the table should remove the whining. Adding more strictness in any hobby is an effective way to eliminate the fun-factor.
Sotha is right on this. We had an extension for previous contests. Why would it be a problem here?
What a gorgeous and fantastic bit of synchronicity! That the seeming fact that "Sotha is right on this" just happens to be in accordance with the very fact that he was just parroting you!
I love this world. It's indeed a wonderful world. Brings a tear to my eye, most often...
I see skies of blue and clouds of whiteThe bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
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There is no gracious way for them to say what might need to be said though.
Still...I don't think that it's hard to have paid a little attention and to have read the larger message between the lines... a little.
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Yeah, maybe, moot and whatnot, but they did NOT build the trigate transistor for games.
...several advantages beyond the fact that more transistors can be packed into the same space: Current leakage is reduced to near zero while the gates can still switch on and off more than 100 billion times per second; Less power is needed to carry out the same action; The innovation only adds 2-3% to the cost of making a chip... -
Did some google-image searching for some examples of what I would like to see as the end result of a moss arrow deployment. There was lots of stuff of course. I'll just post one now:
Say you shoot a Moss Arrow at a bed (or maybe a couch, settee, etc).
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I do honestly like the idea posed above about leaving a nice trail along the arrows path.
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Like most of us I have a Corei5 2500K...
?
?
er
??
Most of?
Wha?
?
The i5 25?
Most?
Who?
???
Come again?
Really?
?
Whasi?
?!??
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Anyway, this sounds more like a giant leap to me! These actual systems engineers, the chip builders, are the actual geniuses. Sure it's always best to sit back for a generation or two but this does sound like an extremely promising tech.
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...do you play in a laptop? Is it overheating? Because thats exactly what happens here if i play with very demanding settings, the only thing that worked was to really put the resolution down (so the computer thinks a lot less). Otherwise Im afraid i cant help, I can get quite good frame rates myself with my 3 years old laptop, and im pretty sure i solved any internal leak? Is anyone else having problems?
Thanks for the reply.
I am using the same (not a laptop) machine that I've been using all along, which is a Q8200 Quad CPU with a 8800GT with 512MB... XPSP3... 3GB Ram (4 really... but). As I say, I've had some lags in missions before, some due to obviously busy areas, some due to the garbage build-up that used to plague the engine (and still does maybe to a much lesser degree?) after some long-plays. So this right-off the bat and pesistent lagishmentalizationing is definitely something peculiar... and, I think, particular to my setup. Maybe a hint lies in the way...
the crypt/basement of the church seemed to get pitch dark when I rounded the corner to look into it? I could see some faint "ambient" light going down the stairs, but then when I got down there and looked in it all faded down. And I'm not talking about the candle blowing out sequence.
And come to think of them, another possible set of clues:
I might not have seen the "ambient" light the very first time I went down the stairs. It might only have been after I awakened Dick Nobleman? Which didn't make sense because, even though I call it "ambient" light due to the fact that the candle in that room could not possibly have been enough to be the source of the light apparently coming out the doorway... that candle had blown out as you know...
Another situation that changed though I've no understanding as to why is the gate on the doorway eventually getting me to the church library was impassible but not fully closed the first time I went to go through that door. It was at about 45 degrees and unfrobbale, thus impassible. So I went inside the church proper, skulked about a bit and went back out to find the gate fully open (well, at 90 degrees, passible).
Anyway, my hardware is pretty adequate and on the good side of standard/compatible and has worked well with all the previous missions. But apparently no one else as yet has had my issues. I did try all 3 different ambient rendering modes, and knocked my AA and AI filters down too. To no avail. Maybe it was the textures killiing my 512? One of the nicest things here was your visuals; I think you did use all "high-rez" texures? Could be the thing that got me?
Anyway, anyway, I really liked the mission. I'm certainly appreciative if the fact that you, as the others, went and blew us all out of the water with your efforts. And I didn't mean to add to any "drama" by trying to put forth my opinion that the contest should be bewtween ST and jysk. It was pure advocacy for them, not against you, of course (though, Brer Rabbitizings might have been better -- stop the flip-flopper flipping his flop?)
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Now, for some quick and straightforward critiques (as well as I am able to be quick and straightforward):
I immediately saw that this was going to be a beautiful and stylishly coherent mission. And it was throughout. Hope to see so many more missions from you that we can all say, "Oh, yeah, this is a RPGista mission; just look at it."
Not a big fan of the no-kills, no-knockouts, and such beyond optional or suggested objectives. But if there are to be such, I did like the fac that this was limited to high difficulty AND limited to those I wouldn't kill anyhow anyway. Only problem is recognizing the dastardlies by sight. You did do a ~pretty good job of iindicating who might be considered this or that, but, inevitably some of this comes down to our opinions. The narrative did help me understand your opinion and explained why I got a fail when I, though I tried...
to just knock him out and had to kill him because I flubbed it the first time around, killed Henry of Riddlehan. Surely the best of his kind, but still an exploiter!
IOW, I would rather not have killed him but I wouldn't have felt too bad about it, just as I had no problem looting him fully before he ran off to his "country home".
All of this is just by way of commenting, but, likewise, I usually have no problem smiting the zealots, even the "well-intentioned" ones, either, if it comes down to it; and I see your mission was explicit in its agreement with this POV of mine.
The only thing is, and this is a general suggestion to all FMAs from the player in me:
As I mentioned, I guess there is no perfect way of recognizing who is who whilst an AI is milling about... but I do love to know... so I hope that authors are able to, and make it a habit to, "name" their characters by simply setting some property in DR? So we get "Captain Merc van Tool" rather than "Body" (or "Corpse") if and when we do eventually "move" them to a more expedient locale.
I'd like to have been sure...
that the guy I killed in the church was Murilo. I'd have felt much less hestitation (and I still did try and get him otherways and otherwise) when I eventually put an arrow into his skull (a beautiful shot from one end of the church to the other!).
I thought having no particular loot requirement worked great with the narrative and objectives framework you set out! We were able to not worry about stealing from those we mightn't have wanted to. This is very good -- and, again, especially in this kind of mission -- because it allows us to sympathize where we are (apparently) meant to.
For instance, I did not have want to steal the money left for the workers and peasants!
...Really, really like that aspect here. Maybe, not always, in all missions, no. But defintely in this story.
Minor glitches, you might address if there is going to be a v1.somethingorother:
A couple of missing inventory icons (eg. the coinbox)
And a final suggestion:
Give the player a spyglass. I would say always in all missions -- but certainly this mission deserved (and kind of needed) it. I love to be able to look closer at fine visuals! And what with this being a bit of a platformer, it would naturally lend itself to spyglass zooming for "scoping" out paths...
Thanks for the FM
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Glancing through so as not to get spoiled... Am I the only one experiencing major, ever-lasting lag? I haven't gotten above ~8fps all game long -- indoors, outdoors, upstairs, downstairs, strange, charmed, surrounded, alone, forwards and back... I have played them all (TDM FMs) and never had such a persistently laggy go-round.
Otherwise I have a lot of likes with this one. Most especially the manipulation gameplay aspects and the visual style (oh, and I quite like the readables too).
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Now...
In Fairness to the other contestants, RPgista has only been fixing bugsIn fairness to the other contestants... their missions had to have gone through the same processes. If this one comes in a wins the contest, as it appears to be, it will be unfairness to the other contestants.
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I did. I even sacrificed a goat.
To no avail.
Tonight I'll kill a whale and toss a pair of very expensive sunglasses into the brack.
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It isn't a dead serious process, exactly.
Which is why the two entrants that got in inside the contest rules should be the ones eligible to win the contest.
The others can still take the contest part of it less seriously and rejoice and bask in the much greater side of it all: that they have concieved and created a mission and, in so doing, become fan mission authors! They should of course still put up threads (with polls if they'd like) wherein their missions will certainly be praised (I've little to no doubt their missions are going to be praiseworthy).
This is the fairest thing to do. AND it relieves the pressure the "late" authors might be feeling to rush even the slightest bit.
Ungoliant's mapping questions
in TDM Editors Guild
Posted
Oh, so steam powered guns ain't enough? TDM is going to outdo T4 by bringing multi-stage rockets into the ~Dark Age~?
Oy. Vey!