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@nbohr1more Unable to reproduce in 2.12 in The Transaction in these circumstances. No point in trying in 2.13. I experienced few bow crashes in 2.12 in other missions though, I just don't keep track of these events anymore.

Another failure by @kingsal. Firstly the mission is way too short. And like his other missions, the quality is supreme, keeps me playing and neglecting real life duties. Never feeling the frustration of getting stuck, never resolving to walkthrough material. Is it a sign of excellent design or rather a lack of challenge? Also extreme attention to detail, engaging maps from room to a room, gorgeous visually. I understand this is just a free-time effort for someone who could instead make money out of his skills but, I'm sure you could do better.

Another plausible scenario is where the player has a number of tasks/missions to complete but they can choose to do them in any order - giving the player a bit more agency, Tied with this, you might want to be able to re-enter a mission - e,g, it's some sort of hub (memories of the 'Pocket Plane' in Baldur's Gate 2 come to mind).

Are you going to build two separate missions knowing that player will only see one of them? I think this is "cool in theory", but in reality using such a feature requires tremendous amount of work from mapper, so nobody will use it.

Another thing, not sure if it's entirally related: If you have a campaign, you might want to have different maps loaded depending what you do in the mission. Currently there's one specific order, but it would be cool if another map could be loaded. So you could get different debriefings, but also different followup missions based on that. I don't want to derail the topic, so if needed this could be split into a new feature request.

Obviously the change will only work in last night's dev snapshot and onward. But missions can already start implementing this: It's just that older TDM versions won't see the debrief screen and only future players or dev users will enjoy them.

Is it already possible to pass information from the briefing to the mission? I don't think I ever saw this implemented apart from the starter-location selection. TDM is currelently in early dev, maybe a bit soon to start implementing in missions? I think it's better to wait for beta, so no changes will be done to the system.

The new behavior is available in the latest dev17026-10712. If you set cvar s_overrideParmsMode to 1, then you get the new behavior. The old behavior is under value 0, which is default yet. Also there is "debug mode" if you set value to 2. In this case the new behavior is used, but console warnings are posted when a sound being started shows difference in behavior (i.e. the engine computes both behaviors and complains if they are different). Right now you'll see regular warnings about various AI sounds: they have wrong effective volume in TDM 2.12 and before due to this issue. As for modifying the missions, I think the main blocker is the new DarkRadiant behavior. @greebo @OrbWeaver, could you please comment why DR automatically sets s_minDistance and s_maxDistance spawnargs since recently?

The new behavior is available in the latest dev17026-10712. If you set cvar r_envmapBumpyBehavior to 1, then you get new behavior. The old behavior is for value 0, which is default yet. The missions/core files are not adjusted yet. But I'd say everything is ready to do it.

Each time I check the objectives in game (pressing O), this warning appears in the console: I checked a few missions (MoongateRuckus, Eye On The Prize, By the Cookbook, Spider and the Finch) and they all do this. Doesn't happen with TDM 2.11. I reinstalled 2.12, but still get this behaviour. Is anyone else seeing this?

Why would that work? What's in that directory to make it work? Modified missions.tdminfo ?

After editing some objectives, now I'm getting this console warning pop up any time I check the objectives in game. I've never seen it before. Everything appears to be working though. I have not edited the tdm_objectives.gui file and it is intact in the tdm_gui01.pk4 folder in TDM. It references DestroyDelay here. onAction { set "gui::DestroyDelay" OBJECTIVES_DESTROY_DELAY; set "gui::CloseGUI" "1"; set "cmd" "updateObjectives"; } but I have no idea what I could have done in my fm to give it issue. [EDIT] I get this warning in other missions now, not just mine. I reinstalled TDM and I still get this warning. Is this a 2.12 thing?

I wonder about the alternative models for the arrows. Have they been used in other missions too already? I really like them, maybe I could extract them to my directory to use them in general for the game?

Yes. Sure, I will change it, but I do mind. In addition to changing the forum title, I have also had the name of the pk4 changed in the mission downloader and the thiefguild.com site’s named changed. It's not just some "joke". The forum post and thread are intended to be a natural extension of the mission’s story, a concept that is already SUPER derivative of almost any haunted media story or most vaguely creepy things written on the internet in the past 10 or 15 years. Given your familiarity with myhouse.wad, you also can clearly engage with something like that on some conceptual level. Just not here on our forums? We can host several unhinged racist tirades in the off-topic section but can’t handle creepypasta without including an advisory the monsters aren’t actually under the bed? (Are they though?) I am also trying to keep an open mind, but I am not really feeling your implication that using a missing person as a framing of a work of fiction is somehow disrespectful to people who are actually gone. I have no idea as even a mediocre creative person what to say to that or why I need to be responsible for making sure nobody potentially believes some creative work I am involved in, or how that is even achievable in the first place. Anyway, apologies for the bummer. That part wasn’t intentional. I am still here. I will also clarify that while I love the game, I never got the biggest house in animal crossing either. In the end Tom Nook took even my last shiny coin.

YeeY, I succeeded the 45 second challenge!! It's not hard at all : P I'm not telling how ofc : ) Also, I like these "little" missions with extra challenges, like the quite common "secrets" (only found one so far) .. and a very rare "time challenge" only added to my enjoyment! All of you "april fools missions" contributors: it was a real treat!

so secrets are also - no - 2 secrets are Joke ?! but theres still a thievie challenge !!! : Grab the guards arrow - without suspicious ; even it won´t count in the stats . But tell me – why are these April fools so big on the data??? JackFarmers is twice the size – but 5 missions – and each is 10 times bigger

So I've been cleaning off updates on the missions page by updating and replaying them and have been having difficulty with this one. I don't know if there's a trigger broken or what. Aside from my issue listed in my spoiler, I found the update plays much smoother, so thank you for that. I realize this is an older mission so may not get fixed at this point, just thought I'd mention in case.

Thanks for the feedback @Rio_Walker As mentioned in other comments in this thread, the optional objective was meant to be for players who enjoy exploring every inch of the map. If all you want to do is complete the mission via the primary objective it's pretty straightforward. It was also meant to be sort of 'open world' in that if you explore everywhere you pick up little hints and bits and pieces and put them together at the end to solve that objective with. It wasn't meant to spoon feed the player. But again maybe not everyone enjoyed that approach. It was also kind of a knee-jerk reaction to players not liking 'linear' missions. But it seems some people still do like that And yeah, some players don't like big maps. I get that. I don't like playing them myself a lot of the time The issue with the bow crash is a known issue (not just with this mission) which we haven't got to the bottom of unfortunately:

Wow... the sheer verticality of the level makes my head spin. The fact that we can climb pipes (that I still couldn't jump up and grab, had to yoink a chair) blew my mind. I got stuck a few times, I couldn't for the life of me discover a way to enter Smythe's apartment. I knew it's possible to enter it, and I assumed I needed to enter it because of a few hints. I loved extra missions. Really felt like it expanded the world. But I'm still confused about the "panic" they showed.

Me too. Also the other FMs which were released on the 1st of April. Not a fan of speedruns, so, that optional objective will be just ignored.

I wrote earlier that I owe this masterpiece a review, so... Here is my detailed review of this groundbreaking and seminal Mission Fan. SPOILERS ABOUND ! TDM PLAYER BEWARE, YOU'RE IN FOR SPOILERS AND MAYBE EVEN A SCARE ! This mission... subverted my expectations. Starting with the briefing video. Not since the days of Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns have I seen such daring subversion right at the start. You're expecting one thing... then, bam ! I tried everything to infiltrate the mansion from the outside ! No luck ! Well and truly, expectations subverted ! NPC dialogue heard from the inside... stellar ! Brought a tear to my eye. Or was it just one of the raindrops that fell on my head ? What else brought a tear to my eye ? The senselessly slaughtered guard at the courtyard ! Clearly, a cautionary story that he who grabs a sword... and yet, forgets to dim his lantern, the fool... shall die by someone's sword or arrow. Figures ! That you hid the masterful sidequest of collecting the pennies-for-a-thought from the rather racy fountain, in order to later thoughtfully redistribute them to the poor and hungry street urchins of Bridgeport, is nothing short of design brilliance worthy of at least a two hours long, detailed GDC lecture. I'd watch such a lecture on a loop, 24 hours a day, twelve times a day. Brilliant stuff ! Ah, the side-yard, with steps and a basement entrance that looked and felt straight out of Thief II's opening mission, Running Interference... Could the cunning TDM homages to the classics get any better ?! Could they ? Well, soon enough, I discovered that, yes, they could get even better ! There was an even more amazing homage that I didn't expect ! Read on to find out what... The chefpick was... indescribably cool. I now yearn for it to be included in every single FM. The classic lockpicks feel completely passé. I knocked out both NPCs and... what is this unexpected social commentary ?! The knocked-out have names ?! I applaud your deeply incisive observation, worthy of a skilled chef with a kitchen knife, that the NPCs in games are not mere fictional constructs, but fictional beings with names, hearts and souls ! I confess, upon this moving revelation, I started shedding tears so uncontrollably, I nearly had to quit playing the mission. Yet, I pressed on, heartened and refreshed by such displays of humanity in a work of stealthy interactive fiction ! The commentary was no less subtle and stealthy, I tell you ! As subtle as the protagonist's gritty, grounded accent ! Two different entrances into the local vent system... I... I can't even... So many possible routes of entry. Truly, in the grand tradition of the TDM immersive sim design philosophy ! The choice of giving the intrepid protagonist a temporary rat companion, bribable by cheese, who fetches priceless hidden loot, was equal parts innovative and a hard-hitting social commentary on the abuse of animals for theft and burglary, and people "ratting out" their fellow tenants by revealing the hiding places of their priceless belongings ! I was deeply impressed ! I was thoroughly amazed ! You even had my 'stalgia sense tingling ! Why ? That minor element of your FM even reminded me of the old but gold Thief II FM campaign The Flying Age: The Abominable Flying Machines of Dr. Zeppelinger, where you escape a prison cell by giving a mouse a bit of cheese you've managed to find, and the mouse then provides you with a means of escape. I have scarcely ever seen such a wonderful duo of homages to other past LGS missions and fan missions ! Of course, the shocking revelation with the undead in the freezer was an even more biting commentary on the undead precariat of today, and their ruthless and dehumanizing exploitation by The Man, maaan, the snobby culinary establishment. Undeadkind merely want to roam their abandoned tombs and catacombs in peace (pieces ?) and get a bite or two out of a stray vagrant or drunk guard every now and then, no big deal. Society needs to be more charitable to undeadkind ! And you've even included a gas arrow up in the rafters ! You well and truly know your audience, as I'm an old, die-hard gas arrow collecting enthusiast. I am a sophisticated, yet simple man: I see a gas arrow in Thief or The Dark Mod, I immediately grab it, owing to its rarity. Thank you for such generous mission design. To cut a long story short, I have had a thorough, engrossing and moving cultural experience with this short-but-dazzling mission ! In the shadowed alleys of TDM fan mission sites, I have crossed paths with missions that were ruthlessly difficult and confounding, yet rewarding, but never have I played a mission this... authentic... avantgarde... thought-provoking... It even made me feel hungry ! Riveting, simply riveting. Like working on the skeleton of a 1930s Art Deco skyscraper. Ultimate verdict: 22 frommages out of 20, with a happy cheese-filled rat as the cherry on the top. (But what kind of frommage ? Cheddar ? Swiss cheese ? Gouda ?! I dunno. Don't have a cheesemaking degree.) In other words, I cannot rate this mission other than with the Chef Excellence Award for... Excellence ! *chef's kiss* Le Mission Légendaire Magnifique ! Roll over, Requiem ! Roll over, Crucible of Omens ! Roll over, Iris ! This, this... is the pinnacle TDM fan mission of all time.

The coin is a little joke in the mission end stats. It exists solely to mock you, similar to the newspaper stating it's missing. There is no actual coin in the mission. Because it's missing, just like the newspaper says. You can clearly see how TDM players do not believe much in thieving-free missions. There has to be loot, right? Rather than pack their belongings and leave, they chase after a coin that does not exist, only because the stat screen tells them there is a coin even though there is none. TDM is a game about stealing, after all. There's no room left for locking your apartment, stacking your furniture onto a cart, and leaving. But perhaps sometimes that's all you can do. Maybe that is what you should do. Ignore the coin. Ignore the ugly stain on the wall, it's no good. Don't even look at it. Pack your belongings and forget. Ignorance is bliss.

I've seen fun workarounds like that in other game modding as well. Years ago, maybe even a decade, some fella who was making a mod for Mount & Blade over at the Taleworlds forums revealed that he put invisible human NPCs on the backs of regular horse NPCs, then put the horse NPCs inside a horse corral he built for one of his mod's locations/scenes and then did some minor scripting, so the horses with invisible riders would wander around the corral. The end result was that it looked they're doing this of their own will, rather than an NPC rider being scripted to ride around the corral slowly. Necessity is the mother of invention. I don't know about the newest Mount & Blade game, but the first generation ones (2008-2022) apparently had some sort of hardcoded issue back in the earlier years, where if you left a horse NPC without a rider in its saddle, the horses would just stand around and wait and you couldn't get them to move around. Placing an invisible rider in their saddles suddenly made it viable again, at least for background scenes, of riderless horses wandering around, for added atmosphere. First generation M&B presumed you'd mostly be seeing horses in movement with riders, and the only horses-wandering-loosely animations and scripting were done for situations when the rider was knocked off their horse or dismounted in the middle of a battle. Hence the really odd workarounds. So, an invisible NPC trick might not be out of the question in TDM, even though you could probably still bump into it, despite its invisibility.