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Fan Mission: The Thieves (2009/11/25)


Springheel

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I just finished playing. It was a short and VERY enjoyable mission!

 

But it's quite a hard one, actually! I had to quick load 3 or 4 times..

 

.. in those rooms filled with people and a guy with a torch

 

But, of course, I've played the mission in 'difficult' and I'm expecting a piece of cake? :laugh: But it is harder than the others, in my opinion.

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Nice look, but it crashes every time I try to reload -- after the initial load. ie, I can load from quicksave at the start of the session but only once. Makes me extra cautious I guess. I'll have to see what happens if I try to reload from permanent save. I have XP and plenty of memory. haven't had this problem with any of the other missions.

 

So what should I infer from this issue? Naturally I want to know if the problem is on my end or with the DarkMod or the Mission or what. How should I approach this question? What is the most likely possibility? On the one hand I haven't had this problem with any other mission; on the other hand, plenty of other people seem to be playing this mission w/o problems. So how do I think about this??

 

It turned out that my stability issue only arose during a limited fraction of the game. After a bit it went away and the play became normal.

Edited by fhapgood
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I'm really liking all these little missions. Sometimes I don't really feel like playing a 2hr+ mission (and I am a slow player). This one took me almost 40 minutes.

 

Thieves was a little weird for me because I was supposed to kill someone. Not really my thing, but it was neat. I felt like a ninja :ph34r: . I played hardest difficulty and managed to sneak my way to the target, stab him in the back, and leave the mission with all the loot. This is the first of the Dark Mod missions that I was able to get all loot on the first try. ^_^

 

As I was ready to make my way out of the mission I noticed one guy with a coin purse. Wow, not as huge and noticeable as in the Thief games. I then examined every other guy.

 

I've started getting into the habit of frobbing every picture I see. How exactly can I tell a regular one from a valuable one by looking at it? Guess I just haven't noticed any sort of pattern yet.

 

Some of the loot seems to be silver and kinda hard for me to tell it's valuable. The silver stuff should be shinier or something in this mod.

 

The torch guards made this mission extra fun and special. I love those guys. About the guards; for the most part, I thought they were placed pretty well and had good routes, but a couple of them just seemed silly to me. The guy that patrols from the toilet to the bunkbed room and the guy that just kept walking around in circles. They kinda made the mission seem silly. If instead of just a toilet room, that was another room with some loot, that would've been neat. And instead of walking (rather quickly too) in circles, I think that other guy could've been more interesting if he walked to the bunkbed room or if he stood in place or something else.

 

I dislike those roof bits that I can't seem to really get on (the ones that you pretty much just slip off of). I was annoyed by the roofs in another mission as well (freaking slipping). Not that it matters in this mission anyway. Just saying because I see a low roof and I think to myself,"maybe I can get up there and in one of those windows". I think I might be expecting too much freedom with this awesome mantling that I can't help but think every reachable place leads to something. In this mission, I got up that big stone wall in the beginning by jumping and mantling it from the stack of barrels and thought "cool where does this lead to?" It was just kinda there, I thought maybe it was put in as a stealthy shortcut, but it was faster and stealthy enough to just run to the window than to scale the wall and take the big fall to get to the other side. Was I not meant to get up there or was it just a funky shortcut?

 

Some of my observations are on the mod itself rather than the mission. Hope you guys don't think I'm being a douche when I mention those things, but I'd imagine the authors are always interested in hearing how players felt or what they thought when they played the missions.

 

Edited by ilpalazzo
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Very nice mission guys. I really liked it. It was short, completed it on the highest difficulty within 30 minutes but still really good. I'll try ghosting it next, still missed a lot of loot, so I'll be looking for that as well. Sonosuke I saw the mission complete screen, so that has to be a problem on your side. Didn't had any performance issues, it was the first mission I played without any stuttering, except for the pause when I'm opening doors. I don't know if anyone has a tip for that, because the solution mentioned in the wiki doesn't work for me. Keep up the good work everyone, all the missions have been amazing so far.

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I enjoyed this little mission, really liked the story as well.

 

Here's a weird case of synchronicity: In two different missions I've been working on (originally for DromEd, but now moving to TDM) I included a thieves guild and I called them the 'Black Hand Thieves Guild'! Don't know if the thinking behind this mission was the same but the 'black market' hand imprints from Thief 3 gave me the idea for the name (plus it sounds cool :D).

 

Anyway, the way I see it, this could be almost the official thieves guild (or at least the most prominent) in the same way the Downwinders was the most commonly used guild in the original Thief.

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Are you sure your monitor isn't cutting off the bottom of the screen? Try fiddling with its positioning controls.

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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got through in 2 tries and inside 15 minutes on difficult.

nice map, but a few suggestions:

please add some rooms , getting up on walls and over fences just to find that the effort was for nothing is quite frustrating

make the mission requirements on difficult harder, like only kill the leader

either take out the bit about bringing back the head for extra credit from the storyline, or make it possible to behead the fellow.... i stood there for 4 minutes slashing away...

put a guard on the wall at the starting point, turning 180° every now and again. adds difficulty and fun.

since thy just got raided, an you went through the trouble of mapping a loo, why not make it a hiding place for some loot?

 

all in all a fun mission, ideal for genre/game newbies

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Hi there!

 

I played it on Hard in about 30 minutes. Well, I did not ghost it and knocked those guards out. Missed about 500 in loot, which means I am not a good thief ;)

 

Thank you for the great work! I really enjoyed it.

 

 

Some thoughts:

 

 

 

I liked

- the use of light, especially the use of candles and guards with torches. Also the light inside the warehouse (the one with the toilet).

- the hidden gold bottle besides the shelf :)

- the situation, where you can hide under a carriage, and a guard with a torch approaches

- the mood of the map. Was very fitting.

- that you kept to "no frob door = no way through" [i just GOT to write that :D ]

 

I did not like

- to kill someone, without any other option.

- the window, where I can look inside, but don´t fit through. That didn´t make sense and frustrated me.

- the inconsequent use of frobable and non-frobable junk.

- the roofs that could not been reached, like ilpalazzo said. I also prefer playing like a child and try to climb everywhere :)

 

 

The map was kind of linear, but that´s not a bad thing. I guess ghosting is possible, but kind of hard inside the last warehouse.

 

I encountered some problems:

- As mentioned before, the "metal chest key" has no function - or I missed it.

- Although it is not a problem with the map: If a guard with a torch fights, he waves the torch around and causing some strange light with that sharp shadows

 

 

 

 

greetz,

kaldor

Edited by kaldor
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ilpalazzo,

 

I have been tweaking the specular on metals. So loot will be more shiny after the update. But that requires light to shine on it. In the dark it won't shine.

 

We've mostly stuck to gold being loot, but we'll probably add more silver loot. But it will be small things. We consider stuff like the silver teapot to be too big for a thief to bother with. And stuff like silverware (which there may be 40 pieces on a table) to be too much trouble to bother with.

There's gotta be limits somewhere so that's kindof generally where we've settled on the loot topic I believe.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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I have been tweaking the specular on metals. So loot will be more shiny after the update. But that requires light to shine on it. In the dark it won't shine.

 

We've mostly stuck to gold being loot, but we'll probably add more silver loot. But it will be small things. We consider stuff like the silver teapot to be too big for a thief to bother with. And stuff like silverware (which there may be 40 pieces on a table) to be too much trouble to bother with.

There's gotta be limits somewhere so that's kindof generally where we've settled on the loot topic I believe.

That's a pretty good idea. Some of the loot is too dull now; some specularity will help a lot in making it possible to identify. Thief had quite striking loot, which was mostly achieved with brighter metallic textures (e.g. the candlesticks). WRT silver, silverware and teapots are mostly made of alloys while coins and art objects would be either made with the purer stuff, or valuable for their craftmanship - so there is another good justification there beyond bulk.

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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Nice little half an hour

I never kill and I actually enjoyed being forced to here.

Although I did think maybe on expert it could have been a kidnap mission.

Sneaking past the guards with the body. But it was definitely fine as it was.

This is the first time I've played the Dark Mod with a mouse rather than my touch pad.Makes a big difference in manipulating.

I'm loving the Dark Mod, loving the lock picking, mantling and manipulating objects.

I feel it's my environment.

Thanks guys.

Edited by Namdrol
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I thought this was a very well-constructed little mission. The use of light and shadow, as other people have noted, is great -- in the thief's layer by the gambling table, was it intentional that you sneak by the two guards using the shadow cast by one of the guards standing in front of his torch? I thought that was really cool.

 

At one point, there was a candle sitting in an inconvenient place, so I shot it with an arrow to knock it out of the way. Physics are fun! One of the guards got a little suspicious and started looking around where the arrow had landed, so I availed myself of the opportunity to rob the chest he had been guarding previously :P

 

Only one minor criticism -- there was one guard walking endlessly around a pillar in the back room, over and over and over again. Was he supposed to do that? I tend not to like guards with really short patrol routes, it's very gamey and immersion-breaking for me.

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Yes, I thought that patrol was too relentless and meaningless too. Could have been better if he'd have waited here and there.

But due to the short route, it made the situation more challenging. You have less time to act. Actually, he caught me in the first attempt. Making him stop somewhere from time to time would (maybe) make it too easy.

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I've been playing around, getting into the whole mapping thing and using Thieves as a testbed, however doing things to expand it realistically I thought was the best way to gain a realistic skillset and learn the functions etc, as such I've made pretty good headway into expanding the mission, tho I havent quite worked out a story etc, I've made it a bit more challenging, better looking and things like AI a bit less robotic. Working on pimping out the guild area a bit more at the moment, but we'll see what comes of it :)

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I'm having a bit of a problem with this mission. I can't find the key/mechanism to open the door to the leader's room. I look everywhere, killed everything, even used noclip to look for hidden stuff, but nothing. I am playing on expert btw.

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I'm having a bit of a problem with this mission. I can't find the key/mechanism to open the door to the leader's room. I look everywhere, killed everything, even used noclip to look for hidden stuff, but nothing. I am playing on expert btw.

 

It is, I believe,

on someone's belt downstairs. Pick up the bodies, turn them over a few times (Use key) and there it will be.

 

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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It is, I believe,

on someone's belt downstairs. Pick up the bodies, turn them over a few times (Use key) and there it will be.

 

Thank you so much! I overlooked it.

 

 

It's on the belt of the guy with the nasty diarrhoea.

 

 

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I'm late to the party, just finished it on expert.

 

Dislikes:

  • I'm fine with killing bad guys. But
    that guy seemed more like a sportsman to me, judged according to his motives. And then he had books. A literate mind waits to be blowen away. I almost quit.
  • Technical issues (propably by design) with the victim.
    I felt sorry for him, so I tried to give him a fair fight. But the AI obviously is friendly, no matter what I do (jumping in front of him, throwing junk items, water arrows). Shooting a broadhead or hitting him with the sword is an instant kill, what made me feel even more guilty.
  • Has been mentioned: player clipped roofs, static junk items, useless metal chest key.

Likes:

  • Sound Design: the use of ambient music seems to be better than in the other missions. No deaf spots, guess this is the "zone approach".
  • Always fun to me when you have to proceed through some completely unrelated person's house (instead of the streets or the "highway"). Remembers me of the ladies right before Angelwatch in LOTP.
  • Little details, like rats and the cheese.
  • I don't know why, but it felt very neat and stable. No glitches (except for some z-fighting).

Overall a nice little mission. :)

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I am also here to congratulate, very nice. I do not recall if Thief had torch wielding guards, but it has been a nice surprise: it changes the logic quite a lot.

 

Just a question, I went in ghosting (I think none noticed me much), but I got `0' in Steath in the final screen. It is about the necessary kill? Or I got seen without noticing?

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The stealth score method is a bit extreme at the moment and is to be revised. The kill shouldn't affect it though unless someone heard or found the body. Mostly it's just tiny suspicions from afar that keep deducting points from the stealth score.

 

Thief 3 had torch wielding guards. Thief 2 could carry lights with small radii so possibly a torch could be simulated. Certainly lanterns were often used.

 

Funny, for a second I thought you said 'torch welding' - we do have an inventor or builder or something who wears what looks like welding goggles and apron. Be fun to give him a blowtorch.

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If it is as you say I think it is a design error: it is better having a value that increase to every `error' the player does instead of vice-versa. 0 would mean that no-one ever suspected anything related to the player.

 

Players interested in ghosting might have `contests' about the lowest value, imagine: `I ghosted this ultra-tough missin and I got a score of Stealth of only 103!' - Answer of another ghost: `Really? I cannot believe it, I was sure it was impossible to get less than 500! How did you pass through that part with 139 guards?'

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