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Fan Mission: Business as usual by b1k3rdude (14/01/2010) Christmas FM Contest Entry


Bikerdude

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This mission is completely nonlinear! The space is rather small and compact but it is all filled up. At the beginning it is even difficult to choose where to go :) There are many places that have no loot and no items. It makes the proper feeling that money isn't lying around in every corner.

 

There is a room on the first floor of the hotel with two books. One of them has three pages. But the last page has a bent corner representing that it is not last. When I scroll to the next page the book closes automatically. What's wrong with this book? Scrolling through the last page causes the readable system to mess up a bit. After that I frob the another book in the room (which is OK) once - it opens. Then I hit frob again - it reopens without closing. After each frob while reading it the new instance is created and the old ones doesn't disappear.

 

 

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That was fun, very nonlinear indeed, and I liked the feeling of walking around the neighborhood, which was laid out very well to feel like a real medieval neighborhood. I liked all the readables, made the houses feel lived in. I did get an extra blank page at the end of a lot of them.

Collecting stuff from home before going out was a nice touch. And might a well rob my upstairs and downstairs neighbors on the way out, because that's what neighbors do. The tavern was nice as well. I took a gamble that they wouldn't attack me if I stepped out, and they didn't.

 

Appearance-wise, the sewer power station was very well done, but some of the other interior brush like in the hotel looked a bit simplistic. I don't know much about mapping, but maybe it was missing some trim at top and bottom or something.

 

 

My only complaint about the otherwise excellent gameplay was that there weren't many AI awake indoors.

Just two that I can recall, Serpentine and the city guard who goes into the barracks.

It might have been more exciting if a few more AI were awake indoors, because I started to feel too safe after a while.

 

Had one fairly serious technical problem at the end: The mission didn't end when all the objectives were done. I got back to the place I was supposed to go back, but nothing happened. Even cheated and used g_showentityinfo to see the objective entity

just above the chair in front of the fireplace

, but no matter how much I crawled around there I couldn't get it to go off.

 

Maybe it has to do with the difficulty bug we have, because I selected expert at first, but when I checked my objectives, the loot requirement was back to the easy/normal setting. I did find 2016 loot out of I'm not sure how many, so the 1800 requirement is do-able I'd say.

 

Also, not sure if this is intended or not:

 

I could pick the hotel door without needing to use the key I pickpocketed from the owner in the tavern. Was that door supposed to be un-pickable and only openable by that key?

 

And on the flip-side, I never found the key to open Fidcal's hideout from the "front" way, had to come up thru the trap door. Found two sewer keys but that just opened the door betwene the sewer and the outside stairs.

 

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Nice job Bikerdude.

 

There is one important thing I should mention for the team: In every other FM my fps drop from 60 down to 10 or less fps when I am underwater with bloom on. In this FM I don't get any performance impact at all. There is admittedly not much to render in that scene, so that might be the reason for that, but perhaps it could help the team figure out what causes the performance problems with bloom underwater. Maybe Bikerdude set his water up differently than others...

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I'm looking forward to play this one bikerdude. Congrats on finishing your FM for the contest. Will leave some feedback later.
no worries dude ;-D

 

Maybe Bikerdude set his water up differently than others...

Are you saying there was NO fps drop with my water then..? Awesome!

Edited by Bikerdude
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  • Appearance-wise, the sewer power station was very well done, but some of the other interior brush like in the hotel looked a bit simplistic. I don't know much about mapping, but maybe it was missing some trim at top and bottom or something
  • My only complaint about the otherwise excellent game-play was that there weren't many AI awake indoors. Just two that I can recall, Serpentine and the city guard who goes into the barracks. It might have been more exciting if a few more AI were awake indoors, because I started to feel too safe after a while.
  • Had one fairly serious technical problem at the end: The mission didn't end when all the objectives were done.Maybe it has to do with the difficulty bug we have, because I selected expert at first, but when I checked my objectives

Most of the issues you raised were purely down to my lack of experience and secondly wanting the Fm to run optimally on low end machines... I found that if I added more Ai to the tavern for example I got wacked with a 10fps hit on my laptop.. I'm planning to expand the mission, I have already learned tonight to build my first elevator, so that building with that will be added. I have also learnt about patches so I'm give all the streets a uneven surface etc, add dirt debris etc... And that last problem you had was because you change the difficulty setting mid-game, its a know bug with tdm.

 

Mappers should never force any client setting to be active or inactive on the player machines. This should be a rule.

I left it there because it didnt present much of an FPS his, but point taken..

 

  • This mission is completely nonlinear! The space is rather small and compact but it is all filled up. At the beginning it is even difficult to choose where to go. There are many places that have no loot and no items. It makes the proper feeling that money isn't lying around in every corner.
  • There is a room on the first floor of the hotel with two books. One of them has three pages. But the last page has a bent corner representing that it is not last. When I scroll to the next page the book closes automatically. What's wrong with this book? Scrolling through the last page causes the readable system to mess up a bit. After that I frob the another book in the room (which is OK) once - it opens. Then I hit frob again - it reopens without closing. After each frob while reading it the new instance is created and the old ones doesn't disappear.

Glad you liked it, that was the plan from the outset - there shouldn't be loot everywhere etc, I had to keep explaining that to my testers..

 

The book issue, was just lack of experience on my part, I will fix that in the next version. Along with lots more readables to open up the story, in fact the next version will have a new story - moved on from the current :ph34r:

Edited by Bikerdude
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Nice mission Bikerdude, i liked originality. :D

 

I liked a lot the onwater green room on the sewers, really cute!

 

Congratulation for your first mission, and especially my congratulation to make it in only 5 weeks. Go on for the next one!B)

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Hmm...I've found the hideout (where a thief is sleeping and a guard is on sentry-duty), got a lot of loots from a lower shelf, got the hideout key, but this objective hasn't been checked in the objectives...is there an other hideout somewhere?

 

 

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Hmm...I've found the hideout (where a thief is sleeping and a guard is on sentry-duty), got a lot of loots from a lower shelf, got the hideout key, but this objective hasn't been checked in the objectives...is there an other hideout somewhere?

look around in that room - there is something else in there that you need to get...

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Hmm...I've found the hideout (where a thief is sleeping and a guard is on sentry-duty), got a lot of loots from a lower shelf, got the hideout key, but this objective hasn't been checked in the objectives...is there an other hideout somewhere?

 

 

 

 

 

like a bag just inside the door on your left

 

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Biker: you mentioned something about an update but I was well into playing by then so didn't want to restart for something trivial. Now I'm wondering if something is broke or a clue missing or something in that first issue. If not, I'm going to need a hint about the hideout.

I found the readable about an underground power station but no clue where the supervisor is or if the key is with him.

Searched through all areas several times for anything. I have trouble seeing keys on belts but I've blind-frobbed every AI I have found, including sleepers, tavern crowd, gatekeeper, city watch, and even the cat. ;)

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Check the flat above the one where "you" live. After you've done this, check the basement, meaning the rooms below your flat.

 

 

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

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Thanks 7up. Well been up there a few times. Went up again without success. There is a

static blank book. Is that meant to be a readable? If so, can you tell me what it says so I can evaluate this as if it were working. If it's not that then you might as well just tell me what is up in that flat because I've been over it so many times.

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No, the book is actually blank. 

 

Okay, so I'll explain in detail (it seems absolutely natural to me, but I've played the FM about a hundred times while beta-testing it).

 

 

The guy who lives above you is the owner of the workshop in the basement of the same house. He is sleeping on the bed. Next to him is a little chair or whatever, it has a key lying on top. Hard to miss once you know what to look for. Take the key, go outside (maybe through the backdoor), then jump on the street (you are facing the guard's house). Thereare two stairs that lead down, one is the one to the workshop, the other one leads to the sewers. Take the stairs to the basement, open the door with the workshop key. On the table there you'll find the workshop sewers key. The rest is self-explanatory, you are led straight to your target.

 

 

 

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

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omigod - I've already got that key! :blush:

I thought I'd already used it in the player's start house! Funny though, I tried all my keys on the other metal door blindly not expecting them to work and they didn't - but not that wooden door! Y.O.Y.? <picks up voodoo effigy of Biker and carefully removes needles>

Thanks 7up. :laugh:

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Very enjoyable. THREE hours (of which best part of an hour spent looking for a key I'd already got!) Apart from said glitch which was my fault there was interest all the way. This is super high value and if we could all churn out one of these every 5 weeks we'd never be short of an FM to play. I'll see if I can learn anything from this to make my own FM more interesting.

 

Got all the loot except 100. But the loot was tied up with the two main objectives so it almost felt like there wasn't a loot objective. I think that might have been improved by taking the loot associated with the two objectives as a given and added more loot for the player to find on top of that. Having said that, the loot was well spread and logical for an area like the setting of this game.

 

A nice ending to the Christmas FM play for me and those of you who haven't yet played it are in for a treat.

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There is a static blank book. Is that meant to be a readable?

Bugger, I forgot to fill that one out...

 

but not that wooden door! Y.O.Y.? <picks up voodoo effigy of Biker and carefully removes needles>

LOL Sorry... but I have always felt FM's were'nt close enough to real life. That's why some are having issues finding some items, in real live you wouldnt have a readable or a clue, youd have to explore and deduce etc. But yeah, a small clue see above...

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Shouldn't worry - sometimes it's the player who fails - in this case, me. And foiled by the oldest trick in the book - looking for something I've already got.

Well I've put a book in the footlocker of the workshop owners flat and I've updated and fixed all the minor things listed in this and the ttlg thread and updated the download links. That said some of the issues people have been getting (books not closing) I think its a bug as I checked those books and they are fine etc.

Edited by Bikerdude
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