Vert Contest Mission : The Rift by Baddcog : Aug 15, 2010

[nbohr1more]

Didn't have much time this morning but I saw that:

 

 

The lighting near the spiders has been improved (more moody). And I couldn't resist seeing if the performance area above the big chamber was fixed so I zipped to the end in noclip and found that it was MUCH better.

 

 

Cant wait to play through properly...

[Jesps]

Thanks for this mission Baddcog. And thanks for the link MD.

 

Doom crashed when I was on my way back from the

temple

, and the savegame was corrupted, but I'll definitely try it again.

 

I wont be voting untill I actually complete the map, but I think

 

 

the map makes good use of the vertical theme especially in the rift/mines. It reminded me of the Cragscleft mines and the Bonehoard maps for Thief 1.

The extra objectives gave me a feeling of a player character who doesn't care (or think) about the dangers if there is riches to be found. Very Garrett-ish

The AI were a challenge to sneak by, but it was mostly not impossible (a good balance)

 

When buying gear in the puchase menu, it would have been nice to see the gear you already have.

I notices some misaligned and streched textures

There were some chests with some unfrobable loot. If I closed the chest and noclipped into it, the loot became frobable. Seems like the frobblock brush works the opposite way of what it should?

 

 

Congratulations on the release!

[LEGION]

@LEGION

If you want more to do in the starting area, try playing on hardest difficulty. You'll be forced to go somewhere you probably haven't explored yet.

 

Thanks! Should´ve paid more attention to those

bricks outside of the chapel

... But what do you mean by 'forced'? Or is this gonna happen at the end of the mission?

[nbohr1more]

Someone will probably stop by and say "wikified" soon...

Edited August 16, 2010 by nbohr1more

[Baddcog]

I'll just lump what I can into one spoiler

 

 

 

You do have to climb all the way back out, but that's half the vert excitement

 

The treasuer room

 

was the last thing I added. I felt it would give the player a little extra excitement as my beta testers thought it was kindof lacking down there. Of course that turned into leaks and multiple compiles... running out of time...visportals leaks...

Got that fixed, did seem to have more fps loss for sure, probably could've adjusted thinking times of the ai there, but last minute rush...

 

Never thought anyone would get on rocks above ruins.

 

Wasn't intended to be hard to get loot in chests, last second rush placements. But I was able to frob it all, with a little bit of lean on a few pieces maybe, but never saw any NOT be frobbable.

 

 

-must be in the final release, all I got for taking a look was a massive fps hit as the entire level showed up. (you mean when you no clipped?) but yeah, final release.

 

 

There are a few readables and they expand the story a little, though you have to go everywhere in the map. And the story was kindof thrown together quickly anyway. The whole mission in fact wasn't so much thought out well as just slapped together quickly and try to add a few things to tie it all together.

(even the adventurer was second to last thing done just to beef it up more)

 

honestly I didn't ever notice organs sounds in the sound I put in the mines, but I probably could've chose better.

 

I did put 'notes' in my read me thing, it's just the beta tester list mainly. But it was last minute rush. I also thought about load screen, but again just trying to get it done.

I guess I messed up the loot count objectives too.

 

 

 

 

Oh, and thanks MD

[nbohr1more]

Wikified.

[Midnight]

... But what do you mean by 'forced'?

 

On the hardest difficulty, the loot objective can only be completed by fully exploring the map (including that area).

 

[Baddcog]

^ actually not anymore, the final version curcumnavigates that

 

If you find the scret treasure

 

 

I actually wanted to up the loot amounts but it was too much work to count/retest last minute.

 

Thanks for the Wiki nbohr1more

[nbohr1more]

No problem Baddcog...

 

I'm just waiting for the beat-down from SneaksieDave for updating it

[Tels]

Mirror: http://bloodgate.com/fms/rift.pk4

[Baddcog]

thanks Tels

[Fidcal]

Another mirror: http://www.fidcal.com/darkuser/missions/rift.pk4

[Sotha]

Welly well. Here is my thoughts on this mission. I'll just spoilerify everything.

 

 

 

First of all, interesting vote options.. someone obviously loves eggsalad.

 

Gameplay: Good. This was a nice map. I liked it. It was fun going down the rift. Spiders were a bit boring, since they're nothing more but target practice. The mine was nice and I liked the temple. I lingered there quite a while trying to find a way to go further, even when all the objectives were completed. A shame. I'd liked to explore more of the temple as it felt the most interesting part of the map. Other interesting places were the city and the lower mines with the zombies. The mission was rather easy, but fun. The mine zombies were maybe too easy to avoid, but I had nice high tension kicks at the temple.

 

Appearance: Tedious. What a shame. With little texture alignments and other tweaks the mines would have looked so much better. When the map started I had a truly big wow factor as the city looked fantastic. It looked so living and breathing. After this I expected so much, probably too much.

 

Then I went into the first levels of the mines. The textures on the patches were an eyesore. With little effort you could have truly maxed out the visuals. I know getting textures to look right on patches may be a pain in the butt sometimes, but it's not that difficult to simply omit that. I felt you sort of gave up after the beauty of the town, leaving the chasm textures so stretched.

 

Story: Tolerable. What story? It was mainly about let's grab a rich man's valuables and then the player got more interested in a chasm. When I got to the temple I was excited. Wow! Cool! What is this temple? Why was it built here and by whom? Is there a dark secret in the temple? Maybe it's an evil god's worshipping place haunted by its former inhabitants, forever tormented for their sins? Why was the temple abandoned here? Where does the tunnel over the bridge go? Why is the bridge broken? It was rather disappointing to find the silly ex-adventurer book when my mind was swarming with these questions.

 

But hey, as a conclusion. Simple fun sneaking. Works for me. Could have been sooo much better with simple texture fixes and focusing more on the temple area. Plus telling a story of the place in an entertaining/interesting manner.

 

 

 

Thanks BC!

[Melan]

Played this mission tonight. The best use of verticality in this contest so far, although occasionally it gets confusing with areas you cannot actually get to. In theory, it would be very easy to get stuck if you used up your rope arrows at the wrong places. I gave up ghosting at

the spider horde; that was just too nerve-wracking and I ran through them. Then you had to add in undead (in a beautifully realised mine environment!), and not just that, burning ones. Sheer horror. And then, getting back up, the spiders somehow got on the scaffolding to the grand cavern, so I had to kill them one by one. Shriek!

 

 

I just couldn't figure out

 

what to do at the broken vase - the adventurer's journal suggested there was something to be done in that room, but I didn't find anything. Is it actually a clue?

 

 

Anyway, this is a very good mission. And scary, scary, scary.

[Midnight]

Just played through the final version and had a nice little dark mod moment. I alerted the city watch guard and builder outside the church and climbed onto a wall to escape. In their attempt to attack me one must have struck the other by mistake and they then started attacking each-other! After killing the guard, the builder ran away, so I climbed back down only for the builder to see me and he ran towards me. I had a quick one-on-one sword fight which ended when I struck the builder in the head and his feet flew forwards and upwards as he fell backwards. Wish I had a video, it was very comical.

[Baddcog]

@Sotha, the tex were stretched on purpose, to make it appear that the rocks had been grinding against each other. A quick way for the effect.

The bridge is broken due to the pile of rocks on top of it That way might have been the original cave entrance, a long long time ago.

The adventurer book was last minute... it was to be a book of his adventures, falling off the vase and breaking his neck put an end to that. lol.

 

 

@Melan

The book by the broken vase references the 'Nua Pua's Treasure.

 

Which is in the ruins, but not DOWN by the pot

 

 

Not sure where you mean you can get to by rope (other than in town I know there are wood trimmed roofs that are high)-but no open windows, etc...

[Tels]

The mission is quite good, but due to mod issues I had a very hard time and couldn't complete it without noclip

 

* The first thing is it is impossible to judge depth, I fell so many times "too deep" and hurt myself, the next try I walked one step different and the height was suddenly ok to not hurt myself. It is not really possible for the player to see when the fall will be not-too-high to break their neck. That makes for some pretty tiresome trial-and-error. I think some better lighting might have helped a bit?

 

In any event, when I arrived at the bottom, I had almost no health left...

 

* The next thing is that I killed one

spider

and after picking it up and flinging it down to the bottom, I no longer could use most stuff. At this time I didn't really notice it, but it came apparent after I wanted to pick up the second

dead spider

and couldn't, so I just continued. Later I found out I couldn't use my weapons anymore, using a weapon with the spyglass in the inventory instead dropped the spyglass (wtf?). Likewise, atacking was impossible. I somehow managed to continue a bit further, but in the end grew annoyed and used notarget (because I had overwritten my savegame quite a while ago). Unfortunately, I could pick the first chest, but had a hard time picking up stuff from chests or even books. Strangely enough, I could pick up loot. Somehow I could f.i. only use my lockpicks by using the "ENTER" key (instead of left mouse).

 

Also, I had two times holy water, but some how no water arrows. Duh! (Even if I had any, I think I couldn't have shot an arrow - seems the left mouse button stopped completely working)

 

So in the end I didn't want to replay half the mission, so I just nocliped the rest of the way. Sorry

[Baddcog]

hmm, never heard of the spider bug, can't say I ever tried to kill one and pick up the corpse though. Guess it needs testing Mod wise. Probably no reason to be able to grab spiders anyway right?

 

I didn't have issues with falling deaths really, obviously I've had more practice than anyone, but I tried to make obvious 'steps' all the way down. Jumping into deep holes is not a good idea, if you made a big jump and survived then the rest of the area isn't bad, you just got lucky imo.

I had one tester complain about taking alot of damage the first run through but he was more careful the second.

I wouldn't know what to do about that, go through and make sure the player can't get lucky on ANY drops to enforce the point that they are going down a huge chasm and need to be careful?

I've been all the way down and up with one arrow and no damage several times.

 

water arrows

 

in the water of course

or in the loading store. (at least 4 on expert in the store, more for lower difficulties)

 

I even upped the ambient back to 7 'cause testers thought 4 was too dark. 7 is too bright imo but probably gives players a better range for gamma adjustment.

[Melan]

hmm, never heard of the spider bug, can't say I ever tried to kill one and pick up the corpse though. Guess it needs testing Mod wise. Probably no reason to be able to grab spiders anyway right?

At least they should be draggable - say, out of a patrolled cavern hallway into a side chamber so the others don't notice. Now shouldering them, that's gross. Imagine a spider dangling from your shoulders like a backpack.

[Berny]

super cool scripts !!! VERY *geil* ^^

[Fidcal]

Absolutely entranced by this so far. Just got killed by something so take the opportunity to break off for breakfast. Gotta eat unfortunately. Resume later.

[id3839315]

Woohoo! Finally a Baddcog mission. THX.

 

BTW: What happened to Baddcog's 1st map ?

[Fidcal]

Is there any way out of the

moat area? I can't climb back up. I got the diary and looked in 4 different pots several times but couldn't get the portcullis open so I went round the other way. Now I'm stuck. There was also one chest I could not open and cannot get back to it to double check.

[nbohr1more]

Woohoo! Finally a Baddcog mission. THX.

 

BTW: What happened to Baddcog's 1st map ?

 

One of those shots reminded me of Heart of Lone Salvation but it might just be placebo... ?

[LEGION]

@Baddcog:

 

Without the adventurers book and the chapel(I assume there are readables), are there readables anywhere else?

 

about the height feel:

I got hurt at the entrance of the rift, but after I figured out which way to take I never got hurt again. Except the hole in the Mines, but I fell in due to the darkness there, but the damage I took was fairly nothing, so I even enjoyed this!

 

That brings me to the ambient light: Without the mines it could´ve used a little bit darker ambient. Especially the spider-area was too bright. The areas your lightgem says you´re in complete darkness it actually was very bright there and because I play usually without the lightgem (instead I 'use' the PlayerShadow as reference) I didn´t noticed that and felt forced to kill all the spiders. The spiders weren´t able to get to the area you came in there around that corner, so it was pretty ease to nail them with arrows or even slash them. They only jumped at the corner without getting forward.

But the mines are the reason to not decrease the ambient light (I assume the ambient light effects the whole map and cannot set individually for areas) because it was perfect the way it was. I was barely able to see the nearest walls (the lighted up zombie was a help) and that was just great and realistic, and as I said it was a pleasure to fall down blindly into that hole and got hurt(because it was only a very little hurt)!

 

 

@Tels:

I guess this bug you suffered from is related to the shoulder-issue about the spiders where you shoulder them but the spider still lays before you. I think I too had once this issue where I dropped my spyglass, that rings a bell...

But than again, didn´t you said (in the bugtracker-discussion) that you very likely fixed this anyway and I assume you´re using the SVN-version were the fix is available. (I would like to have access to this too, the weapon-inventory-bug still annoys me )

 

Oh, and about the loot not frobable: Sometimes it´s really hard to get the loot highlighted, maybe a slower mouse-setting would help?

(Fidcals solution for the second crouch-height really serves as an improvement for me, because with this you are able to lean forward into chests while crouched)

 

edit: added spoilercode

Edited August 17, 2010 by LEGION