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


Baddcog

The Rift by Baddcog : VC2010  

57 members have voted

  1. 1. Gameplay: Enjoyment. Fun duration. Smooth flow, ect. Versus Bugs. Frustration, Boredom, framelag

  2. 2. Appearance: Vertical use, Visual pleasure, lighting, visual style, deduct bad texturing etc.

  3. 3. Story & Text: Story. Text. Briefing. Graphic storytelling



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Estimated Time of Arrival?

Yeah, sure, a misspell on my side.

 

ETA = "Edited to add". Sort of a way of indicating a postscript after coming back to edit the post rather than create a new one; that kind of thing.

 

ETA: I didn't need to E to A this because as you can see I didn't E this post so this is a fake ETA

Oh, never would´ve come to that conclusion. Thanks for enlightening. :)

-> Crisis of Capitalism

-> 9/11 Truth

->

(hard stuff), more
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Just finished the mission and enjoyed it once I got my depth perception goggles on.laugh.gif I did have some difficulties getting all the loot

 

just as Chiron did with the chalice in the chest I couldn't get it to highlight even after bjing it out of there and kicking it around the room a few times. I also had trouble with the helmet. It would highlight but could not pick it up. I tried using my sword to flip it over (hopefully) but that only caused the game to crash. So I had to leave those two items behind and only came up with 4139 in loot. Oh well. I also must comment on the way into the church. That was such a clever ladder. Thanks for the clue Baddcog as I saw the window but could not see how to get to it.

 

All in all I liked the vastness of the rift, it seemed to go on forever with a great beginning and ending - they really made you want to see more of them

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This was the first entry in the contest I have played and it's a really nice mission!

 

 

 

 

Very nice destruction because of the quake in the citysection :)

 

You beat me by far of the "convicability" and "realisticness" of your section of mines :D That felt really nice and old and murky. I could almost smell the rotteness and the mold in the air :laugh: I see you also had found the idea of making golden ore in the form of large chunks to steal ;)

 

I also liked how the rift opened up and revealed a huge waterfilled cavern and an ancient temple! It reminded me of the 4-armed guys in Unreal and the fish-men-things in The sunken citadel in Thief 3 :D Nice sneaking in the temple and fun to crawl about in the broken vases. Good idea with the burning undead. Made them more threatening to have them lighten the area up as they thread about :)

 

 

I cannot find anything bad about the mission except frobbing some things out of the chests was quite hard on some occations. The framerate dropped at some occations and by this I mean they went around 30 which I believe is acceptable. Missions shall absolutely be adjusted to make old-computer-folks enjoy them also, but we cannot hold on too much to the old machines. The evolving in computer games will get higher and higher and if you don't keep up you will get behind and I don't think it's totally fair to minimize effects in a mission just so somebody with a 12 year or even older rig can play it acceptable...My computer is about 3-4 years old or something and I don't have any problems with any game...

 

 

EDIT:

 

Why is there jewelry-loot when all that counts is gold? It's really satisfying to hear that rrring-sound but it feels strange that you need pure gold...Yes, there is some nice idea to go for a total-loot-run, but I didn't understand the reason for just gold...

 

Edited by Fieldmedic
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finished it.

 

city part was great! I loved architecture, ambient sounds and lighting. However, mine was really disappointing on visuals. That's why I voted for mmm good on appearence. Otherwise it'll be near perfect. I'm sure many of us considered in same way.

There were many scary cliffs. I hated them, because I have acrophobia. But who don't?:) Rope arrows were not enough for me. So that, I felt the pain on landing many many times. There was a problem with a loot in the chest. It wasn't frobable. The only way to grab it is closing the chest, then it becomes frobable. Not annoying that much.

 

Overall, I have enjoyed your mission very much. Thanks!

 

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The first time I played this was a few days ago and I didn't get far due to a quicksave crash. So I tried again tonight.

I enjoyed it quite a bit. I thought it had a good balance of climbing/descending and roping.

I had an issue with not being able to move the spiders (the first time I played, I could move them all just fine), but I did not experience a dead mouse1 button (linux vs. windows issue maybe??).

I had no issues with mis-judging depth and falling too far. Perhaps those issues arise from a combination of certain hardware and graphics settings.

I did not buy any water arrows and did not find any later, even though

I searched in the water in front of the temple.

Perhaps I did not search thoroughly enough. I had to use notarget

around the undead in the temple

because my sword fighting skills are poor.

One chest in

the treasure room had one gold statue and one green gem which I could not frob, though I tried various angles and climbing on top of the chest, etc. No matter what I could not get those and gave up after about 30 seconds, assuming them to be decoration.

 

 

I also can't remember playing either an FM or an original T1/T2 map where I fired a rope arrow to a spot lower than me, then dropping down to it to grab the rope. I did that

at 2 vertical drops in the mine shaft

... wanted to fire the arrow low enough so I could reclaim it and not break an ankle.

Edited by PranQster

System: Mageia Linux Cauldron, aka Mageia 8

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Very nice mission.

I liked the spiders and especially the way into the

chapel.

 

I did not expect such a route but I am even more happy that I can be done this way in TDM.

However I ran into some bugs:

Loot : some items are not frobable and can not be obtained

 

- green gem in the adventurer bonus area (in a chest) is not obtainable, but is indicated as loot

- pokal in a chest in the thone room is not obtainable, but is indicated as loot

- a statue in the same room CAN be obtained, but is nearly impossible to frob. I verified this by using my BJ so that these items would be smashed out of the chests

 

And I ran into a crash, too:

 

- near the throne-room is a place with a giant vase you can crawl into. There is a helmet below it, which highlights. But since frobbing would not help to grab it and I was too curious whether there might be something worth taking I was using a broadhead to shot at the helmet.

I tried multiple times shooting the helmet away and always the game would crash !

After a couple of crashes I was actually able to frob the purse that was hiding below it and ended up with 4136/4411 in loot.

 

 

I think this might deserve a fix.

Edited by gnartsch
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Just finished the mission. Thank you Baddcoq for all the hard work put in. Whilst appreciating it is a Vertical contest mission and therefore of a quicker build with no time for elaboration( I see Komag calls his Vertigo and these missions are certainly giving me it !) , may I give my brief thoughts which may echo one or two others, but are no way a criticism of a mission which I enjoyed a heck of a lot.

I would have liked a little more depth with more areas to explore in the underground temple , for instance behind the barred gate area and across the broken bridge. I did go to these areas by noclipping and obviously there was nothing much there , but felt the mission could have been enhanced by expanding these areas a bit. This could have made the overall storyline more complete. Also it would have been nice to have had a more direct way back up , say through the temple . Now tell me that there was and I missed it !!

Edited by raymeld
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Thanks, glad you enjoyed it.

 

No, part of the vert is climbing back out!

Unfortunately there just wasn't enough horizontal space allowed to have a differnet way out, would've been better than backtracking through already explored terrain. I guess I could have always teleported the player some but...

 

Same with the temple area, both those ways are the boundry limits. I had originally wanted that area to be larger, but by the time I got the pool of water in half my horiztonal space was gone. The only way to go was down and I was out of time/desire to go further.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Beautiful design.

 

 

 

Gameplay not so great (heavy dependence on the two of my least favorite AI: zombies and spiders). Reached temple/castle and discovered I didn't have one of the lockpicks. Thought I'd grabbed both off the table Way Back at the Start. Had a difficult time with the last 35 required gems. Players could easily bypass the gems hidden in the geodes. When I'd satisfied all objectives except "Return to your room" I said, No Way I'm trudging all the way back there, so I noclipped my way out of the rift to below the window of the start room. Rope-arrowed up and in. Mission complete.

 

 

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See, I just don't get that.

 

it's a vertical mission and yet people don't want to climb, they just want to no clip to finish it?

 

In Mad Mountain people were glad it just ended at one end of the cave...

 

I felt the same way in the other maps, just play half of it then noclip to the end.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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The problem is that players don´t expect sth new on the way back, especially if it is the same way so they get bored. (I never use noclip or quit before finish, I value immersion very much) So, alternate routes back or scripted events on the way back would make this more attractive to players.

-> Crisis of Capitalism

-> 9/11 Truth

->

(hard stuff), more
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Yeah, I get that, but it is a contest and people are voting so they should finish the map, not cheat no clip when it gets tough boring whatever.

 

I guess thtat's one option you didn't have in T2. You HAD to play it, now players get the noclip crutch and there's nothing we can do about it.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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there's nothing we can do about it.

 

You can not sweat it?

 

As I said, I had a fucking blast with this one. Other missions not so much...

 

So, please, don't sweat it; don't ever let mission building become a chore -- just as players shouldn't let mission playing become a chore, eh? ;)

"A Rhapsody Of Feigned And Ill-Invented Nonsense" - Thomas Aikenhead, On Theology, ca. 1696

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When playing on an older system with low FPS, it's a long trip to get to the "middle" of this one. Facing a long trip back to the start with an expectation that that's all it will be, with nothing new to see, I decided to end it quickly.

 

"Leave the way you came in" is an oft-used final objective for many maps. Not wanting to ask that of a player in my own entry was one of the reasons why it ended the way it did.

Edited by grayman
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  • 3 weeks later...

I thoroughly enjoyed Rift, and will spotlight some of my favorite features:

 

Let's start right off with the beginning...

 

The Inn-

I love how the inn was set up; all of my tools arrayed around the room as if I'm checking my arsenal and maintaining my tools. It just feels better than visiting the generic invisi-shop. Well done!

 

 

 

Town-

Wish it were larger, of course, but this was a vertical mission. I did try to climb over every wall, fallow every sill and gutter, trying to find secrets.

 

 

 

The Church-

This rocked! The free climb was perilous and felt dangerous (and darn near impossible at first) I would have figured it out by the low loot count at the end, however.

 

 

 

The Mine-

The environment certainly felt cavernous, and it was just daunting to realize I would have to climb back out! However, I really felt the mine was missing some things... This was a major operation to cause the collapse, but I never got that impression. Mine carts, dozens of bodies, tracks, and equipment would have made it feel more like a mine and less like a natural cave.

 

 

 

Haunted Mine-

Okay, THIS is a mine! Dark, shored up ceilings, broken beams, and lumbering skeletons. I really enjoyed this part, getting lower only by rushing past the burning skellies. Would have been cool to have at least one super deep shaft to give the illusion of an even deeper dig.

 

 

 

 

The Temple-

Small but sweet! Again, the bonus treasure chamber was well done. I got out with all loot, but wished I could delve further.

 

 

All in all, a great mod!

207115_1788633687853_1599901965_31729336_1424191_n.jpg
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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

Well I searched through these 4 pages in this thread quickly for "loading"...

 

Anyway, I decided to revisit this FM under 1.03 to see some spiders and stuff... And I don't know if it's known, we all missed it, I missed the mention (after searching here) or what but this FM doesn't seem to have a "loading" screen at all? Correct?

 

Also, as far as spiders go, I liked the fact that if you nailed a little one with a broadhead it'd die sweetly and you could retrieve your arrow so it was ~lossless~ a bootifulting. But I experienced a couple of regressive type situation/scenarios in this regard:

 

  • Many spiders would die indeed, but float as if propped up by my arrow, yet no arrow...
  • Spiders are no longer shoulder-able, eh, well, okay... but not moveable at all? I got a sticky pile up here!

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You're correct Aprilsister, no load screen made for this one. It was a major crunch in the last few days to try and crunch bugs, makes sure objectives worked and detail the lower area as much as possible. In the end I felt like the load screen was low priority compared to other issues.

 

I believe (don't quote me on this) that spiders were never meant to be shouldered and it was removed for 'reality', they wouldn't quite folder over your shoulder like a body. However I figured they'd still be draggable... I guess the main thing is the team didn't feel that dead spiders would be something that would alert guards in most cases, they'd probably be glad to see them dead. (unless someone makes a 'pet spider' in their map).

 

I actually haven't had a chance to play any missions since 1.03 release yet, much less one infested with spiders, so I haven't seen new anims or anything. I wonder if it's a bug or if something was missed in the update.

But the spider caves in my mission also have lots of clipping for pathfinding, so are they floating like a couple inches in the air, or like a couple feet?

I think they should have a flip over anim when dead, not totally sure though.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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...I felt like the load screen was low priority compared to other issues

 

Oh, absolutely. I was just wondering if I had gone crazy. I can't believe I didn't notice it the first go-round. Nothing "wrong" about it, exactly, just a little "did this freeze up?... well I'll wait a bit... ah there it goes... here I am comfortable in my room..."

 

of course then real the fun starts as things get uncomfortable for sure

 

...

 

Here's a couple of screenshots I took that don't do a perfect job illustrating the spider weirdness (don't know why I took them like this) but good enough:

 

Riddle me this: I am dead and I float too. What am I? (I just told you... I am dead... and I float to...)

 

spiders2.jpg

 

 

I'm floating too, but more importantly look at that pile up in the background, eh? The bastard who slayed us all wanted to clear that up some...

 

spiders1.jpg

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hmm, I'd say maybe half the height is the spider laying on monster clip. The other half, I don't know. Maybe there is an issue with the origin of the spider rig being lower than the flipped spider?

 

I'll pass the word on to Springheel.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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