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Fan Mission: St Alban's Cathedral (01/11/2010)


Bikerdude

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Help!

 

I,ve

 

 

Found the skull of St Alban and replaced it with the fake (although my Objectives hasn't updated to reflect this) and I'm in the Inventors cubicle (glasses - Leonardo drawing on bed) but no indication of where to put the skull.

 

 

I really hope I didn't read that correctly.

 

Ok, you're not supposed to replace the real skull with the fake in the tomb, and then give the real skull to the inventor. that is totally not the objective.

 

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THANK YOU!!!! after reading about how a person dedicated solely to story and readables would be soooo great because the quality was so poor, it is nice to hear that. as for the workflow, i designed the plot/story/objectives/readables and then biker would dissect and edit my final drafts for the release.

 

More time would of been nice, i've still got a few pages of backdrop story that never made it into the release, and the quality and quantity of readables still leaves something to be desired (to myself), but it can always be used by the third(?!) mission in the st. alban series.

 

Oh, that would have been me there.

I only voted "good" on story because it IS solid and fully suitable, but I had T2 missions that had a story so brilliant, with side-stories, twists, drama, cabals and so much background story that they were highly immersive and generated great atmosphere on their own, making technical aspects of the mission even rather secondary.

Here, we have "just" a standard get-stuff-solve-riddle-over - type mission. Thats fine, and the glowing text on the stone tablet, the readables (with the Latin), the riddle and overall style all classy, but nothing really extraordinary - I have only 4 options, and I would have voted well above "good", it's just "excellent" needs a more alive and deeper story, I think.

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Plato

"When outmatched... cheat."— Batman

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Help!

 

I,ve

 

 

Found the skull of St Alban and replaced it with the fake (although my Objectives hasn't updated to reflect this) and I'm in the Inventors cubicle (glasses - Leonardo drawing on bed) but no indication of where to put the skull.

 

 

You may want to reread the objectives. The fake isn't supposed to go where you're putting it.

 

The fake is placed on the inventors bed, and you are supposed to retrieve all of his remains and take them all out with you.

 

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Started to play this, wow, this looks good! :wub: (Stealing a broadhead from the Archer was fun!)

 

Since I only have one lockpick and there are lot of things I cannot pick with that, I haven't progressed much. But that's part of the fun :)

 

Btw, at least the first area (some city house, the city street and the city watch) already have quite a few (minor!) things that could be improved:

 

* TDM has so many nice moveables, but in the first house there are already quite a lot of static entities. Always a shame when you can't pick up apples :)

* I saw at least 5 or 6 z-fighting areas. (on my graphic card, these are somehow very very visible, flickering a lot. I also see sometimes seems on triangles, so this might be just that bad on my system. Still. The z-fighting things will also cause D3 to compile a bigger map than nec. :) Can post screenshots if desired. (Biker: probably you want them via PM or somewhere else so that things aren't spoiled for people?)

* Not turning things into entity. Example is f.i. the room in the city watch with the shelves. The shelves and the ceiling bars all should be entities (2 preferable, one for the shelves, one for the bars). Right now, they divide the walls and ceiling into a couple dozen triangles, this makes AAS and the map size bigger, etc. It also decrease rendering performance. (And in my case, I sometimes see the triangle seams on the walls, which is why I spotted it. r_showTris of course shows it more clearly).

 

You probably don't want to release a update for these small things, but if there are more, it might make sense to sometime take a good look in DR to see what else can be improved. (The loading times here were... ugh, very long. I did go and get me some drinks and it was still not finished when I came back :)

 

Anyway, so far what I did see looked very very good.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Yes. I am extremely meticulous I even found the third clue without finding the second. Which I guess could say that I wasn't very meticulous too. :laugh:

 

But, yes, there is a text I found in two places that I've now found was actually Chimp-boy Bush.

 

From

 

Written in his own hand and on his official Texas governor's stationery, Bush is begging his best contributors for a cup more--$150 or $250, to be exact. Why? "I face a challenge no other Republican does. I'm the Republican the Clinton/Gore White House fears. Clinton is already attacking me," Bush sniffs.

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Moddb has been updated with news of the release and images courtesy of AluminumHaste. Going forward I will try to do the same thing for every FM release.

 

(I also plan on going back to old missions and high-lighting them so that they are not neglected.)

 

:D

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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Yep.

 

The Moddb presence should represent proportionally how much more content this mod has. Rather than seeing one or two maps being incrementally updated from some small mod we can show them our legions of mappers at work :laugh:

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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Moddb has been updated with news of the release and images courtesy of AluminumHaste. Going forward I will try to do the same thing for every FM release.

 

(I also plan on going back to old missions and high-lighting them so that they are not neglected.)

 

:D

 

Interestingly enough, I don't see our news in this list:

 

http://www.moddb.com/articles

 

Huh?

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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I don't have an "Articles" tab....?

 

You should be able to view the update under the "New" tab (see link below ;) )

 

http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/news

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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I don't have an "Articles" tab....?

 

You should be able to view the update under the "New" tab (see link below ;) )

 

http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/news

 

Edit: I looked at the "Games" tab, but our mod is under the "Mods" tab, and there the news appears, but only with a generic image. Sorry, my bad. We probably should move this discussion to an extra moddb thread.

If you go to:

 

http://www.moddb.com/

 

You see two things: "Latest Articles" (a short list) and "Latest Downloads" (also a short list). Both have a sort of "more" link at their bottom, one is called "continue reading" (articles), the other is "more downloads".

 

Interestingly enough, if you click on any random "articles", like "http://www.moddb.com/mods/blue-portals/news/good-evening-subjects", you see, it goes to the "News" section of the mod. So why do our news not appear in the "articles" list on the main page?

 

If our news doesn't go there, it is effectively invisible to the moddb visitors, unless they happen to go to our mod page.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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It was listed towards the top of the general "Mods" listing, so that is more exposure than we previously had.

 

http://www.moddb.com/mods

 

But apparently an Admin\Editor has to see it and post it to the front page. :wacko:

 

I think the editor will want more of a fleshed-out article to have the news hit the front page. I have something planned for that... :ph34r:

 

(I kinda think I should do regular articles about "how much Moddb" has helped the mod grow in popularity, it will be cross-promotion and get us on their radar...:laugh: )

 

 

(We also need to prove "reader-ship" so please do your part and visit the Moddb site for The Dark Mod ... :mellow: )

Edited by nbohr1more

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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How can I download from the bloodgate mirror? I keep getting a McAfee Adware/Simbar warning page!

 

That means your computer is "infected" with some sort of unwanted software. My website in this case redirects you to a page that tells you how you can get rid of that software. I don't know the specifics but here is quick googling:

 

This is not a virus or trojan. It is a direct-marketing adware application. This application generates extra pop-up ads while using Internet Explorer.

 

This kind of application generally comes bundled with another program, which usually discloses the fact that it is ad-supported. Users agree to have the Adware installed in the license agreement, although they may not realise at first that this file was packaged with the product they installed.

 

Despite the harmless description above, that means the application can monitor all your browsing with IE and it can do a lot of other things that you don't know about!

 

Try this to get rid of it:

 

http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php

 

Download and run that program and it should tell you a lot of warnings about things on your computer that you don't want on it.

 

Also: Please do not use Internet Explorer (it is the unsafest browser of all, use Firefox, Opera, Chrome or Safari), and even if you insist using IE, update it to the very newest version. Running an Anti-Virus program, including the Security Essentials(I think they are called that) from Microsoft including a Windows Update are in order, too.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Finished.

 

I'm not rating this, because the rating system in the thread is not compatible with the ratings all the other missions are using. Incompatible rating means it is useless to rate this using these options.

 

 

The mission felt it was two missions in one: the city and the cathedral could have easily been separate missions.

 

The city was really good and fun. A map could have been nice. It was difficult to figure out where the police station was, but random exploration showed the way. The sewers were also nice, but a map would have been nice there too.

 

I like maps because they give the possiblity to plan places which to visit, rather than just randomly explore the place.

 

The cathedral was a disappointment, I'm really sorry to say that. Yeah it was gorgeous and the crypts were amazing but once I got up from the crypts.... The smaller rooms in the cathedral seemed so cloned. Like the author got tired and just cloned rooms.. On the other hand, the cathedral main hall was truly impressive.

 

Only two guards in the upper cathedral? Too easy, almost boring. I liked the clue hunt, but the second clue was really strange.

 

C'mon? I would really like to know what was the idea with that clue. "I put the clue in latin so the player has to quit the game and go find a translation?" And the translation didn't help either so I was forced to open DR and look where the target of the crank was. Not fun at all. Maybe I missed something. If not, then this was a huge blunder.:(

 

The other two clues were fun and cleverly thought of.

 

This would have been so much better if there were more guards, but the clues were easier.

 

 

 

Finally, you should learn how to do alpha gradients on your briefing images to avoid them being 'boxy.'

Here is how:

1) get GIMP

2) open your image

3) layer->transparency->add alpha channel

4) Go to Layer>Mask>Add Layer mask

5) when prompted to select a type, select "Layer's Alpha channel"

6) check to make sure you're set to edit the layer mask (it should default to this)

NOTE: What's going on is the "White" of your mask is the "visible", the "black" is the "invisible", and of course the greys are in between.

7) Set your foreground color to White and your Background color to Black.

8) Choose the gradient tool.

9) Set your Gradient to "FG to BG (RGB)"

10) Your White-to-black gradient is now the visible-to-invisible alpha channel gradient. You'll have to work with that to get the effect you desire.

 

I hope this helps. And finally, thanks for using my briefing system. This is the first real mission that uses it.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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  • I'm not rating this, because the rating system in the thread is not compatible with the ratings all the other missions are using.
  • The mission felt it was two missions in one
  • A map could have been nice. The sewers were also nice, but a map would have been nice there too. I like maps because they give the possiblity to plan places which to visit, rather than just randomly explore the place.
  • The cathedral was a disappointment, I'm really sorry to say that. Yeah it was gorgeous and the crypts were amazing but once I got up from the crypts.... The smaller rooms in the cathedral seemed so cloned. Like the author got tired and just cloned rooms..
  • Only two guards in the upper cathedral? Too easy, almost boring.
  • C'mon? I would really like to know what was the idea with that clue. If not, then this was a huge blunder.

 

- Er, its the same voting system as is used on contest missions and I only did it so I could see what people thought of the mission.

- true, but then why not have one big mission?

- This comment is unfair as it isnt technically possible to have a multi-page map in tdm atm, I did ask this before releasing the mission.

- again unfair, you mean the side rooms werte a disapointment! You trying building a map of this size and complexity and see if don't get burnout. It would have been kinder to say the rooms were a little plain, which I concede btw. Also I had time constraints, I wanted this map out for around Halloween time before loads of people said they wanted the cathedral/town/sewer/cave all in one map. Also fyi I have and still am currently working on 4 other maps at the same time!

- I'm kinda getting tired of explaining why you cant have more than a few Ai in big open spaces with D3 - on even mid end systems D3 bogs down!!! just the two Ai in the main hall robbed the map of 15FPS, yeah you read it right!

- Hah, I take you have never played this before then..? as I have played mission with much harder clues than the simple ones in this mission.

 

Thanks for the tip on the gimp alpha thing, I did wonder how to do that.

Edited by Bikerdude
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I'm not rating this, because the rating system in the thread is not compatible with the ratings all the other missions are using.

 

So far this poll is created by the mapper to gather feedback for himself, you are under the impression this is a TDM feature to give the players feedback.

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