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Fan Mission: Mandrasola by Sotha (2011/04/10)


Sotha

Please grade this mission  

81 members have voted

  1. 1. Seasonal Theme

    • No Season
      0
    • Barely Defined
    • Season is Clear
    • Season is Captured Well
    • Near Perfect
  2. 2. Gameplay: Enjoyment. Fun duration. Smooth flow, ect. Versus Bugs. Frustration, Boredom, framelag?

  3. 3. Aesthetics: Visual pleasure, lighting, visual style. Audio, use mood. Storytelling and consistency?



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Mandrasola is a small sized map in which aspiring thief Thomas Porter steals some herbal products from a smuggler. The mission was created by me, Sotha and I wish to thank Bikerdude, BrokenArts and Ocn for playtesting and voice acting. Thanks goes naturally to everyone contributing and making TDM possible.

 

This mission occurs chronologically before the Knighton's Manor, making it the first mission in the Thomas Porter series. Events in chronological order are: Mandrasola, The Knighton's Manor, The Beleaguered Fence, The Glenham Tower and The Transaction.

 

The winter came early and suddenly this year. Weeks of strong blizzards and extremely harsh cold weather hit Bridgeport hard. With the seas completely frozen, a rare occurence indeed, most of the City harbor commerce has stopped completely. Vessels are stuck in the ice and no ship can leave or enter the City, resulting in the availability imported goods declining and their prices skyrocketing.

 

One of these imported items is Mandrasola, a rare herbal product, which is imported overseas from the far southern continents. Mandrasola has its uses in alchemical cures and poisons, but mostly this substance is used for its narcotic qualities by commoners and even the nobility. The problem with Mandrasola is that excessive use is extremely addicting and the withdrawal effects are most grievious. Many are utterly incapable of stopping using Mandrasola and are transformed into quivering human ruins if they do no get their daily dose.

 

And now this expensive and rare substance is running out from the whole City. Me and my fence, Lark Butternose, would love to grab this monopoly to ourselves: selling the last few doses in the City would probably be worth a fortune. According to Lark's sources, there remains only one smuggling lord who still has Mandrasola in stock. The problem is that this individual maintains an exclusive clandestine operation and only supplies a few nobles. Despite our best information gathering efforts we couldn't learn who the smuggler is and where he or she operates.

 

Luckily we have an alternate plan. While searching for Mandrasola related information, we learned that a noblewoman called Lady Ludmilla is addicted to the substance and has paid high prices for small amounts of it. We also know that she has visited frequently someone in the Tanner's Ward waterfront, and since she goes to the area personally we believe she is visiting the smuggler.

 

The plan is simple: I must monitor Ludmilla's most likely entryway to the Waterfront and then follow her to the smugglers hideout. I'd better be very careful around Ludmilla. She must not realise I'm following her or she probably won't lead me to her dealer. Hurting her is also out of the question. After she leads me to the smuggler's hideout, I can take my time to break in carefully and steal all the Mandrasola I can find. While I'm there it wouldn't be a bad idea to grab some loose valuables as well.

 

I've now waited in the blistering cold for a few hours already. Looks like there are a few city watch patrols in the area to complicate matters... I think I heard a womans voice beyond the north gate. That must be lady Ludmilla, I haven't seen many ladies in these parts. I'd better get ready..

 

Links:

Use the ingame downloader to get it.

 

WARNING! Someone always fails to use spoiler tags. I do not recommend reading any further until you've played the mission.

  • Like 1

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Curse you Sotha!

 

Now:

 

* My day at work will be even more tedious.

 

* Springheel's map (and likely others) will be delayed.

 

* I will have to write-up a (badly needed) release article to boost the Moddb rankings.

 

* More TTLG (etc) folk who don't want to buy Doom 3 will get even angrier by hearing about how cool this mission is.

 

* You are a villain who scorns "those who are trying not to like The Dark Mod".

 

* Foiled again! :angry:

 

:P

 

Alright.

 

Enough foolish blather.

Good luck in the contest your competitors have until JUNE to try and outdo this one. ^_^

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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Loading screen looks a bit different.

 

Weird. It looked just fine on my system. Also betatesters did not complain about it.

 

It is not .tga file like they normally are, but a compressed .dds to save some disk space. Maybe DDS loading screens look corrupted on some systems? Are .dds loading screenies allowed?

 

Does the mission work otherwise? Howsabout briefing pictures? They are .dds:s as well.

 

Curse you Sotha!

Sorry.... :P

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Weird. It looked just fine on my system. Also betatesters did not complain about it.

 

It is not .tga file like they normally are, but a compressed .dds to save some disk space. Maybe DDS loading screens look corrupted on some systems? Are .dds loading screenies allowed?

 

Does the mission work otherwise? Howsabout briefing pictures? They are .dds:s as well.

 

 

Sorry.... :P

Downloading!

Task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody see. - E.S.

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Congrats on the release, Sotha!

 

I have 4 rooms in my contest map. And they are not even finished yet wacko.gif

 

Anyways, loading screen looks fine on my system. Will post more later, when I have finished it.

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Oh, and it just occured to me. This is a contest entry, so why not have a little contest among the players as well?

Now that we have the new stealth score system, why not grab a screenie of your end statistics just to show off who is the best sneaker in Mandrasola.;)

 

The information might also be useful for the team members to see how the scoring works and what kind of score people typically get.

 

At least I'm interested what kind of scores are gained and how long it takes for you to complete the mission.

 

Anyways... Enjoy the map.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Thanks!

I've been playing the mission, though I haven't completed it yet. I must say though, your missions contain some of the most convincing skyboxes/backdrops I've seen. It seems as though the world actually continues on beyond the places the player is allowed to go.

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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Most splendid.

I got only 14/15 though, I wonder where the last one is ...

Death got me at the caves, so I'm not as skilled as I thought I am:

 

 

Those beasts are nicely dangerous - fast and strong. I loved the sniffing on lower alert levels !

The pagan mage was a little to tough maybe - he could see me right away and his missiles are deadly enough.

I had to opt for instant preventive gas arrow treatment which downed him with a very satisfied noise.

 

 

 

I missed a more intense climate - howling ice winds, dense snowfall, or dense winter fog. Not so much for reasons of making the season

clear, but if an opportunity to implement those in a way that they are limiting seeing and hearing distance comes up like here I feel it shouldn't be left out.

Shadowing the lady through fog or dense snowfall could have added up much to atmosphere I think.

 

Well,this mission surprised me with an enjoyable Sunday evening, thank you very much.

"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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Most splendid.

I got only 14/15 though, I wonder where the last one is ...

Death got me at the caves, so I'm not as skilled as I thought I am:

 

 

Those beasts are nicely dangerous - fast and strong. I loved the sniffing on lower alert levels !

The pagan mage was a little to tough maybe - he could see me right away and his missiles are deadly enough.

I had to opt for instant preventive gas arrow treatment which downed him with a very satisfied noise.

 

 

 

I missed a more intense climate - howling ice winds, dense snowfall, or dense winter fog. Not so much for reasons of making the season

clear, but if an opportunity to implement those in a way that they are limiting seeing and hearing distance comes up like here I feel it shouldn't be left out.

Shadowing the lady through fog or dense snowfall could have added up much to atmosphere I think.

 

Well,this mission surprised me with an enjoyable Sunday evening, thank you very much.

Same thoughts for me, 14/15 too :D

 

A bug!

Exiting from here:

 

 

shot00002qu.th.jpg

 

causes "rose" flashing on that black background.

 

Isn't possibile to implement in DOOM3/TDM some kind of "fog", like old games one to hide the empty horizon?

Edited by lowenz

Task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody see. - E.S.

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Completed this mission and it was great.This is first FM with winter theme and it was good.I really liked this frozen sea.Sadly snow was not raining,it would be cool. :)

 

I very liked the suprise in the end of the mission,beasts was fun but i liked pagan and his "workshop" most

 

 

shot00001kb.th.jpg

Sotha asked for mission stats and there we go! :) I completed mission on dificult with stealth score 34 and almost all loot take and of course 15 bags.btw how do i attach image like lowenz did?

Edited by Zaratul
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It's not the first winter one ever, it's the first of contest :D

 

how do i attach image like lowenz did?

Choose "Forum Thumbnail" on imageshack page!

Edited by lowenz

Task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody see. - E.S.

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Another amazing mission Sotha.

 

The weather thing wasn't as noticable as I expected, but I almost don't want to say that because the rest of mission was so good that I didn't really care.

 

 

 

I liked the conversation over the price of the Mandrasola.

 

I actually had a hard time finding the entrance of the so called "basement" I read about. I was actually wandering around the first floor and was just about to head outside to look for an outdoor entrance when a section of the wall opened up and a woman walked out almost spotting me. It scared the crap out of me and I almost got caught at that point.

 

The wolfmen gave me a bit of a difficult time in the cave. They move around so much and so quickly was hard to sneak past them. I ended up gas arrowing one and using a fire arrow + a few broadheads on the other.

 

I almost snuck up on the Pagan (I think?) guy to blackjack him when he turned around showing me his evil red eyes and made that growling sound. "HOLY SHIT, DIE DIE DIE!" I ended up stabbing him to death then giving his corpse another couple stabs for good measure.

 

 

 

Unfortunately I didn't screenshot my stats, I was really eager to play this mission and didn't bother reading the rest of the thread beforehand.

 

I think my stealth score was 28. I forget how much loot I had.

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