Trepidation then Elation

[Glyph Seeker]

Hello! I'm new to the forums.

 

I'm from the UK and I'm in my 20s - in case anyone is doing demographics. =-P

 

I've not got any really helpful computer skills at all and no level design knowledge beyond fiddling with Duke Nukem 3Ds Build Engine for a bit when I was 11, so I'm not sure I can promise any Fan Missions any time soon! But at the very least, I wanted to throw my lot in with regards to sheer, bloody-minded encouragement. It's a miracle that a mod so ambitious got off the ground at all, and even though it took so many hundreds of man hours to produce, and seems to have strong disagreements among the fan base - I think it's really succeeded in providing the most things for the most people.

 

I'd looked at the development of the mod from time to time - but by the time that the first Alpha level / build was released, I was on a falling apart laptop and so couldn't really enjoy it. I finally got a new PC around Christmas 2010, and I've been putting off playing the Dark Mod - though aware of it, I felt it might be too "hardcore" for me or that it would be made for a "different kind of Thief fan", strange though that may sound.

 

The sheer professionalism of what I encountered blew me away. A mod download manager? An FM download system built into the Main Menu system? The only hiccup I could see was having to restart the game to play a new mission - but the fact that all the saves are isolated from each is nice and tidy and means I can explore missions easily without cluttering up a single save directory - genius!

 

***

 

I was a bit overwhelmed at first - the different lock picking system - some initial trouble in getting used to the blackjacking - and the horrid ATI "spinning sky" bug were barriers at first (I fixed that with the static sky fix I found on these helpful forums!). The training mission actually made me more nervous about playing a proper mission - lots of skills to take in at once! I'm so glad that combat is avoidable. I find the sword fighting suitably difficult (Haunts are utterly nightmarish now, just as they should be).

 

I would interested to hear what you think are the best "starter" missions for new people getting to grips with things... I started on The Outpost - and it is nice, small and simple, without any puzzles involving frobbing or anything like that which I initially had trouble with. I found myself leaping into a tough one straight away - Sotha's Vertical Contest mission - which was pleasingly terrifying and difficult, but wouldn't suggest that to a friend I'm going to get into it due to the need to ration your ammunition against the enemies / his unfamiliarity with earlier Thief games.

 

Some levels I've found myself stuck on almost immediately - or too difficult - Betrayal and The Rift seem pretty crazy at the moment! But the theme of both of them is utterly perfect, so I'm frustrated because I desperately want to be better at them. And Swing makes me feel utterly nauseated, so that's one I have to leave to one side. x-D

 

But I've downloaded every single "official map" that appears within the game and tried most of them - I enjoy every flavour of Thief mission, from city exploring ones to mansion capers to desperate fights against heretical abominations. In fact, my favourites are often scary ones - I am kind of "saving" the Flakebridge Monastery one as it seems to be the only mission to purposefully imitate the Haunted Cathedral style from earlier Thief games.

 

I think my only disappointment is that there are very few of the horrific creatures / Maw Beasts. Nothing quite terrified me like the Pagan beasts from the first 3 thief games - you literally didn't know what things were lurking in Down In The Bonehoard and The Lost City and the Abandoned Quarter. But the zombies and revenants I've seen so far are a grim pleasure as they are. =3

 

===

 

In summary - thank you mod maker staff - and thank you, equally, FM makers, who have really done some amazing things with what is available. Please, don't get discouraged, I sincerely hope that the Dark Mod continues to grow, even though the "meat" of it is done and working beautifully. =3

[Fidcal]

Thanks Glyph Seeker and welcome. Simple beginner FMs?...

 

Crown of Penitence

Awaiting the Storm

Outpost

Flakebridge Monastery

Thief's Den

 

But you'll soon pick up the skills needed to play the trickier FMs. And many more in the pipeline!

 

If you're interested in delevoping your own FMs then start here:

[Springheel]

I'd recommend:

 

The Thieves

Too Late

The Parcel

 

They're all small and relatively straightforward.

[Baddcog]

I'm surprised to hear you say the Rift is too difficult. I guess it's fairly easy to get busted right off the bat (lots of light, 2 guards)

 

if that's the case, just wait til they are walking away, they shouldn't see you inside the window, jump down and go left over the crack and behind the wall right away.

(there's an extra guard on the left on expert only that'll spot you easy, but getting into the dark and he'll lose you, plus he can't chase)

 

 

 

If it's something else I'd like to know.

 

If it's navigating the terrain just take your time, crouch before slowly 'rolling off ledges'. If you aim for the highest spots you shouldn't take much fall damage if any at all.

If you walk off ledges, move quickly you're more likely to get hurt/die.

[ungoliant]

i like the whole original post. looks like we got another tdm-4-lyfer

[Glyph Seeker]

I'm surprised to hear you say the Rift is too difficult. I guess it's fairly easy to get busted right off the bat (lots of light, 2 guards)

 

if that's the case, just wait til they are walking away, they shouldn't see you inside the window, jump down and go left over the crack and behind the wall right away.

(there's an extra guard on the left on expert only that'll spot you easy, but getting into the dark and he'll lose you, plus he can't chase)

 

 

 

If it's something else I'd like to know.

 

If it's navigating the terrain just take your time, crouch before slowly 'rolling off ledges'. If you aim for the highest spots you shouldn't take much fall damage if any at all.

If you walk off ledges, move quickly you're more likely to get hurt/die.

 

Ah. I just went back now and finished it off. I'm afraid I was judging it by what I anticipated rather than by what was actually there. I shall turn to spoilers in case someone hasn't played it yet.

 

Please don't take it to heart - it's a good FM - I just kind of got a bit mixed up as to what to expect.

 

 

I had gotten much further than that - I was right in the abandoned temple with the fiery zombies! I found it absolutely fine dropping down the terrain and using rope arrows - the problem is something like this:

 

There's not much in the way of starting equipment, but two vials of holy water and only two water arrows was weird - it made me assume that I was going to have to scavenge some water arrows from a hidden fountain in order to use the Holy Water. I felt like I had wasted arrow ammo on the spiders and then on one of the two skeletons you meet in the mine shafts area. I kept thinking "oh I'm doing it wrong - there'll be loads more and I don't have the supplies."

 

Instead you'd balanced it well so that as a player I could extinguish the flaming zombies and sneak / run past them to find the explorer's body and gems without too much of a problem! But I looked at the huge cavern and thought there were several places I had to get to - I thought that I was going to have to fight all the zombies / skeles because they were flaming and therefore could discover me more easily - and as a result I felt I was "stuck" because I had no fire arrows / not enough water arrows to use my holy water.

 

I didn't realise that I was so close to finishing - and that it was possible to get back - I thought that you'd force a different escape - kind of like Down In The Bonehoard allows you to escape a different way from the entrance.

 

 

 

 

So! "I thought I thought I thought" - not your problem, just me being silly and making assumptions. I've done that a lot with missions, assuming they are going to be much larger or more difficult /obtuse than they are.

[Baddcog]

Ah no worries, I was just curious what gave you difficulties. I do need to update it so...

 

 

 

 

 

Not sure what to do about the store. I like having the items in the room, but it does make players feel like they might be limited when in the store.

 

Other people had mentioned another way out too. An update might include that, but due to contest size restraints my only option was to keep going deeper.

 

Plus I ran out of time

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for playing, glad you're enjoying the mod as a whole too.

[Glyph Seeker]

Thanks Glyph Seeker and welcome. Simple beginner FMs?...

 

Crown of Penitence

Awaiting the Storm

Outpost

Flakebridge Monastery

Thief's Den

 

But you'll soon pick up the skills needed to play the trickier FMs. And many more in the pipeline!

 

If you're interested in delevoping your own FMs then start here:

 

Thanks for the welcome!

 

I must admit, I came a bit unstuck on Thief's Den trying to get over the darn fence right at the beginning - in fact that was what stuck me when I tried playing it on my old laptop. The mantling is wonderful in the Dark Mod - but initially to a newbie like me - it seemed confusing and difficult until I got the hang of thinking with portals thinking vertically as well as horizontally!

 

Your tutorials look spot on, Fidcal. I find it very hard to concentrate at the computer at the minute - but maybe I can build up the courage to try the "Learn DR in a day" sometime!

[Fidcal]

Dromeders and DoomEders take a day to learn the basics; total beginners might take a couple of days depending how many hours a day you have.

[Glyph Seeker]

Ah no worries, I was just curious what gave you difficulties. I do need to update it so...

 

 

 

Not sure what to do about the store. I like having the items in the room, but it does make players feel like they might be limited when in the store.

 

Other people had mentioned another way out too. An update might include that, but due to contest size restraints my only option was to keep going deeper.

 

Plus I ran out of time

 

 

 

 

Thanks for playing, glad you're enjoying the mod as a whole too.

 

Hrrm, speaking personally:

 

 

I've absolutely no problem with equipment being restricted if there's a relatively small pool of it at the beginning. In this case, not a huge amount is needed - but my own feeling is that perhaps only one holy water is needed, but a couple more water arrows would be wonderful - to aid in extinguishing the zombies so I can sneak past them in the temple area without feeling that I'll be "trapped" in there. In fact, I might say ditch the fire arrows altogether and just have the water arrows - force the player to use the holy water either for the first two zombies in the mineshafts OR use it to thin out the four zombies guarding the corpse of the idiotic intrepid adventurer!

 

I kept thinking there was more to explore because of the broken bridge by the pool in front of the temple - the detritus on the unreachable side made me assume that that was a tunnel veering off to a secondary area!

 

Mind you - it was fine climbing back up, having to dodge the remaining zombie was actually great! And made me sneak about nicely.

 

It's a great map and it did a fine job of capturing the vertical theme - your mission is, correct me if I'm wrong, the ONLY mission to try for the Lost City theme - and I leapt into it because of that.

 

 

 

 

I'm very happy to have played it! Can you tell I'm more of a Thief Gold guy than a Metal Age guy? =-P

[Baddcog]

Hrrm, speaking personally:

 

 

I've absolutely no problem with equipment being restricted if there's a relatively small pool of it at the beginning. In this case, not a huge amount is needed - but my own feeling is that perhaps only one holy water is needed, but a couple more water arrows would be wonderful - to aid in extinguishing the zombies so I can sneak past them in the temple area without feeling that I'll be "trapped" in there. In fact, I might say ditch the fire arrows altogether and just have the water arrows - force the player to use the holy water either for the first two zombies in the mineshafts OR use it to thin out the four zombies guarding the corpse of the idiotic intrepid adventurer!

 

I kept thinking there was more to explore because of the broken bridge by the pool in front of the temple - the detritus on the unreachable side made me assume that that was a tunnel veering off to a secondary area!

 

Mind you - it was fine climbing back up, having to dodge the remaining zombie was actually great! And made me sneak about nicely.

 

It's a great map and it did a fine job of capturing the vertical theme - your mission is, correct me if I'm wrong, the ONLY mission to try for the Lost City theme - and I leapt into it because of that.

 

 

 

 

I'm very happy to have played it! Can you tell I'm more of a Thief Gold guy than a Metal Age guy? =-P

 

 

don't know if you found them, but there were several water arrows scattered in the pool outside the temple

 

if I expand it will probably be across the bridge as after contest I can make it whatever size I want

 

 

 

[Glyph Seeker]

 

don't know if you found them, but there were several water arrows scattered in the pool outside the temple

 

if I expand it will probably be across the bridge as after contest I can make it whatever size I want

 

 

 

 

 

 

Argh, I am an idiot! Ok, once again, that's my own oversight and not your problem! =-P