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Fan Mission: Reap as you sow by Fieldmedic (2011/06/19)


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49 members have voted

  1. 1. Seasonal Theme captured?

    • No Season defined
      1
    • Barely defined Season
      1
    • Season is clear, nothing more
      11
    • Season is captured well
      22
    • Near Perfect, evokes the feel of the Season
      14
  2. 2. Gameplay: Enjoyment. Fun duration. Smooth flow, ect. Versus Bugs. Frustration, Boredom, framelag?

    • *
      0
    • * *
      11
    • * * *
      21
    • * * * *
      12
    • * * * * *
      5
  3. 3. Aesthetics: Visual pleasure, lighting, visual style. Audio, use mood. Storytelling and consistency?

    • *
      0
    • * *
      3
    • * * *
      14
    • * * * *
      23
    • * * * * *
      9


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UPDATE 26/6 ver 1.02

 

Fixed Bernhard's book

Fixed some missing text in readables (Can you believe it's more?! :laugh:)

 

Fixed black wall in barn, second floor.

 

Tweaked some tension meter scripting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UPDATE 22/6 ver 1.01

 

Added popup message that tells the player that the maze isn't opened yet.

 

Couldn't find the reason for the book bug so I've put this particular book in the world instead of adding to the inventory via a script...

 

 

 

 

Hello!

 

It's time for me to release my entry to the Seasons Contest, 2011. This map was built roughly between 1/4 - 19/6,

 

A special thanks to my friend Ziggun and Ash that have helped me work out the story and write the readables. Also a thanks to my friend Henrik Swenson that has produced some of the sound effects. And also a big thank you to all team members and people developing this brilliant mod!

 

And also a big thank you to the various guys and gals that helpt testing this mission and found some crashing bugs and helped me through the tempest :)

 

Dear Sir

I send you this letter as a request for aid in a delicate matter. My name is Oscar

Powell, and I assure you that the rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated. I

am, in fact, merely in hiding after the unfortunate incident that took the life of my

father. You come highly recommended, and I trust in your complete discretion in

what I am about to tell you. The incident that claimed my father and nearly myself

was no accident - it was a clumpy attempt at an assassination. A band of pagan brutes

assaulted the summer home, seeking to claim my life and that of my beloved father.

And given the recent death of my beloved brother Bernhard, I now know where to

point the accusing finger. My sister Alma, thrice-cursed be her name, must have hired

them to rid herself of us. I have no doubts to her ambition to claim the family holdings,

nor do I know her soul to contain any compassion. But the law is blind, they say, and

I am but one man in hiding. But with proof I could challenge her and bring her to

justice. Which is where you come in, as I am told you are without peer in bringing

light to the ugliest of truths. So I ask of you to go the Powell summer home, where my

beloved father and brother met their end, and find out the truth. With this letter you

will find a ticket to the Powell hedge maze, which will give you an excellent chance

to enter the estate. Use any means necessary and leave no stone unturned in this and

you shall be richly rewarded when I am restored to my rightful place as owner of the

Powell holdings.

 

Yours humbly, Oscar Powell

 

 

Important information!

 

Because this is quite different mission from the rest, there are a few things to be aware of when playing.

 

1.

You are in essence a thief, but has chosen the approach of a private eye. This mission has lot of emphasis on story and most of the story is told through readables. As with most missions, the mission is enjoyable without reading all readables and most of them can sometimes be skipped. But in order to get the full experience from this mission, I recommend the player to read all the readables.

 

2.

This is a daylight mission and this means that you aren't directly cosidered a villain unless you show socially unacceptable behaviour such as stealing, walking in flower beds or going where you don't belong. (Note that on expert difficulty the mission begins with you breaking inside the main house and thus start in a high tension area). You will have a tension meter that goes up when you do something socially unacceptable. If anyone sees you during this state, the tension will go up on red and you will forever be considered a villain and will be chased. On expert difficulty this will result in instant failure. One another aspect on the daylight theme is that this mission is set on a farmland and to simulate these lands I have chosen a quite open map layout. This is contrary to all recommendations for the IdTech 4 engine and as a result, performace may be lacking in some places. I have tried my best to keep a good balance between good looking exterior parts versus good performance.

 

3.

This shouldn't have to be something to point out, but I've got to known that some players have some issues against "violence-control" in missions. My personal gameplay puts lots of emphasis on stealth and sneaking. Therefore I consider detection a failure and almost never kill anyone besides animals/undead. Violence is sparse in this mission and you're not allowed to kill anyone (that doesn't pose any immediate threat to you) on any of the difficulties. KO:s are perfectly allright although limited.

 

Enjoy!

 

http://www.mindplace...tails.php?id=45 Not updated yet...

http://www.MegaShare.com/3359042 ver 1.01

http://www.MegaShare.com/3368609 ver 1.02

 

Remember to use spoiler tags where appropriate! (This may fail and therefore I do not recommend anyone to read any further unless they've played the mission!)

Edited by Fieldmedic
added mirror
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Holy cow! I was doubtful at first but this is amazing! However I'm a bit stuck:

 

 

After clearing the labyrinth, killing the brother in the snow and taking the father's ring. My tension status was set at medium when teleporting back to the labyrinth and now everytime someone sees me they go full alert. I managed to sneak past them to the entrance of the maze, but the guard in the ticket booth always sees me whenever I try to get past the gate...

 

Edited by Briareos H
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Holy cow! I was doubtful at first but this is amazing! However I'm a bit stuck:

 

 

After clearing the labyrinth, killing the brother in the snow and taking the father's ring. My tension status was set at medium when teleporting back to the labyrinth and now everytime someone sees me they go full alert. I managed to sneak past them to the entrance of the maze, but the guard in the ticket booth always sees me whenever I try to get past the gate...

 

 

Think I know what ya missed, Briareos:

 

 

Did you do the "hide the bodies" objective? The tension should drop when you complete it.

 

 

Hope that helps. I am not gonna vote on this though, it'd just be unfair ;)

- Writer Ascendant >

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Ah that's more than likely. In my defence, objectives change quite often in this mission and TDM doesn't make them easy to scroll through, so it's easy to miss a few. I really liked the way Thief made the font much smaller if there were too many objectives.

 

Thank you Ziggun, I'll try that tonight :)

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Hello!

 

It's time for me to release my entry to the Seasons Contest, 2011.

 

Fieldmedic, can you please rename the thread title to something like

 

Fan Mission: Reap as you sow by Fieldmedic (2011/06/19)

 

 

just to follow the usual standard. Thank you!

 

 

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

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Ah that's more than likely. In my defence, objectives change quite often in this mission and TDM doesn't make them easy to scroll through, so it's easy to miss a few. I really liked the way Thief made the font much smaller if there were too many objectives.

 

Thank you Ziggun, I'll try that tonight :)

 

Aye, one of the few things that I find bad about the map is the sheer amount of objectives. But hey, nothing's flawless except for pie. Anyhow, glad I could be of assistance!

- Writer Ascendant >

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Fieldmedic, can you please rename the thread title to something like

 

Fan Mission: Reap as you sow by Fieldmedic (2011/06/19)

 

 

just to follow the usual standard. Thank you!

 

 

 

My bad...cannot find how to change it myself so Greebo is informed.

Edited by Fieldmedic
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Not the prettiest mission, but damn original. I had a lot of fun with this one, the mission even got genuinely creepy at some point, too bad it didn't last long. And the feel of summer with daylight, haystacks, birds, fountains and flowers was indeed captured well. The story was pretty interesting and scripting was solid.

 

As I said earlier, maybe a bit too many different objectives. Thanks Fieldmedic!

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Completed...

 

 

 

Oh man..

 

I wished this to be cool. I wished this to work. But nay. It didn't work for me and that makes me sad.

 

This mission kinda proves my point (until someone proves otherwise with TDM) that daylight missions simply do not work. There were only a few guard patrolling outside but I had to constantly do frustrating save-loading because I got busted within seconds. You can't even peek around a corner without getting the AI freaking out instantly. In the bright locales, there was no-where to run and hide-> reload.

 

The interiors were sane and fun. But the difficulty was so insane that this mission cannot be passed without constant save-loading, something I hate.

 

I did like the sound work you did in the tunnels. Very nice. Got me interested in the mission again as I was just about to give up.

 

The outside environment looked washed out. Most of the geometry was in 90 degree angles. I think many of the appearance-problems would have been okay if the mission happened in the darkness of the night. There were some cool and neat details though, like the windmill and the horse carriage. Interiors were fine, but mostly very simple and could have used some little extra spice.

 

Did you betatest? I found plenty of bugs ranging from get-stuck ladders (tunnels) to disappearing black walls (barn second floor). There was even an inventory crippling bug if the player tries to read the book he gets from one of the corpses in the winter-place. Some of the readables had page-breaks so that the end of the sentence is never seen in the next page. The guy sleeping in the guard house got up, searched for me and then went to sleep floating in the air. The large amount of bugs I encountered gave a very sloppy impression.

 

And then the readables. I know I started the poll and in that I declared I love reading those, but in this mission... Well... I just screamed 'NOOooo!' at the monitor when I encountered yet another book with trivial things or the same story repeated again and again. You could have accomplished a neat information flow with much lower amount of readables.

 

I really wished I had liked this. There were many good ideas, like the tension meter and daylight gameplay with prohibited areas.. But the good ideas fell short and the end product, unfortunately, was not enjoyable for me at all.

 

Season was clear.

Gameplay two stars. (Bugs, insane difficulty, save-loading..)

Aesthetics exterior one star, interior three stars, so the end verdict is something like two stars.

 

 

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Congrats on your mission !

 

Problems at the very beginning, playing on normal:

 

I am supposed to have a ticket for the maze, but it is nowhere to be found/how do I get into the maze?

 

You have a ticket (no inventory item though) but you'll have to go to the house first...Now that you mention it, I briefly remember I should have put a message the first time you move towards the door that says something like "The maze is not open yet, better start exploring the house". So the maze will open later.

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Completed...

 

 

 

Oh man..

 

I wished this to be cool. I wished this to work. But nay. It didn't work for me and that makes me sad.

 

This mission kinda proves my point (until someone proves otherwise with TDM) that daylight missions simply do not work. There were only a few guard patrolling outside but I had to constantly do frustrating save-loading because I got busted within seconds. You can't even peek around a corner without getting the AI freaking out instantly. In the bright locales, there was no-where to run and hide-> reload.

 

The interiors were sane and fun. But the difficulty was so insane that this mission cannot be passed without constant save-loading, something I hate.

 

I did like the sound work you did in the tunnels. Very nice. Got me interested in the mission again as I was just about to give up.

 

The outside environment looked washed out. Most of the geometry was in 90 degree angles. I think many of the appearance-problems would have been okay if the mission happened in the darkness of the night. There were some cool and neat details though, like the windmill and the horse carriage. Interiors were fine, but mostly very simple and could have used some little extra spice.

 

Did you betatest? I found plenty of bugs ranging from get-stuck ladders (tunnels) to disappearing black walls (barn second floor). There was even an inventory crippling bug if the player tries to read the book he gets from one of the corpses in the winter-place. Some of the readables had page-breaks so that the end of the sentence is never seen in the next page. The guy sleeping in the guard house got up, searched for me and then went to sleep floating in the air. The large amount of bugs I encountered gave a very sloppy impression.

 

And then the readables. I know I started the poll and in that I declared I love reading those, but in this mission... Well... I just screamed 'NOOooo!' at the monitor when I encountered yet another book with trivial things or the same story repeated again and again. You could have accomplished a neat information flow with much lower amount of readables.

 

I really wished I had liked this. There were many good ideas, like the tension meter and daylight gameplay with prohibited areas.. But the good ideas fell short and the end product, unfortunately, was not enjoyable for me at all.

 

Season was clear.

Gameplay two stars. (Bugs, insane difficulty, save-loading..)

Aesthetics exterior one star, interior three stars, so the end verdict is something like two stars.

 

 

 

 

Painfully true. The sole reason for making a daylight mission was because I wanted to go all in on the season theme with a farmland in sprudling summer...I was swaying if I was going to the release this or not, but my friend Ziggun persuaded me into releasing it...

 

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I've been exploring and enjoying this mission, but I haven't finished it so far. One warning I would like to throw out there to any players is this, which is a slight spoiler. Do NOT stash any unconscious bodies behind the booth where the man-hole cover is. I figured that was a safe place because it was dark, but let's just say that area needs to open later, and it can't with a body on it. I had to noclip to continue.

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

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I've been exploring and enjoying this mission, but I haven't finished it so far. One warning I would like to throw out there to any players is this, which is a slight spoiler. Do NOT stash any unconscious bodies behind the booth where the man-hole cover is. I figured that was a safe place because it was dark, but let's just say that area needs to open later, and it can't with a body on it. I had to noclip to continue.

 

It would be possible to fix that by a spawnarg on the hatch...

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I'm absolutely lost. Not sure how to get into anywhere.

 

 

I approached the gate nothing happened (from earlier post - nobody said the maze was closed), went to the gate keeper - nothing, touched the door to the house - got attacked. Tried sneaking around the hay stacks was spotted three times - once by the guard, once by the lady who ran screaming her head off, and once by another guard coming out of the barn when I finally did make it to the back of the house. What am I missing?? All I've managed to do is rob the gate house and keeper with the help of a bunch of quick saves and reloads. It's hard to tell where a safe spot to be is once you get away from the main court yard although to be fair I haven't gotten very far. I'm trying to remember that this is a different type of map (being daytime) than what were use to but so far it's proving very frustrating.

 

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I'm absolutely lost. Not sure how to get into anywhere.

 

 

I approached the gate nothing happened (from earlier post - nobody said the maze was closed), went to the gate keeper - nothing, touched the door to the house - got attacked. Tried sneaking around the hay stacks was spotted three times - once by the guard, once by the lady who ran screaming her head off, and once by another guard coming out of the barn when I finally did make it to the back of the house. What am I missing?? All I've managed to do is rob the gate house and keeper with the help of a bunch of quick saves and reloads. It's hard to tell where a safe spot to be is once you get away from the main court yard although to be fair I haven't gotten very far. I'm trying to remember that this is a different type of map (being daytime) than what were use to but so far it's proving very frustrating.

 

 

This is how the tension meter works:

 

When the arrow is on green, the tension is low. Nobody will harm you.

If you do something suspicious the tension goes to the middle = Tension is high. If anyone sees you, they'll either attack you, or flee from you and the tension hits red = Your cover is blown. Suspicious things are: Stealing, KO:ing, going where you don't belong (Like moving up to the door, as to enter the barn, or going past the sign near the hay.)

 

As I forgot to mention that the maze hasn't opened yet (That would have been another hint among the objectives) I say it flat out:

 

"The maze hasn't opened yet, better search the houses first."

 

 

 

I'm really starting to wonder if uploading this was a very smart idea...

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It's a rough but interesting mission which could have done with some more beta testing. I'm really glad I played it because:

  1. the whole detective idea is great
  2. it's a promising start for daylight missions
  3. it's got some really creepy things going on
  4. sneaking through the house and maze, while very short, is pretty fun

So all things considered, I'd say uploading it was a good thing ;)

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It's a rough but interesting mission which could have done with some more beta testing

 

 

That is true. I did betatest it, but the most effort went into fixing major crashes so time run short so I swayed between releasing it or not, but because I had put so much effort into it the last month i felt compelled to at least be part of the competition...

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