Jump to content
The Dark Mod Forums

FM : Winter Harvest v2 by Bikerdude and Shadowhide


Shadowhide

  

16 members have voted

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

    • shadowhide,you're a probably the biggest douchebag in the world and you suck
    • Poor
    • Ok
    • Good
    • Excellent
    • Near Perfect
  2. 2. Appearance: Visual pleasure, lighting, visual style.

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



Recommended Posts

Until instructed otherwise, I'm gonna file this latest ShadowHide activity under sarcasm and smidge of passive\aggressive barking.

 

I'm half expecting Winter Harvest to devolve into a parody so that ShadowHide can skirt all semblance of sincerity in favor of some bemused snark.

 

If that is the new goal, those new readables better be funny. ^_^

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...)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

I will go with Flood in praising Shadowhide's ambition to create a fantasy tale, which deviates quite a lot from the classical stealth experience and invites you to forget all about the usual way of playing, and just go out and explore the misteries and the adventure.

 

Like I told Shadowhide, I always thought a game like Thief, or in this case, Dark Mod, could be a great platform for an "action-rpg", because it nails the most difficult part, believeable, intelligent and reasonable AI and overall great game mechanics, all that's missing is some interaction and some exploring/quests. This is exactly what we find here in this experiment.

 

 

Regarding version 1 and 2, I would say that one thing I really liked about the first try was that you had this barren, cold world that you had to explore and even though there was that sense of threat with all the darkness, ruins and death, the actual antagonistic moments were very few (2, to be exact), and I really liked that minimalistic choice (though I understand why others would find it uninteresting). Playing a second time, using the v2, I must say that Bikerdude's additions make everything look extremely good, there are a lot more detail, the church and the library in particular got an impressive overhaul, really competent work of improving the existing "feel". I welcomed the additional challenge, specially in the castle halls (QUITE hard to get past the guard post before the tower door), but I still believe the original scale had it's own merit, minimal enemy situations, just threat and exploration the rest of the time.

 

Like I mentioned before, putting the focus on npc interaction, puzzle solving and the beginnings of a "free roam" mentality in the Dark Mod universe was an intriguing choice and a mostly successful one (even if I agree with some of the criticism here, the interaction specially should be explained in some kind of FAQ included with the mission file, for those not getting it?). Even though the story is very concise and leaves a lot to the imagination, I enjoyed the "pagan lore" feel of it. The interaction system can be very unforgiven (if you miss a word, no way of knowing what to do), I don't remember but I think adding detailed objectives on the list after conversations would be a good way of solving this problem - something like "I think I trust that strange pagan wizard... I should look for the Book of Nature and return it to him (when you have it, 'drop' it in his cell).", just a suggestion).

 

 

Anyway, great effort for your first mission!

Edited by RPGista
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

hmm I like the fact that story is told through spoken dialogue, (which is something which Thief games did alot mainly through the protagonist you play as, Garrett) but thats not really what this is about... something that Thief and TDM do well is how the story is told through initial cutscenes (intro), readables, eavesdropping & being a peeping Tom. And the gameplay when designed well is to take advantage of this. This FM seems to take a different approach to Thief and takes on a grand quest that isn't to do with stealing (though to be fair he did originally go out into the woods to rob a large, lowly populated houses), conversing with friendlies (which is something almost unheard of in Thief, Garrett was quite the anti-socialite, conversing with himself usually :D) and the generally more exploration based locale.

 

Its a different tune that seems to work well in Thief, because the fundamental aspects for a action RPG are all already there (minus the character customization like attributes/traits/skills that you would spend experience points & gain from completing objectives... which could take some time to implement and probably wouldn't be polished enough nor would the FM be able to take much advantage of anyway).

 

I will give more indepth opinion soon.

edit

My main problem is that the FM was far to short, there should have been a big build up to the fight with the mage, like a castle maze with many rooms, stairs, guards in action RPG fashion.

The one corridor we got had a few doors which don't open :(

If this mod ever gets overhauled I think it should get a expanded storyline, and bigger castle.

 

My nitpicks are that in the library, you can't actually read anything. Not very libraryish. Just a few readables would be nice, and its weird that I can't climb the 2 ladders there. Maybe its just the Thief in me talking, but considering there are readables elsewhere and you can still loot stuff (once a Thief always a Thief, even when saving the land from a eternal winter :D) it seems weird to overlook this prime location.

Heart of Lone Salvation had a library by Fidcal and it had some readables open on tables.

Come to think of it I have honestly have never seen a in game library where you can read everything. It would be amazing if someone could accomplish this, I know that Oblivion/Morrowind had tons of places where you can go through some houses or stores that are almost like a library.

Edited by TheUnbeholden
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well let's not forget this was a first effort mission, why does everyone expect things to go perfectly on the first outing? You try, you learn and get better. I'm sure his next mission will come out much better, don't forget SH if you need help with english for readables and story etc, we're here for you don't hesitate to ask, the more polish on the mission the better. It's called a community for a reason.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Its the single biggest issue WH has is the poor story presentation.

sorry,i cant rate my mission myself and i dont want to tell that is good or whatever,but i think story presentation and story itself is much poorer in some other fm's

And the map could do with a few more tweaks for sure.

what tweaks ?

Proceed with caution!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 year later...

I really enjoyed (am enjoying) Winter Harvest (I haven't quite beaten it yet :blush:) I'm not sure how much credit goes to Shadowhide and how much goes to Bikerdude; or others who may have helped.

The forest was pretty fun to wander around, and it was a bit spooky too. I think that it would be really cool to have a werewolf or two wandering through the forest to spice things up a bit. Maybe there were some, but I didn't run into any. Having to find the key, to get into the house, to get the lock pick, to get into the church, to get the pagan orb, to progress the story was kind of cool and reminded me of a Resident Evil game. I guess this pattern is very common for all Thief and TDM missions, but for some reason this mission reminded me of RE more than most. I think that the castle that you are teleported to should have had a few more gurards/baddies. The characters that spoke to you had good voice acting and they added to the immersion of the mission. When I saw how many fire arrows were in the armory, I thought that a tough boss battle was ahead of me, but I was wrong. The fight with Quintus took place in a cool environment and his magic powers looked cool, but if I stayed far enough away he couldn't hit me. I didn't have to move in and out of cover to fight him. I just stood in on place and slammed him with fire arrows until he died. I think his range should be increased so it could be a real fight.

Overall I like the mission, however I can't seem to figure out how to leave the castle and return to the house. Anyone care to tell me how? I'm tired of re-re-re-checking every room.

 

I guess I should have posted this on the V3 thread :blink:

Edited by SirGen
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 years later...

Hmm.

 

Here's another mission that seems perfectly functional in v2.06.

 

No missing textures, scripted events working as expected, I am not seeing any Standalone issues here.

  • Like 1

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...)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 years later...

I played it yesterday, nice mission and with a slightly different approach. I didn't notice any bugs to take into account and it worked fine in 2.09.
I had no difficulty finishing it either, although I was wrong at first, putting the corpse from the hut in the sarcophagus of the church, instead of the dead guard behind it, which I found later. The rest was pretty straightforward and intuitive. 

Maybe a few more guards / spiders / zombies would be indicated, but otherwise it's certainly not the worst mission.


I downloaded it some time ago, but I completely forgot, until recently, when I went through the missions that I have installed and which I have not played in a while.

Edited by Zerg Rush

Sys Specs Laptop Lenovo V145 15AST, AMD A9- 9425 Radeon R5 - 5 cores 3,1 GHz  RAM 8Gb, GPU 1+2 Gb -Win10 64 v21H2

Favorite online apps you may like too 😉

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


  • Recent Status Updates

    • Ansome

      Finally got my PC back from the shop after my SSD got corrupted a week ago and damaged my motherboard. Scary stuff, but thank goodness it happened right after two months of FM development instead of wiping all my work before I could release it. New SSD, repaired Motherboard and BIOS, and we're ready to start working on my second FM with some added version control in the cloud just to be safe!
      · 0 replies
    • Petike the Taffer  »  DeTeEff

      I've updated the articles for your FMs and your author category at the wiki. Your newer nickname (DeTeEff) now comes first, and the one in parentheses is your older nickname (Fieldmedic). Just to avoid confusing people who played your FMs years ago and remember your older nickname. I've added a wiki article for your latest FM, Who Watches the Watcher?, as part of my current updating efforts. Unless I overlooked something, you have five different FMs so far.
      · 0 replies
    • Petike the Taffer

      I've finally managed to log in to The Dark Mod Wiki. I'm back in the saddle and before the holidays start in full, I'll be adding a few new FM articles and doing other updates. Written in Stone is already done.
      · 4 replies
    • nbohr1more

      TDM 15th Anniversary Contest is now active! Please declare your participation: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22413-the-dark-mod-15th-anniversary-contest-entry-thread/
       
      · 0 replies
    • JackFarmer

      @TheUnbeholden
      You cannot receive PMs. Could you please be so kind and check your mailbox if it is full (or maybe you switched off the function)?
      · 1 reply
×
×
  • Create New...