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Fan Mission: A Night To Remember by Fieldmedic (2011/10/30)


DeTeEff

  

41 members have voted

  1. 1. Halloween element, Storytelling and consistency

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  2. 2. Gameplay: Enjoyment. Fun duration. Smooth flow, etc. Versus Bugs. Frustration. Boredom, framelag...

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  3. 3. Aesthetics: Visual pleasure, lighting, visual style, Audio use, mood...

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Excellent FM Fieldmedic. Memorable creepiness and exciting gameplay. Liked the opening sequences until

I ran into my first beheaded ghost , Then I began to get very nervy. Very atmospheric stuff.Really edgy until I worked out the routes of the various ghosts !

Thank you.

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  • 2 months later...

This was an OK mission for me. The beginning was really great. Very good background story and an exceptionally atmospheric start. When I first stepped into the corridor I was absolutly thrilled for the things to come!

 

 

 

When I stepped into the study room I was quite excited to find the blueprints already stolen and my host murdered. I didn't like following the thief as I could not tell which way he went from hearing his footsteps. So I had to try every possible way and reload every time I failed the mission. That was a litte frustrating and immersion breaking.

 

I also didn't really understand what those ghosts where supposed to be. Friends? Enemies? They hurt me when I got to close but other than that they seemed completely harmless. Whose ghosts are they? Did they give me the task to kill the priest? Rather strange ... they even ran away when they saw me! So every time I saw a ghost, I just lit my lantern to scare it so it runs away into the next best wall ...

The only real interaction I had with the ghosts was scaring THEM and being accidentally killed by them through walls ... (as there were no other enemies this made the mission quite easy of course and not really scary ;-) ...)

 

I also got the key to the conservatory by opening the freezer by hand instead of using the machine, which left me wondering what the machine was good for in the first place. (I returned later with the oil to realize that me opening the freezer by hand was a bug ...)

 

The carpet rolling also didn't work for me. Only after reloading my savegame did the carpet open the way. I also didn't like the idea to have this scripted in general. Scripts are nice for things like the pictures that suddenly fall from the wall or the turning head in the art room (both absolutly excellent, loved them!), but having a script roll back the carpet the moment I read about the secret room in the butler's book is just strange. I think it would have been much better just to have a movable floor tile or something there, that leaves the player more in control of finding the loot. I think this is what TDM is very much about ... searching rooms for treasures! Being "given" the loot by some script is less rewarding and also makes it impossible to stumble upon it by accident.

 

The "storage room" with the pictures was very hard to find in my opinion. I just didn't expect it to be hidden so well! Why would you have a storage room, that obviously everyone knows about, but which can only be opened by a secret lever in another room? Just doesn't seem practical to me ...

 

I also couldn't take the sword. Well I was able to pick it up, but every time I did so, one of the ghost came running through the wall, killing me instantly. After a few tries I gave up, assumed that I'm not supposed to take it and just took the arrows instead to kill the priest ;-) ...

The story with the priest seemed a litte over the top for me. A builder priest, who decapitates everyone in the house, including innocent women?

 

I don't like auto closing doors. I know they are there for performance reasons, but it just kills the immersion for me when I see a door "close for performance reasons" ...

 

 

 

Visually I really liked the mission. The whole place looked quite good and the dining room was especially beautiful! Best thing was front garden with the trees bending in the wind. Wonderful! I also liked your use of mirrors.

 

Sorry for having written so much critique. The beginning was just so wonderful that I was quite disappointed when it didn't continue this way ...

(Although my playthrough seemed quite bug-infested, so maybe I'm to harsh here.)

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  • 1 month later...

I found this FM completely captivating. Only one question: How do you open the locked cabinet in the Master Bedroom? Found everthing on medium play ... going back to hard to find ALL the gold.

 

Thanks for the time and effort to create such fun.

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There was a "let's play" of this on Youtube. For the life of me, I can't find the first video right now, or I would share it. The guy spent like five minutes trying to figure out how to get out of the first room! I don't mean to insult the guy, but perhaps he should turn up his gamma just a bit. The mission scared him a few times, (though not me because I already knew what was coming). It really made me laugh to hear "Oh ****!".

 

EDIT: SPILERS obviously. Here ya go.

Edited by lost_soul

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

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  • 1 month later...
  • 6 months later...

Played through again on 1.08 and hit a slight glitch.

 

Trying to get to the pictures under the stairs I operated the switch in the Trophy Room but on going to the opened access I found that the ghost of the maid was stuck trying to get into the adjacent door but was missing it so kept going round in circles making access impossible

 

post-8491-0-40081900-1351196133_thumb.jpg

Just to add the ghost going into the master bedroom was also glitched in that it didn't come in but was somewhere close outside

making the retrieval of the gold bars very difficult without getting killed

 

Edited by Oldjim
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  • 1 month later...

 

 

As you're not out on a regular mission (just a friendly visit to a certain person) you don't start the mission with any thieving equipment.

 

You'll be given lockpicks at a later stage.

 

The mission is quite railroaded in the beginning; the only place you can go is the study and from there you are herded to chase the other intruder. The chase should be quite straightforward exept the first turn when the intruder darts left into the arch way (servants quarters). This is the "hardest" part of the chase, after that you cannot go wrong, as it'll be easier to detect the open doors and later he'll be tip over a barrel with wine and from there he'll be making foot prints. In the servants quarters you'll be making your first encounter with the ghosts...

 

 

 

If thats the case then why am I wearing my thief outfit? And you did intend for us to look in the mirror in the beginning because we start off right across from one, but I digress.

 

Very beautiful mission with 3 good scary moments. A more conservative amount of loot which makes sense seeing as the mansion owner is getting low on coin, even the paintings have been replaced with fakes, I liked the art room scene in particular and the new enemy type totally took me by surprise

and I liked the method of which the ghost speaks to you

. I also had fun trying to find the keys because its no regular key hunt, its obvious that they are on the bodies and 2 others are ones you can find based of clues or really good searching.

The weak point comes when we kill the murder who doesn't even see me walk up to him.

 

 

My only issue is how to get into the east wing storage room which seems to be hidden and theres no hint as to how to get to it. It contains the valuable paintings mentioned on the notice board..

 

Edited by TheUnbeholden
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  • 1 month later...

Just a question:

the InGame-downloader, as well as the link on the TDM mission page just gives me version 1.0 for download (map file dated oct 30, 2011).

And the link to v 1.1 on the first page is dead.

Well, I have version 1.1 already (map file dated nov 7, 2011,), but is there a chance to get this mission officially updated on the download sites?

Thanks!

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Please upload the file to dropbox (etc) and post a link and I will update the mirrors.

 

The update must have gotten lost in the shuffle during that time...

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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My only issue is how to get into the east wing storage room which seems to be hidden and theres no hint as to how to get to it. It contains the valuable paintings mentioned on the notice board..

 

 

Oops, sorry for late answer...

 

 

There is a switch in the trophy room that opens an area under the stairs. The opening should be beside the toilet...

 

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  • 5 months later...
  • 5 weeks later...

I'm sure a lot of time and effort went into making this mission and I definitely appreciate that.

 

A lot of the design choices didn't sit with me very well, though, personally.

 

 

The level to me seemed full of forced linearity, trial and error / goofy deaths, and of course the dreaded loot / key / switch hunt, all of which really grind my gears. Being killed through walls, or even the FLOOR at one point (like a poster above I kept dying whenever I went into the chest compartment under the floor... eventually I decided I was probably being killed by a ghost through the floor, so I went downstairs, and sure enough, there was a female ghost stuck walking into a wall. I scared her away and voila, I could enter the compartment without a goofy death.) The first time through each of the halls / rooms was interesting due to the special effects, etc, but after running through the whole place ten or twenty times only to find out that the carpet rolls itself back if I walk in a bathroom, or that the "east wing storage room" is actually on the north side according to the compass and on the left side of the map, behind a hidden door controlled by a switch some ways away... it left a sour taste to me.

 

I'm sure not everyone feels this way, but honestly I would rather play a level with regular haunts and more easily-discoverable loot.

 

Sorry if I was too harsh.

 

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

Managed to complete the map and aquire 1815 gold on the first try. Took me 1 hour and 10 minutes.

 

I didn't like:

 

- Open doors auto closing. Half-open doors not auto closing.

- Some doors being pickable and some not.

- Being hurt through the wall by the ghosts.

 

 

I expected to see:

 

Ghost walking behind me while I look in the mirror. That didn't happen though. :P

 

 

Bug I encountered:

 

Same one Oldjim mentioned in his post. Link: bit.ly/19LlYOf

 

 

I overlooked:

 

Both the lever in the Master Bedroom and the one in Trophy Room.

 

 

Before finishing the map I went and read about them here, but these are the only things though. :)

So in the end, my final loot was 3690. I wonder where is that 50 I missed.

 

All in all, it was awesome! Great map.

Edited by eqagunn
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What's the problem with reflection? Any fix? Nvidia 660 with latest drivers + AA is ON

That floor texture doesn't draw a 3D-rendered reflection. In fact, I don't know any texture other than the mirror that draws a 3D-rendered reflection.

If it's not that you're concerned about, I personally think it's a poor cubemap to use on all default reflective surfaces.

yay seuss crease touss dome in ouss nose tair

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Please learn to use SPOILER tag so you don't spoil the FM for the others.

 

Regarding the hole...

 

Carpet should roll by itself (ghost will roll it) when you enter the toilet, but I see you found the trap door before doing so.

 

 

As for the switch...

 

it disables the anti-theft mechanism inside that hole in the floor. If you don't activate it, 3 spears will pop out and kill you.

 

Edited by eqagunn
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Is there a way of having a loot list? I'm missing roughly 600g's

 

Great map by the way. I loved the thunders while trying to picking a door whilsts the ghosts were after you.

 

I found also some bugs on the ghost movements but in overall it was a very pleasant level.

 

Thanks for those precious old style moments.

Edited by Vagos
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Sorry, but I didn't think it was that great. It started out well but it quickly became boring and there are some aspects of it that are poorly designed in my opinion. First of all I absolutely hate the enemies that everybody seems to like so much. At first I was creeped out but then I quickly became frustrated by them for several reasons. The radial damage mechanic is very annoying and often leads to you sustaining damage or just dying outright by having a ghost walk through a wall directly into you. I would perhaps excuse it if the ghosts were actually scary, but they aren't even hostile. They seem to be completely deaf and if they manage to see you in a brightly lit area they just run away. All it does is slow down the gameplay by having you be forced to wait until the ghosts move out of the damned way to get where you want to go (Compare to the ghost in Casing the Joint which was legitimately chilling). It is also quite annoying that if you happen to find yourself cornered you are just dead.

 

The storyline was passable. The basic concept was alright and I enjoyed most of the notes. I did get stuck for a considerable amount of time but only because I missed the oil flask in the art room. It could have been a little more conspicuous but I'm willing to accept that it was just bad luck, since I did frob seemingly everything item in that shelf. Because of this though the pacing went completely out the window and I ended up being very frustrated, more than I would have had I not gotten stuck. I think the loot requirement on Expert was a little too high also. I combed through every room several times and still only got about 2350.

 

Aesthetically, I really wasn't feeling this one. The map to me felt very empty and devoid of character. The architecture and decor is really samey and boring IMO and something about the overall mise-en-scene rubbed me the wrong way, I'm not quite sure why. The mood just wasn't there for me. The sound design was a little flakey to me. The thunder sound effect has this strange inexplicable noise at the start of it and ends with a prolonged loud static sound that almost sounds like rain. Clearly there was rain in the map but I did not hear any rain sound effects and even if there were, the sound is inconsistent. The ghost effects were decent, but they were a little buggy (you could hear them through walls and floors). I also did not enjoy the piano piece that played endlessly on repeat. It would be tolerable if it were played only once but it gets very tiring.

 

I apologize for being a little vague, but those are my two cents. I gave it 2/2/2 but on reconsideration I would maybe be willing to ramp up the storyelling rating to 3. It's not a bad idea, I just found it poorly realized.

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Well, I just played through this as the first fan mission (after Tears of st Lucia). It was coincidentally well timed with Halloween. I found it very original and had an interesting background story. Gameplay was a little different not starting with your equipment, but it was a nice change of pace. The mood was good and the ghosts and lightning were very creepy to me. Difficulty was not too high

once you figured out how the ghosts behaved - they have a set path just like a guard would - just give them more space

. You just need to be patient. I did get stuck at the last step though

couldn't find a way to disable the trap, I even tried stacking boxes in front of the chest to catch the arrows

and had to look up the solution. Overall well done.

gvg

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  • 2 months later...

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