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Fan Mission: In remembrance of him (by RPGista)


RPGista

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Pwl and Midnight - Thanks, nice to know you guys enjoyed it. I like that playstyle, fleeing from the peasants and looking for another way (loading only when you have to) - thats exactly how I play and would suggest everyone who dont to try, it can be great fun and is also the way to witness some unpredictable behaviour from the npcs. ;) What I love about that book I used in the mission (in the library) is that it is so incredibly devastating - "new atheists" writters like Dawkins or Harris nowadays get a mountain of complaints because of how agressive they sound when criticizing belief/religion, but they dont get even close to this intensity of argument, and this was written centuries ago, so I thought it was a very curious book maybe more people would be interested in reading.

 

Like I said elsewhere, architecture is an important element for me, as I believe it has to be detailed and rich, so you can get lost inside it, you can immerse yourself naturally. So it wasnt about wow factor, there are no majestic buildings anywhere, it was mostly about trying to make the world feel like a reasonable place, an ordinary place (which can be quite difficult, as they demand more sense then a totally alien space because we dont expect anything familiar from those). Plus some storytelling in there, with the little I knew of how to control the environment and the npcs.

Edited by RPGista
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  • 2 weeks later...

Beautiful, realistic looking map!

 

Sometimes not clear where to go and how to go there.

A rope arrow (and perhaps some other arrows too) would make the mission easier but also more fun to explore.

Thanks for making this mission.

 

I would love to play another mission like this .......

with lots of damaged buildings, but with a rope arrow for easy climbing.

 

 

I play TDM at night with headphones and EAX enabled. The sound, near the end, is one of the most terrifying experiences in a fan mission. Well done!

 

Edited by Partol
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  • 1 month later...

I enjoyed this one a lot as well. Very good visuals and storytelling. Personally I don't mind long readables. Every bit helps flesh out the story, and if you're in a hurry you can just skim them for clues, surely a useful skill for a thief. Overall a very enteraining mission.

 

 

 

Liked having no loot objective so you could decide whose side to be on.

 

Would have liked some secret objective for stopping the merchant from being murdered - I pickpocketed the note off the axe-man, waited a while for him to come back with two friends like it said, so I could ambush them, but he never did. Seeing them break in and go upstairs to kill them and having to decide whether to stop it would have been awesome.

 

I loved how you had to bring a light down to the church cellar to look around after dealing with "Kevin." Side note, I didn't realize from the readables that the Priest was feeding Kevin; I interpreted that to mean that someone who loved the zombie had stayed with it to the end, then got eaten, and the eaten parts had a ring on the hand. So I thought the character whose ring we were supposed to find was actually taking care of his new lover in zombie form, then got eaten, and the Builders glossed over how exactly he met his demise. But I guess the name Kevin doesn't fit with that, because the new lover/spouse was referred to as a "she" in the intro briefing.

 

I still can't figure out where to drop the coin box, even after reading the hints on here. My guess from the hints was to leave it where the wife's lucky amulet was, in the wardrobe, since the wife was looking for that before they left. But nothing happened when I did that. Does the secret objective come up right away, or is it only after the mission ends? I tried setting it down in a bunch of places in the merchant's house, but no dice.

 

Also, a minor gripe: I wasn't too keen on the mission ending in the church, because I wanted to go back and figure out the coin box after accomplishing the main objective. I wanted to explore the full map before deciding where to drop the coin box. It may have been better if you had to get back to where you came, although I guess it wasn't intended that there be a route back.

 

 

A few bugs occurred, playing with the current 1.08 build:

 

 

For the door at the end of the street next to the two peasants, I approached it and saw green when lockpicking, but heard no lockpicking sound, nor saw any motion of the handle. So it was impossible for me to pick it. I never got to see them attack as a result.

 

The merchant's wife did not patrol as RPGista implied in one of the walkthroughs - she just stood still opposite him. Maybe the conversation system broke and she was stuck in a conversation position?

 

Similarly, I saw the Priest moving and tossing stuff into the grave at first, but then he stopped patrolling and ended up standing still forever just inside the door, facing the door (fortunately, it was dark enough to sneak by).

 

In the cellar, the lights seemed to darken right away, as soon as I stepped in from the staircase. Was this supposed to happen, or were they supposed to darken when the rest of the crazy stuff happened, when you touch the candle?

 

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Thank you very much for the opinions and comments; happy you liked the story and some of the "dramatic" situations in there!

 

 

 

 

"Would have liked some secret objective for stopping the merchant from being murdered"

 

Thats actually a pretty good idea! The reason I didnt even attempt to create the actual attack on the peasants or the merchant was because I have no idea how to pull that off, how to control AI, other than using path networks or the conversation system. It would be nice if you had a path node that worked like a warcraft click - saying to the AI, go here and attack everyone on sight; and then another for them to go back or gather somewhere else. ;) It can probably be done with scripting, but that is way over me.

 

 

"I loved how you had to bring a light down to the church cellar to look around after dealing with "Kevin.""

 

;)

 

"Side note, I didn't realize from the readables that the Priest was feeding Kevin"

 

Yes, Kevin is the young priest that was sent to a village suffering from a plague (you can read this in a readable inside the priest quarters), and got infected by the unded sickness - the resident priest (the one we see throwing the skull in the open grave), is using Richard's body to feed Kevin (you can see that only a couple of his personal belongings remain on the crypt altar, where he should be, his body has been taken somewhere else) - he's the one that wrotte the letter inside the tombs room where the zombie is been kept, while Kevin was still dying. Maybe it is not clear enough, but we are supposed to infer that the resident priest loved Kevin and decided to keep him around even though it was not him anymore, and was doing whatever he could to help him (thats why he got rid of the gravedigger, used the deceased to feed him, and was going to bury Richard's remains secretly so no one would know what happened).

 

He is not a bad guy himself - the intention was to portray him as a sensitive person (through his readables), but led to desperate behaviour due to the grievious situations he is in. This should make it ambiguous to kill him, even if he will be in your way.

 

"I still can't figure out where to drop the coin box, even after reading the hints on here."

 

Sorry, this is just a minor "feel good" action that I put there to reward those who felt the need to give the money back to the owners - again, the player here is not the Thief, he's an adventurer and isnt really looking for fortune, just the ring. The original idea was to put big clip brushes inside the upper floor rooms, but I was getting issues with that and had to limit it to a small area over the commode, inside the merchant's bedroom (there's a letter there refering to the coin box and a convenient empty space next to it). It isnt that clear I know, but then again its just an optional objective.

 

"I wasn't too keen on the mission ending in the church, because I wanted to go back and figure out the coin box after accomplishing the main objective."

 

It isnt possible to go back after you jump into the cemetery area (at least it is not supported, Im sure simplenoob would like to differ! :) ). Again, nothing that happened before is going to keep you from getting what you came for, thats also why one shouldnt care about ghosting the mission, as alerts wont spread around the map. You just have to deal with each situation locally, and/or keep going.

 

 

BUGS

 

 

"For the door at the end of the street next to the two peasants, I approached it and saw green when lockpicking, but heard no lockpicking sound, nor saw any motion of the handle. So it was impossible for me to pick it. I never got to see them attack as a result."

 

I read somewhere that Grayman had the same problem with the 1.08 version on another map, it seems to be connected with the way the visportal is sunk into the door... :(

 

"The merchant's wife did not patrol as RPGista implied in one of the walkthroughs - she just stood still opposite him. Maybe the conversation system broke and she was stuck in a conversation position?"

 

Some people reported this and I have no clue why this happens. Baddcog had that, and it also happened to Grayman (and Im not sure how many people also got this but didnt report it). It must be something in the conversation logic that is not sending her to the her path network after the conversation is done. To me (and all other testers) it works every time, so Im clueless. Its a pity as this makes the merchant house a lot less tense without the wife roaming around.

 

"Similarly, I saw the Priest moving and tossing stuff into the grave at first, but then he stopped patrolling and ended up standing still forever just inside the door, facing the door (fortunately, it was dark enough to sneak by)."

 

Thats another bug, never seen this happening either, he is supposed to drop the skull, go back, hang around the altar for a while, go inside his quarters, then go back to the church and stay inside the chapel for good, behing the altar... I could probably make sure everything is working and reupload the map, but the version I have here is literally the same I uploaded at the time.

 

"In the cellar, the lights seemed to darken right away, as soon as I stepped in from the staircase. Was this supposed to happen, or were they supposed to darken when the rest of the crazy stuff happened, when you touch the candle?"

 

Yes, this is correct, the crypt is supposed to be completely dark, with the only light sources being a small window and a candle.

 

Again, thanks for your review. Maybe it would be worth it to try playing in the 1.07 version, to see if the problems persist.

 

 

Edited by RPGista
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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello RPGista,

 

I´ve just finished your mission and I´m impressed.

The verticality (there were so many places riped for ropearrowing and I had none :) ), variability of the areas and level design in general is very good.

 

- Intro. Intro!!! I´ve found myself grasped from the first frame to the last. It definitely deserves an outro done in the same way. to conclude the story. Because this way the overarching story of two lovers would fade away into background, pushed out by the scary part (which WAS scary a lot) and that would be pity ;) I also liked that somebody did mission with a love as a topic. I know, somebody might say that first mission in the Thief II was rescuing Basso´s girlfriend; but the whole love topic was frowned upon by Garret and his cynical remarks. I just like the simple fact, that somebody did a mission, where thief steals unselfishly. Much needed change.

 

And I know it was mentioned somewhere, but could you tell me what music did you used for the intro? It was beautiful and my Winamp definitely wants to play it :). Can I extract it form some game file? If so, which one?

 

Now the buggy parts:

- too long readable (I think you know which one I mean, you´ll encounter it completely at the end. The same message could be conveyed through much shorter readable. And I must say I was a bit angry, since I read the whole thing (okay, except last 5-7 pages), thinking there might be something essential to the storyline)

 

- being lost, clueless (like Sotha) after darkening in the crypt (definitely a hint in the objectives after darkening would help): I thought that zombie is actually that lover you should take ring from. In order to do that, you´d need to kill it. I had no holy water, no water arrows, so I thought there is some special way of defeating it. I discovered none. Then I tried to lure it out near the priest. To my great surprise, priest started to hunt me down and paid no attention to zombie walking around him, trying to kill me too. After that I gave up and run to the forums.

 

From a technical standpoint, I have a low-end machine and your mission run fine most of the time and I haven´t experienced a single bug.

 

I am bit surprised, as many people here, that you don´t wan´t to do any more FMs. C´mon, your first attempt definitely shows you have a talent! Don´t let it rot! And as Sotha said, eventually you´ll become better and you wouldn´t have to make such an effort (and it wouldn´t take so much time) to create a FM.

 

Again, very nice mission and more than average first attempt.

Edited by Tarhiel
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Well, thank you, I appreciate your views very much. ;) Glad you enjoyed the opening sequence, the intention was indeed to create a scenario of a warm relationship between two characters, where hopefully the player would be able to fill in the details with his/her own imagination. I did have a planned outro sequence (still have the drawings of it) that would take you back to the woman's presence, the point being exactly to present her with the ring and a personal vow to never let her know any of the horrors you saw at the chapel. We couldnt manage to get it in though.

 

PS: I might know of a way though, now that I mention it again... Will have to check with Grayman, but if we can put a video at the end of a mission (but not an outro briefing), I could probably record the sequence as a movie file and maybe play it like that? Hmmm...

 

The music I decided to use is called Inside the Mansion from Saxmeister, which is a very pretty, sad tune included in the mod. You can find it inside one of the pk4s, but you only need to download TDM's soundtrack from the ModDB page (in the downloads section), its in there! ;)

 

* Inside the Mansion was actually one of the candidates, I ended up using church_kyrie01, a sweet, depressing tune (in a good way) by Schatten

 

Readable - Yeah, it was risky to put a whole section of a book there, but in fact this, in the context of the mission, was supposed to play with the idea of forbidden texts in the religious environment - its an atheistic text that is locked and forgotten inside a chest in the priest's library. You can read the whole book on the Project Gutemberg's site if you want (take a look at the readme file).

 

Enemy - Even though this isnt talked about much, zombies are quite beatable in hand to hand combat, they are tricky only because they will destroy you if they corner you, you cant block their blows and they have pretty good timing. But you can beat them easily by strafe running or running in, attacking, running out before their blow. This is how I envisioned most players would face the problem (fighting it out), but it is also possible to lure him to the far corners of the cemitery and sneak into the chapel again (made hard if the priest is still there). And Im afraid that was really a problem with Doom/TDM, it seems enemies, even among themselvers, would rather attack you than each other... :(

 

And thanks for the words, I will probably be busy making models for the community for the time being, but who knows, maybe I will have time and inspiration in the future to start thinking about some other story. ;)

Edited by RPGista
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Will have to check with Grayman, but if we can put a video at the end of a mission (but not an outro briefing), I could probably record the sequence as a movie file and maybe play it like that? Hmmm...

 

Yes, you can add a debriefing video at the end of your mission. See "A Score to Settle". It can't portray anything that might not be true, given the player's choices during the mission. For example, you can't play a video showing Father Graham alive if the player opted to kill Father Graham during the mission. There's no way to optionally turn off the debriefing video once it's defined in the gui. (At least none that I've found.)

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  • 1 month later...

Ok, this was the first mission I played yesterday after the long break from TDM and well, the looks of the city were quite amazing and I enjoyed it if it wasn't for a few palces where I got stuck in collision of things. More in spoilers:

 

The Story was simple but in my humble opinion quite well told. As far as I remember there are two ways to the place but I wouldn't use that next time on your place unless you go hardcore on the amount of it. The zombie part was real fuckin creepy especially that I get easly scared but I found it a cheap trick when I decided to just run in and run out and wait on the stairs throwing stuff down to the zombie. Also the misconception of a zombie who shouldn't get killed with the sword(at least in most of the missions) influenced the game a little for me. When I got it all finally I was quite glad to have played it. It was a very good come back mission. :)

 

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Thanks for the opinions. Glad you enjoyed tha map and the small storylines going on despite the difficulties. That was a very curious way of defeating the last scene, and you are right, there's a misconception one shouldnt fight in those situations - this map clearly challenges that by forcing you to deal with it in one way or another, using either combat or trickery (by making yourself a bait and luring the problem somewhere else).

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  • 2 weeks later...

As a test, I made myself two walkthrough videos of how to reach both routes to the final area (lets say, the "official" way) - quality was crunched pretty bad by youtube so make sure you choose 720 hd at least (first time doing this, anyway).

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GaCTJAmiJk&feature=plcp

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw1OSuWqdZA&feature=plcp

Edited by RPGista
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  • 2 weeks later...

Just started this, and apparently I'm already stuck. I mantled over a broken wall and into a courtyard that led to a ruined basement with a

golden statue by a single candle.  Now  can't get out.  I threw the candle up the broken stairs

but can't go there to retrieve it (seems to be an invisible barrier?). I can't see any other way out of the broken basement, and the way I mantled in is far too high to get to now. Is there some way out I'm missing?

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You might need the candle to investigate the surroundings, so dont throw it away! Plus, what grayman said. ;)

 

Also, if you want a quick guide, there is a walkthrough section on the first post with solutions to all areas.

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I'll need to expand my notions of what is possible in maps. :)

 

Really liking the look of things thus far.

 

Do you happen to know what flame particle you use in the brazier at the starting point? I'm playing with 1.08 assets, and I notice it's not using the updated flame particle. I thought I'd got them all but I may have missed that one. I don't want to have to open the map file though until I'm done playing.

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Good to hear (about the mission and those assets) - regarding the brazier, I chose the tdm_fire_flames_small.prt particle, just verified it. ;)

 

PS: I would NOT play with 1.08 though, grayman and ishtvan reported problems with failed AI conversation scripts and some glitches with visportals and locked doors (you cant pick doors with no handles because they make no sound).

Edited by RPGista
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(you cant pick doors with no handles because they make no sound).

 

That's fixed now. There shouldn't be any more of those kind of bugs (and if there are, it's important to find them now).

 

I chose the tdm_fire_flames_small.prt particle, just verified it

 

Ah, so you added an emitter and selected the particle directly?

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Ah, so you added an emitter and selected the particle directly?

 

It is possible I added something, but I mostly only remember taking what was there and selecting the small fire particle via spawnarg, because the default fire was too big for the brazier (I might have imported the set from another map, not sure).

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Played a bit more tonight. I'm very impressed with a lot of the visuals. You've done some amazing things with patches and have really nailed the feeling of an old, worn, broken down city. I've had a blast with a couple of the areas I've gone into...

 

 

 

the rich couple's house and the barn with the two thugs and the coin box have both been tremendous fun. I had to figure out how to get them to move away from the loot I wanted to grab, so I started throwing things as distractions.

 

In the merchant's house, I started throwing things around in the dining room, hoping they would both go into investigate, and I could run over and nab the loot on the desk. Unfortunately, the man was pretty nonchalent about the noise. His wife freaked out and went into investigate, so I quickly shut the door behind her and clubbed her over the head. Then I snuck around back to the desk. Unfortunately there was a lit candle right there, so I grabbed the wheel of cheese off the table in the corner and heaved it at the candle, knocking it over. The merchant got up, all pissed, but with the shadows I was able to dart in, grab the loot off the table and snatch his key while he was blustering, "Whoever you are, you've made a grave mistake". But he still hadn't seen me. I was hiding behind his chair, but unfortunately the candle had stayed standing up, so was still lit, and when he turned around, he saw me. I high tailed it out of there before he could catch me though. :)

 

In the barn with the thugs, I managed to get in behind them on the hay, but couldn't figure out how to get close enough to nab the box. So I took one of my arrows and shot it into the wooden fence. They both went over to investigate, and I darted out and grabbed the box, then sank back into the shadows. After a few minutes they both came back, saying, "Somebody's playing a joke," and, "Must have been some kids messin around". I was able to sneak out the top window completely unseen. Felt great! I love having to use equipment in creative ways.

 

I went out on the landing, and jumped over to another ledge, but the archer below saw me. I wasn't too worried, since I didn't think he could hit me from there, until he suddenly showed up right on the ledge I'd just jumped from!! (see image) I'm pretty sure I said, "Oh shit!" out loud and then ducked into the collapsed house.

 

 

 

 

Things got a little frustrating after that point, since I jumped and mantled and resaved a kazillion times inside there with still no clear idea where I'm supposed to go yet.

post-9-0-43005700-1347758763_thumb.jpg

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Springheel:

 

 

 

Thats amazing to hear; use of the environment and physical bodies was exactly how I was hoping the mission would be played, since you are given very little equipment to start with. Some coldbloodness can also be useful, as the lights are dim enough for you to get away with a lot, as long as you dont mind getting some suspicious warnings here and there (in the merchant house for example, you can crawl right under the guy's nose to his table, sticking to the window wall, even if you are lit momentarily by the moonlight - as long as you wait for him to turn a page or look the other way, he'll sometimes not even notice).

 

Regarding the derelict building you are in, that was a problem for a lot of people:

 

The short answer -

 

57326230.jpg

 

But you might want to check this video too (a complete walkthrough of this section of the map), as there is another jump, once you cross the derelict building, that wasnt very clear to some (set to 720 hd resolution at least) -

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GaCTJAmiJk&feature=plcp

 

 

Edited by RPGista
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