Jump to content
The Dark Mod Forums

Modern TDM


pusianka

Recommended Posts

Ok, this idea just simply ran through my mind a moment ago and I wish to put it into discussion immediately. So ehm basically when I showed TDM to a friend of mine who is a fan of classy games I was sure he'll be surprised. I opened the section of main page where you download the missions and showed how many we got with all the pride in my voice. Then he said - "blaah but these are standalone and they don't match so it's not really an involving game" and then he said sth like "if it was like a part of one City...".

 

When I woke this morning, I imagined a modern TDM:

 

When you launch the game, instead of a menu, we could just spawn on the main City map, preferably at our secret hideout. In the secret hideout we could go into certain rooms where we would have pop up menus like let's say you go into the toilet and you have "Settings Menu", when you get up to the table in dining room where scrolls with assignments lie, you have "load game/download missions/choose missions" etc.

 

Now since we go standalone, I understand that we will also have option of making maps with loading locations. Perfect thing because we can make a city map with one district which will match with other districts, making up for a huge map. Ofc We wouldn't have to do everything at once! When you have a mission installed we could also allow the players to use City locations to enter these missions. Ofc most of them could start in the Inn. But people who want to contribute to the City, could make their mission entrances for example at doors to a cathedral or at some random doors in the street!

 

What it gives is a much bigger connection to the world of TDM. There are no problems with different campaigns then, becuase you can start it from Inn, or if you re a traveller and you want your mission to be in other City, well then hey, you can make the entrance to mission at the city front gate!

 

Ye we all have different thieves in our missions with different names, but I don't think we would bother because of that so much... and the City itself make up for this little inconsistency.

 

ok I am ready mentally for all your negative answers and conservative points of view, bring it on! :D

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your first idea with different rooms remembers me of DiRT2. ^^ - I think it is a nice idea, if you could select a mission on a painted city map, which lays on a table. It's easier than a hub level and still immersive.

 

At a next step I would prefer a hub level like in Thief 3.

I think that you can already insert most missions without a change. The Mission "Pandora's Box" for example plays at the docks for example, as well as "Too late". At the first one you have to get into a crate to get onto a ship. At the second one you just enter in a workshop/warehouse. So the hub level just needs the docks and two warehouses. One is open with open crates in it. And one is closed with an open window on top, you can enter. So you will have level entries for both fanmissions at the docks. :D

 

(It would be cool if the mappers would allow the use of the front brushes of thier manors. [For all the manor missions.] To set them into the hub map, so you stand in front of the fences and already see your missions target.)

Edited by Radiant
Link to comment
Share on other sites

At a next step I would prefer a hub level like in Thief 3.

I think that you can already insert most missions without a change. The Mission "Pandora's Box" for example plays at the docks for example, as well as "Too late". At the first one you have to get into a crate to get onto a ship. At the second one you just enter in a workshop/warehouse. So the hub level just needs the docks and two warehouses. One is open with open crates in it. And one is closed with an open window on top, you can enter. So you will have level entries for both fanmissions at the docks. :D

 

 

I liked it in thief 3 that it all matched to the city you were in every time. ^^

Edited by pusianka
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That is exactly what I said. I liked it in thief 3 that it all matched to the city you were in every time.

Ok, maybe I got it wrong. I thought you meant level segments have to be created at first for mappers so they can put them at their missions startpoint. - Which aren't that necessary if you just make up a locations in the hub level which tend to match (not exactly).

Edited by Radiant
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Missions are not always in the same time period, have several completely different player-characters, their own (conflicting) take on the history of the city and its inhabbitants, and might not even be in the same universe (say, Winter Harvest). It would be, even if there was someone willing to create that, impossible to make a hub map "connecting missions" together.

 

In thief3, to access a mission map through the city hub, you first had to explore it and find out clues and get the mission from someone, which wont happen here either (would you go to the cemetery and then choose from 3-4 halloween missions, that are completely unrelated?).

 

TDM is based on single mission packages (even when they are supposed to be played in succession, like Sotha's or Fidcal's), and the only way to get someone pumped and immersed enough to play your mission is the briefing, where you are going to introduce the character and his motivations. That is, IMHO, an area that could use a lot more work in a great many missions - you often get the feeling they are more like "ok, you know the deal, lets rob this thing, lets do this", it is rare to find a briefing that does a good job at introducing the mission and putting you there.

Edited by RPGista
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@RPGista: Because most missions are like "let's rob this place", like you've said it, it is no problem to put them in without any connection.

About this 3-4 halloween missions:

You can strengthen the worlds appereance by putting in a ton of readables and maybe some conversations into the hub level. So you can whether choose: "I just want to play a quick mission." Or: "I want to get every additional information that can be found about this world."

 

About other universes:

Winter harvest can play on a far snowy mountain.

Missions that are totally off can be reffered as a dream after a trap or something.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

In thief3, to access a mission map through the city hub, you first had to explore it and find out clues and get the mission from someone, which wont happen here either (would you go to the cemetery and then choose from 3-4 halloween missions, that are completely unrelated?).

 

 

Well, hello you download the missions in your hideout and install them, then you have the position of entrance in town added and as for cementery example - yes that is exactly how it would work in such situations! What's wrong with that???

 

Different time period? Please like you can tell from playing? You can always choose to go to the front gate because your missions are outside, but for many many missions that we have so far, it would work.

Edited by pusianka
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1. One option is that your mission can start directly from your hideout the moment you installed it. After all you have briefings explaining what happened before.

2. Sometimes it says that you've been to the Inn and got drunk and the next thing you remember is you being inside the prison cell sometimes you are after a mission which you got from someone and you get framed. So in these two examples you can start a mission by getting to the Inn or by stepping into the random door of your client?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am sceptical it would work for already released TDM missions. People prolly want to load and install the missions throught a gui without the need to boringly stroll around a hideout/city to get basic things done.

 

However, is there nothing preventing a mapper to create a campaign of missions which are linked via a hub, hexen style? Grab DR and check if you can do it.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This will 100% never happen as long as TDM is open to using different protagonists. If all missions were locked to a single protagonist, still 99.9% chance of this never happening (imho of course). About the only chance this could ever realistically happen would be as a campaign hub, like CoO, and considering the burnout already going on... no chance this is gonna get implemented unless by a 3rd party volunteer with a very strong knowledge of TDM and DR. Actually, grayman is probably the only person on earth that knows how to get that working.

 

ninja'd of course.

Edited by ungoliant
Link to comment
Share on other sites

oh come on... seriously? You wouldnt like to have your secret hideout each time you get in game? :D "Sofa", really? :) What is so sceptical in putting many missions into such a town? I told ya most of these could start in an Inn and there wouldn't be rather no problems with strolling around City, it's actually the fun part... IMO.

 

ungoliant@

 

Not so long ago it was being said, it's impossible to make TDM standalone in a few years time and as far as I'm concerned we will have it working with the very next update...

Edited by pusianka
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I told ya most of these could start in an Inn and there wouldn't be rather no problems with strolling around City, it's actually the fun part... IMO.

 

I personally loathe the 'explore area X without a map and try to figure out what you are supposed to do there' type objectives. Too many TDM missions have that already.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not so long ago it was being said, it's impossible to make TDM standalone in a few years time and as far as I'm concerned we will have it working with the very next update...

 

I didn't mean its impossible to achieve. I meant its impossible that the team would ever approve it. It's feature creep at its worst.

Other issues: low end system users would need to load a minimum of 2 maps to get to gameplay. this is both frustrating and an unnecessary tax on user resources.

Edited by ungoliant
Link to comment
Share on other sites

oh come on... seriously? You wouldnt like to have your secret hideout each time you get in game?

 

No.

 

1. A casual glance through the list of already existing FMs shows that no single hub could reasonably encompass all the existing missions. Consider Business as Usual, where you _already_ start in your own room. Consider missions like "Trapped" where you start out already captured and in a jail cell. What about missions that take place in winter with snow everywhere? How do you establish what gear you have? If you have no gear when walking around the hub, where does it come from when you suddenly start the mission (and vice versa)?

 

2. There are several different characters in play already. Obviously they can't all live in the same hideout.

 

3. The city is supposed to be huge and sprawling. A huge, sprawling hub would be a massive time-waster, IMO. Who wants to spend half an hour walking around to get to the mission they actually want to play? Meanwhile, what are you supposed to do in this hub? You can't steal or buy anything, or it would completely throw off the shop screen for the mission you choose. You can't get caught or killed (or if you can, that makes it even more ridiculous...you can _die_ while trying to get to the mission you actually want to play)?

 

4. I've just downloaded A Score to Settle. Where the hell do I have to go in the hub to play it? How do I know I'm supposed to go to the inn instead of the city gate (or whatever)? If I'm a new player, how do I know where the inn is?

 

5. Loading times are already ridiculously long...it takes me five or six minutes to load up a big map for the first time. Who wants to wait an extra five minutes of loading for a hub that isn't actually part of the mission you want to play?

 

And that's just off the top of my head.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The city hub was far from popular in TDS as well... with good reason.

  • Like 1

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Then he said - "blaah but these are standalone and they don't match so it's not really an involving game" and then he said sth like "if it was like a part of one City...".

 

Each mission is a game unto itself. Just because they're not strung together in an epic storyline doesn't mean that the individual parts are not involving.

 

I can't really take much pass of his comment if he opens a game menu and immediately dismisses it because it doesn't fit his preconceived notion of what an involving experience is.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Business as usual could be somewhere in the city so it could be entered at any random gate which is in the town but doesn't go anywhere, as for the fact taht you already have there your own apartment, well ye you will never get perfect consistency when you have FMs and I said that in the beginning, protagonists and such little things could interfere but then again I don't think they would break the feel of the game more then with what we got now. As for Jail missions, I already explained it earlier.

 

What would we do in such a hub? Steal for the fun of stealing, get into the shop? Why not? You install the mission and you get the entrance added on the map of the city and we can also add how much money we get to buy in the shop which is in the hub. As for goods stolen in the hub, they won't be counted, but they can be stored in numbers in your hideout, so you can have like a little gold chest of your own :). Hub can also have the Training area in it as well.

 

I personally would put guards in the hub and if they caught you, you could go to some local jail or simply respawn at the beginning of the level but seriously, it's not about making hub the terrain of rage, so there wouldn't be like ton of gurads which are hard to pass. Of course I can reconsider it as a bad idea and allow only civil AIs who cannot kill you in this map. There would be like a few homes you could rob every time you re in the town.

 

The only true drawback that you pointed out so far is the amount of loading time it might take, well yes that is a problem and I think this could be voted in a poll wether it is really a problem.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I echo all of Spring's sentiments.

 

I really don't think a Hub is representative of TDM. Like it or not, we're representing a different type of player. The hub is quite often a tool to artificially extend game time in modern games...which I find to dishonest. Remove the Hub from TDS and the game is a heck of a lot shorter.

 

It's a time waster.

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

    • 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
    • OrbWeaver

      I like the new frob highlight but it would nice if it was less "flickery" while moving over objects (especially barred metal doors).
      · 4 replies
    • nbohr1more

      Please vote in the 15th Anniversary Contest Theme Poll
       
      · 0 replies
×
×
  • Create New...