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Fan Mission: Return to the City v3 for TDM 1.08 (12/11/2012)


Bikerdude

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  • Am I dreaming or is the doorstep on the big manor behind Sykes' place new?
  • Also, is it normal that I don't have a map? (playing on Expert). I also encountered the first bug Oldjim reported.
  • I have spotted several tiny visual bugs as well, most notably in the attic with the footlocker near the garden area.

  • Yep :-)
  • did you uninstall the old version as Ive just checked and the map works fine.
  • pm screenshots.

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Finished this up earlier today but had to go back in to look for the

 

secret place as I didn't remember finding one, I even checked from an earlier save with no luck. :unsure: I got all the loot and enjoyed finding the new routes to previously nearly impossible to-get-to places. Thanks Bikerdude. I also noticed guards that were very alert to their surroundings.

 

 

There were a couple of spots I noticed ( see pics). The first one with the wood beam; if you step on it you fall to your death and the second; the building across the way disappears if you're standing near the wall on the veranda.

 

Still enjoyed playing it through!

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I didn't even know that there was a secret area there so while looking all round I killed a couple of rats (I didn't realise you could do that - the blood and wounds were very good) and still didn't find anything in the way of switches or hatches

Next the

generator there is a door

you need to unlock...

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  • 3 months later...

This was one of the first missions I played in dark mod, and it was thoroughly enjoyable, I especially liked the hidden rooms and secret places. The priests lookout room was the best, imo.

 

My only real gripe with it is that there is too much use of that cursive font - I have terrible eyesight and had trouble reading it.

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My only real gripe with it is that there is too much use of that cursive font - I have terrible eyesight and had trouble reading it.

Your not the only person to mention this, I/others poke Melan with a stick to make sure he tries to use use more legible fonts while maintaining his artistic vision.

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  • 2 years later...

Good, very solid map and excellent for practicing some close combat skills! I think this is a good beginner mission too, because it has a clear setting and fair preconditions! I usually prefer this setting over the undead one anyway!

 

Here are some tips for achieving the objectives:

 

 

For the first one, the explosive: Just put the stone-looking stuff out of the cage by abusing the broken rods on the top and put it in the water.

 

 

 

For the second objective you need to put the "Hastily Written Note" into the Donation box (over the box there are the words "Give give ..." and so on).

 

 

So the map hit my taste and will be played again with different settings sooner or later for sure! Thank you for the map!

Edited by Silverd
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  • 1 month later...

Hmmm quite a nice way to spend an evening, I would think. The mission is very strong vertically, with nothing really feeling artificially restricted. I did manage to see OOB in the loading docks area by climbing up the highest I could go. I could've probably gone up to the roof of the clock tower, but I didn't try because (as AB is fond of saying) "muh ehmersion". I actually used a rope arrow to bypass the door into the cloister's yard which ended up getting me all the way to the attic, pretty fun.

 

There was a hiccup when

 

I found the vault. I figured the readable was hinting at finding keys for the locks or some such, so I went back up again to try and find Guillave's office. Then when I couldn't find anything and had made a round across the city again, I sneaked back to the vault. The second time around I did figure it out, though I didn't get the blaming objective, since I'd read that donation ledger on my first visit.

 

 

This made the mission a bit more frustrating than I would've liked, but overall use of vertical space, the creativeness of the loot placement, and some very well hidden secrets make this great fun to play. If I had to give a criticism, it would be that the cloister section just isn't that great visually. It's not something that I normally pay attention to but it was very overlit and the texturing was just bland.

 

Oh, also, I quicksaved while still on the "press 'attack' to start the mission"-screen, and when I quickloaded to that save, the AI were immobilized and in "standard" (vitruvian man) posture. I suspect this is a game-wide bug and not just specific to the mission, but I wanted to play, not test. Something worth looking into.

Edited by 161803398874989

You can call me Phi, Numbers, Digits, Ratio, 16, 1618, or whatever really, as long as it's not Phil.

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Thanks for your comments! Very fair.

 

This was my first TDM project, made at a time when TDM had a much more limited asset base, which I struggled with a lot to realise what I wanted to create. Originally, this was supposed to be mission set in a slum, but we just didn't have the right assets to make that - so it ended up the way it is, with rather simple texturing. The nicer parts, like the mansion interior, are mostly Bikerdude's later additions, especially after he fixed the original's horrid performance issues.

 

It is also worth mentioning that on its own, the mission may be a bit hard to understand, as it heavily cross-references Prowler of the Dark, an earlier Thief Gold level, not just in its story, but physically, in the spatial sense. There, you broke into the eastern half of the same Builder complex you would return to now. Return to the City was intentionally built as a link between Thief and TDM, and the title itself is a reference to this connection. I wanted to rebuild Prowler in TDM, but never got around to it.

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

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If it happens, it will need help with optimisation. Prowler had a notoriously open-air layout, which is against TDM building principles.

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

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  • 1 month later...

The lack of the loading screen in the latest revision was bothering me so I fixed it:

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17706561/returntothecityv3.pk4

 

When you change your map name you need to change the name of the file under:

 

guis/map/<example_mission>.gui

 

changing it to

 

guis/map/rttc.gui

 

solved it.

 

I tried to run the localization script on it but it failed with an error so Tels will need to figure out why it cannot be translated.

 

 

Trivia: The latest version in the repo was created in January just before the v2.03 release.

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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  • 6 months later...

I can safely say after playing both of your Dark Mod Talbot levels, Melan, that you are the only one that emphasizes vertical design this damned much.

 

That is not a complaint.

I like to record difficult stealth games, and right now you wonderful people are the only ones delivering on that front.

Click here for the crappy channel where that happens.

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Crossposted from below V-Man339's video:

Some smooth, elegant taffing there.

 

And yeah, you can tell it is an early level, and that's playing the third version (not counting an interim expansion that was much bigger, and went on to become the still unreleased first episode of the Crucible of Omens Campaign). The original, pre-expansion RttC was sort of a learning-by-doing experience. That didn't just mean the performance issues (which is why Bikerdude had to add all that distance control), but even the fact that it started out as a radically different mission than it ended up. In the first concept, it was a slum mission where you'd have to ruin the business of a dog oil merchant by ruining his stock, but I soon found that TDM 1.0 had very little of the asset base needed for the purpose - no beggars, no thugs, and not even enough suitably dark textures. That's how it became a sequel to Prowler of the Dark, and how the Hammerites (renamed to TDM's Builders in a later version at Springheel's request) got involved. And that's what the mission was - streets and backlots to approach your goal, a few side rooms and scattered pieces of loot to pick up on the way, and the Hammerite complex.

 

If you look at the current version, the Sykes house is almost entirely Bikerdude's creation (I built the first cellar room, the pantry, and the master's room, but the last one was significantly different in my version), and it rather complicates the look and feel of the mission - my areas are mostly a mixture of cold blues and greys, while Bikerdude used significantly warmer colours - including retexturing a whole lot of architecture. It also shifts the weight of the action, which is why you can actually complete the loot goal before entering the Seminary.

 

So that's why this mission can feel a little haphazard and odd - it didn't go in the way originally intended, went through multiple revisions, got a huge amount of stuff added, then a huge amount of stuff removed, then added again. Which is why you have not yet seen this: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v198/Melan/Darkmod/rttc_title_xmas2.jpg ...or this: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v198/Melan/Darkmod/RttCU04.jpg ...even though they were once a part of the mission. What remains is a mission that is kinda all over the place, which sometimes tries to be more things than it could be, and which actually plays differently now than it did when it was first released (due to all the AI upgrades - this is more visible in Fauchard Street). From an author's point of view, it is a bit of a mess, but at least its wreckage is interesting.

 

Also, as far as I know, you are the first to draw the conclusion that the idol (actually, the skull, but that's beside the point) is the same one you stole in Prowler. I am not saying whether it is an accurate observation or not, but it is certainly a good one. Bravo! .)

 

 

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

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Very noice, you should get playing PD1 and 2 while Melan and I work on PD3...

That's the plan.

I like to record difficult stealth games, and right now you wonderful people are the only ones delivering on that front.

Click here for the crappy channel where that happens.

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  • 1 year later...

Accolades

 

This FM was excellent. I'm just getting used to TDM, so figuring out how to get the explosive was a chore, and I cheated by finding a walkthrough. I daresay when I return to playing classic Thief missions, I'm going to miss the versatility that comes with Dark Mod.

 

Thx to Melan & Bikerdude

 

PS: Penny Dreadful was also an awesome experience.

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