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Fan Mission: Crystal Grave v2 (by ERH+ and Bikerdude) (2013/02/09)


ERH+

Crystal Grave v2 (2013/02/09)  

26 members have voted

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

    • Poor
      0
    • Tolerable
    • Good
    • Excellent
    • Near Perfect. Outstanding.
  2. 2. Appearance: Visual pleasure, lighting, visual style, deduct bad texturing ect.

    • Poor
      0
    • Tolerable
      0
    • Good
    • Excellent
    • Near Perfect. Outstanding.
  3. 3. Story & Text: Story. Text. Briefing. Graphic storytelling

    • Poor
      0
    • Tolerable
    • Good
    • Excellent
    • Near Perfect. Outstanding.


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Questions -

 

1---I spent a bit of time searching round the dining room for the person who said "Help me" as I thought that it might be a hidden objective but gave up in the end as I assumed it was just for atmosphere even though the voice wasn't of a haunt

2---I didn't find the dangerous beast which has been locked in the dungeon other than the big spider in the cage which I killed

 

Frame rate -

 

3---The only place I hit a problem was trying to get from the roof through the upper window with a beam sticking out below it - frame rate dropped and it was worse when a haunt passed by the open window

post-8491-0-75916300-1360498419_thumb.jpg post-8491-0-42781500-1360498427_thumb.jpg

 

4---Food -

No problems with three of them as they were in places where you would expect them. The last one (where I needed a specific hint :blush: ) was in a totally non obvious or logical place and must have been put there just to make it difficult :blink: - that was the only part where a got a bit annoyed.

1,2---At some point of upgrading mission, I start add jump scares and mood hints, in hope that they will be properly placed in presented story. But it eluded out of my mind that whole story is just on three randomly hide, not numbered sheets of paper, and player is expecting more visual presentation of story.

3---There was some huge performance problems and rendering errors in roof area, so one spot frame rate drop had to be tolerable for me as it is not obvious issue.

4---I think it is more about density of details, when I place something small yet important in so deserted area as 6 floored staircase, you will just pass by it running. My fault.

 

 

 

1---The first thing that I've noticed is that there is a pre game shop in this mission. That's a bit confusing, as the briefing says that you've lost your stuff and then you can just buy one?

 

2---After that the mission started quite good. The atmosphere and the tension was on a very high level. Geometry and detailing was not that high, but the FM looks good anyways. The only thing that bothered me after a while is that you've used the same textures almost everywhere, what makes orientation really hard.

 

3---But the mission itself grew quite tiresome after a while, as I was just aimlessly wandering around searching for loot, crystals and supplies. Also finding the water was a bit strange, as I just stumbled over the secret entrance leading to the room (laboratory?) where it was, without having found any clue leading to it. Also afterwards I never found anything pointing to it, so I'm a bit curious how you expect the players to find it. Same goes for the crystals.

 

4---So to sum it up, I think this mission has a high potential. The atmosphere is very good and the optical site is ok, too. But unless someone plays the FM who loves exploration this mission holds a lot possibilities of frustration.

 

5---Gameplay: 3/5 The idea is quite good, but you can get stuck really fast. In addition you don't give the player much hints on where to go first or next, so the only option is to search room by room by room. Another point I dislike is that the crystal and loot objective on the highest difficulty seem quite harsh to me. 8 of 9 (hidden!) crystals and 2000 of 2195 loot is really, really high. Also, why is cheese the only food you can use as rations. I've completely overseen the first one as I just didn't expected them to be important. And again, you have to find all the 4 pieces.

 

6---Visual: 3/5 You've managed to create a good looking place with a relative low amount of details. The inner yard looked great btw. But your repetive use of textures is not on the good sight.

 

7---Readables/Story: 2/5 Basically I liked the idea behind your mission. But there is a dramatically lack of information what makes the chance to get stuck quite high. I also didn't understand why this place is haunted, but maybe I missed that.

 

 

1---Yes that was pointless, I think I just want to learn how to use this part of game (and I still have problems with that, as you can see there is doubled map in inventory).

2---It is just major flaw in this map designing -huge outer area forces us to take every possible way for optimisation, number of textures is just one of them.

3---I would call it lack of direction in my work. I intended a standard, small mission where I will able to complete all my assumptions and execution of objectives will be as easy as it can be-thats why I decided I will just multiple a task like "collect X of something".

My major target in this map was "as non linear as it can be", and "no fake windows or doors, no houses filled with stone" and while story line was still just scattered on 3 sheets of paper, I was busy developing architectonical posibilities.

So you are right, there is no real reason for character to avoid living dead for all night in search of unknown price. Dead man's diary is rather excuse for simplest objectives I could make, and it was unforgivable to make them not hard but tiresome to complete.

4---Well, player expectations are not something I can plan. I was always think about Thief as a more logical succesor of Doom's invisible secret walls, and knocking on everything can be pleasure, as long as it is pleasure -if player is getting tired and bored and he don't want to finish mission, it is my and only my fault -but goal is still the same and I don't want develop mission as a movie fabula from point A to B to C. It should be maze as twisted and big as I can afford, but I need to keep player focused and with hope of win. But if player just don't want to wander aimlessly, instead he expect theatrical chapters and space bended by storyline-he is not my target.

5---It's reminds me Thief1 fan mission where author rename difficulty level to "impossible", maybe this will do the trick :) . But you've got the point, as I said objectives are generic and difficulty is artificialy raised. On map where finding a way is a main tool of player, it is still good to scatter targets, but they could be more rewarding.

6---Single building in open area was a big mistake in planning this mission, and low number of texture was -as i thought- less annoying countermeasure for bad performance. In general this open space was a trap, as we keep flying in "no clip" mode and repetitively encounter disastrous triscounts. It was hard to find good level for details in this deserted outer area as it can be crossed by player at many angles.

7---Yes, story was put on a hook and poorly merged with physical objects in map. It was intended to be readable, but i should try to force player to focus on it in one way or another. Main story become a trinket, and player become frustrated while competing his meal.

 

I finished this on expert and I liked it. The location and story premise were interesting. The mission looked good and performed well. I only voted "tolerable" on gameplay (which is a bit harsch maybe). But playing on expert difficulty I expect challenging AI and not a hunt for hidden stuff with no hints how to find it. Having to look online where the last item is when you have done everything else is not fun.

 

That damn food item on the tower!

And how are you supposed to find the secret door in the hallway behind the metal door? I saw that just by pure luck.

 

Maybe I should add more haunts?

 

This secret room have small window to courtyard, I thought thats more than enough.

 

 

1---The mission flat out dispels some of the assumptions about the mod -- it has a huge exterior part, and only produces a slowdown very occasionally. And with such a huge presence from the outset, scaling the tower and defeating its challenges really feels like an epic undertaking. This mission has scale.

2---It also has non-linearity up the wazoo. The various ways you can get around both inside and outside is exemplary, and everyone who makes maps ought to take notice. I also liked the secrets; in fact, the sense of discovery reminded me of The Enterprise, a very old mission (which has been released for both Thief games), and I mean it as the highest form of praise.

3---People who point out the sneaking is too easy are IMO missing the point - we are almost all very experienced Thief players, so of course it is going to be easy. There is no way around that. But this mission has lots of immersive stuff, visual storytelling, interesting non-standard objectives and creatively designed AI.

4---Its weaknesses are that clues are maybe too thin, and object hunting can become too drawn-out on higher difficulties... but, well, that's what higher difficulties are for. And really, there is so much to praise that it should cancel out the criticism.

5---One thing I could not figure out:

 

Is there any secret related to the mirrors? They look too elaborate to be random decoration... are they?

 

1---Sure it is good to put whole map in line of sight, but blame my lack of knowledge about engine performance -it was realy hard to cut all those empty spaces with Visportals and make them work properly.

2---As I said before, it was my main goal -I'm happy it succeeded.

3---Yes, I would more likely done mission without even single hostile AI, or like this cozy little room on roof in T3 Old Quarter vis a vis Hammerites cathedral. Ofcourse this spell will break as soon as you encounter swarms of flies over several bodies... So much about building homogeneous mood.

4---Thanks! I will try my best next time -after all I just learning on ground of this one.

5---No, I tried to make better use of them, but they produce rendering errors quite often. And I can't apply this surface to breakable objects, so I just had to give up with some of ideas.

Edited by ERH+

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I might have had the crash/lockup issue, but I was easily able to skip what caused the problem, and I never had any slow downs or other issues at all. I really have no complaints in this area, even if I did have the crash. (Such things happen. It didn't prevent me from playing the mission at all.)

 

The only issue I can say that I had was the same as some others have said- difficulty finding the last bits of some objectives. For me, it was loot, and I had to scour the place repeatedly to find enough to make up for the last 35 I needed. (And of course, after swimming around and roaming hallways repeatedly and futilely, I found a sizable object I could have sworn I tried to collect before- twice!- but somehow hadn't gotten close enough to actually pick up... or something... and it was worth 150. Still a bit short of max, but good enough.) Besides that, though, more readables would have been nice, to help cement the background story, but I did get a sense of the story from the ones I found.

 

But I still loved the mission. Why? The non-linearity. I cannot express how much this means to me. I'm an explorer. More than anything, I'm an explorer. I might get tired treading and re-treading ground I've already covered five or more times, but being able to cover as much ground as I was able to, via as many routes as were available, made my heart sing. And there were secrets. ("Secrets!", she whispered quietly to herself with a grin and eyes alight with glee.) Oh how I wish for code as in the Thief games to track secrets, but for them to be there at all makes me so very, very happy.

 

Thank you, ERH+ (and Bikerdude!). I eagerly look forward to future FMs!

Edited by Shaz
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Maybe I should add more haunts?

I think a few more illuminated places (like the library) would help. There were to few tense spots where you don't feel safe.

 

This secret room have small window to courtyard, I thought thats more than enough.

 

Ok, this is a good hint. I even saw the window but had forgotten it later. I like secrets like this but onyl when they're optional. If you have to find them to complete the mission they should be hinted at much more clear.

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4---Well, player expectations are not something I can plan. I was always think about Thief as a more logical succesor of Doom's invisible secret walls, and knocking on everything can be pleasure, as long as it is pleasure -if player is getting tired and bored and he don't want to finish mission, it is my and only my fault -but goal is still the same and I don't want develop mission as a movie fabula from point A to B to C. It should be maze as twisted and big as I can afford, but I need to keep player focused and with hope of win. But if player just don't want to wander aimlessly, instead he expect theatrical chapters and space bended by storyline-he is not my target.

Just for clearence. I love the freedom your mission gives the player. They are a dozens of ways to proceed, and this is something I always loved about the original games either. What causes the probem here is just the lack of information. A few more readables, providing the player with the infos needed to find what he searchs for would be a big boost. I've only found four readables, and as far as I can remember none of them provided any mission relevant information. But beneath immersion this is what they are mainly for.

 

The number of things I've critizised may seem a bit high, but as I've said, the mission was good after all (and I've finished it). :smile: The only real downside is that it can happen that the player get stucked, and this is something that can be very frustrating.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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Just finished and loved every minute of it ! Thank you ERH and Bikerdude. I did try playing it originally but gave up due to language difficulties. Had a bit of trouble getting the wrench but made it in the end.

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Lol Biker. Grayman is just gently teasing you for using Bare instead of Bear in your forum post.

 

Relax.

 

We all know that translation work can be challenging.

 

:)

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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Thanks for the update !

II am not sure where to gte or how to produce

 

pure water

 

. (Last open objective) Any hint ?

And a note: besides key #20039 & #20040, this one also has no label : #20038 (found near the dead bodies)

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It is a secret room that looks a bit like a laboratory. I think the entrance was hidden in one of the stony big hallways.

 

 

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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I thought I was finally going to beat an exploration kind of mission without resorting to spoilers, but I couldn't find the last bit of food. Thanks for the great mission :D I was dying to play this since the first release, where I played until realizing the readables were in russian (?)

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My feelings on this FM are overall positive, but tinged with a bit of frustration and boredom for the better half of my play time (nearly two hours, one of which was spent looking for a hunk of cheese :-/) Going through the same rooms over and over again, looking for such an incredibly mundane object is not my idea of fun. The usual technique is to provide the player with written clues as to where some of these things can be found - that's part of the exploration and puzzle element - associating text clues with locations we've visited, or expect to visit, and working out where we can find loot.

 

Most of the text provided is either related to the story (I'm still curious how the spiders are associated with the undead you find roaming around. Zombie plague?) or simply flavor. Which is fine, but generally you want flavor text to actually serve a specific purpose; an example would be, say, a Builder priest moaning about his alcoholism and the bottle of expensive brandy he has hidden in his floor safe. Stuff like that. In this mission, the only connection I could find between documents and the level was the document about the wrench location. Oh, and the robot. But everything else was just kinda flavor and served little purpose.

 

By this token, I often found myself blundering into objectives - the crystals I was able to accept as part of the general exploration element, but the pure water and the provisions (well, one of them, anyway) were all happened upon purely by chance. It was kinda frustrating and, unfortunately towards the end, quite boring.

 

But I loved the design of this level, though, and, as has been said, the non-linearity. There are many legitimate ways of moving around this level, and it was thrilling to unexpectedly run into an undead, knowing I had at least three escape routes I could use to get away from him. I liked the general atmosphere and the presentation - I like it when everything in a level looks and feels like it has some actual real world purpose, AND serves as a facilitator for good gameplay. Well done, on that part.

 

However, again, the actual story details and clues were woefully lacking and the enjoyment I was getting from exploration quickly wore thin :(

 

Still, I liked this level overall because it looks good and feels good. It just doesn't always play good, lol.

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nearly two hours, one of which was spent looking for a hunk of cheese :-/

 

That sentence is hilarious. But I can relate to what you're saying. Actually, your comments describe almost exactly my experience, a good challenging mission almost spoiled by one particular item. All other objectives were also about finding hidden objects but that was one particularly elusive piece of cheese.

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That sentence is hilarious. But I can relate to what you're saying. Actually, your comments describe almost exactly my experience, a good challenging mission almost spoiled by one particular item. All other objectives were also about finding hidden objects but that was one particularly elusive piece of cheese.

Chaps, this was ERHs first mission. He has learnt a lot during the upgrading etc and I'm sure his next mission will be better.

 

And yes I or the other beta testers could have spotted this, but we had a bunch of issues that meant we got bogged down etc and just wanted to get the thing out the door.

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