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Fan Mission: Not An Ordinary Guest by Fieldmedic (2013/08/01)


DeTeEff

  

32 members have voted

  1. 1. Unusual Gameplay Theme

    • *
      0
    • **
      0
    • ***
      2
    • ****
      15
    • *****
      15
  2. 2. Gameplay Quality

    • *
      1
    • **
      2
    • ***
      3
    • ****
      15
    • *****
      11
  3. 3. Aesthetics (Visuals, Story, Audio)

    • *
      0
    • **
      2
    • ***
      6
    • ****
      17
    • *****
      7


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Hi Thiefette ( and anyone else reading this thread. I've all but

given up on this one now. You see , I've been diagnosed as needing a couple of replacement hips and am in a fair bit of pain sitting down so haven't the patience for the long sittings I used to play. I found the coal/ boiler room etc as instructed, made my way up the stairs and came to a long stairway where there is a bar(?) with an annoying woman who keeps popping out and who I'd like to bop but can't because of the restraints of the game. plus an old fella who sits somewhere around there and talks about opera s and suchlike.there is a snooker table in the same room. But no key anywhere , seems to me this could have been made a bit more accessible i.e hidden in the office or suchlike? so about to give up now.

 

But I thank you for your ever helpful kind comments and apologize for being a grumpy old man!! I hesitate to no clip because that's against the spirit of this section of the mission. I completed on assassin but this has become too much for me!! Heaven help me if I tried to do saboteur! I won't rate it just based on the one part but would like to thank Fieldmedic for the work he's put in.

Sorry its a little tricky to describe as I'm only guessing where you've been during the playing of this mission

Start back at the coal bin room - there are waterwheels in there - and go through the door by the waterwheels. In this room is a large vat of water (with a small lid that you can open). This is the room you want to be in to follow previous instructions. This room has a grated platform for you to walk on with machinery etc. underneath. Take the door with the long straight stairway (not wooden), cross a small bridge and go into the landing. Again there are 3 doors in this room. The one straight across leads to back alley, the 1st door beside you leads to stairs to the sewer. the next door in this room is the one you want. The key should be on the desk/table I believe.

I feel your frustration as I too spent a lot of time on it. Hope this is a little clearer for you and you don't give up just yet.

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Thiefette. You'll be glad to know that thanks to you alone I found it , though what such an important key should be doing in such an obscure place is a matter of conjecture! Obviously an awful lot of other folk found it without problems but unless you were passing that way ( and there are a lot of other ways in ) , you'd miss it. So maybe a weakness in the script and a bit frustrating? But only to someone with my particular problems I guess.Thanks again , getting up before I weld to the computer chair!

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  • 3 weeks later...

I completed this for the first time today. My favorite aspect is the

non-linearity. I never felt like I was on a strict path and being told where to go. There were plenty of ways to break into the hotel and plenty of ways to get from room to room while inside the hotel. I particularly liked the balconies that overlook the outside where you can see the other parts of the building and the atmosphere in the atic was great, with the moonlight coming in through the windows.

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

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just completed this on the Assassin. I dunno. It felt a bit... Well, sloppy.

 

 

The performance was poor.

 

The mission was unfocused: there was a huge outdoor area without a purpose, lot's of wasted mapping effort. The hotel was needlessly big, too: an endless maze of rather plain corridors. I would have preferred a smaller location with more interesting features. Same thing about AI placement and patrols: most of the time I was alone in the corridors picking locks after locks after locks. No excitement there.

 

I spend a lot of time trying to grab the guest ledger. It was pretty futile. I would have liked to cleanly KO the girl behind the counter, but could not because of the objectives. I'd rather KO her rather than let her see me grabbing the ledger. Then I noticed I had flashbomb. Boom. "Eek, I'm blind." Grab ledger. Not very graceful, but got the ledger without breaking the objectives. How was this supposed to be done? I like being forced to use tools to get forward, but given the objectives saying avoid commotion, the flashbomb felt like the wrong tool for this situation.

 

Finally I found the room number 3 in the maze of corridors. Was it really in the basement? Who would want a basement hotel room? The room door was unlocked: who would sleep in a hotel with a mistress and leave the door unlocked? I went in, the guy got up and went to the crapper. I shot him in the face. The woman got up and just stood there next to her bed without doing anything. I left the corpse to lie on the room entrance and the lady standing oblivious next to the bed. I left the scene.

 

On my way out I noticed a dead city watch guard on the street. No idea what happened to him. *Shrug* End mission.

 

It was clear you had spend a huge amount of effort in the mission. Maybe next time you should keep it a bit smaller, more tight and interesting. The majority of the time should not be spend unlocking doors without anyone nearby or wandering in lots of streets that don't even pay any role in the mission.

 

I hope I wasn't too harsh, I just want to give you feedback so that you can improve your future works.

 

 

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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playing as assassin (which who wouldn't want to?) the mission felt rather flat. The lag was terrible, worse than any mission to date. The uninteractable outdoor area serves as a nice backdrop but I feel you missed out on a opportunity here sir.

Why was the bloody room in the basement.. who rents a room in the basement? Why would there even be a room in the basement for guests, even for servants quarters thats pretty low.

Edited by TheUnbeholden
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Great fun so far. Can someone please help me out on the following objectives? I'm playing as a saboteur. How do I:

 

 

contaminate the water? I have a bottle of acid but i think that's for something else.

 

Frame someone else? I have the bags of money but I have no idea where to put them

 

How do I make the hotel owner sad? I have a bottle of acid and I think I'm supposed to use it to make the chandelair in the lobby crash. But it doesn't work when I try to use it on some chains in the attic that I think are the ones holding up the chandiler in the lobby

 

 

 

Edited by Sir Taffsalot

"I believe that what doesn't kill you simply makes you... stranger"

 

The Joker

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You need to find something dirty to contaminate the water, and dump that into an appropriate place. The basement's a good place to look.

 

There is a small office located inside the basement. Find it and you will get some clues.

 

You need to drop it, then frob it, I believe.

 

 

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

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I spent an hour wondering around the basement and I didn't find anything to help me complete the objectives. I'm getting a bit bored so I probably won't complete this. Credit where credit's due, the aesthetics are bloody amazing! Especially the streets. It's a Hell of a lot better than my attempts at TDM streets. I sure could learn a thing or two from this FM. The problem I have is that this FM just feels too big for it's own good. Why is there no in game map? If ever an FM needed one it is this. I have spent literally hours wondering around trying to get a mental layout of the place and most of the time I still feel lost. I'm going to give up on this one for now but will definitely come back to it at some point and play as an assassin or thief and see if I have more luck with that.

 

Edit: I just read Sotha's comments and I completely agree. I've played all of your FMs and you are clearly a very talented FMA. Apart from the beautiful city streets (which seem to serve no purpose) it feels like it's missing the Fieldmedic magic of previous FMs.

Edited by Sir Taffsalot

"I believe that what doesn't kill you simply makes you... stranger"

 

The Joker

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There's the bit in the basement where you go up some stairs, and then there's an empty room with a door leading out to the street. In that empty room, turn on your lamp. You'll find a door there. That's the office I was talking about.

For the contamination, get a bucket of dung (it's two rooms from the water resevoir, which is in the room adjacent to the boiler) and turn it upside down in the water resevoir.

 

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

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Ohh, a review from the grumpy finlandier :)

 

 

I just completed this on the Assassin. I dunno. It felt a bit... Well, sloppy.

 

 

The performance was poor.

 

Other than the front area, the performance shouldn't be that horrible.

 

The mission was unfocused: there was a huge outdoor area without a purpose, lot's of wasted mapping effort. The hotel was needlessly big, too: an endless maze of rather plain corridors. I would have preferred a smaller location with more interesting features. Same thing about AI placement and patrols: most of the time I was alone in the corridors picking locks after locks after locks. No excitement there.

 

The purpose was to create a mission with lots of entryways and ability to roam about in a surrounding city. Like taking a 'chunk out of the world' rather than have a completely locked in cityscape. Betatesting made me unlock some hotel rooms to avoid too much tedious picking. I know the corridors were quite plain but I had to cut down on details as I reached the roof on entities in this mission.

 

I spend a lot of time trying to grab the guest ledger. It was pretty futile. I would have liked to cleanly KO the girl behind the counter, but could not because of the objectives. I'd rather KO her rather than let her see me grabbing the ledger. Then I noticed I had flashbomb. Boom. "Eek, I'm blind." Grab ledger. Not very graceful, but got the ledger without breaking the objectives. How was this supposed to be done? I like being forced to use tools to get forward, but given the objectives saying avoid commotion, the flashbomb felt like the wrong tool for this situation.

 

I actually suspected that this would cause some frustration and thought about having the desk lady leave the lobby unattended at times, but that would have made it too easy so I left it as is. The ledger shouldn't be that hard to grab by the way. You wait until the lady is as far from the door as possible, by the keys, and then move in, shut lights of, and then walk in and grab it. The keys on the other hand are virtually impossible to get without alerting her in any way.

 

Finally I found the room number 3 in the maze of corridors. Was it really in the basement? Who would want a basement hotel room? The room door was unlocked: who would sleep in a hotel with a mistress and leave the door unlocked? I went in, the guy got up and went to the crapper. I shot him in the face. The woman got up and just stood there next to her bed without doing anything. I left the corpse to lie on the room entrance and the lady standing oblivious next to the bed. I left the scene.

 

Yes, design flaw. The bottom windowless rooms are more like caverns...

Don't know if this stationary lady is a 2.0-bug (I haven't tried it on 2.0 yet). It may also be my fault because this mission alternates between five different AI-alignments and it's totally possible that some bugs have sneaked by in the path design.

 

On my way out I noticed a dead city watch guard on the street. No idea what happened to him. *Shrug* End mission.

 

That is strange. Should not happen but apparently it did...exactly where did you find him?

 

It was clear you had spend a huge amount of effort in the mission. Maybe next time you should keep it a bit smaller, more tight and interesting. The majority of the time should not be spend unlocking doors without anyone nearby or wandering in lots of streets that don't even pay any role in the mission.

 

I hope I wasn't too harsh, I just want to give you feedback so that you can improve your future works.

 

As said earlier, the design with huge outdoor areas without exact purpose was mainly to make a back drop for the hotel and rather to make a 'Call of Duty'- like corridor mission without 'useless' spaces, I wanted to try something new, more like a sandbox and a places where you could climb into random houses and steal stuff from ordinary people. A bit like 'Business as usual' without too many high climactic areas.

 

No need to apologize for harshness, I can imagine Sotha sitting in his sauna with his laptop in his lap, muttering and cursing at the game ;)Put some more water onto the stones!

 

 

 

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Regarding the water sabotage mission I'll bump my earlier response...

 

Ok, since some questions have arised regarding the saboteur objectives here are some explanations, step by step:

 

How to pollute the fresh water?

Mild spoiler

 

There's a room in the cellar with a pump of some sort that was used to pump the human waste out from the sanitary system and out the sewer pipe. That pump is out of order since a long time and now there is only a wooden ledge where the shit can slide down on, and down the drain.

 

More explanation

 

There is a bucket with human waste in that room.

 

Even more explanation

 

In the machine room with all the pipes, the room beside the boiler room, there is a large cylindrical tank with a hatch on top. That is the fresh water tank.

 

This is how you do it!

 

Carry the bucket with feces and dump it in the fresh water tank.

 

 

How to make the owner sad? What a about the lobby?

Mild spoiler

 

The target is that two-ball-chandalier above the stairs.

 

More explanation

 

Read Randhofs diary in his office

 

But where's that?

 

The office is located in the cellar, at the far east side. There is a door right out on the street nearby.

 

Need more clarifications?

 

What does the diary tells you about the acid?

 

???

 

The protective sleeve on the chain that holds the chandalier in place is damaged at floor level. The acid is good for burning through metal.

 

So what? Where shall I go?

 

If you go in the main entrance, there is a flight of stairs, directly to the left, in front of the booth. Go up the stairs and then up the ladder to the attic.

 

Yeah...Now what?

 

Drop the acid to your hands and use the acid on the chain.

 

 

Better turn the power of first...

 

 

Now what about this framing objective?

 

Read Randhofs diary in his office

 

But where's that?

 

The office is located in the cellar, at the far east side. There is a door right out on the street nearby.

 

Okey, and now what?

 

As you can see, he's ben thinking about stealing from the hotel. This triggers the new objective. Don't forget to take the key to the vault.

 

Yeah, but how do I complete the objective?

 

The hotel has a vault with lots of money, and Randhof is trusted with the key.

 

Okay, but where is that?

 

The vault is located in the office, besides the lobby.

 

Cannot enter...

 

The switch is on the side of the book case.

 

More problems?

 

The glas box is has a pickable lock

 

Okay, and now what?

 

Randhof mentions where he lives, in the diary.

 

Yeah, but I don't get it...

 

Go through the kitchen and out the loading bay at the west side of the facility. Right across the street is a tenement. There lives Randhof.

 

I'm new to this...

 

The money bags are dumpable. Just drop them anywhere in his appartment.

 

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@FM

The dead guard position: if you look at the hotel from the starting position, there is a street going leftward into the city, away from the hotel. There is some kind of sewer grating in the middle of the street. The guard was lying at the sewer grating.

 

Me? Grumpy? Yep, a rather constant state of mind. ;)

 

And about linearity: there are many shades of gray between a full sandbox (white) and a COD linearity (black.)

 

What I just want to say from a design point of view:

 

Ultimately, the game is supposed to be fun. What good is a full city sandbox if it does not entice the player to play, but rather repels the player? Here the problem was, the way I see it, the ratio of gameplay elements per square meters of play area. There was a huge playing area, but the gameplay was diluted because there weren't much gameplay on that area: low amount of AI, lots of locks to pick, not much interesting things going on

 

I would rather see smaller area maps with more tense sneaking gameplay. In this map, there was a lot of area to go to, but the areas or the plot weren't that interesting to make me bother to explore more. And there wasn't much gameplay as the majority of locations were empty of AI the most of the time.

 

Synopsis: don't make a mission with COD-like linearity, but a sandbox isn't worth the effort either, if it is not fun. A smaller map with more tense gameplay is better, a balance between these two opposites should be found. A smaller map is also easier and faster to make, has less 'useless' areas and generally have a more interesting feel, and is not so resource hungry for the computer.

 

The perfect recipe for a well-balanced FM is probably obtained like this::

 

Design a map with COD-like linearity, but then, still in the design phase, add tunnels and corridors and loops that break the linearity. Academically, it is just a linear flow chart, with links added between the nodes at well designed positions. You also gotta have an optimal amount gameplay elements per square meter of play area. The location should present an interesting challenge. Each node in the flowchart should have at least one interesting thing in it, and a locked pickable door does not count as 'interesting.'

 

I'm claiming that, in general, it is a mistake to make a so large mission, that you are unable to fill all the areas with interesting, challenging and meaningful gameplay elements.

 

That said, you are a very capable FMA, make no mistake, if you weren't I don't think I would be spending so much time here trying to give you some feedback and advice. All you gotta do is to get that one level-up of general FM design and your maps would be among the top ones in this community.

 

Cheers, man! :)

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Hey there, I just finished this FM as a saboteur but I wouldn't have been able to, without the walkthrough posted here. I noticed a few problems:

 

 

-The bucket of shit fell through the floor and since I didn't know what to look for before checking out the walkthrough, I didn't realize this had happened. Of course I spent quite some time looking for the solution and was pretty frustrated. Of course, this is not your fault. I eventually noclipped in that room to find the bucket. I suppose this bug occured due to the new friction code in 2.0. I tried to reproduce it, but no dice.

-The diary of that inventor is a closed book that stands right to some junk books. I frobbed one of the junk books, realized it was junk and concluded that all the books were junk. FALSE! I would reommend using opened books for useable books, like other authors do.

 

 

Anyway, I really liked the gameplay idea as saboteur. Too bad the issues I had pretty much corrputed my experience.

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Hey there, I just finished this FM as a saboteur but I wouldn't have been able to, without the walkthrough posted here. I noticed a few problems:

 

 

-The bucket of shit fell through the floor and since I didn't know what to look for before checking out the walkthrough, I didn't realize this had happened. Of course I spent quite some time looking for the solution and was pretty frustrated. Of course, this is not your fault. I eventually noclipped in that room to find the bucket. I suppose this bug occured due to the new friction code in 2.0. I tried to reproduce it, but no dice.

-The diary of that inventor is a closed book that stands right to some junk books. I frobbed one of the junk books, realized it was junk and concluded that all the books were junk. FALSE! I would reommend using opened books for useable books, like other authors do.

 

 

Anyway, I really liked the gameplay idea as saboteur. Too bad the issues I had pretty much corrputed my experience.

 

Glad you liked it anyway!

 

Crappy thing the crap falls through the floor...ecpecially because it's essential to the objective.

 

The readables thing has been pointed out by another player. Point taken :)

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

An excellent mission, I very much look forward to seeing more like this! I do like the strong stealth objectives and playing style.

 

I agree, once I figured out how to

get the guest book (I lock picked every single guest room first!)

, playing as assassin was rather short ... but it was a nice and easy intro to a very complex map. I was very pleased with a stealth score of 0/6.

 

Thief was much more interesting, but I had to look at the nice playthrough posted here to discover that I'd never been anywhere near

the sewers or the room with the key to the vault -- I lock picked the external double doors instead

. Ho hum.

 

Saboteur is interesting, but has its difficulties. I was put off the obvious use of the

acid

by the fact that frobbing with it selected just flashes red -- I never thought to bring it into my hands before reading the solution here.

 

I am stuck on one final objective as Saboteur:

wrecking the heating system

. I've really no clue, so I'd be grateful for a hint. Seems to be the one target nobody's mentioned problems with, so I'm probably missing something rather obvious.

 

A couple of little bugs: 1. the cash box that won't open; 2. light switches don't highlight even though they're frobbable.

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Re the heating system - it is a long time since I played this but in the boiler room

I think that there are a number of readables explaining what not to do

 

 

Oh blast! Thank you. I do get blind at times, it took me ages to find, but wasn't particularly hidden :(

 

Again a stealth score of 0/6 (6 suspicious level 1) ... seems a bit odd as the guard on my floor was wandering around with his sword out, which presumably ought to rate a rather more severe stealth score.

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That should have been fixed in 1.01...Sure you play the latest version?

Well, of course I try to ... but I use the in game downloader, and it doesn't believe that there are any updates for naog. Here's the entry in missions.tdminfo (as you can see, collecting loot is not my major goal!):

 

tdm_missioninfo naog

{

"downloaded_version" "1"

"last_play_date" "2013-11-14"

"mission_completed_0" "1"

"mission_loot_collected_0" "0"

"mission_completed_1" "1"

"mission_loot_collected_1" "1340"

"mission_completed_2" "1"

"mission_loot_collected_2" "1170"

}

 

I have a feeling that there's an inadequacy in the downloader, and it completely fails to recognise that missions have updated. As there is no checksum listed, I'm inclined to suspect that the algorithm for working out whether a new version needs downloading is a bit ... limited.

 

Edit: How *do* I get the latest version of the missions?

Edited by Araneidae
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  • 2 weeks later...

I just finished this on Saboteur yesterday. Quite a few hours and lots of fun.

 

I did experience the white cash box issue but all goals were met so not a biggie.

 

Such a large mission, I would have appreciated more readables, even some random stuff, thoughts/journals of guests whether meaningful or not to the plot; side stories, misc. tales, etc. It would have rounded out the whole feel of the hotel mission much better IMO.

 

Unfortunately aside from the selected player character goals as Assassin/Thief/Saboteur, the entire place seemed very cold, impersonal, and empty which for me felt like a wasted opportunity.

 

 

 

I didn't have any issues with the poo bucket falling through the floor, I just didn't have much of a clue as to how to poison the water supply. I read here some of the hints and then went to where I recalled hearing the flys and that solved it.

 

 

Also, the "Steal from at least 3 guests" objective on Saboteur was easily enough done however this was a really ritzy hotel and yet hardly any of the guests had any thing valuable?

 

 

I would have though every room to have some goodies, all wardrobes, nightstands, suitcases...empty? what? I haven't played through on Thief obj. and maybe that is addressed there however I wouldn't think those things should be removed for a Saboteur play through. They're just not a goal, they should still be there. Guests at a wealthy hotel should have stuffs! :P With most everyones bags and closets empty, it made the whole ritzy hotel theme seem false/fake and contrived.

 

Such a shame with all of the great mapping, rooms, environments, streets, and audio.

 

The acid/chandelier objective I didn't have any issues with. I thought it was cleverly done and the readable indicated that the housing on the upper part of the chain protected it. I thought the uncovered portion at the bottom would be larger however I just moved the acid to hands and stood back and left click threw it at the chain (with the power on!) and it worked. The first time hand applied it with the power on and it killed me! Haha! I was like, DOH! I enjoyed the mechanic.

 

 

 

 

I did enjoy it but the experience still feels hollow and doesn't make me want to revisit it for the other 2 player classes :\

 

Making the map feel more alive and lived in with more readables, more conversations, etc. would have gone a long way from lifting this up from a good FM to a truly excellent experience, as a player.

 

You have some really clever and inventive ideas and I'm still eager to play more maps made by you so take all of this with a grain of salt. :)

Edited by Lux
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  • 2 months later...

Really good looking mission but like Sotha I have to say most of the explorable areas seem rather empty. A lot of exploration to be had but not a whole lot inside those areas to find. I liked looking around but again it seemed very empty of things and AIs. The objectives although different were very well placed in terms of difficulty to figure them out. Assassin was the easiest and could be done in just minutes. Thief required far more exploration, middle of the road. And Saboteur required doing far more and thinking far more than on Thief as well as doing some of the things you had to do on Thief.

 

I had minor performance issues outside but only in certain areas, like the beginning spot for Assassin difficulty. I had the cash box bug as well, but the link in the original post to v1.01 is broken (expired, it says-- should use a free mediafire account or some other non-expiring hosting for these things) and the in-game downloader only seems to grab the original version.

Edited by GUFF
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