Fan Mission #80: A Noble Home (The Accountant Prologue) by Goldwell & Bikerdude (2014/03/14)

[Vae]

I am currently working on part two which addresses a lot of the problems of the first one (mainly linear entrances) Part two will feature multiple entrances and also the rope arrow! Plus the map will be much larger with more to explore.

 

Sounds good...

Edited March 25, 2014 by Vae

[HAL-Fan]

Short but very nice (short doesn't imply lower quality for me - it is good that one has a short levels at diposal just to kill some time). Among other things I enjoyed: 1. raindrops on the windows (don't remember that I have seen such thing in other missions) and 2. and mostly - almost "Garrett-style" of voice acting!!!

[Goldwell]

Fen did the first Lets Play of the mission which can be seen here

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT4YfqVKDtg

 

Very hilarious and quite interesting from a design point of view watching someone else play. I see A LOT of mistakes I made after watching his play through which Part 2 will hopefully not suffer from.

 

Thanks for doing that Fen! Hope your throat gets better soon

Edited March 31, 2014 by Goldwell

[FenPhoenix]

Thanks

 

I regret not slowing down to notice and appreciate the rain on the glass.

[AluminumHaste]

Oh the rain effect on the glass is seeeeeexy.

[UnrealOne]

Had lots of fun playing it, a good solid mission, hope there is more to come, keep it up.

Edited April 1, 2014 by UnrealOne

[raymeld]

Thank , you excellent ! Finished in less than forty minutes which , believe you me , for me is good. Wish it had lasted a bit longer. And I found all but twenty of the loot on the level I played at , also good for me if not the purists on here!!

[Goldwell]

Thank , you excellent ! Finished in less than forty minutes which , believe you me , for me is good. Wish it had lasted a bit longer. And I found all but twenty of the loot on the level I played at , also good for me if not the purists on here!!

Thank you for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it and this is just the prologue to setup the base of the story however the next part in the series includes a good chunk of the story I have written so it will be much longer

 

Had lots of fun playing it, a good solid mission, hope there is more to come, keep it up.

 

Glad you enjoyed it! There are 3 more parts to come in The Accountant series. Currently I am working on Part 2 which is coming along nicely, I have the story planned out fully and the level design too, also i'm about 700 brushes into building with a fair bit to go

[Nico A.]

Okay, I really want to leave my impressions here. All in all I loved this (rather small) mission and can't wait for the other ones in the series. It felt a bit like TDP, but it only looked nicer <3

 

+ I loved the voice acting. It felt really professional.

+ I usually don't like weather effects in TDM, but the rain was very well done.

+ The introduction to the mission was really good (the fence). Also, I liked how the mission built up from the dark sewers to the noble mansion.

+ The difficulty and the length of the mission was really good for a tutorial/beginning mission. For this, the balance between linearity and complexity was about perfect.

+ I found the textures brilliant.

 

Some negative things I want to add:

 

- Only 4 missions in this campaign? I'd love to see at least twice as much! Is there any possibility to extend the storyline, maybe adding an unexpected twist? Because I think this is the best campaign's first mission so far.

- The trailer was atmospherically the best introduction to a TDM mission I've seen so far. So why isn't it included in the actual mission?! I love the voice acting and the images! Please include it!

- The font of the loading screen should probably have a bit higher resolution.

- Some things were unexpectedly not frobable imo. For example, the carrots were, but the apples not... also, I'd like if all doors which look the same are frobable, even if you can't open them...

- another entrance into the building would have been great, but that's not so bad for a first mission imo.

 

Keep up the good work!

[Goldwell]

Okay, I really want to leave my impressions here. All in all I loved this (rather small) mission and can't wait for the other ones in the series. It felt a bit like TDP, but it only looked nicer <3

 

+ I loved the voice acting. It felt really professional.

+ I usually don't like weather effects in TDM, but the rain was very well done.

+ The introduction to the mission was really good (the fence). Also, I liked how the mission built up from the dark sewers to the noble mansion.

+ The difficulty and the length of the mission was really good for a tutorial/beginning mission. For this, the balance between linearity and complexity was about perfect.

+ I found the textures brilliant.

 

Some negative things I want to add:

 

- Only 4 missions in this campaign? I'd love to see at least twice as much! Is there any possibility to extend the storyline, maybe adding an unexpected twist? Because I think this is the best campaign's first mission so far.

- The trailer was atmospherically the best introduction to a TDM mission I've seen so far. So why isn't it included in the actual mission?! I love the voice acting and the images! Please include it!

- The font of the loading screen should probably have a bit higher resolution.

- Some things were unexpectedly not frobable imo. For example, the carrots were, but the apples not... also, I'd like if all doors which look the same are frobable, even if you can't open them...

- another entrance into the building would have been great, but that's not so bad for a first mission imo.

 

Keep up the good work!

 

Wow thank you for the kind words and thanks for playing! I'm glad you had a good time

 

A big reason why I am making these FMs is to show off my voice acting as I would love to make a career out of it one day so the fact that and others really like my voice acting is great to hear All of my campaign will feature plenty of voice acting from myself and possibly some other people too.

 

As for the campaign length I currently feel that is enough to capture the story I have planned out. However I have planned and thoroughly thought out the story for part two & three and compared to part one they are much bigger and grander on scale so hopefully that's enough to keep you happy, part 4 has a rough storyline written out but I need to see how its predecessors play out first.

 

I wanted to include the introduction trailer but The Dark Mod only supports a video format called ROQ which is incredibly bad quality and is quite painful to implement so I had to skip over it but for Part two I will try to ask some of my coding friends to implement the video playback code into the source or maybe someone here has that planned.

 

Same goes for the loading screen image, its original image is incredibly high quality but you need to scale it down but I don't personally mind this to be honest.

 

So yeah I am currently working on Part Two and things are coming along nicely, I don't have an ETA yet but I am working hard as there are some cool and never before done in TDM ideas I have planned so let's hope they all work out well in the final build

[Lux]

Just completed this FM and I have to say, compared to all the smaller FMs I've played this is a very solid first FM from you, Goldwell. Looking forward to the rest of this series for sure.

 

The voice acting was excellent. The audio cues where the player would frob something or enter somewhere and hear the main character speak where well done and well timed giving the player a sense of self, increasing immersion, and fleshing out the story for the player. Very well done.

 

The geometery and patrol routes fit the setting although they didn't provide much challenge for an experienced player. Still, a great mission for those players new to TDM.

 

I especially liked the freezer and office areas and the city streets section coming in to the housing area. You have a good attention to detail.

 

The audio, other than the voice work, was well placed and appropriate to the setting. It did what it should and nothing seemed out of place so you've done a good job also in this area.

 

There seems to be an issue with one or more of the ambient sounds or it could possibly be with my audio drivers, where there is a constant repetitive ticking going on when a certain ambient track is playing. Not quite sure what it is as its not the beginning or ending of the sound loop but something else. A bit distracting at times. Anyone else notice this? I noticed it mostly in the lower hallway in the manor. Could be an issue with the ambient sound itself, the info_location system or my audio drivers though I have noticed it prior when I was using onboard audio.

 

The texture work suited the locations and again, everything felt like it should and everything was put together believably, not distracting in any way and let the player focus on the objectives.

 

Other than the guard I mentioned earlier that was getting his circle on, the only 2 other bugs I noticed were:

 

1) the shelves in the kitchen in the small back room. The front vertical posts were not attached to the shelves.

2) in the back of the cellar there was an octagonal peach colored patch on the floor near the right side wall, next to the bottom right crate.

 

All in all a very solid first mission and definitely looking out for more FMs from you! Thanks!

[Bikerdude]

Feedback:

• I especially liked the freezer and office areas and the city streets section coming in to the housing area. You have a good attention to detail.
  
• The texture work suited the locations and again, everything felt like it should and everything was put together believably, not distracting in any way and let the player focus on the objectives.
  

Bugs:

• the shelves in the kitchen in the small back room. The front vertical posts were not attached to the shelves.
  
• in the back of the cellar there was an octagonal peach colored patch on the floor near the right side wall, next to the bottom right crate.
  

That was me in equal measure, good and bad.

[John_Quays]

Is it just me (and my weird performance problems), or the main street at the beginning is very performance heavy? I get 30 fps there, when otherwise I got a constant 60 fps w/ vsync. Someone else have experienced this?

[Goldwell]

The problem is the rain, sadly it doesn't seem to work that well and causes performance drops. I have the same thing happen when I play through too. You can optimize it more than I have here but it's only a few fps difference for the price of the rain completely disappearing when you step inside.

 

I found because that looked rather broken it was best to sacrifice a little performance for beauty

[Bikerdude]

@JQ you must have a low end system as the DC outside is well within in TDM limits

[John_Quays]

@JQ you must have a low end system as the DC outside is well within in TDM limits

 

Well, you said it was "quite good mid-range pc" and I shouldn't get slowdowns at all, save for very large missions, that's why I'm concerned. But I think the only problem was the rain, otherwise it was really great. I enjoyed it.

[AluminumHaste]

Well that's a simple fix, turn off vsync.

[John_Quays]

Well that's a simple fix, turn off vsync.

 

Well, 30 fps w/o vsync But hey, I can play Doom in 320x200 (upscaled) at 35 fps, so why am I complaining?

Edited April 6, 2014 by John_Quays

[Lux]

I absolutely love rain in FMs. It makes the mood more dreary with the ambient sound and visuals. I wish we had more missions with rain in them. Fidcal's tutorial map is obviously a great example of this as well.

[Sir Taffsalot]

Nice work guys. It's not the most original TDM FM but that's OK. Sometimes good gameplay and some nice visuals are enough to get the job done. I absolutely loved the view from the windows and the sound of the rain. I could have stared out the windows while listening to the rain for ages. I look forward to the next installment of The Accountant.

[Goldwell]

Nice work guys. It's not the most original TDM FM but that's OK. Sometimes good gameplay and some nice visuals are enough to get the job done. I absolutely loved the view from the windows and the sound of the rain. I could have stared out the windows while listening to the rain for ages. I look forward to the next installment of The Accountant.

 

Glad you enjoyed it!

 

The prologue is a rather typical Thief style mission but that's what I wanted for the prologue, to help ease you into The Accountant campaign with something simple and straight forward. Part two which i'm working on now has more adventurous gameplay with more open levels and much more lore to explore (I pretty much wrote a book about this universe haha).

 

And as for the nice visuals you can thank Mr. Bikerdude for his incredible bling techniques!

Edited April 16, 2014 by Goldwell

[plotzzz]

Could someone please give me a hint on how to get the

book ? (optional objective)

Thanks!

[Goldwell]

Could someone please give me a hint on how to get the

book ? (optional objective)

Thanks!

 

Vague hint

 

 

Its in a room downstairs inside the house

 

 

More specific

 

 

It's in the room second door on the right when you first enter the house downstairs

 

 

The actual location

 

 

In the room which is the second door on the right when you first enter it is the book laying on the bottom of the book shelf closest to the window

 

Edited April 20, 2014 by Goldwell

[plotzzz]

Thanks Goldwell.

Very nice little mission, with cool new features. The rain effect of windows are just amazing. Beginning is really well done. Enjoyed playing it.

[zenid]

Thanks!

Really fun mission! Loved the voice acting and the rain. Was fun to ghost the mission, too, since you really have to make use of the eavesdropping.

Got a little annoyed by doors that looked like I should be able to open them (handles), but couldn't. But enjoyed it really overall!