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Concept for Future Missions


Cambridge Spy

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Some time in the future, I intend to try making a map for TDM. This will be the first of a series of missions I have potential plots for, each one part of an overarching storyline. Right now, I have at least five missions with settings I thought of:

 

1. A thieves' hideout. A wealthy merchant has arranged to come to this hideout to do a business deal with the gang's leader (First mission, and I'll make the map small).

2. A mansion. You track the merchant to this place, loot it, and find out who his business partners are.

3. A prison. You infiltrate this place in order to rescue a fence who knows the whereabouts of a pirate captain.

4. Docks. You infiltrate a warehouse or other establishment, observe the captain, and follow her back to her ship and end the mission hiding among some yet-to-be-loaded cargo (What do you think about the idea of having an all-female crew in a TDM mission? Also, this will be the largest of the five I have concepts for).

5. Ship. Loot the place and read the captain's log and/or cargo manifests before heading back to your starting point, while not being seen by the crew and without resorting to violence (including blackjacking). The ambient track used in the "House of Theo" mission (mansion_piano01.ogg) could be used for the ship's interior.

 

Any future mission I might have a try at making could have the following features:

  • Lots of conversations. It kind of bugs me how there aren't that many scripted conversations in TDM missions.
  • Briefing videos, complete with voiceover. There just aren't that many voiced briefing videos in TDM missions.
  • Sensitive AI. You'll need to think twice every time you open a door, snuff out a torch, or steal even a single valuable.
  • Extra NPCs on higher difficulty levels. Is it possible to do this in TDM?
  • Optional objectives involving stealing every loot in the mission (inspired by Lords & Legacy).

What do you think about this? I don't have time to start using DarkRadiant, I have enough stuff to do, but sometime during the year, I'll start looking into DarkRadiant and its features. For now, I'm posting these concepts here. What do you think about these concepts?

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"Let me guess - little blue men with three heads stole your sweetroll?"

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Some time in the future ...

 

Welcome! Looks like you have an excellent plan.

 

(First mission, and I'll make the map small).

 

Yes! If first missions are too large, they can overwhelm you at the same time you're learning Dark Radiant, and that will become frustrating.

 

 

Extra NPCs on higher difficulty levels. Is it possible to do this in TDM?

 

Yes. Many map authors have done this, myself included.

 

Good luck!

 

Don't be afraid of asking questions questions questions. Everyone here is very helpful.

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I find somehow interesting how will you acquit of the concept of female crew.

 

Yeah, that's going to be a bit of an issue, given that there aren't enough female models and voices. Though we can create new models based around the female rogue and female thief models and remove the boots. ^_^

Edited by Cambridge Spy

"Let me guess - little blue men with three heads stole your sweetroll?"

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Great plan, and I agree with starting small, very important to not get overwhelmed to begin with, as there are all sorts of unforeseen things to deal with.

 

Also realize investing a ton of time in conversations and videos will appeal to some players, but many will simply knock out the AI or move on while they are occupied and assured of no interference while they, you know, play the game. Players don't load up the game to play when they want to watch TV, they watch TV. Putting passive entertainment into what users expect to be an active experience contradicts things a bit.

 

I groan whenever I see a mission start with a video and hit escape to get on with playing the game. The purpose of videos used to be to cover loading from disk and disk swaps, then later loading from slow CDs, none of which apply nowadays.

 

The only reason I bring it up is because your awesome design plan seems to focus on some stuff that should be enhancements to a game experience, not the core experience, if that makes sense?

 

But yes, it's easy to add other female or child characters to a mission if you never meet them. There's a child, and a female inventor, in one of my missions that the player hears about, sees evidence of, and indirectly interacts with, but never crosses paths with them directly. Also ship crew could be female led, and have male conscripts to round out the duties.

 

Not only may you have extra NPCs, or differently equipped AIs on higher difficulty levels, you may have different attributes to them, as well as different all sorts of things. You'll need a way to communicate that to players beforehand though, as many play on the same setting, or choose their setting based on loot requirements, since few FMs vary the objects/details/objectives much between levels. Oh and don't expect players to read the mission notes before they play, most don't.

 

So you might want to budget your designing around what provides the most bang for the buck, sure, I provided a lot of extras in Inn Business for players who would enjoy those extras, a minority, but it didn't take a lot of time for me to do so. As long as you are prepared that a lot of players don't do optional objectives and expect that, hopefully it'll be a rewarding experience for you too.

"The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out."

- Baron Thomas Babington Macauley

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What I actually had in mind was the story behind the female crew. While clearly male crews are pretty usual, female crew is something extraordinary. Captain has to have a reason for that and I'd like to know why. But maybe I'm just thinking too much :)

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She was kidnapped by pirates. She was scrappy. She earned their respect as she grew up and took over. She killed them all and replaced them with women she could trust.

 

She was raped. She fled humanity, took a rowboat out to a deserted island and lived off the land. A pirate ship came too close, she snuck on board, killed slit the captains throat and was too much for those that remained. She gradually replaced men with able women with each ship they attacked, freeing the slaves.

 

Um, what else...daughter of a mage, she learned all his secrets, then set off from home to make her way in the world.

 

Could also be a woman who believes women are more capable than men and has set out to prove it in the most testosterone filled field she could.

 

Lost a bar bet? "I bet you can't crew a pirate ship ya' wench!"

 

Haunting, ghost of former sex slave kills any male on board overnight, player be warned.

 

Disease that didn't afflict women aboard, slaves had to fill in for missing crew as they were adrift.

 

That's all I've got at the moment.

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"The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out."

- Baron Thomas Babington Macauley

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She was kidnapped by pirates. She was scrappy. She earned their respect as she grew up and took over. She killed them all and replaced them with women she could trust.

 

My life story is copyrighted, I'm afraid. You'll have to think of something else.

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My life story is copyrighted, I'm afraid. You'll have to think of something else.

 

Sorry, your life has been taken down due to DMCA claim. You'll need to file a counter claim in triplicate and provide a link to prior art from an objective separate unbiased source, with verifiable date/time stamp prior to April 8th, 2014, 17:01 EDT.

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"The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out."

- Baron Thomas Babington Macauley

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Certain characters in my planned missions are going to be named after characters from various works. Try and guess where the names come from.

 

The gang leader in my planned first mission is named Percy Pym, and some of his underlings are named Bottomly, Standforth, Greenbottle, and De Pledge.

 

Some City Watch higher-ups you will encounter in the planned prison mission are named Hollister, Ackerman, Knott, Todhunter, and Thornton.

 

And finally, I'm thinking of naming the pirate captain "Captain Mildred".

 

What do you think about having the pop culture references in there?

"Let me guess - little blue men with three heads stole your sweetroll?"

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I find somehow interesting how will you acquit of the concept of female crew.

The Thief universe is much more egalitarian than the real world (used to be) in terms of gender -- TDM's universe appears to be a bit less so, but that shouldn't stop a mapper from building their own concepts. I like it a lot when fantasy universes subvert expectations somewhat and are totally unapologetic about it, in such a case I'd probably enjoy it even more if there was no big deal or any justification needed behind the concept of an all-female crew.

 

Re. cultural references, if I were to write something with pop culture nods that would be a huge forbidden zone for me. In general I dislike breaking the fourth wall such as it happens when a reference is obvious, jarring and not open to interpretation. That being said, being a stinky Frenchman I recognize none of the names you are thinking of (I take it they're from UK fiction works?), and I actually find them great. I guess YMMV depending on where you're from, but in all honesty they sound like a perfect fit for the Dark Mod.

 

Re. the first post, I like it. Reminds me of Thief 2, straightforward thievin' plus I got the hots for docks and ships.

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If you haven't already, you should go through Fidcal's A-Z tutorial to learn the ropes.

 

My favorite building plan is called step-wise refinement, where you build the entire space of your FM first, and then take passes section by section refining them in steps until they are as detailed as you like. The other important tip is to think about visportal placement right at the beginning, so kind of mazy tunnels and shortish lines-of-sight & VPs closing regularly as you walk around. Will be worth it to plan for it early than respond to low performance later. Oh, and try to keep your brushwork clean and leave the wacky angles and slivers to func_stats if you can help it. Good luck!

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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