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T2 FM: Breaking the Stone by Hipbreaker (14/06/2014)


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HipBreaker is very excited to finally present to you my most recent FM "Breaking the Stone" for Thief 2 (NewDark 1.21)!

 

Downloads: (beware though, the mission is 383MB)

 

Southquarter

MediaFire

http://derfy.net/fms...e_Stone_v10.zip

http://www.transhuma...e_Stone_v10.zip

 

Description:

 

A satchel found its way into my residence recently, and that leaves me uneasy. The contents included a map to a town called Meliae, a sealed letter, a second letter addressed to myself, and 3,000 in gold. After my initial apprehension, I opened the letter addressed to me. It read:

 

“Mr. Garrett, it is good to finally track you down in request for assistance. As you may or may not know, change is rapidly occurring across this region as Archmage Victus forces his tyranny and beliefs on more and more innocent towns. After uncovering the secrets of the Dryads (those with whom we once shared our lives), he has extended his stay in our town of Meliae, torturing and killing anyone who disobeys him. We, who choose to remain anonymous, wish to employ you to remove Victus from our town. We don’t care how, but we need him gone. In addition to this, we have produced a sealed letter from Victus’ second in command, Valeria, in which she describes her plans to destroy Victus and assume his position as Archmage. You must plant this false evidence to cover all traces of our interference, thereby removing two problems at once. If you do this, we will be forever in your debt. Take the 3,000 as good faith, for triple awaits you if you succeed. Sincerely, the Meliai. ”

 

This doesn’t sound easy, but I can’t pass up the opportunity. I will begin on the cliff face, making my way in unnoticed. Once I find a way to rid the town of Victus (and pick up a few extra coins), I will meet with Basso outside the main gate where he is posing as a beggar with a carriage waiting for my departure. Hey, it never hurts to have a quick escape plan.

 

The Beta Team:

 

While HB's name is attached to this mission and he put in the majority of the work, he want to give credit where credit is due. He has had the privilege to work with a superb his beta testers, to the point where they all became more a team. Each and every one of them has gone above and beyond testing this mission. All have contributed content, bug fixes, edits, ideas, narrative assistance and unending support. Without this amazing group of individuals, you would not be playing the mission you are today. This mission is a result of the dedication and hard work of many individuals who continued to amaze and assist until the very end. So, from the bottom of my heart:

Thanks go to ffox, nickie, Nightwalker, Peter Smith, Tannar and Yandros!

 

In addition, HB would like to thank everyone who provides all of the wonderful tools and content available to use in fan missions. They have truly helped keep the T2 community alive with new and exciting things to see and do!

 

Enjoy! thumb.gif

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Neat!

 

I'm waist deep in TDM now, playing and/or designing, but the only T2 extended gaming I've ever done is T2X. If I ever carve out a chunk of time, I'll have to sink my teeth into some T2 FMs.

"Fancy burricks are afraid of dogs, if they encounter each other the dog barks and the burricks poop." - Thief: Deadly Shadows Game Designer

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FenPheonix did a "First Look" playthrough of part of this mission. I didn't watch the entire thing, but I caught him raving about the beauty of the mission multiple times. It looks like a really cool FM. Here's the vid:

Edited by Digi

"Fancy burricks are afraid of dogs, if they encounter each other the dog barks and the burricks poop." - Thief: Deadly Shadows Game Designer

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I watched the first part of the video and I don't understand why he was raving about the quality of the graphics.

Is this because of the limitations of the Thief engine as I thought that they weren't any better than quite a few of the FMs on here

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I watched the first part of the video and I don't understand why he was raving about the quality of the graphics.

Is this because of the limitations of the Thief engine as I thought that they weren't any better than quite a few of the FMs on here

 

By "on here" do you mean TDM? Because TDM's engine is more advanced than T2 in many ways, so most FMs are going to be visually superior. But if you're referring to other T2 FMs, as I'm sure FenPhoenix was, then maybe he just hasn't played as many visually stunning T2 missions.

Edited by Digi

"Fancy burricks are afraid of dogs, if they encounter each other the dog barks and the burricks poop." - Thief: Deadly Shadows Game Designer

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I've played the first mission so far and it's pretty great. References to the author's superb previous mission "Eclipsed" are in some readables, and maybe even references to another of my favorite T2 missions "Dark Messiah" with the "Shadow Dream" if I remember its story correctly.

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Just finished it, very cool campaign and the

second mission shadow nightmare was a pretty cool concept

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pffCyberm.gif Just finished it... the download. B)

 

Damn.. Are you on dialup or something? :P

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Why has each Thief FM at least one wall poster / painting with a naked woman on it?! xD

 

I think that's just from the community art assets that have been used for years now because the original games didn't have much variety or pretty much any kind of wall decals like posters to use. I think the one you're referring to is probably a beer poster with a mermaid on it?

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One advantage I think Thief/New Dark has over TDM is the ability to do huge, wide open levels. Or am I wrong? In Breaking The Stone, if you stand on the roof of the chapel , you can basically look down and see the entire level, almost 3500 brushes, with only minimal slowdown. I think a setup like that in TDM would bring most PCs to their knees (if not crash them altogether).

 

No offense to TDM, it's just a different engine with different capabilities, and it seems it wasn't really designed for openness, considering Doom3 is a corridor shooter. I think in most other areas, it's still technically superior to Thief.

Edited by brethren
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I was about to say T2 has a pretty hard 1000 poly limit which is merciless (things start disappearing after that point), but then I remembered New Dark allows more so you could get the 3500 brush. The light is baked in T2, so that's probably why you can get the longer lines of sight. Actually you can render very long lines of sight in TDM too...

 

Well to start with, TDM can push scenes with 10,000s or even 100Ks polys without any real slowdown, which blows T2's 3.5K brushes away, even with New Dark. I remember Komag rendering a whole 1 km long island in one of his experiments. The issue with TDM isn't the line of sight by itself, but the real-time shadowcasting lighting, especially if you have 3+ lights overlapping on a brush, that's going to slow the rendering down the more it happens in one rendered scene. Since that happens more the longer the line of sight, that's where I think you get the issue. But if some clever mappers could get around that lighting issue, not have too many overlapping, they could have very wide open areas too. But they have to think about lighting & portalling it in advance. I think mappers shy away from it because of the challenge. (T2 of course automatically portals & with its subtractive geometry sort of gives mappers a headstart with it, and they can light it however they want.)

 

If somebody has a link to that TDM video of the field of grass blowing in the wind, with the pond at the bottom, that's a good showcase of how wide open & pretty outdoor space can be. Or look at how open the archery area is in the tutorial.

 

Edit: There are still differences though of course where you could argue a preference one way or another. T2 is more a poly # issue (lighting doesn't really matter), where TDM is a overlapping-light-count issue (poly # doesn't really matter, by itself anyway). So you get different design thinking if you want to do open spaces, I think, and people may like the results of one or the other way more.

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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If somebody has a link to that TDM video of the field of grass blowing in the wind, with the pond at the bottom, that's a good showcase of how wide open & pretty outdoor space can be. Or look at how open the archery area is in the tutorial.

That was the one made by Arcturus and I have a copy of that map.

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FenPhoenix has continued his Let's Play of this on Youtube. With TDM, I tend to only watch Let's Plays if I've already played them myself. But since I don't really do T2 missions (though maybe I should start), I've been enjoying his runs.

 

It's very interesting visually and with the layout of the level. Lots of "layers" to the level, with interesting stuff and multiple path options packed into every area. Seems challenging too.

Edited by Digi

"Fancy burricks are afraid of dogs, if they encounter each other the dog barks and the burricks poop." - Thief: Deadly Shadows Game Designer

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It's definitely worth playing T1/T2/T3 missions if you aren't already. Lot of good stuff is out there and it's similar enough that you'll be able to pick it right up. With most recent missions using much better textures than the original games and a 800mb enhancement pack, it won't look too terrible either. Except for maybe AIs, but oh well.

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It's definitely worth playing T1/T2/T3 missions if you aren't already. Lot of good stuff is out there and it's similar enough that you'll be able to pick it right up. With most recent missions using much better textures than the original games and a 800mb enhancement pack, it won't look too terrible either. Except for maybe AIs, but oh well.

 

Oh, I'm sure there's a lot I'd enjoy from them. My issue is time. So it's a hope, but probably won't be feasible for a while.

"Fancy burricks are afraid of dogs, if they encounter each other the dog barks and the burricks poop." - Thief: Deadly Shadows Game Designer

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One advantage I think Thief/New Dark has over TDM is the ability to do huge, wide open levels. Or am I wrong? In Breaking The Stone, if you stand on the roof of the chapel , you can basically look down and see the entire level, almost 3500 brushes, with only minimal slowdown. I think a setup like that in TDM would bring most PCs to their knees (if not crash them altogether).

 

No offense to TDM, it's just a different engine with different capabilities, and it seems it wasn't really designed for openness, considering Doom3 is a corridor shooter. I think in most other areas, it's still technically superior to Thief.

It is also a question of mentality. The design ethos that has emerged in the TDM community is very sensitive to performance problems, and I believe people have become too cautious in terms of designing level spaces. I like a cramped maps as much as anyone, it is even my general style, but sometimes I want to make something bold and, yes, potentially performance-taxing. Which is how I built my latest mission, partly against the common wisdom. When the next TDM update is out, anyone can see how TDM can handle relatively open, wide spaces with a sense of scale. On some PCs, this will be a problem. On reasonably modern ones, not so much. And ten years from now (as it is with Thief nowadays), nobody will think twice about 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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Every time I try to start this mission it crashes. I'm able to get to the Change Difficulty screen, but when I click on "Breaking the Stone" to start the mission, it crashes. I'm using GarrettLoader 1.41 and I've already placed the Userscript bug fix file in the proper folder.

 

I have been able to get quite a few missions to work, but I can't figure out why Breaking the Stone won't work.

 

Does anyone have any helpful information, so I can get Breaking the Stone to work please?

Edited by SirGen
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Hate to ask an obvious question, but do you have New Dark installed? Because that would be required to run/play Breaking The Stone. I was under the impression that GarrettLoader was not compatible with New Dark, although I might be wrong on that. If you're still having troubles, maybe try loading the mission with Darkloader or even New Dark's built in misison loader, FMSel.

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