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Fan Mission: La Banque Bienveillante by Airship Ballet (2014/11/22)


Airship Ballet

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Oh, and the minimalist in me balks at the frankly embarrassing amount of loot in this FM, but that's more of a personal quibble.

 

In 1608, the French treasury was estimated to hold around 32.5 million livres, and the 1640 conversion rate for livres is 6.69 to 6.12g of gold.. about 35.4 tons.

 

Was also one of those rare missions where I didn't mind screwing up and killing guards - this is too much money to leave in the hands of mercy, after all.

 

It's not really that much money at all.. if anything, it hints a lot of people in the TDM universe are living beyond their means.. an eery parallel of 2008 where people drove expensive cars and lived on borrowed money.

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Woops, math failed on that, should be 29.5 tons. Compared to which, the amount stored in Le Banque is still a pittance.

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Now that you have released mission v 1.1 the game plays well, but

even though the wire box is now open, I have not found the way to cut the wires for safe deposit box access. I have tried the sword, the show matches, the cleaver from the kitchen, and just pulling the wires. I cannot seem to affect any of the wires. A hint please.

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Now that you have released mission v 1.1 the game plays well

It played well before :huh: but you'll have to close and re-open the wire box for the wires to go frobable again. It's been a fair while since release now so I'll have another revision upped with all the problems found fixed, including that one from a few posts ago.
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The wires should highlight, just take it slow, unless that's been broken with the update, careful mouse movements got them to highlight for me on the release version. Nevermind, solution posted above.

Edited by Xarg

Intel Sandy Bridge i7 2600K @ 3.4ghz stock clocks
8gb Kingston 1600mhz CL8 XMP RAM stock frequency
Sapphire Radeon HD7870 2GB FLeX GHz Edition @ stock @ 1920x1080

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Thanks for this mission, it was nicely done and interesting to have a female antagonist in the story.

 

I had some problems mostly with the stuff that's already been mentioned,

 

 

The deposit alarm wires toggling between frobable and un-frobable depending on how many times you opened and closed the cover can be slightly confusing. I was also in the way of the secret exit the first time I flicked the switch to open it, so it got stuck half-open.

 

The first time I played I didn't get the alternative loot drop, so carrying 6 X crates + 3 bags of loot for a total of 9 trips out to the window got fairly boring. I'm not sure what would have helped here, since by this stage the player will most likely have the guards KO'ed or didn't wake them. Maybe some scripted "disturbances" halfway through the loot-ferrying to keep the player on their toes. I also found that the crates etc. seemed too light/silent in-game if you accidentally dropped them.

 

Other than that...The sequence when you trip the alarm was kick-ass. I liked the length of the individual readables, not too long or too short. The themes were more "adult" than usual and I think this helped believability. If anything, I would have liked to see slightly more intrigue, flawed characters, consequences of alcohol over-indulgence etc.

 

The hidden stuff was nice, but some were really impossible to find (painting switch + vault button) unless you get the hints at the start lol. Maybe an oblique reference in some readables could help here. I don't like getting too much help at the start in a mission since I want to get the most value out of exploring by myself, but it's hard to know in advance how much of a hint the optional purchase will give you at the start.

 

Edited by Peanut
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the crates etc. seemed too light/silent in-game if you accidentally dropped them

I did want to make them heavier, but they lag behind your view like crazy the heavier they get, so I decided against it.

The sequence when you trip the alarm was kick-ass.

You're the first to mention that! I guess people have been quickloading when the alarm went off, which is a shame <_< Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed yourself!

 

So, v1.2 will be up on the downloader soon. I've added a bunch of readables to tell a little story about the higher-ups at La Banque, and why Morley's at work so late. I've fixed the wire box again and also AI should be pathing properly where they previously weren't. Some purchased readable hints are a bit too more explanatory now and there's a hint lying around with regards to the button in the vault. I think that's everything, I fixed all that's been reported anyway.

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The minimalist in you is welcome to go back to picking up cock rings and ink wells :huh:

 

I haven't played the newer Thief, if this is some sort of reference to that! I find the attitude kinda weird considering I said I liked your mission, too. The high loot cap isn't a huge deal or even a bad thing, just different from what I was used to. Again, personal quibble. I'll emphasize again that I came away with more good feelings than bad, so definitely keep doin' what you're doin'.

 

I thought the secret passage switch thing was a bug, to be honest. Is it intentional that it can only be interacted with once?

Edited by Ryan101
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(...) So, v1.2 will be up on the downloader soon. I've added a bunch of readables to tell a little story about the higher-ups at La Banque, and why Morley's at work so late.(...)

I thank thee and congratulate thou once more on this formidable piece of enjoyment. *bows*

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I find the attitude kinda weird considering I said I liked your mission, too.

It's a reference to Thi4f, also a joke. I don't treat people differently depending on the reception of the mission, so praise doesn't make you exempt from leg pulling, nor does criticism encourage it.

I thought the secret passage switch thing was a bug, to be honest. Is it intentional that it can only be interacted with once?

No, it was preventative. If you were to get a box stuck and them spam the button trying to get it out, it would break entirely, whereas if you got a box stuck and could only pull it once, you could get it stuck, move the box and have it finish moving. That said, people were hitting it with their own clip model which does actually stop it, so I've just changed it back.

 

The new version's up, though it's completely lacking a briefing because I'm a fool. It'll be back later!

Edited by Airship Ballet
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Thanks Airship! I'll have to replay it since happy with the amount of loot I found only 2/3 of it. Great mission with great design where every place, even the bathroom, has its specific function. My impression is that in many missions there are such places (bathroom, toilet) mostly for the sake of realism. Sure, nothing wrong with that

but bathroom as a part of lascivious story brought life there :)

 

 

I did not stumble on the before mentioned bugs except one: walking on the carpet in the manager's office sounded like stepping on the wood.

 

Maybe I'm stretching a point but one moment of the story I find quite curious:

The guy in madame's bedroom was meant to be a guard or a husband? If guard is the case, maybe it's strange to have him in such intimate place as bedroom. If it is a husband, as I suggest from the letter on the desk, than he has rather too poor appearance, even though one might think that he looks this way because of his miserable wife

 

 

Speaking of miserable wife, maybe it is because of my playing on lower resolution that is a standard nowadays or by sheer accident, but I really liked the Madame Manager's face after I K.O.ed her: it had somewhat "I'm not happy with the course of my life" alcoholic expression.

 

In the end, I understand and even concur with your reluctance towards polls. Nonetheless, it seems that we need a contest to have because your missions should be judged

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Very well-put, thanks ^_^ I've always been of the belief that all rooms should have a purpose, even if it's a single piece of loot. Empty rooms just sap the soul of someone who went to great lengths to get in there and now has to leave empty-handed.

 

 

The guy in her bedroom is her husband, a man who has both married from the working class into wealth and also has been worn down by his wife to the point of undergoing Stockholm Syndrome.

 

Edited by Airship Ballet
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???

I keep two different TDM installs: one to map with and one to test packaged .pk4s with. There was an inconsistency between xdata because I'd been working entirely out of the FM install and accidentally overwrote it with the mapping one, so the briefing got erased. I had it re-upped since though, so it's back.
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Just a note - the new version doesn't show up in the game downloader so needed to remove the previous version 1.1 and download 1.2

 

Played through again on hardest trying to ghost

Managed to return the key and get all the loot in Morley's office but after doing everything else I just couldn't find a way of getting into the vault without blackjacking the guard

It might be possible with a noise arrow but I somehow doubt it

Edited by Oldjim
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The low ceilings throughout are just a preference of mine. I find vertically compact spaces to be way more believable, while big ones just generally look wasted, and are difficult to rationalise in more modern and functional buildings.

 

The mission looks great the way it is, but with the low ceilings you sometimes fail knocking the guards out because you hit the ceiling instead and that's annoying. So just for practicality reasons I'd raise the ceilings a bit.

Apart from that: Great mission, I had fun and I found the concepts interesting. Keep it up!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Congrats on the release! I finished this up yesterday and found it enjoyable. ^_^ Buying things at the shop was a different twist for TDM, so look forward to seeing how ALL the loot I found transfers over to your next installment.

 

Just a few things to mention (some already mentioned):

 

The low ceilings in some spots made it difficult to find the right spot to knock a guard out but I managed.

Finding the hidden switches - never really saw them but as I knew they had to be there I just clicked on everything everywhere until found.

One thing I didn't see mentioned here - in the managers residence there's a painting in the dining room for loot that I was able to frob from the living room when I leaned into the painting.

 

 

Thanks for all your hard work and look forward to more missions from you!

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Nice mission, AB!

 

I tried to get all the way through w/o asking questions, but in the end had to come back and read the spoilers.

 

 

 

1 - Didn't know how to find the secret compartment in the manager's office.

 

2 - Didn't know what to do about the "deposit withheld" situation.

 

3 - Didn't grasp what to do about the "alternate drop" situation. Since the mission can be completed w/o carrying the loot bags or crates anywhere, I'm not sure what the incentive is to go through the extra effort to move those items out of the vault. Doing so didn't check off any objectives.

 

4 - My impression is that w/o collecting the various docs in the shop, the mission might be unplayable. I found one case where an alternate hint was given in the map in case the matching doc wasn't taken, but I don't know if there are alternate hints to cover the hints contained in the other docs.

 

5 - I couldn't open the upper-right cabinet door in the owner's bedroom. It just made clunky sounds, but wouldn't open.

 

6 - Since I couldn't solve #1, I had no idea what I needed to carry out of the bank to satisfy the evidence objective. That was satisfied when I read the spoilers and got the painting in the owner's office open and grabbed the letter.

 

7 - Cutting the wires in the vault seemed easy enough, but I didn't know what that then allowed me to do. I completed the mission w/o doing anything related to that act.

 

 

 

Again, thanks for a fun time. Looking forward to your next mission.

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