Fan Mission: The Golden Skull by Sotha (2015/10/24)

[gnartsch]

Very nice little mission!

 

Not sure what was supposed to happen in the end, but my dear love did not want to leave her cell.
She kept running in circles in her cell near the doorframe and nothing worked to make her to walk off.
So I had to kill her to get all the loot. I am such a dirty greedy little bastard!

 

[AluminumHaste]

Thanks Sotha, fun little mission, I was pretty angry at the lord at the end:

 

 

 

 

 

[Gast]

Completed, nice mission !

Edited October 27, 2015 by Gast

[AluminumHaste]

I left his wife alive though, so she can feel pain the way I did!

[Goldwell]

I left his wife alive though, so she can feel pain the way I did!

 

hahahaha very sadistic... I like it!

[Oldjim]

Second playthrough and I hit a major problem which stopped me completely

 

I found Emily first with no KO's but when she came upstairs she only killed the lord so when I went to get the skull there were the elite guard, the other guard, the wife and the male servant all in the room with the skull and they wouldn't leave it

 

[Bikerdude]

@Jim, not a flaw, but rather a realistic feature.

[Oldjim]

Yeah - miserable sods

Why couldn't they go and look somewhere else

[grayman]

I ran into the same feature. Still need to back up and try again.

[Sotha]

Second playthrough and I hit a major problem which stopped me completely

 

I found Emily first with no KO's but when she came upstairs she only killed the lord so when I went to get the skull there were the elite guard, the other guard, the wife and the male servant all in the room with the skull and they wouldn't leave it

 

 

I ran into the same feature. Still need to back up and try again.

 

Huh? I've not set the AI to have any custom paths if they are alerted. They should relax and resume normal patrols after The Incident

It is not a feature of this map. Perhaps a quirk in the AI behavior?

[Oldjim]

It may be because of the lady who seems to keep changing her mind about whether she should be searching

 

This was a problem when beta testing 2.03 where under some conditions the AI could keep alerting continuously as one character alerted another ad infinitum but I thought it had been sorted

[Tarhiel]

Congratulations on the release, Sotha - you now, it was 4:00 PM in the morning when I decided to go to sleep (bank holiday, does´t have to work tomorrow), and just peek into the forums, whether something new wasn´t released.

 

It was

 

So I played... till 5:50 in the morning - see what Thief/Dark Mod fan missions make me do? Even after all these years, this is one of the few games where I just get welded to the monitor and can´t put it down - especially when I read in the chat that it should be small.

 

Well, to me it seemed rather medium-sized.

That terrible feeling though, that engulfed me when building the suspicion, as to

whether Emily lives or not, and then the long decent down, then, after I saw what happened, I realized I probably would have to kill her to proceed, which is pretty cold brutal + seeing all the gold scattered across the floor arouses feel of guilt in the player, because you realize it was your (mutual) greed, which caused this - brr, gives me shivers

I shot a fire arrow at her, but it did her nothing, so I thought she is immortal, plus I have noticed that she would climb the sitars had I not interrupted her, so I loaded the game and left her, then carefully followed.

 

She had nobody to kill, except the un-knockable guard, because everybody else was knocked out by then. While she was dealing with him, I have escaped this wretched mini-manor!

 

 

All in all, well done canapé!

 

End of report.

 

Back to Shadowrun:Hong Kong.

Edited October 28, 2015 by Tarhiel

[MVT]

You can do this in an unusual way.

s p o i l e r ]
Get the zombie to follow you upstairs and hide in the shadows near the wife. When the wife finds the zombie, everyone else eventually ends up in a fight down the hall. This usually also ties up the elite guard. Just take the skull and leave the back way through the dining room and down the empty hall.
[ / s p o i l e r ]

[Goldwell]

You can do this in an unusual way.

 

Just letting you know your spoiler didn't work and is visible.. you write them like below (without the space before the s)

 

[ spoiler]

bla bla bla

[ /spoiler]

[MVT]

 

Just letting you know your spoiler didn't work and is visible.. you write them like below (without the space before the s)

 

[ spoiler]

bla bla bla

[ /spoiler]

Woops, sorry – typo

[Melan]

Solid mission for 16 hours of work!

 

 

Its appearance is mostly down to the modules, which make the building of common environments very convenient. They were built effectively, and the final result looks attractive. There are some strong touches of audio-visual storytelling, particularly the underground section, which heightens the terror of the mission to a pitch.

 

The gameplay is good, and things could play out differently on the basis of the order you approach the objectives. As it was, I found the secret door before the skull, so I unintentionally freed Emily before time, and she set out to methodically massacre the household as I snuck off to retrieve the skull. I was still caught by a servant and the guard, and ended the mission in a mad dash for my life.

 

The horror element is treated efficiently. You know something is up, and the tension builds gradually over exploration. It is this element that places the mission over a standard mansion heist.

 

Also, I bet myself that Sotha, who always introduced some new technical innovation in every fan mission, could not do so in such a small contest. Proven wrong, again!

 

[fllood]

Really nice and unexpected change of things after finding Emily.

Found Emily before the skull, and as result the fun part really did start.... liked that.

Also good use of voiceover.

Thanks for that little cool horror heist map Sotha.

[raymeld]

Thanks Sotha , nice taut little mission. All I can say is

poor Emily.

. Killed the Lord early on , just as well.

[Bienie]

Great little mini-mansion mission I was pleasantly surprised how much gameplay you were able to bake in to the mission is such a short time!

 

but I thought maybe it could use a bit more Halloween flair for a contest mission. I also ran in to AI issues with Emily. I was able to steal all the loot while she was flailing at me and missing. But she lost me when I ran up the stairs. I thought it would be a fitting end for the lord to be mauled to death by Emily since he made her that way (I assume? We don't really get to know why she turned it to a zombie, or did I miss something?). Anyway I made sure she followed me up but she was still hell bent on killing me, and the lord as well Seemed to me that they were on the same team, but reading other people's experiences I guess they were not. Peculiar...

I was however able to steal the golden skull without a problem even with the guard patrolling. Just had to break up the lockpicking into sections when he was out in the other room, and then quickly dash in to the shadows when he came back, made the whole ordeal very exciting I think! In general the difficulty was very high which can be frustrating but very satisfying when you manage to make it through!

 

[Xarg]

I left his wife alive though, so she can feel pain the way I did!

 

 

 

This is kind of the same, isn't it?

[Melan]

Eeep.

[AluminumHaste]

Yeah I suppose, I just find it harder to be cruel towards women, even in video games.

[demagogue]

Well this FM was designed for quite a bit of procedural entertainment.

 

 

I finally squeeze in to get the skull, and just as I nab it a guard walks in, turns on the light, sees me of course & draws his sword, I'm screwed. Then the zombie walks in at that exact moment and bludgeons him down from behind, without ever seeing me as I slip into the shadows and watch her take two more down that ran in by the noise. Then I could slip out.

 

Saved by the zombie. Her last unwitting act of love.

 

[Bob Necro]

And the bronze goes to...

 

Elaboration on scores:

Appearance: 2

It's another Dark Mod mansion.

 

Also,

the face texture of the unfortunate, undead damsel in distress is kind of amateurishly modified, and I was frankly expecting something far more shocking considering the amount of blood leading to the cell. If you're gonna release an updated version once the competition is over, I can make something higher in quality and more fitting for a torture victim, if you want.

 

 

Gameplay: 3

Works well, but nothing to write home about.

 

Halloween: 3

Bog standard mansion, but with quite a nice 'n' nasty tweest. I especially liked

descending the stairs down to the Lord's secret room. Nice build up. Pay off wasn't quite as impactful, on one hand due to what I mentioned under "appearance" and, on the other, you could perhaps look into an alternate voce set for Ms. Zombie. Or perhaps it'd be even spoopier if she was eerily silent as she tears through the household?

 

 

All in all, quite a nice testamnent for what can be created in short time.

[Apiai]

Thank you for this nice little mission.

Good job on the voice, really convincing.

 

 

I liked the zombie a lot, I think it's the first time I see a TDM character transformed into a zombie, It was a good surprise.

She killed everybody héhé.