T2 FM: Waterfront Racket by Yandros (31/05/2016)

[Bikerdude]

Posted from the mission thread on ttlg -

 

Tannar and Yandros are thrilled to announce the release of Waterfront Racket, a film noir-inspired project which gives you the starring role as Sam Marlowe, Private Eye. You're hired by Vivian Sternwood, the wife of a wealthy shipping magnate, to look into her husband's doings, and in the process of doing so, get dragged into a web of deceit and murder.

Important Notes - Please Read!

Gameplay Information

• This project is far removed from a traditional Thief mission; in fact, we took pains to remove as many things as possible which might remind you of the Thief universe. This includes gameplay, which is also unconventional - you will mostly be exploring, hunting for clues and unraveling the story. Your only tools are lockpicks and your eyes and ears; there are no weapons, potions or other tools of any kind. As such, the campaign plays more as an interactive movie than a typical mission, although there are several instances where you must be stealthy as part of the story, to avoid being caught somewhere Sam shouldn't be.
• The general visual style is the traditional noir black and white, although punches of color are used to represent key characters and locations.
• Besides the movies, there are numerous in-game cutscenes which convey the story. It is best not to save and load during these scenes to avoid issues. These cutscenes are presented in a mixture of first person and third person perspective. If you are in first person and a character appears to be waiting for you to do something, then take heed. Also, note that if you're talking to a character and decide to wander away during the conversation, chances are good that you will fail an objective.
• After these cutscenes, you might find yourself moving uncontrollably in the direction you were moving when the scene started (most often forwards). This can be stopped by just pressing the same movement keys again.
• Don't be in a hurry to carry out your objectives; take your time to explore, soaking in the atmosphere and appreciating the details. There are many small things which change from night to night, if you are observant; immerse yourself in the world.

Technical Information

• This campaign requires NewDark v1.24 or higher. All necessary custom scripts are included.
• Disable any upgrades or enhancement packs, including the EP/EP2. Everything in this campaign is custom so they shouldn't affect anything anyway, but they were not heavily tested, so unexpected problems could occur.
• One tester had a myriad of seemingly random sound issues until discovering that Audio Channels under Audio Options had been reduced to 4; increasing it to at least 12 resolved the problems.
• IMPORTANT: If the first briefing movie doesn't play, quit immediately and resolve that issue or it will be difficult to follow or enjoy the story, which relies heavily on movies to convey both story and atmosphere. There are briefing movies before nights 1 and 3, and also there is a final cutscene movie after the third mission ends, so be sure to click Continue from the final debriefing screen.
• You should confirm the following in your cam_ext.cfg file:
  • crop_movies is disabled (there is a semicolon in front of it)
  • no_unload_ffmpeg is enabled (there is NO semicolon in front of it)
• At least two testers had movies play correctly when Thief 2 was launched, but stop playing during the course of playing through the campaign. A clue this is happening for you might be that the Success or Failure movies don't play at mission end. If this happens, we highly recommend you save, restart Thief 2, and then load the save and continue. This usually restored movies for the affected testers.
• One tester deduced that having Windows Media Player or a browser open (Chrome in the known case) often prevented movies from playing, so you might try closing all media players and browser windows as well.

Downloads
Note: Only download the 7z file if you use FMSel, it won't work with Darkloader!

Dark Fate:
ZIP - http://download.darkfate.org/fan-missions/Thief2/waterfront_racket/Racket_v1-0.zip (515MB)
7z - http://download.darkfate.org/fan-missions/Thief2_7z/waterfront_racket/Racket_v1-0.7z (458MB)

Derfy:
ZIP - http://fms.derfy.net/Racket_v1-0.zip
7z - http://fms.derfy.net/Racket_v1-0.7z

flying_hope:
ZIP - http://www.0815x.de/thief/FMs/Racket_v1-0.zip
7z - http://www.0815x.de/thief/FMs/Racket_v1-0.7z

South Quarter
ZIP - http://www.southquarter.com/downloads/2016/Racket_v1-0.zip


High Quality Movies on YouTube
Night 1 Briefing: https://youtu.be/d49XrQ4QnmU
Night 3 Briefing: TBD
Final Movie: TBD


Written Transcript of Cutscenes, Movies and Conversations

Waterfront Racket Transcript

Thanks
Tannar and Yandrod extend their heartfelt thanks to the testers, their discoveries, suggestions and attention to detail made this a much better mission and improved the gameplay significantly -

 

Brethren, FreddyFox, Hipbreaker, Nickie, Nightwalker, Random_Taffer, and R Soul

A sincere thanks also goes to SlyFoxx, Leigh Catlin and RandomTaffer for providing vitally important voice work.

Special shout outs go to:

• Gumdrop for releasing the abandoned base mission which inspired us (the interior of the warehouse)
• LarryG for making all the custom AIs which made this thing possible
• Necrobob for providing the black and white water texture with ripples, which adds so much to the atmosphere
• Gort for making the telephones which are also key to the atmosphere
• R Soul for going above and beyond by fixing numerous objects

[Dragofer]

Fascinating, what kinds of styles can be achieved in the Thief setting. I really value expressions of creativity such as this.