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UPDATE: Fan Mission: Briarwood Manor by NeonsStyle - First Mission (14/08/2018) UPDATE 1.93


NeonsStyle

Poll: Mission Rating  

37 members have voted

  1. 1. Gameplay:

  2. 2. Story & Text: story telling, briefing

  3. 3. Design: Aesthetics



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Ha thanks , I'll complete it now!

As I said , loved it , I'm a bit old to still be playing Thief (75) but still love the game.

This , your map , has all the fun I hope for in Thief.As to the rope arrow , I thought I'd cycled through the weapons I had at the beginning , doh , as I say put it down to age!

P.s I'm not going mad after all!Restarted the mission from the beginning and toggled through the weapons , no rope arrow.But I'm playing on the lowest level so that must be the reason I guess.Also did find that hidden area early on but didn't look around enough.pps I'd already read it but it hasn't ticked off in the objectives.

 

lol ur not the only old bastard around here ;)

 

 

When you find the diary, take it to the Stewards room, and drop it on the dresser. Be careful not to be seen. That should get you going again. :)

 

 

I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

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Ha ha , so who is the other one then! Anyway thanks , great mission.

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me - getting free TV license this year

Ha , beat you , already got mine!

Must be me and not my age cos I know you know your way around Thief by the comments made on here while I just muddle along.But I still enjoy it in my own way.I'm more an arrow in the gullet than a stealth man I'm afraid!

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Thank you MayheM for your kind words. :)

I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

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Need help.

 

When I follow the steward to the door, he closes it behind him and I'm confused as to what I'm able to do next.

 

Not sure if bugged or what, can't pick lock and none of the keys work.

Edited by V-Man339

I like to record difficult stealth games, and right now you wonderful people are the only ones delivering on that front.

Click here for the crappy channel where that happens.

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Need help.

 

When I follow the steward to the door, he closes it behind him and I'm confused as to what I'm able to do next.

 

Not sure if bugged or what, can't pick lock and none of the keys work.

 

Hey V, here's ur solution

 

 

 

Go back to the stewards room, he dropped a key, it should be on the matt. Maybe you had ur sound turned down or something, cause Corbin tells you he dropped

a key. :)

 

 

I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

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Hey V, here's ur solution

 

 

 

Go back to the stewards room, he dropped a key, it should be on the matt. Maybe you had ur sound turned down or something, cause Corbin tells you he dropped

a key. :)

 

 

Ah, yeah, watching videos on one monitor while playing on another.

 

As an aside if there's ever an update, I'd like my name removed from that note.

I'm super flattered, but I'm not a fan of fourth wall breaking so I'd like to keep my credit to the forum post if it's all the same, anonymity suits me just fine.

 

I'll probably end up avoiding that note in the inevitable video as a result, I pride myself on detachment from the work I end up showcasing when I can.

 

Edited by V-Man339

I like to record difficult stealth games, and right now you wonderful people are the only ones delivering on that front.

Click here for the crappy channel where that happens.

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I can do that for you V if you wish. I guess you don't like your performance? I love it, I think it's just so Crowley. Also,

how do you the fourth wall was broken? You shouldn't be flattered, you did a good job and should get the credit for it. :)

Also I'm guessing the note you refer to is the reademe.txt yes?

 

[Edit] He's talking about in game credits, I thought I removed them, in fact I was positive I removed them. I have now and

in the next update they'll be gone.

Edited by NeonsStyle

I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

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I can do that for you V if you wish. I guess you don't like your performance? I love it, I think it's just so Crowley. Also,

how do you the fourth wall was broken? You shouldn't be flattered, you did a good job and should get the credit for it. :)

Also I'm guessing the note you refer to is the reademe.txt yes?

Oh it fits but it's in the mission as a note.

 

PFBecO5.jpg

 

Thankfully we figured this out in DM's, but I'm placing this here for posterity and because I find it legitimately kind of funny.

I like to record difficult stealth games, and right now you wonderful people are the only ones delivering on that front.

Click here for the crappy channel where that happens.

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Thanks V, I removed this, as I decided long time ago to not have it, but had forgotten about it. It will be in the next update.

I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

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@esme, the black boxes are fixed now, and the latest update is now available in game, and the link above.

Thanks, I did see black cubes around the horses but I forgot to mention them, it was Marbrien who reported them

 

 

I'm the one who wanted to climb in through the windows

;)

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Excellent mission! Nice on the fog in the front yard. The room

over the stables

is a nice touch. The house itself is nicely visualized, good on the 'servants/guards' area

being simple wood and stone while inside the house is polished for the family

. Quite nice on how the spatial placement for rooms, halls, etc makes it

not overly simple to deduce where secret passages are

.

 

A few things I couldn't quite figure how to do, a little help would be appreciated -

  1. Open the door with the muddy foot prints in the servant's area supply room

    .

  2. Open the hatch at the top of the ladder just behind the dining room fire place. Logic dictates he has a passage from his personal rooms to the well area halls with the patrolling spider, but I couldn't find a button or trigger so I just ended up feeling somewhat stupid about it. :-p

    .

  3. Is there a way through the wall in the basement hall with the mousehole in it? The stone and feel of the area is the same as where the spider patrols, yet the spider area doesn't have a wooden wall.

 

A few points to ponder -

  1. The wall between the the dining room and the lobby is far too thin for the story line, as unless I was creeping - and being careful how even that was done when near the fire place - the guard in the lobby would hear and raise an alarm.

  2. The opening of the dining room's secret door makes more noise than simple footsteps do, yet doesn't trigger the guard to alert. This is compounded by the notes of the serving girl, who says she heard an odd noise before he was gone as if vanished (I forget her words).

  3. The Steward's key doesn't simply drop from his belt, and I'd've not found it if I hadn't reloaded and positioned differently before I managed to see the key 'fly' - when he was half way across the room - from his belt to atop the bed, just before/just as the sound of it hitting the wood floor happened. To verify I'd seen it, I reloaded again and again it flew yet didn't stay on the bed but bounced off to land between the bed and the wall (which is prolly why I didn't find it the first time, dunno if its supposed to fall out of sight back there).

  4. The theme of the story is a bit dark. After determining there wasn't a thing I could do for the lass in the dungeon, I picked the chest lock. Having stayed in the room for a few minutes, her noises started to interfere with my enjoyment of the mission - the suffering of others isn't (to me, at least) entertainment, despite being a main plot for story in general when it comes to mysteries and the like (Agatha Christie, etc). Just a thought, if she could be toned down from wails to whimpers maybe? *sigh*

    .

  5. The fire place switch for the hidden door is nicely placed and designed, yet the switches for all the hidden accesses which are inside the hidden areas are quite overt and don't quite match the visually-refined nature of the rest of the mission. Perhaps, in order to provide a few more clues (even in future missions), the switches in the hidden passages could be somewhat more like the subtle fire place switch, yet not exactly the same - the visual continuity would be helpful in searching for other access switches, yet need not betray exactly what to look for.

All in all, an excellent effort! Hope you have it in you to work on more

but hopefully a little less dark.

 

 

 

** EDIT -- is there a way to render test unreadable by simply making a block of the background match the color of the text? I thought that's what would happen when using the [.spoiler] code, but doing so renders more like using the [.quote] code.

Edited by rinscewind
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It's never a three hour tour.

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Thank you for your kind words rinscewind.

 

As for your questions: Let's go through them in order. :)

 

1. The door with the muddy foot prints is the back yard, but is not modled in game. Handy hint in future, doors with no door handles

in TDM are not openeable. Since this was an imagined back door into the store room it should have muddy footprints from a careless

guard. :)

 

2.

 

 

The hatch at the top of the ladder in the hidden area, is also a placeholder. Again I imagined he'd have an area up there, but I really

didn't want to use it because the door opened there and models could cause the player to get stuck. So I decided to make it a

placeholder.

 

 

 

3.

 

 

The mousehole is just for the mouse, also it's at a different level than where the spider is. At least a floor higher. So there's nothing

behind it

 

 

 

4. As for the dining room best way for the guard not to notice is shut the door. :) In there, in all the times I played it, I never once alerted

him from there. So if you had the door shut, he shouldn't hear a thing.

 

3. The DropKey is a known problem, and I never found a solution to it. grayman worked on it 3 times. It's not supposed to bounce, in fact that's been disabled on it,

yet still it glitches out. Dropping a key in TDM seems to be a bit glitchy. Only way around this, is save before you go in his room. Another issue that sometimes

happens is if you are seen by him, he can stop pathing. A reload fixes that.

 

4. The theme is very dark, and I thought a lot about it. However there have been many movies that have used this theme, and countless horror films also,

so I felt using some of the mechanics of those to be fair play. :) However I do agree that the sound of her does get to you if you're in that room for long, however

that is the point, it's designed to make you feel something, even if it's unpleasant. I like realism.

 

5.

 

 

As for hidden switches, this is Crowleys home. The fireplace switch is designed to not be seen by the staff (in fiction), but once

in he hidden area, it makes no sense to make them subtle. He'd want them to hand, and easy to reach. Same for the player. After

you've found the secet you don't want to have to hunt around to find a switch to close it. Crowley would have it in plain site, as there's

no need to hide it. :)

 

 

 

6.

 

 

As for a way for Morgan Crowley to get to his private area from his rooms. You are very astute. I did have a way to get there from there. In fact

if you look carefully in the left wall of embedded bookshelves in his library, you might see a hint to a passage there. It isn't there, well it is, but

I removed it. Originally he would get to his private area from his room. I'd built it out that way. Then I remembered I'd build that tall room next

to the dining room expressly for a secret passage. So I decided to use that instead of his room, also by the time the player got to his rooms,

he'd have already found the hidden areas. However; that said. If you open the console, and use noclip, you can look through that wall of embedded

bookshelves, and see that the passage is there, but it is blocked off lower down. Only one other person has noticed this. :) So on the whole,

you figured everything out that you could do. :)

 

 

 

As for the next mission, I definitely have more in me, and am currently working on a new one, and you'll be happy to know this is not a Dark Theme. :)

 

As for the text unreadable, I don't know much about the forum controls. Ask Bikerdude, he would know.

 

Glad you enjoyed it. :)

 

Neon

Edited by NeonsStyle
  • Like 1

I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

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Thanks for the quick reply, a point or two of logic in return, though. :-p

 

The door to the backyard does have a handle (as I remember it, just a really flat one which hindsight hints at being a placeholder), and the fact that the other hidden open-ables look exactly like the walls/etc they are embedded in - perfectly flush, not even a hairline of a hint of an outline, no visual difference in rendering an object which will move, etc ... this added to the back yard door being the same kind of visually-the-same-as-the-wall-it-is-in, well, I spent some time trying to find a way. :-p

 

I did have the dining room door closed, being something of a vetran Thief player I already know just how much of a difference a closed door makes toward alerting guards/people/etc. It was surprising that over a half dozen times (I kept reloading) the Lobby guard - already semi-alert, having mumbled about seeing something as I crept across the room in front of him - kept alerting, drawing his sword and bringing the other guards into the room to search with him. I simply gave up on trying to ghost the mission. /selfpity

 

Thanks for all the effort!

It's never a three hour tour.

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Usually in TDM, when a door doesn't have a usable handle, the door can't be opened. It's common to place some sort of handle as a placeholder. It depends

on the mapper. Some have none (most), and others like me, think if it's a door, it should have something. I feel a door is naked without some form of handle.

 

As for the dining room, you are right, it will alert the guard moving in there. I just tested it. In all the times I've played it, I've never alerted him, so it's a bit odd.

The map is possible to ghost, but probably not in a first play through.

 

As for the design. Below is the image that was the inspiration for the mission. If you look carefully, you can see the main part of the house on the right

was built before the the part of the house on the right. Usually when you do renovations, things are modernised, or done cheaper than the original house.

So the left part is a younger and not as expensive to build as the right which is mostly stone.

 

So when I did the interior, I designed it that way, so the cost of decoration went up as you got closer to the family. It fits the house better. :)

 

 

You can also see here, why I made the secret room access off the dining room. :)

 

 

 

bs9h2x8.jpg

Edited by NeonsStyle
  • Like 1

I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

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Has anyone been able to ghost my mission? I never could, so I'm thinking maybe it's too hard on expert.

I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

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The yard needs the performance.
Sucks, I know, but the framerate even optimized isn't great.

The lobby needs a very, very slight nerf in difficulty. Not much but the possibility that you could waste just two or so too many water arrows to a light that the guard can immediately attempt to relight is just too dangerous as far as risk to allow.

Aside from that the landing is hell.
If you were designing it to be ghosted, it means a long, long observation to realize you effectively have to follow the guard patrolling it.
Landing is bright and tight, which when combined with the lock to pick and the guards below possibly sighting you is just too many factors. This is all made harder to work through and understand given the guards will spot the door to the landing left open.

The fact that there is a spider in the area it is ends up looking ridiculous.
Either I'm sending the steward down to kill or die to it, or Crowley domesticated a spider.
Both of these are equally comedic and clash with the tone.

 

Finally, I found two glitches that need fixing.

  1. The spider, when rounding the corner, will clip into the ground a bit mid-walk.
  2. As well, you can uncheck the private diary objective: if the book isn't on the dresser you won't be able to finish the mission, even if everything else is done.

Everything else in this mission is good, especially the kitchen, which is so perfect in terms of difficulty I'm enjoying simply thinking about it.

The aesthetic is spot on and the sense of slowly building up just how vile Crowley is ends up being done solidly.

Also kudos on the steward's conversation with the player. It feels very naturally written in terms of dialogue.

Big, big kudos to you on the VA work, it's some of the best I've heard.

 

 

Oh and whoever voiced Crowley sounds like a complete prick in real life.

 

 

400/10 mission, I hope to critique more missions in such a clearly non-biased manner in the future.

 

Oh and this is the funniest message I've read in a while.

 

2wJ8ELP.jpg

 

Edited by V-Man339
  • Like 1

I like to record difficult stealth games, and right now you wonderful people are the only ones delivering on that front.

Click here for the crappy channel where that happens.

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I 've just completed the mission. I play TDM on a 10 year old PC with Nvidia 8600GT on Linux, it's definitely a low-end PC now. The outside of the manor I liked very much, but nothing special in the interior. The graphics was a bit slow outside , but OK inside. The game did not crash at once on Linux, which I experience with some rare TDM missions in the past. This is positive too.

I struggled a lot to find the secret switch in the dining room, I had to check this forum for some hints :rolleyes: .

It was also hard to get pass the guard in the lobby, I couldn't do it without a noisemaker arrow .

The bug regarding the stewart and his key dropping was very annoying, but I guess you will fix that somehow NeonsStyle.

I can't wait for V-Man's "Stealth score = 0" video on youtube for this mission B)

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Idea just occured to me as to how to deal with the steward and the key ... have him

awake and moving when the mission begins - standing where you want the key to fall - then have him to move to lie down on the bed. As the player starts outside of the house, and the steward only needs move a few steps to lie on the bed. Maybe this will cause the key to drop on the carpet.

 

 

Dunno if the idea even has merit, but if it doesn't work then nothing lost. :-)

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It's never a three hour tour.

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When the mission starts, the steward is awake, all sleeping AI are awake. Only once the player spawns, do they lay down and sleep.

 

@V-Man Thank you. Working on an update to fix some issues re difficulty. Thanks for kind words re Voice Acting. Everyone involved did

a great job. I just loved all the performances. I think Crowleys voice could have some use again whenever a real sleezey, or sinister

voice is needed.

Edited by NeonsStyle

I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

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On the topic of the dresser, I don't think you understand that the logic born of the issue is that I drop the book over the dresser... But don't actually drop it, lest it make noise.

Wait for the man to leave, close the door behind him and truly drop it before proceeding with the mission.

I like to record difficult stealth games, and right now you wonderful people are the only ones delivering on that front.

Click here for the crappy channel where that happens.

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V. I made it, I understand the logic lol. I know about that, in next update it's made irreversible, so if you put it down, it's there for good. You can put it down quietly.

I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

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Congrats, NeonStyle, downloading now! I tend to just skim these threads just in case of unintended spoilers, but couldn't help but notice raymeld and Oldjim's comments.

raymeld 75, and Oldjim I'm guessing 65ish? Nice to hear, I'm 52 and I have lately often wondered if I will still be enjoying tdm in the future. I hope I will be able to keep up with you!

Cheers to you both, and to Neon!

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