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Magic School


Kurshok

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As I understand it, magic is officially illegal in the Empire, so people study it in underground schools, more like circles of aficionados meeting in some noble's secret basement study, or master-disciple style.

In other regions, like Menoa, magic may be legal, so we could expect colleges of magic there.

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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It's not completely illegal. According to the wiki:

 

According to current Church law, it is illegal in the city to make a living through the use of magic. At certain times in history, all magical business had to be conducted secretly. Currently, however, the Church is unwilling to totally outlaw the use of magic, due to the high demand from the nobility for magical services and the difficulty in proving magical interference. It is also hard to draw the line between using a magic earth talisman to cure someone's disease and tying a bone of St. Andrew to someone's foot to cure gout. So instead of persecuting all magical use, they just make it very difficult for Mages to operate. Mages either sell on the black market (to people like our thief) or they manage to get a wealthy patron who supports them in return for their 'wise counsel' (since they're getting paid only as an advisor, they are free to cast helpful spells for their patron on the side).

Although I don't think most maps using magic have followed that.

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things worth stealing for a thief.

uncut diamonds used as focuses of wands, or magic circles.

diamond dust as tears of 1001 demons.

vial of dried dragon's blood this is usually tiger blood.

rhino horn = used in Chinese medicine like Viagra

amber items, either lucky charm or wand focus, or magic circle item.

any precious stone can be used in magic in some way.

 

magic books, containing banned magic a collector/strange group would be willing to pay a lot for. then you can expand on that and get hired to steal book back.

magic scrolls, as ^

 

mages staff with a precious stone as its focus, mages wand, mages pen made from a black swans feather and a silver/gold nib, bottle of magic ink used to write spells.

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I am less thinking about stuff that you could steal, but rather crazy stuff you could experience in the school itself, like moving staircases, teleport puzzles, gravitational anomalies etc. The setting would certainly be interesting and provide ample opportunity for freaky mechanisms you could not have in a "regular" mission.

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Did you ever dmap the soundmaze.map I uploaded a few years ago, Destined?
The one where you had to find the the source of a noise that came from a misleading direction in nearly every room, following this principle for bypassing visportal dampening of sound:
https://i.imgur.com/KZD296N.jpg

(don't ask why the bedroom is downstairs and the dining room is upstairs - I've no idea..)

It contained some tricks like escher-esque stair cases and revolving rooms (static objects inside, room rotates, gives impression of having to walk up walls to stand on ceiling / move room down to simulate "floating objects", hit switch to realign stairs or lift brushes in sequence as unfolding staircase, to door that leads to corridor patch, with objects aligned back to "normal", next room regular orientation, etc...), infinite corridor through teleport door (unless you turn around and go back to "new scene") and hit triggeronce again to destroy. Basic stuff, some shadow and perspective illusion using projector and skybox planes.

Teleport was especially useful in shortening traverse time through sewer tunnels instead of building one massive one across the whole map, if a little disorientating. Adding impulse to the sewer [water] was a better solution to quickly navigate such areas without getting bored to death by such long corridors of nothingness, by speeding up the player - adding impulse also can fake a speed potion or magical wind against which to battle from, eg, a particle emitter with some important loot on it.

Now I've seen "In the Black's" cool and spooky well section - I think it's possible to figure out how to make the "death capture, reawaken in cell" and "2nd death, cutscene of being taken to gallows, thief" that seemed too difficult to negotiate before.

No-one seemed interested at the time. I think it was downloaded 3 times before nuke. Didn't think it was a thing that TDM players would care for... "weird" puzzles and strobe effects and illusions and stuff.

In retrospect - it's probably more likely that it's rare that anyone can be bothered to read what I write, because I've nothing interesting to say and no-one's got time to read more than a tweet, according to what certain people have said...

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I did not download it, no. But I actualy find puzzles like this quite interesting. However, you still need an interesting mission around it. Puzzles for the puzzle's sake is never as interesting as puzzles in an interesting context. I myself am working on a mission, where the player will be sent into a kind of ghost world and want to implement puzzles like that. However, I don't have that much time right now and when I find some time, I prefer to spend it playing rather than mapping... I hope I will find some more motivation soon, so I can finally finish my first mission (although this one will not have a lot of time in the ghost world).

I actually read almost each post on the forum (exceptions are the fan mission section to avoid spoilers and topics that are too technical and that I simply don't understand). In your case I also, usually, read the long versions in spoiler tags as long as I find the time. But as long as I don't have anything to comment on a given post, I see no reason to reply...

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It was a semi-full mission, with readables, AI and was the base from which I copied out several things for other missions.

Sometimes, when testing something "new" (either to you or something you've seen done but want to change / doesn't exist yet in any mission / needs doom3 forums wayback machine to implement, because no-one here answers any call for an assist) - it's useful to open up the "blank" start map and build it inside this.

It can then be incorporated into the main mission map with confidence a second time, or a copy-paste, complete.

I hope you find motivation to finish your FM - I've only linked one pk4 to TDM forums.
I've only ever put .maps or videos / screenshots / concepts or zips with assets req. Mission dmap for demo or whatever.


This is off-topic now, but:
Making a map in a modular fashion, though importing maps means faster dmaps for your "puzzles" to see if they work, easier structure and organisation, a less daunting "omg this map is getting huge" thing and - in my experience, a better optimised experience (if more difficult entity count), plotting such things as "overlap seeds / AI / loot" last, unless it is mission critical.

The only issue i've found is - if it's not possible to complete a map within one update of DR or TDM, it can lead to technical difficulties that means: fk this game, I could've been spending time with my family.

Mostly, it's for my own enjoyment - the only time I did link a complete mission pk4 (the one where you start off being set up and only option is to have to jump over the wall, far down into the river to escape and end up at a hidden village run by religious fanataics - the girl found a book on "paganism" and asked the woodsy lord for help with certain problem - that's where player comes in as "sneaksie / trickster / worming death)... It was ignored by everyone:)

(It was based upon the Adam and Eve / Golden Llama start in the game, Banished - except my mrs at the time had a spanish/americn accent, which didn't really fit... she was pissed when I changed it to text, heh)

De nada. I have fun.

It helps to set goals.
"This weekend, I will finish this room and fill out the previous sections a little more detail now I've had some time way (but not enough to forgot), do a little playtest and remember to eat and take regular 50 min breaks for 10 mins to do exercise and walk around".

Playing with DR is as much a game as playing TDM (which is mostly mansions and cities and square and... idk... at least in DR there can be new things).

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Oh, I also have a couple of test missions that I use to copy/paste stuff into my WIP. So far, I have not yet experienced any technical difficulties from one version to another, but maybe I was just lucky. I rember your rants about your movers not working...

I believe missions tend to get ignored if they are not announced "properly" i.e. make a thread for it, have beta testers test it and then release it via telling people to put them on the official server.

Regarding motivation for mapping: I currently don't have that much time. I am in a long distance relationship, so every other weekend is reserved for meeting my girlfriend. The other weekends we are skyping a lot and playing online games together, which is the closest to alone we can get. Consequently, my weekends are pretty much stuffed. Additionally, I am preparing for postgraduate studies next year and reading a book on the topic in the morning (which was the time I got some mapping done before). And after work, I prefer activities that need less thinking than mapping (even though it really is fund, it is still exhausting at times). Well, maybe I can spare a morning or two a week for mapping instead of learning... I will see.

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Mostly, it's for my own enjoyment - the only time I did link a complete mission pk4 (the one where you start off being set up and only option is to have to jump over the wall, far down into the river to escape and end up at a hidden village run by religious fanataics - the girl found a book on "paganism" and asked the woodsy lord for help with certain problem - that's where player comes in as "sneaksie / trickster / worming death)... It was ignored by everyone:)

I don't think, i tried that (completed all but a few and tried all missions available via ingame downloader though). Where can i get it?

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hmmm dropbox?

I'll double check to make sure it still works. Might need fixing as it's a few versions old.

/* just read this: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/17456-player-voice-over-spawnarg/page-4?do=findComment&comment=415258
gonna wait until those guys have finished doing whatever it is and see what happens - plus I don't like hearing her voice - it's painful.
So would prefer to have someone else speak the lines - i'll practise my falsetto */

Edited by teh_saccade
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/* just read this: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/17456-player-voice-over-spawnarg/page-4?do=findComment&comment=415258

gonna wait until those guys have finished doing whatever it is and see what happens - plus I don't like hearing her voice - it's painful.

I would not hold my breath until that sound channel assignment changes get into official TDM. They are only proposals now. 2.06 is freezed. So that stuff will likely be contained in 2.07 (expect a year wait time for that) or as part of the "minor" summer patch (because volume sliders are pretty useless as they are and that would fix that).

And don't worry about the voice acting. Most will probably like it - some not. And most players are more into visuals anyway. Nobody cared for that sound channel assignment and volume issues for a lot of TDM versions and look at how often there are sound propagation issues in missions or doors sound like chests...

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