Fan Mission: The Night of Reluctant Benefaction

[kingsal]

Got around to giving this mission a go and had a blast! The holiday theme was great and it had quite a few fun bits of exploration and story for a mission this size.

 

 

I love the little touch with music boxes in people apartments. I'm also super curious whats in those gift boxes!

 

 

Thanks for this! This mission has a lot of charm to it.

Edited February 16, 2019 by kingsal

[Bienie]

Got around to giving this mission a go and had a blast! The holiday theme was great and it had quite a few fun bits of exploration and story for a mission this size.

 

 

I love the little touch with music boxes in people apartments. I'm also super curious whats in those gift boxes!

 

 

Thanks for this! This mission has a lot of charm to it.

 

Glad you enjoyed it!

 

I was initially thinking of making packages in the shape of items that they could find useful, so the player would be able to tell what it is and get a chuckle. Ultimately it proved too time consuming for a speed build, and I was already having enough trouble with the objectives. Hence the stereotypical box presents.

 

[Goldwell]

Just finished playing this mission and I loved it!

 

 

 

You really nailed down the atmosphere well here, I loved starting in my own apartment and then venturing out to do some classic thieving but also to do a little bit of reversethieving?

 

I enjoyed going through your readables too, you have great sense of telling stories through these while keeping them short enough to keep the player engaged. Plus I enjoyed the couple of hidden areas you added such as the safe behind the painting and that little roof section which had the nook of hidden goods, both were great touches.

 

You made good use of the core assets here too, for example resizing the tap model for example and putting that on the wall with the text of it being a congratulatory medal of service for being a firefighter for 30 years was clever and worked well.

 

Overall I had a lot of fun here, it was bite sized, atmospheric and enjoyable the whole way along. Really looking forward to your next mission!

 

 

[Bienie]

Just finished playing this mission and I loved it!

 

 

 

You really nailed down the atmosphere well here, I loved starting in my own apartment and then venturing out to do some classic thieving but also to do a little bit of reversethieving?

 

I enjoyed going through your readables too, you have great sense of telling stories through these while keeping them short enough to keep the player engaged. Plus I enjoyed the couple of hidden areas you added such as the safe behind the painting and that little roof section which had the nook of hidden goods, both were great touches.

 

You made good use of the core assets here too, for example resizing the tap model for example and putting that on the wall with the text of it being a congratulatory medal of service for being a firefighter for 30 years was clever and worked well.

 

Overall I had a lot of fun here, it was bite sized, atmospheric and enjoyable the whole way along. Really looking forward to your next mission!

 

 

Thank you for your kind review, it really means a lot! My next mission (CoS2) is actually just around the corner now!

[Cambridge Spy]

 

My next mission (CoS2) is actually just around the corner now!

Crap, you serious? Man... I'm actually waiting for Goldwell's next chapter to Shadows of Northdale.

[Amadeus]

Hey, so I was replaying this mission and found two bugs

 

 

 

 

First one is that the hidden safe in Wade's Brawn and Pawn (amazing name btw) can open and clip through the painting without hitting the button. (I was frobbing around looking for a hidden button when I just opened up the safe instead)

 

Secondly is a typo in the Thieves correspondence readable on the rooftop. "Take it to take it to..."

 

 

 

 

Fantastic job though, looking forward to your next one!

[raymeld]

A belated thank you for the lovely little mission Bienie! I had no time at Christmas so completed it for Easter instead ! I managed to solve the three bonus missions which for me , considering my thieving skills , was amazing! Great fun.

[MirceaKitsune]

This is simply one of the best FM's I have played recently. A full 5/5! Small but with a lot of detail and content packed in.

I loved the design of this little city... there are too few FM's where you get to explore a whole town, enter homes, find the stories of each resident, that sort of thing. Also ones where you have ally AI's, it adds a lot to have an area where you can walk around and people say "hi" instead of attacking you. Not to mention the story and idea itself was a very nice and fun one.

I'm eager to see what new missions you will make, if this is your general FM style

[Bienie]

On 10/22/2019 at 2:11 AM, MirceaKitsune said:

This is simply one of the best FM's I have played recently. A full 5/5! Small but with a lot of detail and content packed in.

I loved the design of this little city... there are too few FM's where you get to explore a whole town, enter homes, find the stories of each resident, that sort of thing. Also ones where you have ally AI's, it adds a lot to have an area where you can walk around and people say "hi" instead of attacking you. Not to mention the story and idea itself was a very nice and fun one.

I'm eager to see what new missions you will make, if this is your general FM style

Wow! What a shining review! Thank you.

I love making missions in the style you described, and I would argue the CoS series are essentially larger versions of this map minus the theme and with more variety of locations.

My next mission will be released in about a week and will have a slightly different layout and theme (horror), but for this type of mission, CoS3 will probably be ready next spring. After that I hope to focus on making smaller missions in about the same scope as this mission, because I find it very enjoyable and the community seems to really appreciate those.

[Swiggy]

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Edited February 28, 2020 by Swiggy

[Bienie]

5 hours ago, Swiggy said:

OK, for some reason I totally forgot to play this mission until now. Really enjoyed it, got two out of the three good deeds but I don't think I got any of the secrets and only about half of the loot, so I clearly need to keep my eyes open.

I do have a confession to make, since no-one seems to have made mention of it yet. Bienie, I found your "extra" little secret. I have no idea what compelled me to test this out, but for anyone else I encourage you to, ummm... kill your in-game wife who's sleeping near the starting area. This will of course fail the mission due to the no-kill objective, but in-between the death and the fade-out, pick up the corpse and look at the name at the bottom of the screen.

Glad you enjoyed the mission!

I have to say I was fully expecting nobody to ever discover that little detail. Nice catch? You monster!! ^^

2/3 good deeds and one very bad deed! That's my girlfriend doing the voice line.

[Sneaker]

On 2/21/2020 at 7:33 AM, Swiggy said:

 Bienie, I found your "extra" little secret. I have no idea what compelled me to test this out, but for anyone else I encourage you to, ummm... kill your in-game wife who's sleeping near the starting area. This will of course fail the mission due to the no-kill objective, but in-between the death and the fade-out, pick up the corpse and look at the name at the bottom of the screen.

Well now, you know I had to check this out for myself.  thanks.   You don't have to kill your wife; you can make some noise by banging your sword around or something and then knock her out when she wakes up!  no failures.  hee hee. 

[Swiggy]

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Edited February 28, 2020 by Swiggy

[Bienie]

13 hours ago, Swiggy said:

Well I went back and tried knocking her out instead via blackjack (while she was still lying on the bed), but the body glitched out and killed her again! This seems to be a fairly common issue with blackjacking anyone who's sleeping, where their collision model intersects with the bed in such a way that once knocked out, they twitch profusely for a second or two and the game I guess deliverers massive physical damage to the model, killing them.

In my defense I tried it because of this particular trope: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DevelopersForesight, which happens more often then you think.

Yeah that glitch is annoying and seems to happen consistently when an AI is sleeping in a bed, and sometimes when they are sitting in a chair. It would probably be possible to work around as a mapper, but would only make sense to add if you're supposed to knock the person out.

I guess I'm guilty of the Developer's Foresight trope haha. Though I think that's more a sign of an eye for detail than anything!

[MirceaKitsune]

This is honestly among my top favorite FM's of all time. Replayed it for a second time and it was nice to see it again! Very nice and well thought out, well detailed with a lot of content crammed into a relatively small map. I wanted to report an issue I just now encountered in case it can still be patched up:

Spoiler

If you frob the painting behind which the wall safe is hidden, you can open its door through the painting itself, even if you didn't use the button under the desk to lower the painting first. This should be easy to fix by putting a target_setfrobbable around the safe door and making the button trigger it on / off with the painting. Though the button should also close the safe door if it's open, so that the painting can't pull itself back over the already open door either... not sure how to do this as simply targeting the safe door would automatically open it when closed as well, perhaps disable the button while the safe door is open?

 

 

Edited January 12, 2021 by MirceaKitsune

[Bienie]

20 hours ago, MirceaKitsune said:

This is honestly among my top favorite FM's of all time. Replayed it for a second time and it was nice to see it again! Very nice and well thought out, well detailed with a lot of content crammed into a relatively small map. I wanted to report an issue I just now encountered in case it can still be patched up:

  Hide contents

If you frob the painting behind which the wall safe is hidden, you can open its door through the painting itself, even if you didn't use the button under the desk to lower the painting first. This should be easy to fix by putting a target_setfrobbable around the safe door and making the button trigger it on / off with the painting. Though the button should also close the safe door if it's open, so that the painting can't pull itself back over the already open door either... not sure how to do this as simply targeting the safe door would automatically open it when closed as well, perhaps disable the button while the safe door is open?

 

 

Thank you for a second round of praise! Unfortunately I'm very bad at going back to patch up my missions as I tend to be focused on building something new all the time. I'm ashamed to admit that I've known about the safe bug since just after release, but have never gotten around to fixing it. I was hoping to patch it for Christmas this year, and take a look at changing up the snow particles among a couple of small issues... I think I could probably fix this mission up in a day or two of work so I should probably just bite the bulllet and do it.

[Kaaiman]

Although I've never replayed this FM so far, every Christmas since its release it's still on my mind.

Back in 2018 I had a lot of fun playing it. So far I've never replayed any mission, because I'm not even halfway through the wiki FM list. But if I decide to replay some missions, this one would be on the list for sure.

 

[Cambridge Spy]

Bikerdude's latest FM got me to replay this mission so I can finally cover it after all these years. However, I think datiswous should update the FM with in-game subtitles for the scripted dialogue (the wife and the contact) before I can do it. I've got a video to work on before Christmas, and hopefully I can cover both missions by Christmas too.

[datiswous]

Here are the subtitles.

Btw. it's not so hard to do it yourself I think.

subtitles_tnorb.pk4

[Cambridge Spy]

Six years and six versions of TDM later, I finally got round to making a playthrough of this mission:

 

 

[nbohr1more]

On 12/3/2024 at 6:00 PM, datiswous said:

Here are the subtitles.

Btw. it's not so hard to do it yourself I think.

subtitles_tnorb.pk4 1.38 kB · 0 downloads

@Bienie any objections to adding this to the mission database?

[datiswous]

I already messaged him about it, but he last logged in 2 years ago...

[Baal]

Have you tried Discord?