Fan Mission: Shadows of Northdale ACT II - Down The Rabbit Hole by Goldwell (2019/03/20)

[Goldwell]

 

Author note:

It's hard to believe it's already been a year since Act 1 came out! Well during this mission the player will be following Corbin into the Grimwood district to followup on a lead from last night (Act 1) .. the mysterious tablet!

This mission is my first time including full EFX support as well as a HD briefing video file, additionally a new script has been added crafted by the talented Obsttorte which has loot flying towards the player when you pick it up.

On a level design front I have tried to change things up a bit by really catering towards a number of play styles, this mission can be completely ghosted or you can use the tools at your disposal to wreak havoc on the citizens of Northdale. For the first time I have tried to create more sandbox environments which don't offer clear answers handed directly to you, so if you're having trouble figuring something out try a different method.

This mission takes between 1 - 2 hours to finish depending on the difficulty you play on and how thoroughly you explore.

I hope you enjoy your night in Northdale!

- Goldwell


 

 

 

 

Voice actors

Fen Phoenix
Goldwell
Random_taffer
Yandros

Beta testers

Amadeus
Boiler's Hiss
Cambridge Spy
Chakkman
Crowind
Epifire
Kingsal
SquadaFroinx

 

Custom Assets

Andreas Rocha
DrK
Epifire
Grayman
Kingsal
MalachiAD
Obsttorte
Sotha
Springheel
SquadaFroinx
Purgator

With special thanks to Epifire for creating a large collection of custom models, Grayman for helping out with coding, Kingsal for drawing the ingame map and Moonbo for his script revision on the briefing video.

Available via in-game downloader

MIRROR

File Size: 417 mb

 

EDIT: If you are having performance issues please consult this post by Nbohr1more which may address your issue http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/19936-fan-mission-shadows-of-northdale-act-ii-by-goldwell-20190320/page-2?do=findComment&comment=436271

[nbohr1more]

Congrats!!!

 

(Too bad my new overnight schedule will prevent me from playing until Sunday night... )

[grayman]

Yoweeeeee!!!!!!!

[FenPhoenix]

Boy howdy, I remember recording for this! Feels like back in the mists of time...

 

Looks fantastic Goldwell. That intro is production value supreme right there!

[RPGista]

Wow, this looks amazing... Gonna have to check this one out!

[Ubersuntzu]

So glad I subscribed to you on youtube. Redownloading Dark Mod as a type this. 0_0

[NeonsStyle]

Congratulations. WOOHOO I've been looking forward to this. Will get into it later tonight Absolutely love the briefing style. Just gorgeous.

 

Thank you Goldwell.

Edited March 20, 2019 by NeonsStyle

[STiFU]

Congrats, looking forward to playing this beauty at the weekend!!! :-)

[Petike the Taffer]

Goldwell, congratulations !

 

Awesome to see a new chapter in this story.

[Filizitas]

I did a playthrough of it, its not a good playthrough. But even dumb me managed to finish this mission :3

[kingsal]

Congrats Goldwell!

 

As always, this is a killer release with so much thought and care put into every inch of it. I encourage everyone to play it! Can't wait for the next one.

[Bluehawk]

I've found all the loot, but only 5 out of 6 secrets. Is that working as intended?

 

 

Is that portal in the magically hidden passageway just a teaser for Chapter 3, or is there some way to interact with it.

 

 

I only ran into one little bug. When I stand near to the statue in the intersection between the church and the tavern, the skybox flickers. If I move out of the intersection in any direction, it appears fine. Could it be z-fighting between two intersecting 'ceilings'?

[Goldwell]

I've found all the loot, but only 5 out of 6 secrets. Is that working as intended?

 

 

Is that portal in the magically hidden passageway just a teaser for Chapter 3, or is there some way to interact with it.

 

 

I only ran into one little bug. When I stand near to the statue in the intersection between the church and the tavern, the skybox flickers. If I move out of the intersection in any direction, it appears fine. Could it be z-fighting between two intersecting 'ceilings'?

- Yes all six secrets are working. In the past people complained about them being too easy. So I tried to make some of them much more difficult to find. One of them isnt tied to loot, its a location.

 

-

its purely a visual entity

 

 

- I will look into it.

[chakkman]

Grats to another wonderful mission.

[VanishedOne]

Yes, nice one: I especially loved the aesthetics of the mage areas.

 

Unfortunately, I encountered a glitch: the interrogation audiolog stopped playing its sound midway through. I reloaded and tried again, and it got a bit further but still nowhere near the end. The tube continued rotation and eventually it stopped and became frobable again, I just wasn't hearing anything more from it.

 

The other, shorter audiolog worked fine, so I don't know what the cause might be and there's no obvious reason to think it's a map bug: maybe something about TDM on my system creates problems for longer audio files? Though you'd think I'd have music cutting out if that were the case.

[Goldwell]

Yes, nice one: I especially loved the aesthetics of the mage areas.

 

Unfortunately, I encountered a glitch: the interrogation audiolog stopped playing its sound midway through. I reloaded and tried again, and it got a bit further but still nowhere near the end. The tube continued rotation and eventually it stopped and became frobable again, I just wasn't hearing anything more from it.

 

The other, shorter audiolog worked fine, so I don't know what the cause might be and there's no obvious reason to think it's a map bug: maybe something about TDM on my system creates problems for longer audio files? Though you'd think I'd have music cutting out if that were the case.

That bug has been in TDM for a longtime. If you press escape or quick save in the middle of either a sound file playing or during the delivery of an AI conversation line it cuts itself off. I also found during testing if you walk too far away the sound file stops too.

 

If you quick load it will start playing from the point you quicksaved thats the only resolution I found there. But if you hit escape it just wont play unless you load a save game from before you activated the speaker entity.

[VanishedOne]

I don't think I did any of those things; the second time around I made a point of standing still to listen. But it's probably related to or another manifestation of that behaviour, you're right.

[Goldwell]

I don't think I did any of those things; the second time around I made a point of standing still to listen. But it's probably related to or another manifestation of that behaviour, you're right.

Its just part of the nature of game design. Theres nothing in there which I could see would break it. Once you frob the audiograph player it activates the speaker and and sound file rolls in. In the script which spins the roll in the back theres nothing further referencing the speaker. Theres no other entity targeting it either so I dont understand how it stopped.

 

I personally have listened to those files play out probably a hundred times without any stopping (minus the quick save, escape or walking away thing), no testers had issues either. I really dont know sorry.

 

There have been stoppage issues since 2.03 apparently though. http://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=4341

[JackFarmer]

Oh boy, here comes his next mission!

 

Congratulations and thank you very much for the hard work!

[NeonsStyle]

Playing this now. Awesome misson. I love the design and all the little vocal details and effects

that just add so much to it. Not really a fan of magic, but here it really does work well.

 

Story is just great, really getting into it. The design is just gorgeous. So much variety

of gameplay from rooftops to ledges to ground level. Definitely one of my favourite

missions.

 

I've completed all of it, just can't seem to find the final 200 loot for the master level, Will find

it somewhere lol.

 

Thanks heaps. A lot of replay value in this level.

 

Neon

[zergrush]

What a quality release! Might I ask how many episodes do you have planned for this series?

 

Also in a fair bit of criticism, regarding the image below:

 

 

If this torch was placed like this in real life two things would happen: a) with little ventilation around, the room would be filled with smoke, b ) the whole place would have caught on fire since it's entirely made of wood! Torches like this were never used in days of yore to light up interiors since the light they produce is overly obfuscating and they tend to burn out too fast. Candles and oil/melted fat lamps, like the ones already used on TDM, were commonplace instead, since they are much safer, durable, and produce a stable flame with no smoke.

Edit: I found nice a video explaining why indoor torches don't make much sense at all:

 

Edited March 23, 2019 by zergrush

[peter_spy]

There's no requirement for maps to be realistic, here it's more about spending a gameplay resource (water arrow) to tackle a problem (or avoid the light). There could be a gas/electric light with a switch there, but it would make the situation a lot of easier. There are fireplaces/chimneys without proper air duct as well, and nobody complains about that, because they serve as simple decoration, and light source that can be extinguished/avoided.

[Goldwell]

Also in a fair bit of criticism, regarding the image below:

 

 

If this torch was placed like this in real life two things would happen: a) with little ventilation around, the room would be filled with smoke, the whole place would have caught on fire since it's entirely made of wood! Torches like this were never used in days of yore to light up interiors since the light they produce is overly obfuscating and they tend to burn out too fast. Candles and oil/melted fat lamps were commonplace instead, since they are much safer, durable, and produce a stable flame with no smoke.

 

Good point, but Judith hit the nail on the head in that this scene is more about spending a gameplay resource to remove the light.

 

 

What a quality release!

 

Thank you!

 

 

What a quality release! Might I ask how many episodes do you have planned for this series?

 

There are three more missions left in the series, two of which are full levels and one is an interlude mission. I'm unsure if they will all be bundled in Act 3 or if they will be spread out over Act 3 and Act 4.

[zergrush]

There's no requirement for maps to be realistic, here it's more about spending a gameplay resource (water arrow) to tackle a problem (or avoid the light). There could be a gas/electric light with a switch there, but it would make the situation a lot of easier. There are fireplaces/chimneys without proper air duct as well, and nobody complains about that, because they serve as simple decoration, and light source that can be extinguished/avoided.

 

This would only make sense if water arrows could not be used to put out oil lamps or small oil burners. There are plenty of options available that make using indoor torches pretty much pointless.

[Goldwell]

 

This would only make sense if water arrows could not be used to put out oil lamps or small oil burners. There are plenty of options available that make using indoor torches pretty much pointless.

 

There was an oil lamp in there originally but it's light radius made it's threat ineffective. If I increased the light radius to make it light up enough of the room people would wonder "why is there a huge amount of light coming from this oil lamp?".

 

It's a bit damned if you do damned if you don't. I chose the torch because I thought it looked great in the scene, added a bit more of a challenge then hitting a button to switch off an electric light and lit up the room well.