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

[zergrush]

 

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?".

 

If I recall correctly, this is something Grayman did on his Wm. Steele series and it looked just fine. A more powerful wall-mounted lamp can pass for a gas-fueled one (much like the streetlights used in the 19th century). Maybe I'm just being picky, but indoor torches are such a staple inaccuracy for me, it breaks my suspension of disbelief altogether

[Shadow]

Ooooooooooooooh a new mod! I'm gonna have to skip going to the gym to play this!!

[Kerry000]

Hi Goldwell,

 

Thank you so much for this! I was really glad to see Act II and I thoroughly enjoyed the mission. The quality of everything was incredibly high. Great work!

 

I found most of the loot and 5 out of 6 secrets.

 

Thank you yet again. I'm looking forward to Act III :-)

[NeonsStyle]

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

I actually loved the lighting for this scene. The addition of the skylight was just a perfect choice. I would've like more

broad arrows, and so many guards carried torches, I eventually ran out of an ability to knock them out of their hands.

This was really important in the records area; but by then I'd used them all. I found it impossible to ghost that

area. The problem was getting into the second part of it. Still; I loved this mission. Really well designed.

[Tarhiel]

Hi Goldwell,

 

fantastic mission overall, level design is top notch, as always and I absolutely enjoyed the little details and touches, like flies and incense in the toilet.

 

Overall, the mission was performing well, but there were several passages which were lagging + the small room in the hotel with the bear skin and tea garden had abysmal performance (probably less than 10 FPS on my system). Maybe it has something to do with 2.07 update in general, I noticed that all missions performance dropped heavily after that update, regardless of my settings of the soft shadows.

 

I also enjoyed the new icons for various items (arrows, food), and I noticed while they´re being picked up, they will not just disappear, like in the previous versions of the Darkmod, but rather fly in your direction through the air – interesting little touch.

 

I was able to find only 3 secrets out of 6, I, like the others, have also been wondering whether it´s because maybe some secrets weren´t registered by the game, although I have found them.

Maybe I have missed also different Keeper paths, since there was only one I found, but the objective menitons plural, so I assumed there might be more than one.

 

Is there anybody who was able to find all the secrets?

Really would wish to know their locations

 

Thanks for the mission,

Edited March 24, 2019 by Tarhiel

[nbohr1more]

Please post your Darkmod.cfg

[Goldwell]

 

I actually loved the lighting for this scene. The addition of the skylight was just a perfect choice. I would've like more

broad arrows, and so many guards carried torches, I eventually ran out of an ability to knock them out of their hands.

This was really important in the records area; but by then I'd used them all. I found it impossible to ghost that

area. The problem was getting into the second part of it. Still; I loved this mission. Really well designed.

Did you know if you shoot a water arrow on a wall near or the roof above a guard with a torch, the wall will fall and it will douse the flame without alerting them?

[Goldwell]

All six secrets can be found. One is really hard to find.

 

I dont want to reveal their locations just yet as I want to see if someone can find them all (then theyre free to reveal them of course).

[Bluehawk]

I finally found the 6th secret I was missing. I thought at first it must be related to a certain "mist"-ical item that can be found down by the docks and spent a good hour trying to frob things with it, but it turns out it was just..

..an unassuming little flashbomb sitting above a work bench.

 

[Tarhiel]

Please post your Darkmod.cfg

 

Here you go:

https://pastebin.com/kMQkQXdQ

[nbohr1more]

 

Here you go:

https://pastebin.com/kMQkQXdQ

 

This is probably your biggest problem:

 

seta r_fboResolution "2.62"

 

That's probably left over from 2.06 where MSAA didn't work with soft shadows.

 

Set it to 1.

 

Also, 16x MSAA is still pretty expensive. Try lowering to 8x.

 

Finally, try increasing your lightgem interleave:

 

seta tdm_lg_interleave "3".

[peispud]

Thank you for this - very well done :-)

[Tarhiel]

 

This is probably your biggest problem:

 

seta r_fboResolution "2.62"

 

That's probably left over from 2.06 where MSAA didn't work with soft shadows.

 

Set it to 1.

 

Also, 16x MSAA is still pretty expensive. Try lowering to 8x.

 

Finally, try increasing your lightgem interleave:

 

seta tdm_lg_interleave "3".

 

Oh my goodness, thank you, nbohr1more!!!

 

Finally I can enjoy darkmod missions again - I had no idea this might be the case, I just thought my machine is not powerful enough.

Even with MSAA 16, it runs majority of the time like a charm now, thank you a alot

[Goldwell]

 

This is probably your biggest problem:

 

seta r_fboResolution "2.62"

 

That's probably left over from 2.06 where MSAA didn't work with soft shadows.

 

Set it to 1.

 

Also, 16x MSAA is still pretty expensive. Try lowering to 8x.

 

Finally, try increasing your lightgem interleave:

 

seta tdm_lg_interleave "3".

 

Thank you for that Nbohr1more. I'll link that into the main OP incase people are having issues too.

[Berny]

Very nice mission! You did great in the use of good storytelling, gameplay mechanics, architecture and level building and linearity. Especially videos, sidequest and the use of recorded voice is well appreciated. The difficulty seemed a bit low with one or two exceptions, but it's ok, since I had 2 hours of one of the best TDM experiences so far!

 

EDIT: haha, I just saw that my last post was about your first Northdale mission which obviously gave me also a very nice experience. So you are my favourite level creator. Not that others don't make good missions, but yours just fit my style of enjoying this game.

Edited April 6, 2019 by Berny

[SuaveSteve]

Beautiful.

 

It's nice to see so much attention to detail and consistency. The loot pickup animation/effect needs to be stock.

[Bienie]

Finally got around to playing it last night. Really great mission! I really enjoyed all the opportunities for exploration, and the mage's tower at the start was very cool. You do have a really keen eye for visual detail in general! The humor was great as well, funny without being misplaced or cheesy, except for

the builder who was having serious gastrointestinal trouble. Can't lie though, it still had me in stitches!

That creep Popsy was hilarious too! Makes you wonder how he knows what Elizabeth's feet smell like.

.

All in all, amazing work, a worthy sequel to act 1 and I can't wait to play part 2 to see what whimsical things you come up with for the Inventors' complex!

Edited April 8, 2019 by Bienie

[Goldwell]

Very nice mission! You did great in the use of good storytelling, gameplay mechanics, architecture and level building and linearity. Especially videos, sidequest and the use of recorded voice is well appreciated. The difficulty seemed a bit low with one or two exceptions, but it's ok, since I had 2 hours of one of the best TDM experiences so far!

 

EDIT: haha, I just saw that my last post was about your first Northdale mission which obviously gave me also a very nice experience. So you are my favourite level creator. Not that others don't make good missions, but yours just fit my style of enjoying this game.

 

Thanks for the kind words! I put a lot of effort into all aspects of my missions and also there's plenty of high quality help from Moonbo, Epifire, Grayman, Kingsal, etc who all really help to make this mission something special too. I like to add in side missions to really help pad out the space you explore and make the world feel more lived in, so it's nice to see that appreciated it. In terms of the difficulty I tried my hardest to tweak each to be the most suitable for their levels. Instead of only changing the amount of loot required I went through and changed enemies that you encounter and the amount of gear available too. That's an ongoing thing which I will always try to work at, it's hard because to some this mission is easy and to others its very difficult, so I always try to hit that middle ground.

 

I am very flattered about being your favorite level creator, that means a lot to me, thank you! I understand my missions aren't for everyone, there are some haters even but I don't mind, the general consensus is that they're enjoyable experiences so if I can bring joy to people that's mission accomplished in my books!

 

Beautiful.

 

It's nice to see so much attention to detail and consistency. The loot pickup animation/effect needs to be stock.

 

Thank you! I love that effect too, you can thank the very talented Obsttorte for making that magic happen. Originally I got the idea for flying loot from Dishonored, I think it works much better than just having loot disappear and reappear in your inventory.

 

Finally got around to playing it last night. Really great mission! I really enjoyed all the opportunities for exploration, and the mage's tower at the start was very cool. You do have a really keen eye for visual detail in general! The humor was great as well, funny without being misplaced or cheesy, except for

the builder who was having serious gastrointestinal trouble. Can't lie though, it still had me in stitches!

That creep Popsy was hilarious too! Makes you wonder how he knows what Elizabeth's feet smell like.

.

All in all, amazing work, a worthy sequel to act 1 and I can't wait to play part 2 to see what whimsical things you come up with for the Inventors' complex!

 

Awesome to hear you enjoyed your experience! I was a bit worried in the beginning about the humor being too over the top or too frequent, but so far i've only heard positive things so that's great!

 

 

Hahaha yeah that builder scene gives me a good chuckle even now, I was giggling like a school boy when I was editing that together, it's super immature but damnit if it isn't silly and funny. And yes Popsy is a rather strange fellow... I think I might make him the town creep, bring him back in future missions.. dunno yet haha.

 

 

Act 3 is not too far off, my goal is for a summer release, hopefully around May. A lot of the work for it is already done too so it's simply a matter of building 2 new areas and then polishing whats already together and optimization. The player visits the city hub again except this time it's rainy and there are different places to explore. Because of the rain i've had to go through and really work on reducing those drawcalls but i've managed to get most scenes from 3000+ to under 1500 so far which is great because rain and fog tends to be a big performance hit.

[Bienie]

 

...

 

Awesome to hear you enjoyed your experience! I was a bit worried in the beginning about the humor being too over the top or too frequent, but so far i've only heard positive things so that's great!

 

 

Hahaha yeah that builder scene gives me a good chuckle even now, I was giggling like a school boy when I was editing that together, it's super immature but damnit if it isn't silly and funny. And yes Popsy is a rather strange fellow... I think I might make him the town creep, bring him back in future missions.. dunno yet haha.

 

 

Act 3 is not too far off, my goal is for a summer release, hopefully around May. A lot of the work for it is already done too so it's simply a matter of building 2 new areas and then polishing whats already together and optimization. The player visits the city hub again except this time it's rainy and there are different places to explore. Because of the rain i've had to go through and really work on reducing those drawcalls but i've managed to get most scenes from 3000+ to under 1500 so far which is great because rain and fog tends to be a big performance hit.

 

I'm glad to hear that you have gotten good reviews on the increased humor. Similar to you I have also included a bit more humor into my upcoming mission and was also a little bit worried.

Awesome that you've already got Act 3 in the pipes! I guess that's a huge benefit of being able to reuse some areas. Sounds like it will still feel fresh with completely different weather too. It will certainly be interesting to see!

 

P.S. I would definitely love to see the continued demented adventures of Popsy!

 

[peter_spy]

Because of the rain i've had to go through and really work on reducing those drawcalls but i've managed to get most scenes from 3000+ to under 1500 so far which is great because rain and fog tends to be a big performance hit.

 

1500 DCs is very good result. AFAIR fog adds just another pass to all objects, so you get +1x of whatever you have in model tris, number of materials per model, and DCs from additional shader stages (other than image slots). As few materials per model and as few stages per material help with that a lot. Rain is more tricky, as we're talking particles, so it's also things like number of particles per second, overdraw from transparent cards etc. Maybe others know some stats that would be more helpful here. I just use r_skipparticles 0 1 to approximate the impact of particles in particular visleaf, along with CPU/GPU use from MSI/Rivatuner tools.

Edited April 9, 2019 by Judith

[Goldwell]

 

1500 DCs is very good result. AFAIR fog adds just another pass to all objects, so you get +1x of whatever you have in model tris, number of materials per model, and DCs from additional shader stages (other than image slots). As few materials per model and as few stages per material help with that a lot. Rain is more tricky, as we're talking particles, so it's also things like number of particles per second, overdraw from transparent cards etc. Maybe others know some stats that would be more helpful here. I just use r_skipparticles 0 1 to approximate the impact of particles in particular visleaf, along with CPU/GPU use from MSI/Rivatuner tools.

 

I'll give that a shot! Thank you.

[Ladro]

Played just the beginning

i'm in the mage tower exploring and I found the magic purple passage

 

 

Only three words: THIS IS ART!

 

 

I cannot wait to play the part II of the mission and explore all the city

Congratulation for another masterpiece, really thank you :-)

Edited April 11, 2019 by Ladro

[Gerberox]

It was the first mission where I had problems with the amount of loot (highest level). I found 3 secrets IIRC.

The archive part was exciting.

All in all, it was fun, thanks.

[Ladro]

Played just the beginning

i'm in the mage tower exploring and I found the magic purple passage

 

 

Only three words: THIS IS ART!

 

 

I cannot wait to play the part II of the mission and explore all the city

 

 

Congratulation for another masterpiece, really thank you :-)

 

Just finished: a splendid mission!

 

I liked a lot how the mission was "linear" and clear. And the beauty of design :-)

 

Thanks another time for your effort :-)

[Thiefette]

Finished this up last night and enjoyed all your hard work. Even taking forever on finding secret #6 lol. I had to finally accept defeat and come looking here. It really became one of those "Doh" moments when I realized it was hiding just about in plain sight. lol

 

I did have some concern for

the city watch fella and his bladder issue, however not as much as the recipient of said problem - wanted to yell "hey dude, wake up!" LOL!

Anyways, I loved the many areas we were allowed to explore. Two questions though.

1- What was the doll for? (Thought that had to do with the 6th secret - like I'd missed a readable about some little girls long lost doll). 2 - In the tunnel there's a clear wall with a rotating disc??? Oh wait, never mind. I'll keep myself in suspense in case they are for future work.

Thanks again for all your hard work, and look forward to more.