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Fan Mission: A Good Neighbor (2020/03/08)


Amadeus

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Gave up looking for the code and like a good thief, I cracked the safe :D Look forward to your next mission. This was quite

inventive. I liked the horror aspects, as it adds a nice touch and definitely a fan of including light switches and havn't

AI turn them back on. All in all, first rate mission. Well done and thank you. :D

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, thank you guys for the very kind words :) Glad you liked it!

And @NeonsStyle Are you telling me you actually brute forced the thing??? Wow! Since I made the FM I feel like it is within my power to grant you an achievement, so congrats. ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!

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In the flooded waterworks, I found some bugs with the reflections. I apologize if these have been reported already. When standing in certain areas, some of the prefab objects, lights, particles etc. stop rendering in the reflection. The three areas I found were in the corner by the C1 and C2 switches, an area that extends a little into the middle of the room; by the three bulkhead doors around the machinery; and directly underneath the control room. Typically the archways and moss stencils continue to render, but the brick walls do not and neither do the coloured lights.

Spoiler

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Under the control room is especially funny looking because you can see the walls, doorways and windows of the room above, but not the floor, ceiling or assets within it. When I first played this FM last night, I could see a bright blue skybox in the reflections (which is how I noticed the bug) but now when I  go back to take screenshots, all I get is black. Go figure.

The rest of the mission looked great, ran well, and had just the right balance of difficulty I like (although I have no idea how you can snatch the coins off the table of the two playing cards without them noticing). A solid FM.

 

Edited by Bluehawk
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Hey Bluehawk, thanks for pointing that out. You're not the only one to have experienced this issue and I have a sneaking suspicion this is caused by visportals, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. I'll be working on an update soon trying to figure out what's causing this. Thanks for playing!

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On 3/17/2020 at 2:43 AM, Amadeus said:

Hey, thank you guys for the very kind words :) Glad you liked it!

And @NeonsStyle Are you telling me you actually brute forced the thing??? Wow! Since I made the FM I feel like it is within my power to grant you an achievement, so congrats. ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!

I did. Took about 15 minutes to go through all the combinations but I finally found it lol. Wasn't that hard since I already had two

numbers, just didn't know where they went. I doubt you intended this, but giving us the two numbers from the Inn Keepers

writings, was a brilliant bit, as it allowed you to be a thief and crack the safe. Very tedious but rewarding. lol

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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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An honestly nice mission. It's been a bit since I've felt that atmosphere of something always being around the corner, and the feeling of a city encircling you, even if the mission layout is very compact. Speaking of it, I enjoyed the use of the space, it didn't feel like it was a lot of wasted space or interiors you should've been able to enter but couldn't. I had trouble hitting the Expert loot goal since some of the loot was in locations not even lit to where you could see them. The openable crates, for example, I had no idea existed because I didn't have a precedent of being presented with an obvious one. The readables were serviceable, insofar as they mostly supported the gameplay and not any narrative but the environmental storytelling carried that load just fine.

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My FMs: The King of Diamonds (2016) | Visit my Mapbook thread sometimes! | Read my tutorial on Image-Based Lighting Workflows for TDM!

 

 

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Hey @Spooks, than you very much for the kind words and feedback; its no small compliment coming from an atmospheric master such as yourself! I never thought to introduce the openable crates cause I certainly didn't invent that prefab i used, but I can probably put one in an easy to find location just to set the precedent for players. Out of curiosity, 

How many secrets did you find?

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Spoiler

I think I stuck with 3 out of 5, the one that requires jumping on windosils, the one that makes you explore a spooky hidden room early on, and iirc one in the Inn.

From my previous message I don't want to gloss over just how balanced the locations are, considered in total. There's a keen, intuitive sense of pacing in terms of time you spend in one place and the detail that holds you to that place. I had a genuine feeling of discovery when making it to the waterworks (i didn't go through the main entrance), but once there, there was just enough to look around and explore that had bearing on my main objective, rather than an overabundance of distractions that would make me forget what I came in there for. The lack of goal-oriented design like that is what a lot of TDM levels suffer from, but this isn't one of them.

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My FMs: The King of Diamonds (2016) | Visit my Mapbook thread sometimes! | Read my tutorial on Image-Based Lighting Workflows for TDM!

 

 

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This was an enjoyable and great mission. I can see how much attention to detail you poured in. Great lighting.

That secret area behind the book shelf was awesome!

The guard walking in the water but still hearing me if I made a noise by the loud machines made me wish DM had a sound masking feature that mappers could easily make use of.

 

Spoiler

 

It's not obvious what is happening as you press the Door Ctrl. button in the waterworks, there is no feedback. If the player doesn't see something when they press a button, they'll probably assume nothing happened.

Lots of frobbale but useless scrolls.

Some useless doors still have door handles.

 

 

 

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Hey, thanks for playing! I'm glad you liked it!

I totally agree with you about the feedback issue, but that was something i didn't realize until it was kind of too late, haha, so i just chalked it up to "this is my first map, i'm sure it'll be fine."

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Hey, Amadeus,

This is your first mission? Impressive!

All the typical mistakes of upcoming mappers are not here - too vast spaces with nothing to do or unclear goals are not present; level-design is concise, micro-stories of its inhabitants gave it life-like feeling and it was very well optimized! 😮 

The main villain twist on how to get rid of him was original

I also liked the way code was hidden - if player found just one half with a little bit of combinatoric you could still open the safe :) 

All in all, awesome little mission :)

 

Spoiler

I was missing cca 700-800 gold, probably form the last secret which I didn´t discover:

I had:

- Windowsill

- Secret black magic tunnel in the store

- And 2 more which I don´t remember, I have no idea where the last one could be.

EDIT:// I found the last secret - it was in the bookshelf of man who is watching you, near your flat. I also missed some loot on the streets and the one in the maintenance sewers.

I also experienced the same reflection bug as Bluehawk and I thought the moor is un-blackjackable, until I have read the forum - it would not have occurred to me to steal the bracelet right form his arm, but it should have, since it was glowing green.

Also, I would have welcomed the possibility to cure the hammerite, since he writes in his letter that he feels his powers is draining while he stays here and player will find a voodoo doll in moors´s apartment, I definitely wouldn´t mind a hidden objective of curing him by tossing the doll into the holy water, just like the bracelet - because I did it and nothing happened.

Also, it would be a nice hint to players as to what to do with a bracelet as well ;) 

 

 

I also hope you would release another stories of your protagonist.

 

Edited by Tarhiel
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Thank you for the kind words Tarhiel! It is my first mission, but this was made on the back of several authors before me and hundreds upon hundreds of hours building maps, scrapping maps, learning things, relearning things, making mistakes, haha. This has been a long time coming. But I'm glad you enjoyed it! And I definitely plan on continuing this story as well

You're the first one to mention the doll! That's a good idea. Originally i just put it in there cause I thought it would be a fun little quirk to find, but you're right, that would be good to toss in there. I will keep that in mind for when I make an update soon. Also gotta figure out this reflection bug...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Very nice mission!

But I'm stuck at two points.

Hammer guy is up and pacing in his room, making it next to impossible to use the holy water. Aren't they supposed, to calm down after being alerted?

In the water station, I can't pick up the welder and I also see no sheets. Am I looking in the wrong place (the table, where the manual was)?

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Hey, thanks for playing!

As far as the Builder, this might actually be my fault. When he's alerted he goes to an alert path node in the room, but I don't know if he calms down. I should maybe give him a patrol outside of the room to give the player some breathing room. Will fix in the next update. (Keep in mind, getting to the holy water is not mandatory to complete the mission)

And for the water station, the welder is not your way forward

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I'm running the 64 bit version of The Dark Mod and the keyhole feature instantly crashed the game when I tried it. I didn't really miss it (in fact, this is the first I've heard of it, do any other missions have this?), but I'm really curious what it looks like and why it's not working.

I also ran into something kind of weird when I started the mission- when I tried to blackjack the two guards walking the streets (with the black and white uniforms), it just passed harmlessly through them, not making a sound. They turned around and killed me, and the problem persisted when I reloaded, though I could still kill them with arrows. Later, when I blackjacked Stefan, there was no trouble at all, and when I tried the same guards again later, they also were felled as normal. It's really weird- I've played dozens and dozens of missions and never had that happen before.

As for the mission itself, I enjoyed it very much, and everything felt really well put together. I enjoyed finding the secrets- I was able to find 4 out of 5 on my first try. However,

Spoiler

I still haven't been able to find the neighbor's hidden treasure. It was obvious from context that there must be something there. Other people on this thread have mentioned that it's one of the secrets, and that it's got something to do with the bookcase. But I've absolutely combed every square inch of that room looking for some kind of switch or lever or loose book, and there. Is. NOTHING. Where on earth is the secret??

 

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1 hour ago, Jehauri said:

It's really weird-

Whoa, that is really weird. I don't have the slightest clue as to what could be causing that. Are you playing 2.07 or 2.08?? And yeah, not sure why peeking works for some and not others but I attached a picture of what it looks like. Pretty useful for spotting guards on the other side.

And as far as the secret goes...

Its pretty darn tricky to spot, but look around the desk

good_2020-04-03_18.48.29.jpg

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Spoiler

Thanks, I was finally able to find it. The flickering firelight does a good job of hiding it, and even when I saw the edge of it I had a devil of a time getting it to actually activate- it didn't seem reachable for the first five tries, then, without anything apparently changing, it suddenly was. Feels good to see the last hidden part of the level though!

Tried the keyhole again, still crashy, unfortunately. I'm using 2.07... as far as I know, there isn't a 2.08? I don't see any mention on the Dark Mod page, and the updater doesn't update to it either. But don't get me wrong, the issues were minor in the end and I had a great time playing the level. Thanks for all the hard work!

 

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27 minutes ago, Jehauri said:
  Reveal hidden contents

Thanks, I was finally able to find it. The flickering firelight does a good job of hiding it, and even when I saw the edge of it I had a devil of a time getting it to actually activate- it didn't seem reachable for the first five tries, then, without anything apparently changing, it suddenly was. Feels good to see the last hidden part of the level though!

Tried the keyhole again, still crashy, unfortunately. I'm using 2.07... as far as I know, there isn't a 2.08? I don't see any mention on the Dark Mod page, and the updater doesn't update to it either. 

2.08 is currently beta. If you are brave enough, you can follow directions in the Beta Testing 2.08 thread to install it. Update regularly and keep in mind that this time the tdm_mirrors.txt has to be updated manually to get each new patch level.
The beta seems to be quite playable (no crashes for me, but there are bugs - it is a beta after all).

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On 4/3/2020 at 4:10 PM, Amadeus said:

Hey, thanks for playing!

 

  Hide contents

 

As far as the Builder, this might actually be my fault. When he's alerted he goes to an alert path node in the room, but I don't know if he calms down. I should maybe give him a patrol outside of the room to give the player some breathing room. Will fix in the next update. (Keep in mind, getting to the holy water is not mandatory to complete the mission)

And for the water station, the welder is not your way forward

 

Thanks, I stopped looking for a welder and could rob the vault regardless.

As for hammer guy, he was still pacing around when I came back after all of this, so, he ain't calm down.

I tried distracting him with a noisemaker, only to have him stuck at his bed in high alert.

I managed to put out all lights, so I was able, to throw Atiq's charm into the holy water :)

Again, nice mission, thank you!

 

Edited by s.urfer
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  • 2 weeks later...

What a cool mission, just finished it!  Only found 4 / 5 secrets.

Spoiler

Apparently there is one in the neighbor's room? I bumbled all around in there, but came up with nothing.

There was one rather confusing part:

Spoiler

The mage in the kitchen was completely invulnerable. After finishing and reading through here, apparently that was by design, but I would have never thought to pinch his armband and dispose of it without external assistance. So mostly I ended up in a save-reload cycle trying to figure out how to finish the mage off for a little while. Luckily you can get around him, but I still feel like I went away not having quite put the old 2 + 2 together. Once I understood it, it was a very neat concept, so maybe I'm just a bit dense.

And then, just as far as mapping goes, the lighting and soundscape was superb. The waterworks were particularly impressive, especially with the reflective water and electricals. Very good use overall of combining modules with custom brushwork and certainly something I'm aspiring to do more of in my next mission.

I'll be excited to see what you come up with next!

 

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Hey @krrg! Thanks for playing! 

Yeah, I realize I definitely did some unique things in this FM that might be a little weird at first, especially when

it came to the mage 
, but I'd like to think it came out pretty well.

As far as the secret goes:

there is definitely something there, but it is REAL subtle. Don't want to ruin it for you just yet, but you have to pay special attention as you curse me for making it that hard

:D 

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