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Fan Mission: The Painter’s Wife v1.2 by Fractured Glass Company (2020/07/01)


Dragofer

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If there's one word to describe this, it's epic. It's got a couple of bugs but given the size and sheer ambition, it's a minor distraction. Crucible of Omens is pretty much a dress rehearsal for this! That being said, I like missions with a bit more of a personal feel but this is still an incredible effort. Look forward to any future releases from the FGC crew!

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I've done a lot more exploring, gotten a little lost, picked up some shiny objects, and found some bugs:

Spoiler

on my second attempt at the temple/firetrap in tiny world, the water went vertical: (attached)painterswife_2020-07-08_20.41.38.jpg

when picking up the mask from the statue in the tiny world, I got a BOOP noise; I've heard it when unsuccessfully trying to KO AI as well.

the thieves in their hideout are unusually heavy, like trying to drag large crates.

I'm missing prompts for some very obvious bonus things, or seeing ways of entry for others:

Spoiler

I found an assassin; someone must have a note about fearing or hiring her, but where?

there was a note of frustration about the clock tower being off-time, but how do I get into it?

 

Edited by MrMunkeepants
moving image into spoiler tag
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@MrMunkeepants 

Spoiler

There's a note about needing to make arrangements to "take care" of your contact inside Marlow's Manor and some information about being surprised about the assassin's living conditions etc

Spoiler

To get into the Clocktower there are multiple routes possible; careful jumps and scaling from small assassin's balcony that overlooks Alderman Street south end to get to a thieves highway (boarded) route to clock tower. Alternatively start in the small back garden of the Apothecary and scale up the vines, balcony and rope to reach the thieves highway above Alderman Street that way. Head along it towards Bell Street and find your way up the tower via ledges and horizontal pipes to a maintenance hatch.

There is also an upper floor Balcony in Marlow's Manor that opens directly onto the area you can start climbing the Clocktower from.

 

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@CountMorillonite The Builder wells, of which there are 2, are indeed single-use and restore 50% health. They were added because it seemed likely that players would receive a fair bit of falling damage in a vertical map like this one.

@MrMunkeepants Those boop sounds indicate that a sound file can't be found. My guess is something went wrong with the download, because those sounds are definitely part of the TPW and TDM downloads, respectively.

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On 7/5/2020 at 4:31 PM, mmij said:

Congratulations on putting together this epic-scale map with some interesting and frustratingly, fun missions. I can tell a lot of work went into it from many different people.

I enjoyed the main storyline, the idea of the player being more than just a simple thief. And how you can choose the method of exacting revenge on the villain makes it more than just a Mario World level collect coins, free the princess... Oops! She's in another castle.

 

And as much as I enjoyed the missions, I do feel the need to share my critic of the map.

 

Humans build cities based on a geometry for planned growth or asymmetrically for natural growth. This map uses neither and is difficult to navigate. All the buildings have near identical exteriors in the dim light, there are no landmarks to reference. And the street signs are dark placards sitting in the dark, of limited use on the ground, but definitely not helpful if you've gone vertical.

 

Another issue with the mapping is that, because of the hodgepodge of structures, there are many areas where you can literally walk on air (Hill Street is a good example), or get pushed sideways during a jump by an invisible wall. The latter is a feature found throughout the map. I have no suggestions on how to fix this other than through a walkthrough in Dark Radiant.

 

But about the layout of the city, I do have a suggestion. It's based on my past work within government public works. And I give it as advice, to be regarded or disregarded not for me to be a know-it-all or an attacker. I know a ton of work went into this project.

 

Any building that was constructed by the government, a church, or wealthier faction should be part of a geometry. It can be part of a grid polar or Cartesian a militant triangle, star, diamond, etc. (as long as it's pointy), or your choice of polygon. Poorer areas, or places where the sprawl has grown with the city's population, are normally going to be like tree branches or rivers. The passageways flow around larger buildings (connecting to but not overpowering geometric ones) and natural formations.

 

So for this map, the area around the church, the clock tower, and all major buildings housing the wealthy or government services (electrical and water centers) should be on a geometric pattern. This includes the verticals. The pipes and lines should radiate out in the same pattern as the ground-level roads.

 

The "sprawl" is not random. There is a pattern to how sprawls develop, and often it grows like a tree. main branch of traffic forms, and the smaller branches bud out after that. If the sprawl is growing out of decay, the original large structures will look more like rocks in a river if you take a bird's-eye view.

 

In areas where geometrical growth meets asymmetrical growth, in a newer city (only a couple hundred years old) you often find its a no-man's zone. There's not really any established business or housing from either side that seems to be permanent. It's in flux. Older cities will still maintain the line, but there is a mix of well and poorly funded architecture.

 

Two of the biggies for navigation are the facades and the roads. In an area around a well-funded, high-profile project such as a church, the church will decide the look of the area. If its design is sedate and dark, many of the major structures in the neighborhood will to reflect that. And the road, which is normally funded by the builder, will be uniform in that area and wider than those found elsewhere.

 

So around our theoretical church, that's in an older city, the buildings should show signs of having started out from the same designer. The roads should all be the same material and wide enough for high traffic or parades.

 

A more recently built clock tower nearby our church will have it's own sycophantic buildings, but in better condition, and its own unique, wide pavements. If the structures' properties meet, then there is a distinct border. More often than not though, there is an intermediate section of sprawl that connects the two areas. Where sprawl sits closely between two properties, it leans more towards one design or the other.

 

This is not really important for smaller maps. Smaller maps are tiny sections of larger geometry or asymmetric growth and can be treated independently. There are fewer high-level patterns to consider, and the above topics won't affect a player's run. But on a large map such as this one, consideration to city planning and growth can drastically increase a player's ability to navigate.

 

One last note. This advice is given based the growth of a city considering material wealth only. Vying political factions and wars will change the footprint of various parts of a city in different ways than I described above. Asymmetric and geometric patterns will still arise, but density and direction will be different.

Thank you for this unexpected and interesting bit of trivia, I´m intrigued!

Is there any book or article you would recommend to read to learn more about all this?

Because this would be important reference material for area level design. I remember @Melan once wrote about the book he recommends about design of houses and how it informs his approach to design certain missions.

It would be interesting to read your material as well.

 

Edited by Tarhiel
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Captain's Desk

I'm having a problem

Spoiler

depositing the 4 letters onto a Captain's Desk. I thought I knew where the desk was (one of 2 desks at the Court House) but I may be in the wrong place. I'm looking for a desk that highlights as you approach it then place 4 letters, one at a time onto the desk, completing the objective. Where am I wrong?

 

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Spoiler

When you have all the letters from Marlow (one in his personal quarters desk drawer and three in the kidnapee's basement cell), you should read them all and then they should be replaced in your inventory by a new item called "Marlow's Letters", and the protagonist will comment that he's found enough evidence. The new bundle of letters item is still a readable and contains all the text of the separate letters, but now it's a quest item you can manually drop and position on top of the desk of Captain Wilkins as a physics object to trigger the objective.

 

Edited by Bluehawk
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I couldn't resist, I just played one hour and (Builder, forgive me) noclipped to see the scope of the mission.

The map size is not insane; it is some new sort of madness which has not been described scientifically till now.

All these details, a mushroom here, a branch there, steam from gratings, if one looks up illuminated windows, balconies, dormers, pipes and practically no vertically flat surfaces.

This must have been hellish to work on. How long does compiling take? Fives minutes is surely not enough.

Great work, guys, really great work!

Jack

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5 hours ago, JackFarmer said:

This must have been hellish to work on. How long does compiling take? Fives minutes is surely not enough.

Heh, the dmap times where unbelievable for a little while a few months ago. I have a fairly decent rig, but I'd start dmapping, then leave to make dinner, eat dinner, then find the pc still dmapping, it'd take a solid half an hour to 45 minutes or so. But with 2.08 and a few other changes, that time was drastically cut. so now its only like 5-10 minutes to dmap :D

@MrMunkeepants Do you mind kindly putting that image in spoiler tags please, thank you!

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9 hours ago, Bluehawk said:
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When you have all the letters from Marlow (one in his personal quarters desk drawer and three in the kidnapee's basement cell), you should read them all and then they should be replaced in your inventory by a new item called "Marlow's Letters", and the protagonist will comment that he's found enough evidence. The new bundle of letters item is still a readable and contains all the text of the separate letters, but now it's a quest item you can manually drop and position on top of the desk of Captain Wilkins as a physics object to trigger the objective.

 

Thank you, thank you. I hadn't read the second letter so it wasn't "packaged". Now everything works! 

Spoiler

But I was expecting the desk to highlight indicating that something had to be placed there. Doesn't matter.

The only issue I have left is to "discourage the assassin"

Spoiler

 

which I assume means knocking her out. Unfortunately I maxed out my quota of knockouts so when I club assassin, game ends.

I hope this means I can't complete the mission.

 

 

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10 minutes ago, CountMorillonite said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

which I assume means knocking her out. Unfortunately I maxed out my quota of knockouts so when I club assassin, game ends.

I hope this means I can't complete the mission.

 

 

Spoiler

Hm, did you actually try to knockout the assassin? The KO quota shouldn't be affected by the assassin, since it's controlled by an external script which checks the total amount of player KOs and subtracts 1 from that total if the assassin is among them.

There is also a non-violent way to discourage the assassin: steal the gear she needs for the task (upper floor by the blank note, lower floor on the kitchen table), then frob the blank note to leave her a message.

Regarding the table in the courthouse, the intention for an update is to make both tables work for the objective. Could probably also make the desk frobable in addition to or instead of being able to drop the letters.

 

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5 minutes ago, Dragofer said:
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Hm, did you actually try to knockout the assassin? The KO quota shouldn't be affected by the assassin, since it's controlled by an external script which checks the total amount of player KOs and subtracts 1 from that total if the assassin is among them.

There is also a non-violent way to discourage the assassin: steal the gear she needs for the task (upper floor by the blank note, lower floor on the kitchen table), then frob the blank note to leave her a message.

Regarding the table in the courthouse, the intention for an update is to make both tables work for the objective. Could probably also make the desk frobable in addition to or instead of being able to drop the letters.

 

Spoiler

Everything is cool. I assumed I couldn't club her. So when I DID club her and nothing happened, I knew things were going to work out. But also I had to a supplemental thing after she was unconscious which I figured out and you verified in your comment above.

Thanks for your help Dragofer.

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On 7/9/2020 at 10:07 AM, Dragofer said:

 

@MrMunkeepants Those boop sounds indicate that a sound file can't be found. My guess is something went wrong with the download, because those sounds are definitely part of the TPW and TDM downloads, respectively.

I also get it with the dumbwaiter hitting the the bottom of the shaft. TDM just updated, so I'm surprised assets are missing. Do I need a fresh download to fix it?

4 hours ago, Amadeus said:

@MrMunkeepants Do you mind kindly putting that image in spoiler tags please, thank you!

I tried when posting and it wouldn't go; it should be fixed now

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3 hours ago, MrMunkeepants said:

I also get it with the dumbwaiter hitting the the bottom of the shaft. TDM just updated, so I'm surprised assets are missing. Do I need a fresh download to fix it?

What I'd try first is to delete your darkmod.cfg and/or re-download the mission (make a backup of the existing mission and the savegame). If you still get boop sounds in this as well as other missions, in particular when failing to KO AIs, then I think the best shot at a fix is to get a fresh download of TDM.

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On 7/8/2020 at 1:40 PM, Apache Fiero said:

Painters Wife is pretty impressive so far, although I'm pretty lost and got no clue where to go really.

Me too, though I've rarely enjoyed it so much =D The city environment is lush.

Edited by Oleron
Sp.
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wow, thoroughly enjoyed getting lost and soaking in the ambiance of the Mirkway Quarter!

I printed out a map to make notes on, and keep track of which passages connected which areas 📝

I found a few extras: 

Spoiler

8 special items of loot, 2 optional objectives, and a bonus from using the stone key

 

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Fantastic mission, it's massive!  The only problem I've encountered so far is when I go to the bookcase with the tiny world inside the book. When I try to enter, it crashes on me!  Any suggestions on what I can do to try to fix this issue? I've updated my game drivers, but it's still crashing!

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Hi suzy8track

this mission requires TDM 2.08

run this mission using the 64-bit client (TheDarkModx64.exe)

you can delete the Darkmod.cfg darkmod writes a new one
 

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@Dragofer

I anticipate lots of models/brushes/func statics have been merged into single models with the "save selection as new model" command?

From flying over the map, I think that should easily be 8,000 + objects without some sort of optimisation.

Edited by JackFarmer
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