The Siege Shop (07/09/2020)

[PranQster]

 

Title: The Siege Shop
Short Description: Obtain the secret weapon plans from a small fortress run by a rogue-faction. 
Version: 5.0
Author: PranQster & lowenz
Required TDM Version: 2.08

Version 5 beta testers: lowenz, wesp5, thebigh

Download: The Siege Shop

Please read the "framerate disclaimer", below.

Long Description:
East of town, by a pass in the mountains, lies a small fortress. The Builders once used it as a training camp for their archers. Their needs outgrew the small outpost years ago and it was sold to an independent buyer. It is now occupied by a gang of thugs and former city watch. Raids on supply carts near that pass are likely being diverted there.
The fort houses a weapons factory, with sounds of hammering, sawing and smithing happening 'round the clock.
I need to pay this fortress a visit tonight, to retrieve something another guild member failed to secure.
The front gate is not a good way in, but a small cave leads to the rear entrance...so I'm told.
A few weeks ago, the local thieves guild was able to get a man into the place, hired as a cook. There were rumors of large siege weapons being built inside the fort, and he was to acquire the plans to any of the weapons he could.
He is now more than a week late in returning. The guild fears he has either been caught, or has taken the plans to sell to a more lucrative market.
The guild has hired me for an old-fashioned break-in job. If anyone can pull this off, it's me...

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This mission is the fifth release of The Siege Shop. It originated as a tutorial map when I first started working with DarkRadiant. The first release was very rough and gradually improved with subsequent releases. This has been a big learning curve for me and I apologize to all for repeatedly whipping a dead horse. I feel that this version is a vast improvement upon the previous releases, so hopefully players will find it worth a re-play.

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Highlighted Changes:
+Outdoor lightning effects
+New mission start
+More AI
+More loot
+Goodbye to the elevators; hello to the stairs
+Darker/dirtier with lots of texture changes
+Lots of lights were changed
+AI doing more stuff (and some do less)
+Some things long since broken were fixed (textures, z-fighting, AI relations, the list goes on)
+Re-designed front gate and workshop cavern
+Equal Opportunity Employment
+More fun things to see and do
+Four-legged creatures here and there
+Eight-legged creatures might make an appearance
+Several more things moving around on splines
+There's a Floater (no, not the one in the bucket!)
+New splash screen and loading GUI
+New & changed readables

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Framerate Disclaimer:
Due to new lightning effects, the frame rate will drop noticeably when these effects are triggered. There is no way around that. It is brief when it happens & hope it doesn't ruin the gameplay for too many people.

Lightning flashing inside the building: This will happen while the roof door is open. Just pretend the light came in through the windows. The same goes for the inventor's spectacles, due to the open front gate.

Ugly Spider Web Disclaimer:
Please ignore the ugly spider webs if you see them. Just use your imagination. Some day I will get proper webs in place of the ugly ones. First I will need to rig something up to prevent lightning flashes on them while the player is in the cave.

Regarding AI killing each other: Yes, unfortunately this can happen when two AI decide to use the same path node at the archery range. If that node is occupied, the second archer simply lines up behind the first and lets the arrows fly. This should happen infrequently, but due to randomness, who knows. I suggest a quick-save before going to the roof. That should allow enough time for different path-finding decisions to be made by the AI. Sometimes these guys share a toilet bucket too.

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Screenshots:

Spoiler

 

 

Edited September 13, 2020 by PranQster
Updated disclaimers

[Amadeus]

Congrats, looking forward to giving this a go! 

[PranQster]

Who can help me get the mission database updated? ... Or give me access to edit it myself?

Edited September 7, 2020 by PranQster

[nbohr1more]

The mission database has been updated.

Congrats and thank you for all your hard work!

[PranQster]

Awesome! Thank you

[Acolytesix]

On it  

[joebarnin]

Congrats! Never played this one before, so now I will!

[PranQster]

1 hour ago, joebarnin said:

Congrats! Never played this one before, so now I will!

Consider yourself lucky

[PranQster]

On 9/7/2020 at 8:09 PM, nbohr1more said:

The mission database has been updated.

Congrats and thank you for all your hard work!

Would it be possible to update the splash/title image with the one from the top of the first post, please?

[nbohr1more]

15 minutes ago, PranQster said:

Would it be possible to update the splash/title image with the one from the top of the first post, please?

Done

[Oktokolo]

Thank you for keeping updating this great mission.
I had to download the update manually, but then enjoyed comming back to the shop.

Obligatory nitpicks:

Spoiler

- The lightning indeed makes the FPS drop significantly. But it is worth it.

- Despite the front being absurdly well guarded, only player clip actually stopped me from boldly sneaking in through the front gate. There really is no reason why that small area in front of the gate has to be plot walled. The cave entrance is great and all - but taking the front route should still be a valid (although much harder) way to go. I verified ghostability from start to player clip and from inner player clip to delivery entrance gate.
Another thing hard-blocking the front (and the water tunnel) route is the placement of the key to the inner delivery gate. Would be nice if it could be aquired by leaning or using a stick (if the engine supports that).

- I like that the backtracking became faster by replacing the elevators with stairs. But getting rid of the keyhunt aspect (or just allow the front route, so the player can get the keys before needing them) would be nice too.

- Auto-closing all doors is irritating and never needed (players are able to close doors). The map also is well designed and portalled. You could probably leave every door of the entire map open without significantly hurting FPS.

- The spider webs are indeed looking like blurry rocks. I first tried to climb the animated strings of the spiders.

- The table in the shack at the front entrance is floating.

- There is some really stretched grassy dirt texture on the top part of the moat's wall.

- The second wardrobe to the right in the officers' bedroom on the upper floor has its door texture shifted to the left.

- There is a floating bag on the right side of the door leading from the kitchen to the gatehouse.

- There is a scroll of impotence in the shelf next to the stone thrower miniature. It is collectible and when used renders the player unable to use any item or weapon.

 

[PranQster]

12 hours ago, Abusimplea said:

Thank you for keeping updating this great mission.
I had to download the update manually, but then enjoyed comming back to the shop.

Obligatory nitpicks:

  Reveal hidden contents

- The lightning indeed makes the FPS drop significantly. But it is worth it.

- Despite the front being absurdly well guarded, only player clip actually stopped me from boldly sneaking in through the front gate. There really is no reason why that small area in front of the gate has to be plot walled. The cave entrance is great and all - but taking the front route should still be a valid (although much harder) way to go. I verified ghostability from start to player clip and from inner player clip to delivery entrance gate.
Another thing hard-blocking the front (and the water tunnel) route is the placement of the key to the inner delivery gate. Would be nice if it could be aquired by leaning or using a stick (if the engine supports that).

- I like that the backtracking became faster by replacing the elevators with stairs. But getting rid of the keyhunt aspect (or just allow the front route, so the player can get the keys before needing them) would be nice too.

- Auto-closing all doors is irritating and never needed (players are able to close doors). The map also is well designed and portalled. You could probably leave every door of the entire map open without significantly hurting FPS.

- The spider webs are indeed looking like blurry rocks. I first tried to climb the animated strings of the spiders.

- The table in the shack at the front entrance is floating.

- There is some really stretched grassy dirt texture on the top part of the moat's wall.

- The second wardrobe to the right in the officers' bedroom on the upper floor has its door texture shifted to the left.

- There is a floating bag on the right side of the door leading from the kitchen to the gatehouse.

- There is a scroll of impotence in the shelf next to the stone thrower miniature. It is collectible and when used renders the player unable to use any item or weapon.

 

Thank you. I'll take a look at these oversights and quietly sneak an update. Your comments regarding the front gate as an entrance were discussed, but I only wanted the one way in. The same goes for the second gate just inside.

I just updated my original link. I'll have to request an update to the mirrors. I fixed most of the issues listed.

Spoiler

• Key moved closer to the gate. Those guards are sure dumb to keep the key there. (I actually forgot to test this, but set the frob distance on the key to reach past the bars).
• I'll work on the spider webs for a possible update. If I use web decals, they flash with the lightning despite no caulk and only solid textures in the walls down there. Open cave entrances allow the lightning to leak in to the webs. I'm trying to figure a way for doors to close at the three cave entrances while the player is inside the cave, only to open again before reaching an 'exit'.
• Most doors no longer auto-close, except for the sets of double-doors near the drawbridge, roof door, and the lower door from the captain's room to the cavern.
• Floored the floating table and items upon it.
• The stretched texture was new and I hadn't seen it after recently aligning the grass textures beneath the balloon. I worked on that and added some bushes to hide stuff there.
• Fixed wardrobe door texture, hinge textures, and fixed the handles.
• Bag on the floor was floored, but too round on the bottom. Sunk it a bit. Same with the broom near there. Also rotated some sacks on the other side of that wall.
• The three objective scrolls were all set to 'usable' '0'.
• Also re-set the silverware on the table in the officers' quarters.

 

Edited September 10, 2020 by PranQster

[Acolytesix]

On 9/8/2020 at 1:11 AM, PranQster said:

Framerate Disclaimer:
Due to new lightning effects, the frame rate will drop noticeably when these effects are triggered. There is no way around that. It is brief when it happens & hope it doesn't ruin the gameplay for too many people.

Lightning flashing inside the building: This will happen while the roof door is open. Just pretend the light came in through the windows. The same goes for the inventor's spectacles, due to the open front gate.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

The only framerate issues I get is in the dungeon...

Edited September 12, 2020 by Acolytesix

[PranQster]

On 9/7/2020 at 8:09 PM, nbohr1more said:

The mission database has been updated.

Congrats and thank you for all your hard work!

Could you please update the mirrors? I updated the .pk4 on google drive.

Thank you.

[PranQster]

On 9/11/2020 at 8:53 PM, Acolytesix said:

The only framerate issues I get is in the dungeon...

Yeah, the one place where I (purposely) lax'd the rules for overlapping lights with shadows is the torture area... mostly because of the little fireplace with lights in it to make a poker glow red.

Edited September 13, 2020 by PranQster

[nbohr1more]

1 hour ago, PranQster said:

Could you please update the mirrors? I updated the .pk4 on google drive.

Thank you.

The mirrors have been updated.

[stgatilov]

When I checked this FM in the database before this update got released, it said "version 5". When I now check it in the database, it still says "version 5". Consequently, when I check the in-game downloader, it does not offer me the update because it thinks that my current version is the most recent one (since it has same version), which is clearly wrong. Most of the people won't download the update if we don't bump the internal version.

@nbohr1more?

[PranQster]

Blame that on me for naming the previous release "4.4" instead of "5". As such, I should have released the current one as version "6". Live and learn...

[PranQster]

So, should I update the text files and call the current release version 6? That might be easiest to solve issues with updates.

[stgatilov]

47 minutes ago, PranQster said:

So, should I update the text files and call the current release version 6? That might be easiest to solve issues with updates.

No, you should not. It won't change anything. And versions like this will happen anyway.

The internal version in FM database must be bumped to 6.

[stgatilov]

Nevermind, I bumped the version.

Also verified that the new version boots properly on SVN. Thanks!

[MirceaKitsune]

Very nice FM overall. It's rarer to see proper outdoor FM's, with the right amount of detail and the geometry not looking fake, this definitely achieved that and felt very natural. Was going to mention the lightning performance and super low-res web texture, but you already clarified those in the first post. All I can offer is two small visual issues I encountered:

Spoiler

 

The water floats above this beer jug. It might be hard to see in this screenshot as it's animated, but if you look closely you should notice the refraction in the air (look above the jug and along the table's edge).

 

Spoiler

The pipe floats in front of this guys face. It doesn't even move with his head, but most importantly it just hovers at a noticeable distance from it. I know the goal was to make it look like he's smoking, but unless permanently attached I don't think this can look well as is.

 

 

[PranQster]

Thank you.

The first issue you mentioned. Yeah I saw that too late. I previously had a floating table and mug... lowered those two, but forgot the patch of liquid. It's fixed in DR but I don't know when it will be updated for everyone.

As far as the second issue. I made no attempt to get that object synced to the AI's head. Just use your imagination.

[MirceaKitsune]

10 hours ago, PranQster said:

As far as the second issue. I made no attempt to get that object synced to the AI's head. Just use your imagination.

Then a wizard with psychic powers he is