Away 0: Stolen Heart by Geep & _Atti_ (2021/11/12)

[thebigh]

I liked this mission. The casino and art gallery bits reminded me of some of the T1 missions- notably the opera house and the non-suckful bits of Thieves' Guild. The early section, before you get to the Four Flags, seemed eerie and empty in a good way too.

At times it got to be a bit of a key hunt and did drag a little towards the end, but I thought the clever puzzles made up for that.

On 11/21/2021 at 8:40 AM, Geep said:

Yup, frobbing through the wood... that's cheating. I thought I had prevented gamers from doing that, but if not, will add it to the bug list. Of course, if you're using noclip, can't stop that.

You could just put the key somewhere far away and inaccessible, and then use a script to move it into the box when it opens. I had the same problem and had to resort to this hack to stop the player grabbing a bit of loot through a wall when nothing else worked.

[Geep]

@thebigh, I'm happy you found this FM atmospheric and worthwhile to play, and the puzzles engaging. In retrospect, yeah, there is a fair amount of hunting (for keys, lockpicks, notes, paintings, clues), and probably not enough dealing with traps. Something to ponder for the future.

Thanks for the feedback. And for the hack idea, I'll remember that!

[thebigh]

Oh, I forgot to mention... the panel or whatever it is obscuring most of Hornsby behind his door just looks like it's made of matte black. Is that a missing texture?

[grodenglaive]

Thanks for the fun mission and the first NSFW one I've seen. It was pretty amusing and I thought the singing priest was well done also. It probably took me a fair bit longer than it should have though, 

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I just didn't notice the red light changing positions with the lock numbers and I managed to miss where the ladies were kept for the longest time.

 

[Thiefette]

Finished this up yesterday and for the most part enjoyed it 

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I had difficulty with the deposit box puzzle and ended up coming here to get some help. At first I didn't realize that was them in the room with the drunk guy but from checking here I saw it was. I was still baffled because I never found a 4 number code so I didn't even try the dial, then spent a lot of time searching for a code - which was okay as I found loot I was missing.  I did have the 69 code note and with some help from here discovered the dials moved the red spot lol and I got the girls taken care of. 

I have to ask though - where is the key for the grate in the girls area? I thought the one locked up would be the one but it didn't work either. 

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

[Summer]

Question: 

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1. I'm going blind in my old age, or I'm just dumb. Where are the gems I'm supposed to give Hornsby?

2. What do I do with the women's papers? I read a plaque that suggests a cutscene about to start, so I don't want to trigger that if it ruins the optional papers task.

 

[Geep]

On 1/22/2022 at 8:19 PM, datiswous said:

When I update this mission from version 1 to 2, after download (with in-game downloader) the mission still shows version 1 in the mission selection screen

That's because it's just a patch. A real version 2 will be out before the end of the month.

[Geep]

On 12/20/2021 at 6:04 PM, roygato said:

I already beta tested this at the time, but it was fun to see the improvements. Certainly a lot of the jank is gone, so kudos for that. A fun mission, with some novel ideas. I don't seem to remember others that tease an objective, and then make you either hard commit or leave it.

That said, I'm not sure if it's because I'm running a 2.10 beta build, due to testing the new frob outlines, but I had a serious bug. When the fence offers you the lockpick, the map and the gold pouch, I couldn't for the life of me frob anything but the lockpick. So I just left the rest, and went though the entire mission. Which worked up until after the final cutscene finishes, since I'm now stuck in limbo, as the "do business with the fence" objective never completed. I skimmed through the comments, and it doesn't seem like anyone else has had it happen to them, and it worked fine back in beta testing, so could be a 2.10 quirk. Or just a rare occurrence.

A pretty ambitious mission in a lot of ways, definitely points for the effort and making due with what seems to be less than ideal equipment.

Sorry I didn't see this earlier. Thanks for kind words.

Regarding the fence with the lockpick, the visibility and frobability of the items on the plate (and overall plate movement) are set by scripting. Although I originally tried to make it so you could frob in any order, I couldn't make that work reliability, so I reluctantly made you frob in a given order. It is possible that is what caused your difficulties. I'll look at this issue again for V2. I don't have hopes too high for more flexible frob order. Probably I could make it that only getting the lockpick is required to meet the objective.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Geep
*didn't*

[Geep]

On 1/25/2022 at 5:53 PM, grodenglaive said:

It probably took me a fair bit longer than it should have though,

Too bad that the deposit box indicators weren't apparent to you for a while. In V2, there's a different texture on those boxes, which may or may not help.

As to the other point, yeah, it is a big building to find things. It's hard to give clues from Emily about where things are, because space on the paper is limited, and who knows what the names of places refer to anyway? Glad you managed at last!

[Geep]

On 1/28/2022 at 8:51 PM, Thiefette said:

...where is the key for the grate...

Yes, as you indicated, the key you had should have worked that grate too. I'll check it again in case something got broken.

[Geep]

3 hours ago, Summer said:

(2 hidden questions)

1) The gem specifically for Hornsby is only at the very beginning of the game. So presumably you already did that if you got to question 2. (If the problem is that Objectives 1 or 2 are not satisfied when they should be, then that would be a bug)

2) What to do with the papers is described in the last of Emily's notes. Yes, you are right, starting the cutscene does foreclose the chance of satisfying the optional objective.

[Geep]

On 1/23/2022 at 7:41 PM, thebigh said:

Oh, I forgot to mention... the panel or whatever it is obscuring most of Hornsby behind his door just looks like it's made of matte black. Is that a missing texture?

Nope, it is indeed a black matte panel, used to help corral the gem if you accidentally drop it. I tried to obscure it with the black vapors. Too bad Hornsby has no body, so needs a vanity panel

[Geep]

Sorry to anyone I didn't get back to in a timely matter... somehow "Follow topic" got turned off. It's back on now.

[Olivir2016]

I must admit I am probably totally blind - I have run accross the 4Flags several times and I just simply cannot find the vault and the drunken guard you all are talking about. Please, can anyone point me to the right direction? Untill now it has been refreshing experience, but now after several hours I am just frustrated:-(

[thebigh]

I hope I am remembering this correctly but

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in one of the big hallways there is a wall with four flags hanging down, with a sort of narrow wooden catwalk behind the flags, about half way up the wall. Up there is a little crawlway that leads to the drunken guard.

 

[Olivir2016]

Wow, thanks a thousand times!. And to imagine I have walked

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around this platform so many times and the fallen grid alway seemed suspicious - and yet I didn't follow it...

 

[Geep]

Glad you found it. The map you got in the lower town hints at this too, but it's meant to be enigmatic.

[Geep]

@Thiefette, you were right about that key problem. Fixed in Version 2, which will be out real soon.

[Geep]

All -

Stolen Heart V2 is now released, along with a bonus "Making of Away 0's Video Cutscenes" doc. See the updated original post in this thread for more.

[Frost_Salamander]

How do I:

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'do business' with Hornsby at the Inn?  I have the gem from the alley, and he's holding his arm out with the plate. The gem won't come out of my inventory or anything, so I can't drop it on the plate, nor do I have anything else to give him.  I've tried 'using' the gem and nothing happens, and nothing seems to be frobable.

Also, why does the inventory icon have that heart outline and it looks like only half the gem is there?  I feel like I've missed a bunch of stuff here somehow...

 

Edited April 28, 2023 by Frost_Salamander

[datiswous]

When you select the gem you cannot make it drop like all regular inventory items? I thought this is how you do it.

[Frost_Salamander]

2 minutes ago, datiswous said:

When you select the gem you cannot make it drop like all regular inventory items? I thought this is how you do it.

Yeah.  It turned out I didn't have my 'drop inv. item' key bound, so I was pressing it and nothing was happening. 

[Geep]

On 4/28/2023 at 7:25 PM, Frost_Salamander said:

Also, why does the inventory icon have that heart outline and it looks like only half the gem is there?  I feel like I've missed a bunch of stuff here somehow...

Ah, there was an original plan to have a heart-shaped stone, or maybe bind two oval stones together to fake that (as a previous FM did, that was a story inspiration here). But it turned out that was all too much of a lift. So just used a single oval stone, with a heart outline to allude to the "Stolen Heart" theme. Just atmospherics.

[MirceaKitsune]

Strange: I thought I finished this FM long ago but it seems not. I saw there's a part two so I decided to play it again and refresh myself. For some reason thought I'm completely stuck.

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How do I get past this gate? I looked everywhere and can't find any key! I got the papers from the desk / vault room, for some reason the objective didn't complete... wonder if I'm supposed to give them to the girls elsewhere first.

Also I can't find the combination for the 4 digit safe, looked at suggestions in other comments but none of them worked for me. Nor a way to get to it without taking damage, the area with the hanging flags where you crawl into the vent can only be reached by jumping from the balcony and getting hurt.

 

[Geep]

@MirceaKitsune , I hope this helps -

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How do I get past this gate? I looked everywhere and can't find any key!

You have to solve the 4-digit puzzle in the vault first. To do so, you need a 2 digit code (from Bleda's attic safe or more obscurely from Zelda). There's also an indirect hint about the third digit from one of Emily's notes... then, in the vault, you have to play around with changing various puzzle digits and seeing what effect that has on the moving red light on the safe deposit boxes. The final digit is by exhaustive search - be sure to pull the handle on each try. There's only a desired response on 1 out of 10 possibilities.

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I got the papers from the desk / vault room, for some reason the objective didn't complete... wonder if I'm supposed to give them to the girls elsewhere first.

You're on the right track there.

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Nor a way to get to [the vault) without taking damage, the area with the hanging flags where you crawl into the vent can only be reached by jumping from the balcony and getting hurt.

I'm not sure whether by "balcony" you are referring to the platform immediately under the flags, or the upper-story music hall lobby. In any event, if you have no rope arrow, there's no good way to get to the platform. If you do have a rope arrow, you can shimmy up, then later shimmy down it. But I agree, if while shimmying down you frob it to keep it in your inventory, you probably will get some minor damage. (I recall this got only a moment's thought at design time, and I couldn't come up with a damage-avoiding solution I liked enough to implement.)