Fan Mission: Cole Hurst 1: Eaton by bwyan (2021/12/02)

[bwyan]

After several months of hard (although very enjoyable) work, I’m proud to announce the release of my first FM - “Cole Hurst 1: Eaton”.

Mission description

In the northern town of Eaton, Lord Mayor Zelmer is hosting a lavish party at his luxurious estate to celebrate Eaton's establishment... The city's elite, a famous musician and even the Queen will be partaking in tonight's festivities.

Screenshots

Download

“Cole Hurst 1: Eaton” should already be available for download in the game, but you can also grab a copy of version 1.0 from here.

To install this copy, simply place the downloaded file named “ch1_eaton.pk4” in your “[the dark mod]/fms/” folder.

Notes

I would say this FM could primarily be considered a “traditional mansion heist” mission. These were by far my favorite type of Thief 1/2 levels which I have very fond memories of playing through as a child. I suppose this is my humble attempt to create something vaguely similar...

I have tried my best to make the story, the readables and the conversations as interesting as I could and so I really do hope that some of you will find it enjoyable.

The mission features:

Spoiler

• Two city neighborhoods and a relatively large mansion

• Several conversations and quite a lot of readables

• Variable number of guards and player tools based on the chosen difficulty setting

• A functioning gramophone player and pin-code wheel

• EAX reverb

I already have some relatively concrete ideas for a follow-on mission in mind, so hopefully I will have time to continue my mapping efforts soon(ish) :)

Contributions

I have been overwhelmed by the amount of people interested in helping me with this mission. A huge thanks to each and every one of you!

Story

• Kelly Hrupa

Voice actors:

• twhalen2600 (AKA @Benny_the_guard)

• Kelly Hrupa

Testers:

• @Acolytesix- brisk puzzle solver

• @duzenko - the man with the admin tools

• @JackFarmer - objective wrangler

• @Shadow - a certified spider-monkey who refuse to stay caged

• @Cambridge Spy - an eagle-eyed book-worm

• @wesp5 - eager candle-snuffer

• @madtaffer – readability advisor

• @prjames - spider assassin

• @suzy8track – book magician

• @datiswous – destroyer of crates

I would also like to say a special thanks to @Dragofer who has been very helpful with debugging and general advice in cases where I had absolutely no idea what to do.

@duzenko has also been very responsive to any game-related bugs that I’ve encountered during the beta phase and also thanks to @nbohr1more for handling this release for me.

As I am completely new to mapping in general, I also found @Springheel‘s wonderful TDM New Mappers Workshop extremely helpful when I was first getting started, so thank you very much for creating it.

Known bugs/issues

While this mission has spent quite some time in beta testing, I’m sure that some of you will discover shortcomings that my wonderful beta testers and I have overlooked. In that case, please do get in touch and I will make sure to address it (to the best of my abilities) in a future update.

There are unfortunately also a few (primarily cosmetic) things that I have been unable to solve – at least for this release:

1. The small church model used in Gatwick square has low-resolution textures applied

2. Some picture frames do not match the original frame after being stolen

3. Strange looking shadows on the greenhouses in the garden

4. Visible vertical lines on some interior walls

5. Various gaps/holes in some of the models that I have chosen to use

6. The female mansion lobby guard occasionally sound like a dude

Edited December 3, 2021 by bwyan
user mensions

[nbohr1more]

Congrats on the release!

[Amadeus]

Congratulations! Looking forward to playing this

[datiswous]

1 hour ago, bwyan said:

The small church model used in Gatwick square has low-resolution textures applied

It's probably relatively easy to copy that church into a prefab (if nobody has done that already), which can be textured. This is my quick try on that:

Spoiler

 

[JackFarmer]

Congratulations on the release!

[Heuli]

Congratulations on the release!
nice mission thank you

[bwyan]

1 hour ago, Heuli said:

nice mission thank you

Thanks, I'm glad you like it.

[JackFarmer]

I can't remember a DM mission ever feeling so lively. That has to do with the fact that bwyan was incredibly creative with the resources available.

Countless figures carry out extra animations / activities / movements, the player is even addressed directly at one point, in turn suitable animations are played (sewerage), etc. ... it even goes so far that a conversation (I call it “The Drunken Horse Whisperer “) actually only works with existing dialog lines and the scenario is completely realistic.

It's a very strong achievement and I don't even want to imagine how much time was spent getting the timing right.

And now the boy has only just started, I don't even want to imagine what he's going to do with future missions!

@SeriousToni: Please take a look at this, this is awesome!

Edited December 3, 2021 by JackFarmer

[bwyan]

@JackFarmer Thanks for your kind words. Figuring out the timings were quite cumbersome with a lot of trial-and-error involved, but it was fun to do and quite satisfying when it eventually all lines up. I only hope that future updates to TDM won't mess with the pacing of animations. In that case I'd be screwed

[Shadow]

This is a great "authentically Thief" mission in an old world town style setting and looks-lived-in atmosphere. I enjoyed playing thru it over and over and help fleshing it out to the final product. Excellent job for a "rookie" mapper!  

[bwyan]

@Shadow Thanks! You were very helpful and also quite hard to keep confined inside the boundaries of the map. I'm sure you will find even more holes to escape through eventually

Edited December 5, 2021 by bwyan
wording

[Goldwell]

Congratulations on your first release!

 

Had a lot of fun playing this one, and for a first release you did an excellent job!

 

The flow of the mission was fun, starting out at home and traversing through the city into the mansion.

 

Spoiler

In particular I absolutely loved that story twist you gave at the end. A mission that I thought was going to be a very straightforward city/mansion mission, and ended up adding in some of the mystical and strange elements from thief was just plain badass.

 

I was sus about that sewer pagan, and I guess rightly so!

 

From a map making perspective I thought your use of existing assets was really clever, for e.g. scaling up that boat toy on the harbor. When I first saw it I was wondering what that was and had to noclip into the area to verify. Very clever!

 

Overall an excellent mission man, some great readables and level flow, a fun story and plenty of good conversations thrown into the mix.

 

Really looking forward to playing what you put out next!

[Bienie]

This mission was great fun! Quite impressive, and a first release no less! The city felt quite alive despite not allowing the player to enter any of the buildings, your use of conversations and custom voice lines made it work quite nicely. The story kept me interested the whole way through (especially toward the end!), and the mansion felt large but not lacking in detail.

One problem I ran in to was

Spoiler

finding the switch (I assume) that operates the door to the hidden room with the display case switch. The clue about the locksmith being sent to the office didn't help so I ended up noclipping through. Maybe I was just having a brain fart cause it doesn't seem others were frustrated by this.

Again great mission, and now you've got me wanting to know what happens next!

[bwyan]

@Goldwell and @Bienie Thank you both for your kind words. It means a lot, especially coming from other experienced mappers.

@Bienie:

Spoiler

It was discussed quite a lot during the beta, since others also had a hard time locating the switch - especially in the earlier beta versions when there were no concrete clues as to what room it was even in. I had hoped adding a more descriptive objective would be enough for release, but I suppose the book switch was perhaps not the best idea after all.

Edited December 5, 2021 by bwyan

[kin]

Love the mission so far. I really like the conversations in game, reminds me alot of the original T1-2 mission design. I am having difficulty accepting that this is your first mission. Congratulations

Spoiler

I am having trouble finding how to open the display case

 

[bwyan]

@kin Thank you!

4 hours ago, kin said:

I am having trouble finding

If you would like some help with that:

Spoiler

I would advice you to carefully read the end of the "Hidden vault" letter in Braxton's office. You should also get a new objective after reading the last page which further hints at how to open it.

[AluminumHaste]

What happened to the texture on this building?

[bwyan]

@AluminumHaste:
 

On 12/2/2021 at 2:46 AM, bwyan said:

There are unfortunately also a few (primarily cosmetic) things that I have been unable to solve – at least for this release:

1. The small church model used in Gatwick square has low-resolution textures applied

[AluminumHaste]

Got it, ty

[kin]

20 hours ago, bwyan said:

@kin Thank you!

If you would like some help with that:

  Hide contents

I would advice you to carefully read the end of the "Hidden vault" letter in Braxton's office. You should also get a new objective after reading the last page which further hints at how to open it.

Ok got it. Now I am having trouble

Spoiler

finding the switch.

I must be missing something obvious.

Edited December 6, 2021 by kin

[bwyan]

Just now, kin said:

Ok got it. Now I am having trouble finding the switch. I must be missing something obvious.

Spoiler

It is in Zelmer's office. If you would like me to be more specific, then please write me a PM

 

[datiswous]

I like that hind

Spoiler

In Zelmer's office, where you put of the electrical light and still hear zooming. First I thought this was a bug and wanted to report it.

 

Edited December 6, 2021 by datiswous

[tapewolf]

That was a lot of fun!  The plot twists worked very well.

Calling the place 'Gatwick' felt a little jarring because I couldn't stop thinking about the airport, but hey, presumably there was a Gatwick long before that thing was built.

Having the fish moveable but not actually able to be picked up was something I haven't seen done before.  Granted it made for some fun times where I was smacking them across the room with the sword to see how far they would go, but did mean that I couldn't do my usual trick of leaving them in plundered safes or the Queen's bed.

Something that I'm not entirely sure was correct was

Spoiler

The key assignments.  The Zelmer and Braxton keys seemed to be fairly interchangeable which I suppose might make sense if Braxton was Lord Z's aide and was trusted to that degree, but it felt like a bug (not least because the last mission I played shipped with a skeleton key by mistake)

If you do an update, it might be worth considering

Spoiler

An optional objective of dropping Lord Z's Evil Plan diary and the Archbishop's letter onto the Queen's bed so that she has the evidence needed to depose him

Out of interest

Spoiler

Do we find out who has 'done' Lord Z and I missed the vital clue

...or is that for the followup mission?

All in all, great stuff and I hope there is an episode 2 in due course!

 

[bwyan]

2 hours ago, tapewolf said:

The key assignments

It was indeed intentional that Braxton and Zelmer's keys both open many of the same doors with some few exceptions. I could perhaps lessen the crossover somewhat in a future update.

2 hours ago, tapewolf said:

An optional objective

This is a good idea, but it depends a bit on what I end up settling on in terms of story for the second mission. In any case, I think it is unavoidable that I will have to return to this mission and do minor tweaks before episode 2 is ready for release.

2 hours ago, tapewolf said:

Do we find out who has

Not explicitly so. It is hinted at, but I am pretty sure that it will become a bit clearer after playing through the mission briefing of the next mission.

[datiswous]

I was flying a bit through the outside area (using noclip) and noticed there's a lot of detail outside of what is possible for the player to see. I wonder if that has an impact on performance. Maybe not because of visportals?