Down and Out on Newford Road by thebigh (Jan 26 2022), Christmas Connections contest entry

[thebigh]

Hello sneaksie taffers!

I'm very pleased to release a new map, named Down and Out on Newford Road. Our kleptomaniac protagonist has found himself without his gear after a job gone wrong and is now stuck in a strange part of town with few friends to call on.

It's a smallish-to-medium city exploration map with several intricate parts to deal with. In keeping with the "connections" theme there are usually multiple ways in and out of the various City sections.

This is a Christmas Connections contest entry. For my connections to previous missions I have chosen two of the oldest missions in the archive:

The silly Builders from the Outpost north of Bridgeport are making another attempt to manufacture a golden holy symbol. Has the Bishop learned his lesson from last time?

...because the one man still willing to talk to you wants you to steal it before he'll help you out. This contact is none other than Hamill, the fence from the first FM of them all.

Thieves with a talent for exploration and an eye for hidden secrets might come across a sneaksie reference to my first mission The Factory Heist. Here and there are also bits of foreshadowing for my upcoming mission, tentatively called A House Call. And of course I had to work in a tribute to the greatly missed Grayman, also findable by players with a passion for discovering secret areas.

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Spoiler

The contest gives bonus points for using features and assets from newer Dark Mod versions, so here are the things I used from the last four releases. The list is more exhaustive than necessary as I'm not sure what the Contest Comptroller will accept, but if I've calculated right I should be eligible for the full bonus marks.

2.10 feature :    Secrets!

2.10 Asset   :    Sound from the security camera (though not the camera itself)

2.09 feature :    New particles via revamped particle designer

2.09 asset   :    Firefly particles

2.08 gameplay:    Getting onto the church rafters or apartment building roof w.o. rope arrow or crate stacking can be done with the new running/mantling mechanics. It's not really feasible without them.

                  I also made use of the instantaneous patrol path change described at https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Path_Nodes#Switching_Immediately_.28TDM_2.08.2B.29
                  
2.07 feature :    Version 2 EAX reverb

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This mission would be much uglier, buggier, disorganised, and z-fightier without my kind beta testers: ate0ate, datiswous, JackFarmer, and Kingsal. There were also useful comments from Dragofer, wesp5, and madtaffer. I am very grateful to them for their hard work and attention to detail.

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Here is the link to the mission:

Down and Out on Newford Road    --(!!TDM 2.10 v 8 BETA REQUIRED!!)--

I'm also including some promo shots for the downloader: Promos

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Enjoy and thanks for playing!

Edited February 21, 2022 by thebigh
Link to patched version, fixing bug affecting Windows

[kin]

Congratulations on the release. How to I update from 2.09 to 2.10 beta?

[thebigh]

9 minutes ago, kin said:

Congratulations on the release. How to I update from 2.09 to 2.10 beta?

Run the installer- this will be tdm_installer.exe on Windows or tdm_installer.linux64 on linux. Select the "custom version" checkbox, then on the next screen scroll down until you get to beta210-05.

 

[datiswous]

1 hour ago, kin said:

How to I update from 2.09 to 2.10 beta?

2.10 is still in testing (although pretty stable), so if you want to keep your 2.09 installation till release of 2.10 you can also just create a new folder, put the installer in that folder and run it with custom version checkbox as mentioned above. Then you can use this for the missions that curently only run on 2.10 or missions that run better at 2.10 (possibly all). This off course takes up more harddrive space.

Edited January 26, 2022 by datiswous

[datiswous]

Btw. this is the first new mission of 2022, right?

[Jedi_Wannabe]

Congrats on release!

[nbohr1more]

Congratulations and good luck!

[Amadeus]

First contest mission is out! Congrats!

[STRUNK]

Congrats and thanx for the mission thebig!
 

19 hours ago, thebigh said:

the new running/mantling mechanics.

Can someone point me to what these new techniques are?

[thebigh]

23 minutes ago, STRUNK said:

Can someone point me to what these new techniques are?

I'm afraid I don't quite understand the exact way it works, but in 2.08 the way mantling works while running and jumping was improved to make it easier and to fix certain geometry clipping issues. There's a few areas in my mission where aerial acrobatics make it easier to get places.

Spoiler

Leaping from the church balcony to the rafters is easier.

Getting onto the roof of the apartment building can be done by mantling onto the door, then doing a twist in mid-air to grab the gutter.

From the higher rooftops you can run along the edge of the archway roof and leap onto the roof of the bowmaker shop. That involves grabbing the edge while falling.

I pulled those bits out of my level and tested them with a pre-2.08 build and they really would have been a lot harder without the mantling improvements.

[STRUNK]

9 hours ago, thebigh said:

in 2.08 the way mantling works while running and jumping was improved to make it easier and to fix certain geometry clipping issues.

Ok, so no special techniques/buttons needed. Thanx : )

[kingsal]

Congrats on the release!!

[nbohr1more]

Mission is up at Moddb:

https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/addons/down-and-out-on-newford-road-210-beta-required

[wesp5]

So this mission is not yet on the in-game servers because it requires 2.10? I was already wondering why I didn't find it there! I just played the last beta, so there might have been changes, but I have two questions for the mission itself:

- Where is the blackjack in the other thief's appartment. I can't seem to find it...

- Is there another way into the landlords flat or is the only way to lure him out?

Otherwise a sweet little mission, making it hard to play my usual knockout-everybody style because of the missing blackjack ;). I managed to get one from the guards, but it was not easy with all those bright lights and the torch guy!

Edited January 27, 2022 by wesp5

[thebigh]

1 hour ago, wesp5 said:

Where is the blackjack in the other thief's appartment. I can't seem to find it...

Spoiler

Slide the straw rug away, then look for a hidden switch in the closet.

 

1 hour ago, wesp5 said:

Is there another way into the landlords flat or is the only way to lure him out?

Spoiler

Get onto the roof, then pick his pocket through the window. You can get up there either by jumping onto the open apartment complex door, or by stacking stuff onto the snowman.

 

[Zerg Rush]

I like a lot this mission, nice detalle with the Grayman bust. But I don't find the builder symbol.

[thebigh]

Just now, Zerg Rush said:

I like a lot this mission, nice detalle with the Grayman bust. But I don't find the builder symbol.

Spoiler

Hint: Look at the safe in the sacristy. Does it look a bit funny to you? Then read the book in the bishop's room, which should give you a clue where to look next. Search Isaac's forge carefully for a reasonably well concealed secret.

Thanks for playing! I'm glad you liked it. The head of Professor Graumann isn't quite as impressive as the tribute in The Black Mage but I thought I'd do something...

[Zerg Rush]

Thanks, finished it. I played first in easy level

896 loot

4 secrets

2 KO

1 Spider death

Stealth 0 (6 Sospicious)

Small mission, but pretty challange 

[thebigh]

9 minutes ago, Zerg Rush said:

896 loot

That's pretty thorough! I can tell you that you haven't missed very much at all.

[Zerg Rush]

Searching since the release a lot of hours, searching the symbol. The most time I've spend in a small mission like this. Very tricky to play with a lot of AI in a small map, even in the easy level.

It's between my favorites.

[JackFarmer]

Congrats on the release! Very good atmosphere!

[STRUNK]

Nice mission but I had a lot of strange things happen:
 

Spoiler

It started to get weird when I got out of the undead area. I entered it from street level and when I got out by removing the window, all AI from the whole map, exept the gatehouse guard, got out on the streets searching .. and they didn't stop.
They were all alerted by doors that were open and somehow I caugt 5 guards (including the gatehouse guard) inside one of the gatehouse towers. I stole the key already and the followed me in there. I swiftly sneaked out and managed to lock them all up.
I was able to search the whole builders building without having npc's to worry about. Some were already dead and the others were still searching the streets, until I opend a window, and they all came swarming in.
Also knocking out npc's didn't work most of the time .. it killed them instead, and send them flopping around in mid air for a second. Sometimes it did work as it should.
Also, under the moving rug, in the little hiding place, there is one item that I can't see nor grab.
I can see it's there with tdm_show_loot but can't obtain it ...
Maybe it has to do with different versions of 2.10 beta?

 

Edited January 28, 2022 by STRUNK

[thebigh]

Spoiler

1 hour ago, STRUNK said:

Also, under the moving rug, in the little hiding place, there is one item that I can't see nor grab.
I can see it's there with tdm_show_loot but can't obtain it ...

Did you find the lever that opens the metal lid under the rug? It's in the closet in the corner, above the boots.

There is a bug with tdm_showloot that causes non-monetary loot items to remain highlighted after you've grabbed them so even after you've looted the little secret compartment it will still show, but I wouldn't worry about that.

Spoiler

2 hours ago, STRUNK said:

I entered it from street level and when I got out by removing the window, all AI from the whole map, exept the gatehouse guard, got out on the streets searching .. and they didn't stop.

Someone else reported this, but I have never been able to reproduce it. Even dropping the window right in front of the patrolling guard doesn't make him do more than stop and look around. And I've never been able to get them to activate the Builders, even by running around the courtyard and flashing my lantern in their face, so knowing just how to trigger this issue would be valuable. Were they already freaking out before you left the clock tower or was it dropping the window that set them off?

Spoiler

2 hours ago, STRUNK said:

knocking out npc's didn't work most of the time .. it killed them instead, and send them flopping around in mid air for a second. Sometimes it did work as it should.

I have never seen this. What version are you using, and have you got any addons or mods installed?

 

[STRUNK]

9 hours ago, thebigh said:

Someone else reported this, but I have never been able to reproduce it.
If you read this:

It seems the problem I had has the same cause as Jacks problem:

9 hours ago, JackFarmer said:

In my run  with the previous version I had almost all zombies (those outside the building and those inside the caves) standing in front of the respective cameras. Inside the building there had been at least 10 - 15 (!) of them circling around one camera. I thought this was a special challenge for the player to find some sort of explosive to blow them all away!

It looks like an issue between different beta versions .. I guess.

Edited January 28, 2022 by STRUNK

[JackFarmer]

21 minutes ago, thebigh said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Did you find the lever that opens the metal lid under the rug? It's in the closet in the corner, above the boots.

There is a bug with tdm_showloot that causes non-monetary loot items to remain highlighted after you've grabbed them so even after you've looted the little secret compartment it will still show, but I wouldn't worry about that.

  Hide contents

Someone else reported this, but I have never been able to reproduce it. Even dropping the window right in front of the patrolling guard doesn't make him do more than stop and look around. And I've never been able to get them to activate the Builders, even by running around the courtyard and flashing my lantern in their face, so knowing just how to trigger this issue would be valuable. Were they already freaking out before you left the clock tower or was it dropping the window that set them off?

@thebighThat was me; I reported that during beta. Apparently, @STRUNKran into the same problem. However, I think the reported (and already solved) problem in Hazard Pay had a different reason as this was linked to the cameras and Down and Out does not include the latter.