Written in Stone [2022/01/28]

[Amadeus]

In pursuit of a long-sought secret, the key to life everlasting lies deep within the recesses of an ancient athenaeum.

Dragofer, Bikerdude, and I proudly present our FM for the Christmas Connections Contest titled "Written in Stone."

 

Notes

- TDM 2.10 Beta 5 or later is REQUIRED to play this mission. However, it is recommended to play using 2.10 Beta 6. You can get the latest version here.

- This FM is a sequel to The Elixir. While it is not vital to play that before playing Written in Stone, there are some story connections.

- This FM may be more hardware intensive than normal. LOD settings can be set below "Normal" to improve performance on low-end machines by disabling certain features.

- Various areas will look better with shadow maps enabled at the possible expense of performance.
- This FM implements the func_peek mechanic, allowing players to peek through any door that has a keyhole on it by leaning forward. PLEASE NOTE: This function has been known to cause crashes for a small number of players in the past, likely due to using the 32-bit version of TDM. At no point in this mission is it required to use the func_peek mechanic; it is purely optional, so feel free not to use it.

As an entry in the 2.10 Christmas Connections Contest, the new features and assets used by this FM are:

Spoiler

[2.10 Feature] Security cameras

[2.10 Feature] Volumetric lighting

[2.10 Feature] Secrets tracking

[2.10 Feature] X-Rays

[2.10 Feature] Subtitles

[2.10 Asset] “Cabinet1” suite of furniture

[2.09 Asset] Eve statue

[2.09 Asset] Fireflies

[2.08 Asset] Microscope

 

Download Version 1.1

This FM is available for download here:

Google Drive

Simply place the written.pk4 into your darkmod/fms folder and you're ready to go! 

Promotional Screenshots (via ThiefGuild)

 

Credits

A big thanks goes out to Wellingtoncrab for making a beautiful city map, Narrator for their wonderful voice work, nbohr1more for creating the original story premise as well as a few readables, Goldwell for animating the introduction to our briefing video and Duzenko for making certain glasses work as well as they do!

A huge thank you also goes out to our beta testers: Goldwell, Wellingtoncrab, Kingsal, noodles, Krilmar, Garrett(Monolyth-42) ate0ate, and Mike_A. Thank you all very much for your keen eye to detail and great insights!
 

Asset Credits

Kingsal's Killer Assets

Wellingtoncrab's Wonderful Furniture and Book Skins
 

***PLAYERS BEWARE*** SPOILERS lurk in the depths below. We strongly recommend playing this FM first so you don't spoil the fun for yourself!

[kingsal]

Congrats guys! This mission absolutely rocks!

[nbohr1more]

Congrats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The mission is up at Moddb:

https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/addons/written-in-stone-210-beta-required

[nbohr1more]

The promo shorts barely do justice to this beauty!

Too bad the best screens would be too spoilerific

[AluminumHaste]

That is the strangest pronunciation of gems I've ever heard.

EDIT: This is freaking amazing though!

[Goldwell]

Congratulations on the release! I had a lot of fun playing this mission!

[kin]

Congratulations. The mission looks like an original thief 1 or 2 mission at first glance. A true diamond for me.

Now I have to deal with tremors caused from excessive happiness due to all those new missions released suddenly.

[JackFarmer]

Hello my friends and congratulations on the release! I have no doubt that this will be a real gem!

Lots of missions to play now, hope I can have a look at it very soon!

 

[duzenko]

The starting location seems to need some optimization. 

[madtaffer]

I love it!

Spoiler

What up with this purple crystal? How do I deal with it?

Spoiler

Is this a bug with textures on tree trunk and crystals ?

 

 

[Dragofer]

@madtaffer

Spoiler

You can find a clue in the archmage's quarters on how to handle the crystals on pedestals.

Spoiler

The tree uses the same texture as the crystals - it is indeed intentional.

By the way, please use spoilers for that part of the mission at least for now.

[demagogue]

Wow, this is a lot more ambitious than a little contest mission.

Congratulations on releasing a new classic. It looks & plays great!

[Zerg Rush]

I can't start the mission, it gives me an error 

I'll try to download it again from moddb instead of google and run TDMinstall again and see if this fixes it.

Edited January 29, 2022 by Zerg Rush

[nbohr1more]

4 minutes ago, Zerg Rush said:

I can't start the mission, it gives me an error 

I'll try to download it again from moddb instead of google and run TDMinstall again and see if this fixes it.

You have TDM 2.10 Beta v5 installed ?

[AluminumHaste]

Yeah you need to be on the latest 2.10 beta zerg

[Zerg Rush]

I already imagined it, for this I was going to run the TDM installer again. Thanks 

[STRUNK]

Amazing work!
 

Spoiler

I was wandering around for hours, visiting places I had been yet, to look for things I previously did not get.
I decided to read a book, I already had, and that looked to be the key to see the things I already could see, but didn't see yet.

So I don't always read all the readables and and just now I found new ways, after playing on and off all day. This migt be the one of the most awsome missions I played : O

 

 

Edited January 29, 2022 by STRUNK

[Zerg Rush]

4 hours ago, AluminumHaste said:

Yeah you need to be on the latest 2.10 beta zerg

I am on the last 2.10beta, but it don't work. Maybe the download from GDrive is corrupt., I'll see.

 

Edit: No way, Used TDM Update to the last 2.10 dev, download the written.pk4 this time from OneDrive. Same script error, don't work for me 

Edited January 29, 2022 by Zerg Rush

[Dragofer]

1 hour ago, Zerg Rush said:

I am on the last 2.10beta, but it don't work. Maybe the download from GDrive is corrupt., I'll see.

 

Edit: No way, Used TDM Update to the last 2.10 dev, download the written.pk4 this time from OneDrive. Same script error, don't work for me 

The dev builds are older than the beta builds - you need to download the latest build from the "beta" category in the installer. The script error happens if the TDM .exe doesn't contain certain script events ( so, outdated ).

[Zerg Rush]

This was it, thanks 

[Amadeus]

Seems I am out of emoji likes to use for the day  But thank you all for the kind words everyone. I'm glad you guys seem to be enjoying it, despite the few technicalities involved in installing it

[prjames]

I'm unable to play this mission.

After the briefing video and being given the choice of Easy, Medium, or Hard difficulty, it briefly says "Generating World" and then immediately returns to the main menu (Start this mission, ... Quit)

From darkmod.log:

[/game/darkmodglobals.cpp ( 372):INI (INIT) FR:    0] The Dark Mod 2.10/64, code revision 9815 (1435:9815)

(then several entries, ending in:)

[/game/darkmodglobals.cpp ( 428):FRC (FORCE) FR:    0] LogClass_STATE: 0

Has anyone seen this error before?  If not, what should I do to get you more info?

I played the other two Contest missions (Down and Out on Newford Road and Hazard Pay) without any difficulty.  (I was spastic trying to install the beta (I tried to load the latest /dev build at first, which didn't work) and because it wouldn't go to other versions from there, I had to delete all of DarkMod, reinstall to 2.09b, and then installed Beta 2.10 V5; after that, I played the other two contest missions without difficulty.)

                      - prjames

 

Edited January 30, 2022 by prjames

[nbohr1more]

14 minutes ago, prjames said:

I'm unable to play this mission.

After the briefing video and being given the choice of Easy, Medium, or Hard difficulty, it briefly says "Generating World" and then immediately returns to the main menu (Start this mission, ... Quit)

From darkmod.log:

[/game/darkmodglobals.cpp ( 372):INI (INIT) FR:    0] The Dark Mod 2.10/64, code revision 9815 (1435:9815)

(then several entries, ending in:)

[/game/darkmodglobals.cpp ( 428):FRC (FORCE) FR:    0] LogClass_STATE: 0

Has anyone seen this error before?  If not, what should I do to get you more info?

I played the other two Contest missions (Down and Out on Newford Road and Hazard Pay) without any difficulty.  (I was spastic trying to install the beta (I tried to load the latest /dev build at first, which didn't work) and because it wouldn't go to other versions from there, I had to delete all of DarkMod, reinstall to 2.09b, and then installed Beta 2.10 V5; after that, I played the other two contest missions without difficulty.)

                      - prjames

 

If the other two missions play, I would try downloading this mission again. Also, make sure that you do not have any modification packages installed ( stealth add-on, flame glare mod, fresnel mod, etc ).

[prjames]

 

17 minutes ago, nbohr1more said:

If the other two missions play, I would try downloading this mission again. Also, make sure that you do not have any modification packages installed ( stealth add-on, flame glare mod, fresnel mod, etc ).

Re-downloading the mission worked.  Thanks, nbohr1more!

     - prjames

 

[madtaffer]

Where do I find the real formula for elixir? With mage's glasses? Or is it written in stone somewhere as a punchline?