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Fan Mission: Iris by WellingtonCrab [TDM 2.10 Required] (2022/02/13)


Wellingtoncrab

Iris - Connections Contest Scoring  

63 members have voted

  1. 1. Story Quality and Theme (Stars)

    • 5
      44
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      4
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  2. 2. Gameplay Quality (Stars)

    • 5
      52
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      9
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      1
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      1
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  3. 3. Visual Quality (Stars)

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      0
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      0
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7 hours ago, Klatremus said:

Is the bug in v1.12 game breaking? I started ghosting now after your first update, but don't want to restart if the hotfix is just nipickings. Or can I just replace it without a restart? I kinda doubt it.

No, it was a very minor thing regarding something which was added and doesn’t break the mission at all. No need to restart imo.

-=  IRIS  =-    ♦    = SLL =

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Thanks for that.

One other thing I noticed while ghosting this. In hardly any of the buildings marked as 'hostile' south of the bridge do the inhabitants react to sounds you make. Is this right? For example in the Dreamer's Alter, I can jump around on tile right behind the woman, but no reaction. Then as soon as she turns around and sees me, she draws her weapon. The same goes for a lot of other buildings.

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1 hour ago, Klatremus said:

Thanks for that.

One other thing I noticed while ghosting this. In hardly any of the buildings marked as 'hostile' south of the bridge do the inhabitants react to sounds you make.

It is a limitation of the custom scripting that handles whether AI are hostile or not in these types of areas - since they are only hostile to the player if they witness the player committing a crime they are technically neutral while you are making that noise.

-=  IRIS  =-    ♦    = SLL =

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2 minutes ago, Klatremus said:

Makes sense, thanks. Another question (sorry I've got so many):

  Reveal hidden contents

This time I can't seem to trigger the Hero of Red Rook objective. I read all 3 Red Rook History volumes, as well as the book in Rodere's locked drawer, but nothing. Was there anything else needed in order to trigger it?

 

No problem - it’s quite interesting to hear how the mission works with this play style and I am glad anyone enjoys the mission enough to even try.

Spoiler

You need to find Lord Rodere himself - which shouldn’t be an issue if you’re collecting most of the mementos.

If you need a more explicit hint:

Spoiler

Lord Rodere’s alter ego is Rat Man and you can find him in the decommissioned drain along with the Rodent’s Cowl.

 

 

-=  IRIS  =-    ♦    = SLL =

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@Klatremus I have been working on some improvements to the AI scripting in the southbridge areas you pointed out which should make those AI act more consistently with the base game (reacting suspiciously to player sounds in areas that are hostile for example). Admittedly I am not much of a scripter so while it seems quite promising I am worried I have broken something or thrown off the mission balance.

I could use some help testing the changes and your play style would be well suited if you are willing, but unfortunately while it is just a script swap it doesn't seem to be compatible with older saves so I understand if you're not interested at this point in your playthrough.

Still I am attaching the beta version of Iris here which you would just need to replace iris.pk4 in FM's directory with this irisbeta.pk4 if you (or anyone else) are interested in testing it.

 

Edited by Wellingtoncrab
replaced attachment with drive link to beta

-=  IRIS  =-    ♦    = SLL =

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Almost done with my ghost run now, but I'll definitely take a look after that. The lack of tension while ghosting areas that are supposed to be hostile in most of Red Rook is the biggest con I have so far. Hollowbrook is a whole different story since everyone is fully hostile there. Got 4 stuck guards in total, which was strange.

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On 8/25/2022 at 9:13 AM, Wellingtoncrab said:
  Hide contents

Nostalgia is the pain felt by a sentimental longing for the past. Sorrow is the present feeling of pain from loss or wrong. Penitence is an act of regret in acceptance of having done wrong.

I did not expect as many players would trigger the occultation and many even on their first play through. I was actually not so sure many would play the mission at all, but I was pleasantly wrong on all counts! The occultation ending is not the “good” or “actual” ending of Iris - but it is an end. My hope would be no players feel they have missed out by not pursuing it (most would not even be aware of it unless they have dived into spoilers in this thread) and that there would be plenty to discover to make a satisfying experience on any difficulty, but as I stated I have been wrong before.

Thank you for this excellent explanation! I follow what you were going for now, which is quite interesting. I'll do more playthroughs to see the different possibilities. 😁

Edited by Daft Mugi
Fix formatting
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2 hours ago, Klatremus said:

Almost done with my ghost run now, but I'll definitely take a look after that. The lack of tension while ghosting areas that are supposed to be hostile in most of Red Rook is the biggest con I have so far. Hollowbrook is a whole different story since everyone is fully hostile there. Got 4 stuck guards in total, which was strange.

Thanks! Your feedback there will be greatly appreciated.

Do you recall the areas where the AI were getting stuck? I can take a look at that as well.

-=  IRIS  =-    ♦    = SLL =

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A civilian with a purse in Brewbower got stuck on a lamppost at the far eastern end, where you look down into the Sump. I freed him by taking his purse, because when he reacted to it missing that seemed to reset his pathfinding and he went back to normal patrol. 

Then the guy in the pump house got stuck just south of the window you leave through to get to Hollowbrook. He was facing away so I could luckily sneak out undetected.

A lanternguard in S Sloughgate got stuck at the foot of the stairs right by the entrance to Monument Hall. He was about to walk up but instead kept bumping into the lip of the wall there.

And lastly one hooded lanternguard at the southern end of Blackhander Row got stuck on a wagon outside the forgotten house's back entrance. He just stood there pivoting, but didn't move even if he saw me, so he was properly stuck. All the others could move once they detected me.

I hope this helps.

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@Klatremushmm ... that's a tricky one. I spent quite a bit of time at 10x timescale observing these ai and couldn't replicate them getting stuck. Normally I would think the AI must have gotten alerted and deviated from their patrol paths  managing to get stuck but since you're doing a ghost playthrough this would also be strange. I moved some geometry out of their way and put more aggressive clipping in these ai's patrol paths which hopefully would prevent them from getting stuck.

These changes, as well as the updated AI scripting and other tweaks are available here in this beta branch of Iris 

Obviously no pressure to test it, but they are there if you are interested. Replace your iris.pk4 with irisbeta.pk4

-=  IRIS  =-    ♦    = SLL =

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Here you go! In this save, the guy in Brewbower I managed to free up, and the guy outside monument hall got freed up also; he saw the hall door being open and came to investigate.

Wait a minute! I now went back to check on the guard outside monument hall and the door had closed?! The code panel is still busted, but I didn't know this door could be closed. Is there a way to close it manually??

Edited by Klatremus
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@Klatremusdarn - unfortunately the save doesn't want to load for me even on 1.12 Iris (pre hotfix) and 2.10 release. I am sure there are plenty of reasons a save wouldn't load, but would there be any other reason for differences in you local TDM version or Iris? (Like are you on a dev build, have mods installed, do you have the fm extracted from the .pk4)

So for now I have fallen back to just watching the patrols routes for these AI's at 10x speed hoping to see where they might get bound up but I haven't been able to replicate it on any of the recent versions of Iris. Given how many AI in your playthrough have the issue it's almost like there may be an issue with the .aas file which contains the pathfinding info for all the AI, I just have no idea how.

I would typically recommend redownloading the mission, but since this no longer matches your local version my guess is it would break your save.

My apologies at it certainly spoils the immersion a bit.

-=  IRIS  =-    ♦    = SLL =

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Something must be up with my install or something, cause when I returned to Southbridge, two more enemies had gotten stuck. All I did was download your v1.12 .pk4 file and overwrote the one from the v1.11 fm zip, then restarted the game. Do you recommend something else?

Did you see my question about the monument hall door closing above btw?

Also, it might not load for you because I do use KCGhost's stealth stat tool  which is a mod. You can download it here and hopefully then it loads.

Oh and I use TDM v2.10, no dev version. I didn't even know you could extract the .pk4, so no I definitely don't have that.

Edited by Klatremus
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@Klatremusno that is definitely correct - I ask as files extracted to the directory take load precedence over stuff packed in the .pk4 , so it's possible that if certain files were in the directory they could be overwriting the archive contents but sounds like that is definitely not the issue.

I will try installing the stealth tool as see if I can load the save.

15 minutes ago, Klatremus said:

Did you see my question about the monument hall door closing above btw?

Ah sorry I missed that! Interesting - the door is flagged that ai should not interact with it but I can confirm with enough time they will eventually close the door even sealing the player inside (for me this took them roughly 10 minutes). Definitely not as intended and I will fix this!

-=  IRIS  =-    ♦    = SLL =

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If those guards are not supposed to even notice the door being open, then yes please fix it. As it is now, I have to skip the loot in there for Supreme Ghost, as you're not allowed to let enemies react to open doors for that mode. I don't want you to change the mission just for that mode, but if that was always your intention then it's ok.

I am going to make a Supreme Ghost let's play of this mission, but I won't start that until all potential fixes have been fleshed out. I will try the beta version with the new scripts when I get the chance.

Edited by Klatremus
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@Klatremusthe guards are supposed to notice the door being opened but they are not supposed to be able to close it again (it seemed strange for them to not react to this mysterious vault being opened).

I of course did not take this into account that it may make the mission unghostable at a certain level. 

I did attempt to design Iris to enable as many playstyles as possible including on the very extremes, so in this instance I do think it is appropriate to make a change to enable the vault to be accessed for these types of players.

So I am thinking instead of them reacting suspiciously to the door I will add additional patrol paths so the ai explore the vault if the door is opened. This more or less achieves the same thing "narratively" and will add a nice bit of tension to trying to loot the vault without busting a ghost playthrough.

-=  IRIS  =-    ♦    = SLL =

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If it was always your intention for them to react to the door, then I would be hesitant recommending changing that. I never like authors modifying the mission in order to "appease" ghosters. However, your solution of having them now patrol the vault is a good idea and it would fix the issue. I should also say that it doesn't bust any ghost playthrough either way. The regular Ghost mode allows for enemies alerting to doors being open, it's just for the more extreme Supreme Ghost that this isn't allowed (my preferred playstyle). But even there it would only mean the player would skip that vault entirely and not get the loot, but it wouldn't bust the entire playthrough.

On another note, I just couldn't help myself and had to fire up the beta version with the script. I quickly visited the Hartwood House and the result is brilliant. The woman alerted like normal to me jumping around, but as soon as I stepped outside, she didn't care. Likewise, the sleeping bloke upstairs heard me walking too heavily on the stairs and woke up like normal, yet if I jumped on the metal chain outside the window, he didn't wake up. Perfect! I will do a re-ghost of the entire Red Rook area and note issues, if any. This of course makes that entire part of town a lot tougher to ghost, but as mentioned before this increases the tension and realism drastically. Did you also apply this script to Rookbridge and the Brewbower area? I can't remember if these areas also had the same issues.

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@Klatremus I see - so supreme ghost doesn't have a requirement to get all of the loot? (makes sense as I imagine there are many missions where that isn't achievable). Still I think this small change is an improvement as the suspicious door behavior was a bit strange and if it also helps support being able to experience more of the mission with the playstyle I am for it in this instance. I have included this change in this updated beta (same link)

Glad to hear the first impressions of the ai changes are good! I really appreciate you taking the time to test it out. The changes are mission wide including Rookbridge and Brebower, though as you progress there were more and more areas where AI were always hostile to the player so the impact becomes less. There are many elements in the scripting which are manipulating the AIs relationship to the player, so I would be quite surprised if something didn't get a little weird as a result of the change but so far it has been working quite well in my testing. 

The difficulty increase is what concerns me, so I would be very curious as far as what you think of how it affects the balance of the mission. I already have this change restricted to the medium and highest difficulty settings, but I might change it to only be the highest.

I might recommend given whatever was going on with the AI path finding in last version to try cleaning out the fm directory completely before dropping the beta package in.

Thanks again!

Edited by Wellingtoncrab

-=  IRIS  =-    ♦    = SLL =

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No ghost mode has the requirement to get all the loot. If you do, the run is denoted Perfect Supreme Ghost, or Perfect Thief for regular Ghost. Rarely is that possible for Supreme, but sometimes. It is definitely not possible for any mode in this mission.

I deleted my fms folder and redownloaded both the regular v1.12 and the beta. Hopefully that will fix any errors as I test the latter. Won't get to that until this weekend though.

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Tried a bit more of the beta version. It is definitely tougher inside enemy territory, but much more immersive. I could no longer enter Cloak & Dagger's top floor window without a level 1 alert for example. Had to muffle the drop with a soft item to get in there Supreme clean. I assume there will be plenty of similar situations later.

One more question:

Spoiler

Why is the skeleton key not droppable? All other keys in the mission can be put back, but only not this...

Edited by Klatremus
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