A House Call by thebigh (Mar 10 2022)

[thebigh]

A virulent and deadly illness afflicts the children of Bridgeport. One brilliant but greedy physician can treat the disease, for an extortionate fee. Burgle his house for the cure your daughter needs.

Hello sneaksies! I'm happy to announce my new mission. A sequel to my first map, The Factory Heist, this is a smallish mansion heist that's turned out to be somewhat tricky, and I hope you enjoy uncovering the house's hidden secret! Promotional pictures here.

Big thanks to my beta testers: datiswous, madtaffer, acolytesix, and wellingtoncrab. Without their input the level would be an unbalanced mess.

 

V1.01 available in the mission downloader.

Edited March 13, 2022 by thebigh
might as well link splash screen

[Anderson]

My love for small missions started with The Parcel.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Anderson

[thebigh]

8 minutes ago, Anderson said:

My love for small missions started with The Parcel.

Me too! That and Living Expenses still hold up well as mansion missions, and I've tried to emulate at least some of the feel of those old classics even though mine has a slightly darker theme.

[nbohr1more]

Congrats on the release!

This mission has been added to the mission database:

https://www.thedarkmod.com/missiondetails/?internalName=housecall

[datiswous]

4 hours ago, Anderson said:

The Parcel.

Thanks for the tip. Just finished this one. Indeed nice.

[nbohr1more]

What's the name of this series of missions ( so I can update the wiki )?

[thebigh]

Just now, nbohr1more said:

What's the name of this series of missions ( so I can update the wiki )?

I haven't settled on a name yet, so I guess we can just call it the Duncan Lynch series after the name of the protagonist.

[datiswous]

I noticed you removed the original death screen (the one with the skull), if you end up there and click objectives, the failed objective is not crossed out.

Also noticed this:

Spoiler

 

 

[thebigh]

I didn't replace the skull screen on purpose. I have no idea what happened to it

But I can confirm that failing, say, a no-kill objective doesn't cross out the objective on game-over screen. I just tried it on COS3, put an arrow through a patrolling guard's eye, and the mission failed but it didn't mark the no-kill objective as failed. So that seems to be a TDM thing.

[Amadeus]

And the FM release streak continues! Congrats, I'm looking forward to playing this

[Xolvix]

What the hell, where did this sudden onslaught of missions over the last few months come from?

[thebigh]

3 minutes ago, Xolvix said:

What the hell, where did this sudden onslaught of missions over the last few months come from?

This mission was about 70% finished when the Christmas Connections contest was announced, so I put this on hold and started working on it again in Feb. Honestly, it probably isn't up to the standards I'd set for myself nowadays, but since it was nearly finished I decided not to just abandon it. Maybe someone will still have fun playing it. I'd also briefly intended to make this my Connections which is why it contains more references to other peoples' missions than usual. Ah well.

[stgatilov]

8 hours ago, thebigh said:

But I can confirm that failing, say, a no-kill objective doesn't cross out the objective on game-over screen. I just tried it on COS3, put an arrow through a patrolling guard's eye, and the mission failed but it didn't mark the no-kill objective as failed. So that seems to be a TDM thing.

Yes, this is known problem: 5852

[Heuli]

Congratulations on the release! 

 

[Nicholas]

Nice little mission, but I encountered 1 strange bug.

Spoiler

What's up with the medical records? Is the book supposed to be readable and give me hints about finishing main objective? If I use it, nothing happens and I can't interact with anything but the game menu.

 

Edited March 10, 2022 by Nicholas

[thebigh]

1 hour ago, Nicholas said:

Nice little mission, but I encountered 1 strange bug.

  Reveal hidden contents

What's up with the medical records? Is the book supposed to be readable and give me hints about finishing main objective? If I use it, nothing happens and I can't interact with anything but the game menu.

 

Argh! One of the readable XD definitions got broken.

 

Try this patched version, which should stop the bug. It seemed to only affect the hardest difficulty.

This will nikely need to be updated in the in-game downloader @nbohr1more  

Edited March 10, 2022 by thebigh

[Anderson]

Nice mission. I didn't properly play TDM in a long time.

Haven't done much of anything since I alerted everyone as usual making things harder for myself. Not a lot of time to play but I chose medium difficulty. I'll see how it goes.

Found a weird glitching on the walls at the end of the hallway on the 2'nd floor. If you mantle in the end you can see the walls glitching under certain angles.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Anderson

[Nicholas]

Thanks! Don't sweat it, I'll eventually complete the mission and will try to find as many

Spoiler

sweet little house secrets, as i can

 

[nbohr1more]

Version 1.01 is up in the mission database

[Nicholas]

Got to finally read that source of wisdom in v. 1.01. 5/5 for difficulty of

Spoiler

recipe protection system. Still working on the code (probably it's all about colors and sizes, but there are no yellow books, so I am still thinking how to solve this puzzle)

 

Edited March 11, 2022 by Nicholas

[thebigh]

3 hours ago, Nicholas said:

Got to finally read that source of wisdom in v. 1.01. 5/5 for difficulty of

  Reveal hidden contents

recipe protection system. Still working on the code (probably it's all about colors and sizes, but there are no yellow books, so I am still thinking how to solve this puzzle)

 

If you need a little hint for that:

Spoiler

Look carefully at the lights surrounding the book-cases, and the position of lever-books on the shelves.

 

[wesp5]

A nice little mission where I once did not get lost in endless mazes of passages ;). If you are still working on this, I have two things to suggest though:

- the loose notes icon looks like a scroll, but when you use it you get a book and some loose pages. I would change it into a book icon unless it supposed to be only the torn out pages, in that case change everything to look like loose pages.

- I was lucky to read the hint above otherwise it would have taken ages to solve the riddle because there are so many possible ways the letters could refer to book colors. An easy solution would be to mention the lamps in the manual.

Edited March 13, 2022 by wesp5

[thebigh]

2 hours ago, wesp5 said:

the loose notes icon looks like a scroll, but when you use it you get a book and some loose pages

Good point. Unfortunately I haven't got the skills to create a new readables gui. If I ever update the mission that will definitely be on my list.

[thebigh]

And as for the difficulty, I deliberately made it hard. The clue in the surgery readable is more obvious on Easy and more cryptic on Hard. If people are really continuing to struggle I might put a clue about the coloured lights in the other readable on Easy mode. But there are already so many puzzles in TDM that hold the player's hand that I wanted to make something that would make them go "AHA!" and feel satisfaction in solving it.

[Anderson]

On 3/14/2022 at 12:12 AM, thebigh said:

And as for the difficulty, I deliberately made it hard. The clue in the surgery readable is more obvious on Easy and more cryptic on Hard. If people are really continuing to struggle I might put a clue about the coloured lights in the other readable on Easy mode. But there are already so many puzzles in TDM that hold the player's hand that I wanted to make something that would make them go "AHA!" and feel satisfaction in solving it.

I suggest that progressive puzzles on demand could work. I don't know of ways to implement it other than using the difficulty settings though. Would be cool if the mission briefing reflected the fact that difficulty affects puzzle clues too.

Really thoughtful of you to make puzzles harder with difficulty. Usually I assume that difficulty only affects damage that enemies do, the number of enemies, how easy I am to spot. That kind of thing.

Edited May 15, 2022 by Anderson