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Nort

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Does this need to happen?

Title:
The Hot Spring of Chaos

Description:
And lo, the master perv shal'th pass unseen into the fertility temple of the Pagan women, and he descend'th into the very Hot-Spring of Chaos where Succubi bathe without the modesty of the Builder, and he shall shame'th them as it was fore'written!

Spoiler

But the succubi were all super into it! Happy [Valentines Day / April Fools]!

Content Warnings: suggestive themes, sexual innuendos, and whole new connotations for the "Mission Complete" chime

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1 minute ago, ChronA said:

Does this need to happen?

Title:
The Hot Spring of Chaos

Description:
And lo, the master perv shal'th pass unseen into the fertility temple of the Pagan women, and he descend'th into the very Hot-Spring of Chaos where Succubi bathe without the modesty of the Builder, and he shall shame'th them as it was fore'written!

  Reveal hidden contents

But the succubi were all super into it! Happy [Valentines Day / April Fools]!

Content Warnings: suggestive themes, sexual innuendos, and whole new connotations for the "Mission Complete" chime

I tried my best to get the nocloth female pagan skin to work, but failed every attempt, and so good luck.

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Perhaps Makehuman (FOSS)can be used to create characters for TDM, which is very simple to use.
There is also a free online solution, which is even better, to create photorealistic characters, suitable for use in animations (requires an Epic account), but sadly no for TDM, is licensed only to use it with the Unreal engine, but may serve for someone who develope a game in this engine

http://www.makehumancommunity.org

omICrdX.png

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/metahuman-creator

 

Edited by Zerg Rush

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The best FM I can think of for only pure sneaking is the T2 FM Midday Escape. (If you don't have Thief 2, you can watch a video of it.) You just have to escape a town with guards every 20 feet or so. I thought it was great. It pared the whole game down to the most bare essentials. I'd like to see more FMs like that in different settings.

This was a contest FM too. Because the player weaves in and out, it's actually all laid out in a pretty small space. You don't need much for this kind of gameplay, and I think someone could make the core of the whole thing within 2 weeks.

It's a good idea for a first FM because it won't take long to make if you keep it small and tight like this one.

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What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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So basically the Shalebridge Cradle past scene where being spotted means to reload your save. This means a lot of save scumming to nail every stealth challenge.

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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1 minute ago, Anderson said:

So basically the Shalebridge Cradle past scene where being spotted means to reload your save. This means a lot of save scumming to nail every stealth challenge.

Well, no, I mean a proper "Mission Failed" screen when you get spotted, if that isn't too much to ask from the engine's scripting.

...and it doesn't have to be hard either. You just design the map around the playstyle, as usual.

...but since I like sadistic challenges, and near unbeatable maps, it might be. I grew up with games that weren't beatable at all - that just promised a light at the end of a tunnel that just endlessly led the player deeper and deeper underground, just to test the outer limits of your human condition - so that's not unthinkable for me. Maybe i could just make a map where you go into a spider's ant-like nest and get torn asunder by thousands of spiders just for the horror experience alone. ...but that wasn't what I had in mind. I see Let's Players do flawless runs all the time, so I know that people like the ghost playing style.

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Heart of Lone Salvation has an optional objective for ghosting that fails if you get heard or spotted, so that should definitely be possible with scripting.

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My missions:           Stand-alone                                                      Duncan Lynch series                              

                                      Down and Out on Newford Road              the Factory Heist

                                                                                                  A House Call

                                                                                                  The House of deLisle                                                                                                  

                              

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It's an easy feat to add an objective that fails if you get spotted. And if you make it OPTIONAL the player gets alerted that they're spotted and may restart if they want, but as it isn't forced, every player can decide for themself if they should continue playing or restart.

I would argue that the community as a whole are generally against forced ghosting, but with the aformentioned setup you can get both.

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28 minutes ago, DeTeEff said:

It's an easy feat to add an objective that fails if you get spotted. And if you make it OPTIONAL the player gets alerted that they're spotted and may restart if they want, but as it isn't forced, every player can decide for themself if they should continue playing or restart.

I would argue that the community as a whole are generally against forced ghosting, but with the aformentioned setup you can get both.

I like advanced setups like that as well, but ultimately I'm as limited in time as every game developer is, and so I will primarily cater to ghosting, and simply describe my map as "a ghost map", if that makes sense. Then, if I have time, I might upload a more complex version later.

I like uploading several versions of missions as it develops and evolves, but I haven't looked into if the archives would allow replacement of former uploads, or if that would just result in horrible spam.

 

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On 5/22/2022 at 5:04 PM, Nort said:

Like I said: The key to making an odd mission, is to be sure to describe that it's at least going to be odd, in the download description. That way everybody's happy.

There are odd missions, but, none of them stray as far from the base concept of the game as your ideas.

Probably the reason why @wesp5reacted like that. I mean, seriously? No stealing, no getting spotted, no story and no objectives? Well, I think it's safe to say that I would not play it. ;)

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1 minute ago, chakkman said:

There are odd missions, but, none of them stray as far from the base concept of the game as your ideas.

Probably the reason why @wesp5reacted like that. I mean, seriously? No stealing, no getting spotted, no story and no objectives? Well, I think it's safe to say that I would not play it. ;)

...and I'm fine with that. I'm fine with nobody ever playing my mission, or even releasing my missions at all. A lot of developers already develop maps for other people, and so you probably get your christmases several times a year. My maps will be something different, that maybe you'll play if you get really bored and want to see how weird things can get. :)

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Your ideas boil down to basically not having any purposeful objectives at all (other than the Do not get spotted). And as you don't have any story, your mission ought to be more quick to build than any ordinary mission. Yes, you may have to put even more emphasis on visual storytelling but as I said, there is no big deal to add any Do-not-get-spotted-objectives.

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9 minutes ago, DeTeEff said:

Your ideas boil down to basically not having any purposeful objectives at all (other than the Do not get spotted). And as you don't have any story, your mission ought to be more quick to build than any ordinary mission. Yes, you may have to put even more emphasis on visual storytelling but as I said, there is no big deal to add any Do-not-get-spotted-objectives.

Oh, don't underestimate how long it takes to build a good environment. I've seen vast cityscapes made in The Dark Mod, which took a collaboration to create. At my pace, to create one area of my map, took a whole year (since I grew bored and abandoned the project for most of the year).

It's quick to just put room filler prefabs in a room and move on, but why do that? That's no way to treat a player who's looking for a new experience. No, I carefully position all my furniture, and angle them just right. I do use prefabs, but more often than not I change and improve them with new details. I put needles in the machine gauges, and I'll make them move when power is supplied to them. Maybe the power flow will be constant and having them hooked up to a virtual electrical grid, won't be needed, but the visual difference isn't the point. The point is that they do, behind the scenes, for my own personal appreciation.

...and that's why I'm taking a lifetime to create my maps: Because creating meaning, through love, takes time.

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I didn't mean to sound like a nice environment is created in a handwave, it takes time, of course. But it ought to be less work to create a mission without story/briefing etc than an ordinary one. My newly released Who Watches The Watcher took almost 2000 hours all in all, but that doesn't count all those hours I sat and plotted out the story and wrote readables and voice lines. I remember sitting in a gas mask in our covid unit during the pandemic, plotting on story elements :D (Yes, there were times when we could sit and take breaks.)

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2 minutes ago, DeTeEff said:

I didn't mean to sound like a nice environment is created in a handwave, it takes time, of course. But it ought to be less work to create a mission without story/briefing etc than an ordinary one. My newly released Who Watches The Watcher took almost 2000 hours all in all, but that doesn't count all those hours I sat and plotted out the story and wrote readables and voice lines. I remember sitting in a gas mask in our covid unit during the pandemic, plotting on story elements :D (Yes, there were times when we could sit and take breaks.)

Yes, I do have a setting in my map, and with settings come planning, and purpose, and readables, but these can all exist independently of any objective. When I play a game, my mind isn't actually on fulfilling any objectives, but to navigate and explore areas. Often I completely forget what the objective even was. I recently began playing King of Diamonds, and pretty much the last thing I did, was to go and meet the quest giver, even if I couldn't loot anything until then. To me, all that objectives are, is a few lines of text that you can pull up. The long and elaborate exposition dumps at the intros, I just roll my eyes over. I feel like they're just holding me up, and that the real setting should exist in the map design itself.

...so the readables I create, I aim to make them disjointed nonsense with no helpful bearing on the player objectives. Maybe in the kitchen there will be a grocery list, or cook book with numerous real recipés. Maybe some guy wrote a poem about a memory of a past that you're not clued into at all. The sooner the player stops looking for any meaning or clues in my readables, the better. ...but my point is that they will still take time to create. I have lots of notes over readables as well, but none of them is about any objective.

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18 hours ago, Nort said:

...so the readables I create, I aim to make them disjointed nonsense with no helpful bearing on the player objectives. Maybe in the kitchen there will be a grocery list, or cook book with numerous real recipés. Maybe some guy wrote a poem about a memory of a past that you're not clued into at all. The sooner the player stops looking for any meaning or clues in my readables, the better. ...but my point is that they will still take time to create. I have lots of notes over readables as well, but none of them is about any objective.

 

If the readables have no meaning or purpose and you want the player to stop reading them, then why bother making them readables at all? 

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47 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

But why would somebody go exploring in your mission when there isn't even loot to find?

For the sheer marvel of it, of course. Why do people vacation in Rome, if there's no loot to find there?

...but ultimately the question is: Why should people want to play my maps at all? I'm certainly not going to force them to, but there will probably always be some Buffalo Bill character somewhere in the world, who will kidnap young women and force them to play horrible maps. ...and I guess that's where I come in. The main point is that I enjoyed making it. The player experience is secondary to me.

40 minutes ago, Springheel said:

If the readables have no meaning or purpose and you want the player to stop reading them, then why bother making them readables at all? 

For a realistic atmosphere. In case the player wants to stop and read something in the world at his leisure, then he has something to read.

I'm not saying that wasting a player's time is good game design. I'm saying that my maps are not game maps. :)

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So the purpose becomes creating an open world without any set goals, just for exploring? It may be a nice steak to put in your mouth, but I think it will sorely be missing in flavour if one leaves out the story/loot/purpose. This whole idea makes me think about the movie Gummo...

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7 minutes ago, DeTeEff said:

It may be a nice steak to put in your mouth, but I think it will sorely be missing in flavour if one leaves out the story/loot/purpose.

Maybe. Maybe I have an odd taste. I may have played so many games and missions, that I don't think an objective can impress me anymore. In Thief, it's basically always "Steal this.", and I just don't like to steal things, and so I can only come up with the objective "Reach this point." and "Have fun." and "Live long and prosper." and "I hope you're not neglecting your real world dishes because of my map. That's right: Press that 'Quit' button to win.". ...because ultimately I don't think that one should find meaning in games, when there is so much meaning to find in life. My maps are just expressing a state. I don't think I want people to do anything special with it. I think I want people to stop drinking and stop doing drugs, and I don't think I can accomplish that through a virtual mission. ...and so I see no point in setting some additional life-robbing objective for people.

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7 hours ago, Nort said:

Maybe. Maybe I have an odd taste. I may have played so many games and missions, that I don't think an objective can impress me anymore. In Thief, it's basically always "Steal this.", and I just don't like to steal things, and so I can only come up with the objective "Reach this point." and "Have fun." and "Live long and prosper." and "I hope you're not neglecting your real world dishes because of my map. That's right: Press that 'Quit' button to win.". ...because ultimately I don't think that one should find meaning in games, when there is so much meaning to find in life. My maps are just expressing a state. I don't think I want people to do anything special with it. I think I want people to stop drinking and stop doing drugs, and I don't think I can accomplish that through a virtual mission. ...and so I see no point in setting some additional life-robbing objective for people.

I think TDM offers a lot more possibilities than just 'steal this' and there may well be a mission that focuses only on exploration and reaching a goal, maybe solving some puzzles or mysteries, so it's not a boring walkthrough from A to B, like Dear Esther. March of Rahenna and Thief Remorse already pull in this direction, where stealing isn't a requirement.
Even Spring cleaning is about pure survival and recovering three paintings, which can't be seen as theft in this sense either. Still others where stealing is only optional. 

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