Fan Mission: The Lieutenant 2: High Expectations by Frost_Salamander (2023/04/24)

[Keatsy]

this was a phenomenal mission, I just finished it and it took me a few hours but I loved every minute of it, very well done

[Oleron]

Quote

it appears that to some players keys bound to AI are unfrobable. I don't have a solution as I've never been able to reproduce it.  As a mitigation, for these doors you can either lockpick them or an alternate key will be available.

Will confirm this still exists. The...

 

Spoiler

..two guards in the pool area...

...carry keys that are unfrobable under any conditions.

[Frost_Salamander]

23 minutes ago, Oleron said:

Will confirm this still exists. The...

 

  Reveal hidden contents

..two guards in the pool area...

...carry keys that are unfrobable under any conditions.

Thanks for reporting. I can't really do anything about this unless I'm able to reproduce it though. If anyone has any info that they think might help, please mention it here 

[Labeeb]

Really enjoying this most fabulous mission. Thanks much, Frost_Salamander!

[Shadrach]

Hi, I've been getting back into Dark Mod after some time, and have really been enjoying this mission and the first part, really well done - great stories and ambiance!  

Just one thing though, I think I made a boo-boo, and just at the end... 

Spoiler

Coates was at the last place I looked (of course!) - the church. 

Really hard to get the body out of there, so I figure the briefing says "accident near a body of water" - well there's a font in the church, that's (holy) water. So I dump him in there, head first. Not exactly *subtle*, but gets the message across I guess. Never liked those Builders and their stupid religion anyway 

So he drowns after a while (love how just his head in water makes the game detect this). Body says "(dead)". But objective is still not completed. I try picking the body up and shooting it with a fire arrow - nope. Pick it up, noclip and dump it in the river and the well - nope...

Various methods:
Mine: 
Fire arrow: 
Bludgeon: 
Drowning in well: 
Drowning in river:  
Drowning in baptismal font: 
Falling (repeatedly) from great height onto cobblestone: 
 

Problem is, I don't have any recent saves or quicksaves... 

Edited September 1 by Shadrach

[chakkman]

For the record: The laughing smiley is for your solution to the objective, not you not being able to quickload.  

[Frost_Salamander]

On 9/1/2023 at 8:48 AM, Shadrach said:

Hi, I've been getting back into Dark Mod after some time, and have really been enjoying this mission and the first part, really well done - great stories and ambiance!  

Just one thing though, I think I made a boo-boo, and just at the end... 

  Hide contents

Coates was at the last place I looked (of course!) - the church. 

Really hard to get the body out of there, so I figure the briefing says "accident near a body of water" - well there's a font in the church, that's (holy) water. So I dump him in there, head first. Not exactly *subtle*, but gets the message across I guess. Never liked those Builders and their stupid religion anyway 

So he drowns after a while (love how just his head in water makes the game detect this). Body says "(dead)". But objective is still not completed. I try picking the body up and shooting it with a fire arrow - nope. Pick it up, noclip and dump it in the river and the well - nope...

Various methods:
Mine: 
Fire arrow: 
Bludgeon: 
Drowning in well: 
Drowning in river:  
Drowning in baptismal font: 
Falling (repeatedly) from great height onto cobblestone: 
 

Problem is, I don't have any recent saves or quicksaves... 

HI @Shadrach. I can reproduce this and thanks for raising.  Very frustrating, as this was indeed an intended way to complete the objective so I'm 99.99% sure it used to work. 

Spoiler

And yes, if you noclip and dump him into the river it works fine.  Both ways he's equally dead by drowning, but the objective doesn't detect it if you drown him in the baptismal font.  How strange.

I think this will need some debugging.  Not sure when I will ever get around to doing it though as I'm on a bit of a break from TDM.  If anyone has time to debug this, it's pretty easy to reproduce quickly:

Spoiler

1. start the map and set notarget on.  Read the briefing to make the 'kill Coates' objective visible.

2. noclip into the hotel. This will spawn Coates in the church.

3. Noclip over to the church.  Knock out Coates and place him in the baptismal font.

4. Observe he dies, but the objective never completes.

5. Repeat all this again, but instead of placing Coates in the font, noclip and dump him in the river.  The objective will complete this time.

Alternatively, if anyone knows what part of the codebase (i.e. the actual C++ classes to set breakpoints) to look at to debug this problem, I may try and have a look. 

Edited September 2 by Frost_Salamander

[Shadrach]

@Frost_Salamander Thanks for checking

Spoiler

Yeah, I kind of suspected it was intended, as getting the body out of there would be really hard, and involve silly immersion-breaking stuff like throwing him off the church tower (he'd survive...)

It's not a huge deal for me, I can still finish the mission from my last save with some noclip to save time. Far as I'm concerned, mission's done. 

But wondering as a workaround if there's a console command to "resurrect" and just get the objective checked off maybe? Or just set it completed for the OCD completist in me?

EDIT: Fixed it 

Spoiler

remove ai_coates
spawn fsx:ai_vinton_coates

One thing I did notice that might be a clue - his head is a *separate* entity from the body. Maybe the game detects the head under water as drowned/dead but for the objective to trigger the body needs to be under water? Very fiddly to test...

Edited September 3 by Shadrach

[chakkman]

On 4/24/2023 at 9:56 PM, Frost_Salamander said:

There's a wooden door in the prison that I can't open...

hint:

  Hide contents

That door can only be opened from the other side. You need to find another way into that room.

spoiler:

  Hide contents

That's the door to the prison/chapel office.  It's accessible from the chapel by climbing up onto the rafters and entering the stained-glass windows.  There is a key to door on the desk.

 

I don't get it.

Spoiler

Do you mean the - chapel in the abbey, or the - church. In neither of those seems to be a stained-glass window up in the rafters. And, neither of them seem to be close enough to the prison so that you can get into the prison.

Edit:

Spoiler

Ok, so you meant that very small chapel room in the prison itself. My bad, should have looked on the rafters there. Didn't even realize there were any in that room.

 

Edited September 9 by chakkman

[chakkman]

On 5/9/2023 at 9:23 PM, Frost_Salamander said:

the keys on the guard: never did get to the bottom of that one as I could never reproduce it.

I don't think it's the same guy, but, this guy's key is also not frobbable:

[chakkman]

Just finished the mission. And while I really liked it (it's well designed, and has some nice locations), I also had some issues with it:

Spoiler

1. Like in "In Plain Sight", I found the secrets and optional objectives too hard to find. It's good that you gave hints in the first post in this thread, but, it's better if people actually find them theirselves. Especially the Burns/Atkinson objective is really too much. You have to find 7 things, which are really well hidden for the most part (especially Atkinson himself), so, I wonder how many people actually found those by themselves, without checking this thread.
2. The loot objective as too high for me, like in "In Plain Sight". Without opening the hotel safe (I wouldn't have found the combination without the help stated in the first post; I thought the hint was in the broche you find in Sharpe's office somehow), I wouldn't have made the objective, and would've ended up some 60 or 70 gold short. I never had an issue making the loot objective on hard/expert in other missions.
3. I found at least 2 guards, one patrolling the Coates' pool, the other patrolling in the area near that, at the canal/river, which had unfrobabble keys. The way I understand it, you fixed that by making the respective doors pickable.
4. I also found 2 or 3 guards stuck in their patrol route. 
5. This trapdoor above the elevator in the store at the square was designed so that it can't closed or opened fully, when you dropped down on the elevator. There is just not enough room:
   
6. This case in the shop was behind a woodenbeam, and could hardly be reached for picking up the loot:
   

What I really liked about the mission where the well designed locations (especially the hotel, the abbery and church and Coates' mansion. It was a lot of fun exploring, and the verticality as well done as well.  

The difficulty was about perfect, I would say. The amount of guards, and placement felt right. What was a bit mean was positioning several NPC's in dark places in rooms where you didn't expect them.

Overall, great mission, with a few rough edges to it, which I hope will be "fixed" in your future missions, which I'm really looking forward to. 

[Frost_Salamander]

Thanks @chakkman and glad you mostly enjoyed it.  The feedback helps and one of these days I'll get everything mostly right I'm sure :-)

[chakkman]

Reading my post again, it almost sounds too negative. I really enjoyed the mission, and I think it's great. I just had some issues finding some things (maybe it's just me, I notice I miss some things which I wouldn't have missed, some years ago. Eyes and brain are getting old ). I really think you have a winner with this mission.