Fan Mission: A Bridge Too Far

[Skaruts]

Haven't played too much of it yet, but I'm enjoying much of it. The atmosphere is awesome, and I love the the idea that the bridge is so big that people built buildings on it as if it's just another part of town. I'm also enjoying that I'm being able to ghost it without even knowing it beforehand. Not perfect ghosting, but pretty decent for a first playthrough.

There are some technical issues though. The outdoor areas are barely playable on my potato. Even some indoor areas are heavy because they have transparent windows revealing the outdoor areas. I'm thinking the performance killer may be those fully detailed buildings in the distant background. Ideally they would be very low poly models, because the player is never gonna see them up close. As it is, they have literally millions of triangles to be rendered at once (r_showprimitives 1). That the outdoor area is completely open also doesn't really help the game render less stuff at once. This engine isn't particularly suited for this kind of thing.

I think fog can also weigh on performance, but I'm not sure. I've had lower FPS on foggy missions before, but they were also highly detailed (Iris and Briarwood Manor), so it may not have been the fog.

I also found two minor issues so far that are probably easy to fix:

Spoiler

1- there's at least two doors that have a thick wooden doorstep that the player can't easily walk over. I had to mantle over them. One of them is where the drunk guard is sitting (I forgot the other one) :

I'm pretty sure a brush of tdm_nodrawsolid_wood around it will fix it. Nodrawsolids usually fix any issues with stepping over things. There's also a toolbox on a table in the room full of paintings on tables, which is also tricky to walk over. Some models have this problem. When that happens I personally set them to "solid 0" and put a nodrawsolid around them (make their rough shape if needed).

2- There are some walls that are troublesome to bump into, as the player climbs over that protruding part and then slides and gets thrown away:

A good way to fix that is using clip brushes (all the way up to the ceiling). That will also prevent the AI from having the same issue. There were some wooden poles in some other room that had the same issue, but I forgot where it was (though in that case you don't slide out).

 

 

 

 

Edited September 26, 2023 by Skaruts

[joebarnin]

A fun mission - great atmosphere and design. Good idea - sort of a "Ponte Vecchio" feeling for the bridge. Lots of entry points, good use of rope arrows (I love missions with rope arrows), nice physical relationship between rooms & levels. I don't have the patience to ghost, but it looks ghost-able. I just knocked out most everyone, which was fine. I did accidently kill one guard who was sitting, but that's a known bug with TDM.

Nice work, and thanks!

Like others, I ran into performance issues. Outside my FPS was low, and TDM froze once for about 10-15 seconds. Also, some minor things:

Spoiler

Gap between railing and floor:

The guard was dancing around this post, I think maybe it needs a Monster Clip?

Gap between wall panels - you can see the sky

[ashpl]

Congrats on the release, very creative industrial setting and nice attention to details. Looking forward to play your next missions (and more new TDM missions period!)

 

Nothing severe on my rig but I did notice some lags too on the bridge floor / courtyard

Edited September 26, 2023 by ashpl

[thebigh]

Here we go. Up on Thief Guild!

 

https://www.thiefguild.com/fanmissions/54914/a-bridge-too-far

[Jnon]

Finally got around to playing this, and I'm happy to see new fan missions on the download list.

Exploring the map was very enjoyable, and I liked the verticality... also the opportunity to "cheat" and get around with rope arrows made me glad I invested in them at mission start.

The sense of scale in the map, particularly crawling around scaffolding under the bridge, was cool and I enjoyed the view of the city in the fog. That said, I mirror some of the comments here that even with a pretty beefy graphics card I had the whole game freeze for almost half a minute whenever I faced out into the skybox view while standing on top of the ground floor outhouse (just in front of the sitting guard outside, by the door).

I never had any of the bridge problems others have reported, so I guess that might be a sporadic issue. At any rate, a fun map. Very enjoyable!

[datiswous]

On 9/22/2023 at 7:17 PM, nbohr1more said:

( LOL! Pretty sneaky way to title the mission so it shows at the top of the missions page. )

This is different inside TDM. There lettering in full words get priority.

[NeonsStyle]

Congratulations on the release. Downloading now. :D

[nbohr1more]

A reminder for folks who have poor performance in this mission.

The latest 2.12 "dev builds" have some major performance optimizations that may improve your experience:

 

[peter_spy]

Very nice POC with the in-map background area instead of static skybox. I suspected it could be done to an extent, but this one requires some performance tricks.

The setting is also a breath of fresh air, although it makes me wish for something a la Perfume: Story of a murderer.

Edited September 26, 2023 by peter_spy

[NeonsStyle]

Just finished this. Really enjoyed this mission. Nice details throughout the mission, good
gameplay and the story was ok, though it did lack depth in terms of readables. I had a few
issues with FPS, probably due to all the extra buildings added that are not needed or seen
unless you noclip around. Same with the ship. Better visportalling will probably fix that up too.

Overall an very good mission, could do with a little refinement, but I really enjoyed it. Thank you for your 
hard work. It was worth it.

[esme]

Very enjoyable, and an interesting setting

My machine struggled a little with the exterior at times but nothing major

One question

Spoiler

Was there a readable about the loot in the water, if there was I missed it

 

[datiswous]

Nice mission. Almost no issues except some major TDM freezes in a certain area:

Pick up the bottle of wine: Freeze. Have to close TDM.

Leaning: Freeze. Have to close TDM.

Freezes stop when I open the door.

This might or might not be due to me using the latest dev version of TDM.

 

Other minor things:

Spoiler

 

Edited September 30, 2023 by datiswous

[cugzkani]

Thanks everyone for the kind words and feedback!

 

Version 1.1 - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IiHuD293mIb-kQL_t5dJzKnsnkXl4IN_/view

This version has better performance, thanks to b1k3rdude (@Bikerdude - it's not tagging for some reason?) who redid the visportaling in the outdoors area (as well as monster clipping the outdoors, and some decoration on the flat rooftop) - can't thank you enough! This has major impact on the outdoors FPS.

I also replaced most of the faux-skybox models with their lowest LODs.

Other fixes:

On 9/25/2023 at 2:50 AM, Skaruts said:

...
I also found two minor issues so far that are probably easy to fix:

  Reveal hidden contents

1- there's at least two doors that have a thick wooden doorstep that the player can't easily walk over. I had to mantle over them. One of them is where the drunk guard is sitting (I forgot the other one) :

I'm pretty sure a brush of tdm_nodrawsolid_wood around it will fix it. Nodrawsolids usually fix any issues with stepping over things. There's also a toolbox on a table in the room full of paintings on tables, which is also tricky to walk over. Some models have this problem. When that happens I personally set them to "solid 0" and put a nodrawsolid around them (make their rough shape if needed).

2- There are some walls that are troublesome to bump into, as the player climbs over that protruding part and then slides and gets thrown away:

A good way to fix that is using clip brushes (all the way up to the ceiling). That will also prevent the AI from having the same issue. There were some wooden poles in some other room that had the same issue, but I forgot where it was (though in that case you don't slide out).

On 9/25/2023 at 7:06 AM, joebarnin said:

...
Also, some minor things:

  Reveal hidden contents

Gap between railing and floor:

The guard was dancing around this post, I think maybe it needs a Monster Clip?

Gap between wall panels - you can see the sky

 

13 hours ago, datiswous said:

...
Other minor things:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Unfortunately still unsure about freezes related to the bridge moving...

[cugzkani]

On 9/27/2023 at 5:40 PM, esme said:

...

One question

  Hide contents

Was there a readable about the loot in the water, if there was I missed it

 

No such readable, no (very scarce text in general, I'm not sure what level of hinting I like tbh)

 

On 9/26/2023 at 4:46 PM, peter_spy said:

...
The setting is also a breath of fresh air, although it makes me wish for something a la Perfume: Story of a murderer.

On 9/25/2023 at 7:06 AM, joebarnin said:

A fun mission - great atmosphere and design. Good idea - sort of a "Ponte Vecchio" feeling for the bridge.
...

Thanks! And I only knew about old London Bridge being a living bridge from that movie! They're neat, someone could definitely take it to a more extreme (the visuals are something I pretty much tried to speed through ). I like the Italian bridge having a roof over it, might've been smarter to have it walled in.

[datiswous]

17 hours ago, datiswous said:

except some major TDM freezes in a certain area:

Pick up the bottle of wine: Freeze. Have to close TDM.

Leaning: Freeze. Have to close TDM.

Freezes stop when I open the door.

Quick test with the new build. No freezes in this area.

To be sure I tested again the old build and it still gave me the crashes.

Edited September 30, 2023 by datiswous

[datiswous]

LOL

Spoiler

during a replay I got squashed by a bridge..

Actually you can kill guards this way..

Revenge!

Spoiler

 

Edited September 30, 2023 by datiswous

[datiswous]

This alerted guard gets stuck here because the stairs are still locked:

Spoiler

 

I have to say: That fold-out staircase is quite insanely cool. Is that from a prefab, or did you make it yourself?

Edited September 30, 2023 by datiswous

[irisx]

Thanks @cugzkani for the new build and for a very enjoyable mission overall!

The update does play more smoothly for me, though I still got a hard freeze

 

Spoiler

while mantling on a small roof next to the guard who is sitting across a torch. Happened only once, could not get it to freeze again.

 

[cugzkani]

2 hours ago, datiswous said:

This alerted guard gets stuck here because the stairs are still locked:

  Hide contents

 

I have to say: That fold-out staircase is quite insanely cool. Is that from a prefab, or did you make it yourself?

oh haha I don't think they know how to toggle it for pathing
 

Spoiler

there's just the bell ringing script, it's not linked to a proper path...
not sure how possible that is with how it's currently set up

 

and thanks - not a prefab, it's pretty simple, just a bunch of 'mover_door_sliding' entities stacked on top of each over, each with a longer 'translate'

 

  

30 minutes ago, irisx said:

Thanks @cugzkani for the new build and for a very enjoyable mission overall!

The update does play more smoothly for me, though I still got a hard freeze

 

  Reveal hidden contents

while mantling on a small roof next to the guard who is sitting across a torch. Happened only once, could not get it to freeze again.

 

seems to be a problem area I had stutters there on earlier builds

 

Edited September 30, 2023 by cugzkani

[datiswous]

Still, it might be nice for a prefab.

[joebarnin]

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention (don't know if anyone else has discovered this). From here, I was able to use a rope arrow to climb up here:

From there I could walk all the way around to the right and then back along the roof edge, and get a view that I wasn't supposed to:

For my own missions, I personally don't care if someone can "break the fourth wall" (unless it's too easy). But in case it matters to you...

[snatcher]

Congratulations on the release cugzkani! I haven't played it yet but looking forward to Two Bridges Too Far already

[AluminumHaste]

So I take it other people are finding the FPS pretty bad in a bunch of locations?

86 FPS isn't bad per se, but running that low FPS on a 240hz monitor feels......not great.

[AluminumHaste]

Is this building missing from the mission?

[nbohr1more]

@cugzkani as I recall, you were not interested in doing further work to optimize this mission?

Would you be willing to accept any assistance from another mapper willing to help optimize it?