The Dark Mod 15th Anniversary Contest ? ( POLL ADDED )

[nbohr1more]

The Numbers don't lie. It has been 15 years since the release of TDM 1.0 in 2009.

I think we should consider a contest to celebrate this.

Further, the contest goal should be with the intention of motivating the completion of a campaign that can be deemed official.

Here are some possible ways forward:

Proposal 1:  Middle mission(s)

Authors are asked to create a mission that expands the story between "A New Job" and "Tears of St Lucia". This can involve escaping the heavily guarded city perimeter,  stowing away on a ship or caravan, attempting to recruit a partner for St Lucia and failing, getting caught by Builders before arriving and having to escape their compound, getting lost in haunted woods on the way there, etc. Any interesting way that the connection between the two official missions can be expanded. Points are awarded for making explicit references to Corbin, St Lucia, and any story elements in the two official missions. If the resultant mission is of high enough quality, it can possibly be made into an official mission. If we get a number of excellent submissions and they do not cause logical inconsistencies, we might even be able to add two or more to the official list.

Proposal 2: Intellectual Property distinct approximation of TDS missions

Over the years, many have asked that we recreate Thief 1 \ 2 in this engine. Obviously we cannot do this due to copyright law but we could create similar missions and stories that approximate the Thief 1 or 2 designs. That said, I think that most of our audience has played these missions to death so it may be underwhelming to see them arrive in approximate form anyway. What might be better would be to develop a similar story to TDS and make missions that resemble what T1 \ T2 players were dreaming would arrive when TDS was announced and the first screen-shots were shown in gaming magazines. So take any TDS mission you like, examine the story arc and wildly re-interpret something similar but on a much grander scale. Since it's possible that two or more contestants will choose the same mission to re-interpret, we have a slot system were authors need to claim their preferred mission and if it is taken then they must select another one or lose some story points. The slots represent a sketch of what the mission author might try to do rather than a blueprint. If authors can come up with a mission that has almost no resemblance to any TDS mission but would make for a compelling story development in a similar story arc then that can be claimed as an alternative to a slot.

Proposal 3: Same as proposal 2 but we stick with Thief 1 rather than TDS. Wildly re-interpret T1 based on what you may have dreamed of when reading the gaming magazines or playing the demo. Slots system to prevent duplicate submissions.

Maybe with either proposals 3 and 4, we still require the use of Corbin as the protagonist and a connective enough story that they could also be adapted as middle missions for the official campaign if the team agrees on it.

Proposal 4: Another "Connections" Contest. We just allow authors to connect any two missions with each other or expand the story of an existing series or single mission.

So those are my thoughts. I'll leave it to players and mission authors to suggest other proposals and if we have some sort of consensus about the most popular proposals then we will make a poll. Realistically between now and October we may not be able to hold a contest with any strict guidelines ( and tricky issues with maintaining a distance to Thief IP )  so proposal 4 may still be the easiest option.

[datiswous]

Shouldn't we wait till after Deadline: May 25th, 2024 at 23:59 Pacific Time ?

Edit: Well ok, I guess a little bit of discussion can't hurt.

 

I like proposal 1 and 4.

 

4 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

Realistically between now and October we may not be able to hold a contest with any strict guidelines ( and tricky issues with maintaining a distance to Thief IP )  so proposal 4 may still be the easiest option.

I don't understand this. What's in oktober?

 

Proposal 5: Mission hub

Somebody has to create a map that connects missions together. Then others could create those missions.

 

For example: Corban's many adventures in the big city. So like an extension of proposal 1.

 

I think for this a new feature has to be integrated into tdm: The ability to play a campaign in any order.

Edited March 11 by datiswous

[nbohr1more]

1 hour ago, datiswous said:

I don't understand this. What's in oktober?

 

The Dark Mod v1.0 was released on October 17th 2009

https://www.thedarkmod.com/posts/october-17th-2009/

 

Knowing that many current mappers are participating in the TDS 20th Anniversary Contest, I intend to bring the final proposal to Moddb to see if we can get either some old dormant authors or new authors to join in. If we even get one mission to celebrate the 15th anniversary with that would be enough to count this as a success.

[Apache Fiero]

11 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

I think we should consider a contest to celebrate this.

Further, the contest goal should be with the intention of motivating the completion of a campaign that can be deemed official.

If by this you mean a series of missions in one pack, like the recent Thief Gold Black Parade campaign I'm a billion percent for this!!

No offence to DM FM creators, I know one mission takes a lot of hard work, but I'm fed up of the 'one mission and out' type of missions to be honest.

I crave a proper story for once with a series of missions and stuff, not just random associate says steal thing because reasons, oh and you have to steal all this loot but you can't spend it.

[nbohr1more]

10 minutes ago, Apache Fiero said:

If by this you mean a series of missions in one pack, like the recent Thief Gold Black Parade campaign I'm a billion percent for this!!

No offence to DM FM creators, I know one mission takes a lot of hard work, but I'm fed up of the 'one mission and out' type of missions to be honest.

I crave a proper story for once with a series of missions and stuff, not just random associate says steal thing because reasons, oh and you have to steal all this loot but you can't spend it.

Yes this is the trajectory. By the way, have you tried the "No Honor Among Thieves" campaign?

[Apache Fiero]

4 minutes ago, nbohr1more said:

Yes this is the trajectory. By the way, have you tried the "No Honor Among Thieves" campaign?

No, haven't played on that one yet.

[nbohr1more]

41 minutes ago, Apache Fiero said:

No, haven't played on that one yet.

This is currently the largest campaign pack ( 3 missions ), highly recommended.

[Apache Fiero]

2 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

This is currently the largest campaign pack ( 3 missions ), highly recommended.

Thanks

Deffo gonna check it out

[thebigh]

I'd put in a vote for Proposal 4. I really enjoyed the "connections" contest. Proposal 1 as a close runner up, though I'd expand that to allow for a sequel or sequels to Lucia.

[Amadeus]

I love the idea of a 15th Anniversay contest, but I think there should be fewer restrictions on what type of mission can be made so that more mappers would be encouraged to join. Fewer restrictions on what kind of mission can be made for the contest would hopefully open up more room for creativity, and maybe we'll even get some weird, unconventional missions that break the status quo. I, for one, don't really have a desire to do the "connections" theme again. It was fun doing it last time, but if I were to participate in a new contest I'd like to do something different. 

And holding a contest for the third "Official" campaign mission is an interesting idea, but if a contest like that is to be done, I think that should be its own dedicated contest not tied to an anniversary contest.

[thebigh]

Yes, I think I agree. Fifteen years ago TDM was brand new. Nobody had a firm idea of its future direction. People just made the levels they wanted and had a blast. I think we should do that again. Hence, I humbly submit Proposal 5

 

Proposal 5) No expectations, restrictions, set theme, or requirements. Anything goes! Make a mission, any mission you want! Be as creative as you like, or stick to tried-and-true formulas if you prefer. Make a huge sprawling masterpiece if you're up for it, or a little bite-sized gem if that's more your style. Just put something out there.

[Ansome]

For proposal #1, I imagine making a mission fitting seamlessly between the two stock missions in TDM would be a tricky endeavor, truth be told. The first mission is a small tavern robbery and the second is a modestly sized church break-in with a very reasonable jump in difficulty—fitting a mission snugly in between these two in terms of difficulty and scale is a high bar to reach. A contest to make a sequel to "Tears of St. Lucia" sounds more reasonable and would probably flow better for someone playing all three for the first time.

I'd probably avoid doing something TDS related when a similar contest that allows Dark Mod entries is already ongoing, but proposal #3 sounds fun if we're given enough freedom to wildly reinterpret a Thief 1 mission. I'm somewhat mixed on the slot system as it really comes down to whether or not you want a full campaign with no repeats out of this contest. I personally wouldn't mind playing 2-3 different interpretations of something like the Bonehoard, it's bound to be interesting seeing what elements of a mission FM authors focus on.

[nbohr1more]

I have updated the thread with poll options. Please vote

I even though I have given-up on the connections part of this, it might be nice if authors used Corbin as the protagonist to at least pay homage to the included missions.

[TheUnbeholden]

What happened to the "make a middle mission" option... eventhough someone already made one before.

[nbohr1more]

6 hours ago, TheUnbeholden said:

What happened to the "make a middle mission" option... eventhough someone already made one before.

Since there were objections to it, I went with the two most generic options with popular support. I added horror to the poll since that's always popular here.

[NeonsStyle]

"Please vote for a Theme..." and then you put No Theme! FFS! 

[nbohr1more]

1 hour ago, NeonsStyle said:

"Please vote for a Theme..." and then you put No Theme! FFS! 

Language is a tough game. The "lack of a theme" is still a "Contest Theme" when compared to other Contests that have defined themes depending on how deep you want to into a taxonomy discussion. I would have preferred that free-for-all was off the menu but there is a demand for that option.

[nbohr1more]

I expanded voting to threads over at the Thief and Dark Mod communities over at reddit ( we might get approx 10 more folks if I'm optimistic )

asw3333 voted for 3) Horror

Molda_Fr voted for 1) free-for-all

JazzManJ52 voted for 2) T1 style

Meddlloide1337 voted for 2) T1 style

Ok_Yogurtcloset4018 voted for 1) free-for-all

 

[demagogue]

In principle I like the idea of community campaign building.

But the official campaign itself never really captured my imagination, not to mention it'd be hard for people to have an idea of where it's going, much less making it cohere.

I scripted a Dark Mod campaign meant to introduce the districts, factions, and lore that does capture my imagination. But I'm not in any real position to ask people to build for it, and also there's still the problem that people may have different visions for it that may not cohere well.

As for the "connecting mission", that might be interesting... But I'd reframe it a little, not that it has to be connecting per se, but you know, a hero or even another character from some FM in an adjacent setting alongside (or before or after) an existing FM, kind of like what Rozencranz and Guildenstern did for Hamlet, if you know about that. I think it's better to have it more open ended how an author wants to build off an existing FM than only connecting two FMs per se.

That might be a really interesting theme to see play out.

 

[xlm]

I like proposal 2 because I have thought of doing that many times, but realistically, just allowing people to do whatever they want seems less restrictive, so more people might join in. Besides, if someone still wants to reinterpret a T1 or T3 mission, well, nobody is stopping them. Perhaps "include a nod to a classic Thief/TDM map somewhere in your mission" could be a milder requirement.

Campaigns just take too much time to make.

[JackFarmer]

17 hours ago, NeonsStyle said:

"Please vote for a Theme..." and then you put No Theme! FFS! 

What a great comeback from you.

[JackFarmer]

@nbohr1more

another idea: there are several abandoned WIPs. Maybe doing some sort of contest with them?

Edited March 20 by JackFarmer

[nbohr1more]

Seems like the reddit voters are hoping that new missions will be "out there, strange, new".

I guess they would've wanted a new "Unusual Contest".

Regardless of the winning theme, voters will probably be giving higher marks for "crazy new stuff".

[jonri]

I've been feeling the itch to start mapping again, and I'd like to pick up my stalled WIP for the next FM building off my first one.  If we end up with lighter contest requirements I'd run with this for the fun of participating.  If my FM doesn't end up meeting contest criteria I'll still keep the October timeframe as a goal though.

A mild requirement like "include a nod to a classic Thief/TDM map somewhere in your mission" sounds like a nice way to keep participation up without going full free-for-all.

[TheUnbeholden]

If T1 wins then I suggest people also have the option of doing something with story from the dark mod to make it more relevant to the community.