Fan Mission : Moongate Ruckus🎻 (4/1/24)

[kingsal]

Sorry, Ive been sparse with replies in here but thanks for playing this tiny mission everyone + giving your feedback. 

Edited August 14, 2024 by kingsal

[Arcturus]

It's a fun premise. I played version 2 in Darkmod 2.12:

• there's a missing door / window model in two places:

• Guards loose me very quickly. The radius of that light doesn't seem to match the visuals. Something doesn't seem right.

 

[MirceaKitsune]

6 hours ago, Arcturus said:

Guards loose me very quickly. The radius of that light doesn't seem to match the visuals. Something doesn't seem right.

That's usually caused by a negative lightgem offset configured by the map. I noticed this FM is easier than the average in terms of light detection. Likely since I played it on the Easy difficulty, it might not do this so much on Normal or Hard. The AI in general has detection issues of this sort, you can find my own observations about that here:

 

Edited September 13, 2024 by MirceaKitsune

[Arcturus]

@MirceaKitsuneI suspected that since the mission has a lighter tone the author decreased the difficulty level. The video was shot on medium difficulty I believe.

[MirceaKitsune]

3 minutes ago, Arcturus said:

@MirceaKitsuneI suspected that since the mission has a lighter tone the author decreased the difficulty level. The video was shot on medium difficulty I believe.

I see. I played it on Easy and it was the same. It might be an universal map setting in that case... at least for the lightgem level: The AI behaving that way is a known issue I reported months ago, just added that video to the list of analysis on how the AI ignores the direction of alerts as well as quickly forgetting them once the player is out of reach to the pathfinder.

[Wellingtoncrab]

There is a lightgem_adjust of -1.75 in this mission. Additionally the spawnargs for guards are adjusted to give the player more time between them being spotted and guards being fully alerted.

Really I see nothing wrong in the video or when I play the mission. 

In fact I think the changes are good. When you are in a direct light source you become more visible, when you move into the ambient light level you are not. When you are spotted you are given a reasonable chance to correct for it.

In my missions you will see similar stacks of spawnargs on ai, and I set the ambient_world light to ai_see "0" so the baseline for the player is always they are fully concealed outside of a direct light source, which achieves something very similar. That imo has a benefit over lightgem_adjust, as it does not impact every light in the game.

Balancing guard acuity is a very common point of discussion amongst mappers. 

[thebigh]

I agree; I prefer ambient light to not contribute to visibility most of the time.

[Arcturus]

I am in the open in the direct light of the street lamp, not ambient light, yet the light gem is black. I was wondering whether it's supposed to be like that.

Plus the NPCs have sudden urge to run down the stairs where they get stuck by wonky path finding.

 

[MirceaKitsune]

I think the lightgem level itself is alright as a choice: My concern is how AI react to it at times, particularly losing sight of the player and having no sense of direction by searching in random areas where the player couldn't have been. The second video also describes what I noticed several months ago, which can be seen in my own video on AI randomly ignoring alerts or getting stuck:

 

[kingsal]

@ArcturusIts probably a combination of things that contribute to gaps in the lightgem read out and the visual perception of how bright you are.  I use light gem adjustments and a lot of ambient lights set to "ai_see" "0"

I have my reasons for lighting missions this way, but its it a lot of manual work and prone to error. Its a trade off between light gem accuracy and cool lighting

@WellingtoncrabNever though to set ambient_world to ai_see 0. Thats a great little trick. 

Edited September 16, 2024 by kingsal

[Sotha]

Played this tonight. Great little mission and ingenious plot. Everyone has been in that situation, I guess.

Spoiler

I straightforward proceeded to the house and cut the power and shot a gas arrow through the window to underline my point.

Excellent mission and a lot of fun sneaking.

[thebigh]

17 hours ago, Sotha said:

Everyone has been in that situation, I guess.

 

Honestly, I'd prefer distorted and off-key Beethoven to the hip-hop crap my neighbours across the street blare out.

[chakkman]

12 minutes ago, thebigh said:

 

Honestly, I'd prefer distorted and off-key Beethoven to the hip-hop crap my neighbours across the street blare out.

It's everywhere these days... accompanied by the bad manners.

Edited October 13, 2024 by chakkman

[MirceaKitsune]

3 hours ago, thebigh said:

 

Honestly, I'd prefer distorted and off-key Beethoven to the hip-hop crap my neighbours across the street blare out.

Yeah, we don't live in the TDM universe. This does come with a few perks such as no undead or giant spiders, but also the inventors guild replaced with a not always better kind of technological culture.

In my country the kind of music that would get blasted is worse than hip-hop, think something like Indian party music but often far more annoying. If only we had fire arrows

[Thiefette]

Peace and quiet has been restored  Finished this short but sweet mission up today. 

Spoiler

Found all the loot as well as the secrets. Love nook & cranny searching lol. Only difficulty I had was figuring out how to get back in my apartment. Thought the vine arrow would come in play but couldn't find the window from ground level. Once I got up higher, discovered I didn't need it. 

Thanks for all your hard work and look forward to more from you. 

[Fiver]

I asked for tips of short missions (here) and this mission was suggested to me. I successfully played it on TDM 2.13/64 #10920.

Spoiler

The map for this mission was larger than I expected, but I managed to finish it in a little over an hour (according to the mission statistics).

I think I started this mission all wrong: Jumping out the window, without any tools, scouring the sewers, before sneaking into some building and breaking into an apartment which turned out to be... my own. I'm the worst thief there is!

Details I liked:

• The main objective of turning off the music was new to me. A nice break from the nightly thieving. (Also the clever design of the bothering music at the start to establish the urgency of silencing it, but also that it was less noticeable in the large middle part of the game, and then increased again towards the end, which contrasted well with the relief once the power was cut.)
• Some voiceovers (in the sewers and when seeing the beheaded statue)
• The different colors of lighting in different places of the map (yellowish near the four powerboxes, blueish in the apartment, et.c.)
• The overall mapping.
• LOVED the speedrun challenge on Expert level. (Personal best: some 16 seconds with some 29 seconds to spare.)
• The option to enter the window w dandelion outside, using a vine arrow or climbing along the edge from the guard.
• Some parkour possibilities.

Potential improvements:

• Consider changing the briefing cutscene from (mostly) a dream sequence into one directly related to the main mission. I think a little bit of backstory could heighten the stakes ("I have an important job coming up and I haven't slept for days.") and may create a stronger connection between the player and the objective.
• I did not understand there was a drawbridge until I got the key for it from the desk. Consider adding one or two voiceovers to indirectly identify the drawbridge when the player sees it (similar to seeing the hammer in Tears of St. Lucia). One when seeing the guards? One when seeing the bridge from below? Maybe add some drawings, instructions and warning signs and time table in the rooms near the control. If the player understands there is a drawbridge (and preferably fails to cross the gap once) before they actively try lowering it, then that will create an anticipation and increase the payoff when the player succeeds with the task.
• I didn't figure out what to do with the apples. I was hoping I could eat them to restore some of my health, or give them to the beggar in exchange for a "Good deed"-message.
• I never play on expert level and I would have missed the speedrun challenge had I not watched a video of someone else playing. Consider adding a fourth level called "Speed challenge" with only that one objective.
• After completing the 45-seconds-challenge, it would be nice with a large text showing how much time I used and in higher resolution than full seconds.

Possible defects and regression errors:

• The two vantablack objects in the window corners that has already been reported above: (2432.96 352.2 -1323.75   11.0 -18.1 0.0) and (1912.4 -486.27 -1437.75   -18.1 -39.9 0.0)
• In 2.13, there is newly added text with version and build number in the lower left corner on the main menu. It is hardly visible on the custom menu for this mission.

Overall, I very much enjoyed playing this mission! Excellent work! Thank you everyone who contributed to it!

[datiswous]

15 hours ago, Fiver said:

I never play on expert level and I would have missed the speedrun challenge had I not watched a video of someone else playing. Consider adding a fourth level called "Speed challenge" with only that one objective.

It's not possible to have more (or less) than 3 difficulty levels in tdm.

[chakkman]

Thank god.  

[datiswous]

Well actually I think it would be useful to have more control over that gui (for example if I only want to include two difficulties and have this displayed as such on the difficulty screen). Currently I have to override a core gui file (mainmenu_objectives.gui) which says I should NOT do that on top of the file.

Quote

 * This file is part of The Dark Mod's Main Menu GUI
 *
 * Mission Authors: DO NOT EDIT, INCLUDE OR OVERRIDE THIS FILE IN YOUR MISSION PK4.