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Fan Mission: Volta III - Gemcutter [15th Anniversary Contest]


kingsal

15th Anniversary Voting  

29 members have voted

  1. 1. Game Play Quality

    • One Star
      0
    • Two Stars
      0
    • Three Stars
      0
    • Four Stars
      5
    • Five Stars
      24
  2. 2. Story Quality

    • One Star
      0
    • Two Stars
      0
    • Three Stars
      4
    • Four Stars
      9
    • Five Stars
      16
  3. 3. Visual Quality

    • One Star
      0
    • Two Stars
      0
    • Three Stars
      0
    • Four Stars
      5
    • Five Stars
      24


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  • kingsal changed the title to Fan Mission: Volta III - Gemcutter [15th Anniversary Contest]
  • nbohr1more pinned this topic

Just finished this. Amazing mission, very well done.

Spoiler

As usual with Kingsal's mission, the gameplay was nearly perfect. It always appears to me as if you know exactly what makes a mission enjoyable and fun to play. I loved the shooting range, that was a nice touch, and something new. :)

The difficulty was good, although I thought there might have been a few too many A.I. in some places. Speaking of A.I., it behaved a bit odd, greeting me before becoming hostile. Also, I think you tweaked the hearing of the A.I. a bit? Seemed to me as if the range they hear you from was a bit less than in other missions (which is good in my opinion).

The mission felt very polished, I haven't come across any places where I got stuck, or noticed any other issues. I got a bad lag on the Orchid though, and, the longer I played, the more severe the lags got. Not so much bad framerate, rather stuttering. Every time I quickloaded, the stuttering was gone, but then started again, the longer I played. 

The visual quality was excellent, all very coherent, and the lighting was great as well.

 

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There is always something.. I found a minor but kind of obvious bug of a few missing grate models. Ive updated the OP. 
If you have already started a play through, this isn't mission breaking but if you haven't. Please update

@nbohr1moreWould be as so kind as to update the servers for me? Its enough of a bug to fix. No idea how it happened :( 
gemcutter 1.1

 

Edited by kingsal
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7 hours ago, kingsal said:

There is always something.. I found a minor but kind of obvious bug of a few missing grate models. Ive updated the OP. 
If you have already started a play through, this isn't mission breaking but if you haven't. Please update

@nbohr1moreWould be as so kind as to update the servers for me? Its enough of a bug to fix. No idea how it happened :( 
gemcutter 1.1

 

Fixed version is up by the way.

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Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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Just started and I love the intro that is obviously inspired from the "sword" mission in T2. The "sword" was one of my favorite missions. Something tells me that this one is going to be a winner.

Edited by kin
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Hello Kingsal!

I see that you ahve left Discord, so i had to come here to tell you!
Your new mission is a blessing ❤️ are you doing all the 3d meshes yourself? Its so professional!
Really good job.

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Can we have more scary Zombie Horror maps?

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A simply gorgeous mission! I love the unique textures, especially the stonework in the storehouses/market area. Intriguing layout, both of the storehouses and the ship. The lighting was outstanding - visually, and from a gameplay point of view.

Spoiler

Gameplay was just right - basic objectives were doable for mediocre players like me, secrets and max loot were more challenging (hey, at least I found a couple secrets).

Spoiler

I paid the bribes, just to give them a try. They helped, but even before I used them I could see how I could accomplish the objectives without them. But there were plenty of arrows around in the mission, so it didn't matter that I couldn't afford to buy many at the start.

Here is some z-fighting that I noticed:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/prpoujb1lhd5ybftw3von/ACbqye0LJOevb6FZipoS8sM?rlkey=cyfx6z3st6v1du0cmedoi51od&st=zldqvjoh&dl=1

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Hello kingsal 

as i said before : an other gem - cutted by kingsal
one of my most beloved mappers 

i´m still not sure how to vote : but for sure - you now get some " - " 

sorry but you are kingsal - you get some extra expectation  for you´re a profi .
in the outside area of the ship - not everything is accessible as it should be .
sorry - i understand it´s in addition to to the mission - to get a proudly atmosphere 
but since  " Hazard-Pay "  i expect that every thing is consistent 😉
and here one can´t climp everywhere  where it looks possibele 
also - wooden stuff is not allways wooden stuff where rope-arrows fit . 

I´m sure you´l accept this as an minor critics -
and i may ask you : is it you - who is a genius - to know what solutions are needed - to give a sup.ghost a chance to fulfill his ambitions ? --- 😇👻 or is it my genius to allways find one ?
your secrets are very well done ! and the statues value and the second builders cross needed some extra ideas to get them unseen .

By the way ?

Spoiler

did you ever expect in " hazard-pay " that some one gets into the storeroom undetected by any use of inventory items ? -I feeel it´s been made for sup.ghosts - but i can´t imagine you thought of my solution to do so 🤩

 

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This was an aboslute blast to play!

I did not expect anything less after other fms from you :) So far, my most favourite of missions from this contest, with imperial sword as a close second.

Still have 3 more left to play.

Again - I loved the setting (I always wonder how do you do this life-like level design, where you use a lot of sharp angles and symmetrical geometric shapes (i.e. the square with the warehouses and a statue in the middle), yet the levels doesn´t seem bland nor boring), whole middle-eastern aesthetic and setup of the story. Also lightning and whole lot of a new textures (?). And making a boat - a limited space of usually rectangular rooms not boring and monotonous and dividing it into sections, which are vastly different to have for a player something to explore - hats off.

I also noticed some of the missions have this ability where if you take a loot, it does not just disappear, but it instead fly over screen to you - is that something you as a mission creator have to turn on? I find that effect cool.

I absolutely enjoyed the shooting minigame - that was brilliant idea, as I find those targets underutilized in missions and this finally forced me to shoot something else beside rope arrows :)
 

Spoiler

And that switch hidden in the portrait was nasty - I was able to find it thanks to my obsessive nature of frobbing everything interesting in sight and reach :)


I was able to find 6 out of 8 secrets, 7th I had to help myself with

Spoiler

(I didn´t knew the rocks on the cliff were climbable, but that was my mistake, should have at least try more thoroughly, which I usually do)

, but I couldn´t find the 8th secret, although I have all the loot, so maybe some script didn´t execute properly?

Can I have a list of secret locations (in a spoiler tag, of course)?

PS: Oh, and I forgot to mention that beautiful intro animation - did you do that yourself?
That was breathtaking - I love the original Thief (or Black Parade intros, for that matter, as they are homage to the original), but this was very nice upgrade and modernization over the traditional style.

Edited by Tarhiel
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8 minutes ago, Tarhiel said:

I did not expect anything less after other fms from you :) So far, my most favourite of missions from this contest, with imperial sword as a close second.

Same here. 

Regarding the secrets, there are hints in the first post of this thread.

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Thanks for playing! 

A heads up, the briefing doesn't have subtitles yet, I'll do that in a future update. I just ran out of time.
The OP has the briefing scripts written out along with an FAQ as chakkman mentioned. 

Goldwell was kind enough to host the briefing on his youtube which does a decent job with automated captions.

I made the briefing using photoshop and blender. Cut it all together in premiere. 

 

Edited by kingsal
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6 hours ago, chakkman said:

Same here. 

Regarding the secrets, there are hints in the first post of this thread.

Thanks,

Spoiler

I was missing the generator on the boat above the orrery.

 

Edited by Tarhiel
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this is a very impressive mission!

I've gotten physically stuck a couple places, most notably in the wall of the cargo hold office with 

Spoiler

the electrified plate.

this one caused a crash, though maybe it was the quick load crash mentioned above when I tried to reload a bit back from it? I will investigate tomorrow.

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This was impressive on many levels!

Game play 5 stars

Everything went smoothly, no getting stuck on anything. I love all small details (that enhance stuff, without infringing upon gamepley), like the latches on boxes and doors, and small knick knacks. I love that you could move almost anywhere and get where you want without linearity/chokepoints. The possibility to choose your way is a big plus from me; you can take the high road, or you can search for all these little latches and hatches and sneak the sneak way. Lovely!

Story 5 stars

I have only played Volta 1 so I'm not familiar with everything but that didn't stop me from enjoying the characters and environments. They felt realistic and not over the top. All in all, it felt good to rob that Gordiff of his gambling/smuggler money!

Visuals 5 stars

Wow! This mission has a buttload of custom assets! I felt from the start, with the custom menu screen and the beautiful briefing/video that this is not your ordinary mission building looser crapdog, sitting in his basement, trying to figure out coding. This is some graphic designer or painter or somebody else with knowledge in the visual arts! Just that video and briefing must be weeks of hard work!

Somehow the guards/AI gave me an Thief 2 vibe, I don't know why. Maybe something about the design of the custom people. It felt disconnected with the ordinary mod, definitely in a good way! You're truly a King, mr Sal!

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Excellent mission. What I found most enjoying about it was that having a sense of direction was easy, and unlike so many other missions it was not a maze where you forget where you have been and where you are. Stunning visuals and excellent design.

One minor thing / bugreport(?): It was possible to throw a vase inside a display case. I was hoping to break the glass with it , but instead the glass cracked more and more as I kept throwing, and the extra geometry consumed a lot of CPU or GPU power slowing the game down to 2-3 fps. Once the glass was broken (using the blackjack) it was not a problem anymore. Perhaps it is possible to set a limit for how much the glass can crack.

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5 minutes ago, waxhead said:

Excellent mission. What I found most enjoying about it was that having a sense of direction was easy, and unlike so many other missions it was not a maze where you forget where you have been and where you are.

I think this is an important and often neglected point (not so much by mission authors, rather by people who review missions). My favorite missions have this sense of direction, where I actually proceed in the game, going where I'm "supposed to go". Not to be confused with various path to the objective, which is of course totally fine. But, missions which have a logical structure are the most enjoyable to play for me.

And, I also have to say that kingsal's missions are excellent in that regard, that's one of the reasons I explicitely emphasized the gameplay in my post above.

Edited by chakkman
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