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Fan Mission: Gem of Souls (31-10-2024)


MirceaKitsune

Gem of Souls voting  

14 members have voted

  1. 1. Gameplay

    • One star
      0
    • Two stars
      2
    • Three stars
      3
    • Four stars
      7
    • Five stars
      2
  2. 2. Story

    • One star
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    • Two stars
      1
    • Three stars
      3
    • Four stars
      6
    • Five stars
      4
  3. 3. Visual

    • One star
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    • Two stars
      1
    • Three stars
      5
    • Four stars
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    • Five stars
      4


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1 hour ago, datiswous said:

Congratulations!

I'm a bit skeptic about your idea to skip beta testing though. I guess you were on a time frame, but still..

Thanks! The plan was to make something for Halloween hence why I posted it today: It was a last minute idea I thought of 12 days ago, even this morning I fixed a few small issues. Indeed there wasn't enough time, but for something quick and relatively simple I figured it works. I played through it more than a dozen times at various difficulties and routes, couldn't find anything problematic so I went with it.

Only noticeable issue is that if you look closely at the walls in a few spots, you can see the sky between them. It's not too obvious so I left it like that; The church interior module is quite finicky and has no clear guidelines on how to connect the various set pieces, you must find the best way as you go and sometimes there are gaps.

Oh and the exploding food flying all over the place bug, but that's a common issue with the commoners eating prefab.

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Note: This mission is NOT compatible with the "Fresnel Mod"

I believe it uses the non-cubic ambient light? Not sure but I can try making an alternate fresnel mod for this one I guess.

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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Nice mission! I really enjoyed this one, and you weren't kidding about it being hard. It took me forever to work out how to escape after things got scary. I only scored about $3000 and found just one secret, so I'll have to have another play through later to discover what I missed.

 

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My missions:           Stand-alone                                                      Duncan Lynch series                              

                                      Down and Out on Newford Road              the Factory Heist

                                The Wizard's Treasure                             A House Call

                                                                                                  The House of deLisle                                                                                                  

                              

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4 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

Note: This mission is NOT compatible with the "Fresnel Mod"

I believe it uses the non-cubic ambient light? Not sure but I can try making an alternate fresnel mod for this one I guess.

I believe I'm experiencing this problem, do you also have the ground flickering like crazy, while also being absurdly shiny and foggy?

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OK, I'll admit upfront that I'm too dumb for this mission 😑

So, I did the obvious thing and spent ages on knocking everybody out without raising suspicion and putting them, one by one, into the priest's room as it can be locked (which I then did) ... only to

Spoiler

have everybody respawn undead at the exact same place they were before. Just ... why?!

Spoiler

After finding a lever that just mackiged into existence because reasons(?),

I finally get out (still short on loot, but hoping)

Spoiler

, where there is a bunch of invisible crazies constantly running around on high alert for absolutely no reason and some glowing woman standing on a rock

. At this point, I was pretty lost. Where there any hints as to what this all means and, more importantly, what I am supposed to do?

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Firstly, yes: All or most of my FM's use ambient cubemap illumination, since it looks really good and is the closest TDM has to PBR lighting. I haven't tried the fresnel mod yet, but presume it doesn't work with those lights yet, which can hopefully be fixed since more missions might use them in the future.

57 minutes ago, Knüppelaufdierübe said:

At this point, I was pretty lost. Where there any hints as to what this all means and, more importantly, what I am supposed to do?

There's a reason for everything being the way that it is: You just need to look very attentively. Find all readables... some are hard to see which I should have probably made more obvious, I presumed most TDM players will look in every nook and cranny.

Spoiler

Look for a journal under a cabinet in the bedroom. A note in a shelf in the library room next to it. A dropped scroll under the chair of the drinker in the green tunic. Behind him a newspaper on the table where two AI are playing cards. And one more journal in the upstairs room between the wall and the large bed. Don't forget the poem in the desk there, the crumpled note in the tool box on one of the tombs near where you find the red key, and as a bonus you can frob the book in the upstairs hallway.

Also remember that...

Spoiler

Not everyone is hostile, only the builders and later the undead, the "living" civilians will only salute the player. As for said woman, see if she has anything on her that might explain it, but you should first read everything else.

Edited by MirceaKitsune
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11 hours ago, The Black Arrow said:

do you also have the ground flickering like crazy,

Lots and lots of Z fighting in this mission.

  • Haha 1

My missions:           Stand-alone                                                      Duncan Lynch series                              

                                      Down and Out on Newford Road              the Factory Heist

                                The Wizard's Treasure                             A House Call

                                                                                                  The House of deLisle                                                                                                  

                              

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1 hour ago, thebigh said:

Lots and lots of Z fighting in this mission.

Lots? Can you share a screenshot so I'm sure it's not something else I'm not getting on my end? I only I saw a bit where I made the terrain patches, though I pasted the projected material from the ground brush so they should be the same pixels and not noticeable.

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2 hours ago, MirceaKitsune said:

Lots? Can you share a screenshot so I'm sure it's not something else I'm not getting on my end?

Especially on the ground outside.

Pretty nice mission overall. Very pretty also I think. Haven't found the yellow and blue keys yet though.

There are some rough edges, but nothing really bothersome.

Edited by datiswous
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11 hours ago, MirceaKitsune said:

Firstly, yes: All or most of my FM's use ambient cubemap illumination, since it looks really good and is the closest TDM has to PBR lighting. I haven't tried the fresnel mod yet, but presume it doesn't work with those lights yet, which can hopefully be fixed since more missions might use them in the future.

  Reveal hidden contents

Look for a journal under a cabinet in the bedroom. A note in a shelf in the library room next to it. A dropped scroll under the chair of the drinker in the green tunic. Behind him a newspaper on the table where two AI are playing cards. And one more journal in the upstairs room between the wall and the large bed. Don't forget the poem in the desk there, the crumpled note in the tool box on one of the tombs near where you find the red key, and as a bonus you can frob the book in the upstairs hallway.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Not everyone is hostile, only the builders and later the undead, the "living" civilians will only salute the player. As for said woman, see if she has anything on her that might explain it, but you should first read everything else.

Quite the contrary, your ambient_world is using a non-cubic version:

lights/ambientlightnfo_clouds
{
    ambientLight
    lightFalloffImage makeintensity( textures/lights/ambientlightnfo)

    {
        forceHighQuality
        map textures/lights/ambientlightnfo_clouds
        colored
        translate (time*-0.01), time*0.01
    }
}

Gonna see if I can reconcile this but the easiest solution is to move the fresnel effect to the non-cubic side ( revert to pre 2.11 behavior ) so that only non-cubic lights have the effect. Eventually I'll have to do some sort of branching thing to detect each mode.

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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Yes: I believe I set the ambient_world to the clouds, the cubemap is a separate light, then comes the fog. Maybe I shouldn't be using them together like that, I just like the way they mix. Hope it can be fixed!

The Z-fighting on the ground must be caused by the terrain patches. It's weird because all of them are bent slightly, that's why I placed them to get bumps, maybe some surfaces in a patch still produce completely flat surfaces if the vertices aren't far enough? The other strange thing is I pasted the shader of the ground over them, the pixels they're Z-fighting with should be identical... the way TDM handles this is a bit weird, it's like they become brighter instead of picking one surface or the other?

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Here is a modified glprogs folder that you or any interested players \ tinkerers can put into the darkmod/fms/gem_of_souls folder

( folder must be named glprogs )

glprogs_gem.zip

It barely has any visual impact since you have very complex ambient behavior in this mission with all the cubic ambients but does improve the underside of a few outdoor models (etc).

Main benefit?

You can have the normal fresnel mod installed and still play this mission with no artifacts (etc).

  • Thanks 2

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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6 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

Here is a modified glprogs folder that you or any interested players \ tinkerers can put into the darkmod/fms/gem_of_souls folder

( folder must be named glprogs )

glprogs_gem.zip 103.05 kB · 0 downloads

It barely has any visual impact since you have very complex ambient behavior in this mission with all the cubic ambients but does improve the underside of a few outdoor models (etc).

Main benefit?

You can have the normal fresnel mod installed and still play this mission with no artifacts (etc).

Smashing! The map looks different now, in a proper way that is, because the whole "glowy foggy terrain" made the mission look like it had no lighting yet it does. Thanks a lot for this fix 1more.

The terrain still has the whole Z-Fighting going on, but I'd rather have that (which of course I do) than the shiny terrain.

I'll play this map tonight, or at least try to.

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The terrain does use a custom grass material to be slightly shiny, given it's raining so I wanted it to look a bit like wet mud for added realism.

3 hours ago, kin said:

Congratoulations for the release. I love the animated trees in the storm at the beginning. A feature that I don't see often in a fm.

Thanks! I hoped that and the lamps swaying in the wind would give everything a good feel, was also happy with the water running down stairs even if the effect is a bit strong. Rainy and windy maps are a bit harder to do, not too much if you know how to address all the particular details with available possibilities.

Edited by MirceaKitsune
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2 hours ago, MirceaKitsune said:

The terrain does use a custom grass material to be slightly shiny, given it's raining so I wanted it to look a bit like wet mud for added realism.

I think it has the opposite effect unfortunately, at least in my opinion. It's way too shiny. Also I think the water falling down the stairs is a bit too extreme.

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14 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

Here is a modified glprogs folder that you or any interested players \ tinkerers can put into the darkmod/fms/gem_of_souls folder

( folder must be named glprogs )

Instead players can just rename the file to glprogs_gem.pk4 and plonk the file into that folder.

Edit: Sorry maybe it's a bit of a redundant post, but it seems an easier approach.

Edited by datiswous
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This was fun.  I spent far too long looking for a way out, and I could guess where things were going to go plot-wise, but the readables were well done and really added an extra dimension to the story.

The water gushing down the stairs was excellent, though it might have been better to have had an actual pool of water at the bottom of them or something, otherwise the water just seems to vanish.

I particularly liked

Spoiler

The angel and her mission brief.  I think this may be the first time I've ever KO'd an angel...

Struggling to find the other secrets, though I have found one other.  I tore the church apart trying to find a way to open the portcullises on the exits so I'm not sure where else they can be, but I'll keep looking.

With the newspaper there was a slight weirdness in that

Spoiler

The guy talks about losing his head at the gallows.  A gallows is for hanging, and if it's done so badly that his head comes off, that's considered a Bad Thing and the hangman is not going to get paid.  If he is going to be beheaded, 'scaffold', 'block' or 'guillotine' might have been a better choice of word.  Just throwing that out there in case you plan to do an update.

But yes, good work.

EDIT: Oh yes, and the open music is great.  Reminds me of Heretic or Hexen.

Edited by tapewolf
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Thank you, glad you liked it!

Spoiler

Secrets: Only one of them is inside the church, first floor, you can get it just by jumping while looking toward the right place. Look for the others outside, look high. The angel is one, just make sure to pickpocket her carefully.

You don't need to KO the angel as she's non-hostile. But I thought it would be fun to make her immortal yet still possible to KO, given health doesn't affect how the blackjack can put someone to sleep.

And oh my gosh, I only now realized that mistake :D The gallows is indeed for hanging, the guillotine is for beheading... somehow my brain got them mixed up and I didn't realize it till now. Oh well, I don't plan on doing an update just to fix that so it will be a silly mistake players can have fun with.

 

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