Fan Mission: Footloose Museum Theft (V.2)

[Goblin of Akenash]

Update Changelog:

Quote

Updated Layout
Softlock Bandaid
Visual Upgrade
New Readables

Story:

Spoiler

A group of revolutionaries are willing to pay you to steal the mummified leg of earth's last kaiser, a mostly symbolic gesture to show they mean business to the current monarchy.

Thanks:

Spoiler

to the people at the dark mod discord for helping fix certain problems with the map and help with technical issues

Screenshots:

Spoiler

 

Update Video (4:3 standard definition):

Downloads:
https://goblinsecrets.github.io/FM.html

Edited March 4 by Goblin of Akenash
added video, added GITHUB mirror, update

[datiswous]

Are you sure you don't want to beta test before release?

[nbohr1more]

Congrats on the Release!

I completed the mission and verified it is fully functional.

Critiques:
 

Spoiler

It is pretty bare-bones but we have a few other missions that are similarly basic.

The exterior sorta looks broken since most mappers don't use a skybox to represent the city without any facade buildings.

The mission has very few hiding spots or shadowed areas so it might be a bit dry for folks who try to ghost.

Finally, there are a number of areas where the player gets lit up where no obvious light source is present. If you added lights to improve the look of rooms (etc) you should set them to ai_see 0 so that they aren't included in the lightgem calculation.

 

Nothing show-stopping so I will add it to the mission database.

Feel free to upload an improved version in the near future.

[nbohr1more]

The mission is now in the mission database.

[MirceaKitsune]

Yay new FM! Downloaded and installed: May finish another one first then give this a go. 1 MB so I can tell it will be a very tiny one.

[DaffyTaffer]

Spoiler

I seem to be stuck in the basement.  The game says I won, but I can't exit anywhere.  No keys will do anything, so I thought I was missing one.  I tried the "show keys" command and no additional keys show up.  (I have 3.)  

Is a key supposed to work on one of the vents?  I can't jump up to one of them and can climb on a pedestal to the other, but nothing frobs.  There is a curtain just inside the entrance to the other room, just blackness on the other side and they keys don't do anything there.

 

Edited February 6 by DaffyTaffer
Couldn't make the spoiler work. Also edited for speeling.

[snatcher]

Congratulations on your first milestone, Goblin of Akenash!

The map definitely is a beginning, the question is whether it is the end and your companion video tells me you are just scratching the surface of The Dark Mod. Stick around and keep at it. Something tells me this mission will look and feel completely different in a few months time... Thanks for sharing your work with us.

[Goblin of Akenash]

5 hours ago, DaffyTaffer said:

Spoiler

I seem to be stuck in the basement.  The game says I won, but I can't exit anywhere.  No keys will do anything, so I thought I was missing one.  I tried the "show keys" command and no additional keys show up.  (I have 3.)  

Is a key supposed to work on one of the vents?  I can't jump up to one of them and can climb on a pedestal to the other, but nothing frobs.  There is a curtain just inside the entrance to the other room, just blackness on the other side and they keys don't do anything there.

 

Spoiler

When you collect the door, the screen should fade to the mission complete screen. If it doesn't, it's likely a softlock on my part. I knew this could happen if you skip collecting the leg and try to exit the map since the objectives aren’t complete, it leaves you stuck. If you did collect the leg, it’s possible I messed up the objectives in the editor.

 

[datiswous]

46 minutes ago, Goblin of Akenash said:

It's possible I messed up the objectives in the editor.

Yeah so that's why you should beta test before submission next time. Every mapper does that (except if you did, then I've nothing to say).

Edit: Sorry, I don't want to sound too negative. It's great that you made your first mission! Thanks!

Edited February 6 by datiswous

[Goblin of Akenash]

54 minutes ago, datiswous said:

Yeah so that's why you should beta test before submission next time. Every mapper does that (except if you did, then I've nothing to say).

Edit: Sorry, I don't want to sound too negative. It's great that you made your first mission! Thanks!

Beta testing sounds really cool to do, and this project would’ve benefited from it, but I didn’t know it was an option when I started and the way I allocated my time and energy makes adding a beta test now pretty hard since i'll be in a semi-hiatus for the next few weeks but next time i make a FM ill make sure to set up the map to where I can have a greybox beta test phase, that being said I'll probably add an update to this map when i get around to it again

3 hours ago, snatcher said:

Congratulations on your first milestone, Goblin of Akenash!

The map definitely is a beginning, the question is whether it is the end and your companion video tells me you are just scratching the surface of The Dark Mod. Stick around and keep at it. Something tells me this mission will look and feel completely different in a few months time... Thanks for sharing your work with us.

Thanks for playing the FM and watching the video! I'll definitely do deeper research into TDM level design, the art style and other rarer aspects of TDM.

[Frost_Salamander]

@Goblin of Akenash it's a monumental achievement to release a FM, so congrats!

For your next one (which hopefully you do), have a look at this: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Your_Mission_-_From_Beta_Testing_to_Release_and_Beyond

 

 

[thebigh]

Congratulations on the release!

[Heuli]

Congratulations on your first mission

[STRUNK]

Welcome and thanx for your little mission @Goblin of Akenash : )

[thebigh]

This is a fun one to speed run. I can finish in under a minute, 0:59 to be exact, but I bet I could get as low as 0:57 with luck

[snatcher]

And I just speed-ghosted it with no saves in 2:19! Fun indeed!

The next participant must speed-ghost it with no saves but all loot

[hightide]

I understand this is a first effort, everyone starts somewhere.

• No surrounding buildings makes it seem to take place in a weird void; maybe start in vents and don't have balconies if you don't want to do exterior buildings?
• AI vision and hearing seemed super-human, and their voices too close; maybe sound propagation needs work? I stepped on the mat outside and everyone went on alert due to the metal CLUNK.
• No way to turn off lanterns (pet peeve of mine).
• Metal floor in second room was overkill, especially without providing moss arrows.
• No way to avoid damage when dropping to sewers, no way back out once down. A rope arrow and a beam above would solve both issues. I got down there without the leg, realizing too late I'd have to start over (at least its short).
• Some signage for the leg, since its the new feature at the museum, would be appropriate - or making it more centrally located and adding light switches to be able to snag it without notice.
• The gate at the end goes into inventory rather than opening, which seemed weird

I look forward to your second effort, Goblin!

[thebigh]

So I watched your video, and you mentioned not understanding visportals properly. You're pretty much right when you say the mission's so small that visually it's not that important. But they also control sound propagation, so even in a tiny mission they're crucially important.

You might have noticed, for example, that if you jump around on your starting ledge, it's easy to alert the people watching the museum exhibits. And when they start barking, it sounds like they're standing right next to you because, without visportals, sound propagates in a direct line. Realistically, it should sound more like the sound has traveled through the open window and round the side of the building- so it should arrive from a different direction and be a lot quieter.

To get this to work in FMH just for the starting ledge, try this:

* Extend the walls of caulk all the way to the ceiling, and make sure there are no gaps. You want to seal off the ledge from the rest of the mission air-tight, so that not even a gnat could fly into the museum except through the window.

* Make a worldspawn brush inside the window, blocking it off entirely. Convert it to a visportal. It should now be a cuboid with five nodraw faces and one visportal face.

* Dmap your level. If you get any "portal dropped as leaky" errors, then either the visportal isn't blocking the entire window or the other brushes surrounding the ledge area aren't providing an air-tight seal. If that happens, load up the pointfile in DR and look for the red line. This indicates how our imaginary gnat is flying to avoid having to pass through the visportal. Extend the visportal or caulk brushes to block the gap, repeating as often as necessary until all the leaks are sealed.

 

Do all this multiple times, putting visportals into the gaps between rooms. For example, in the coal room, obvious places for visportals would be the hatch leading down to the exit, the locked door, and the hole you jump to from the chandelier. Other natural visportal locations would be doorways, the little crawlspaces, and the vent leading to the room with the Mysterious Key. You definitely want to extend the caulk brushes near the balconies to be completely air-tight, because right now they seal nothing and I can even mantle onto them and onto the museum roof. The goal is to divide the mission into discrete areas- visleafs- where you can't get from one to another without passing through a portal. A noise that happens in a different visleaf will sound to you and to AIs as though it's travelled through the nearest portal and not in a direct line through a wall.

 

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Visportals#Sound_Propagation

1 hour ago, snatcher said:

The next participant must speed-ghost it with no saves but all loot

LOL, good luck with that brightly lit loot platform with the museum guest watching it constantly from three feet away. That's 94.1% of the mission's loot total. XD

Edited February 7 by thebigh

[MirceaKitsune]

It was an experience. Definitely felt like an unfinished experimental project, which makes sense for a first go in learning DarkRadiant and TDM's setup.

For some reason the entire map was alerted when I started: Is there an alarm entity on the map, or did something else happen? At least I had a good laugh at the ending...

Spoiler

When you literally pick up the door and put it on your inventory instead of actually opening it, with the item name saying "you win". That was unexpected as it is unique

[Goblin of Akenash]

1 hour ago, MirceaKitsune said:

was an experience. Definitely felt like an unfinished experimental project, which makes sense for a first go in learning DarkRadiant and TDM's setup.

For some reason the entire map was alerted when I started: Is there an alarm entity on the map, or did something else happen? At least I had a good laugh at the ending...

theres not an alarm entity but what it could be is the noise the metal part of the scroll thing makes when you step on it and that your fully lit up when standing outside through the window and depending on how long you stand there the longer the npcs will notice you and become alerted, you can manipulate the paths the npcs are on to align with each-other if you do it long enough for them to stare at you and not alert them, everythings a bit clunky in the map but im glad you enjoyed it!

4 hours ago, thebigh said:

So I watched your video, and you mentioned not understanding visportals properly. You're pretty much right when you say the mission's so small that visually it's not that important. But they also control sound propagation, so even in a tiny mission they're crucially important.

Thank you! I didn't know visportals were handled that and I can totally implement them next time i'm free, thanks for the advice and the tutorial (also thanks for watching the video!)

5 hours ago, hightide said:

• No surrounding buildings makes it seem to take place in a weird void; maybe start in vents and don't have balconies if you don't want to do exterior buildings?
• AI vision and hearing seemed super-human, and their voices too close; maybe sound propagation needs work? I stepped on the mat outside and everyone went on alert due to the metal CLUNK.
• No way to turn off lanterns (pet peeve of mine).
• Metal floor in second room was overkill, especially without providing moss arrows.
• No way to avoid damage when dropping to sewers, no way back out once down. A rope arrow and a beam above would solve both issues. I got down there without the leg, realizing too late I'd have to start over (at least its short).
• Some signage for the leg, since its the new feature at the museum, would be appropriate - or making it more centrally located and adding light switches to be able to snag it without notice.
• The gate at the end goes into inventory rather than opening, which seemed weird

I look forward to your second effort, Goblin!

You do bring up a good point when it comes to signage and the location of the leg, I imagine a mummified leg of the ruler that essentially created the new world would be more important than a hooka and a bass guitar and would be placed accordingly and have lot's of signage aswell, truthfully the leg was never supposed to be there as it was a saddle that was broken in game but worked in the editor at first, when I started downsizing I had to gut where I could and couldn't add new areas so eventually the saddle got the boot (in more ways than one), thanks for the feedback!
I think for my next map I'll avoid "dropdowns"/"one-ways" they are super common in left4dead2/Half-life1 map design due to the linearity and I'm not sure that kind of design works in a game like TDM where each map should behave almost like a counterstrike map where you can get to each section through atleast 1 other section.

[MirceaKitsune]

I decided to share my in-depth thoughts on this. On one side I don't want to be discouraging or throw lessons like I know better... on the other side I want to encourage other creators to make awesome content. I think you have the basics in order, but would advice practicing more for the next FM. I'll address everything of importance that I noticed... some of these are important for creating a working FM, others are based on my experience and how I do things.

1. Visual: Most areas appear pretty simple and rough, the rooms look too much like cubes textured with flat materials that lack detail. While not everything needs to look AAA all the time, I'd encourage adding more detail to the world and using fitting textures with more complexity where appropriate. I'd also check out the building modules.
2. Skybox: A big problem is you can see and touch the skybox. Being able to see the world edge and walk into an invisible wall isn't recommended. You usually want some kind of wall or structure between the player and any portal_sky surface.
3. Portals: You aren't using visportals. This is a small mission with few entities so performance happens to be good, but every FM requires portals. You add them by filling spaces in and between walls with a brush that has a nodraw texture on all sides and a visportal texture on one face, every interactive door and window should have one, the brush must perfectly fit in those spaces without leaving gaps or you'll get a dmap error. You can press N in-game to see them, I'd use that to look at how other missions portal their maps. Just think of them as virtual windows that only show entities and other portals that can be seen through them, your goal is to design the architecture in such a way that they cover each other as much as possible from any position and angle.
4. Clips: Since you likely haven't used those either, clip brushes are another aspect worth mentioning. Apart from the standard clip texture that used to keep the player from reaching certain areas, encase all large static models (eg: furniture) in a brush textured with monsterclip or AI won't detect collisions and attempt to walk into them.
5. Lighting: Light placement was okay. I'd be careful about putting too many candles next to each other, lights are performance intensive so you want to have as few as possible covering an area. Only issue was ambient light which is too strong, both visually and in making the player visible, I suspect I alerted everyone because it's so bright I scared the whole map when jumping through the window. When the player is crouched without moving in a completely dark area, the light gem should be at its minimum value, adjust ambient light based on that.
6. Ambiance: The map has no music, this isn't a big deal but for a good FM you'll need to learn about locations and using the location_info / location_separator entities to separate portal rooms and give each one an unique song and ambient color.
7. Objectives: Having just two objectives is fine for a tiny FM, usually you'll also want a loot objective based on difficulty level. Only issue with the main objective was that it's difficult to grab the leg; It's lit by a lamp that can't be turned off, lots of AI walking around at once so it's also hard to catch a break when no one is looking... always be on the lookout for those things and what options the player is given. The final objective telling the player to leave once all is ready should use a location check rather than interacting with an item.
8. Tools: The FM doesn't provide any of the starting items that are normally available... blackjack and sword, lockpicks, spyglass, lantern, compass. This isn't always a bad thing, in mine I like having the player pick them up from the world, but generally you'll want them to be available.
9. Navigation: The layout was good and navigates well. There was only a problem at the end, where the map requires you to take a fall that deals damage; If this is intended I don't think it's a problem, there's one FM I played recently that requires you to take some damage as you proceed, but most aim to let the player have a no-damage run without having to confront any AI if you can help it (excluding knockout or assassination objectives).

I hope this helped, let me know if I can help with more info. Here's a screenshot of the world edge I was referring to, you can also tell the excess ambient brightness which is reflected in the lightgem.

Edited February 8 by MirceaKitsune

[thebigh]

I did find one lockpick lying on the metal floor of the room with all the loot. I wonder if that was supposed to be there.

[thebigh]

10 hours ago, snatcher said:

And I just speed-ghosted it with no saves in 2:19!

[JackFarmer]

4 hours ago, Goblin of Akenash said:

theres not an alarm entity but what it could be is the noise the metal part of the scroll thing makes when you step on it and that your fully lit up when standing outside through the window and depending on how long you stand there the longer the npcs will notice you and become alerted, you can manipulate the paths the npcs are on to align with each-other if you do it long enough for them to stare at you and not alert them, everythings a bit clunky in the map but im glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you! I didn't know visportals were handled that and I can totally implement them next time i'm free, thanks for the advice and the tutorial (also thanks for watching the video!)

I think for my next map I'll avoid "dropdowns"/"one-ways" they are super common in left4dead2/Half-life1 map design due to the linearity and I'm not sure that kind of design works in a game like TDM where each map should behave almost like a counterstrike map where you can get to each section through atleast 1 other section.

Springheel created a video tutorial consisting of 10+ video tutorials for beginners.
 

If you want to learn the fundamentals of TDM mapping, then I strongly recommend you to watch this video series.

Edited February 8 by JackFarmer

[snatcher]

I think I figured out your "dark" trick @thebigh hehe