Fan Mission: Year of the Rat

[MirceaKitsune]

I'm happy to announce the release of my third FM: Year of the Rat. This is my first city hub map, focused primarily on story characters and environment. It's my most complex project to date, taking its fair share of effort to make which was a good learning experience. As an experiment I opted to use no scripts and rely solely on the default entities, as well as no custom assets apart from the map and splash screen hence the small pk4. It features a few special elements, such as factions that are hostile only when the player commits crime or a decoder lockpick used to open electronic doors. The beta testing thread can be found here, thank you everyone who helped find the most obvious problems.

You play as a famous thief nicknamed Black Jack: A man who's pulled many crazy jobs in his life, only to be hired for an absurd and insulting task by an anonymous employer. The objective is pretty straightforward: Be kind to the mice and feed them some cheese! Your silly quest takes you to the Lantern Light district during the Lunar New Year celebration, a place where gangs and corrupt nobles do their dirty deeds together. What ulterior motives and unexpected twists could your adventure entail?

While the most obvious problems were patched during beta testing, some issues can't be easily resolved due to the complexity of the entity setup and objectives, meaning you may encounter a few inconsistencies. Most notably surrounding AI, which may float above chairs and not react to alerts or oppositely send the whole map into a panic: This is mostly due to how the engine handles AI and alarms. The map is small since I wanted to add more detail without having to work on large areas, as such some places can feel cramped while the skybox may be visible up close. I'll be busy so further updates are unlikely unless I decide to add new content later... you're welcome to report any issues you encounter, but keep in mind that if something wasn't fixed it's likely known but difficult to address or due to engine functionality. Spoilers for objectives and secrets as follows:

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Objective 1, placing the cheese: Explore the city and find the circles marked with white glowing paint, drop one cheese item in each circle until you get them all. Order is irrelevant and placement doesn't have to be precise, just make sure the cheese is touching the paint. There are too many spots to list all locations, I can offer more details if anyone's unable to find any. The number of spots and cheese items you must place differs with difficulty, 8 on easy 12 on medium 16 on hard, some higher difficulty spots will be more challenging to find.

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Objective 2, returning to your room: Return to your room at the inn when ready. The player is renting room 3, which is the room upstairs to the East for which the owner leaves you a keycard on her front desk. When you enter you'll find a note on the bed: Reading it will trigger the next objective.

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Objective 3, escaping to the South gate: Someone sold you out, you must leave the room immediately and head back to the South gate where you started. Once this objective is activated the guards permanently become hostile and will try to capture you. You have a few seconds to escape before they barge inside and sound the alarm, triggering a massive search for the player in and around the inn. You can either run into the back alley through the door leading outside, or escape through the small bathroom into the little balcony... do not attempt go back to the hallway and leave through the main door, you'll run into the guards running to you upstairs.

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Objective 4, escaping to the North gate: You find a pile of bodies and realize the city is under siege by an unknown enemy, your only escape now is through the North gate. Head back to the alley behind the inn, by now the guards should have calmed down or are busy fighting the new threat you've unleashed. Return to the home of the army chief, he keeps the key to the North gate in his helmet. Head back downstairs where you placed the cheese under the window with two statues. You'll find the army chief having a bad time which caused his helmet to fall off, it's now on the ground along with the key near the chair in the center. Take the key and use it to unlock the North gate, located in the small park with the big statue behind the tavern.

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Optional Objective, pet rat: There's one side quest excluding ongoing objectives, which can only be completed before finishing the 3rd main objective. You trigger it by climbing on the suspended bridge connecting the inn to the building at the East, opening its window and entering the room above the electrical station. Inside you'll find a pink rat that looks dead on a table, with a note from a lady describing how sad she is that her friend won't make it. Pick up the rat and carry it to the church, placing it inside the stoup with the glowing blue water to the North. This causes the rat to come back to life and wander around the church. When the 3rd main objective is completed, this rat will appear near the building where you picked it up... as a reward for your good deed, all rats are friendly and will not attack the player!

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Secret 1, dagger: A golden dagger is wedged into the roof of the inn. Jump on the balcony of the building West of the shop, go through the tiny room with the grate where you place one of the cheese slices, emerge on the opposite balcony. From there walk on the wire to the rooftop of the tavern where you can grab the dagger.

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Secret 2, goblet: At the SouthEast above the pool of the city hall, there's a space with a tall metal fence the player can scale, reached by jumping on the stone supports from the roof of the building with the interior tunnel. Climb on the sign that says Bear & Belcher. Look through the grate toward the generator on the higher roof. There's a rusty metal goblet you can grab through the bars.

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Secret 3, hairbrush: You'll find it in the army chief's house to the North behind the inn. The man has two secret rooms, one of them opened by a book located inside a bookshelf downstairs in a corner. This opens another shelf where you find a disturbing secret and a golden hair brush.

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Secret 4, gem: There's a gem in the structure of the church below the second floor windows. Climb up to the wooden balcony with the parable book, from there jump across the pillars to the other side. You'll find it at the left behind the top of the center pillar to the North.

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Secret 5, amulet: This secret can only be obtained after completing the 3rd main objective. The building West of the shop contains two metal doors which normally can't be opened, when the rats transform the giant mouse blows them apart allowing the player to enter. The amulet is located inside the shelf to the North.

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Secret 6, secret room: The true secret, only use this info if you really can't find it on your own! This secret can only be obtained after completing the 3rd main objective, as described by the note nailed to the door in case you get there early. Its proximity is hinted by an odd note you find on the ground between the South gate and the city hall front gate, inspect the stones near the path leading to the garden. High above you'll see a round balcony belonging to the apartment building. You'll normally need vine arrows to climb all the way up, if you try hard enough you may be able to get there using the arch. Enter the apartment from this balcony and enjoy the mandess, just make sure not to harm your boss or his family. Pay attention when you pass the North gate before finishing the mission, this will trigger a special gift waiting for you there

Download 1.2: Google Drive, Mega. Screenshots with minor spoilers for the various areas:

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Edited July 14, 2025 by MirceaKitsune

[Amadeus]

Congratulations on the release! The screenshots look pretty stylish!

[esme]

Ooooh Thank you, I shall give it a go

[joebarnin]

Congratulations! Looking forward to playing this, once my PC has been repaired...

[chumbucket91]

Wow! Incredible mission. Completed in 1:09:30 on the medium difficulty, 5355 loot.

I loved the detail work on every single room, alley, nook, and corner. I loved the sheer number of npcs wandering around (although this mission really highlighted how repetitive and wonky some of the TDM stock voice acting is...) and the "crime" system. I loved the incredibly goofy premise, how you can actually find out more about it by digging around the inn. I can't believe its only 7mb. Maybe a little bit cramped, and absolutely pushing TDM to its limits, but 9.5/10 incredible work.

I found a few seams in the geometry and places where its possible to get a little bit too much of a look at the skybox (great skybox, btw!). Attaching some pictures with viewpos coordinates for reference. They were quite minor, and rather hard to get to, but the mission sort of encourages scraping the corners and boundaries of the map so inevitably I picked the wrong rooftops to try to clamber onto in my quest for cheese circles.
 

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Edited July 15, 2025 by chumbucket91
spoilering pictures

[MirceaKitsune]

I'm very glad to hear you're enjoying it! Yes: It was cramped from the start as I thought this would allow me to add more detail and get better performance for less work, which it did but at the cost of problems with player and AI navigation. Hence why the skybox can be seen in a few places since making the fences even taller would have ruined the atmosphere, I left it like that since this skybox feels right even when you can see the bottom.

[nbohr1more]

Congrats on the release!

The mission is now available in the mission database.

[nbohr1more]

This mission uses a cubic ambient light, similar to "Gem of Souls" so it will look strange if you are using the "Fresnel Mod".

As a workaround, you can either put a copy of your tdm_base01.pk4 into the fm folder or extract the glprogs folder and place it into the fm folder.

If there is interest, I can make a fresnel mod version that is compatible with this mission.

[I.C.H.I.]

Great gameplay and level design, but I had lots of random crashes and one broken save file. Checked log file every time this happened but there was nothing extraordinary in it.

Another issue was with the sound design, the wind on the streets is totally out of place and gets pretty annoying the more you play. Also I didn't like KO restrictions and I will always hate them, nothing is worse than taking away the freedom of play style.

[werner]

Awesome, marvelous! Many thanks for this great mission! (...with a touch of Kafka )

I just played the easy mode but got in the end only one third of the whole loot - found no secrets.  Surley there is plenty more to discover the next time.

Me too, like I.C.H.I., had to two sudden crashes, and yes me too I found the sound of wind a bit to loud in the long run. What I noticed also were the strange positions of several rats...

[Frost_Salamander]

@MirceaKitsune I just went to play this, and noticed when you launch the mission the TDM splash logo screen plays in an endless loop unless you provide some input (keypress, mouse click, etc).  I had this problem on In Plain Sight as well, and this is what I did to fix it: https://github.com/FrostSalamander/tdm-fm-inplainsight/pull/448/files

I'm not sure it's the same issue for you (didn't check), but may want to look.

[Knüppelaufdierübe]

Just started and the mission looks great, but are there recommended settings for this? Just went through part if the watch station, strolling around on the tower and it's become choppy af, I'm talking literal flipbook quality. My laptop isn't a gaming beast by any means (4970HS, 32GB, 4070 mobile), but that just doesn't feel right.

[irisx]

25 minutes ago, Knüppelaufdierübe said:

Just started and the mission looks great, but are there recommended settings for this? Just went through part if the watch station, strolling around on the tower and it's become choppy af, I'm talking literal flipbook quality. My laptop isn't a gaming beast by any means (4970HS, 32GB, 4070 mobile), but that just doesn't feel right.

Same here, spectacular visuals but my lowly 3060 is really struggling in outdoor areas. Disabling soft shadows, aa and/or volumetrics doesn't seem to help --prob. too much geometry?

[Edit] The only other relatively recent mission with such a slowdown was A Bridge Too Far, before the optimizations that made it playable.

I also had a crash in one of the rooftop areas, will see if it happens again.

Edited July 15, 2025 by irisx

[MirceaKitsune]

Never had any crashes myself, Linux on AMD card. It's weird if the logs don't say anything: Without some error messages it will likely be difficult to know the cause and solve this in the engine.

I noticed performance isn't ideal though I found it bearable. I don't believe I used excessive geometry nor an excessive light count. It may be due to using the building modules exclusively for structures, albeit I've set LOD models and noshadows after a distance which should alleviate the GPU stress.

I believe I added wind mostly in tunnels and tight alleys for realism, but come to think of it I could have lowered the volume some more. I'll keep that in mind if I ever update this FM again.

The small rats can get stuck into the modules like that, saw it a few times but hoped it's a rare accident. I didn't monsterclip those too as it seemed excessive and too much work. The modules can be a bit tricky to work with, I'd likely be tempted to recreate them using patches in the future given there's far more control with those.

[Bergante]

@MirceaKitsune
thx and congrats for the release 
as told while beta testing (not played the release yet) :
i loved all these little faults - they fit well to the obscure story (especially flying mice)  
all the others : this missions seems to have struggle with Quickloads (to often/quick one after the other)
this "crash to desktop-Bug" happened to other missions before (two i know could solve it )
so --- just be prepared - and try not to reload to often 

Edited July 15, 2025 by Bergante

[Frost_Salamander]

9 minutes ago, MirceaKitsune said:

The small rats can get stuck into the modules like that, saw it a few times but hoped it's a rare accident. I didn't monsterclip those too as it seemed excessive and too much work. The modules can be a bit tricky to work with, I'd likely be tempted to recreate them using patches in the future given there's far more control with those.

You absolutely have to monsterclip the modules, as they are not brushes.  If you used patches, you'd also have to monsterclip those.  This is why I basically stopped using the modules.  They look awesome and are great for lowering the barrier for new mappers, but they tank performance if used excessively (I guess due to light interaction) and require a lot of monsterclipping. And like you said, you get far more control without them.  It just takes way more time and effort  

[I.C.H.I.]

6 minutes ago, Bergante said:

all the others : this missions seems to have struggle with Quickloads (to often/quick one after the other)

This happened to me at random while I was walking around. I never had such a bug in any other fan mission before. In fact of all fan missions only in 2 I had crashes but for specific reasons and those were: in Inn Business on my attempt to disable the generator and in The Painter's Wife when I tried to kill the fire elemental, both FMs had error messages in the log while this one just hard crashes without any message.

[MirceaKitsune]

I didn't think much of it since the module walls are so thin they shouldn't affect AI navigation, given there's always a brush wall behind to delimit rooms. This is true for human AI, but since rats are so small it's enough to be a problem.

Random crashes and corrupt saves are a strange occurrence: I play-tested the first Beta before posting it and encountered neither, going through a full game where I quick save / load many times. It sounds like I must have tripped an engine issue that only occurs in specific circumstances and may be Windows specific; It would be nice if someone experiencing these could debug what's happening, hopefully it doesn't require a GDB backtrace since those were always annoying to capture.

[hightide]

I spent just a few minutes playing before a crash by the church; how do I look up logs?

specs: ryzen 9 7900x, 32gb ram, windows 11 pro; geforce rtx4060ti

I noticed several shadows were popping in and out with only medium distance; the shiny floors seem a bit too shiny for the world (like, even the grout between tiles is reflective) and probably aren't helping the engine. I also had the Dark Mod intro video on loop, as reported by frost_salamander.

Going back in I noticed some pathfinding issues around City Hall: the guard on the balcony across from the old tower seems stuck to the doorframe, and the mayor was just walking in circles around his room. Also the lantern wires are "sticky" - I thought I could walk across them, but I fell partially into a lantern and had to noclip out of it.

Edited July 16, 2025 by hightide

[MirceaKitsune]

Look in the root directory for a Darkmod.log and the FM directory for a qconsole.log. Alternatively run the engine from a console and see if that prints anything after the crash.

AI can get stuck sometimes especially with the building modules, I mitigated it best I could. Shiny floors only a few are used in small indoor spaces to avoid performance impact, they aren't visible outside in areas with the usual FPS drops. I can walk on the wires fine, but if you step the wrong way there may be exceptions in a few places.

[hightide]

8 minutes ago, MirceaKitsune said:

Look in the root directory for a Darkmod.log and the FM directory for a qconsole.log. Alternatively run the engine from a console and see if that prints anything after the crash.

I don't see a qconsole.log in the FMs folder or yearofrat. 

darkmod.log is mostly 0s

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[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 365):INI (INIT) GT:    0] LogFile created at 2025.07.15 16:57:35
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 368):INI (INIT) GT:    0] Executable last cleaned and rebuilt on Mar  8 2025 10:36:33
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 371):INI (INIT) GT:    0] The Dark Mod 2.13/64, code revision 10946 (1435:10946)
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 417):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogBegin: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 417):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogEnd: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 417):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogInfo: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 417):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogDebug: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 417):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogWarning: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 417):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogError: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_FRAME: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_SYSTEM: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_MISC: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_FROBBING: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_AI: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_SOUND: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_FUNCTION: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_ENTITY: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_INVENTORY: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_LIGHT: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_WEAPON: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_MATH: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_MOVEMENT: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_STIM_RESPONSE: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_OBJECTIVES: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_DIFFICULTY: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_CONVERSATION: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_MAINMENU: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_LOCKPICK: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_AAS: 0
[/game/DarkModGlobals.cpp ( 427):FRC (FORCE) GT:    0] LogClass_STATE: 0
 

 

[werner]

Bergante's hint about crashes would fit in my case, as I am usually doing a lot of quick saving. Linux Mint, by the way. About the stuck rats, well I guess it have been 6-7 in the whole scenery, it could be a faulty rat model at all. I've never seen that in any mission as long as rats stay at the ground. It seems to happen when they jump around,
Another thing: I played it yesterday eve again in medium difficulty, and again 2 persons at the inn were stuck like in my first run. The guy in room no.4 is walking permanently against his desk, and the girl at the staircase.

[CrisiusXIII]

Hi

i like this story a lot and have to dump the last 2 pieces. at first i thought it was fully "no touch" but you can smash them..

i even "boxed" one by dropping a box on his head ;-)

i have had atleast 10 crashes were TDM just disapears and a lot of strange AI behaviour

i saved just before "the arrow" when i am above a balcony with 3 persons(onder the secret) and aim the rope arrow to the big bar above the door. if i press "aim" (mouse 1 or 2) it fully crashes.

is the FLYING bottle part of the scene?? saved that part to but as a save!

i have to make more screenshots.

almost forget a very strange one, i could NOT use ESC for the menu, it got stuck and only F9 worked, 

 

i am on mint 21.3, on ryzer7 16gb

usualy its boring to replay but this one wont easily boor me.

cheers

 

the soldiers in the screenshot just stand there and dont react at all anymore

 

 

[Woodsie69]

Thank you for a great and interesting fm, MirceaKitsune.

The mission really lags on my pc, even with Anisotropic and AA and Vertical Sync turned off.

In the advanced graphics I've also turned everything down.

I get 5 fps inside most buildings.

I run Linux Mint 21.3, running on an i7, 16gb ram, RTX 2060 GPU with 12gb ram. 

Normally I can  get between 49 and 72 fps with every setting maxed. 

 

Another thing:

Spoiler

I have all ready placed several cheese pieces, but when I try to take out a piece inside a room with a woman standing on a table, Black Jackson says "Hm-hm", so the cheese piece can't be placed

 

[MirceaKitsune]

Yeah this map seems to be triggering a lot of issues that are random for everyone: Crashes, corrupt quick saves, absurd FPS drops... all of which I've never encountered. I believe it should be used to debug them in the engine; I haven't done anything too different and this is a small map with relatively few entities, further more this FM doesn't use custom assets nor any map scripts only the default entities or variations of various defs and guis.

The flying bottle that's also a bug. I suspect it's from the commoners eating and drinking prefab: A drinking bottle must be getting attached back to the AI's hand with an offset at times.

In my case I run Manjaro, KDE Plasma, stock amdgpu driver.