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Public: What Missions Do You Have Planned?


Ombrenuit

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Hi there. I'm in a fairly good mood right now, and I thought that having a public discussion directed to all these frequenters to the Dark Mod forums about the missions that I know we are just itching to start on. I'll begin with my own plan.

 

Mission Title: "Opening Night"

 

This mission came to me one late night with a friend when we were musing--after playing a mission by the name of Equilibrium--what the perfect Thief mission would be. We were particularly taking it seriously, but our little brain storm hatched an idea.

 

Setting the Stage:

We felt that the horror of the mechanist's impact on the City was left relatively untouched by the main story. We wanted to tell a story of the breaking of a man, of oppression of the poor the mechanists exerted, and the height of their power. We thought about whole neighborhoods in the slums being closed off, the people either arrested in their homes or wiped out to be carried into carriages to later be turned into servants. While this wasn't necessarily discussed in Thief 2, we felt that it gave a different picture of the Mechanists. The tightening of curfews and laws, and with Truart out of the picture, the Mechanists take advantage of the opportunity to directly close an iron fist of control around the poor classes. Thus, the story is how the main character, forced into thievery because of poverty, finds his wife dead, his neighborhood smoldering, his home ruined, and everything he knew finally destroyed, and thus the path of the destruction of his own soul. He eventually is approached by an interesting entity with a simple proposition: the infiltration of the new Opera house, and the assassination of the diva at the climax of her performance from one of the box seats with a crossbow, the girl who happens to be Karras's beloved niece. However, the consequences of the action sets a new stage: the final breaking of Karras's sanity, and his impending rage against this world--leading up to the decision to destroy it.

 

The Mission Itself:

The entire mission was supposed to draw direct references from musical, opera, and theatre lore--the mission design based upon the most famous opera house in the world: La Scala. With heavy Italian architecture, and references to the Romantic period of the 19th century such as The Count of Monte Cristo, Chopin, Beethoven, and many others. Incidentally, we were planning on using snippets from the opera "Robert Le Diable", the first romantic opera, that would set a small soundtrack for the level as the player sneaks his way through. We planned on a secret tunnel that leads down into a sewers like system in the basement, and thus a new optional objective "Steal the phantom's mask". I'm sure you will understand this reference.

 

Some of the other interesting quirks of the mission will be eavesdropping on the conversations that run behind the closed doors of the balconies. We imagined a frustrated conversation between Karras and a work bot to lighten the mood.

 

The Climax, as this is a drama naturally, would be the escape. After the diva is shot with the arrow, fall dramatically on stage, the player will have many escape roots that lead to the roof. Probably one of the more dramatic being using the chandeliers hanging from the roof as rope arrows and swinging up to the glass dome while guards fire arrows after you. And finally, once on the roof, the player goes roof hopping to reach the docks, where he has prepared a ship to leave the city finally, and the mechanists decide that their new firework display, designed as a surprise to the attendants at the end of the performance, would be better suited to try to fire at you. Full of triggers, I know that Dromed could have handled it provided that we divvy the mission up into two parts (Opening Night, and the escape). However, I'm worried the Doom 3's detail will severely limit the ability to make this mission run smoothly (I imagine that it will have to be partitioned in several places). This probably isn't the time to mention I don't have level building experience lol.

 

What are your mission ideas for The Dark Mod?

Edited by Ombrenuit
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Ombrenuit: Wow your idea sounds really, really interesting. Especially the climactic escape scene where the player heads towards the roof! Whilst i've never seen the insides of La Scala or many opera houses (except the Sydney Opera House :P) I imagine it creates a diverse array of environments to explore; from long, close hallways to large, open auditoriums. It sounds like it'll be a hit.

 

Personally; I've always liked the idea of the player, as a thief, being a third party in some larger conflict (and an enemy of the 1st and 2nd parties). Caught in the crossfire as it were. This conflict could be small; two rival gangs for example, or a lot larger, 2 armies. I've often toyed with the idea of a thief breaking into a castle already being besieged. The mission could be two-fold; breaking into the castle itself, robbing it, and then having to escape as the besieging army breaks through their enemy's defenses. The thief would be targeted by both sides. Im not sure whether this could be done with scripts or whether it would have to be 2 seperate missions. Also, I've also always liked the idea of the Thief entering somewhere high up. Life of the Party was one of my favourite missions because the player could not touch the ground and had to scale the Mechanist Tower. it was somethign different to what Thief missions normally offered up. I also like the idea of missions being based on historical designs; so having the player break into Neuschwanstein or Conway or even Burg Hohenwerfen (the Schloss Adler from Where Eagles Dare) would both provide breathtaking architecture and innovative gameplay. A castle mission allows for many different entrance and exit points, secret rooms, dangerous and daring acrobatics, climbing, mountaineering stuff etc. The limit of creativity is really up to the FM designer.

 

The scope of missions like these is quite large though; so if I failed to create anything of these ideas I'd probably try my hand at making scary and tense missions, like the Cradle or Equilibrium.

Edited by SplaTtzZ
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Id like to see the Thief high up as well. I have an idea for an FM, the Tower of Time, where the majority of gameplay would take place in a vertical environment. Lots of climbing and leaping but hopefully it wont turn into a climbing/jumping puzzle which are usually both annoying and contrived.

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  • 3 weeks later...
That's a good point - Doom 3 was the "grittiest" looking game I ever played.

Dude, I cannot believe that this did not pop into my head at the begining, but I think I will pee my pants if someone does it. I have to admit that I was scared playing TDS on that mission, well I don't know I mean not scared, but jumpy :blush::blush: Anyway I cannot imagine you will need a disclaimer so no one has a heartattack and blames you :P

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