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Fan Mission: Chalice of Kings by Fidcal (2009/10/17)


Fidcal

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  • 2 weeks later...

I finished this mission, and it was simply great, many thanks fidcal.

just a few remarks:

 

 

- I played in easy, and I was rather disapointed when I was ready to replace the crown by the fake, I directly went to the "mission done" screen when I picked up the real crown... would have loved trying to replace the fake crown :)

- I also encountered the frob bug with the calice. I had to put the brick under the crystal dome, make it move down to be able to pickup the cup.

- I noticed that the 2 big blue jar near the crown tend to disapear when you're near them and they are almost out of the screen. it looks like a clipping bug.

 

 

by the way I simply loved taking the key from behind the clock near the entrance, the little cache behind the brick was nice too. overall that map is great

 

Edited by elwing
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Thanks elwing. The only way to stop the premature end mission on Easy would be make escape to the yard on all levels which is OK. It needs that really. There is a slight possibility of a re-issue in which I've added your notes to my list of fixes to do on it.

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Define 'stuck'. Do you mean you find it hard to drag them into a dark area? If so, press the inventory 'use' control while dragging and you can shoulder them. But with practice, dragging should not be much of a problem. You can grab different parts of the body to turn them for instance.

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  • 1 month later...

I hope some day I'll be able to play this mission. For now, it simply won't load. The mission stops at the beginning and a warning says: "Mission loaded, please wait"

 

Of course, it never started. And if I press the Enter key, The Dark Mod crashes to the desktop suddenly. The specs of my rig are always on my profile. I have the latest drivers/updates of everything, as I am a hardcore gamer, you know :rolleyes:.

 

Fixed!: The damn Catalyst AI again!!!

Edited by GabrielSans

The sun of Sanskrit knowledge

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  • 3 weeks later...

I replayed this just now, after having played it through on easy close to the initial release.

 

This time it was on expert and my god, it is a lovely map. It just works so well I can almost not comprehend it. I tried to get myself as much loot as possible. But just like on all other maps it always ends a couple hundred short of all the loot in the map. Regardless if I look behind books and crawl under chairs, so this was not an issue as I completed the set out loot quota with a fair bit of foam over the brim.

 

It was a bit less exciting of course, after having played it once already, but it still was an excellent map, and knowing exactly where is safe to go, and when, makes me feel really professional.

This however was soon blown away by the extremely alert guards, servants and what else in the house; if I crawled on the rocks on the top of the spiral stair, a guard on the middle floor patrolling would notice instantly and stop for a second, wondering what that might have been.

All the people in the house were really alert and knew exactly what noise would normally not be there, even more so than I have noticed in other maps.

Very interesting, if it was somehow intended as it made the guards feel really good at guarding, and it made me have my nerves charged to the max all throughout the mission.

In the end, this gave me a sneak score of 1, even when never getting visibly noticed by anyone anywhere on the mission. These scores can seem slightly unfair to me, although, you're not responsible for that.

 

What you are responsible for, however, is creating one of the best told, best looking Dark Mod missions, also being the one with the greatest gameplay I have seen this far, and I have played the lot of them, all apart for Thief's Den ironically.

I can hardly wait for any future FM's by you. Keep on making!

Also, in case there will be a future addition to the Thief's Den series, I hope to the developers that all those new items I looted in this one can be conserved for future use, campaign-wise.

 

That's all for me, and as I said, Keep on making!

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Thanks Tudor - glad you enjoyed it and I appreciate the feedback; it's encouraging for the future. :) Yes, the sneak score is over-sensitive and is on the list to be updated in the future. I do have a new full-sized 'Den 3' FM in production and this includes two optional stealth objectives to avoid a low alert and a high alert so that gives a better guide to how stealthy the player is but without failing the game which can be irritating.

 

Meanwhile, perhaps you could try the original Thief's Den small demo which is a 200MB download at http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Thief%27s_Den

 

It installs independently from the other FMs so you'll need to follow the instructions carefully and create a separate desktop shortcut.

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Yeah, I was watching the mod even before Thief's Den too, thing is I couldn't get Doom 3 to work back then. After a while I reformatted my computer, just around the time Saint Lucia came. I couldn't keep myself from playing this wonderful total conversion any longer.

 

So, getting Thief's Den, and man, I'm hoping this will make the story fit even better.

 

About the stealth score, couldn't it be a score of one hundred? Removing something like "3" each time you make a stir, and a lot more for more clear giveaways, I think this could make it hard to get a reasonable stealth score if you play tough, with flashbombing and whatnot. And even hard for ghosters to reach the sought after "100%"

And well, a scale of 1-100% is usually what's applied as well, it's a pretty good standard.

Edited by Tudor
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So now I have Thief's Den finished, and what a difference! The mod was in such a different state back then! I must admit though, that I really liked the rain and how it ran down the gutter. But really, it's hard to compare these two missions, THief's Den was such a simple little peek inside a house, two guards and a quest-guy. And wow, there really is no comparison!

 

Seeing this incredible progress makes me even more interested in seeing how great your third part will be

 

THis all made it sound like I didn't appreciate the mission, Which I did, it had quite good gameplay for something that simple, and the way it progressed was excellent, with the key sliding in and all.

Edited by Tudor
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  • 1 month later...

I'm having a serious case of the Durp here. I'm just starting this mission and I can't get in! I've found

The switches that open the metal gate and turn off the back light

but both doors are locked and can't be picked. How exactly do I get inside? I've been at this for a bit now and would appreciate a straight answer so I can get to thieving.

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The door

with the note on it, past the gate

can be picked.

 

Yes, the idiocy was strong with me. My "next item" button for some reason wasn't including my other lockpick. Had to rebind keys and then both lockpicks were available to me.

 

Now all I have to do is find the death mask. Everyone is dead. It's a different experience than Thief, but I just love sinking a broadhead arrow into some fool's face.

 

And digging it back out when I'm done. Great stuff.

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One can reuse an arrow that was just used for killing? Isn´t that unrealistic?

 

Hey, I only found one bug in this great mission:

after I frobbed the brick I heard coins, but the purse or what should be there wasn´t! No luck by blind frobbing. sad.gif

 

 

And that´s it, all else went fine. In the end I had 2756 loot. Only 200 missing. (That´s good for me) I hope the missing purse doesn´t count 200, though.

 

That´s my first TDM mission with plenty guards. But it was hard for me to ghost, so I decided to blackjack everyone that stands in my way. 7 guards at the end.:rolleyes:

 

 

The guard standing right next to the crown always saw me than I tried to grab it, so I had to take him out. I wondered why the guard by the doubledoor didn´t noticed.

Because, as the LightGem was only one step beyond darkest black they noticed me. I did´t like that, because I was pretty far away.

 

Hehe, I was a little stuck with the poles in the armory, too.:)

 

The layout of the mission and the gameplay I liked very much. But there was one thing that I don´t liked at all: It was so calm everywhere!! Only near and above (2nd floor) the crown and in the chalice room were music/ambiance. And the music in the chalice room was faar too loud! It didn´t take effect, when I changed my ambient sound setting!? (As it does never, though)

Most of the time I could hear my Computer though I played with headphones! And because I played with headphones I heard most of the time this sound when the volume is up most and nothing is played, you know what I mean? Don´t know how to describe it else. It changed in loudness when I changed angle. This really killed the atmosphere for me.:(

Ok, let´s be fair: I still enjoyed your mission very much. (Because the music by the crown was very cool ;) )

 

Oh, I forgot to add that the town at the beginning was very beautiful and I very liked it that you could see through some windows to it! Very cool. I also liked it that it was obvious on which way you just came in. I hate it when you get just put into a map without a realistic starting point...

Edited by LEGION

-> Crisis of Capitalism

-> 9/11 Truth

->

(hard stuff), more
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When you grab something that is carried it 'tries' to move out to a set distance from you so if anything is behind it then it can get pushed away. With practice you just instinctively position yourself so it pulls towards you when you grab stuff if possible.

 

Don't know where you were standing but it is possible to ghost it even in the main hall obective. That guard shouldn't really see you get it because you don't move at that moment and he can't see the thing itself. Usually only the patrolling guard notices it is gone because he walks around the front.

 

Pity about the music - there must be a setting somewhere to fix it?

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Hmm, I just finished 'The Crown of Penitence' and the music there was everywhere hearable and always in same loudness and I was able to change it´s volume with the Ambient-setting in the menu.

 

In the old Thief´s I experienced the same. Some tracks were sticked to certain areas and when you got away from that area the music lost its volume (like in your mission).

But there were missions where the music just got turned off when exiting the area.

There must be a special music setting. Maybe you just put your music as sound-effects? I´m just guessing, you´re the expert! ;)

I hope it´s not a problem in DarkMod if someone wants to use more than one track, though.

-> Crisis of Capitalism

-> 9/11 Truth

->

(hard stuff), more
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Don't know where you were standing but it is possible to ghost it even in the main hall obective. That guard shouldn't really see you get it because you don't move at that moment and he can't see the thing itself. Usually only the patrolling guard notices it is gone because he walks around the front.

 

I was just behind the crown pedestal.The guard I mean stood right next to me (1 or 2 meters). As I remember now I´m sure that I stood up to get the crown. And then he saw me. On a later attempt I realized that I don´t need to stand up to get it.

 

I have to add that I liked the armory very much and all the arrows and weapons. But I wondered why the axes weren´t frobable. They were looking good!

And I found the Healing Potion in the armor! Aren´t I just the greatest? tongue.gif

 

-> Crisis of Capitalism

-> 9/11 Truth

->

(hard stuff), more
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Nice mission. Played it on expert and I had trouble blackjacking the guards. But I have trouble with that on other missions as well. But that is just getting used to the play style of TDM I guess.

I liked the optional objective of replacing the crown for a fake, shame it wasn't set as a sepperate objective since I like the sound of getting a objective completed but hey, it is nice to do it anyway.

The getting in part was a nice way of desinging the mission. The layout in overall was very well done.

Good job!

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  • 5 weeks later...

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