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How would you change St. Lucia


Springheel

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It's packaged with the game, so I imagine this is shooting for the 1.04 release.

That's my understanding too. I don't know exactly which changes yet -- plenty of good suggestions in this thread -- but the plan is a 2.04 update.

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I think the difference is, if you think that this tunnel is the entrance to St. Lucia.

 

There is a sign right before the entrace that says "St. Roderics" on it.

 

That said, some voice-overs would be relatively easy to add to help newer players. We'll be looking into it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I haven't completed the entire mission yet, but here are my thoughts from the parts that I have played:

  1. A relatively trivial point, but there is a good reason the original Thief games used Normal/Hard/Expert rather than Easy/Normal/Hard as their difficulty labels. There is absolutely nothing "easy" about our Easy mode, and I suggest we stick with the same rationale used by LGS.

 

Unfortunately, the names of the difficulty are set by the mapper. So "we" have no control over them. Which might be good, or bad. But it certainly is not easy to change.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Unfortunately, the names of the difficulty are set by the mapper. So "we" have no control over them. Which might be good, or bad. But it certainly is not easy to change.

 

I assumed that the names were indeed map-specific, but this is a thread entitled "How would you change St Lucia", so my suggestion is that the difficulty names are changed in this particular mission. I'm not proposing that some global TDM-enforced naming convention should be applied to all maps.

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I assumed that the names were indeed map-specific, but this is a thread entitled "How would you change St Lucia", so my suggestion is that the difficulty names are changed in this particular mission. I'm not proposing that some global TDM-enforced naming convention should be applied to all maps.

 

Ah, that makes sense.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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  • 1 month later...

It was originally made at the time we still used speakers for ambients, which wasn't as friendly for setting up background music over a whole area as the location system we got later (e.g., you have to fit it all in the radius of a speaker). But also it's a matter of taste. Some mappers saturate a whole map with ambient music going on all the time, and others just at certain places they want to create tension or a mood or whatever. It's hard to say objectively what's the right amount to use.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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If it's too low you should look into the options screen in your game menu for ambience loudness.

 

I meant I can hear ambience fine in other maps but not in St. Lucia.

 

It was originally made at the time we still used speakers for ambients, which wasn't as friendly for setting up background music over a whole area as the location system we got later (e.g., you have to fit it all in the radius of a speaker). But also it's a matter of taste. Some mappers saturate a whole map with ambient music going on all the time, and others just at certain places they want to create tension or a mood or whatever. It's hard to say objectively what's the right amount to use.

That's true, though it stood out because it was nearly entirely absent. It could have just been me though. I was showing it to somoene so wasn't listening to the first half at all really, then saved and went back later to finish the rest of it and noticed it was totally silent inside the church at least.

Edited by ShadeDrifter
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I would consider adding a tip along the lines of "heavy objects can be pushed by standing or crouching against them and pressing forward" to the load screen of St. Lucia.

 

I had learned that in the tutorial but didn't execute it properly when trying the hammer which left me quite stumped. A nudge from the load screen might have inspired me to try it again.

 

Likewise a note about how to carry bodies rather than drag them. I did do the tutorial but I had a crash in the object manipulation part so I may have cut it short. I played all of Tears without knowing how to carry bodies.

 

And I too did not realize the tunnel lead to the church, fwiw.

 

 

Also regarding the "nihilism" I agree and I like it. The anti-clerical argument that the theft and defacing are acts of justice seems false when you consider that (1) you are presumed to be acting on behalf of a rival vicar and (2) judging from the found texts the local priest is in fact benevolent and does bring some solace to the local poor. This is a hard medieval world, the masses are going to take their opiate in one form or another.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just played the first bit again - checking a fresh install of the Darkmod with the anti clunk mod

 

Two things which could be improved

Make the creeper under the opening hatch to the sewers climeable - a nice second way of getting in

Make the key in the vase separate so that you can turn the it upside down and it falls out - I wondered where it had got to so tried turning it over but nothing fell out

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Ahh... I've also tried many times to climb to somewhat looking like a room above the barricaded beggar's hiding place. I could see there some pipes through the hole in ceiling, but could never get up there. Maybe it would be cool to make this possible? Just for fun, maybe.

 

Also, it'd be better if there were less possibilities to climb onto the roofs for one time I occasionally fell into some building (right into it, where no rendered textures were shown, just the house skeleton) and had to load saved game... :laugh:

Another time I climbed onto one roof from that I could see buttafour houses standing out there right in the void. That was a bit scary.

Running on just another roof I also saw void and roof edge and even tried to jump outside. I was happy it won't work. It's always a scary experience, falling of a textured game surfaces into void.

 

So, I'd restrain this possibilities to get up there.

Stop taffering there, criminal taffer!

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Make the key in the vase separate so that you can turn the it upside down and it falls out - I wondered where it had got to so tried turning it over but nothing fell out

This won't work, as the collision model of the vase is convex. One would have to script that.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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Is it ethical to use someone's map as base of yours? I would like to use 'Tears of Saint Lucia' for my map as base, as it's very athmospheric. Not because I am lazy and don't want to work myself, I would add new parts to it, widen it and remove some existing parts to change it's background, but to keep cool design and gameplay athmosphere. No, I wanted to say: to keep some unified design, as though it all take place in one city. Do you know how cool it's to meet a familiar place in another mission.

 

I guess it's a question to its author but maybe he will read this :) or if it's not preferable then someone will say it to me and I will not start bothering him.

Edited by Scampada

Stop taffering there, criminal taffer!

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I would say that would he a HUGE waste of resources. A map can only contain a certain amount of entities. Large maps like Lucia have a lot already. You might start running into performance issues right off the bat as you add onto it.

 

Perhaps instead, take a small portion of the map, like an alley that was a dead end in St. Lucia, and make it the starting point for your mission. Enough so that people recognize it, but not enough that it affects your own map.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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I would say that would he a HUGE waste of resources. A map can only contain a certain amount of entities. Large maps like Lucia have a lot already. You might start running into performance issues right off the bat as you add onto it.

 

I agree this would be unoptimized way to get all the map as a base. I feel certain lags even in the editor when working with this map, maybe my PC is a bit outdated. I see that DR does render ALL of the textures and objects at the same time, not as game itself does, using visportal.

I want to use a small part of a church in my mission (only one room, or two) and half of the main street, all that what remains I'll just purge out. Sewers, another part of the street, all background rooms etc.

Edited by Scampada

Stop taffering there, criminal taffer!

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I like the idea but since this is quiet a big part it would (not only in performance but also in gameplay issues) become a bad idea quickly imho. It's nice that you could visit this area, but if you have no quest to solve there it's more confusing I guess (and maybe boring since you already know the map). :(

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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I like the idea but since this is quiet a big part it would (not only in performance but also in gameplay issues) become a bad idea quickly imho. It's nice that you could visit this area, but if you have no quest to solve there it's more confusing I guess (and maybe boring since you already know the map). :(

I don't have a desire to just keep all the familiar places to give an opportunity to visit them. I would cut only part of the church and a street dead-end, but I'm already quite not sure if I really do want it. The 'Saint Lucia' background map is rather ghetto-type and my mission focuses on bank. I don't think it's good to place a bank in such a ghetto-looking place.

 

Btw, are there cameras and steambots in TDM? I haven't seen any yet.

Edited by Scampada

Stop taffering there, criminal taffer!

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Currently, there's one steambot, an adorable little lantern bot. It's not very T2-esque, if that's what you were thinking of.

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/9082-newbie-darkradiant-questions/page-223?do=findComment&comment=366623is eagerly awaited.

 

There's no standard security camera system, but there's a custom camera in Breaking Out the Fence.

Some things I'm repeatedly thinking about...

 

- louder scream when you're dying

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There's no standard security camera system, but there's a custom camera in Breaking Out the Fence.

 

But, isn't it feasible to make an enemy with a camera shape, and it would have its vision restricted to some special angles and its voice sounding like alarm, and would just shriek and shout alerting all nearby guards? Nothing more would have been required. Is it very complicated?

 

Good gracious. It is said he's made out of something. Was it done using only Dark Radiant or 3ds Max?

It's not quite what I am thinking of, but if one could build such a... horrific structure... then, maybe, I could rustle up much less complicated one? If only I knew how.

Edited by Scampada

Stop taffering there, criminal taffer!

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But, isn't it feasible to make an enemy with a camera shape, and it would have its vision restricted to some special angles and its voice sounding like alarm, and would just shriek and shout alerting all nearby guards? Nothing more would have been required. Is it very complicated?

 

Good gracious. It is said he's made out of something. Was it done using only Dark Radiant or 3ds Max?

It's not quite what I am thinking of, but if one could build such a... horrific structure... then, maybe, I could rustle up much less complicated one? If only I knew how.

There is actually a func_securitycamera entity ingame. It seems to come from Doom3 so it ignores light levels and instead uses line-of-sight, and it has an exploitable bug, but it does have a lot of functionality already. Obsttorte even implemented a camera_gui texture that lets you make a monitor that shows what the camera is seeing.

 

A long time ago I made a testmap with a camera and monitor made-of-patches and an alarm here: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/14394-apples-and-peaches-obsttortes-mapping-and-scripting-thread/?p=352597

If I remember right you can put the pk4 file in your darkmod/fms folder and then either start it like a normal mission or use console to open "map cameramodel".

 

In the state it's in now it's best suited for guarding a completely lit up place with obstacles to hide behind, or for letting the player see an area remotely from a monitor room.

Edited by Dragofer
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