Aged Raver on 22/4/2022 at 12:12

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I’m several weeks behind but just completed the 1999 Fan Missions. An eye-opening experience for a relative newbie.

Thank you Kubric for suggesting the (https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151656) idea, and Samantha for organising and launching the polls. Following baeuchlein’s comment (which I can’t now find) that there are over 40 missions from 1999 and coupled with Komag’s post I went on to the newly re-launched (http://www.keepofmetalandgold.com/) Keep of Metal and Gold and downloaded everything from that year including demos. Forty-nine in total, I think. (I also belatedly worked out what Komag stands for). :rolleyes:

All are good and some are excellent with a lot of imagination and humour. My surprise that these fan missions were released in 1999 probably says something about my thinking but it was a good exercise to tone my thief skills and along with the recent visit of Digital Nightfall to the forum it’s all been very educating in understanding the history of TTLG. Some names I recognise as still posting in forums and others I know have moved on or sadly passed away. Among the mission briefing notes I read of authors thanking those who had signed the petition to Looking Glass Studios to release Dromed into the public domain.

I knew nothing of this.
Pioneers all.

During the voting window I only managed to play one mission (Autumn in Lampfire Hills which was alphabetically at the top). Later in the other missions I managed to complete a few with all the loot (unusual for me) but in many cases I resorted to fortuni’s excellent (https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151182) All-In-One-Place collection of walkthroughs to find a hidden switch etc.

Looking at mission release-dates in 1999 it’s tempting to say “Ah that idea was borrowed from an earlier mission by someone else”. Nevertheless I thought (http://www.keepofmetalandgold.com/missionst1/CreatureClash_demo.zip) Creature Clash was very clever as a demo. The first time I finished in about 8 seconds before realising the joke. After that I played a dozen times to see the many different possibilities. And it looks like there are later versions which I haven't yet played.

I haven’t even started on the year 2000 and will no doubt progress at my own slow speed over a very long time. I don’t know if I dare follow in the steps of others who in the past said they’ve played all the FMs for all the years. A big task but it’s tempting. And although I may not necessarily be posting or adding to the number of voters in the other polls (they’ll be over before I get there) I’ll still be taking part in a different time zone.:joke:

Thank you one and all. :thumb:

fortuni on 22/4/2022 at 16:28

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There's something very special about the early missions, not only are most of them rather basic in design, there's a simplicity to their game play along with their use of only stock items which exude nostalgia for the OM's. As time went by FM's became bigger, more complex and more ambitious and in some ways this led to losing that something rather special magic of the early missions.

This of course was in the days before custom objects and custom scripts had been made (not to mention NewDark) but if you also consider the fact there wasn't a thieves guild with Dromed instruction readily available, or even much of a forum for authors to swop hints and teach each other how to solve even the most basic problems authors encounter, so they all had to be self taught in the intricacies of Dromed.

Big time respect to the early pioneers.

Komag on 22/4/2022 at 23:33

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The original Dromed came with a "tutorial" by (who?) from the original TTLG team, which we worked through and learned from as much as we could, then we tested stuff, helped each other on the TTLG Dromed forums a ton, made progress, and wrote our own instructions and tips. I learned from others and put everything together as best I could to write my tutorial at the time (all text!). But people had already been making full fledged missions for a while by then, so I definitely stood on the shoulders of giants.