[Developer Commentary Added] T2 FM - Lingering Whispers - (8 Sept 2011) - by scarykitties
scarykitties on 15/9/2011 at 15:57
First of all, thanks much for the honest feedback. I appreciate the issues being pointed out so that they can be avoided in the future. :)
Quote Posted by Euphrosyne
In the room with Karras' portrait, I experienced a bug
not slashing the banner and simply pushing the button through it. While the secret door and portrait door opened, the coins remained unfrobbable, and I am unable to pick them up no matter what I do. I had to reload to be able to get them.Hm. I hadn't thought of that and it wasn't something any of the testers encountered, otherwise I would have done it slightly differently (used an NVMetaTrap instead of the old conversation).
Quote Posted by Euphrosyne
Being unable to shut the Jeweler's door. It's not fun relieving an establishment of it's burden of wealth, and all of a sudden a guard walks into the hallway at just the wrong moment, who notices the open door, and consequently the thief behind the open door. Such awkward moments wouldn't occur if it were possible to shut the door.
Initially, the door was frobbable, but testers suggested that it was too confusing to have a frobbable door with a lockbox, so I went with their advice and made it unfrobbable. There were no complaints, so I didn't give it any further thought.
Quote Posted by Euphrosyne
I think some of the room brushes are off. I can't even remember what I was doing at the time in the mines, but I know it wasn't anything louder than walking, and I come up the stairs to a tripped alarm and guards freaking out like it's the apocalypse. I had to wait a bit for them to calm down, and tried to figure out what set them off.
From a non game breaking standpoint, hearing
zombies almost everywhere I go in the offices, and the ratman noises in the mines pretty much spoiled any potential surprises before getthing there. I still haven't figured out how to access the area containing the latter but I'm well aware of what's there already.
Yes, room brush leaks were an unfortunate recurrence. Some of it is bugs that I couldn't fix and some of it is because using more brushes would strain the limited resources that I had, so unfortunately, it is what it is. In the future, I'll try to put more space between areas so there is less chance of leaks.
Quote Posted by Euphrosyne
The entire mission, even the large warehouse rooms is making me totally claustrophobic. Most of the areas just come off as WAY too small with not a lot of room to maneuver, and there isn't! I feel like I'm playing in a well designed maze in a sardine tin. It just feels like for most of the mission my head has been brushing the ceiling or close to it.
Also because of how small everything is, I've had TONS of issues with guard pathing. Quite a few are getting stuck, and thankfully most cases can be remedied with a reload (which is still a pain). However, so far there has been one that NO amount of reloading can remedy. One of the burricks down in the tunnels became stuck on a wall at a T intersection, and could not be fixed. I was VERY fortunate that the tail was deceiving in size, and I was able to crouch and wiggle walk through the tail to get past the burrick.
Yes, I agree that things were too small and narrow. Sometimes, this was an intentional design choice to avoid things feeling big and empty. I would rather things feel small and tight than big and empty, but hallways and, yes, some rooms, should have been wider. At the point I got to those hallways, though, some of them are narrow because I had designed around them and there simply wasn't any more room without rebuilding the entire mission. I'll try to plan that better and build bigger in the future. My next (planned) mission should be partially outdoors-y. That should encourage me to build bigger and with wider halls (read:streets). Hopefully.
Quote Posted by Euphrosyne
Also in this area
once you reach the tombs through the water and enter the trap hallway, it is IMPOSSIBLE to get past the traps without taking damage if you are carrying the ore, you are forced to drop it if you even want a chance of getting through. Since I've had problems in the past with dropping items and having them vanish, I had to pick them up after every step just to ensure I wouldn't have that issue. It was annoying the first trip, and I wanted to bang my head against the wall when I realized I'd have to do it all over again to leave, and then twice more because I didn't have a rope arrow to access the secret down there.I hadn't considered that. I can see the complication, but I still stand by the little design choices that created that complication, such as there being traps and the ore slowing the player down. Maybe I should have tried using pressure plates instead of boundstriggers for the traps so that they could be avoided.
Quote Posted by Euphrosyne
I'm still working on the mission but those are my gripes thus far, I am eager to see how it ends though.
Hopefully you find it to be worth the effort.
Marbrien on 15/9/2011 at 16:51
I am confused about opening the vault. I'm playing on Expert.
1. Early in the mission I turned the primary water valve. It is now unfobbable, which presumably confirms that I have turned it.
2. I have manufactured a bronze gear key.
3. I have put the bronze gear key in the receptacle at the top of the stairs in the mechanist area. The two coloured lights nearby remained off at that point.
4. I went down and flipped the lever switch in the generator room. The ceiling lights in that room came on one by one. I assume the vault is the large door facing this switch. I pressed the red switch but it appeared to do nothing; the vault door remained frobbable but locked.
5. I went back up to the gear lock and pressed the button marked with an "R".
Because the power is now on, there are combat bots to contend with as well as the other adversaries I can do nothing about. Nevertheless I went back down to the generator room. The lever switch is now unfrobbable. I pressed the red button again, but the vault door remains frobbable but locked.
What am I doing wrong?
darthsLair on 15/9/2011 at 18:19
That switch with the 3 big cogs behind it is the one being referred to. Pressing that red button without the water turned on does nothing. Once you have turned the water on, pressing the red button begins the generator start-up process. The generators will begin turning on and a number of lights will begin turning on. The on/off switch will then become frobbable. Wait until it is and then flip it. Also :You must frob the big floor lever sometime after you insert the gear"key"
Hope this helps. That was taken from a reply from ScaryKitties.
Euphrosyne on 15/9/2011 at 19:46
All right, I just finished a few minutes ago on expert. I'm sure I missed quite a bit as I only walked away with 2 secrets and 2705 loot. Shame on me for finding a few more nitpicks, but because of one I did end the mission in tears.
The first being that plant up top separating the two sides of the bay door controls. That thing drove me CRAZY every time I went up there to see what was behind another door. Yes, I could have saved myself a TON of frustration and broken the glass windows but my personal play style is towards ghosting, and not as a demolitions expert. I'm more than certain this may be a me only peeve but I hated that plant immensely. I wished there could have been something like and objective to clear the overgrowth out of the control room because the plants blocked the buttons entirely, and once the plant was gone then it was gone period, thus making it easier to change doors.
On the subject of bugs, once the vault is open if you just barely step into the vault while the mask speaks, then attempt to step forward to start grabbing loot, you get ported before you can grab anything. If you rush into the vault and run right up the the mask, this does not occur and you are free to examine and loot the vault, and get ported as you exit. I'm not sure which was intended, the latter makes more sense. I had the former happen on my first entrance and was not happy.
The second feels like a bug but maybe it isn't, it had me laughing so hard I was crying though. At the end of the mission in my case after having attained balance I returned to the start and was surprised by a keeper who asked me to follow him. Still thoroughly annoyed, I followed him until he unlocked the final door and with a grumble of "HERE'S your balance!" smacked him upside the head with my blackjack knocking him out. What I was not expecting, was him to go down. There was a moment of shock, then a "Hey, wake up sleepy". Distraught, I grabbed him and dragged him all around the room to see if I could get things to move on, but nothing. I didn't get an objective failed. So I reloaded and let him have his speech. I was still laughing though. After poking around differnt endings a bit if you took the balance route I figured out why you CAN blackjack him, but if the optional pops up if you wait till the last minute you might want to have it fail if you say if you knock the poor guy out. :laff:
Now for the Q and A section! I'll bet some of these have been or will be answered by time I finish this write up.
1. What is the point of Brother Arnold's Skull. I picked it up and accidentally dropped it resulting in a pissed off Hammer Haunt out to break MY skull, is that all it does?
2. Where is the ring from Kevin and Eliza's hot and steamy fling? I searched both the taxidermist's, and the room across the hall where he left the wine bottle as a gift, but couldn't find anything. It says in the letter something about "She opened the door to the secret place" so I assumed the switch was in the room with the wine but I came up empty.
3. After finishing the mission I apparently completed a bonus objective of stealing the bank vault info from Arnold's letter. Was there a place I could have left it for Anita to find? The only (living) females in the mission are both upstairs in the bedroom and I couldn't figure out where to place it.
I'm sure I'm forgetting something. Overall, I wasn't unhappy playing the mission, but all the back tracking, and tight spaces and that stupid plant kind of detracted from the experience for me. I would play it again someday, but not anytime soon. You definitely have an excellent artist's touch for the fine and small details that keep the immersion happening though. Even though I had to take short breaks to vent my personal frustration I kept coming back for more because I absolutely HAD to know how it ended and I enjoyed the architecture. I also did enjoy poking through all the endings.
These are what I found, were there more?
1. Attain Balance, listen to what the keeper has to say.
2+3. Attain Balance, ignore the keep and go into the box and choose from 2 endings
- Take silver, end mission OR
- Gas Nobel, take key and re-steal the masks, take the silver, and end the mission.
Marbrien on 15/9/2011 at 21:35
I managed to finish, on Expert, with considerable help from this forum. In what I hope will be taken for constructive criticism, here’s what I thought stopped this good mission from being a great one.
1. Enforced repetition. Having the activation of the bay doors control as a puzzle is great for a one-time challenge, but having to do the same actions over and over just to get around the map became tedious (even if, like me, you break the windows of the gantry which contains the number pads).
2. Enforced ghosting, in some areas, by having too many adversaries who cannot be neutralised (I found only two flash bombs and no flash mines, but those ghostly black haunts with glowing eyes require two flashbombs apiece.) I don’t think I’m alone in liking the ability to get the adversaries out the way so I can explore more freely.
3. Too dark. Even on full gamma there were large areas where I really struggled to see where I was supposed to go and what I was supposed to do (mines, mechanist area, parts of warehouse).
4. Unintelligible speech. There were occasions towards the end when the mask was telling me things and I could not make out its speech (and I have a good sound system).
I also found the chemistry set didn’t seem to work how the hints said it should. (I followed what I thought were the clues as to how to make a health potion, and nothing happened. So I thrashed around for a bit, and one appeared!)
Overall I thought the mission was very good at the start, but it got increasingly frustrating as it went on because of the factors listed above. Hope this helps!
scarykitties on 16/9/2011 at 00:28
It does help, thanks! I'll use it as a learning opportunity for the future.
Those first two things are genuine mistakes on my part. The choice to make bay doors close when another is opened and to not provide enough flash bombs to destroy all the shadows on expert (you could have enough on normal and maybe even on hard, but expert doesn't provide enough).
The darkness is something to keep in mind for the future. I'll try to find a better balance next time.
The speech is unintelligible for a few reasons. For one, I have a crap microphone. For another, in order to make the mask's voice sound different, I added audio effects to make it sound different, but with the low quality of the recordings, it just never was particularly easy to understand. The released voices are WAY better than the originals, trust me, but clearly still not enough.
Note to self: get a better mic and avoid audio effects.
Lawviz on 16/9/2011 at 06:22
Is there some sort of lootlist? I'm like 1.4k loot on expert with all other objectives done..I must be missing a huge stash somewhere...
gnartsch on 16/9/2011 at 07:02
Quote Posted by Lawviz
Is there some sort of lootlist? I'm like 1.4k loot on expert with all other objectives done..I must be missing a huge stash somewhere...
There is nothing such as a 'huge stash' anywhere. All the loot is pretty much scattered over the entire map.
Even the loot in secrets & bonus areas have rather low value.
I would recommend to equip Garrett with a 'metal detector' and do some more thoroughly looting.
:ebil:
Marbrien on 16/9/2011 at 10:53
darthsLair: "Hope this helps. That was taken from a reply from ScaryKitties." Unfortunately it didn't, as the door in the generator room, which I was referring to, is not the vault door after all, which is elsewhere (the position of the vault is marked on the map, and that also happens to be the way into it). I never did open that door in the generator room, it remained frobbable but locked.
And didn't someone point out that the big floor lever did not exist in the released version of the FM? :confused:
