T2 FM : A night in Rocksbourg 3 (05/13/08)

Gillie on 30/5/2008 at 21:53

I have played through the mission again, exploring everything.
It is as others said a whole game on it's own,wonderful mission.
Loved all the dark "gritty textures" and the atmosphere if TDS has a keeper library like this.:thumb:. Loved the graphic details and the story.
Found all the loot. :ebil: plus the paintings. The elemental rooms were so different and so extraordinarily done.
I tried something. In the room of
Intrepretor Dumah's quarters.I saved beforehand,let him see me lashed out, all these transparent souls appeared.Got killed How fantastically done,amazing in fact.
The Big guardian as I did not ghost,let him see me ran to the caved in floor area, crouched close to annoy him. Oh dear he fell in.
Going back through The portals after the dark zone the long dark walkways were creepy then to meet another,amazingly scary !!!

The architecture and work well just amazing.I admire your fm work and others. Just like a whole new Thief game.:thumb: It could so easy carry on from TDS in my opinion.

@ Drk just ask on this.
You mentioned a reference
To the painting in the secret area,to Gateane's missions,was that a message on the Victrola in French, Curious?

DrK on 30/5/2008 at 22:11

All :
In fact the Old City map you're talking about is an old artwork from the CoSaS project. If I recall correctly, it's Zacharias who did it. Digital Nightfall generously allowed me to use it, I only drew the Rocksbourg City map. I wanted to have it because I did find it very interesting too, especially because there are great details, like Purah's Murkbell which is mentionned on it. There is a note in the readme file, in the credits.

Gillie :
You replayed it then. Glad you like it that much :D
It's cool you discovered Dumah's attacks. It's all about details like these... :sly:
Yep, Gaetane's reference is the french song from the victrola. It's a reference to the L'Arsene series, in "the Den" one of the servants sings it. It's Louve who sings it irl, a french fm author. ;)

Gillie on 30/5/2008 at 22:25

Covered up the spoiler. :o
That was cool in Dumah's attacks, amazing details,very cleverly done too. :thumb:

I did love it so much I had to replay to explore all the details as well.
Maybe more,(missions). :ebil:

I had not remembered that in "the Den", I only know a few words of French anyway, very pretty I will now go look maybe play over. I had only played it recently again

DrK on 30/5/2008 at 22:43

It can be tricky to hear.
Once you get out of the prison, and go to the big mansion through a tunnel outside, you reach the kitchen of the mansion (I suppose it's the den in fact, too long since I played it). In the kitchen there is a servant at a window singing it. Better to ghost her if you want to hear it. Basically she sings L'Arsene is the best thief in the world, the greatest taffer, blah blah. ;)
Also, IIRC at the end of the mission there is a little credit video or a camvator, with the song in the background.
I'm not sure if it's in the english version though...

Gillie on 30/5/2008 at 23:42

Quote Posted by DrK

Just played a save in reference to that. It is there, I had missed that or more I could not recall it,very pretty.

Sticky Fingers on 31/5/2008 at 04:21

Quote Posted by redleaf

Aren't we supposed to try and find answers to our questions by searching the thread first?

I only threw in that comment (in jest) as I couldn't think of any other way of "circumventing" the 1st objective: How else could anyone know what Thales wanted without having him tell you what he wanted (&, thus, complete the 1st objective) :confused:
As much as any FM I can think of, this is one to explore & re-explore, search & search again, before coming to this thread. ;)

redleaf on 31/5/2008 at 05:09

Hello DrK:

It seems we somehow got off on the wrong foot. I have the highest respect for you as a superior mission maker. Every one of your missions is in my "Play Me Again" folder. Forgive my bungled approach to this mission, and try not to put me in such a harsh light.

I hope you will bear with me as I try to clarify some things, and express my puzzlement in regards to others.

At the beginning of this thread, I read:

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the gameplay is based on the player's freedom, just do what you want.

Then to me you wrote:

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I guess as soon as you entered the souls compound you started blackjacking everyone...

and

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it seems you've done everything wrong since the beginning

OMG, so harsh! :o I bj'd my first AI after 3 or 4 hours of play when other ways to take a painting failed. I didn't know it was wrong, and nothing in the objectives indicated that blackjacking was in bad form for this fm. However, once the AIs became hostile, it did seem justifiable to continue the practice. :ebil:

This response confused me:

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I don't understand how you could go further in the mission if you didn't meet Thales.

because this is what I wrote in my post:

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I did see Thales earlier

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I did pick up a key in those rooms, and probably the instruction book

Does Thale's speech trigger the objective to tick? I was definitely in the room and got the key and the book. And I definitely continued on to the North Star from there. How could I have done all that and failed the objective?

I totally agree with this one:

Quote:

to spend so much time reading spoilers in forums isn't the good way with my missions : think and explore.

Anyone who knows me also knows of my love of puzzle-solving (on my own) and love of exploration. One of the reasons I adore your missions is because they are so explorable! Really, I would never denigrate them, or any other mission, by using walkthroughs or spoilers at every turn. Plus, what fun is that? Perhaps you got the wrong impression because of my off-handed response to Sticky Fingers, where I admitted reading spoilers?

To clarify: I read spoilers in reference to 3 things total:
1) The Dark Zone code. I felt sure the clues referenced the AIs behind bars in the Dark Zone, but had trouble understanding one of them;
2) I couldn't figure out what to do with the Book of Names still in my inventory; and
3) It bothered me that objectives weren't ticking off, even though I had accomplished so much in the mission. I wondered if anyone else was experiencing the problem.

Searches 2 and 3 came only after more than 15 hours of gameplay.

Last but not least:

Quote:

May I suggest you to restart the mission and play it "normally" ?

Oh, yes, with pleasure -- now that I know NOT to use my blackjack, and to do my best to trigger Thale's speech. I'm quite happy to plunge once again into these amazing environments.

I hope my explanations made clear to you that I am neither a maniacal and compulsive blackjacker nor a spoiler junkie who whizzes through missions and appreciates almost nothing of them other than the "Success" clip at the end. My deepest apologies for anything I said that lead you to any misunderstanding of me and my plight.

redleaf on 31/5/2008 at 05:28

Hi Sticky Fingers

When I said "first" ... I meant before posting a question in the thread, in case it had already been asked and answered. Not before trying to solve it myself.

And regarding Thales - I didn't know what he wanted. I only knew I had this book, and it wasn't loot or a readable, which meant it probably had another function. Especially since Drk doesn't strike me as the kind of author who clutters up the fm with pointless junk. I first tried to give it to Vlain who didn't respond to it. I started rambling around trying to "use" it on things. The next AI I ran across was Thale. When I approached him, he said he had underestimated me, or something like that, and to put the book right "there" and feel free to go. I dropped it on the marble-top side table where he was standing, but nothing happened. I tried dropping it a few other places, but still nothing.

The weird thing is ... I was in Thale's rooms before, and I had totally forgotten he was the guy I was told to meet at the beginning of the fm. I got a key and a book and some loot, and went on my merry way to the North Star, never realizing that HE was the one who saved me and brought me there -- or what it was he wanted. The objective never ticked off, either. I never heard him speak. Drk has no idea how that was possible. Between DromEd and the Dark Engine, I guess any glitch or bug, systematic or one-time-only, is possible. :weird:

redleaf on 31/5/2008 at 09:52

I restarted the mission. Since I already knew so much, I chose Shadow mode to heighten the difficulty.

I met Thales, and we conversed. That objective ticked off, and others I had never seen before popped up! Two about finding the stones, one about finding the Book of Names, and one about not harming important souls. In my previous playing of the mission, the first thing I did in Thales apartment was turn out the lights and sneak around stealing things. Maybe taking the things on the desk and leaving before Thales could speak to me is what messed it up?

I also managed to steal that painting without using my blackjack! The gameplay is VERY different when the AI are friendly, and goes much quicker when you're not sneaking all the time. Previously, I went into stealth mode as soon as I left that first room, thinking I was probably entering forbidden territory for outsiders. :tsktsk:

Am I really the only one who who screwed this so badly? (I know it looks like I'm having a conversation with myself here. Most of you are sleeping when my part of the world is awake.)

DrK on 31/5/2008 at 10:24

Hey redleaf no worry, there's a little misunderstanding here, I never intended to be so harsh with you. It's just that english isn't my mothertongue, and I started panicking as someone might have found a way to completely break my mission despite all the efforts I put in the chronology of the events. I'm willing to help everyone here but in this case I didn't understand at all what was going on, therefore felt I couldn't be of any help as your game was completely messed up. Also I misread a few things in your previous posts.

As you said you were surprised to know Vlain was non-hostile, I thought you made the whole compound become hostile to you because you started blackjacking everyone. Even though I based my gameplay on player's freedom, a taffer who starts killing everyone as soon as he enters a room without trying to understand what's going on isn't exactly what I wanted. I thought it was your case, and I was wrong.
Taffers, at least wait to meet Thales before going in a killing spree. :cheeky:

Also, I couldn't understand how you could have got the key without having Thales conversing with you first, because as soon as you enter his quarters he starts speaking to you, avoiding you from skipping this important conversation.
Once the conversation is triggered, when you take the instructions book the objective ticks off and the other appears. I still don't understand how it happened in your previous play though...

But most of all, like Sticky fingers I understood you started reading spoilers before playing the mission, and therefore you knew what to do before having the objectives appearing, which might have helped you screwing the game.

Considering all this, I thought you didn't actually tried to play the mission, and just started doing a carnage, not reading any books or objectives, and breaking the mission as you were going further. Then once everything was messed up you were coming here to say things like "hi guyz I'm stuck this mission is glitched XD". I'm sorry to have misundertsood it that way, but I already had a bad experience with someone in this thread... :sweat:

Sorry again for the trouble you met, and now that everything seems to work properly with Thales I hope you'll enjoy the mission and understand the story behind it. ;)