T2 FMS : a night in Rocksbourg 1 and 2 (12/29/05)

DrK on 14/3/2006 at 20:28

:ebil:

Quote Posted by Dia

OHCRAP! Just found out my husband's leaving on a business trip tomorrow a.m. I've been making him stay in our PC room while I've been down in Tunnel 21. Looks like it's going to take me a lot longer to finish this FM than I thought. :(

:laff: good luck ! :thumb:

kamyk on 15/3/2006 at 00:25

Quote Posted by Dia

LMAO. At this point I want to finish my FM just for you Dia... Muhahaha.

Dia on 15/3/2006 at 17:27

WOO-HOO!! I DID IT!! I GOT THROUGH TUNNEL 21! I only got killed once, too! Silly me, after I [SPOILER]walked over that corpsewhichturnsintoazombie and he massacred me, I reloaded & discovered I did indeed have one fire arrow. Definitely put paid to that s.o.b., I'll tell you what! [/SPOILER] After that I had no trouble finding the notorious ladder (kind of hard to miss 'cuz I walked right into it). YAY ME!! I found that frickin' sword at last! As of last night I was still wandering around what I think is the black market trying to get clues as to where the key is to the Inn's secret tunnels and looking for the 'soul of whatever' thingy. That running guy is definitely starting to get on my nerves. :weird:

[SPOILER]WHAT IN GOD'S NAME IS UP WITH THAT ZOMBIE POUNDING ON THAT DOOR ON THE BALCONY, DR.K? The door is frobbable but hell if I'm gonna try & unlock that mother! [/SPOILER] (I choose to be a blonde, ya know?) OHGODOHGOD please don't tell me I have to go in there to retrieve something.

Great mission, Dr.K (as if you didn't already know that you slydog! ;) ). I love the textures/graphics and the details of the areas are fantastic! The sounds are soooooo realistically spooky and are what creeped me out in the first place (made it through the tunnel only by removing my headphones) but the music is a bit too loud. Definitely an addictive FM, though; I feel driven to finish it now. Don't know how long I'll be able to hang in there tonight; all alone in the house, in the dark.

Thank you (?) kamyk. (Why do I get the feeling that if you were with me when I'm playing this mission you would have deliberately scared me a gazillion times already?) :cheeky:

DrK on 15/3/2006 at 18:19

Hey, thanks for the compliments. (the best one for me is to know you got paralyzed by fear) :cheeky:

Quote Posted by Dia

(made it through the tunnel only by removing my headphones)

:laff:

Aaah, glad to know you finally went through the tunnel :cheeky:
Don't worry, you can't open the door with a knocking zombie, 'tis just an "ambient sound" I turned as a joke (some were looking for a way to open it).

Dia on 15/3/2006 at 19:43

Now THAT's a relief! Tunnel 21 was experience enough for me for ~~one~~ two nights.

One thing that absolutely amazed me, Dr.K, is the way I could pretty much go where I wanted if I tried hard enough. In the (blackmarket) area with the arch just before the big machine & sect member there's a set of steps leading down/up & right above it a small apartment with a ladder leading up to it. A stone building with a small balcony butts up to the side of this aptmt. I saw the door on the balcony & wondered if I could get up there; shot a rope arrow into the woodwork on the building facing the little aptmt. & sure enough - I got up there! 'Course, there wasn't anything to do there except admire the sights, but I to me it was worth it!

Thanks for a great FM, Dr.K!

Errr, I guess it's great for you that your FM has me scared shitless. But it's also good for you that you're an ocean away from me because I'd probably be making YOU sit in my PC room to keep me company while I finish your FM! So there! ;)

Lyril on 16/3/2006 at 23:19

I'm having the same problems as Aspirin in an earlier post, a crash to Darkloader. But it only started when I installed the latest Win98 version of Media Player to play the movies. Before that I could get into the game without an intro movie.

I'll try the suggestions made earlier, but surely other people play on Win98? What version of Media player do you use, and why would a later one cause problems? It doesn't seem to be a common problem and I'm wondering why.

After the excitement of Under Templehill I desperately need another brilliant one to play. In a way it's rather unfortunate that the bar gets higher, - after a really good fm some seem disapponting, which is sad.

DrK on 17/3/2006 at 00:54

did you try to install the codecs I gave in the zip file ? (look for a "codec" folder).
Otherwise there's a little command I wrote somewhere, as a reply to Aspirin for example, try it... Sorry, too lazy to search it myself right now :cheeky:

And thanks Dia for the comments. This idea to explore the city and let the players just discover it from different points of view, it was one of the objectives of my design. And your comments show me I succeded :D

DrK on 17/3/2006 at 01:13

'kay, found it (I'm too generous :p ). try this tip Lyril

Quote Posted by DrK

Aspirin, thief crash because you still haven't made the codecs to work properly. Did you try to get last version of media player installed on your computer ? It crashs because you can't play the video...
Anyway, here is a tip to make the fm work with you :
Open folder strings/ and open 'missflag.str with notepad. At the end, miss_21:"no_loadout, end" is written. Replace it by miss_21:"no_briefing, no_loadout, end"
So when you'll launch the mission, the game won't read the briefing video first, you'll directly start playing ;)
Too bad you can't watch my vids, I spent so many hours making them... :devil:

Depending on the mission you're playing, it'll be miss_20 or miss_21 of course, but the command doesn't change ;)

Lyril on 17/3/2006 at 02:11

I had installed the codecs but as I couldn't start the game I don't know if the movies were working. I could have checked though.
I'll try altering the 'strings' folder tonight. I seldom play extra-good fms in daylight even in my specially-blacked-out-for-Thief computer room, as the ambience is all wrong. I'm really looking forward to it.

baeuchlein on 19/3/2006 at 19:01

Quote Posted by DrK

... it seems mp3 can't be read with DromEd : I often go take a walk in fms through DromEd (AI_aware on) so I can peacefully appreciate the atmosphere, but without sounds there's something missing, and I don't want that with builders visiting my fms through DromEd :p.

DromEd might not read MP3 files, but Thief II can't do it either. You have to put the MP3 files into the zip file and let DarkLoader unpack the files. DarkLoader will then convert the MP3's to .WAV files which can be read by DromEd and Thief II. Therefore, the only thing which would make sense would be to completely build the mission, then convert some or all of the .WAV files to MP3 format, and then create the zip file for distribution. After that, DarkLoader will handle everything - it doesn't matter whether you press the "Play" button or the "DromEd" button in DarkLoader, the MP3 files are converted to Wave format anyway.

However, I have done a bit more testing with one of the Rocksbourg missions, and even converting a few sounds to MP3 format seems to give DarkLoader a lot of trouble. Even with only the ambient sounds in the snd folder converted to MP3 format, DarkLoader needs about a minute to convert them back to .WAV format (on an Athlon XP running at 1,3 GHz). I think this is only useful for people with modem connections. Everyone else might prefer a larger file size, since one does not have to wait for an eternity after selecting "Play" in DarkLoader.

And for Lyril and all the others having problems with the codecs (e.g., crashes when trying to start one of the missions): Check out the "Rocksbourg codecs" thread at (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103371) , you should find some answers there.