I'm going to be very original and post the comments for my mission as well.
Quote:
incredible, so good mission, really beautiful views and many challenge.
hugs the burricks ,can you solve the mystery,must play for thief fans
Absolutely awesome city FM, lots and lots to explore in an interconnected city, and not only the city is big but the locations to get into (Hammer church, manor) are all big enough to be missions of their own. Probably the largest Thief FM I've ever played.
"Nice mission, the only complaint is that the street lights sounds too much.
I loved the map, very accurate. I enjoyed this mission."
"The guy who did an open world for a contest... You are a crazy one!
Still your same old same great city atmosphere but in matter of plot, you could have done better!
(26/30)"
Flawless city mission, though a lot of the loot is impossible to find
Superior city design along with a reasonably good story make for a great mission.
This was one of the best missions in the contest but I still have some nitpicks. I think there should have been a basement key or something that forces you to visit the upper levels of the Blexham manor. Also the underground areas were kind of lacking in detail compared to the city (although given the map size I'm sure this a technical/time limitation and not a creative one).
Everything is of the highest quality. Amazing level design. Loved all the subplots and the writing.
Lots of vertical fun without being too hard. Challenging city exploration. (Tomb at the end was very short, though.)
"Oldschool TG/T1.
This FM has my vote to win overall - very much like FM's by the authers ""Melan"" and ""Skacky""
Always fun to play, with lots of nooks'n'crannies, and the player gets rewarded for being ""adventurous""
Only thing I could have wished were different, is the way into the vault in the warehouse. A bit too easy once you get the gear that is.
I searched for over an hour for the code to the vault, but wasn't able to find it , but found the gear in stead. I had set my mind up for some code cracking...
Please make more FM's like this. :-)"
"Mission finished, another sweet experience i had with this one, once again well done for this beautiful work, it's impressive how the city is built, in a very flexible and dynamic way, everything is magnificent , the size of the buildings left me breathless the environments are cozy and magical, the ambient sounds provide more life to this map, i also love the gameplay and the new textures customization,
the readables are very interesting.
My score to this mission is 10 out of 10"
I got a lot more out of this citywide escapade than I had bargained for...and I loved every minute of it!
This was my first to play and I must say that the title had me a bit skeptical. But what a solid mission.
Fantastic cityscape, interesting premise and story development. Solid, impressive, fun.
Great city design and a whole lot of fun to play.
"Atmosphere - 10
I loved every second of it. Some absolutely stunning city design here. Many individual places around the city were given a nice, distinctive character. Each location as well as the city streets felt very lively and authentic. The use of sound and some visual effects contributed to the superb feel of the whole.
Gameplay - 10
The mission offered a broad range of classic Thief activities, with lots of climbing and pathfinding in addition to the usual thieving. The city proved extraordinarily accessible with countless windows, rooftops, ledges, and balconies to reach. This also made the area feel very open with various ways of penetrating most buildings and allowed the player to complete the objectives without any enforced order. Moreover, the mission felt as rewarding as it gets, with practically every location offering a new gain or experience. The map was prepared thoroughly and was of great help. I got outside the foreseen area just once, and it didn't happen to provide any shortcuts. Perhaps the number of tools lying around could have been somewhat reduced so as to make the mission more challenging. Also, with loot distributed evenly around the level, I felt the requirement of just about 45% collected was way too low for expert difficulty (I got around 90% without any trouble on the first run). Obviously, that didn't negatively influence the gameplay in any way.
Story - 8
The main story and the rationale for the endeavour were quite convincing and I liked the intro video, but the multiple little subplots inserted here and there I found even more impressing. They certainly gave the mission a lot of depth. I felt that perhaps the “tunnels” section of the mission should have been developed a bit more - with all that hype I expected something bigger down there, while the mission ended rather rapidly."
"Atmosphere was great - city was well constructed. Decent amount of verticality, would have enjoyed a few more interiors. Decent in-game literature to get more immersed in.
Gameplay was standard but tight. Gaurd placement felt fair, etc. Having the canal to through bodies into was an interesting addition to the game. FM beaten in an hour which felt very fair and minimized gaming fatigue.
Story was standard but, like the FM's gameplay, was quite tight. Nothing too unique but very well polished. Narattion was undeniably above-average! For what it appears to be going for - which isn't anything overly extravagent - it does it nicely!
In essence, the FM was a standard Thief affair, but very well polished. Above-average in everyway but uniqueness - which isn't a huge complaint in the context of this contest! Thoroughly enjoyable.
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Other random ratings:
FM Name:
6/10"
Very good leverage of City size and its architecture. Not too spacious not too dense. I appreciate the work done on vertical dimension. Still need to explore many parts of the map.
"An incredible urban mission in pure Thief 1 style, just what I love !
The architecture is typical from a certain author I won't name here... but he's surely not innocent with this mission. Verticality, complexity of roofs, various shops and local politician estates are to be found in this very realisitc Downtowne quarter. We really feel like in the City, it's the exact atmosphere of T1, and I do love this. Use of textures is also pleasant, and the Hammerite church is much impressive.
I enjoyed the river being the common path for nearly all the subquarters, it helps finding his bearings and return to places we have missed. Because it's true, this quarter is very large, and being lost inside happens sometimes, as you would in a city with so many streets and places to visit. I also liked the diversity of places to visit, never or rarely seen in other FMs, like the butcher or the fisherman estates. Also loved the humour in this mission (+1 for the fisher keeper, +1 for the Overlord's Fancy doorman) and the feeling the different books give. They deeply expand the lore and are in T1 style, with little but pertinent information and not too much text.
Very interesting concepts everywhere too, with the big safe company puzzle, the Downwinders waiting for you in the streets or even the thieves arriving before us for the statuettes. Also very nice new motions and animations : this servant dropping the corpses was impressive.
The mission was long and the secondary objectives were really entertaining and pleasant to achieve. Actually, they made the mission last far more than the main objective, which sounds a bit strange( it was also entertaining and pleasant, don't get me wrong). To tell the truth, I refrained from reaching the main objective place in order to accomplish the secondary ones, but it appeared they took more time than the main one. And that's the only negative point I could stress, the main story, despite being very interesting, ends rather shortly and is not that much more challenging than the other quests. Once you push the wall in the cave, you are in the burrick tunnels and the mausoleum is very small. So the main plot is already over, which is too bad for a mission which has the main plot in its title. It's not a big point, of course, but it would have made more sense to name the mission 'Robbing Downtowne' or anything like this, or else to make the main plot more lasting and more important throughout the mission and readables. Again, I haggle, but I found it lightly embarassing for the sake of the mission reason to be.
Apart from that, the story itself was solid and as always (if the author is the one I think (s)he is), the secondary and tertiary stories were too. That's what I like with these traditional T1 missions, the little stories help comprehending the big/main story, and compiled together, they draw a clearer and clearer view of the City's universe, where interpretation remains possible for what you still don't know for sure. This mission is clearly in this perspective and for this, it will remain one of my favourites from this contest."
Review: (
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthre...88#post2409788)
Large and complicated city with lots of vertical content and nice architecture. I especially enjoyed the jumping from window to window, catching mantles, without using ropes. Locked doors could not be entered without an elaborate, indirect, hopping method. Two BJs were unavoidable, one a servant stuck on a table, and one a guard needed to exit the warehouse. The readables were interesting and numerous, many about law enforcement, but the story was not coherent.
"(I have substituted 'Design' for 'Story' when rating submissions in which Story would score lower)
Atmosphere=10
Design=10
Gameplay=10
Perfect. My only possible complaint is that the lowest framerate I got was ~80fps, at one particularly high and far-seeing spot on the map -- Melan's Rose Garden seems to have avoided this, without any obvious compromise on brush complexity/object count compared to this. Of course, this is far above the normal framerate many people actually play the game at, and solving this problem would have required altering or removing some aspect of the FM, which I cannot imagine being a improvement. If son_of_a_dude are who I think they are (a group, or an individual from it), their portfolio continues to be flawless."
"I love the size of this level. I spent close to three hours scouring the city, trying to find every little piece of loot and still came up 500 short. Whether I was on the rooftops or the streets, there was always something new to keep my interest - or shortcuts to traverse.
I'm almost disappointed that the crypt played such a minor role in the end, but then again I had a whole city to explore and enjoy.
I'm rating the story as highly as I am simply because of all the little stories you could find in people's houses - that really brought the city to life."
This mission takes you through the houses, rooftops and hidden underground locations of Sootchime District, a city district designed on a massive scale. Mere size is not a recipe for great gameplay, and some of the largest missions tend to feel fairly empty - but here, a good balance was struck between creating enormous structures, and giving the different places their own colour. Two large manor houses, a Hammerite monastery towering above multiple waterfalls and water channels, and other locations offer plenty to explore. The waterways allow fast progress through the level, but like Calendra's Legacy, they also “reset” a lot of progress you will need to make to reach some of your destinations. There are also rooftop routes which feel natural, and do not restrict the player to a few paths of the thieves highway. And there are many “side events” to the main show. This mission makes for a well-balanced experience, and is a lot of fun to play... multiple times.
It takes a master to build a level so massive but without a single hitch in difficulty or pacing.
First of all.. Sootchime. What a perfectly visual name. I greatly enjoyed the well-thought out names and readables you included that enhanced atmosphere.. so many of them humorous and reflective of a smoky medieval city. And wow.. what an amazing city it was to explore, scored by a multi-leveled canal that, I admit, I jumped into a few times just for the sake of riding all the way down. Your city felt real and immersive, coming alive with the stories of its denizens. The story, itself, is unique and fun and included a lot of variant gameplay. I loved climbing up onto the heights and would find myself just hanging out, munching on a deer leg, admiring the beauty of it all. Well done, team. This mission deserves its place among the classics. As for criticism, the main point I can think of is likely one that couldn't have been avoided, as I heard just about every maximum limit was hit in the building, which is that I would have liked Blexham manor to have been a bit "more" to complete that end-game feeling, but I wouldn't want that if you had to sacrifice part of the world you built doing so. Thank you for making this mission, and looking forward to playing it again.
This is a beautiful mission, an immense cityscape with stunning, soaring architecture, beautiful textures reminiscent of the OMs (only better applied), and a wonderful layout that captures the eye and makes you want to explore. And the exploring is FUN, with numerous routes, a nice amount of Thieve's highway work and loads of homes and shops to enter and loot. The atmosphere is classic Thief, and you captured the feel of the original missions beautifully. The city is a wonderful mix of seediness, oppressiveness and elegance, and had me feeling right at home as a Thief fan. The waterway through the city provided a fast route to other locales, was astonishing to look at, and was a fun ride in it's own right. The story was solid, and had me engaged in what I was doing.. for me, this is a litmus test for a great mission. The readables, many of which were quite humerous, fit well with the story and provided a great deal of ambience. The burrick tunnels were far better done than in the OMs, though despite the mission title, they had little to do with the mission at large, and that is fine by me as exploring the city was where I wanted to be, because the gameplay was consistently challenging and thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. This is an excellent tribute to the OMs. Thank you for a superlative mission that I will play again and again. A definite classic for our community!