The Greyfeather Gems - Part II: Rodamill (Aug. 21st, 2005)

Nightwalker on 22/8/2005 at 15:23

I had just come back to post that I'd figured out what I missed, which was something obvious, as usual. :o Thanks for the quick reply, Vigil. :)

Schattentänzer on 22/8/2005 at 19:22

Downloading the final now. Beta-testing it was a lot of fun (as well as making ambients for it) and I can't wait to play it and find all I have missed.

Well done Morrgan and Vigil!

Ravenus1 on 22/8/2005 at 19:27

YAY!!! What a wicked weekend gift.. Thanks Morrgan!! :thumb:

Vigil on 23/8/2005 at 08:30

If any people are wondering why the water in the starting valley looks odd: it was made using a TGA effect which unfortunately does not show up at all on GeForce 6 cards, making the water appear plain black instead. Radeon and earlier GeForce owners should see the proper water just fine. This is just a cosmetic thing and has no effect on gameplay.

Kudos to NamelessVoice for the technique of using overlapping TGA conveyors for effects like this, which was first showcased in HazelShade cemetary. Pity we hadn't tested our version of the effect on new cards first :P

mol on 23/8/2005 at 08:49

I must say that this is a great mission! I replayed Pt I before diving into this one, just so I'd remember how the story begun. I love the look of this mission. It reminds me of TDP in some ways. :thumb:

There's a lot to explore, to be sure. I'm not ghosting this, as I'm too eager to see what lies ahead, but I'm pretty sure this is entirely ghostable, at least so far.

The architecture is fantastic, and there're loads of nooks and crannies to be discovered. I'm also amazed at how good the fog looks like on my ATI AIW 9800 Pro. In some missions it's rather annoying, and not as subtle and gradually dissolving as in this mission. Great job on applying the fog, don't know how you did it, but it looks good.

As great as this is, it feels a bit too easy even on expert. That's why I mentioned the ghosting earlier, which should make it more challenging, although there are always plenty of dark corners to hide in, and the guards' acuity isn't very high. But these are of course rather subjective assessments. Matters of opinion and preference, really.

This is definitely among the best FMs released this year! Very playable, highly enjoyable, beautiful to look at, lots of variety -- a definite must-play! :thumb:

Spitter on 23/8/2005 at 08:53

Finished it on Expert. 2000 loot, 5 secrets.

A truly fantastic mission. The Haunted Cathedral has always been one of my favourite OMs and there haven't really been any FMs to that style. Not any this good at any rate! Goddamnit, this was creepy. Fantastic combination of ambients, architecture and lighting created some real terror. I was startled more than a few times in this! The architecture was terrific, with surprising amount of details. Having struggled with Dromed limits myself recently, around mid-way in the mission I was sure the terrain brush limits must have been reached already!

Good sneaky action, too. Great patrols with usually several guards covering each others, so that taking them out requires some amount of planning. A little bit of tile and metal here and there made things definitely interesting and challenging, but they were wisely sparsely used, so it was far from frustrating.

The only thing that irked me in this FM were the over-sensitive sleepers. I thought I was really clever when I entered a locked room from rafters above... only to find out that the mechanist sleeping happily below woke up when I shot a rope arrow at the beam. :erg: The water and volumetric light effects were also rather ugly on my PC, but as Vigil pointed it out, it's the fault of my Geforce 6600 card.

The city itself is surprisingly big and it's easy to get lost in there - however, the automap is fantastic and was a great help. Readables were well written, too (oh Jamaille :D )

What more to add? Roombrushes leaked a bit here and there, but it was nothing horrible. One of the best FMs I've played this year and definitely worth the wait.

Now to wait TGG3... :cool:

Deep Qantas on 23/8/2005 at 09:03

Excellent job! :thumb:

And quite a lot longer than what I expected. I pretty much spent my whole loadout and health before even finding the map. :sweat:

Morrgan on 23/8/2005 at 09:21

Wow, thanks guys! :D

Now that I don't have this mission to spend my free time on, I decided to play through Thief Gold for the first time (I have played through TDP several times and played the new Gold missions separately, but never Gold from start to finish) and I still find that Thief 1 simply rocks. Having TGG 2 compared to Thief 1 truly warms my heart. :)

As for the fog, I guess I just got lucky. We have a GeForce, so I had no idea what it looks like on ATIs. Phew. ;) Speaking of 3D cards, it's a pity the water and other effects don't work on the newer GeForces. As Vigil said, it was something we weren't able to test.

Sir Lance on 23/8/2005 at 12:16

Thanks Morrgan for this great FM. :thumb: :thumb: I completed it and got most of the additional objectives (I think!) except for the one below.

[SPOILER]Stuck on the additional objective to get the Totem Pole. Where is it?[/SPOILER]

Morrgan on 23/8/2005 at 12:20

Thanks, Sir Lance! :) Did you find the secret bonus objectives?

The answer to your question depends on difficulty, although on all it can be found in the East valley. Which difficulty are you playing on?