uncadonego on 6/9/2007 at 05:58
I'd like some more input on this, so for those who don't want to go through the whole list of missions, you could just state your favourite and worst OM's, but get specific about the reasons why...
BrendaEM on 6/9/2007 at 16:29
Level 1 - Running Interference
BEST FEATURE: The mission cellar architecture.
WORST FEATURE:
Level 2 - Shipping ... and Receiving
BEST FEATURE: Vast areas. Open warehouses provide little cover, for an uneasy feeling. Feeling of satisfaction when hearing the bells when the player opens the areas.
WORST FEATURE: Not enough guards happening by. Wanted more roof-top movement.
Level 3 - Framed
BEST FEATURE: Hidden doors.
WORST FEATURE: Navigation, as some areas looked similar to others.
Level 4 - Ambush!
BEST FEATURE: Nice cityscape.
WORST FEATURE: Navigation, I kept going in circles betting away from Garret's house.
Level 6 - First City Bank and Trust
BEST FEATURE: Large level.
WORST FEATURE: Really hard to get through marble room.
Level 9 - Trail of Blood
BEST FEATURE: **The little pagan girl ghost saying that her doll doesn't like the hammerites was one of the two most moving moments I've experienced playing video games. It actually made me cry. It worked because it was non-integral to the story. If it was supposed to be important, it wouldn't have been, to me.
WORST FEATURE: Trees?
Level 10 - Life of the Party
BEST FEATURE: Rooftops, and the feud, which again, had little to do with the plot. Lots of houses to enter.
WORST FEATURE: Could not do anything on the street.
Level 13 - Casing the Joint
BEST FEATURE: Secret Passages.
WORST FEATURE: **Sometimes, the player could not fit through the secret entrance. I opened the door; I could not enter.
Level 14 - Masks
BEST FEATURE: Lots of attic-level beam walking areas.
WORST FEATURE: Back here, again?
Level 15 - Sabotage at Soulforge
BEST FEATURE: None
WORST FEATURE: Did not finish, really bad architecture. The gameplay challenge became aggravation.
Ziemanskye on 6/9/2007 at 17:55
It's been a long time since I played TMA, which is just how things go when you should be building missions, but from what I remember (so this may be complete nonsense!):
Level 1 - Running Interference
BEST FEATUREs: Not too annoying an introduction to Thief (I still haven't played TDP), and it had plenty of extra stuff for people who already knew what they were doing.
WORST FEATURE: some rather wonky architecture, and inconsistant lighting in the (guest) bedrooms
Level 2 - Shipping ... and Receiving
BEST FEATURE: Lots of exploration space
WORST FEATUREs: Bricks with everything, and the dock where the boat could never leave (engine thing I know, but it still annoyed me). And the spiders: never liked the noise they made, though I suppose that was the point.
Level 3 - Framed
BEST FEATURE: All the secret passages and hidey holes.
WORST FEATURE: The streets either side of the building, the sewer entrance, and the safe/vault not being interesting enough.
Level 4 - Ambush!
BEST FEATURE: It's on the streets and it's a big area.
WORST FEATURE: Over-reliance on map for navigation, some weird routes open while others blocked.
Level 5 - Eavesdropping
BEST FEATURE: Nice large main chapel.
WORST FEATURE: Barely remember this mission to be honest, though I was disappointed to get into the room you overheard the conversation take place in and find it was perfectly clean and there was no one about.
Level 6 - First City Bank and Trust
BEST FEATURE: Like Shipping and Recieving, there's lots of places to go and lots of ways to get to most of them. And for all I didn't like the lock, I did like the vault: Framed could've done with some of this.
WORST FEATURE: The basement was dull: I know it's a basement, but I still think it could have had something more done to it. Some of the rooms and corridors (especially the stairwells) felt more like something designed for a game than a real building with regular use.
Level 7 - Blackmail
BEST FEATURE: The bits around the manor.
WORST FEATURE: The actual manor, again with the basements being dull, and the fact that he's always already dead: it would probably have broken the story too much to actually be able to confront him with the recording, but it might have been nice. And a bit more resistance to getting out than a couple of slowfall potions off the ledge and a little swim.
Level 8 - Trace the Courier
BEST FEATURE: It ends.
WORST FEATURE: I really didn't like this one, not because it was hard as such, just because it's so trial+error and so linear, and of course, you've already explored the streets before hand, and it goes on for so long.
Level 9 - Trail of Blood
BEST FEATURE: The end, not like Trace the Courier where I'm glad it ends, but because I actually like the last room with the treebeastythingies and fairylights. Also, once getting eaten by the plants, even if I never could replicate it. And the eye-ball plantythings creep me out, but in a "cool piece of otherworldly design" way.
WORST FEATURE: Lava, yawn, and the ape-men-things: I kind of feel the level would have been better served with reluctant humans who fled the village. Seasons thing wasn't big enough either: could have done with more sprawl to each and perhaps more subtle transitions between them: less faffing around near the lava and the entrance would have been a fine trade off as far as I'm concerned.
Level 10 - Life of the Party
BEST FEATURE: It's cool to jump about on the roofs: this is for many the quintiessential Thief-experience level.
WORST FEATURE: Angelwatch was a disappointment, and it would have been nice if the level changed a bit more on the way back (and/or you could leave by the front door and finish it on the ground)
Level 11 - Precious Cargo
BEST FEATURE: Assuming I'm not getting this and Kidnap (or bits of T2X)mixed up, I liked the drowned rooms and things.
WORST FEATURE: Seemed a bit too "adventure-gamish" at the start, not sure about the fog/time of day on the surface bits: given the water fall it seems a weird place to have a lighthouse type thing, and it's a little random with the "why is this room here?"
Level 12 - Kidnap
BEST FEATURE: Get to mess around in an ancient ruin (/shrugs, I started gaming in earnest at Tomb Raider).
WORST FEATURE: Lots of boring filler space, and I kept feeling like this was a fan service level I wasn't in on the jokes of.
Level 13 - Casing the Joint
BEST FEATURE: I liked this one: new idea, break in and explore.
WORST FEATURE: Not being able to finish the mission in one go?
Level 14 - Masks
BEST FEATURE: I liked the rooms we could now explore.
WORST FEATURE: Party, or exhibition, or whatever it was, was kind of lame, and of course we're back on more or less the same map again with no mention of any prior nabbed loot or whatever. And the ghost in the library annoyed me. Would've been great if there was some "persistance" between the two maps, with extra security somehow laid on if you made too much noise breaking in the first time, or if the first time you could swipe an Invite and actually be able to be seen in the mission just as long as you weren't doing anything thief-ish (but that would probably have been beyond Dark Engine)
Level 15 - Sabotage at Soulforge
BEST FEATURE: I liked getting to make things, even if it was quite simple.
WORST FEATURE: Seriously don't remember this level: I've vague flashes of dull towers for recalibrating the signals, and hunting for components to make what we needed for various things. And lots of boring "cathedral" stones/bricks, and a bit of erratic sprawl: Eavesdropping at least had a more or less functional seeming religious site.
uncadonego on 7/9/2007 at 03:54
Quote Posted by Ziemanskye
Level 14 - Masks
WORST FEATURE: Would've been great if there was some "persistance" between the two maps, with extra security somehow laid on if you made too much noise breaking in the first time, or if the first time you could swipe an Invite and actually be able to be seen in the mission just as long as you weren't doing anything thief-ish (but that would probably have been beyond Dark Engine)
That could probably be done, and in TG you have papers to get into the Hammerite church as a novice. Exactly as you describe, if you don't get seen doing anything wrong, or stealing anything (until you knock out anyone who would notice), you can walk right by people without a problem.
Ziemanskye on 7/9/2007 at 17:28
Really don't know the engine: Half-life, UnrealTournament2kx and TDS are about as far as I've played with so far (in real terms, but my only attempt at Dromed made me have to reinstall win95 way back when, I don't know/care how/why).
But I do think that would have been far cooler for a mission so close to the end of the game, rather than just the same thing with a few more rooms and more guards.
Nightstroll on 7/9/2007 at 18:09
The trick with missions 13 and 14 can be done with Qvars and such, pretty easily with some accuracy. ;)
R Soul on 7/9/2007 at 18:13
Yes, it's all numbers. It would have been quite easy to record the number of times the AI were alerted, and have that number determine whether or not to have extra guards placed (easier is to destroy existing guards though). The loot value is already recorded of course, so that could have been made use of.
Gloria Creep on 8/9/2007 at 02:29
I think it's going to be more difficult to make a mission, since we're accustomed to such high standards.
Indeed: the OM's are great but the number of FM's that are equally great or even better is growing.
For me it's essential to have a "frightning moment" ïn a mission, like a sudden thunderstrike or anything other than you would expect at some point in the mission. (Apart from finding a Dewdrop dolly:ebil: )
I need to jump of my chair sometimes.
In "Profane Ascension" it's the ghost, slipping through the door. Didn't we all like that?
I didn't need that before. Just being able to put my arrow in the right angle to reach my goal, was my priority then ...... :D ... now I just hope for "sudden" aspects.
The dracula series from Sensut for example": He added his own "creatures" and sounds to this series of FM's. I was glad to be able to test his newest game: Elizabeth Bathory and I really liked it, when I discovered some typical "Sensut stuff" in there. The game gets its own character by it :cool:
Since I'm not an english speaking person, I sometimes have a slight problem with the readings in the game. Especially when the texts are written in riddles or puzzels to solve. And math: :nono: I'm not good at that!!!:ebil:
So if I've to figure out some 4 digit number, I'll really REALLY have to dig in and read every syllable I can get to. Mostly I end up reading the code on the forum :devil:
So, if I'm going to dig in into Dromed (and I will) it will be very hard to make a mission that will meet the standards we're used to now.
So for now, I'll keep on testing stuff and playing the new FM's.
Perhaps inspriation will come :idea:
Gloria Creep :angel:
uncadonego on 8/9/2007 at 12:54
Let's put it this way-No custom objects or textures or anything. Same stock resources as LGS for FM developers. Same playing field. The only things that would stick out as better or worse would be gameplay, story, architecture,etc.
I'm looking for references to LGS levels where FM makers could learn things that aren't frequently implemented in FM's. I feel that there are aspects of Thief that make it great which are barely touched, but I want other peoples' input on that. I'm also looking for what players think were weak points of LGS' offerings.
Ziemanskye on 8/9/2007 at 20:14
I'm probably going to be less liked for this, but as something I think they did *wrong*: the scale of the levels.
Sure, they're can be big, but there's a lot of dead space in them where NPCs don't patrol, there's noting interesting in the art or reward enough for exploring - it's just filler space between two points, and doesn't even always make any kind of sense of architecturally.
To some people that's a good thing "real life has a lot of uninteresting space too" kind of arguments, but if I'm going to be tensed and nervous about being detected there damn well better be some actual chance of it happening!
And of course, "inconsistant level design" - which while I am at times guilty of, still ranks as one of my pet hates: if one door with this texture opens, they all should. If only one window of three opens, why? Why can't I pick this lock when that one picks just fine? It may be less realistic to be able to tell at a glance from across the street/room what you can interact with, but I'm not playing an ARG here, just a videogame, and that kind of information is usefull to me as a player.
