Renault on 25/9/2022 at 06:26
Ok, so back in January, a contest was announced to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the New Dark patch. For those who aren't aware of the history, here's the short version:
Quote:
Some background: The New Dark patch was announced on the french forum ariane4ever on September 24th, 2012, and then posted here on the TTLG forums by DrK on the following day, September 25th. The author of the New Dark patch remains a mystery, but several updates have been made and released over the past 10 years and continue to this day. You can see the original post on TTLG here: (
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140085). This patch expanded the limits of what was possible in the Dark Engine and also made the game much easier to play on modern PC hardware.
The objective of this contest was to create a new mission, inspired by one of the original missions created by Looking Glass, hopefully using the benefits of New Dark to your advantage. You can see the original thread here with the details of the contest: (
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151620).
That said - we have a total of two entries that have been submitted, both for Thief Gold:
(
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T5lgCg91RI0Vo3yiNpF6zOrYoJr8FLdz/view?usp=sharing) House of the Architect - TheDataElemental
(
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OR_jxa1bGKM-22O9cpFm8eJ8dgos1wR6/view?usp=sharing) Intertheft (ver 1.1, now includes a French translation) - Nomadman
The good news is, we have two excellent new missions to play, and they were both created by first time authors. Quite the accomplishment. Congrats to both of you for finishing your entries on time.
The bad news is, yes, I won't lie, I was hoping for far more entries than we received. I'm not sure how exactly to account for this. If you are an existing or aspiring FM author, some constructive feedback would be much appreciated. Why did this theme and ruleset not interest you? What could be done differently next time? Let me know what's on your mind, so maybe things can be changed if another similar contest is ever announced.
Thanks to everyone who helped out and contributed in anyway to the contest, and I hope everyone enjoys the missions we did receive. Cheers...
EDIT (Nov 19th, 2022): Voting page is now closed. Results will be up soon.
(
https://www.ttlg.com/polls/NewDark10thAnniversary)
DirkBogan on 25/9/2022 at 07:37
I highly recommend Nomadman's Intertheft, and from the few in-development screenshots I saw of TheDataElemental's House of The Architect it seemed quite promising and creative. I'm very excited to play it.
Regarding the limited submissions: if you look at the previous four contests, most of the participants are working on one or both of the two big campaigns in-progress. As part of one of them, I know there was some interest internally from a few members, but we decided that we really couldn't afford to give another contest priority over the long-awaited project. I promise that decision has paid off massively.
A few other previous contestants have solo missions in progress (one author I know has one in beta right now), or have retired from making FMs outright. There were at least 3 contestants who didn't make the deadline, and may yet release what they started. Not my place to say.
It's possible that the theme was confusing, but I doubt that played a major part. It's more likely that the usual suspects were all too busy. The most important thing is that, despite all these obstacles, we still have two new maps and two new authors as we approach Thief's 25th year.
skacky on 25/9/2022 at 07:54
Congratulations to both Nomadman and DataElemental for their first releases! There are many files in DataElemental's archive that aren't needed (a massive crash dump, .wr files, p_portal.cow and so on). These take quite a bit of disk space when unzipped so I recommend the author to delete these files and submit another archive to Brethren.
As for the theme, I am one of those who think it is excellent and I *really* wanted to participate. I took the decision not to though for various reasons, but if I had participated I probably would've reimagined either Blackmail or Casing/Masks.
ticky on 25/9/2022 at 08:30
Quote Posted by DirkBogan
Regarding the limited submissions: if you look at the previous four contests, most of the participants are working on one or both of the two big campaigns in-progress. As part of one of them, I know there was some interest internally from a few members, but we decided that we really couldn't afford to give another contest priority over the long-awaited project. I promise that decision has paid off massively.
A few other previous contestants have solo missions in progress (one author I know has one in beta right now), or have retired from making FMs outright. There were at least 3 contestants who didn't make the deadline, and may yet release what they started. Not my place to say.
Indeed. I think it's not that bad. Huge projects are on the way an we have two quality entries here - also, the "off the record" missions (I mean out of deadline) are very, very promising, since there will be 5 new missions with them.
I do not think that there were anything wrong with the contest rules. They were clear, original and exciting. I think it's just an unfortunate alignment of circumstances - maybe summer (for those in Europe and North America, it became quite unbearable at places), real life and other projects together caused the low number of entries within deadline.
Sagittal on 25/9/2022 at 09:30
Congratulations to the 2 authors and thanks to Brethren for running the comp - looking forward to playing these!
Maybe worth mentioning in first post that both House of the Architect and Intertheft are for T1 / TG?
michael a on 25/9/2022 at 09:45
I simply would say that I'm glad to see new missions. However small turnout is, there are still two more TG missions to play. Congrats to anyone involved - to Brethren, to the authors, testers, and to the community!
Quote Posted by DirkBogan
A few other previous contestants have solo missions in progress (one author I know has one in beta right now), or have retired from making FMs outright. There were at least 3 contestants who didn't make the deadline, and may yet release what they started. Not my place to say.
Perhaps, it would be good to extend deadline - at least for this mission in beta.
Plibb on 25/9/2022 at 10:00
There was some cool WIP screenshots in the announcement thread, hopefully they see the light of day at some point :p Either way, 2 missions that I can't wait to sink my teeth in, downloading now!
DirkBogan on 25/9/2022 at 10:06
Sorry, to be clear the mission in beta is a solo mission unrelated to the contest, but by a competitor in a previous contest. The point is that many prior participants are busy with other FMs.
michael a on 25/9/2022 at 10:12
Quote Posted by DirkBogan
Sorry, to be clear the mission in beta is a solo mission unrelated to the contest, but by a competitor in a previous contest. The point is that many prior participants are busy with other FMs.
OK, understood.
A.Stahl on 25/9/2022 at 11:34
>If you are an ... aspiring FM author
I have 2 most crazy (but interesting, I hope) ideas. Simple ideas. I've spent a week or something playing with DromEd and no... just no. Maybe I'm missing some trivial thing but I really don't like the DromEd. I hate it. And I'm old enough to remember (and still keep a rather warm recalls) Duke/Blood engine.
There were a few guys writing the modern wrapper over the DromEd and they were in the late stages of that process but no new news from them for a long time.
I suppose we will start getting MUCH more new missions if those guys will succeed, but DromEd is just too ugly. It kills the enthusiasm and is plainly near to unusable.