MrMunkeepants on 3/8/2019 at 23:49
Quote Posted by DirkBogan
As for the secret counter... this was an intentional design omission.
I figured as much; I like to use it as a gauge of how clever/probing I was, but 'difficulty of discovery' is subjective. I have no idea how comprehensively I really explored, and a secret counter usually gives me a clue at the end. Comparing to the OMs, the definition of 'hidden' has shifted to a much higher realm. Maybe in the future count whatever you/your betatesters felt was quite devious?
downwinder on 4/8/2019 at 03:22
well i found dewdrop with a tip from db
so i can confirm dewdrop is in the mission but in a out of bounce area and to get it,you need a item to be able to get it
you can be proud of this fan mission
but for the record i was the first to find him :P
Niborius on 4/8/2019 at 06:05
What a great mission DirkBogan, I played it in Multiplayer and it worked really really well for that. I think we ended up with about 6600 loot on expert.
I liked how most windows could be opened.
The atmosphere, especially with the perfect placed ambient sounds is probably the best part of this mission
DirkBogan on 4/8/2019 at 07:36
Thanks for your comments Niborius. I enjoyed Mystery of The Upper Quarter (although the Expert loot goal was very tough!). You have a very distinctive visual style, and I'm eager to see what Secrets of The Old City has to offer!
You are very kind to say that the ambients are good; I liked my choice of ambients, but the actual sound design still has issues -- there were many gaps between doorways and thresholds before beta-testing, so ambients often didn't change between areas. Skacky and Squadafroin in particular insisted that I add transitional ambients between environmental ambients, to reduce how jarring some ambients were. If you look at the changelog.txt, there's lots of 'added ambientsound/ambienthacked' entries. All my testers gave extensive notes when they found places where I had forgotten or missed a transition, so if my ambient placement is good, most of it is because of my testers' hard work finding where I'd left gaps.
I'm glad you enjoyed playing, and that it was fun as a multiplayer experience too!
InfinituS on 4/8/2019 at 08:18
Played this singleplayer first time and loved every second of it. (Missed quite a few loot though) Then i went ahead with multiplayer with a friend and it was an even more amazing experience :)
If this is a taste of things to come then we're in for a ride. Congrats, DirkBogan.
DirkBogan on 4/8/2019 at 21:18
And that is the EXACT reason I included so many SlowFall potions! :D
You can actually slide down the edge of that hole without getting injured on Expert, although you occasionally take one shield of damage.
Kerrle on 5/8/2019 at 05:52
This was a fun one, and I quite liked the more Thief 1 style architecture.
If I might make a suggestion, it would have been cool to see more readables getting into some of the weird things you come across while playing, though of course mystery is cool, too.
DirkBogan on 5/8/2019 at 06:44
Thanks for your comments Kerrle!
Regarding the readables: I think this is a big divide for players. For me, it doesn't matter how well-written or compelling the story is (Gaëtane, Lady Rowena and Melan come immediately to mind as excellent writers), I think lengthy or numerous readables heavily detract from the flow of gameplay in Thief missions. My main guideline for the readables was to keep them efficient, fitting as much meaning into as few words as possible -- a guiding principle that many editors take with fiction.
Initially, I wanted to make an FM with only environmental storytelling, a la Schlock's
(https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149380) Shadow Play. Along with hints in the environment, I also wanted to leave a lot of things up to players' interpretation!
Of course, your suggestion is perfectly welcome; I do not mean to sound dismissive! :D I'm just thankful you felt there wasn't enough of a 'good thing', rather than a mountain of badly written exposition!
A side note: I may be wrong, but I'm sure I've read elsewhere that you play Thief with a controller/gamepad? If so, did you find any parts of the mission very frustrating to navigate? The mission has lots of precise jumps and mantling, and I know they can be a pain in the neck with analog sticks!
Kerrle on 5/8/2019 at 22:55
I play with a custom keyboard I built:
(
https://imgur.com/gallery/F58P5gO)
Along with dual left and right handed mice (yes, I'm weird).
But I did have Thief set up to play with a Steam controller, and I have played a few dozen hours of it that way on a couch. It's not bad at all, though still inferior to a good mouse and keyboard.
For Thief, the Steam controller is basically a virtual trackball for mouselook and an analog stick so run/walk/creep can all be in one control. You also have gyro-based aiming for fine movement (like say when frobbing something small or aiming). It's way better than twin analog sticks, and I don't think there'd be any issues with your design.
