Ravenus1 on 19/1/2019 at 17:09
I felt like through luck I completed both missions without help, or too much difficulty. I was nearly crapping myself though in mission two. truly great.
SuaveSteve on 22/1/2019 at 19:07
The missions are very pretty, but are very mixed in their qualities.
Some glaring issues:
1. It's mostly very dark, yet my light gem seems brighter than it should be at most moments. The sealed wing is even worse and I just raised my gamma to max.
2. Flickering lights are great, but having most of the lights flickering just causes some taffers headaches. Look at some missions that are dripping in atmosphere (Eclipsed, Greyfeather Gems Part 2), majority of their lights aren't doing anything special.
3. Actors are taking the shortest path through corridors (saw this by the bedrooms in mission 2). This means they rub up right against corners, bumping into the player if they're in an outside corner (like this one: (
https://imgur.com/a/unWVuqU) ). It also just doesn't look natural.
4. I would have really, REALLY, appreciated a map, even a rough one showing the mansion's sections.
5. No notes page.
6.
When you are told that you must get the bones from the room below, it is not obvious that the blue particles are a ladder. It's also very tricky to get on it.7. The missions do not feel in the Gold spirit at all. This plays very much like a Thief 2 FM.
Besides all that, I generally enjoyed it.
laserpontiff on 24/1/2019 at 15:28
Absolutely brilliant. Searching for the chess pieces - i eventually gave up but will revisit another time for sure. Altogether spent around 5-6 hours (on expert) and knocked everyone out but still was missing i think 5 pieces: 2 pawns (5,6) king, knight 2 and bishop 1 or 2 (can't remember). I think this mission is my favourite of them all. Thank you kindly for making such a great mission and I hope you continue.
pukey brunster on 25/1/2019 at 05:36
Thanks @laserpontiff! Hope you had fun and enjoyed our story, which was our aim : ) And @Suave Steve, besides generally enjoying it. Some of your criticisms were fair, but otherwise already approached here in this thread. We ran out of time for much of the story we wanted to give you. A couple of thoughts, however:
2. We are grateful for your feedback as how to develop better atmosphere, as we have been long FM players as well, but the reason for the flickering lights was to establish that these lights are extinguishable via water arrows. It was our way of pointing that out.
'
3. I think you would be hard pressed to find that patrol paths aren't often the same as we had to make do with, as with the OM's.
7. The fact that our mission doesn't look like TDP/TG is not an accident. We have both been playing this game since the 90's, but we set out to do something a bit different.. more to the point, to see what this classic engine could do. We were curious as to what we could make the original engine do, in the sense of feel. We got the memo about this being a T1 contest.. but we simply didn't translate it as "copy TG and mimick the original creators". I don't think the original creators can be improved upon, period, so, in the spirit of this fan mission community, we tried to imbue a feeling of what we loved about the OM's, using our own unique styles, if that makes sense.
Thank you for your feedback, though, and glad in the end you say you enjoyed it.
Taylor on 25/1/2019 at 15:11
Thank you for this little campaign, I really enjoyed it.
Both the athmosphere and the story were really good and both levels were nicely designed.
Also the missions/goals themselves were quite understandable, I always found everything needed for completing the mission without much issue, though still missed ~15% of loot in both missions.
Only needed help for some chess pieces (namely the two bishops - what a clever puzzle I didn't figure out - and two pawns) - but the reward was priceless.
What I didn't like that much was the no alarm objective in mission 2, which made me ghost that level (except the Winter wing), because with objectives like this I'm always unsure of the outcome of my usual playstyle -- run around with my blackjack and whack everyone :cheeky:
But I like to take some challenge (at least sometimes) and there were plenty much of opportunities, to make ghosting an enjoyable way rather than frustration :)
I never had the feeling I'd playing T2 instead of TG.
Neither of the missions were much similar to OM's. Being similar to some T2 FM-s didn't make me feel I'm playing T2.
For me the textures gave a medieval feeling, which is much closer to T1/TG than T2's victorian and art-deco/mechanist style. Also the outside areas / forest were quite much unique in my opinion.
Actually I agree with the statement that this could be like the Ominous Bequest of Thief Gold. I liked and enjoyed this mission the most :thumb:
Vera on 27/1/2019 at 15:13
Mission 2. Maybe I am blind. But I am stuck on the ground floor. I do not have any keys. Lockpicks do not work at all. All the door is closed. I do not know what to do. Nevermind, I figured it out.
scottyd on 27/1/2019 at 17:09
BROKEN!! made it to winter wing, killed all statures, climbed a stepping tower to get one piece of gold, came back down, been to a room where you enter through air ducts through top of fireplace, no key what so ever, No tocs, No Elizibeth. no way out. no instructions. The archetecture is great, just too much of a puzzle. Don't want to spend all day looking at ever millionth of an inch of the floor for a key. not too much fun. Archetecture was superb though,
Tannar on 27/1/2019 at 17:56
@scottyd: No, it's not broken. It appears that after you finished that climbing tower you missed a lever on a bookcase in the room above. It's a big lever, not hidden, and it will get you moving forward again.
@Taylor: Thanks for the nice comments. Yes, the alarm system was a compromise at the last minute to fix a worse issue. We hope to have that working better in the next version after the contest. Glad you enjoyed the mission so much!
smithpd on 27/1/2019 at 18:45
I finished Mission 2 on Expert with 5592 of 6377 loot. I am lacking only bishop 2 to complete the chess puzzle. I can't find a reference here, so I must be missing something obvious. Please spoil me.
This is a truly outstanding mission pack. A masterpiece. Thank you both for developing it! Six months seems lightning fast for such a large and detailed work. I especially liked the unique and beautiful city and forest atmosphere of Mission 1 and the challenging map and problem solving of Mission 2. I was a bit confused in Mission 2, so I plan to play it again if an update is released. I'd be pleased to test any update from an almost "new eyes" perspective.
One thing that grated on me in Mission 2 was what seemed to be overly sensitive AI and the frequent (for me) gong deaths. Are the AI really more sensitive than usual, or was it my imagination? I ghosted Mission 1 and most of Mission 2, but after a while, when hunting for loot and chess pieces I needed, I gave up and BJ'ed all the AI in Mission 2. That was challenging enough and much more peaceful. Delayed finding of bodies was also off-putting, although that happened to me only once. Personally, I don't think that bodies should be cause for failure. I also think that the large number of physical gongs detracted from the atmosphere. I'd rather just deal with the response to the ghost bust and reload when I felt like it, based on the honor code.
Thanks again for the excellent mission pack.
Tannar on 27/1/2019 at 19:16
Thanks for the comments, Peter! Very glad you enjoyed the missions. Regarding the alarms and AI alerts in Mission 2, read my response in the post right above yours. We'll let you know when the testing begins. For bishop 2, check the crypt. There is a plaque by the fountain that should give you a hint. If you need more, let us know.
