TDP20AC Mission — The Whistling of the Gears (11/30/2018)

baeuchlein on 15/3/2021 at 00:11

I have downloaded "The Whistling of the Gears" from the Google drive link yesterday (Sunday), and the zip was identical to the one I downloaded when the mission was published. I loaded an old savegame and could continue. The FM loader was FMSel. I used Firefox from Debian 9.13 (Linux) for downloading.

The Southquarter link does indeed lead to a page without downloads, but Yandros recently wrote in another thread that Southquarter really doesn't work now. So these links will work for no one at the moment.

Samantha, I am afraid you have to find out what is wrong on your computer. The Google drive links should work. Can you verify the integrity of the downloaded missions with a Zip program/utility? That would at least tell us whether it's the download or rather something after that which goes wrong.

Aged Raver on 15/3/2021 at 08:23

Quote Posted by baeuchlein

... that Southquarter really doesn't work now. So these links will work for no one at the moment ...

Slightly off-topic.
Is all southquarter.com likely to go away? :(
I can see some webpages still there at present -

[INDENT](http://www.southquarter.com/christine/)
(http://www.southquarter.com/komag/)
(http://www.southquarter.com/fms/)
[/INDENT]

I only recently discovered Christine’s English website which has useful info, walkthroughs, etc. (although I believe she also has a German website) and I know things have changed in 20 years and I’ll never write an FM anyway but perhaps I’ll make a copy of Komag’s 1 page tutorial, if only to read sometime and understand a bit more. Historical information. :D

ticky on 15/3/2021 at 09:51

I tried to look it up on various FM download sites, but could not find any other mission by the same author as Whistling of the Gears. Are there any out there?

FireMage on 15/3/2021 at 10:19

Quote Posted by ticky

I tried to look it up on various FM download sites, but could not find any other mission by the same author as Whistling of the Gears. Are there any out there?

Well, normal because Deception was just an alias I used for the contest since it was an anonymous entry! ;)
I am the author of Whistling of the Gear!

If you want more maps from me, you have (warning, I'll also quote my missions when I was a beginner so... play them at your own risk!!) from the oldest to the newest :

- La Fête du Voleur (private joke to my fellows : No, I still claim this mission is an illusion, it still doesn't exist)
- Horror in St Urbain
- Revenge of Lt.Hagen
- Overlord's Ending
- Evil Thievery
- Half-Assed Weddings
- The Curse of the Skull Gobelet
- The Wooden Box
- The Chalice of Soul (collab with Skacky and Squadafroinx)
- The Whislting of the Gears
- Builder's Paradise

Note :

Don't expect the Whistling of the Gear touch in all of those.
The three first have several glitches which can make the mission unplayable (because I used to play a little to much with Dark Engine limits without understanding all the glitches)
And some are experimental in their gameplay like :

- Overlord's Ending is an action mission
- Wooden Box is a randomized mission

***

Wooden Box & Half-Assed Weddings are also two short missions since the contest themes were 72h for Wooden Box and 48h for Half-Assed Weddings. So, very short time to make something detailed and entirely failproof.

Enjoy them!

ticky on 15/3/2021 at 10:37

Quote Posted by FireMage

That makes the picture much clearer, thank you! :)

Samantha1 on 15/3/2021 at 17:27

Quote Posted by baeuchlein

I´ve uploaded the zip file I have of the FM making a profit on google drive: (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cN4eoUv8bIpmFyC7QG1JhBdGb6EdkxJP/view?usp=sharing)
To be exact, its the one that I downloaded from google drive and now I´ve uploaded it myself. Does this help in any way?

The thing is, I´ve had this issue 3-4 times with some of thief 2 missions aswell and there someone mentioned that the reason is because the link is corrupted. Indeed when I used another link then it worked. So I thought it´d be the same case here, but if the links work for you guys, sth. else must be the reason :confused:

baeuchlein on 15/3/2021 at 19:54

Quote Posted by Samantha1

Yes. The good news is: This file contains all TDP20 Anniversary contest missions, so you already have what you wanted in the first place. You just have to unpack the missions from this file.

When you tried to download the version of "Making a Profit" that had a Google drive link in the (https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149376&p=2407316&viewfull=1#post2407316) first post of the mission's thread, you most likely clicked on "Download all" (or "Alle herunterladen" in German) on the page that opened. This page was the one on Google drive where Southquarter placed all the TDP20AC missions. To allow you to download all of these missions, Google compressed them all into one large .zip file.

Unpack this .zip file with Windows and/or a Zip file utility, and you should get a folder named "tdp20ac", and inside this folder, you will find all of the TDP20 contest missions. There will also be some older versions of the TDP20 contest missions in a sub-folder called "old", and there will be a Word document called "Author list.docx". Copy the .zip files of the "tdp20ac" folder into your Thief 1 folder, and you should be able to play all of the missions - just what you wanted. You can safely delete the rest of these files after that.

There is a newer version of "Making a Profit" which is not contained in the .zip file. You should be able to download it (v1.1, to be exact) from the mission thread's first post. Everything else should be up to date, I think.

If you did not click on "Download all" when trying to download "Making a Profit", then I do not know why it went wrong, but my diagnosis still stands. By the way, I just tried it on a Chrome browser on a Windows 10 installation, and also had the page with the downloads and the "Download all" button on the right side of the page. Firefox on Linux displayed the same page and button, so it doesn't appear to be a browser-specific or OS-specific problem.

Samantha1 on 15/3/2021 at 21:10

Ah you are riiight, that did the trick!! Thank you very much for the help!! :D I also downloaded the newer version of making a profit, so now I´m good to go! :cheeky:

baeuchlein on 16/3/2021 at 19:20

Quote Posted by Aged Raver

I only recently discovered Christine’s English website which has useful info, walkthroughs, etc. (although I believe she also has a German website) [...]

Christine once had a German site, but two recent posts on German TTLG.DE sound as if she currently only has the site on Southquarter. There appear to be some plans to move her (current) site to somewhere else. The German site seems to have vanished, but as far as I remember, it contained the material present on the English site, just with German descriptions.

Aged Raver on 17/3/2021 at 18:25

Ah. Thank you. I must have been thinking of (https://www.ttlg.de/) :tsktsk: or I may have seen (www.zinkchristine.de.vu) in the notes of the NewDark update of The Night Falcon, which I recently enjoyed very much but, as you say, the site has vanished.

Still off topic. Apologies.:rolleyes: