Reply With QuoteI have made a list of all the loot and secrets, and a FAQ. Hopefully this can be of some help for people who have problems playing this level. You can read the loot list here.
There is one objective that requires some clever ghosting: stealing the gold hammer. It's mostly a timing problem... you need to think vertically, then time your actions very precisely.
Dafydd
I have made a list of all the loot and secrets, and a FAQ. Hopefully this can be of some help for people who have problems playing this level. You can read the loot list here.
With the help of this loot list, you should be able to complete this mission in the 'Perfect Thief' style (ghost with 100% loot); I already did that while testing the level.
Originally Posted by Dafydd
Thanks for the reviews, RarRar and Dafydd. It is possible that I will make a city-only mission, although it takes a lot of work and a long time, and at the same time very few people seem to download my FMs (these days there are probably more FMs than T1/T2 players, so this is not surprising by any means). So, I did not decide yet, maybe I will build one, maybe not.
I agree this one put your thief skill to the test, lots of fun. I hope you do more in the future. My favorite part was getting the guards to follow me into the spider caves and letting the spiders take care of the guards for me.
Naturally, one could approach just about any mission and demand "More more MORE!." But the larger the mission the more chance there is to screw something up. Most of the large missions you mention were fun in many ways, but they also screwed a lot of things up, introduced various annoyance factors, etc. I think I object to the assumption that huge missions are by definition better than small or medium sized ones.What I'd like to see him do is start with this city, then expand it to about four times the size
Istvan's City was a nice respectable size. Bigger than most cities one encounters in FMs, but smaller than those in Thief 1 or 2 or a handful of the larger FMs. But it was a *perfectly constructed city.* Everything was just right from the outstanding architecture, to the lighting, to the guards ... well, I've been through that already. You get my point. The same can be said for his mansion. Nowhere near as huge as the Seventh Crystal, say, but it was perfect. I loved Seventh Crystal but the author did seem to let the quality drop in several areas ... probably out of sheer exhaustion.
One can think of lots and lots of things that could be added to Out for Revenge: a cemetary with undead, some rooftops to traverse, some gardens and courtyards outside ... a million different things. But that's true of any mission. Out for Revenge was a medium-sized mission and that shouldn't make it any less impressive than a humongous one. I'm not "defending" Out for Revenge (in case my tone implies otherwise) because I know you're not complaining about it. You liked it too. It's just that one tiny implication in your reply that it was somehow "less good" because there should have been more to it.
I'd love to see Istvan do a really huge City with rooftops and everything. I'll beta test it for him. Heck, I'll help him build it if he needs it--I'm pretty good doing cities in Dromed. But keeping the quality as high as he did in Out for Revenge sounds pretty close to impossible, at least for mere mortals.
Oh, and PS. I *DO* have something to complain about with Out for Revenge after all (because I can't sleep well until I find SOMETHING to nitpick about):
spoiler:Opening the safe in the library: there's really no way to know that you'll fail the mission when he sees the open safe door. That means lots of failures and reloading--especially if you haven't found the safe key yet--through no fault of the player. Instead of staying Garrett I reverted to Me as I tried to puzzle out what the FM author had in mind, what I was supposed to do, what was going on in the AI's "mind." It's a nifty stealth puzzle actually, you have to work quickly and somewhat frantically just inches from the guy, constantly in fear of discovery, and it would be a shame to remove it. But maybe a redesign would make it work better.
There. I feel ever so much better.
Simply giving the keyspoiler:on the guy's belt a name other than just "key" should be enough to alert the player that it is not the safe key. On the other hand, leaving it the way it is would be more realistic ... I, for one, do not label my own keys (in the world outside of Thief) since I know by sight which key does what and if by chance I were to lose the them, I wouldn't want to give the "finder" any clues as to what they are for. But this is only a game so a hint in terms of naming the key or leaving a hint about having locked away the safe key would be nice.
The new loot list & FAQ document I released does mention that the mission fails if the open safe is discovered. Though, it appears that no one has read it yet, so I am not sure if it is of much use; I can only provide the information, and have no ways to ensure that it will be actually read.
To answer the complaints about the size of the level, I would like to mention that this mission already has 6786 brushes (DromEd has a hardcoded limit of 7068) and 252 ambient sounds (this time the limit seems to be 254). So, it is not as easy to expand in size as it seems, unless I break the mission up into multiple smaller levels.
How about these (demo mission can be downloaded from here) ?
I am not sure if I will make another FM. Although I did start a new city mission recently, the bad experiences with the already released missions are a good reason to think twice about releasing a third one. So far, the two FMs I made were effectively ignored. It is really frustrating and discouraging to see that my levels are downloaded by a very small number of people, and searches for threads relating to these missions reveal no hits (other than those that I started); on the other hand, older missions that are much simpler and not worked out as well (e.g. Lord Edmund Entertains) are still frequently mentioned - this is not to criticize the authors of other FMs, but I think that there are already too many levels released, and I am not really willing to spend several months of hard work just to see that the result is downloaded by a small number of people, played once, and then forgotten about, lost in the flood of other FMs. I am not to say I will not build a third FM for sure, but I still need to find out whether doing so is worth the effort; I know for sure that I can design even better levels than those already available - but, knowing that it would be ignored just like the other two, finding enough motivation can be difficult.
Well I just finished this fm yesturday and I really loved it!!! And the only problem I have about it is that I think that it has a little too many ai's patrolling around because it made it frusteration for me to get anywhere else in the mansion at times. I think you really should decide to finish your next fm. The flood of fm's comeing out should be no problem because I think that your's really stick out amongst them all. And I think that I will play this one again sometime because it was so fun and is very good practice for me. Who know maybe I will actually be able to beat it on expert someday.
Let me start by saying I enjoyed your first mission. It was really great. Now as for this new one, I enjoyed about 3 quarters of it and then stopped. Once I realized that you used the same timing puzzle again, I was dismayed. Dont get me wrong. I think your second mission is great except for that timing puzzle at the safe. I think this is why a lot of people didnt download this level. The attic timing was a neat new expirence, pick lock at the right time, then retreat. Repeat until open. But to use the same timing puzzle here, it just kind of ruins the experence. It sort of makes both levels the same so to speak, if you get what I mean. Dont get me wrong, your level design is excellent, just try something different for a final puzzle. I will finish this level sometime soon. By the way I dont mean any offense, you are good, and I can hardly wait for your city mission. Your fan base will get bigger as you do more levels and get even better. Nobody starts out perfect.)
Sting
Sorry for the double post but I also want ed to say that you have to remember that you released your mission at the same time as some other huge releases. We have been waiting for Belboz's missions for years. Dont forget Thief DS. Give it some time, more will download your missions. By the way, is the city mission done yet?
Sting
Everything's in the timing. Even Belboz's Chasm of the Lost was put on the back burner because everyone wanted to play Thief DS ... except for those of us who need a major system upgrade. In the last couple of days, however, his mission has taken off like fire ... and so will yours, Istvan Varga. So don't let up on your FMs because it takes time to create a fan base. Be aware however, as your FMs become more popular you'll be losing lots of sleep because once Thief fans are hooked they just keep clamoring for more. Speaking of which do you have any other demos I can learn from ... love your innovative ideas ... my own FM is in the works but I have a long way to go.
Incidently, the next time you post that you have a new FM for us taffers you may want to include the Name of your FM in your title. Not only does it help to alert us that a new title has come out but it's also useful when we're doing searches for posts later on either when playing it for the first time or when we want to play it again ... and again.
You probably do not expect me to finish a mission in a single week. I just started it this week, and - assuming that I bother finishing it at all, disappointed by the lack of interest in the other levels - it would not be done before September (and if I do not have much free time, October).
Sorry for the double post but I also want ed to say that you have to remember that you released your mission at the same time as some other huge releases. We have been waiting for Belboz's missions for years. Dont forget Thief DS. Give it some time, more will download your missions. By the way, is the city mission done yet?
Sting
I do not think that picking the safe has really much to do with the number of downloads, because no one complained about it being the same as in the first level before you, and so it can be difficult to know about it before actually downloading and playing the mission. And, while the safe puzzle is surely similar, it is not quite the same (in fact I did not expect that anyone will dislike it because of similarity to the previous mission). However, you can rest assured that I will not make another mansion mission (with or without a safe to pick), because there are already too many such levels, and I do not think that anyone needs another one.
Let me start by saying I enjoyed your first mission. It was really great. Now as for this new one, I enjoyed about 3 quarters of it and then stopped. Once I realized that you used the same timing puzzle again, I was dismayed. Dont get me wrong. I think your second mission is great except for that timing puzzle at the safe. I think this is why a lot of people didnt download this level. The attic timing was a neat new expirence, pick lock at the right time, then retreat. Repeat until open. But to use the same timing puzzle here, it just kind of ruins the experence. It sort of makes both levels the same so to speak, if you get what I mean. Dont get me wrong, your level design is excellent, just try something different for a final puzzle. I will finish this level sometime soon. By the way I dont mean any offense, you are good, and I can hardly wait for your city mission. Your fan base will get bigger as you do more levels and get even better. Nobody starts out perfect.
Sting
The comments about timing are right, but I am afraid that it does not matter when do I release a new level, it is almost sure that 3-4 others will be out at the same time, diverting attention. And T
Ignore the smilies in the previous post. I wanted to write T:DS but it was converted to smilies.
Not quite right. The number of downloads was the highest in the first few days, and is continuously decreasing since then.
I'm sure that other people are doing what I'm doing, which is trying to get through T3 before getting on with playing the latest FMs. It's going to take me awhile to find enough time but I certainly WILL be playing all of them ASAP. Since there's no Editor out for T3, I don't think you need to worry about interest in FMs waning. Those of us who can, will play through T3 once or twice and sit it on the shelf, then go looking for new T1 & 2 FMs to play. Frankly, so far, I think they're better than the new game.
OK, so people will play FMs when they are finished with T3, although they will most probably play missions that are going to be released then, and not those that have been released now. Knowing this, it is most likely that Out for a Revenge is going to meet the fate of Retrieval of the Soul, and is expected to be just as much of a failure as the other level, or even worse.
By the way, you can check what is currently done in the new mission (download from here), but it becomes increasingly unlikely that I will finish it, because it is almost sure that a third level would meet even less success.
I think I'd better stop the development of the city mission, and re-release a modified and maybe slightly extended second version of Out for a Revenge after 1-2 months from now.
I think I have no reason to be afraid of that ever happening.
You can use anything from my FMs as long as you credit me in the readme file included with your level (at least if used as tutorials they are not totally useless). The 'terrain demo' is public domain and you can do anything with it. I will probably release everything I done with DromEd to be freely used by anyone, and forget about Thief level design.Speaking of which do you have any other demos I can learn from ... love your innovative ideas ... my own FM is in the works but I have a long way to go.
I've viewed both you new mission and terrain files and all I have to say is PLEASE don't stop. I, for one, would be more than happy to betatest your new mission for you.
I have continued the new level so far, although only for the fun of level design rather than with any expectations about it not being ignored.
You can download the current state (beware: this is dromed only and the bandwidth is very limited, so only designers should download it) from here.
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