Vengeance for a Thief: Part 1
Sir Taffsalot has released a new mission nearly a year after his first release "Let Sleeping Thieves Lie". The mission is a larger, more ambitious offering which clearly shows that Sir Taffsalot has grown as a mission author. Bikerdude also assisted with this mission (as he has done for many mission authors).
Briefing:
Another night, another fat noble stripped of his wealth.
Or so it seemed. It appeared that destiny had other plans. I had stolen
the Angel's Tear as planned. All that was left to do was get out of
Eskil Vadris' Manor, which seemed easy enough.
But before I could make my way out, an alarm went off
and a group of City Watch guards attacked me. I was taken to the local
City Watch complex and after a bit of a beating I was thrown into a
cell.
It is very unlikely for a master thief like me to get caught. Impossible, really. It's almost as if I was set up.
Well, I'm not spending another second in this cell. I'm
no common criminal. I'm a master of the shadows and whoever is
responsible for putting me here should start to fear the dark.
Credits:
Thank you to my beta-testers: Grayman, Bikerdude, Nbohr1more, Ppoe and Xarg
Special thanks to Bikerdude for help with improving performance and
geneal tidying up in the city area. Plus bug fixing during beta-testing.
Thank you to everyone who has helped me in the TDM Editors Guild. A
special mention to Sotha and Grayman for their quick responses and never
ending patience.
Thank you Dark Mod team for all the hard work you have done and continue to do.
Last but not least thank you to everyone who plays TDM FMs and supports The Dark Mod. Without you all this would be for nothing.
Download
Please stop by the Forums or our new Sub-Reddit to discuss the mission or TDM in general.
Other news:
The Dark Mod's "Community Beginner Contest" has a winner!
SeriousToni's Sneak and Destroy
Congratulations SeriousToni!
The missions from this contest are so good that the seriously challenge the notion of "beginner". Great job to all the participants!
Just finished playing Vengeance, great mission.
I have to get to bed, you taffers! Stop tempting me!
Ah, who am I kidding... Downloading now...
really nice.
Any ETA on a possible updated release?
Bikerdude says it's not been adequately beta-tested... and, just scanning through the TDM forum's thread on this FM reveals there are more than a couple of "bugs".
This is not meant as a slam or to be discouraging; only to ask. I've (unofficially of course!) determined that all TDM FMs benefit from the (unofficial of course!) broader beta-testing that goes on as each mission is released to the "public". There are a set of (maybe 20?) players who eat these things up within minutes or hours -- too-quickly afaic, but enough so to find the prominent glitches -- of downloading and these folk are the ones who download these FMs quickest too -- all reporting back within a few days ... this, for me, has become the real beta-test phase... hopefully to be followed by a re-release within a week or so.
?
Points taken on the "scale" of testing done by mission authors. We definitely need to gather more regulars or encourage FM authors to seek-out beta testers elsewhere (probably the latter) so that missions are seen with lots of different perspectives. To my knowledge, I couldn't name any functional bugs in the mission. One of the beta testers offered a HUGE list of potential changes with would mostly amount to the visuals being more physically accurate from a structural POV. The performance on the city streets is a tad rough on the low-end systems but Biker already looked into that as best as he could. The only possible glitch I can see is the over-active dynamic ambient in one of the city areas. I might fix that myself and offer it as an alternative version if Sir Taffsalot gives me permission. Otherwise, I doubt a revised version will be out in the short term...
These things do not concern me.
AAMOF, the way every "structural", "'Thief-Universe'-contextual", "in reality", "aesthetically", "feng-*******-shui" things are critiqued -- without fail, by sometwo or more -- kind of irritates me; much as I'm sure they are, if given the right amount of credence, a kind of healthy aspect of the core community... and much as I'm sure that my critiques are an irritant too, to others.
No, I'm not interested in those kind of fixes. To me an FM author is entirely and expressly to be expected to present the "vision" however that FM author wants.
I am just concerned with gameplay-structural problems. Real narrative-breaking glitches. Actual (and squashable) bugs. I thought I'd seen mention of a few of those kinds of things, but I do not read to closely the comments, of course, for fear of spoiliblahblahblah... if there are little to none of those discovered as yet, I shall get this one soon.
Thanks.
And also congrats to Taffsalot.
for a second there I thought you where talking about your FM, well it is nice of you to try to keep FM makers on more important matters than how faithful architecture is to real life of Thief universe. I would say that almost any kind of building is real life inspired or exists in real life, it would have being structurally sound to a civilization at some point in time, its a broad subject thats for sure. I don't see any problem with experts making critiques on the FM buildings... Thief fans complaining about differences might be annoying, but I wasn't aware of much of that happening and if there is some of that, then its easily ignorable.
Haha lol thanks for the promotion xD
Well, I played it and it was "very good" or better in all the right ways.
There were some occasions that I experienced some bugs, but those were "inherent in the system! ;)" rather than mission bugs (AI sitting on air, for example -- glitchy-happenings 1.08 will hopefully lessen if not eliminate).
And, as for the lag, I would expect such with so much AI on patrol. The streets were crawling with Filth! I'm happy to put up with a big of lag (because my setup only gets a little bit laggy under such conditions {I understand it gets worse for some and not at all, possibly, for others})... I'm happy to put up with a bit of lag for the experience of having a lot of liveliness rather than 60FPS in a ghost-town...
...
Basically?
A fine mission. Much to do and much to look forward to as well!
Thanks, Taffsalot.