Thief fan missions and campaigns

[Severian Silk]

Thief is too hard core. Maybe I will give it a go again some time in the future.

 

[JarlFrank]

So I'm playing some older FMs that I haven't played before. Just played "Ack! There's a zombie in the basement".

This was fun. Short, but fun. Took me maybe 20 minutes to get through, it's a small mansion with a zombie in the basement. That's pretty much all there is to it in terms of story. The nobleman's servant got sick, died, turned into a zombie, now you have to kill the zombie and steal a precious item the zombie has stolen from the lord for some reason.

There wasn't much in the way of multiple entrances (only two: main doors and air duct into the basement), but the small mansion is well-designed nonetheless, and on expert you only get one knockout so you pretty much have to ghost it.
Definitely recommended if you're in the mood for a short timewaster.

 

[Severian Silk]

Crysis was too hard for me too. Having to juggle so many different concerns (the suit in that case) at once is exacting for me. I have an easier time with turn-based games.

 

[Max_b5]

I've played some of the fixed version of 'Night of the Red Moon'. An hour and a half and I've just found a scepter, a candle, a ladder, a flower and the "blackjack".

- "Ant Simulator 2016" would be the most fitting name for the scaling. Everything is just so large that it takes almost half an hour to travel the whole starting area alone.
- The scare factor is "Roofs of Gold 2.0" but worse. It tries so hard it's not even funny but annoying.

An hour and a half and I haven't found half of the items I must get. I know videogames themselves are a waste of time but I'm not that stupid. Shelvin' it. Don't try it unless you're dying of boredom.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

"Seven Shades of Mercury" is the second-most ambitious Thief 1/2 FM ever made. Years in the making and sporting a large dev team with lofty aspirations, it was intended to be a "T2X"-esque campaign, only bigger and better. Sadly the project collapsed, so this singular mission remains as the only tangible element of it, but this is also one of the 'must-play' fan missions of the Thief community.

SSoM is 100% Hammerites, with a sprinkle of Harry Potter thrown in for good measure. As the awesome briefing video explains, the player controls a student at a presitigious Hammerite academy who is about to graduate. All that stands in his way is the final ritual: A war game where the seven teams of the graduating class are pitted against each other. Due to treachery the player is the only one left standing on his team, and must triumph over all the other teams to stand a chance of graduating. That means not only recovering the Icon of his team, but stealing the Icons of all the other teams. And the player is left at the bottom of a frozen river with no equipment except a light-bending cloak of concealment. With the Underdog scenario firmly in place, it's time to set out in what should have been one of the most glorious FMs ever made.

If the start of it wasn't such a mess, that is.

One of the beauties of Thief is how flexible the game is. Assuming that the player isn't a complete dunderblock (or the devs for that matter) there are always multiple options available in any given situation. SSoM, at its start, begins by removing all possible options and doesn't hand them back until later. Because for some boneheaded reason, the first section of the FM must be done in that one particular manner, with no alternative methods accepted. Which wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't for the random element; that despite following every step of "the plan" and doing everything by the book, it can all still fall apart because of reasons beyond your control. This will lead to the player being forced to retry this section over and over again until he either gets it right or quits in disgust...and frankly I can't blame anyone that does the latter, because considering the care and thought put into designing the rest of the FM, this opening section can pretty much go fuck itself. To make it easier on taffers wanting to play this FM, I'll include a step-by-step walkthrough of the first section at the end of this post.

Anyway, once past this first section the FM opens up in a big way, it's neatly divided between two large buildings, the academy itself and the second-biggest cathedral ever seen in a Thief FM. And both buildings are gorgeous. A LOT of time went into making them look the way they do, down to the seemingly countless arches in the ceiling. Keep in mind this FM was made in the days of OldDark and before Hi-Def graphics became the norm, so while it may look a bit old in the tooth at times, SSoM really pushed those standards to their limits back then. This is easily one of the most visually jaw-dropping FMs ever made, up there with "Rose Cottage" and "King's Story" and probably a couple others I can't recall right now.

More than that, the architectural design plays into the game design of SSoM. The player is up against 6 other teams of Hammerites, and due to the architecture (and the occasional outside factor) each team needs to be approached and dealt with differently. Blue Team skulks in the sewers, meaning narrow passages that offer few hiding places. Gold Team marches through the academy itself, offering the 'standard' approach methods of Thief. Red Team patrols the Cathedral, a large, open space that is completely at odds with the environment of Blue Team. Purple team camps out in the open two-story library and relies exclusively on ranged attacks. I'll leave it to the player to discover what's in store regarding the last two teams.

SSoM also follows the rule that "the Builder is in the details". There are very few (if any) FMs that have more readables than this one, and most of them are just Hammerite religious text...and new text at that, not copypastas from the Thief OMs. Fortunately the level and quality of writing is top-notch. A few Hammerites keep diaries which all open with curses upon anyone that dares read them. While diaries written by adult men are cause for me to diagnose Audiolog Syndrome, the way these diaries are written show their owners to be little more than superstitious and childish boys pretending to be adults, which is all too appropriate considering the context. The only readable that is clearly stricken by Audiolog Syndrome is the journal of the Black Team Leader - considering there are dozens of readables in this FM, I'm amazed there's only one such text to be found.

The voice-acting also bears mentioning. While the player retains Garrett's voice for general activities (grunts and yelps and such) the voice cast for everyone else has been redone from scratch. The regular Hammerite voices don't get a look in - instead each team has their own set of distinct lines, with a few of them being repeats of well-known Hammerite lines. And while the voice actors aren't of high quality, they sound realistic - teenagers trying to sound like adults, people that are so close to getting their proper speaking voices, so there's a slight hint of doubt in the voice. But not everything about the voice acting is pretty. Every team has different lines, but every team also only has one line for every activity. They speak the same line over and over when they're searching, the same line when patrolling, etc. It gets tiresome really fast. What's worse, I can't but shake the feeling that some voice lines got mixed up. Make a noise around a Gold Team member, and he immediately goes "We've got him now, boys!" as if he instantly knows what's going on, yet he's looking around to try to find the source of the noise. This does nothing but confuse players for no reason.

Overall: 8/10. If it weren't for the piss-poor start of the FM this would easily be a 9/10, possibly even higher. Despite that fault SSoM stands as a testament to the ambitions of DromEd dabblers, and so it is pretty much mandatory for taffers to at least have a go at it.

In order to help out those taffers, below is the walkthrough for the first steps of the FM:

Spoiler

Step 1: Make your way over to the ice floe by the walkway. A Blue Team member patrols the walkway and up the tunnel, so you need to wait for him to pass before you can safely go up there. At the top of the tunnel is a small room, the far left corner can be used to hide from the patroller and wait until he passes by again.
(Optional Step: There are two water arrows in the river. While they won't help you here at the start, they may come in handy later.)
Step 2: Once the patrolling blue is out of your way, make your way up the second tunnel to enter another small room with a generator. From here is another tunnel leading into a third room, don't go up there just yet. SAVE YOUR GAME first.
Step 3: Once you reach the third room, a scripted scene will begin: Two Blue members will be attacked by two Gold members on the other side of the generator that's right in front of you. Don't worry about that yet. Instead, turn to your right and find the valve at the far end on the pipe. Turn it to disable a trap that'll otherwise block your path later on.
(Optional Step: Look above you in the tunnel leading to this room and grab a Moss Arrow. At least this could prove useful in here, if you think it's needed.)
Step 4: From where you entered this room, now turn left and crouch-sneak towards a toolbox. Open it to get a Noisemaker Arrow.
Step 5: On the wall above the toolbox is a lever. Pull it to turn off the lights (this is important!).
(Optional Step: On the box to your right is a scroll, read it to learn about the traps that are ahead.)
Step 6: Either sneak carefully around the box, or climb up on the box and carefully drop down on the other side of it. If the Blue/Gold fight ended with a survivor too close to the box, climbing the box may be your only option.
Step 7: Make your way around the room by crouching and hugging the left wall. This will have you crawl under pipes and be behind the other generator in the room.
Step 8: Once you reach the exit, stay in the shadows and SAVE.
Step 9: Go back a couple of steps so you're looking down the way you came. Aim and fire the Noisemaker Arrow towards the empty corner you came from. This should make the fight survivors go there to investigate (this is important!). Aim low to guarantee the arrow reaches the corner.
Step 10: While their attention is on the arrow, go down the corridor. Don't go up the stairs, head forward between the electric nodes and into the room on the right.

(If you see electricity coursing between the nodes, you failed Step 3. You can climb and mantle across the nodes, but that's very likely to shock you and steal lots of valuable health from you.)

Assuming everything went as planned, you were not followed. The fight survivors will be on High Alert and immediately come running if they as much as get a whiff of you. If you're lucky the fight survivors will hang out in that corner with the arrow and never bother you again.

Step 11: Once in this new room, stop and get a good look around. On the right is a suspicious-looking pipe. Move closer to it and you should spot a frobbable panel. Open it to reveal a lever, this controls the pipe. Frobbing it activates a Gas Trap that's more than likely to kill you. You need to stand on the far side of the pipe, up against the wall, to be able to frob the lever without getting gassed.
Step 12: Examine closely the floor around you. Spot the tripwire by the generator. Jump over it and remember where it is.
(Optional Step: In the other doorway is another lever with a note. This is another toggle for the pipe, so leave it alone.)
Step 13: Making sure the coast is clear, make your way down the corridor and into the room on the right. There are two Blue team members patrolling here, plus an archer on the walkway above.
Step 14: Avoiding alerting the guards, go into the water at the far end of the room. At the bottom of the water is an item you need to grab, so find it.
Step 15: Once you surface (but before you get out of the water) look around for a ladder on the wall close to that large pipe you may have seen. Climb out of the water there, climb up the ladder and into the pipe.
Step 16: Read the note to realize the situation: You must exit the pipe while running so that you land in the thin slice of water between the two waterfalls. SAVE before trying.
Step 17: While a running jump with a left hook will do the job, others have suggested that running out at a left angle is sufficient. Either way it's very easy to die here, so don't be afraid to fail.
Step 18: Assuming you landed safely in the water, swim to the other end and grab the 3 Rope Arrows above you. Crawl out of the water and slide down back to where you started.
Step 19: Retrace your steps back up the sloping tunnel (watch out for the Blue team patroller!) and into the room where the fight took place.
Step 20: SAVE, then have a look around the room.
Step 21a: If the fight survivors are hanging in the corner of the room, good for you, just sneak through the center of the room and down the corridor again.
Step 21b: If the fight survivors are in the center of the room for some reason, go around the edge of the room as before, then run down the corridor. They will come running once they see you in the corridor, so duck into the room with the Gas Trap and use that to take them out.
Step 22: Assuming you're safely in the corridor and no one is trying to kill you, look up at the hole in the ceiling close by the stairs. There's a wooden beam up there, fire a Rope Arrow up at it and climb up.
Step 23: You're now in another set of narrow tunnels, and there's another Blue Team patroller around. Make your way to the right, then turn left at the junction.
Step 24: Climb up the ladder that's ahead and open the trap door above you. You're now in a room with a chest, which contains your gear.
Step 25: Congratulations, you're now ready to enjoy Seven Shades of Mercury!

 

[skacky]

I AM BRICK, I AM MORTAR. I SHALL BRING TO THE HEATHEN SLAUGHTERRRRR

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I AM BRICK, I AM MORTAR. I SHALL BRING TO THE HEATHEN SLAUGHTERRRRR

I FLIPPED AN IMPERICAL COIN, AND IT SAID WE WOULD WIN

THE BUILDER SAID: GO OUT INTO THE LAND, BUILD MIGHTY FORTRESSES SUCH YOU MAY CLEANSETH THE LAND, GUIDE THE UNBELIEVER WITH MY WISDOM

Not to forget all the knockout sounds that sound they've been kicked in the nuts.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

So...if "Seven Shades of Mercury" is the second-most ambitious Thief 1/2 FM ever made, then what is the most ambitious one?

The answer is obvious to most - "CoSaS Mission X".

(T2X sits comfortably in the third spot, but at least that one was completed upon release, while the other two were mammoth missions intended to be part of campaigns that were intended to surpass T2X.)

The CoSaS line of missions tells a story of power struggle and intrigue within the aristocracy of The City, with the player's character being a part of a team of sneaky taffers that answer to Lord Nightfall and take care of his shady dealings in the night. The first mission, "Gathering at the Bar" comes highly recommended and is well worth playing. Sadly I do not have as much praise for Mission X, and I hope to explain why in this post.

Nothing really can prepare you for what lies ahead in Mission X. The neat-looking intro video lays down the basic plot, followed by many pages of 'homework' in the Notes section to make sure players are up to speed. That still won't be enough.

You see, MX is also in the top running for another title within the Thief community: The hardest FM ever made. Normal FMs have 'Expert' as the highest difficulty level, MX starts there and raises the stakes further. 'Impossible' difficulty only gives you 6 Hit Points and sparse equipment choices, among other challenges. I've only played MX once, and I did not choose Impossible...and to be honest, only masochists should even consider it. Only FMs like "Finals at the Academy", "King's Story" and the ill-reputed "Keeper of Infinity" are in the same league of difficulty...and of those only FatA may be harder than MX. This isn't taffing about for fun and profit anymore...this is work. This is someone trying to make Thief into Mission: Impossible...and for better or for worse they succeeded.

The biggest difference between MX and pretty much every other FM ever made, is that you're working as part of a team. Thief is all about the 'lone wolf', MX is not. You have to check in and stay in contact with your teammates, help them when needed and not get in their way, adding a completely new layer of problems to juggle around. The really clever part here is that in reality there is no team - just a brilliant usage of voice acting and variables to convey the feeling. There are also timed and hidden objectives, but fortunately they are almost entirely optional. In fact, a large part of the effort put into this mission involves optional objectives. Completing these optional objectives will alter the mission debriefing, with your success being measured by your teammates. While a brilliant idea in and of itself, its impact is dulled by the lack of follow-up to the mission. As part of a campaign this would have been dynamite, a motivational push for the player to strife to be the best he can. Sadly the story of CoSaS ends with this mission, so the incentive to go for these objectives is lessened. But they're there if you fancy a challenge.

So what exactly, if anything, does MX do wrong?

Its biggest fault is simply "it's too much". There are so many things the player needs to keep track of. While MX does the best it can to make it easier for you (like the keyring) there can and will come times when the mission fails for some bizarre reason, like a stashed-away body being discovered, or a tiny slip-up unleashing bedlam - and that's before we get to the quirky aspects of MX. I've had guards in MX show...erratic behavior. Failing to spot me when they brush up against me while searching for me, then suddenly come running like mad dogs when I make a normal footstep more than 4 rooms away! The AI has been tampered with, and the result can sometimes be something out of Westworld. Keep in mind that when MX was released it was the most taxing and demanding FM ever made, to the point that it often made DromEd run home and cry (and MomEd is not something to be messed with!). So seeing so little go wrong is testimony to the effort put into this.

Here is the part where I would delve into some of the finer details of the FM...but to be honest I won't because I just couldn't bother playing it again. I started playing, I glanced at the walkthrough...and I just couldn't be bothered. So you'll get no whining from me about how good/bad the readables are, and very little on the architecture beyond stating that it's good and realistic. I also won't give the FM a rating, as that wouldn't be fair. One thing that is really off-putting for me on a personal level is the self-inclusion of the authors of CoSaS. Reading about 'Lord Nightfall', the backstory and seeing some of the imagery used in the game makes me think of LARPers and a mIRC session gone horribly wrong somewhere. (Having SlyFoxx use his Garrett voice for an uppity nobleman doesn't help either.) And the readme adds insult to injury. "MX will become the rule, not the exception" is stated therein, but the fact is that it's the other way around. MX IS the exception. It is unique. There isn't a taffer alive who think they can best Mission X in terms of ambition, experimental gameplay and just outright raping the Dark Engine. The team set out to create something spectacular, and they succeeded...but I can't help but think of Dr. Ian Malcolm's words from Jurassic Park: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn't stop to think if they should."

As a result we have this veritable T-Rex of a Thief FM. It's not bad or horrible, but due to its experimental nature it'll never be top-grade either. But it is a challenge to any taffer, and any serious taffer will rise to it. Stick this one at the end of your taffing career, for it is the grand prize. Enter the Ivory Rose...if you dare.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

About Cosas: mission X, I remember completing all the objectives on the impossible difficulty in a second play through, just after a blind play through when it was first released. It's those kind of missions that introduced some mechanics you're not familiar with. Well after you understand what you're supposed to do to complete the timed objectives, they're not hard at all.

I actually liked the approach of being part of an "impossible Mission" taking place in the city. This mission is also a kind of a baptism of fire for you character, who is a new member of the "team", and your teammates are constantly treating you as a rookie. That was what motivated me to complete the optional objectives. I never touched it again... but mostly because I like to play new FMs other than replaying it...

Anyway, it's a different kind of mission, but I'd recommend just because of that, and because of the effort put on it.

 

[SlyFoxx]

I guess we'll agree to disagree about MX. But I don't know where you got the idea that I used my Garrett voice. I did two voices for MX and neither sounded anything like Garrett. And Digi shit canned a ton of other voices from me before settling on those two. More than any other project that I've had the honor and pleasure to be involved. The final testing took an entire summer and endless revisions. (I was really good at breaking stuff) I must have played the thing 75 times. So poo-poo all you like but that mission was a labor of love that probably totaled 50,000+ man hours of work and testing. Looking at the the flow charts of if/then events it's a miracle this mission didn't collapse under its own weight.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

I guess we'll agree to disagree about MX. But I don't know where you got the idea that I used my Garrett voice. I did two voices for MX and neither sounded anything like Garrett. And Digi shit canned a ton of other voices from me before settling on those two. More than any other project that I've had the honor and pleasure to be involved. The final testing took an entire summer and endless revisions. (I was really good at breaking stuff) I must have played the thing 75 times. So poo-poo all you like but that mission was a labor of love that probably totaled 50,000+ man hours of work and testing. Looking at the the flow charts of if/then events it's a miracle this mission didn't collapse under its own weight.

One thing you said is certain and I forgot to mention: It really feels like that FM is a labor of love. Another behemoth FM is keeper of infinity, which I'm currently playing the new version, and unkillable cat kind of compared it to mission X. Both are mission that push the dark engine's limits and sometimes even cross those. But mission X is a much more polished mission, and it's difficulty is natural and feels like adequate to what it proposes. KoI on the other hand, seems like the author was trying to be smarter than it's players and so he put a lot of pixel hunting and new mechanics in it that are essential to its progress.

Another point is that Mission X feels like a group effort, whereas KoI seems like an ego-trip. Also, the difficulty in Mission X seems to me more like a smoke and mirror effect, pretty much like the "team" in the mission: You are bombarded with warnings about the difficulty that you enter the mission super sensitive to anything. But looking back, it's not that difficult at all. The mission is totally scripted but feels like you're in an open ended environment. KoI, and the author's previous mission, Lost in the far edges, suffer from things like being in the right place to be able to mantle a wall, a tiny wooden surface you can barely see as a target for rope arrows, puzzles that require you to check on the internet what you have to do (like using your sword to cut some grass), jumping from super narrow ledges on far away ropes and you have to save/reload to get the perfect and only possible way to jump - Anyway, I think his updated version is vastly improved from the original release, but I haven't finished it and from what I see, it still has a bunch of these imposed difficulties: There's a underground hole/rift in a street in the new version, and in it's lower chamber, there is a whole which you can climb down/up in roots that work like stairs. But you have to jump across those and you will misjump a lot, and die in the fall. Why the author couldn't make one simple root from the ground below to the top edge of the hole? It's just the kind of thing his missions are infested with.

About these save/reload jumping in KoI, the fact that there's only one way to jump, reach high places, backstab AI, shooting arrows, or doing everything else, makes this mission feel far more scripted than mission X.

 

[Dev_Anj]

Since we're talking about Mission X, I remember that one of my acquaintances had written up an interesting observation on it which echoes some of Cat's comments, but also raises other design issues. With his permission, I post it here:

I had a look at the Mission X playthrough. It felt like BioShock, Deus Ex, Hitman and Thief all had a grimy threeway that resulted in an unholy abomination baby. It also suffered from what I call Feature Saturation.

Feature Saturation is when a modder/developer gets a whole bunch of really, really cool ideas in their head and crams them all into the production without considering how it all fits together. In this example we have electricity everywhere, masks that act as radios, locked light switches, etc... but the guards are still guys who walk around with broadswords in their hands. There's a bunch of banter between characters because the developers really think their characters are super special and everyone will love them, even as the guy playing points out... it's nonsensical.

I can see the design connections, particularly between Lady Boyle's Last Party (I started watching the second one too... so I can see the connection... particularly the misogyny), Return to the Tower and House of Pleasures but they're all things that are not Thief, rather than things that are Thief. You'll notice that the stealthing experience in Mission X play is largely bumping into servants, turning off lights and being out of the way when the guards arrive.

Basically it just wants you to learn the paths pre-created by the developers so to guarantee you will run into all the content they've clumsily scattering about in the name of diegetic stortelling (take that Dark Souls!). The whole "We're a team, we've created the plan together" part means that you're not really experiencing the Thief freedom... you're going out and doing things step-by-step how they want you to. This is akin to all the "non-violent" solutions in Dishonored.

The BioShock/Deus Ex influence also shines through in that the mission starts as a simple "do x" and expands exponentially with choices (diminishing the value of the "plan"), complications that mean you have to go fix things for your simple plan to work (seriously... swapping out fuses?). You don't get the feeling of Thief - the isolation, the dependence on exploration to understand what you're doing and make sense of the little information you're voluntarily given, etc.

So yeah, they might be a Thief fan and his mission mods might be why they were hired for Dishonored, but it feels the person who did the hiring wasn't interested in the Thief aspects - they were interested in the not-Thief.

There's no denying that Mission X is a labour of love and a carefully designed level, but I do remember feeling that it was basically a bit too ambitious for its good and that it had little of the Thief gameplay even though elements of it were present superficially. Those aren't bad things, but they cut a bit into my enjoyment of this level.

 

[Melan]

misogyny

 

[SlyFoxx]

Now that I think about it, I did three voices for MX: Steele, Raputo and Cloud.

As a tiny rebuttal to the above. You could play MX many times and not come close to running into all the stuff that is actually in there. Obviously the mission uses scripted events but it certainly doesn't lead you around by the nose.

 

[JarlFrank]

Mission X is actually one of those great classics that I haven't played yet, because when I found out about it I was just getting into FMs and the whole thing seemed rather daunting. I should give it a shot.

 

[DrKubiac]

Gotta agree with Slyfoxx there, a real labor of love. After I released my first missions I got in contact with Digi, and he offered me to work on the briefing video of Mission X. He gave me access to their private forum, and I had a glimpse of the tremendous amount of work around Cosas, the teamwork, the attention to details, the passion surrounding the project... It inspired me, and made me change my approach to fm making, which gave birth to Rocksbourg 3 and more depth to the lore of my campaign afterward.

Despite its flaws, Mission X, and CoSaS in general, will keep a special place in my heart.
It's a goddamn shame that CoSaS is no more, the greatest loss the thief community ever had

 

[Melan]

It inspired me, and made me change my approach to fm making, which gave birth to Rocksbourg 3 and more depth to the lore of my campaign afterward.

In recent years, I have started to see this approach as a trap for FM designers where ambitious projects flounder and die. In this respect, Cosas 3, Rocksbourg 4 and the Crucible of Omens campaign can all be seen as the victims of hubris. The real mistake we made with Crucible was when we turned it from a basic, loosely strung-together mission series into a more complex full-briefing voice-acted extravaganza, and then we burned out to have eight huge, unreleased missions sitting on our hands at 80-95% completion. I don't know what's keeping Rocksbourg 4, but Rocksbourg 3 was eight years ago. Is perfection worth that?

 

[JarlFrank]

Yeah, always thinking bigger does have the effect of stalling things. I appreciate the big group efforts, make no mistake, but for small teams and especially single authors, biting off more than you can chew can lead to eternally shifting release dates that remind you of Duke Nukem Forever and Cleve's masterpiece Grimoire. In the worst case, it can lead to hitting Dromed's hard limits, even with NewDark, and the project is abandoned.

I'm falling into that trap myself right now, but luckily I know how to set priorities. First finish the essental areas of the mission, then add non-essential side areas for the additional ideas I have.
If I actually manage to implement all my ideas, Song of Lord Bafford's Lost City Bank and Bonehoard Party is going to be one beast of a mission.
But occasionally I wonder if tackling something simpler wouldn't have been a better idea.

 

[DrKubiac]

I see your point.

What's keeping Rocksbourg 4 from being released is simply the fact that I built it on olddark and lost a lot of time in the process, I got fed up with the engine and almost gave up. Then came newdark out of nowhere and it allowed me to modify the mission.
It's also the fact that I work on many ressources, a lore, 4 missions at the same time, that I'm involved in other projects and got distracted by 4 other fms I made, that I don't make a living out of it so it's purely a hobby which comes secondary in my life, got a lot of shit happening IRL...

I'm not trying to do something perfect, I'm just building this little project of mine whenever I can. Rocksbourg got a lot of hype for a reason I still cannot understand, I'm just doing it for my pleasure and I don't feel the need to stick to a schedule. Yes it's an ambitious project, but I won't let it die. I was solo for years, but it's becoming a team project because I want to finish it.

 

[Random_Taffer]

Glad to hear you're still working on it, Drk. I see your forum for it on Shalebridge with fairly recent posts, so I wondered.

 

[DrKubiac]

Don't worry, 3 people help me finish a mission right now. I didn't post on shalebridge because it was for voice acting and readables, and most of the work is complete in that regard. Your servant is so good ingame :D
Btw can't wait for your next mission!

 

[Dev_Anj]

You could play MX many times and not come close to running into all the stuff that is actually in there. Obviously the mission uses scripted events but it certainly doesn't lead you around by the nose.

I agree, but that wasn't his point. His point was that the level felt more constrictive than the average Thief level and it seems like it was aimed at making players run into content over figuring out their own solutions to problems. Of course you don't necessarily run into all of the content Mission X has the first time through because it's such a huge level, but while doing the main mission objectives you can observe that it's stringent on your resources, thus limiting your approaches a bit. This is especially truer of the higher difficulties.

 

[Mechs Delight]

His point was that the level felt more constrictive than the average Thief level and it seems like it was aimed at making players run into content over figuring out their own solutions to problems. Of course you don't necessarily run into all of the content Mission X has the first time through because it's such a huge level, but while doing the main mission objectives you can observe that it's stringent on your resources, thus limiting your approaches a bit. This is especially truer of the higher difficulties.

That's why I couldn't get into it: it's too restrictive with resources and I could never get comfortable playing in my preferred style or anything similar to it. It's a shame, really, because it's very well put together from a technical standpoint at the very least.

 

[Max_b5]

Screens of the slow progress of "Unexpected Detour" both Dromed and in-game.

 

[Melan]

Liking what I'm seeing!

In other news, Up in the Bonehoard, the first mission for the Strange Ventures contest has been released. It comes with a very brief description, so no idea about the contents, but it is for Thief Gold, so pretty sure it is by

Spoiler

DrK