Reply With QuoteAnd thanks to you, too, Brethren for organizing and running the contest and for all your work!
Congratulations, Rod! Well done, my friend!
And congrats to all the authors and thank you for your hard work and for the fun missions!
Without further ado...
Congratulations goes out to...
darthsLair
...for the winning entry in the 10 rooms contest, Hammered!. Well done sir. Wait a minute, didn't you retire from Dromed a while back?
-Thanks to everyone who entered the contest. I thought there were some really unique and creative entries this time around, especially considering the time limitation. Hope to see more from all of you soon.
-Rookie of the year award goes to Soul Tear, for his first officially released FM, Lost In The Far Edges. It was quite the debut, to say the least.
-Thanks to the mods (Nightwalker, nickie, Tannar) for their support, and an extra special nod to Al_B for administering all the voting.
For you stats junkies, here are all the fine details:
Overall (average scores, with a maximum of 15 total):
Hammered, by darthsLair, 13.29
The Serpentine Amulet, by SneakyGuy101, 11.59
Lost In The Far Edges, by Soul Tear, 11.43
Anybody...Home?, by Zoro, 11.23
The Cave Artifact, by sNeaksieGarrett, 8.72
Subcategories (average scores, with a maximum of 5 each)
Theme (10 Rooms):
The Serpentine Amulet, 4.47
Hammered, 4.43
Anybody...Home?, 4.37
Lost In The Far Edges, 4.03
The Cave Artifact, 3.89
Overall Creativity:
Hammered, 4.46
Lost In The Far Edges, 4.41
Anybody...Home?, 3.71
The Serpentine Amulet, 3.60
The Cave Artifact, 2.49
Gameplay:
Hammered, 4.41
The Serpentine Amulet, 3.67
Anybody...Home?, 3.16
Lost In The Far Edges, 3.15
The Cave Artifact, 2.46
Again, a big thanks to all participated and voted. There were quite a few good comments that came along with the votes, and I'll be posting there here shortly, all anonymous, over the next couple of days.
(If any of the authors do not want me to post comments for their mission publicly, even anonymously, let me know and I can send them to you by PM instead).
Edit/Update: I finally have added player comments for all the missions. Shortcuts to those posts are right here:
Anybody...Home?
Hammered
Lost In The Far Edges
The Cave Artifact
The Serpentine Amulet
Last edited by Renault; 9th May 2014 at 11:17.
And thanks to you, too, Brethren for organizing and running the contest and for all your work!
Congratulations, Rod! Well done, my friend!
And congrats to all the authors and thank you for your hard work and for the fun missions!
Thank you and you're very welcome!Originally Posted by Tannar
I am very glad with my place in the results and enjoyed contributing to this awesome contest and I would also like to say a congrats and cheers to all other authors! I can't wait until another contest
Congratulations Rod! Hammered was your usual, polished standard. Let me know if you want an updated custom title to reflect this win.
I was glad I managed to play all the entries this time, I enjoyed them all very much indeed. And thanks, Brethren for all your hard work.
Congratulations, Rod! A well deserved win.I must say I was impressed by all the entries and had a lot of fun playing them (once I got past falling every five seconds in one of them!
)
Thank you, Brethren, for taking the time to run the contest so we could all have the fun of exploring these great FMs!
darthslair. A man who knows how to do stuff really well!
I'm glad to see you've won this contest!
Many-many thanks from me goes to Tannar!
Great job to all contestants! I enjoyed playing all of them!!
Congrats to darthslair your mission was awesome!!
Congratulations Rod
I'm going to stick this for a while. Considering how many people played, I'm sure there are more who'd like to add their congratulations.
Congrats darthsLair and all the other authors!! You've made great missions
Congratulations to everyone involved, a fantastic contest!
Congrats to darthslair - Hammered is a fab FM. I enjoyed playing all the FMs - and for those entrants who are "first timers" or still relatively new to building, I applaud you - Dromed looks like a right pain in the ..... and it's really great to see new people creating FMs. Great contest, thanks Brethren
Thanks to all for your big work. I've enjoyed all the fms, for different reasons... Congrats Darthslair, a wonderful fm, made by a great author, has been rewarded
BoshI disagree with that. If skilled - DromEd looks like a real god tool for building up the Dark WorldDromed looks like a right pain in the .....
and it's a lot of fun
I've enjoyed making the mission, but I believe I could do something much-much better.
One person's pleasure is another's pain!I disagree with that. If skilled - DromEd looks like a real god tool for building up the Dark World
and it's a lot of fun
Wondering whether anyone had heard from Rod lately?
Finally got an email from Rod, sounds like he's been traveling a lot lately and hasn't had internet access. Seems to be doing fine though.
That's good to know - thanks!
I don't doubt you've been busy, Brethren, but is there any ETA on posting the comments from the contest?
If by "been busy" you actually mean "I completely forgot" well then you're right.
Totally slipped my mind, I'll try to get them up this week sometime.
LOL! Cool, thanks.
Sorry for the delay on the player comments, everyone. I forgot all about it (again) and moved on to another project and got too wrapped up in that. One thing at a time! I feel bad because it's great that people take the time to vote and comment and provide some feedback to the authors, but none of it's much good if I don't post them publicly.
So in any case, I'm putting them up now, here they come. Anonymous as always.
Player comments for Anybody Home? by Zoro:
Slightly illogical puzzles; Why would I leave daughter's bedroom key on a balcony? Why would I think of looking for the balcony key in the middle of the kitchen floor?Good mission with great puzzles!The fact that the code was not easy to get and all the secrecy surrounding it on the thread made this fm incomplete. I don't need puzzles to solve I just want challenging objectives.I've never been afraid of a bed before...A nice and very creative mission. Too bad I did not enjoy the weird number puzzle at all.I gave it a lower gameplay score because of non-intuitive puzzles (the combination, and some of the other puzzles, I had to look up the solution for on the forums). That said, this is still a fun little mission, with quite a bit of creativity throughout.Rules, or more like "the rule", was well followed in this fm. It was kinda interesting to see author making much scripted events in so small area. While the things that were meant to have scary wibe in them, most of them lacked it, due to being the very old overused stock resource of original Thief. They also were kinda clicheish.Overall it was neat little fm.
..Also, i don't know was it meant to, but i found a way to open most of the doors by throwing that skeletons skull few times at them.. :PEnjoyable FM, good creepy elements and story that I'd like to see continued. Only issue for me was needing forum help to find items/code, hence gameplay marked down a little.This was a fun mission but it is mainly a short key hunt. It would have benefited from better clues about how to proceed. For example, the code puzzle was not really logical and there is no way to know you are supposed to hit the skeleton in the closet. That means you just have to run around trying everything until you are lucky enough to discover what works. In my opinion, that's not very good mission design. However, I like the whole idea behind the mission. It is a very clever idea and an interesting story. I wish it were a bit longer but the author appears to be promising a sequel. I hope so.While creative and with a good story (albeit without proper closure), there's just no challenge to it. There's no loot to collect, one enemy that can hurt you, and the "keys" are in expected places. Three rooms are not used to their fullest, only there to flesh out the scenery; the bathroom, WC, and master bedroom.Beautiful little mission, interesting use of space: partially vertical, and seemed much bigger than in reality thanks to key hunt and places you see but cannot enter (elevator, neighbourhood) + scary teddy bear, loved it! I liked how you created the illusion of space using windows view. Also, this skeleton in closet - LOL!! However, the story seemed - to me - a bit illogical (e.g. this creepy bed?? why...?) and this is the only problem (a tiny one!) is see here. Many thanks for your hard work!Great horror-atmosphere mission, a pleasure to play during the evening. Nice idea and good execution.
Quite intriguing plot with a creeepy moments and a promise for the continuation (hopefully).
Nice sounds and background music set. Really matches the story and overall atmosphere.
Quite interesting approach towards AI (with no guards) =)
I liked script moments with appearing items and objects. It brings a reason for each area involved in the mission.A fun to play thing. I'd definitely recommend it to others.
Player comments for Hammered by darthsLair:
I find this FM a quite good piece of art. As for the "10 rooms" theme - It seems decent enough.This was freakin AWESOME!!This was fun I don't know about ten rooms but it sure was entertaining even with the lagGreat mission - plenty of varied challenges.Full disclosure: I beta-tested this fine mission, so as I walked through all the things I had to do (which I had done many times before), I got to enjoy the mission and just look at how well done it is, how many "little things" (rocks in various areas, pretty things to look at, different things to look at - a castle, a chapel, a sewer, some high places, a pagan area) were just right, and how many different ideas got implemented in this mission. I think hiding a combination "in the bells ringing" is new. Also, a lot of different gameplay items and tricky gameplay. I would never have guessed I could make it up to the altar of the chapel without having learned the tricks during the beta, but that part is tricky, the Hammer of the Heavens is tricky, the safe room was tricky, certainly getting into the fortress was a little interesting (many ways to do that, too). There's just a lot of different things to do and that you can do in this mission. Very, very good mission!Very nice plot, location and interesting gameplay.Beautiful mission, a very beautiful process, excellent hiding prey. A very playable even the highest difficulty. I give maximum points and I wish the author success in the hope other missions. Hopefully soon we will see?Clearly the winner. It was fun from the start to finish. Fun being the operating word. Two of the others were so convoluted they were hard to finish.Another neat little fetch quest mission. While it didn't really bring up anything never before experienced, it did have alot of small details that made it interesting. 10 room rule was kinda vaguely followed in this fm and i guess it's up to everyones own interpretation did it stay under 10 limit or not, in my opinion it didn't.
Architecture was bit "chunky" too, i was kinda hoping to see some more detail in brushing.
Overall i think it was fairly fun mission to play.Great FM, my favourite overall n the competition. Story, gameplay, challenge - all good, fun and not impossible (played expert). Like the new and bonus objectives popping up. Good work!Clever, beautiful, extremely well-designed mission, full of nice little touches everywhere. Given the constraints of the contest, this is great mission designing. The story was a bit unusual and didn't make a lot of sense at first. But if you just go with it and accept the original premise, it's fine. I had a lot of fun playing this one and really felt like I was playing Thief. So, well done!Hope to see a part 2 for this game!The best contest mission for me. Looks as the most creatively executed. Absolutely beautiful design, textures and architecture job. Good story trip, interesting puzzles. A really mature job.
Level Architecture and design job to be separately mentioned: beautifull and creatively done job, especially if taking into account all the limitations given by the contest rules.
Other parts of the mission as the sound, AI, scripts - everything is in harmony and perfectly executed.
This mission really made my evening and is the one I'll re-play with the pleasure.Quite a bit of good thiefy fun, but just too dull and audio-visually pedestrian. Design was solid and even interesting at parts, but also a bit amaterish at parts. It adhered well the rules (but I didn't count the rooms exactly), and it didn't feel like being artificially restricted by the rules. The background story felt just too random and the FM's story arc wasn't anything special (being special isn't mandatory of course). A couple of objectives felt out of place for a FM with relatively little story content. Puzzles were alright.
The FM would have been better with some polishing here and there; deepening the background story and making the FM revolve around it or changing it altogether. The FM really lacked that something.Amazing how big this mission seems to be! Secret entrances, AIs, enormous buildings, everything beautifully finished. And I liked flying stones
Player comments for Lost In The Far Edges by Soul Tear:
Great mission with great visual details, however, I didn't notice a reference of the "10 rooms" theme - It was too "enlarged" for such limits I think.Impossible and unfathomable.gameplay took a hit because it was so difficult, and required players to do things/use equipment in new ways not fully explainedAmazing looking layout, but extremely frustrating. After the vents I was able to proceed and was amazed by the forest section. And I hope the builder will continue this series!! It would have been very helpful if the drain pipes were climbable.Too much Trial and Error. From launching arrows to making jumps. Each and every step took multiple attempts to make progress. It was like coming across a lock that takes 10 minutes to open. Now multiply by 100. At least 50 challenges were way too hard. One could get stuck in a dromed crack at every turn causing a reload.Love the location so high up. The textures were the best in the competition; and that forest was stunning. For me, the leaping/climbing was really frustrating, too much so, hence low score here. I died way too much, and needed lots of forum help to navigate/find things.What is the sense in creating a game where the player must ask the creator what to do next? The story and gameplay don't fit. Not self supportive, and very frustrating to play, as the player has no idea how to proceed to the next step. Overall-Poor Gameplay, good graphics, but I am not in the least impressed with it.
If it were not for having to reload 50-100 times to attempt to get to the next place, I might have found some enjoyment in it. Not well planned for being a self supportive and playable mission.This was... HARD! Really hard! The author clearly has taken the idea (that goes all the way back to the game "Dark Forces") of putting the player around and on top of infinite falls to their death and trigger the player's "fear of falling" reflex many times, and ran with it! The annoying part is it wasn't clear in a few places where you could and couldn't put vine arrows to help you get where you're going. Similarly, it wasn't clear where to go in some cases (most notably, going to windows far below you). That said, a few of the puzzles were actually pretty straightforward (the vents), but too many puzzles required me to get the answer on ttlg's forums. In particular, the gate you mantle through to get to the area where you place the anti-magic crystal was not intuitive at all. But, the rooms had very nice architecture and many of the areas were very beautiful (the areas near the crystal and the forest in particular). I have to give the author top marks for creativity even though jumping puzzles/ropework aren't my cup of tea.Excellent idea for a mission which includes lots of excellent ideas for creating fun, tense gameplay. Unfortunately, these ideas were sometimes not so well executed. I really liked the challenging terrain and loved that there was so much "rooftop" work. I really liked having to struggle to find my way forward, and I really liked the things I had to do to proceed. But some of them were unnecessarily difficult, such as a railing you must walk on but the part that actually supports you is invisible and the visible part won't support you so you fall to your death until you figure out where you can walk. But this is a minor annoyance compared to how much fun that part of the mission was.
However, there are a couple of glaring problems. It is necessary to backtrack, probably many times, before you figure out how to proceed and actually get the items you need to do so. And that means you must fight the finicky terrain many times which just becomes frustrating and tedious. Having to cross it once was fun, having to cross it multiple times, not so much.
Also, you can end the mission prematurely by completing all your goals, for example if you meet the loot goal before going to the forest (which, by the way, is beautifully done in every respect!). Conversely, you can find yourself unable to complete the mission if you go to the forest without finding enough loot first. This really should have been caught in testing.
But overall, it was more fun than it was frustrating and an outstanding effort. I hope to see more from this author and more missions of this type and this level of difficulty, just with some of the frustrating elements removed.I would have rated this mission higher if it hadn't been so incredibly difficult to get around in and figure out what to do. It was very creative and the forest was really well designed.This was not an easy game to play. Had to save almost at every step in playing. Mantling in some area was just way to hard and I got killed to many times trying. The layout and story line is great but a lot of area needs to be more accessible to keep the player interest and moving forward in the game.This was very fun mission to play, something i'd gladly see a full mission made from.This mission could have been a nice challenge. But as it is, I found it rather too hard and tedious due to some flaws in the gameplay.
Without a video walkthrough available I would have shelved this mission before completing it.
I assume this was due to time constraints and I would be glad to play a polished version.Quite unique looking but absolutely horrible in gameplay mission. For me it was full of meaningless tooth-crushing puzzles with no logically acceptable clues. # of "Help-me!" forum posts is a kind of evidence...
Yet, it is a brilliant textures/objects work, a true must-be-look-like benchmark. Lot's of custom-made things looks just great.
Have to admit quite unique approach fot the overall idea execution.
I also liked the sound execution - great job!
I think that the Author put his really best for the mission but over-reached the willingness to make "good puzzles" (dude, please don't try so hard next time). Yet, I bet that this guy will crush our brains with something of a bigger level and much more enjoyable in gameplay job. I'm really looking forward to his upcomming project.It was a FM, that could have been really great, but fell miserably to its design flaws. Man I wish I could give it less points, as it didn't feel like 7 out of 15. Well, the background story was great, it had that surreal feeling at parts, and even managed to surprise you. The story ended abruptly, so I'm looking forward for a sequel. The FM was visually very good looking, it had nice textures and objects and architecture was impressive. Overall it had some very original scenes and good feeling to it. Too bad it didn't feel like The City though. The ambient tracks were unfitting and not even Thiefy in the city, but in the forest the soundscape was great.
The FM was mostly unpleasant and irritating to play because of its bad design. The FM was very hard and all the jumps and maneuvers had to be just right so quickly you ended up looking more at the loading screen than the wild scenery. I wasn't able to complete this without walkthrough as it was hard to know where to go next: it was inconsistent where you could mantle or shoot rope arrows and which of the dozens of windows you could open. You just had to know it. You were even forced to use violence once. The loot requirements were way too high, I wasn't able to find most of them and not being able to come back later to collect all of it, I would have become stuck again without walkthrough. The high loot requirement forced you to find nearly all secrets and pseudo-secrets and derived you horribly from the main quest. I found even a few bugs: there were a few places where Garrett could get stuck, and one objective didn't fail when it was supposed to.
The FM adhered badly to the contest rules. I think it had exactly 10 rooms, but it felt like being artificially restricted. There were a lot of places you felt like you could go to, but you were 'railroaded' instead. The FM felt very short, even though you spent a lot of time on it, but all the time was spent yo-yoing blindly back and forth.Very interesting story with well developed characters. I almost felt sorry for poor cheated fellow. Not to many AIs, but I guess it could be more than this - maybe in golden version
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