Congratulations on the release, but be ready: the grumpiest Thief 2 fan is here and he's going to devastate you with critique! Mua-ha-ha-ha!
Hey everyone,
This is my first FM for Thief2, A Tough Night!
This mission was made for Thief2 The Metal Age Anniversary Contest but because it used features from Dromed Deluxe (monsters, textures etc.) was not accepted to take part in the contest.
DESCRIPTION:
This is a huge city mission so don't expect to finish it fast. A few hours of play are required even at normal mode. The story takes place between TDP and Thief 2 The Metal Age. The City is still old and dark in many areas still you can feel the air of the new Metal Age that is coming. Garrett takes part in a conflict between the Baron and the Wardens. Just read Garrett's Journal in your inventory at start. It contains all the story lines and all you need to know in order to play this mission.
SCREENSHOTS:
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Updated to version 6.0 (21.06.2020):
-The mission is now fully playable in New Dark. For those of you who still play in Old Dark you can find some old .pcx map files in the folder intrface\miss20\english\pcx and you can switch the .png files with those
-Fixed a lot of bugs and problems reported by players
-Fixed the bugged objective on expert with Mr. Orwell's mask - now this is a normal mode objective and is much easy to complete
-Added new maps, more detailed and a map of the whole city. Added Raputo's route on the map
-Fixed the gameplay, now it's more linear and faster
-Changed the story a bit
-Fixed the compass, now it's working fine
-The locations of Lady Catherine and Mr. Orwell are now marked on the map
-Added loot, changed loot locations - now it's easier to complete the loot goals
-Changed the lightning on streets - you have more shadows to hide. You can turn off the lamp posts on many streets
-Decreased Raputo's route time, he completes the route in 27 min instead of 1h 45 min. Now you can find him much faster
-Added some gameplay hints for those of you who get stuck and cannot progress further - in the files Gameplay Hints.txt and A Tough Night.txt
UPDATE LINK: 53,8 Mb (80,8 MB Unzipped)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Gkt...ew?usp=sharing
Last edited by Master of Dromed; 3rd Jul 2020 at 03:28.
Congratulations on the release, but be ready: the grumpiest Thief 2 fan is here and he's going to devastate you with critique! Mua-ha-ha-ha!
Congrats on your new FM (and part 2)![]()
What a wonderful surprise and congratulations on your first ever mission.![]()
This is wonderful! Thank you for your work. I'm looking forward to play your mission the next evenings.
Gesendet von meinem SM-T585 mit Tapatalk
Where there is singing, sit down quietly :D . Evil people know no songs.
Congrats on the release(s) MoD! Glad you got them out for everyone to enjoy.
I beat this mission in 2 hours on Hard and collected 2664 loot. I never could find key to locked door at the end of street leading west from starting house and keys to 4 houses near Opera House. Maybe these places are only available on Expert.
1st page of map looks the best, but it get messed up if you scroll to next page and return back to it. Other pages of map are drawn with white lines and unfortunately they are barely visible. Also on 2nd page of map you switched West with East. It should be other way (just like you showed on page 3).
Some areas are very empty. Some streets looks the same, so I had few time Deja vu feeling that I was there, but actually I wasn't. Guards are very sensitive, especially purple guards. Only they can't be KO-ed when they are in search mode and even if they calm down, you need to wait few minutes before you will try to KO them. And if guards are near each other, there is no way to KO one of them quietly. Placement of the guards is challenging. In other words it's really tricky mission. Interesting first mission.
Congrats on the release! Looking forward to playing it!
Thank you for your feedback Galaer!
About the locked door you mentioned it is really tricky to get past that door. If you noticed there is a guard patrolling from inside the building to the outside back and forth over and over again. The only way to get inside is to sneak at the back of that guard silently and when he opens the door you block the door with your body preventing it from closing. If you made no noise the guard can't even notice this. Or you can KO the guard right after he opens the door. There is no key for that door you can find outside the building, the key is inside in a room on the wall. I know this may seem odd for some players. That key can open another door of a building near, once you opened it you get inside a room with a sleeping woman and you can steal its purse.
On the expert level there is an objective in that building, to steal a mask which is inside a chest in the room. The mask belongs to an opera actor who can be found inside (only on expert level). Again you can get inside by sneaking behind the guard or behind the actor, both are patrolling from inside to the outside of the building. Be carefull not to KO them before they open the door
About the four doors around the starting area they cannot be opened with a key, some merchants are patrolling inside the rooms and outside to the streets on an interval (5 -10 min). If you are patient enough wait until they open the door and you can block the doors with your body and prevent them from closing. In some of the rooms you can find some gold, others are just empty.
I know the map is not great since i'm not very talented at drawing maps. In the next update i will draw a new map.
The gameplay can be hard especially on hard and expert, play on normal mode first if you find it difficult. The alertness on guards is set pretty high. On expert i set up a KO limit so it's much harder to finish.
Last edited by Master of Dromed; 8th May 2020 at 12:39.
So what you're saying is on expert you're basically softlocked if you just so happen to KO the guard that walks through that door, which apparently is the only way into that area behind the door, and thus must hope you have a save from before knocking him out or just restart the mission?
Am I the only one that sees a bit of a design flaw here? Why not at least put a key somewhere outside or make the door be pickable?
I think you are right Psych0sis, on expert if you happen to KO both the guard and the actor (which is not likely to happen but.. ) it becomes impossible to check that objective, i was thinking since it is an expert objective to make it to be harder to complete. I could simply make the keys from the guard and actor visible so Garret can take them after the KO but would be so simple that way.. That may be a flow in design, lets see what others think, i am waiting for other opinions on the matter
Last edited by Master of Dromed; 8th May 2020 at 12:42.
Uploaded to https://www.thiefguild.com/fanmissio.../a-tough-night
@Master of Dromed, I think your mission contains unnecessary resources from OMs, in "interface" directory and possibly others too.
Uh, having a few problems navigating this FM
Pop quiz: where in the world would this compass be right?
On the ceiling
Other side of a beer glass?
Well, I'll not write anything bad -- it is obviously author's first FM so I'll limit myself to a small advice: in a future, please, make FMs 10 times smaller but spend 10 times more work to polish it.
Tell someone where i can get the key for home territory? :3
i played on Expert thx![]()
Just finished this. I was trying to decide what mission to lp next after the TMA20AC entries, and yesterday I picked this up as it had the distinction of being the newest-released fm.
Started on Expert, got about an hour in, and stopped: there were too many guards and too much light on the streets, and the blackjack limit meant I couldn't just knock them out as I wanted (cause it turns out there's a whole lot more than 16 enemies that'd be getting in my way!). And I had seen the comments above about the potentially impossible objective, so continuing on Expert seemed unwise.
So then I restarted on Hard. 2 hours 49 minutes according to the stats screen, but if you include reloads and time spent looking up hints (see below) it was just about 4 hours total.
I did not have fun with this mission. The streets are too large and much too mazelike. The map is very difficult to read (even after I converted the .pcx files to .png to avoid the palette problems when going between pages), and to make it worse they are 90 degrees out: North by the in-game compass is actually to the right on the maps, in defiance of the drawn compass rose (Master of Dromed: set Automap Info > Compass Offset to 270 to correct this)—which kept on confusing me when trying to find my bearings. And then when I finally found my way to Raputo's quarter, and had knocked out every npc in it, I still went all around it at least twice trying to find Raputo with no luck whatsoever. Eventually I got so tired of going round in circles to see if there was a room I'd missed, that I opened up the mission in Dromed in order to locate Raputo. Which showed me he was standing with two guards in the casino room that I'd already been through! But it also showed me that he was on a Cavador-style patrol, which gave me enough information to finally track him down. And when I'd completed the main objective, I realised I still had the Lady Catherine's necklace objective to do! And I'd been everywhere (or so I thought) and had not seen anything or anyone that seemed to meet the description. I was not looking forward to scouring the same streets again, so back to Dromed once more, and I found there was another section of streets that was not on the map that I could see and that I had not yet visited, and sure enough found what I needed there. Oh, and I was not a fan of the many archers with high vantage points who would inevitably see me in the brightly-lit streets.
Overall this mission is a decent first attempt. The story concept is good. Architecture and detailing are adequate. It's layout and gameplay where this falls down.
Master of Dromed: I was streaming as I played, so if you want to some more playtest feedback, the twitch videos will be up for the next 30 days: Part 1, 2h17m and Part 2, 2h38m (eventually the edited video will go on my youtube channel, but exactly when will depend on scheduling).
Really good first mission, but I have gotten lost several times going around in circles. Got everything done except for Lady Catherine's necklace can someone tell me where it is?
Near thieves lair is a locked gate. The control panel who opens the gate is in a tower with a wooden door. The door is lockpickable. After you open the gate you gain access to a new section of the town with a few streets. There, in a tower, at a balcony you can find Lady Catherine and a statue. The necklace is on the head of the statue.
Last edited by Master of Dromed; 8th May 2020 at 12:44.
You have the river to get through :3Started on Expert, got about an hour in, and stopped: there were too many guards and too much light on the streets, and the blackjack limit meant I couldn't just knock them out as I wanted (cause it turns out there's a whole lot more than 16 enemies that'd be getting in my way!). And I had seen the comments above about the potentially impossible objective, so continuing on Expert seemed unwise.
So then I restarted on Hard. 2 hours 49 minutes according to the stats screen, but if you include reloads and time spent looking up hints (see below) it was just about 4 hours total.
I did this Mission on Expert with 4 KO's in my first playthrough. My Walkthrough video is 2h and 58 minutes :3
A big Fan Mission of course, but you need timing and patience in Thief to go forward. i don't understand the criticism.
Hello vfig! Thank you very much for your feedback, i say your feedback was exceptionally helpfull. I watched carefully your 2 videos of almost 5 hours of hard struggle with this map. I am very sorry you had such a frustrating experience but maybe this happened because your not so logical approach to this mission.. as Garrett TMT said you have the sewers in Opera Quarter at the start of the mission to navigate underwater and safe for the streets patrols. As you noticed, the streets with many lamp posts and a lot of light are not the recommended way to proceed.. still you persisted in trying with that approach.
I think the mission can be done pretty easy on expert with around 5 KOs. But we are people playing Thief for almost 20 years so we cannot assume all the players have the same degree of skill. Still i recommend to you and to all not so experienced Thief players to play this mission at normal mode difficulty for the first time so they can get used with the environment first. To play at expert difficulty without knowing the map is simply madness as this place is very very big and you can end up getting lost. You have to know what guards to knock out as you have a limited amount of KOs. This can't be done at first attempt if you are not very experienced in sneaking or ghosting. I wonder.. have you ever played Kidnap mission in Thief 2? This is no harder than finding Cavador in that huge underground mines in the Lost City, full of mechanist patrols. I thought all players had that experience before and finding Raputo in that quarter is not so hard. Still you had been incredible unlucky and pass near him a few times, at one moment you panicked and run in circles not paying attention on what's happening near you. Then you supposed the map is bugged or something and maybe there is no Raputo on the map and lost your concentration to the main goal. Again your approach was not optimal, as you simply can wait for him in one place at his mansion, at the tavern or at the mages and eventually he will show up. If you are running in circles on the map you can miss him as happened.
After all i can say your videos were great and very helpful, you discovered a lot of bugs, the compass is wrong placed, the map is pretty bad and unclear, i have to mark Lady Catherine location and other important places in the future updates. The slipping AIs don't fall down instantly after they are KOed in sleep, other AI just run and fall down after a long time after a KO which looks pretty bad and needs a fix.
Last edited by Master of Dromed; 8th May 2020 at 12:48.