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Reviews

 

 

Thief 2 FMBreakout From Apocalypse Prison (2003) Thief 2 FM

Synopsis:  Garrett has been captured and sent across the countryside to Apocalypse Prison.  Naturally, he must break out.  However, breaking out may not be as easy as it seems.

Mission Info:  My first attempt at an FM, this was an entry for KOMAG's 4th small mission contest (the mission size was 64x64x32).  It was awarded 4th place out of a possible 28 missions.

My Thoughts:  4th place was almost certainly too good for this mission.  It certainly wasn't as good as I wanted it to be, and there were other missions that deserved a better spot than mine.  It's quite buggy, and I'm not even sure it's possible to complete on some difficulties, as I hardly playtested this mission at all.

That said, I think it was a neat little mission, and there were a lot of little nuances about it that I quite liked (I thought the atmosphere was about right, and most of the puzzles were solid), even though I think the extreme gravity of the storyline was a little too much.  All in all, it was probably as good as I could have hoped for for a first try.

Thief 2 FMThe Saint (2004) Thief 2 FM

Synopsis:  Post-Soulforge, Garrett decides to steal a quite valuable diamond called the "Orion Stone," now that the Mechanist threat is more or less off his back.  Throughout the course of the mission, small "miracles" keep making themselves available for Garrett to perform.  Hmmm...

Mission Info:  Another contest entry, this one was for KOMAG's 5th small mission contest (the mission size was 8x 40x40x40 cubes).  It was awarded 14th out of a possible 19 missions.  Not really inspired by the movie and television series of the same name, but it was in the back of my mind nonetheless.

My Thoughts:  My initial reaction upon seeing the low place in the contest was very angry.  I think that it was less the fact that I had placed very close to last, and more that I had not even come close to taking the puzzle category (my pride and joy ;-)).  However, in retrospect, while I initially thought that I had a lot of puzzles, in reality, there were very few pure puzzles and a lot more tricks.  I playtested this mission a lot more than Breakout From Apocalypse Prison, but not nearly enough.  There were still a million bugs (as evidenced by the extreme amount of discussion on the forums).  Once again, the mission was impossible to complete on higher difficulties.  Also, I think that while I knew what was going on while I was making the mission, I really didn't convey this well to the player, and I think this confused a lot of people (also evidenced by the forum chatter).  I had only a vague idea of what the mission was going to be about when I started, and I thought up a lot of the mission while I was constructing it.  While this is how I work on things like this, I think the mission was way too rushed, and I was forced put more time into the technical aspects of the mission while leaving players in the dark about what was going on.  I think a lot of good ideas can occur, that is to say, one can think up an interesting way to fill a hole (that otherwise might not be noticed), while building "on the fly," as opposed to sticking religiously to a script.  However, I think it is definitely better to have more than just an abstract plan of what will transpire over the course of the mission.  Players are going to spend an hour or so playing the mission, and the more of a grip they have on what's going on, the more they're going to enjoy that hour that they spend (of course, in certain missions, keeping a player in the dark about their surroundings can be a good tool, psychological or otherwise.  However, this effect must be intentional, which is not the case with The Saint).  If there's a lack of information about a mission, then it might as well be in a completely different language, because the amount of information conveyed will be the same.  I draw a parallel to playing those crazy Japanese missions, where you know there's something going on, but you really don't know what, and there's a haunt chasing you around toilets surrounded by lava.  It all seems like a random sequence of events, which The Saint turned out as (although not as random as the Japanese missions*).  This randomness can make for a very long hour (or longer, which is even worse, if the player gets really confused).  Long point short, there was an awful lot going on, and not a lot of clues to tell players what was happening.  Lastly, I made the ambient light too dark, which looked fine on my computer, but was almost impossible to see on most other machines.  This was especially relevant, as evidenced in the forum frustration, in the underwater maze.

Despite the essay on why I didn't like the mission, The Saint did have its moments.  I think that the overall plotline (unconveyed as it was) was solid, and I especially like the variations between the difficulties.  I had hoped to surprise the player between difficulty levels, but asking a player to play all three difficulties, was perhaps too much to ask.  I would venture a guess that one of the (many) reasons the mission placed so poorly was because most players didn't finish (more or less) all three difficulty levels, thus completely missing one of the core strengths of the mission.  While I certainly liked the idea of that much variation between difficulties, I think a contest was the wrong type of medium to try something like that in.  In short:  good idea, bad timing.  I like the miracles.  I think they gave the mission a neat kind of replayability, although the reward at the end was very Japanese-esque in its randomness.  If I could've done it all over again, I would've put in more puzzles.  I especially liked the statue/executioner ghost puzzle on expert, which was completely inspired by the mirror trap from Conan.  I would've liked to have had more of puzzles like that throughout the entire mission, especially in a contest with so much room to build in.  I'm divided about the teleporting issue.  It definitely saved me a lot of space, and prevented some nasty problems with sound flow, but it might have also hindered the continuing atmosphere of the mission a little bit.  All in all, this was a very manic mission for me, one that I loved and hated all at the same time.

I think I got a consolation prize in that I had the largest discussion thread in the forums.

*I am not dissing the Japanese missions by any means.  I am just pointing out that they are quirky and weird, which I think equals loads of fun.  However, this is not the type of mission I had set out to build with The Saint.  If The Saint had been what I had envisioned it to be, I may have been able to go top 4 again, and would have won the puzzle category for sure.  However, severe rushing and ill-thought out plans made this mission more of a learning experience for me than a serious contender in the contest.