TDM FM Review: House in Blackbog Hollow

This is a review of one of The Dark Mod’s (a mod for Doom 3) fan missions. It may contain traces of spoilers. You have been warned.

Author(s): stumpy
Version: 1.0
Date released: 2011-10-29
Other info: Halloween Speed Build Contest 2011 entry
Theme: Builder/Haunted
Download FM here

Stumpy has made two missions in the past – neither of which I enjoyed much, to be honest. But “House in Blackbog Hollow” (which I will from now on refer to as HIBH – not a rude word) is mostly better than said missions. In case you’re wondering – the missions I speak of are “Lord Dufford’s” and “Illusionist’s Tower”.

You start off on the streets hidden away in an alley of sorts, and make your way in to the large area ahead. You’ve got two patrolling guards here but they’re easy to avoid. First thing you’ll notice is the large black house – more on this later. The mission is to grab some ancient treasure outside a warehouse nearby. But it turns out it’s not that simple: some bastard got there first and nabbed it – and he’s hiding in the house you couldn’t help but notice earlier.

I managed to enter the place after several minutes of mucking about; missing the obvious way in. After seeing a pumpkin kill a nobleman sitting at a table, I knew I was in for something else. From then on, I was wary of every bloody pumpkin I came across. I tried shooting them with arrows, or slicing them with swords – to no avail.

And there were spiders, too. Very large, patrolling spiders. This mission pretty much has everything scary you could possibly want in a mission. Never mind zombies – they’ve got nothing on seemingly invincible pumpkins.

Stumpy pulls some tricks similar to the ones seen in “Illusionist’s Tower”. Upon entering the house, it grows larger than initially thought. It’s positively massive with several floors to explore. There’s some interesting illusions besides this, such as walls that can actually be walked through to reach the corridor behind. It wouldn’t have been so obvious if it hadn’t been for the spiders, that basically showed me it was possible in the first place. Otherwise I’m sure it might have stumped (no pun intended) a few people. There’s also a crying baby, which turns out… not to be. Rather creepy, that part.

 

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There aren’t any guards anywhere, but you’ll come across some corpses every now and again – these are supposedly the people who lived here before the curse came along. I won’t spoil it too much for you, so that’s all I’m saying.

After some looking around, you reach the study near the top of the mansion and discover that there’s more to the pumpkins than you originally thought. The pumpkins you avoided earlier actually need to be collected and taken to a temple beneath the surface. They need to be used to end a curse that resulted due to the mansion being built on top of the temple. Sounds similar to the old “house that was built on top of a sacred Indian burial ground” cliché, but nonetheless. That’s what we were all expecting to come out of this competition: clichés.

So we went from trying to retrieve the treasure to helping end the curse.

The mission was enjoyable in the end. Stumpy pulled out the usual tricks; some new, and others old. From what I can tell, he’s not as amateurish as I thought he was initially and has shown that with some general messing around in DarkRadiant, he can put a decent, and sometimes challenging map together. But this mission is his best so far, because it doesn’t stray too far from the norm as far as a TDM mission goes. The level design isn’t anything too special, but it is a step up from the likes of Lord Dufford’s large, empty, uninteresting rooms. The soundtrack that accompanies the FM consists of some new tracks, as well as some old ones with a twist.

Lord Dufford’s was an average at best mission for several reasons among which included some gameplay faux pas that could have been avoided with some beta testing. That and it was a bit too loony for my liking. And Illusionist’s Tower was too frustrating – it tried to be overly technical. This mission is a sort of happy medium, or balance between the expected and outrageous. It’s not too challenging, and the best bit of the FM will be the story, more than likely, which isn’t bad.

Overall the FM is unconventional, rather wacky, but for this Halloween Speed Build Contest – it works; almost perfectly.

Pros:

+ Good story.

Cons:

-  Not that challenging.

FM score: 8.8/10

TDM FM Review: A Night To Remember

This is a review of one of The Dark Mod’s (a mod for Doom 3) fan missions. It may contain traces of spoilers. You have been warned.

Author(s): Fieldmedic
Version: 1.0
Date released: 2011-10-31
Other info: Halloween Speed Build Contest 2011 entry 
Theme: Mansion/Haunted
Download FM here

This FM takes a different turn to fit in with the horror theme expected in this contest. You are a nobleman who moonlights as something a more disreputable (but just barely): a thief. This is an inside job. Instead of having to break in to the mansion, you begin inside one of the rooms. You’re here as a guest but right off the bat, it seems as though somebody knows your ulterior motives.

You exit your room and wander around the mansion. There are no guards about as the lord of the manor does not want any patrols inside. This seems to make life easier as you explore the rooms that aren’t locked. Most of them are and you don’t possess any lockpicks or much equipment at all, initially. There’s a fair bit of lockpicking involved, but numerous doors actually require a key.

Judging by the design and the dates in the journals, Fieldmedic has practically ditched the Middle Ages in favour of a more modern feel, possibly Victorian or Colonial era – perhaps even later. But this isn’t anything new seeing as his previous mission, “Reap As You Sow”, exhibited a similar style. With the large, sprawling, practically empty estate, I couldn’t help but feel that this reminded me of one of my favourite horror-themed games of all time: Clive Barker’s Undying.

You make your way up to the study to steal some blueprints for an airship named Gottfried II – but it seems as though you might be too late. The rest of the mission is spent chasing after an individual who seems to have the same idea in mind as you.

 

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There are sections which contain ghostly figures who patrol the dark corridors of the servants quarters’ hallways and passages the lead to the more stately rooms of the manor. Getting near these spirits will damage you. If one of the beings spots you, you die instantly. So extra caution is advised in avoiding these spirits, much like Thief: Deadly Shadows’ infamous Shalebridge Cradle mission. There are pianos that play all by themselves, and you can hear the constant cries of torment coming from the ghosts of the beheaded servants.

Fieldmedic is an FM author who experiments with new ideas, such as “Reap What You Sow”, and obviously knows a little about scaring the player, which was evident while playing an earlier FM of his in “Betrayal”. Here he’s turned TDM in to yet another experience: that of fully-fledged horror, instead of just mildly tense. Once again it feels like a mod for a mod and not just an average FM. You lack most of the gear and weapons. You’re, for the most part, defenceless and vulnerable.

But like “Reap What You Sow”, it is flawed. ANTR has bugs – maybe some of you have experienced these, and others haven’t. But there’s a bloody annoying save game bug where if you save the game after a certain point, the game crashes. Saving the game before you come across the first ghost in the servant’s quarters works; after that point, it doesn’t. As long as you don’t save you’ll be fine. Some people play TDM this way by design. They shouldn’t have a problem (this bug seems to have been fixed since I installed TDM version 1.07 and restarted the FM).

When I first played this FM with this bug present, I hated it. But after I had patched TDM and replayed it, I realised how good it really is.

Pros:

+ Atmospheric.

+ Feels different from the normal FM.

Cons:

- Some bugs.

- Might be too much of a departure from conventional TDM gameplay.

FM score: 8.9/10

TDM FM Review: Samhain: Night on Bone Hill

This is a review of one of The Dark Mod’s (a mod for Doom 3) fan missions. It may contain traces of spoilers. You have been warned.

Author(s): PranQster
Version: 1.0
Date released: 10-9-2011 (Oct. 09, 2011)
Other info: Halloween Speed Build ‘11 entry
Theme: Haunted
Download FM here

This is the first entry in the Halloween Speed Build contest of 2011. The title and loading screen that shows up is quite striking. It could be the name of a horror movie – probably not a very good one, but still.

In this FM, you’re off for a bit of tomb raiding, similarly to “Down in the Bonehoard” from Thief: The Dark Project perhaps. The ultimate goal is to nab a ruby which belongs to a noble family which came from pagan roots. And you plan to do this on the night of All Hallows Eve.

You start off in the graveyard outside and notice that you’ve somehow recently developed the very sneaksie ability to levitate – very handy. This is a bug that has been reported by several people (but I noticed it was fixed on my second playthrough using v 1.07). After deigning to set your feet down on the ground, you make your way past the tombstones and on to the entrance to the mausoleum. Here you see a group of pagans leaving after having paid their respects to their deceased relatives. PranQster was very keen to show off the new “plaque mask” here that was made by Nosslak, as well as the pumpkins by Springheel. But the masks don’t always appear for everyone which meant some had to download the texture separately.

Seeing the candles and the pentacle at the entrance, I got a feeling that things wouldn’t be so serene for long. Inside the mausoleum there’s some nice marble textures, and ahead lies the ruby you’re after. Just snatch it and it’s mission accomplished, right? Wrong. I almost bought in to it. But then the floor gave way and I ended up in water-filled tunnel below. The skeletons down in the water give an ominous look in to what lies ahead. It looks like I wasn’t the first sure-footed* thief to go after the treasure…

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Inside the caves there’s a nice showing off of lighting and colourful hues – reds, oranges, blues, greens; all colours of the rainbow from nicely placed light sources. Lovely. The place is filled with spiders, too, and this has led to some of the more anxious types being unable to progress in this mission. There’s some original ideas here, such as bats flying around which cast a light on the walls and ground, so there’s an extra bit of a challenge in avoiding being spotted by the spidies.

And being able to get to the crypt level where the sarcophagi are by climbing the spider’s web is a nice touch. PranQster demonstrated this knack for being inventive and introducing some fresh ideas in his previous, and first ever FM: “The Siege Shop”.

In the crypt area you need to find several switches or levers to find your way around, and this is all while having to put up with zombified skeletons who have sometimes erratic and unpredictable patrol routes (which was intentional on the part of the author). The King’s crypt is in this area and you’ll get some of your objectives here. Some of the loot is hard to obtain though and requires a bit of negotiation. You can also tell that there wasn’t a lot of beta-testing in this FM, as some people would lock themselves in the King’s crypt, and were unable to get out. Beta-testing was closed for this FM, according to the notes accompanying the download.

There are some other rooms that will open up as you accomplish objectives, and one of these areas even has a maze to navigate.

Samhain isn’t a bad mission. It’s got some good ideas. Not doing any beta testing is a recipe for disaster though, generally speaking. I understand that this is a speed build, and it shows off at least above-average quality for such a build - at least superficially, minus a few missing textures and such. But technically it could have used more time in development to get rid of some annoying bugs.

* sarcasm

Pros:

+ Original ideas.

+ Creepy.

+ Not a bad looking mission at all.

Cons:

- Some bugs.

- Some silly mistakes.

FM score: 8.1/10

TDM FM Review: The Creeps

This is a review of one of The Dark Mod’s (a mod for Doom 3) fan missions. It may contain traces of spoilers. You have been warned.

Author(s): Mortem Desino
Version: 1.0
Date released: 2011-10-30
Other info: Halloween Speed Build Contest 2011 entry
Theme: City/Haunted
Download FM here

MD or Mortem Desino is a name I’m sure I’ve read somewhere before, but to my knowledge this is his first mission. And it’s not too bad.

When starting up, I was greeted with a voiceover during the briefing section, which felt very Thief: Deadly Shadows-esque. A little bit of extra effort there, then. Indeed, at several points during the mission there are some voiceovers.

The mission is to sneak inside a “superstitious” family’s home while they’re out for the night, and case the joint. You begin on the streets outside as usual and make your way towards the tree in the centre of the courtyard. From here you fumble your way around, interact with some frobbable objects, and get inside a tower of sorts.

You eventually get around to jumping out the window and on to the roof outside. There’s plenty of open windows and multiple entry points in this mission – especially the Creeps’ manor – making for some interesting routes to take – and limited replayability. Most of these alternate ways you’ll only discover after having gone the long way perhaps.

After entering the Creeps’ household through one of several entry points, you’ll likely stumble upon the main focal point of the building: the dining room. Here you have a few surprises waiting for you.

There’s always the promise of some sort of encounter in this mission. I was expecting to run in to something or someone. I thought I’d be facing off against pagans – who rarely make an appearance in any TDM FMs, or maybe some zombies or a haunt. But there was hardly anything. It’s not really scary at all – maybe moody; a tad tense, perhaps. That’s the aim of the contest I suppose. Zombies and the like are so old hat; overdone, and not many players really like “undead missions” anyway. I don’t.

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I definitely noticed the contrasting use of colour and lighting between the starting point of the mission and the area in and around the Creeps’ place. It went from the more traditional blue, brown and grey hues you’d expect, to yellow and orange. This complements the Halloween theme and the season of Autumn (or Fall) quite nicely – even though it’s Spring over where I am at the time of writing this fan mission review.

But all that I’ve spoken of so far is what you’ll encounter on the surface level. There’s also a subterranean section which you’ll need to find in order to finish the mission (especially as far as loot goes on the highest difficulty setting). Here you’ll needless to say, get most of the loot, plus experience some scares, too – predictable, but it’ll make you jump, nonetheless. The style of scares is almost right out of a commercial title like F.E.A.R. – but the first one, which was best in the series. Let me just say that it’s very difficult if not impossible to get a perfect stealth score in this mission.

There was one nice touch that I liked in this mission, and that was another sort of object – an obstacle – to interact with. Up until now I’ve come across locked doors that you either need keys for, or you have to pick; there’ve been locked chests, too. These are the main two obstacles separating you from success, and after several FMs, I’m dying for a little originality. Well, it’s here in this FM, in the form of a mere padlock. You can only interact with this padlock once inside the house, but when you pick it and the window swings open – I must confess that I thought that was rather nifty. It’s a small thing and yet it adds positively to the overall impression I get from this FM. Also, the massive tree outside with the falling leaves was great, if a tad unrealistic. That tree drops leaves faster than my cat sheds hair.

There was that and a bit of texture misalignment, plus some messy management of heights as far as negatives go. You can climb on top of roofs and look in to the empty abyss which is the skybox that surrounds the map. It takes away from the good that this mission had going for it. That and there was another small error in mission objectives depending on difficulty settings. Playing the medium difficulty or “Spirit” was just the same as playing on easy, or “The Wind”, because the loot goal was exactly the same.

But all in all, for this author’s first FM - it’s quite good.

Pros:

+ Multiple entry points for some buildings.

+ Extra effort with the voiceovers.

+ Some tension and atmosphere.

Cons:

- Silly mistakes that could have been avoided.

- Quite short.

FM score: 8.4/10

New TDM FM Released: House of Theo

There’s been a welcome resurgence in new TDM FMs following the recent Halloween Speed build competition. To start off the Silly Season, we have a new FM up for download. It’s called “House of Theo”.

It’s by Theothesnoop, and it weighs in at just over 6 MB. You’d think then that it’s a rather small FM, but just looking at the screenshots over at TDM alone, it looks to be a pretty big map. Most of it takes place in a huge castle. I just so happen to love castles – this is a big reason why I’ve always been a big fan of the original Thief series: the architecture.

So go ahead and grab the FM over here. I’ll no doubt have a play and have a review up soon.

TDM FM Review: Dragon’s Claw

This is a review of one of The Dark Mod’s (a mod for Doom 3) fan missions. It may contain traces of spoilers. You have been warned.

Author(s): Bikerdude, Flanders
Version: 1.0
Date released: 10-31-2011
Other info: Halloween Speed Build ‘11 entry
Theme: City/Haunted
Download FM here

Whenever I see a Bikerdude mission, I instantly think that it’s going to be one hell of a lot of fun ahead of me.

Missions of the past like the fantastic “St. Alban’s Cathedral”, or the awesome “Caduceus of St. Alban” left me with a very positive perception of an author’s work who I admittedly didn’t like much to begin with. Bikerdude’s missions are in a way sort of like watching a Quentin Tarantino film. You dislike it the first time – you might even be a it bewildered. But after the second viewing, you understand the genius behind it. It grows on you and you appreciate it for the brilliance it is supposed to convey.

This mission is not like that at all. This mission is a poor excuse for an FM in comparison to the aforementioned ones. It’s the worst of Bikerdude’s mission’s I’ve played. It’s not that bad, but it’s not that good either.

The story sounds like it could be interesting. You’re a thief as usual who wants to get a hold of the legendary “Dragon’s Claw”, which is holed up in a section of town known as the Plague Ward. It’s walled off from the rest of the city, much like the Old Quarter was in Thief: The Dark Project. But even though they might be similar in story, there’s no comparing this FM for The Dark Mod to “The Haunted Cathedral”. I might sound a little harsh here, but bear with me.

Starting off in the city, I was in familiar territory. I expected to be able to pick any lock, open any door, and go pretty much anywhere, much like in the beginning of St. Alban’s Cathedral – a mission which I hold in regard, and like the best from this author so far.

But you can’t. Exploration is limited, and the only real area of appeal is the canal. There’s a bit of loot here, and a few guards. This area presents the most challenge you’ll face in this FM.

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But this limited exploration actually detracts from the experience as far as being able to find the entrance to the Plague Ward is concerned. It’s an unnecessary distraction. Once you navigate your way around the underground, and make your way up to the plague ward, again things seem familiar. It’s like a lesser version of one of the undead missions from T2X, the unofficial expansions for Thief II: The Metal Age. Everything looks nice graphically speaking – at least on the outside. There’s some nice effects like low lying fog and dust particles, and even a rare sighting of a will o’ the wisp.

But there’s just a real feeling of laziness or incompleteness that lies behind the fancy texturing. If you were to look inside some buildings here, you just see black – well, I do. I don’t know if this is a graphical glitch, or it was intentional on the author’s part. Having a look through the official forum thread dedicated to this mission, Melan (who tutored Bikerdude, so some say) claims it’s a caulk texture, and thinks it wasn’t that good an idea to use it so generously.

And it’s here that some other major gripes of this mission come in to play. There are some severe slow downs (literally 0 FPS) during this part of the mission that either require you tap the forward key to move out of this slowdown zone, or just reload a savegame… again.

Again there’s the illusion of exploration here, as there are some places to go, but not much to do or find. There’s not a lot of interactivity on offer. It’s way too easy to get the main objectives and get out of there. But like most BD missions, there’s always a stash of loot somewhere that you never seem to find. This might make things trickier on harder difficulty settings.

Exiting the Plague Ward with my prize, I was on the way to the tavern to finish the mission, and then I was hit with 0 FPS again, but this time it froze completely, forcing an alt+ctrl+del solution.

I’m disappointed in Dragon’s Claw. It had the promise; the potential of a great mission, but just fell flat. I wouldn’t say it’s the worst FM I’ve played, or even the worst in the Halloween Speed Build competition. But it could have used a bit more polish and testing, bug-fixing, and a lot more challenge. Those undead lying around in the Plague Ward are far too easy to step around and avoid. They should have been upright and patrolling. I’d rather have a tough undead mission than one that hardly even tries.

Pros:

+ Good story.

+ Level design is decent.

Cons:

- Bugs, bugs, bugs.

- Practically no challenge whatsoever for the most part.

FM score: 7.0/10

Happy Halloween

Today is the 31st of October, or Halloween as we all know it by.

Why am I posting about this here? Because today is the last day you may submit missions for the Halloween Speed Build of 2011 - a Dark Mod competition which was announced in September. All in all there were four submissions for the competition. Most of them arrived just in time - the authors of these missions took the time to polish their FMs.

The five FMs are:

A Night to Remember by Fieldmedic
The Creeps by Mortem Desino
House in Blackbog Hollow by Stumpy
Samhain Night on Bone Hill by PranQster
Dragon's Claw by Bikerdude

A sixth mission, Let Sleeping Thieves Lie was uploaded during this period, but is not an official competition entry.

I haven't played them all - only Samhain. But I will get around to playing and reviewing them now on All Hallow's Eve! Expect the winner of the contest to be announced... some other time. Personally my fave would be either "The Creeps" or "House in Blackbog Hollow".

By the way, if you hadn't noticed, the TDM website has changed its look - again.

New TDM FM Release: Let Sleeping Thieves Lie

Hot on the heels of PranQster’s entry in the Halloween Speed Build contest this month, “Samhain: Night on Bone Hill”, comes a new fan mission for The Dark Mod.

This one is called "Let Sleeping Thieves Lie", and it’s by Sir Taffsalot, with a bit of help from Bikerdude. I've played a bit of it so far and it's no too bad. Will get a review of it up soon.

You can check out the FM details page here.

TDM FM Release: Samhain: Night on Bone Hill

After a 3 and a 1/2 month drought with no TDM FMs, this mission comes in to save us all from boredom.

It’s the first entry in the Halloween Speed Build contest of 2011, and it’s called “Samhain: Night on Bone Hill”. It’s an average size mission which weighs in at about 10 MB. It was released just this week, by PranQster. He also brought you the above-average mission, “Siege Shop” – his first.

You can grab the mission over at the usual places. I might well have a review of the thing up at some point, too.

FM Discussion thread
FM details page with download links