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	Message: : : : Tempus Irae 13 Rock the Boat : Okay so we ended up deciding to combine our efforts, and so I will embed bits : of Viking’s work within my own, and sometimes include my comments in : brackets :). : Last time on Tour of Duty we explored a castle complete with watchtowers, : drawbridges, tiled floor halls, arches, courtyards, and of course Pfhor. I : did go back and manage to get into the pretty room with the secret : terminal, and it was a little bit anticlimactic, but still a nice : achievement, from those days before we had “achievements” :). Our : repository room terminal told us that the Pfhor were on a boat, and not : with the purest of motives, so we’ve come to sink it! : This is probably the level with the best use of layered polygons. (I think : The Hard Stuff Rules… might still hold sway there.) We start on the ship’s : deck, and we were already told by the S’pht that we would have no sealegs : syndrome, and the boat feels perfectly motionless. A good excuse for the : mapper to not put in a ridiculous amount of effort to make all the : polygons behave with the motion that liquids have. Seriously, I think this : would be possible and totally kick Pfhor headflaps if someone felt arsed : to do it. : Just as the S’pht implied by asking us to sink it, there is nobody aboard : except the Pfhor, and the door to the lower decks is locked. We must first : climb to the bridge and hit a switch to open it. This level plays a lot : like other TI ones, with switches that open doors in other places, except : we’re in a very compressed space and the map is rather useless. I’ve : reinstalled since last writing – reverted my Surface Pro 2 to Windows 8 : because 10 is just bad on a tablet; in fact I’m pretty sure it’s bad : overall, where 8 is just excellent. Anyway, the effects are that I : carelessly lost my saves, and also lost that show all polygons plugin, : which was mainly for these writeups before Hopper came through with all : the maps one could ever want on lhowon.org. To celebrate, here’s the map : -before- it becomes useless, kind of like I did for The Hard Stuff Rules… : years ago. Oh and I also worked out how to get pictures in from OneDrive : better! : : That’s me standing by the first switch we come to, just inside the structure, : after we deal with a few Hunters, Fighters, and Troopers both outside and : in. A staircase leads up to get us in there on one side, and then the : adventure begins. The result of that first switch takes a bit of finding, : as we actually have to come back out on deck again, and then it turns out : we’re definitely on a submarine here! Let's have a look at the whole map. : It really is just not -quite- aligned straight. : : : The 3D one is kind of cool especially for the mast at the top-left, which : explains those weird extra polygons in the 2D version. : Back to exploring, the first room we descend to has a Pattern Buffer, smaller : than normal lacking the portrait component, but it still does the job. : Viking suggests perhaps we are supposed to think of this more as something : that might actually be on the wall in a ship – navigator’s notes or a : public message board, to hold up the suspension of disbelief … or whatever : you might find in a 16th Century ship. : In the next room we hit a switch that reveals a key that we just can’t get to : right now – what kind of ship is designed like this!? : : Down the next corridor we -can- access, we find the door that is looking for : that key, and then I at least get a bit confused. The posts that come down : through these rooms in a nice touch of structural reality (Viking also : remarked on the very realistic architecture with support beams) can make : it hard to spot the rather narrow corridors that are on offer to us. Here : there is another locked door and then such a narrow opening, also : camouflaged by the fact that this whole place is in wooden textures! : Despite what I said earlier, the map can at least reveal some of those : hidden corridors. : : See, easy to miss - not the obvious one, but the one that is only discernable : by the change in the ceiling level! Down this one is another switch, for : the locked door I most recently mentioned. It takes us down to what every : boat really should have, a hall with a tiled floor and a pool in the : middle … packed with Pfhor! At least they’re all sitting there waiting; : this level does also continue the TI tradition of ambush by Pfhor. There : is also an easy to miss terminal in the wall, next to another thing that : all wooden boats should have, a candle! And there are quite a few on this : one! : : Viking: The fact they are still burning suggests rather recent abandonment of : this vessel, but where are all the dead bodies? Did the Pfhor simply throw : them overboard? Or are they still on a slave-trading kick, and beamed them : all up to their own ship? Surely that wouldn’t cause any weird anomalies : in the future! Hey, back in M1 they had to transport BoBs on vessels back : to their own ship, so they didn’t have teleporters that go that far in : range, and their own range of teleportation still seemed to be fairly : limited to short distances in M2 and even Infinity if you scrutinise the : story (and boy do we do that!). They couldn’t just beam Pfhor onto : Durandal’s ship until it crashed on the moon, for instance. Here, they : have teleporters powerful enough to warp from orbit to planetside? Did I : just find a plot hole? Huh? Maybe Tycho gave them some upgrades. : Also this tiled room extends beyond the where the ship’s starboard wall : should be … shenanigans with the design again! : Martin: Oh yeah the terminal. It’s pretty special, especially for how easy to : miss it is, and it rather speaks for itself. The lhowon.org map actually : suggests this is two terminals? But it doesn't seem to provide them there, : perhaps for lack of text? : : So, kind of scary to start with, given that it looks like it’s written in : blood … maybe that of whoever crewed this boat? Then there’s the fact that : this Pfhor has learnt English, that’s definitely news, and what? I guess : the next manuscript is not here then … or no longer here? Are the Pfhor : really just making this an extended treasure hunt? Our Princess is in : another Castle? Oh well, not much we can do, as ever. Viking writes “We’re : in Tycho’s insane care now”. Nice. : In the far corner of this room is a rather subtle lift, another map : consultation, yes I know, I didn’t give it nearly enough credit! And how : exactly does this work? Anyway, the lift takes us up to that key we were : after, along with a mean Hunter, and Viking notes also a flashlight, which : the Pfhor must have brought, because y’know, 16th Century. Anyway, now we : backtrack to the key door. : One slightly uneventful room ends in a big dropoff – we get a Pattern Buffer : at this point, the full version with the face … I guess we left our : suspenders of disbelief in our other pants. And now it’s onwards to the : last section of the level. Right here we’re on a path with narrow water : channels to the left and right. The ceiling is higher than we might : expect, and the Pfhor that beam in seem to come from above. : A switch in a little alcove room to the left opens a door to the right, but : that doesn’t seem to lead anywhere interesting. The next room has one : switch, and another just beyond down some stairs has two more. It also : holds a secret room behind one of those innocuous looking shelves in the : wall. Therein are two panels in the wall facing back in, one with a 2x : recharge canister, and the other with an invincibility powerup! : Together those three switches at the end: close off the path back out of this : area (so we don’t get any ideas of swimming back), open the exit : teleporter (in the room we just opened with the alcove switch), and start : the boat filling with water. They were quite kind not leaving us with much : scope for panicked running around while running out of oxygen really! And : that ends a rather short writeup, as the Pfhor continue to play with us – : we’re off to the theatre!
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