Springfield Noire - Original

really brilliant mod

i just made gameplay of it yesterday

I had some pretty high hopes for this mod, the screenshots looked good, the plot seemed interesting, but after finally playing it I find it to be a bit of a letdown. And here's why:

The missions
I had fun with some of the missions, but there are far too many that just feel like they missed the mark. There are lots of objectives where it's just go one place, collect stuff and go somewhere else and after a while it gets repetitive. Some of the missions make very little sense in the situation, especially around level 3. Level 3 overall seems like the laziest level and has lots of obvious mistakes which I go into detail later.

The art
This mod almost seems like it had a different artist for every level. Level 1's art was very polished and refined, looking clean and pleasing to the eye. Level 2's was decent as well, although there was a sudden urge to go unnecessarily upwards with the character icons . A number of the character's heads stick far too far above the main body of the icon, and often get chopped off by the top of the screen. It's something we could have done without. Level 3 on the other hand has incredibly ugly art, and I don't just mean compared to levels 1 & 2. Images are squashed and distorted, pieces are chopped off and it gives an unprofessional feel to the whole experience. It feels rushed and incomplete, and more time should have been spent on it.

The bugs
For a mod with 5 beta testers, a large number of bugs and game-breaking issues have gone unnoticed. As Some Bot already pointed out, saving in M5 crashes the game. While I don't know why it crashes this seems like the kind of bug that could have been found with just a day's more beta testing. I've also experienced the dreaded 'Insert CD 1 Glitch' which happens when there's incorrect HEX editing in a mod, or in this mod's case, no HEX editing at all. This is just plain stupid, as no mod is enjoyable when this glitch can just spring out at you whenever it feels. There's also a bit of an issue with the road block in M4-6. Traffic cars will just drive straight into it as if it isn't there, which is not how real traffic behaves at all. There's really no fix for this other than disabling the traffic, which would have been a smart idea as cars wouldn't be in an area where there's roadblocks anyway. As well as these larger bugs there are also a number of grammar and spelling mistakes, too many to list here. I understand English is your second language but one of the other developers must have picked up on at least some of these.

Conclusion
As I said earlier, this mod has not lived up to the hype that it had. While I can still find some enjoyment in it I must say that these issues have ruined the experience for me. I'm sorry if this review turned out overly negative, these are just my feelings on the mod.

Thanks for the review!

The main problem of the mod - is me, working completely alone

Yeah, we WERE a team in the begginig(Like, Colou and Me, duh. Also, Fairy helped sometimes), but later Colou left, and things gone south.

I was showing the plot script of the missions to everyone in the team, I thought someone will tell me to change/add/remove something, but hell no, no one reacted.

Art, same s***. L1 was completely Colou's work, later, he decided to leave the team, and I had to take care of art by myself. The results are pretty f***** up

Bugs. Can't find the reason for M5 either. CD bug is also my fault, since I worked completely alone, and was kinda exhausted to take care of this bug (I haven't met this one btw). Well, currently, you can't make this roadblock a complete map mesh, and removing traffic would remove the challenge aswell, since you can simply drive everywhere without bumping into traffic cars. Grammar - same, I worked alone, and even though there were some people in my team, I guess they weren't interested (But Colou helped a bit, even when he left the team. Otherwise, you could've seen some even more stupid mistakes like "Get into the police station")

Well, this mod is a little bit better than HA, isn't it? Oh darn, I guess I just made another Hunt Down The Freeman

And, I have some plans for future project, but I doubt I should work on it since no one in the team wants to be a part of the team(Sparrow and Thomas are busy, while I have a feeling that others just simply left me). I think I could just give these ideas to somebody else, so he would make the mod, not ""US""

I don't feel you should blame this solely on your team members, that seems like an unfair way of shifting the blame on others. If people have decided to leave the team then they must have a reason, whether it be disinterest or anything else. If they're busy then it's not their fault, this is your mod and you should have spent more time making it the best you could. I notice this mod was released 12 days ahead of schedule, and I really don't understand why. If more care and more effort was put into it then it would be a much better mod. 1,000 views means nothing if it only has 5 upvotes.

I didn't meant to blame any of my team mebmers...I..I guess I'm a complete idiot...Don't even know why I released this mod before the release date. This time I ruined everything by rushing through the development again...sorry...

I was an a******, and I'm still an a******
You can forget about forgiving me, but you've gotta know, that I'm sorry for all this bulls***...I just wanted to finish this stupid mod...

I agree with Sammy. While I haven't played the mod yet since I have been pretty busy these days, I have to say I'm glad I didn't. I see that the mod was rushed and it's not the only one but also other mods such as A Christmas in Springfield and Homer's Adventure (what's up with so many rushed mods as of lately, anyway?). It's sad to see so many mods rushed that had potential to be amazing but instead they were broken (HA had a bit rushed things especially in later levels and ACIS had 2 broken missions) which completely ruined the experience of the mods. I didn't want to mention these mods here but these are ones that came in my mind and I'm not attacking the author or anything like that as HA is made by same author and the mod was well done for the most part but the ending was a bit rushed as mentioned above, I recall not being able to buy a vehicle from levels 2 and 3, as well as some challenges being too difficult.

Now regarding Springfield Noire, I have read earlier in thread that one of the missions can cause a crash after completion if you decide to SAVE, so the only option is to skip the mission or to use UnlockAllMissions hack. Now I personally think this shouldn't be required to be able to continue the mod, this bug should have been reported and fixed immediately, there was NO reason at all to release the mod in this broken state, especially with TWO weeks before its initial release date. Really, there was no reason to do this. What is the point of releasing a mod earlier than intended? To get negative responses mostly? I was waiting to play this mod in the following weeks (whenever I got some free time) but I didn't feel the hype as others did, I mean sure having a mod where you play as a NEW character rather than a Simpsons character is something fresh and interesting but that doesn't mean the mod has to be rushed like that. You could have just waited few more weeks, if the beta testers were busy with real life, you could just wait few more days and when they have time, they would work again on mod instead of forcing them. I am disappointed to see a mod like this that had potential, to go to waste just because of miscommunication between the author and the rest of the team.

Gordon, I hope you will understand what you did and I recommend you to remove the download link and re-release the mod in upcoming weeks in proper state or leave the link and add some warnings to the first post that the mod is buggy and try to fix the major bugs in the meantime, then re-release it later.

Glad this... kind of got resolved, but try to keep it chill and resolve conflicts before stuff like this happens next time. I know working on stuff with other people doesn't always go 100% smoothly, but we don't want anyone fighting here or being so hard on themselves. Thanks.