The Shadow Ring [Mission series]

[Platinum Card]

Fixed the issue I had before. I've got RoSA + installed so I had to overwrite some of the peds in modloader.

 

Also: After the first introductory mission, your writing still blows me away lol. Good stuff.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Platinum Card

[Jimmy_Leppard]

2 hours ago, Platinum Card said:

Fixed the issue I had before. I've got RoSA + installed so I had to overwrite some of the peds in modloader.

 

Also: After the first introductory mission, your writing still blows me away lol. Good stuff.

It's good to hear that the mod setup is working even with additional stuff installed.  I was really concerned about that. Also, thanks a lot, man! It means a lot. Hope you like the rest of the missions too

[MihajloS]

Can you please tell me how I can add the new interior in DYOM?I'm making my own mission pack and i cannot find tutorial for that.🤔

[Jimmy_Leppard]

3 minutes ago, MihajloS said:

Can you please tell me how I can add the new interior in DYOM?I'm making my own mission pack and i cannot find tutorial for that.🤔

It's easy as long as you have Modloader installed. Basically, just browse various GTA modding related sites and once you find an interior mod you want, just download it and put it into your modloader folder.

[MihajloS]

3 hours ago, Jimmy_Leppard said:

It's easy as long as you have Modloader installed. Basically, just browse various GTA modding related sites and once you find an interior mod you want, just download it and put it into your modloader folder.

Thanks man!🤘

[Notna]

Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god

[Jimmy_Leppard]

1 hour ago, Notna said:

Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god

😁 😁 Hope you like this one, bro!

 

[MihajloS]

I almost died laughing when Sonny and Knox was in hospital!

You are king! I can't do so many dialogue I don't know English well. The story is great I'm moving tonight to chapter 5. Rate is 10/10 for everything!

Edited May 22, 2020 by MihajloS

[Jimmy_Leppard]

7 minutes ago, MihajloS said:

I almost died laughing when SPOILERED You are king! I can't do so many dialogue I don't know English well. The story is great I'm moving tonight to chapter 5. Rate is 10/10 for everything!

Thanks a lot, man! I'm very happy you like the mission pack this much so far. 😁 One thing though, can you put your first sentence into spoiler tags because it's a spolier 😁 Type [ spoiler ] at the beginning and [ /spoiler ] at the end of the sentence, of course without the spaces.

 

Like this

Edited May 22, 2020 by Jimmy_Leppard

[MihajloS]

Just now, Jimmy_Leppard said:

Thanks a lot, man! I'm very happy you like the mission pack this much so far. 😁 One thing though, can you put your first sentence into spoilers because it's a spolier 😁 Type [ spoiler ] at the beginning and [ /spoiler ] at the end of the sentence, of course without the spaces.

Sure man I will

[The John David]

I've never seen a topic that draws more depth chapters than evaluating all the basic results, in a single topic before. Good luck for designing the rest of the chapters, Jimmy. I might give it a try for the first chapter you released and give you my feedback. Also, I kinda liked the expressions of the character photos you have here. Truly realistic.

Spoiler

Why does this MP have many plugins / tools for us to installed before playing this anyway? Is it still necessary or not?

 

Edited May 26, 2020 by The John David

[Jimmy_Leppard]

3 hours ago, The John David said:

I've never seen a topic that draws more depth chapters than evaluating all the basic results, in a single topic before. Good luck for designing the rest of the chapters, Jimmy. I might give it a try for the first chapter you released and give you my feedback. Also, I kinda liked the expressions of the character photos you have here. Truly realistic.

  Reveal hidden contents

Why does this MP have many plugins / tools for us to installed before playing this anyway? Is it still necessary or not?

 

Hey man, good to see you! Thank you so much for your support. I'm really glad you like the topic design! By the way, I think the topic might got you confused. I already released the whole mission pack, not just the first chapter. In the link, you'll find the whole mission pack, all 59 missions. It's finished. 😁

 

As far as the plugins go, each and every one of them is necessary because they keep your game from crashing and they expand the limits of the game which is necessary since the mods are very demanding. Everything I included in the archive along with the missions needs to be installed as instructed in the readme instruction manual.

[The John David]

4 hours ago, Jimmy_Leppard said:

Hey man, good to see you! Thank you so much for your support. I'm really glad you like the topic design! By the way, I think the topic might got you confused. I already released the whole mission pack, not just the first chapter. In the link, you'll find the whole mission pack, all 59 missions. It's finished. 😁

 

As far as the plugins go, each and every one of them is necessary because they keep your game from crashing and they expand the limits of the game which is necessary since the mods are very demanding. Everything I included in the archive along with the missions needs to be installed as instructed in the readme instruction manual.

Oops 😅, my bad. I was totally jumped out of the conclusion without reading any remarks around here. Anyway, yeah, I've been busy for online studies right now, even my own personal problems. Anxiety is killing me already. So regarding to the plugin, I guess I will try to install them and see if it works on my game before I play all the content. I know this is a very long story, but depends on my time to play this, my feedback for you will be postponed.

 

Cheers 😃

[Jimmy_Leppard]

12 minutes ago, The John David said:

Oops 😅, my bad. I was totally jumped out of the conclusion without reading any remarks around here. Anyway, yeah, I've been busy for online studies right now, even my own personal problems. Anxiety is killing me already. So regarding to the plugin, I guess I will try to install them and see if it works on my game before I play all the content. I know this is a very long story, but depends on my time to play this, my feedback for you will be postponed.

 

Cheers 😃

That's okay, man 😁 I included a readme instruction manual in the archive, so make sure to read it fully and the installation process will be very easy for you. I'll be looking forward to your feedback. Cheers!

[MihajloS]

I finished! Just amazing mission-pack!

Spoiler

It broke my heart when Sonny and Knox died...WHY???🤣

 

[Jimmy_Leppard]

Just now, MihajloS said:

I finished! Just amazing mission-pack!

  Reveal hidden contents

It broke my heart when Sonny and Knox died...WHY???🤣

 

Thank you very much for playing, man! I'm very happy you liked it! 😀 Cheers!

 

As far as your spoiler reference goes - I'm glad that scene left such a strong impression on you. That was exactly what I wanted to accomplish.

[MihajloS]

22 minutes ago, Jimmy_Leppard said:

Thank you very much for playing, man! I'm very happy you liked it! 😀 Cheers!

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

As far as your spoiler reference goes - I'm glad that scene left such a strong impression on you. That was exactly what I wanted to accomplish.

Glad to hear that! Cheers!😁

[Joey_]

First and foremost, damn, that's a way to write a introductory post to a mission pack! Mission pack experience gets more points only based on that post. And now on to the main thing: I always loved your previous mission packs because they were quite unique and the story was the key there. But this stuff with mods just brings it to a whole another level of DYOM missions. And I definitely love it! So kudos and I hope you make at least one more cause I think the community deserves it. 

[Jimmy_Leppard]

On 7/7/2020 at 11:35 AM, Joey_ said:

First and foremost, damn, that's a way to write a introductory post to a mission pack! Mission pack experience gets more points only based on that post. And now on to the main thing: I always loved your previous mission packs because they were quite unique and the story was the key there. But this stuff with mods just brings it to a whole another level of DYOM missions. And I definitely love it! So kudos and I hope you make at least one more cause I think the community deserves it. 

Thanks a lot, man! It's nice to see you like it! We'll see though. Maybe I do make one more some time in the future 😁

[Black Fox]

Just played the mission packs recently. Good as usual man, been a fan of yours and I played all of your previous mission packs, keep it up! 10000/10 🙂

[Jimmy_Leppard]

16 hours ago, Black Fox said:

Just played the mission packs recently. Good as usual man, been a fan of yours and I played all of your previous mission packs, keep it up! 10000/10 🙂

Thanks a lot for your support, man! I'm happy you liked this mission pack so much 😀

[Curtis]

Hey, looks great!

 

Would you mind updating this topic some time? I'd love to binge all your missions if I ever had the time, and I'd love to have a complete list in one place.

 

 

Edited August 8, 2020 by Curtis

[Jimmy_Leppard]

7 minutes ago, Curtis said:

Hey, looks great!

 

Would you mind updating this topic some time? I'd love to binge all your missions if I ever had the time, and I'd love to have a complete list in one place.

 

 

Hey man, good to hear from you! Yeah, that topic is missing the last couple of mission packs. I'll add them to the list, no worries 😃

[Suriya sathriya]

Bro i have a doubt that what happens to frank martinelli at last ? This is so good ,nice . This is my third dyom designed by you . Runaway, edge of high life , then shadow ring,

Edited October 21, 2020 by Suriya sathriya
Spelling mistakes

[Jimmy_Leppard]

4 hours ago, Suriya sathriya said:

Bro i have a doubt that what happens to frank martinelli at last ? This is so good ,nice . This is my third dyom designed by you . Runaway, edge of high life , then shadow ring,

Hey, thanks for the support, I really appreciate it! 😀 Hope you like my other mission packs in case you decide to play them 😀

[Notna]

Getting to this finally! Let's see how I handle installing mods tho

[Jimmy_Leppard]

5 hours ago, Notna said:

Getting to this finally! Let's see how I handle installing mods tho

Hey bro. Good to hear that! Better late than never, right? I tried to be as detailed and as helpful when it comes to the Readme file regarding mod installation. I hope you won't have any issues with them. I'm very much looking forward to your feedback! 😀

[M.B. Kovas]

Yesterday I was talking with Notna about DYOM and he mentioned that he's gonna get down to playing Jimmy's new mission pack (which I can see he left a post about above shortly after), and I decided to give it a try myself. I played through the first chapter myself (didn't play the rest yet) and then noticed that there is a serious lack of actual reviews on the project here, so I'll give you my piece. While playing through this, I was contemplating whether I should record this with commentary like in the old days again when I used to blast through Edge of High Life in one of my channels which is now gone, but I left that idea for now.

 

Before I get into the review of the first chapter, I wanna say that it's pretty interesting seeing you mix up your missions with mods this time. It's a refreshing sight and it feels new as opposed to recycling the same old faces. Good job.

Spoiler

What can I say? Great first chapter! I never expect anything less from you, Jimmy, and you never fail to meet expectations. Gonna go through the pros and cons as usual in my reviews, so here we go.

 

As usual in most of your projects, your strongest suit is your compelling storytelling and interesting characters, and I believe this is what you do best in the entire DYOM community. Your characters feel alive. Most other DYOM projects have a lot of side characters that do not really disagree on anything much and just flow with the storyline in a linear fashion, but the people that you have created, especially the top three bosses of the Shadow Ring, all feel different and unique in their own terms. The stage has been set for three factions to rival eachother based on fear of one of them getting Tom Rhodes killed, and going through the first chapter, Martinelli already confessed that he's not the one who organized the hit (as far as I remember others didn't confess, but my memory could be lacking here as I didn't write anything down and just went on with it). Not sure if he's lying or not, but if he is indeed innocent in this case, the whole conspiracy has been shortened quite early into the series, but I won't leave out the possibility that finding and dealing with the one who killed Rhodes, the initiator of The Shadow Ring, is not the end goal of the entire series. Other than that, the gangs themselves feel real. Having to play through the first initial missions of each gang accordingly, getting to know what kind of business they're dealing in really set the tone for what I now imagine the situation in each city being like. The smaller story arcs, like the rival gangs in Los Santos coming after the cartel is also an interesting scenario. The simple, traditional GTA-style gameplay missions are also something that you know how to interpret correctly, and I enjoy it. All in all, I just wanna say how good you are at making your universe feel fleshed out, and that's not just this mission series.

 

I don't generally have a lot of cons to point out, but I will throw in some notes based on my own personal preference. Whether they feel objective enough for you to change something in your future projects is up to you. Anyway, coming back to the characters. What I emphasized a lot in the first paragraph is your ability to create an atmosphere of the story as a whole. It seems that the focus of the story is leaning more towards the big picture (how the gangs and their bosses interact) instead of individual characters, the latter of which I feel are lacking a bit. The biggest problem, although it's not a severe issue, is that most of the henchmen of each individual gang feel a lot like the same people. Their motives are rather unknown, and that's fine for a story that likely doesn't intend to put much emphasis into it, but at times they do like to speak in the same "tough guy" manner, which can get old rather quick. What I'd imagine work best is that one of the main henchmen was, for example, extraordinally paranoid. Another henchmen could be extraordinally crazy, and another could be extraordinally clever. At this point, they feel a lot like the same, but I know that it's rather hard to contrive this stuff when there is no explanation to the backstory of these henchmen characters, or when you don't want to take away the focus from the main gang bosses and Jason Rhodes himself, so I feel it doesn't pose that much of a problem in the context of this story specifically. Other than that, not much else to say, really.

 

Conclusion - very entertaining to play. I like stories and you do them best around here I feel, so it's a real treat. I'm likely gonna continue playing through more of the series, but I can't really promise any more reviews, but it's not out of the equation. Jimmy, your stuff is great. Keep making it if or when you can, because your missions really do stand as one of the best standards in the community.

 

[Jimmy_Leppard]

1 hour ago, M.B. Kovas said:

Yesterday I was talking with Notna about DYOM and he mentioned that he's gonna get down to playing Jimmy's new mission pack (which I can see he left a post about above shortly after), and I decided to give it a try myself. I played through the first chapter myself (didn't play the rest yet) and then noticed that there is a serious lack of actual reviews on the project here, so I'll give you my piece. While playing through this, I was contemplating whether I should record this with commentary like in the old days again when I used to blast through Edge of High Life in one of my channels which is now gone, but I left that idea for now.

 

Before I get into the review of the first chapter, I wanna say that it's pretty interesting seeing you mix up your missions with mods this time. It's a refreshing sight and it feels new as opposed to recycling the same old faces. Good job.

  Reveal hidden contents

What can I say? Great first chapter! I never expect anything less from you, Jimmy, and you never fail to meet expectations. Gonna go through the pros and cons as usual in my reviews, so here we go.

 

As usual in most of your projects, your strongest suit is your compelling storytelling and interesting characters, and I believe this is what you do best in the entire DYOM community. Your characters feel alive. Most other DYOM projects have a lot of side characters that do not really disagree on anything much and just flow with the storyline in a linear fashion, but the people that you have created, especially the top three bosses of the Shadow Ring, all feel different and unique in their own terms. The stage has been set for three factions to rival eachother based on fear of one of them getting Tom Rhodes killed, and going through the first chapter, Martinelli already confessed that he's not the one who organized the hit (as far as I remember others didn't confess, but my memory could be lacking here as I didn't write anything down and just went on with it). Not sure if he's lying or not, but if he is indeed innocent in this case, the whole conspiracy has been shortened quite early into the series, but I won't leave out the possibility that finding and dealing with the one who killed Rhodes, the initiator of The Shadow Ring, is not the end goal of the entire series. Other than that, the gangs themselves feel real. Having to play through the first initial missions of each gang accordingly, getting to know what kind of business they're dealing in really set the tone for what I now imagine the situation in each city being like. The smaller story arcs, like the rival gangs in Los Santos coming after the cartel is also an interesting scenario. The simple, traditional GTA-style gameplay missions are also something that you know how to interpret correctly, and I enjoy it. All in all, I just wanna say how good you are at making your universe feel fleshed out, and that's not just this mission series.

 

I don't generally have a lot of cons to point out, but I will throw in some notes based on my own personal preference. Whether they feel objective enough for you to change something in your future projects is up to you. Anyway, coming back to the characters. What I emphasized a lot in the first paragraph is your ability to create an atmosphere of the story as a whole. It seems that the focus of the story is leaning more towards the big picture (how the gangs and their bosses interact) instead of individual characters, the latter of which I feel are lacking a bit. The biggest problem, although it's not a severe issue, is that most of the henchmen of each individual gang feel a lot like the same people. Their motives are rather unknown, and that's fine for a story that likely doesn't intend to put much emphasis into it, but at times they do like to speak in the same "tough guy" manner, which can get old rather quick. What I'd imagine work best is that one of the main henchmen was, for example, extraordinally paranoid. Another henchmen could be extraordinally crazy, and another could be extraordinally clever. At this point, they feel a lot like the same, but I know that it's rather hard to contrive this stuff when there is no explanation to the backstory of these henchmen characters, or when you don't want to take away the focus from the main gang bosses and Jason Rhodes himself, so I feel it doesn't pose that much of a problem in the context of this story specifically. Other than that, not much else to say, really.

 

Conclusion - very entertaining to play. I like stories and you do them best around here I feel, so it's a real treat. I'm likely gonna continue playing through more of the series, but I can't really promise any more reviews, but it's not out of the equation. Jimmy, your stuff is great. Keep making it if or when you can, because your missions really do stand as one of the best standards in the community.

 

Hey dude! Thank you for the long, comprehensive and detailed review! It was very fun to read. Unfortunately, the virus has messed everyone and everything up. I remember quite a few people leaving the comments saying they're gonna play this mission pack back when I initially opened the topic, but to this day, I haven't heard back from many of them. I'm glad people are finally coming back to ''normal'' as much as possible and hopefully, others will soon follow. 😀

 

I like written reviews and video commentary, so it's all good. Of course, if you ever want to record a video playthrough of this, feel free to do so. I know it takes a lot of time to make videos. Whatever suits you works for me too. Now to the actual mission pack review:

 

I'm very happy that you liked the first chapter! I always work hard to create an impact at the start to get people hooked on the rest of the mission pack. I think that's the key, especially when the mission pack is as long as this one. I don't want to spoil anything for you, of course, but what I can tell you is that the missions (and everything that makes them) get more and more engaging as you progress through the mission pack, so if you liked the first chapter, I think you will like the rest of the mission pack as well (at least, I hope so 😀 ).

 

I'm glad you mentioned the characters. I really had a lot of fun creating them, especially Sonny. 😀 I've mentioned this weeks ago when I replied to someone else here - I've taken a different approach in this mission pack. Usually, story carried the characters, but in this mission pack, characters carry the story. It's what really makes or breaks this mission pack for players. If you don't feel the characters, you won't like the story. But I wanted to take the risk and I'm glad it's paying off! As far as your questions from the first paragraph go - rest assured, they do have answers, but you have to play through the whole thing to find them out 😉 Also, as you noticed, there are a lot of angles in this one because not every character has the same problems. Not everyone is in the same position.

 

As far as your second paragraph goes - the first thing you mentioned gets explored later on as the story progresses. I wanted to use the first chapter to set up the whole thing so generally, there was no time to specifically focus on individuals. I had to focus on pairing up the characters and establishing relationships (or the hierarchy if you will) and it ended up being as it is. I do understand what you mean though. Like I said, if you go further into the story, I think you'll be more satisfied on that subject as the story progresses. Now, when it comes to the second thing (the henchmen) - if I understood it correctly, by henchmen, you mean the ''goons''? Like the ''minor'' minor characters (''Villa's goon'' etc.)? If so, then you've already explained it perfectly. Since they are minor characters and they are not really an integral part of the story in any way, it's really hard to make them distinguishable from one another. And it sure is a problem, I agree. But you know, it is what it is. In a story like this one where there are a lot of major characters and really important minor characters that all need screen time and, for me personally, it would've been next to impossible to incorporate another dimension in the story for the ''minor'' minor characters. I don't really see it as something that's important. You can't prioritize everything, right?

 

All in all, thanks for your support! I've said it many times before - I try my best not to disappoint the people who take their time to play my missions and make sure they don't feel like they've wasted that time in doing so. In case you do decide to play through the entire thing, I hope you like it! As far as additional feedbacks go, it's all good man. Whether or not you decide to leave a second feedback after playing the whole thing is up to you! 😃

[M.B. Kovas]

@Jimmy_Leppard no problem. As for henchmen, I mean the playable characters like Sonny, Victor, Hector and so on - there's quite a few of their names to remember! That's precisely what I meant by it - they have this common approach to challenges in the story, whatever form they come in. I am aware that they are all criminal gangsters who are doing similar work, but there are personalities to them that can be made a bit more unique in the contrast of others. That's the only note that I have on the "cons", even though it's not much of a con now that I look at the story as a whole. Good luck in the future!