[RELEASE] Bridge Between Two Islands

[Forge]

Write long posts in notepad then copy/paste.

Puritan lags so he doesn't notice. [oldman.gif]

[ck3D]

i'll just cross-post my comments from duke4 to here anyway, they belong here more than over there seeing as this is the site the original author chose to share his work on :

pretty nice map, probably your best one so far. i liked how your influences were less obvious this time, even though a lot of locations did remind me of merlijn's or gambini's maps in terms of feel (then again 90% of modern maps do, i wish more people developed a personal style but that's another story plus i am repeating myself), said locations didn't feel like blatant copies and the whole terrain actually felt pretty coherent overall.

i liked how open the space was and how intense some of the firefights got. enemy and weaponry placement was well thought-out even though i did completely run out of ammo just as i got to the bridge, which gave me a pretty hard time considering the long-distance liztroop and lizmen fights that occur there. i liked how heavily the gameplay was focused on exploration, two of those four first switches were harder to find than expected and having to try finding them for a few minutes in such a wide environment was pretty fun.

gameplay and sense of entertainment both took a leap after i got to the bridge, i got killed by the explosion several times because i was experiencing serious fps drops during the fight there and it took me a few attempts to realize where the explosion-triggering touchplate was, then after i cleared the area i got lured into thinking i had to jump onto those sprite structures connecting the pillars underneath the bridge in order to keep going (which seemed more natural to me than going back and try climbing up the side of the bridge, which i now assume is what i was supposed to do in order to keep going ?). seeing as nothing was properly blocked and i actually could somehow find my way down there i saved my game, then when i realized that this one cliff i had seen was too far away from me to be accessible and thus could not be the proper route i should have taken, it was too late and i couldn't find my way back onto the actual bridge. thus i got stuck and had to resort to cheating after 15 mins of trying to find a way back up and out, and i usually try to refrain from cheating unless i get into a situation that's mathematically impossible to get out of. i think that's a pretty serious design flaw that the player can access the bottom section of the bridge yet can't get back up if they try. and i swear i've tried it dozens and dozens of times, from several of those sprite sections.

seeing as i had cheated to get back onto the actual playing area my progression was already fucked up in terms of pre-existing health and ammo at my disposal so making my way to the end of the level was easier than it should have been, thus i won't comment on that last third of the level. but i liked how tough the fights progressively got, i am sure i would have loved the challenge had i kept my original health points and restricted weaponry. those last few respawns did feel a bit unnecessary, especially that last battlelord, but whatever.

another thing i disliked about the map was the amateurish feel. yes your technical skills in terms of cosmetic detailing have improved and stand their own ground which is a good thing, but you are still forgetting about some essentials - making certain sprites one-sided so they don't glitch through one another from certain angles and actually look solid, blocking unreachable areas, avoiding cluttering the playable space with unnecessary detailing (so much that you get the disappearing sprite glitch despite the enhanced eduke32 limits), putting switches at a reasonably accessible height so you can just press them instead of needing your gun to shoot them and so on. i even spotted a few 'holes' in your water surrounding the islands that still had the parallaxed sky texture and a few other silly little things that could have been easily avoided. it's all fair seeing as it doesn't necessarily affect the gameplay too much, but if you are trying to tackle ambitious aesthetics (which you did rather well in this map), i would recommend on making sure that the little things work fine first.

that might sound like a lot of bitching and bitter garbage but i actually really liked the map, the overall design was impressive (a LOT better than what you did with your LORCH maps), the map played well until i broke it, and you got the gameplay essentials right with a good eye for monster respawns and weapon placement. i hope you keep going that route and improving the way you did with this map with your next releases, work on keeping the good bits while sorting out the bad, maybe develop more original ideas and visual styles, but you are getting there !

[Merlijn]

Finally played the whole thing. Overall, I liked it. Design is very impressive, despite the visual errors. Some great spritework as well! I had some framerate issues at times, but nothing too bad.

I agree with ck3d that this is your best map so far, the layout is more original and the enormous scale makes the level stand out more (it kinda reminded me of Clear the coast, but this one is even bigger and more open).

Gameplay-wise, it was pretty good. I'm not a huge fan of this type of gameplay though (having to fight a big wave of respawns with every new step you make). I probably would have toned it down a little. For instance, the bridge section didn't need any enemies IMO, it could have been a nice little breather before the next frantic battle.

Which also brings me to this: some enemies got trapped inside the spriteworks (mostly during the bridge section). The liztroops could still shoot me but I couldn't shoot back, which was very annoying. If the sprites were one-sided, this wouldn't happen. But having too many enemies on huge spriteworks usually isn't a good idea anyway.

Despite that, it was fun to play and I'm looking forward to new maps from you. Perhaps you could implement this kind of scale to a LORCH map?

[MSandt]

The liztroops could still shoot me but I couldn't shoot back, which was very annoying.

Yeah I noticed this too, they could shoot you from strange places even if you were a mile away. Annoying.

[Sanek]

gameplay and sense of entertainment both took a leap after i got to the bridge, i got killed by the explosion several times because i was experiencing serious fps drops during the fight there and it took me a few attempts to realize where the explosion-triggering touchplate was, then after i cleared the area i got lured into thinking i had to jump onto those sprite structures connecting the pillars underneath the bridge in order to keep going (which seemed more natural to me than going back and try climbing up the side of the bridge, which i now assume is what i was supposed to do in order to keep going ?). seeing as nothing was properly blocked and i actually could somehow find my way down there i saved my game, then when i realized that this one cliff i had seen was too far away from me to be accessible and thus could not be the proper route i should have taken, it was too late and i couldn't find my way back onto the actual bridge. thus i got stuck and had to resort to cheating after 15 mins of trying to find a way back up and out, and i usually try to refrain from cheating unless i get into a situation that's mathematically impossible to get out of. i think that's a pretty serious design flaw that the player can access the bottom section of the bridge yet can't get back up if they try. and i swear i've tried it dozens and dozens of times, from several of those sprite sections.

I'm agree that this is a terrible mistake. I had plans to make the player spent much more time under the bridge, but in the end I just gave up and had to leave everything as it is.

i even spotted a few 'holes' in your water surrounding the islands that still had the parallaxed sky texture

It was done for helicopters (if you spotted them).

it kinda reminded me of Clear the coast, but this one is even bigger and more open

Actually, I was inspired by this map, sort of.

Despite that, it was fun to play and I'm looking forward to new maps from you. Perhaps you could implement this kind of scale to a LORCH map?

I don't even begun work on a new map, but I really want to do it on the same scale too.




Of all the comments in this thread (and on duke4 too), I realized that the map  has a good designv though, is seriously affected by gameplay, which is not completely adapted for that design, which is my big fault (perhaps i need more than 1 beta-tester before the final release).

[Forge]

(perhaps i need more than 1 beta-tester before the final release).

this
it's always better to have an extra set of eyes help pick things out. makes the final product cleaner

[ck3D]

gameplay and sense of entertainment both took a leap after i got to the bridge, i got killed by the explosion several times because i was experiencing serious fps drops during the fight there and it took me a few attempts to realize where the explosion-triggering touchplate was, then after i cleared the area i got lured into thinking i had to jump onto those sprite structures connecting the pillars underneath the bridge in order to keep going (which seemed more natural to me than going back and try climbing up the side of the bridge, which i now assume is what i was supposed to do in order to keep going ?). seeing as nothing was properly blocked and i actually could somehow find my way down there i saved my game, then when i realized that this one cliff i had seen was too far away from me to be accessible and thus could not be the proper route i should have taken, it was too late and i couldn't find my way back onto the actual bridge. thus i got stuck and had to resort to cheating after 15 mins of trying to find a way back up and out, and i usually try to refrain from cheating unless i get into a situation that's mathematically impossible to get out of. i think that's a pretty serious design flaw that the player can access the bottom section of the bridge yet can't get back up if they try. and i swear i've tried it dozens and dozens of times, from several of those sprite sections.

I'm agree that this is a terrible mistake. I had plans to make the player spent much more time under the bridge, but in the end I just gave up and had to leave everything as it is.

i even spotted a few 'holes' in your water surrounding the islands that still had the parallaxed sky texture

It was done for helicopters (if you spotted them).

it kinda reminded me of Clear the coast, but this one is even bigger and more open

Actually, I was inspired by this map, sort of.

Despite that, it was fun to play and I'm looking forward to new maps from you. Perhaps you could implement this kind of scale to a LORCH map?

I don't even begun work on a new map, but I really want to do it on the same scale too.




Of all the comments in this thread (and on duke4 too), I realized that the map  has a good designv though, is seriously affected by gameplay, which is not completely adapted for that design, which is my big fault (perhaps i need more than 1 beta-tester before the final release).

don't be too hard on yourself either, it wasn't a bad map, it was well-designed for the most part and the gameplay had its peaks. but yeah, as Forge said, it's always better to have one extra person who gets to scan your work before you release it publicly. (things being said, I don't always have my maps beta-tested either myself, I usually send a few versions to MetHy and Forge to get some feedback while progress is still going, then I spend ages trying to break my own map myself to the point where my head starts hurting. I probably should listen to people more, if only for things like visibility compatibility problems and stuff.)

[Micky C]

Finally played this map. Design, detail and progression-wise it was very nice, but the gameplay... I have to say it's the most stressful map I've played in recent memory.

3 things: no difficulty curve, poor pacing, repetitive.

I'm sure some people like this sort of mega fragfest but I'm going to list my personal thoughts on the gameplay below. It's going to sound negative, don't get me wrong I liked the map for the above reasons, and the atmosphere (i.e the "intense" feeling) was pretty nice, but blow me down I was always just a bit short on health and ammo, and ended up using god mode for the last 25-30% of the map.


So for the first problem of the difficulty curve, the map throws a lot of stuff at you right at the start: liztroopers, pigcops, enforcers, commanders all at once almost. You're pretty much surrounded taking hits from all directions, and not only do you need to deal with the enemies up close, but there's also a lot of enemies at a fair distance away draining your health all the while. The game keeps on doing this, so as such it doesn't really get that much harder because it already starts off pretty damn hard. Sure there are some battlelords at the end but otherwise the difficulty is pretty damn constant (and high). I played on the easiest setting, although I recognize that it's difficult to implement difficulty levels with a respawn-oriented map.

          This leads into the pacing, it feels as though you're always fighting everything all the time. No real ups or downs besides those brief moments when you've killed everything before moving onto the next switch to spawn the next wave of everything. I know that this is pretty much an arena battle map so I shouldn't really criticize it for not having some calmer moments, but once again it's a preference thing and not my cup of tea. I also realize that you can't really control the pace or difficulty on a non-linear switch hunt map like this because you can't control the order in which the player presses the switches.

          The above point is pretty similar to the point of repetitiveness. As I said before, it feels like the map throws everything at you all the time, and all the waves felt pretty damn similar. Sure further in you had a few extra weapons, but you really need to vary the enemy types more, especially when you're fighting the same enemies in the exact same location each time. For example there always seemed to be some liztroopers at a distance whittling down my health with their lasers while I was taking care of the closer up dangerous enemies like enforcers (which were also tearing down my health). Now having to worry about two or more sets of dangers like that is an interesting mechanic... once or twice. But it felt like it was always the case. I always make a great point in my maps to try to add as much variety to the combat as possible as the player progresses, however my maps are more linear than this one so it's much easier to do. I really think this map could have used much more variety in enemies as well. Perhaps have different waves focus more on different enemy types, or have one wave of really close up enemies where you urgently need to take care of the threat, and other where they're all loosely spread out and you have to hunt around for them.


So as I said above, some people (steam megaton users definitely) would love this kind of map, otherwise at least half the problems I mentioned above are as a result of the non-linear open-area button hunt gameplay style that you've chosen, and aren't necessarily your fault. Otherwise it's a fairly epic map.
Also unlike other people I didn't have any framerate problems; I wonder if that's related to the polymost optimizations TermiX was talking about which drastically improved polymost's performance. I also didn't get lost or stuck or anything which is nice in an open map like this.

[Forge]

It's run and gun. You can't sit still or you're done for.

Some people like it, some like a more methodical and organized approach.

[Micky C]

It's not like I was standing still, of course I was moving around but it just seemed like I was taking fire from all direction most of the time. I'm hardly the best player though so that wouldn't have helped things. I do prefer that more methodical/organized approach.

There was definitely some good design and some nice ideas in there. I enjoyed crossing the actual bridge itself (you don't cross a bridge like that in Duke every day), even if a Commander did spawn in my face