BobSP4 release thread.

Started by bobaverill, 24 October 2013, 10:42:24

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Forge

#15
Quote from: Merlijn on  27 October 2013, 17:26:34
Based on these comments, I was expecting this to be a *lot* harder. But I only drowned once, after I figured out where the scuba gear refill stations were it became a lot easier.
i was in a beta-test mind-set when i went through rather than normal play/review mode. it was more geared towards exploring and looking for things that were "broken". This coupled with having minor trouble finding entrances & the correct buildings caused me to take three tries to finish (which means i drowned twice).
I mentioned it not really as a major design issue, but the level does contain the potential to have people go the wrong way due to its openness

Quote from: DavoX on  28 October 2013, 03:19:58
I'm stuck.. I picked some kind of motherboard chip and I can't place it on the CO2 slot... before this I opened the blue card for the armory and I guess I picked something, maybe? it's an empty slot just like the one for the chip... there were 2 chips? I picked it by accident? did I break something?
take the chip from blue key card building (sub repair station) all the across the chasm to the building over there (alien base) where you'll find another chip that needs to be brought back to the blue lock building

Quote from: bobaverill on  27 October 2013, 19:27:58
...new revision of the map I've sent in to a few sites for reviews.
got this Puritan, or am i to be expecting an email with attachment?
Take it down to the beach with a hammer and pound sand up your ass

bobaverill

#16
Quote from: Forge on  28 October 2013, 03:32:58
got this Puritan, or am i to be expecting an email with attachment?

Sent it to Puritan.

Micky C

I liked it. I enjoyed the scenery/detailing, and the idea of the progression and gameplay. What I found annoying was some of the underwater combat. For example, the best thing to use against octabrains are the devestator/RPG. However, under water rocket projectiles move really slow, while the octabrains move at normal speed, which means you miss about 90% of the time.
Wall whore.

bobaverill

#18
Quote from: Micky C on  28 October 2013, 09:22:22
I liked it. I enjoyed the scenery/detailing, and the idea of the progression and gameplay. What I found annoying was some of the underwater combat. For example, the best thing to use against octabrains are the devestator/RPG. However, under water rocket projectiles move really slow, while the octabrains move at normal speed, which means you miss about 90% of the time.

This forces you to fight differently. What I think you'll find is that the best weapon underwater is the expander as it auto-tracks to correct for enemies who are above/below you and it's a hitscan weapon so it doesn't have the slow projectile problem of the RPG. Rocket weapons can still be used but as a sort of "slow sniper" weapon from just beyond the enemies' range of detection, to reduce their numbers somewhat before closing in to engage the survivors. The freedom of movement on the vertical axis also changes how you evade the explosive drones, and how Octabrains behave when they first notice you. It's difficult to adjust to at first but it just has its own rules of combat that I think should make for very entertaining Dukematches, as people frantically switch weapons as they move from a habitat into the sea and vice versa, since the weapons that work best in air are not the same ones which work best in water. Case in point, the useless nature of rockets works in your favor when fighting the three fat commanders underwater, when the sub repair facility door opens. Had you faced them inside it would have been a much more difficult fight.

Forge

Quote from: bobaverill on  28 October 2013, 07:43:43
Quote from: Forge on  28 October 2013, 03:32:58
got this Puritan, or am i to be expecting an email with attachment?
Sent it to Puritan.
there it is.  :)
Mr Averill wants a Puritan review, so it's time to polish up those skills and do a new release  8)
Take it down to the beach with a hammer and pound sand up your ass

Sanek

Well, here's MY review, in clumsy english. :)

It's only been a few days since the release of Red 1 from Merlin, and here's another veteran of the mapping have a new release for us ! Bob Averill in the early 2000s became one of the such mappers who made a revolution in the field of mapping - from a pretty average maps that were released during the 90's, we went to the ultra-detailed maps that make our community still live today.. BobSP4 became the first release from Bob over the last few years...

In BobSP4 he represent to us a completely new approach to gameplay. The bottom line is that most of the time the player will be under water. Of course, such maps come out before, but in BobSP4 this idea was introduced on such a large scale for the first time .
On the territory of the map we have multiple underwater bases, among which the player must travel great distances, which give the reason to explore the entire map. You'll have to monitor the amount of oxygen in order to have time to pick up new scuba gear, generously scattered across the map. However, at different points of the map. In terms of the difficulty of this map is pretty average , although it is recognized that there are several serious battles.

In terms of design, this map came out worse than the rest of Bob's maps, but it's still at a fairly high level. And if we compare the quality of map to its gigantic scale, there are no hindrances to the design at all. Personally, I liked the prison and the main base of the aliens . On the main site of the map you also can spot some interesting places, including the destroyed alien craft, which came to us straight from BobSP3, one of Bob's old maps!
BobSP4 represents a superb example of a conceptual map. However, there's still some room left for improvement.

If I can give to this map any score, I'll give it 92/100!

Puritan

Thanks a lot, Sanek  :)


I've uploaded your review ( with some minor adjustments ).
Bitter words mean little to me. Autumn winds will blow right through me
And someday in the mist of time, when they asked me if I knew you
I'd smile and say you were a friend of mine, and the sadness would be lifted from my eyes
Oh when I'm old and wise

Sanek

Quote from: Puritan on  28 October 2013, 18:42:22
Thanks a lot, Sanek  :)


I've uploaded your review ( with some minor adjustments ).

Okay. :)


Hey, I'm also recorded my playthrough of this map. Download.


bobaverill

#23
Quote from: Sanek on  28 October 2013, 17:15:31
In terms of design, this map came out worse than the rest of Bob's maps

I agree, but I am content if it means someone else is intrigued by this style of map and makes a better map like this. I'd love to play it. Mainly I just wanted to get the idea out there. There are some examples of other possible settings in the text file.

Also, to Puritan: some of the screenshots on the review seem to be from an earlier version. There is less decoration around the Poseidon sign for instance.

methy

Quote from: bobaverill on  27 October 2013, 19:53:24
What did you like?

The originaliy of the setting and layout. The atmosphere, the story (both from the .txt and in game), the (surpringsly) fun gun fights underwater.

I haven't finished the map but I'll start over with a newer version. I happened to catch both blue and red keycards before using any, and as I seem to understand from reading this thread, you're supposed to get them one after the other?
http://thisshitaintscary.blogspot.com/ - The only Blog solely dedicated to Horror video games

Merlijn

#25
I've played the map twice now, so here's a short 'review'.

I really liked the scale, the conceptual grandness. Watching out of a window, seeing the huge underwater scenery and knowing it's actually part of the playable area instead of background scenery was pretty damn awesome. The descent into the chasm to the destroyed research station was a nice touch as well. The gameplay wasn't that hard after all, I would have liked a bit more expander ammo (I ran out pretty fast),  but maybe that would have made the map too easy. The section in the alien base was fun, probably the best part in terms of gameplay.

Indoor design reminds me a lot of the older bobsp maps, only some of the locations are more cramped this time. Some rooms should have been a bit wider (especially the prison rooms). It's too bad the engine makes spriteworks glitch underwater, despite the 'magnetic boots' explanation.
I especially had trouble navigating through the flooded prison section. TROR would have been perfect for this situation, but I know you're a veteran like me. ;)

In short: very good map. It does have some short comings, but the overall theme and execution make it worth playing.

bobaverill

Quote from: Merlijn on  29 October 2013, 18:36:17
I really liked the scale, the conceptual grandness. Watching out of a window, seeing the huge underwater scenery and knowing it's actually part of the playable area instead of background scenery was pretty damn awesome.

Glad you liked that, it was born from frustration with maps that tease you with cool looking but unreachable background stuff. Or stuff like Moon base maps where the only thing outside is the parallaxed lunar landscape sky texture.

Quote from: Merlijn on  29 October 2013, 18:36:17
TROR would have been perfect for this situation, but I know you're a veteran like me. ;)

My understanding is that TROR glitches when seen through transparent textures. Due to the necessity of all those windows I could not find a way to use TROR at all in the map which is a shame as I didn't want the bases to reach all the way to the surface as they do. If I'm wrong and TROR has been fixed such that it no longer has that problem I'd love to see someone do a better map with this theme using it.

Quote from: Merlijn on  29 October 2013, 18:36:17
In short: very good map. It does have some short comings, but the overall theme and execution make it worth playing.

Let's see you do a map like this. That's not a challenge, I actually would really like to see what you come up with. I'm sure playing SP4 has given you some ideas.

Forge

#27
or expand on High Treason's Space Mission concept and implement more space-walking and lunar surface crawling using the spacesuit and altered gravity

http://www.scent-88.com/reviews/S/spacemiss/spacemiss.php
even this project has limited outdoor action, but the concept and tools are there to make one

large, open hostile environments are very rare, but not unique
Take it down to the beach with a hammer and pound sand up your ass

bobaverill

#28
Quote from: Forge on  29 October 2013, 20:13:40
or expand on High Treason's Space Mission concept and implement more space-walking and lunar surface crawling using the spacesuit and altered gravity

In fact, I've already contacted him about using his space suit code. He's offered to do an improved version of it to suit the needs of a Moon map I've begun preliminary work on. I am still exhausted from SP4 and honestly don't know if I can finish it myself though. I'd definitely like to collaborate with someone on it or just let someone more talented take over altogether. I can supply an example building that shows what aesthetic I had in mind though.

Maarten

Wow. You actually got me posting on a forum again! Haha

First of all: AWESOME underwater scene. Damn, it's really big, my laptop even got a bit laggy :D Not too much though.

Played the map for the first time yesterday, got stuck pretty fast. Today I played again, really did enjoy it. Some things could have been better (like the spriteworks/water thing), but I'm not gonna repeat them since it's already said.
I also liked the "green map" with numbers, thats shows you the order of the map. Really did help me more too... first time I did a wrong order of playing and died alot of times. It's OK though, becouse it makes the map more challenge.

I loved the fact it's all underwater + the scuba gear stations. Once I got the weapons & ammo, the bigger fights where lots of fun, I ran out of ammo with the climax though.... so I skipped the last aliens :P

Didn't got the yellow key, but I already heard I didn't miss much :)
Probably going to play it again sometime! Thanks.
Boo!