[RELEASE] ACB Studios by Ancient Coffee Bean

[ck3D]

really good map, especially as it seems to be your very first one - impressive effort. it looks like you completely skipped the beginner stage and become an experienced mapper from the get-go - just out of curiosity, how long did learning your way around the editor and making this map take you ?

the architecture and overall sector work were very interesting, loved the little extra bits of detailing, odd room angles, also the extra decorative walls on every object (doors, soda machines) were a really nice personal touch and definitely made everything look a lot less flat than how most people would make them. the design (both indoors and outdoors) was perfect minus the crampedness (which has been pointed out before, but still - so many newbeasts were getting stuck everywhere during my playthrough), and the gameplay was butter. in some ways the map felt a lot like a lost e4 map to me, or maybe a little like an unseen, insanely good user level from the early / mid 2000's that would only surface just now (style reminded me a lot of Kevin Cools' work), i think it is because of the texturing and / or some of the gameplay elements.

really enjoyed this one, welcome to the community and i hope you make more because i am already looking forward to playing them

[Fernando]

Even though I have not played, I studied the map in the editor and I must say I'm really impressed with its high quality and well-made design. I really liked it.

The first time I've gave it a go on "Damn I'm Good", got my ass wiped out in no more tan 5 minutes. "Come Get Some" came after and I made it in 20 mins.

[Ancient Coffee Bean]

It took me over a month to create, mainly because I was learning as I go, if you look closely at parts of the first studio and and the RPG room you may notice those where made very early on, most of the early areas I completely redid later, also the difficulty maybe is a bit too high for most people.

[ck3D]

that's really impressive. a month isn't even much to spend on such a map - it takes most people several of them, or even years sometimes, to come up with such good quality, well-designed, average-length user maps more often than not. or at least that's how i remember it being back in the days - now i guess that you are a fast learner, and also that all the new, convenient mapster32 features old-school mappers used to miss (stuff as simple as measurements and assisted spritework construction in 2d mode, easy copy-pasting methods and whatnot), as well as more general information floating around online really help new mappers. gone are the days when the golden rule was not to release one's first map (or second, or tenth) because 95% of the time it was a barely playable piece of crap with the same reoccuring design mistakes. that's awesome !

again i hope that learning your way around the editor and making this map was fun enough to you to make you want to make more, new mappers are always more than welcome in this community

[Puritan]

again i hope that learning your way around the editor and making this map was fun enough to you to make you want to make more, new mappers are always more than welcome in this community

Keep it coming 

[Fernando]

Well, yes. A month is not a big deal of time to work on a particular map. But, if I have to say which is the biggest problem to face in the creation of a map is self-acceptance itself. Don't know actually if that is for you guys, but for me, it is quite.

Let me elaborate my problem. I'm currently making the third episode in my FM series, and I even plan to make a fourth episode. I have sketches of the levels in a copybook and even annotations as to what and how to make them in the editor. But for some reason, when I imagine it, it doesn't turn out completely nice on the editor itself. Sometimes it comes better, other times worse. I'm really inspired as to build levels, but many times I turn out not liking the actual output of my ideas, not liking them as much as I wanted, so therefore I tend up spending way too much time in trying to think how to make it better than before.

I completed the first level of FM3X, and it took me nearly a month to complete, yet I only worked continually for just a week. I was really inspired to complete that level, but I just can't work completely dedicated on the pack. No interruptions and no hassles. I wish I could do that again, just like many years ago.

Anyways, nice hand on your first level! Hope you keep making much more levels. I just can't see Duke dying in the near future...

[methy]

 You know what's funny? When I first played ACB Studios, I told Ancient Coffee Bean it was worth a 93/100 on the MSDN scale. Good guess!

I only rated 95/100 because after replaying it I found it even better than on first playthrough.

[Ancient Coffee Bean]

Already got a new map in the works, planned it out well, I'll probably show some images once that I've textured and detailed it, hopefully you'll see it in a month or maybe less. Won't spoil what it is yet but it's classic city themed.

Thanks again for all the feedback.

[Forge]

sweet
be sure to employ a beta-tester to help work out any issues before you release it

[Micky C]

Finally got around to playing this. It's a fundamentally "flawless" map which has everything; good progression, layout, texturing,trimming, unreachable scenery, destructive environment, nice subtle details like windows in doors and vending machines with curved fronts (they've been done before but should be used more often). Hard to believe it was done in a month! Impossible to believe the mapper has never mapped before for Duke 3D (I have the impression he did some mapping back in the day?).

Ancient Coffee Bean, I imagine you based the map on a real life location or otherwise fully visualized what you were going to build before you started making it? I don't know about others but a large amount of my mapping time is spent thinking "hmm what room/detail should I put here?" as opposed to straightforward building.

Having said that, there are some flaws 

When I finish using this viewscreen (and possibly others) Megaton crashes to the desktop for me.


Now there are a few shade related issues, but I understand that it may have to do with Megaton's outdated shading system (and you stated in the readme that it might seem brighter). But I'll point them out anyway.

These bathrooms barely seem to have any shading. Some different shades on the walls for adjacent walls would really spruce up this area, as well as maybe darkening it so that the light on the ceiling has a more profound lighting effect on the floor directly below.


I think this room and hallway should be a bit darker. Especially that hallway which has no light sources in it. Btw, when I opened that door in-game, I thought it didn't have a sound for it, however inspection in mapster shows that it does have a MFX sprite, however the sound is almost inaudible in-game. Not sure what to do about that.


Finally with the fog at the end, it's sticks out like a sore thumb where the fog isn't being applied here, namely those wooden bits on the ceiling outside, and in the window frames; perhaps turn those glass sprites into walls so that you can apply the fog to the outside there.


Otherwise it's a damn fine, polished, high quality map. Glad to hear you have another one in production, I can't wait to play it 

[Ancient Coffee Bean]

You are better off trying it in eduke, that has better lighting/fog and much less bugs, play through it again in eduke because most the problems your just said are megaton related, as for the bits without fog they just didn't look good with fog on them up close.

It probably took closer to two months to create though also I did not plan the map out at all or even have a reference. never touched build before or even doom editing but I did use the hammer editor briefly a long time ago

Glad you enjoyed it, give it a go in eduke, make sure to include the music track.

[Arghantyl]

It's a fundamentally "flawless" map which has everything; good progression, layout, texturing,trimming.

Same.

I can just complain about the size of rooms and the ceiling.
Every thing seems too small for me and ennemies were always stuck so the fights could be more enjoyable.

I did like the secrets and little alternative ways.