Last map you played

Started by Puritan, 02 December 2011, 08:14:26

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Nancsi

Daikarin had its moments, especially with the first two maps. But I don't like the ancient maps and the random supposedly-space map turn out. the gameplay seems very one dimensional with only liztroops and lizmen to fight against. Also those maps are too short. The boss map is short but fun at least.

Puritan

Thanks to methy for an excellent DaikariN review  ;)


I like the fact that this is a community where everybody can contribute.
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

Loke

Just played that Daikarin episode. I've already beaten most of those maps in Attrition numerous times but playing through them as an episode felt fresh regardless. Really good overall even though the later maps weren't as good as the first two. I also felt that there were an overabundance of health packs making it very easy to pretty much plow through it without worrying about your health.

methy

Spaceport http://www.scent-88.com/reviews/S/spaceport/spaceport.php

Kinda slightly above average map. Design wise nothing is bad and it doesn't feel old or noobish, shading is good, textures are well chosen for the most port and always well aligned. However the layout of the map is kinda weird with all its long cramped corridors and overall it looks very generic.
There are a couple of interesting ideas.
Gameplay felt kinda bland.

Took me 15mins, found 1/5 secret (the one which you're told where it is), played without the custom user.con but that didn't seem to matter.
http://thisshitaintscary.blogspot.com/ - The only Blog solely dedicated to Horror video games

Nancsi

Just a little trivia for the Daikarin episode:

The author used hi-tags instead of lo-tags for enemy skill settings at the second half of the first level (hotel part). Which means you play on come get some no matter what skill settings you use.

Another trivia: the boss can disappear in the last level, as soon as it reaches the middle purple part.

On a side note: I think the second level is really brilliant. I love the first one as well, but that Area 51 type basement look very original and fresh looking. For the contrast, the fifth level is just a meh. It's another basement, but it feels like a random DooM map. The DooM-styled key doors indicate that too, so that might be the author's purpose.

Another thing I don't like from map 3 to map 5 is enemy placement. While there is a large scale and variety in the first two levels, only liztroops and lizmen are found in the other levels, with one random Battlelord in each levels + there are 2 small Octabrain locations.

Merlijn

The boss doesn't completely disappear, he gets teleported to the outdoor section for some reason.. Fighting him on the pyramid is more fun then in that cramped room anyway. :)

I recently replayed it, and the first 2 maps are really good. I pretty much agree with Nansci about the 2nd and the fifth map. I also liked the 2 medieval levels though, especially the second one was pretty good.

Puritan

Yay! We've reached 400 uploaded maps today.
Spy Hard by Juan Pablo Lenceiro is actually a fun map to play if you're reading the template first.
Knowing something about what to expect makes it a cool experience.
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

Found on my hard drive that "map" called "ZOMBIEMODE". If you don't want to save your progress in game every time, you just should load that map to start where you died.

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ck3D

besides Riverside Town (on which I commented on Duke4), I just played an obscure city map called 7Eleven.map (yes, I was intrigued by the name), by the author of Escape from Alcatraz. It was actually pretty damn good, the design is very very basic but at the same time very clean and polished (I only spotted one misaligned texture), pretty much like an early Episode 3 level (the start reminded me of Bank Roll). The layout was also pretty excellent. It's a short ride, I made it through in less than ten minutes, but it's fun. Gameplay is perfect and reminiscing of older user maps. The thing reminded me of New York Plaza a little bit. Only complaint is that a few indoor areas were so undetailed that they did look a bit poor and shabby (ie. the inside of the convenience store itself). A couple of extra minutes spent on fixing those obviously rushed rooms and maybe stronger lighting would have made this map a hot map in my book.

ck3D

LORCH (which I just posted about on Duke4), and right now I just finished ESBN 6, that map Mikko reviewed a few weeks ago on MSDN. It was better than I expected and I really liked the challenge, I died a couple times which is worth mentioning. That level just keeps throwing massive amounts of enemies at you, and you are in for some pretty intense firefights. Liztroops by dozens, lots of pigcops and lizmen too, even though you start off barely armed with a pistol that you have to find in a trash can in a street packed with monsters. It's not noobish by any means unless that type of gameplay would suggest, too, the map itself is very well designed, with a clean look and good shading / lighting, and the monsters are well placed and not random - it just so happens to be a lot of them. It only got a little annoying in some cramped areas, especially an underwater maze where you have to find a keycard at some point, and you have no scuba gear (you can only surface back where you started, and octabrains get in the way). I know it doesn't sound fun when I put it like that, but the map is actually pretty damn cool to play. I liked it !

ck3D

just played Retaliation and Parkade for the first time (I can only play TROR maps when I am on someone else's computer). Didn't think much about Retaliation, to me it's clearly a demonstration map à la Bobsp, which clearly goes overboard with detailing to the point where it stops being immersive (way too many sound effects, palette values, complex spritework everywhere, not bringing up the TROR because it was originally supposed to be a TROR practice map but still). It was enjoyable but so short I had to play it again a second time to make sure I had gone the right way and that I hadn't missed anything, and so that I could actually take the time to look at all the (epileptic) eye-candy (during my first playthrough I had fallen into the first manhole instantly by accident and completely missed the first street area, before even having been able to explore around and look at all those promising building entrances, that I assumed to be enterable, so for some reason I assumed I took a wrong path by glitching my way through a floor, and felt frustrated the entire play). Took me three minutes. It is a good looking map, but that's pretty much it. Everyone can make uber detailed maps in 2012. I didn't think the gameplay was interesting, so I prefer to be neutral and just look at it as a museum kind of map, like the Bobsp of TROR in 2012.

Parkade was a different story, the gameplay was much more interesting, albeit I spent a while roaming around and looking for where to go next, I think it's because I did something wrong (again) and collected the keys in the wrong order, I managed to enter the room with the sleeping newbeasts and the yellow key by crawling under the door, which I was not sure I was supposed to, the layout of the map was already complex (plus I was getting visual glitches all over the place with TROR and it was getting on my nerves) so I just kept going, in the end I think I finished the map with one yellow lock left untouched and a few rooms left unexplored, oh well, I don't think I missed out on much. Not much to say about that map especially seeing as the visual glitches I was getting prevented me from enjoying the sight, I was in it solely for the gameplay, and it was fun, even though confusing at times. Two very different building styles between Paul B and Micky C, not too sure who built what but I could spot the differences from location to location. That car with the shotgun inside killed me like five times before I managed to get the gun without actually trying to enter the car.

Nancsi

I've recently played ADG, and well, it's not as good as I remembered it. Leveldesign is fantastic, especially the shadows, with realism was al over there, and locations were clean. However the episode lacks in other departments:

- Very skimpy use of ambience sounds. They are rare, and the whole thing is too silent (except for the rainy level, where it was done well).
- Shotgun. Always shotgun. It's not fun to fight against pig cop hordes with shotgun only. More massive weapons should have been there.
- Enemy placement is meh. Too many pigcops, and too few others. The first map aside there are no Enforcers, and Commanders, Drones, Slimers etc. are very rare. Octabrains however have been put into locations where they don't belong.
- The final map is too short and uninspired. Also, the gameplay is too linear with every key in sight, and there is no way you can use alternate paths. It got old by the 4th level actually.

Despite all of these issues, this thing worth playing because of all the eyecandy (the 1st map looks lesser than the others).

Micky C

Quote from: ck3D on  30 December 2012, 03:56:38
Parkade was a different story, the gameplay was much more interesting, albeit I spent a while roaming around and looking for where to go next, I think it's because I did something wrong (again) and collected the keys in the wrong order, I managed to enter the room with the sleeping newbeasts and the yellow key by crawling under the door, which I was not sure I was supposed to, the layout of the map was already complex (plus I was getting visual glitches all over the place with TROR and it was getting on my nerves) so I just kept going, in the end I think I finished the map with one yellow lock left untouched and a few rooms left unexplored, oh well, I don't think I missed out on much. Not much to say about that map especially seeing as the visual glitches I was getting prevented me from enjoying the sight, I was in it solely for the gameplay, and it was fun, even though confusing at times. Two very different building styles between Paul B and Micky C, not too sure who built what but I could spot the differences from location to location. That car with the shotgun inside killed me like five times before I managed to get the gun without actually trying to enter the car.

Yeah you're not supposed to be able to get through that door. From memory there's a shotgun ontop of a 3D car, not sure about inside, unless Paul changed that in one of his many updates  ::) You shouldn't be getting any glitches though assuming you're running it in polymer. Otherwise you must have played it in classic or worse polymost and the map was not designed for that. I'm glad you liked the gameplay, it was a complete mess and literately an afterthought. "Ok we've built all this cool stuff now what the hell is the player supposed to do". But I guess it turned out ok. I still prefer the original gameplay compared to the final version that was finalized a year later imo.
Wall whore.

MSandt

Quote from: Nancsi on  02 January 2013, 12:40:01
I've recently played ADG, and well, it's not as good as I remembered it. Leveldesign is fantastic, especially the shadows, with realism was al over there, and locations were clean. However the episode lacks in other departments:

- Very skimpy use of ambience sounds. They are rare, and the whole thing is too silent (except for the rainy level, where it was done well).
- Shotgun. Always shotgun. It's not fun to fight against pig cop hordes with shotgun only. More massive weapons should have been there.
- Enemy placement is meh. Too many pigcops, and too few others. The first map aside there are no Enforcers, and Commanders, Drones, Slimers etc. are very rare. Octabrains however have been put into locations where they don't belong.
- The final map is too short and uninspired. Also, the gameplay is too linear with every key in sight, and there is no way you can use alternate paths. It got old by the 4th level actually.

Despite all of these issues, this thing worth playing because of all the eyecandy (the 1st map looks lesser than the others).

Yeah I agree, there are bits that spice up the gameplay but combat itself is pretty monotonic.
"Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential." -Howard Roark

ck3D

#314
Quote from: Micky C on  02 January 2013, 14:38:35
Yeah you're not supposed to be able to get through that door. From memory there's a shotgun ontop of a 3D car, not sure about inside, unless Paul changed that in one of his many updates  ::) You shouldn't be getting any glitches though assuming you're running it in polymer. Otherwise you must have played it in classic or worse polymost and the map was not designed for that. I'm glad you liked the gameplay, it was a complete mess and literately an afterthought. "Ok we've built all this cool stuff now what the hell is the player supposed to do". But I guess it turned out ok. I still prefer the original gameplay compared to the final version that was finalized a year later imo.

i never really understood shit to the differences between polymer, polymost and the like, the settings i always play with on the computer i used are 1024 x 768 32 bpp with polymer unchecked. that's classic mode, right ? anyway before even playing parkade, i had already observed that those settings i am using always result in visual glitches whenever i play a map with true room over room, i am just too lazy to change them (and really didn't know that just activating polymer would have done the trick), i knew it wasn't directly related to your map, i was merely throwing it out there that those glitches (although coming from my end) distracted me while playing the level, so that my experience was probably not representative and true to the quality of the map.

about the shotgun it was inside the 3d car when i played but maybe the sprite glitched through the roof or something. i assumed that was normal so i tried to crawl through the car windows which squished me repeatedly. i guess i was just being stupid. and i know what you mean about implementing gameplay as an afterthought, i have done that in some maps of mine before as well... but yeah, it didn't feel improvised when i played it, it seemed pretty coherent to me, and well thought-out with the final battle. don't know what the differences with the original version were, though !