Looking good for early shots. I enjoyed FESP1, especially the excellent design / build quality, and look forward to any new maps from you. Just do whatever is easiest / most inspiring and I'm sure it will be good :) 

Question To Kinn
#9472 posted by spy [37.150.51.110] on 2013/06/06 17:42:13
hows it going? Any progress to your maps?


'Sup. Ummm, well my situation of the last year or so hasn't changed in that I haven't found any time to do anything outside of my "work" work.

I don't have an ETA on anything right now.

There is however an outside possibility I might just use the level geometry I've built so far as a base for some of the content in my current (commercial) project. 

I see,

it's sad, id like to get your Q stuff as soon as possible. as you're most inspiring mapper ever

GL to your commercial project 

Hey guys,

The basics of my deathmatch map are done. I need to do a lot to the textures, cladding, fixing stairs etc, but I want to get your opinions on the "feel" of the map from a players perspective.

Does the selection of weapons and powerups work?, do you feel like there is sufficient ammo? do you think I've got the teleporters going to appropriate places? etc.

FYI the pentagram is only for show, I was bored.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/108695968/hellvert.zip

Thanks in advance,

Ben 

I'm a SP but I love CTF, so I'll try to see how I would feel in DM.

�t's rather a small level for 8 DM players.
All works fine so I think you could play it, but I think 4 would be enough.
It could be brighten up if you shape the corridors more
so it doesn't look so blocky.

I would be bored if I couldn't use the pent.
Give it a func_lift with a button downunder,
so players have to run to get it. 

it's only meant for 3 to 5 dm players. I included a lot of dm spawn points because I wanted them a bit randomized. I could always cull them down.

I'm worried that if I include the pentagram then the balance of the map will be thrown out. If you don't think that this will be a problem then I can change this.

Eventually I wanted to use the demonic textures so that the pentagram would tie in nicely with the theme.

There is still a lot of work to do with the hallways, ceilings, textures etc.

Thanks for the feedback :) 

I thought adding "goodies" to a level just encouraged the attraction.

Pentgram is a heartbreaker, and sureley it unevens the balance of a level, but then again if you make account of the func_lift only opening after 3 min the challence of the level gets stronger.
Same goes for another cache with a QuadDamage.

Strikes out the amount of players when there are so many spawns. 

Decent foundation but could stand some reworking before being made pretty.

Thoughts and musings in more detail in demo format:
https://dl.dropbox.com/s/uwx2gsuo5w5dfd9/hellvert_lurk1.zip

Briefly:
1. Hallway lengths and general walking about rhythm are OK, but pent area is far too cramped and most hallways could benefit from a slight widening.

2. Pent should be removed. if I see an item in a DM map, I expect it to be obtainable somehow. This one shouldn't be obtainable (too unbalancing in a small map), so it should go. Also, it confuses bots.

3. I don't like the teleport destinations (into doorways of the hub room!?). One-way teleports to alcoves would be an improvement, but 2-way teleports (teleporters linking to each other) would be ideal.

4. Yellow armor should be downgraded to green and moved elsewhere.

5. Red armor should be moved further down its tunnel or moved to a risky 2nd floor jump in the central area.

6. More ammo would be nice. I played a 4p match where single shotgun was almost the only weapon getting any use.

7. More could be done to allow players to read each others' intentions and cut them off. Right now the focus seems merely on responding to immediate threats and a more cerebral duel play doesn't seem particularly possible. But on the other hand, the map is cramped and in general too closed off (essentially only a single floor to the central atrium) to allow manic free for all. 

Invulnerability sort of defeats the purpose of a shooter. 

was done right in Terracity. It's a good gameplay device when placed properly, it will break any standard gameplay map though. 

thanks lurker for the in depth demo / commentary

I've re-designed a bit of the map and will look at re-designing the teleporters and widening hallways where I can.

I'm still not sold on the two way teleporters, but I will fiddle with the teleporter destinations to make them better. It might be a bit tricky to keep the circularity and move the destinations... I'll see what I can do...

Visibility is a thing I should be able to improve, but having it balanced is going to be tricky.

Again, thanks for all the commentary, (I'll also fix the powerups)

Thanks again,
Ben 

Invulnerability sort of defeats the purpose of a shooter.

Dunno, if it's temporal it gives incentive to cull as much baddies as possible for it's duration. Also can get you through a hairy situation when low on ammo etc.
And sometimes being superman and having pent+quad+sng just mowing down some hordes for the heck of it feels kinda nice.
A fun exercise could be to spawn in a room without any ammo and having to use the pent + inter ranks agression to kill some key monsters (which opens a door to a ammo stack, etc). 

Ahoy, I did a bit of tweaking and redesigning. I feel like I addressed a lot of the things that lurker mentioned in the demo. I feel like I have lost a little bit of the flow in the map, I may be able to recover that with further tweaking.

Anyways, If you guys could share your thoughts on the gameplay again that would be terrific.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/108695968/hellvert_rev2.zip

-Ben 

I'm only a DMSP2 player and this level is very unfriendly for that mode of play, but then one would expect a decent 1 on 1 level to be exactly that. The number of spawn points means that the same type of enemy spawns at the samw spot in DMSP2 and that's not ideal. Nonetheless, I could see this becoming a popular duel map. One suggestion is to not to forget to put a bloodsoaked texture at the bottom of the spike pit :) If you could orchestrate some spatter on the walls that'd be good too. Big up! 

Monolithic Brickwork 

sweet :D 

 

V.2 comments in demo:

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/wbnjb6zbrx2j95q/hellvertv2_lurk.zip

Briefly:
1. I've enjoyed my duels on this one. Thanks for the changes!

2. There is a leak above the lightning gun.

3. Bars at green armor area need a clip brush.

4. Nailgun ammo is a little tight in 3P.

5. MH alcove probably needs a back, as the MH is too close to the RA right now.


Keep it up! 

looks great.
The wind tunnels are made of bricks? It works. Like the subtle custom textures, the simple quasi-metal/industrial grillwork.
Is that a fog laden abyss below the wind tunnels?

Really nothing to criticize, for me, except that the bottom area, if it is a pit, is very flat, if that makes sense. Like some kind of downwards protruding structures there would make it look better, imo. 

yeah the wind tunnels are made of bricks which is stupid, but I wanted to stick to the brick theme and not get back into metal. This is a screenshot of the skill selection area, the abyss below is deep, but the fog does not work well at distance fading to black. I like the idea of stuff protruding below. 

it looks pretty good with bricks. At first I wasn't sure. Might be divisive, but it doesn't seem *wrong*. 

in the first wind tunnel, have some bricks broken off the tunnel visually... and then as the player takes it, have some bricks fly by his vision inside the tunnel 

As he exits the tunnel there's an ogre, who gets a brick in the face. 

But I think it's something to do with the way Quake skews the textures on angled surfaces that makes it feel odd. 

The vertical parts with the brick don't look too bad. Do you horizontal scale to compensate for stretching? It's hard to tell in the screenshot.

Where the top part angles out is a Quake texture alignment nightmare, I don't think there's any way to make that look right.