Not a member of Pastebin yet?
Sign Up,
it unlocks many cool features!
- [Labs]
- The beginning indoor areas is very Wolf3D-ish in that it's just blocky corridors with little variety in scenery. The part with the turrets is pretty cool though. The first part of the outside area is hell. Not only is it quite dark outside due to the sunset and the fact that giant rocks are casting shadows on the battlefield making it hard to see where the enemies even are (I could only aim in the general direction of where the projectiles are coming from) but it's also filled with these super fast, twice as much health/damage Kleers that just shreds you to death in a second. You barely even have enough room to dodge their leaps, not that it does much any way since their heightened response times means they immediately leap at you again from behind. The second part of the outside area is similarly troublesome, I didn't even know there's a Scrapjack firing those special projectiles until almost every other soldiers are dead.
- The ice lake part is quite awesome. It's quite primitive but it does the job well enough. The bullshit part is the part where the Arachnoids rise from the towers from the side. There's basically no way to dodge their hitscan attack in this open field area. Luckily SS3 Arachnoids have worse aim so I somehow got by it. There's one part where I had to restock health after fighting the shit tons of Kamikazes that shoot homing projectiles and then I clipped into the ice water below and froze to death because I couldn't get back up.
- [Space Ship]
- A cool and ambitious level. As with the previous level, everything's quite primitive but does an okay enough job at being what it's supposed to be. The beginning area with the laser grid is a bit confusing. I didn't even notice the crowbar is there until a few deaths. Why isn't it a melee weapon that can be used to destroy the vent grates instead? In the armory, it's possible to get stuck behind the Marsh Hopper crate with no way out so the player has to restart the level. You'd think the infirmary would have health packs or something but it looks more like a cafe with a collision-less t-posing guy behind the counter that you can't interact with. The battle in the engine room is slightly more bearable than the battles in the previous level thanks to the infinite health and ammo replenisher. It's a bit strange how the C4 floats in the air when the cloned soldiers die in the corridor to the shielded area.
- [Overall]
- The two-level mappack is full of creativity and inspiration but suffers terribly from balance. The lack of quality in terms of architecture is forgivable, but the battles feel like there is little thought given to them. Most of it is just spamming a huge amount of one or two types of troublesome enemy with little to no counterplay to them aside from being lucky enough to survive. Are those super-Kamikazes when you return from the C4 area really necessary? That is just one of many examples of poorly thought out battles in the mappack. The Kleer spam in the Lab level makes me question how you actually tested the level. Big horde battles may be Serious Sam's motto, but Croteam actually put thought into the timing and pacing of each individual battle. That's why they're fun (most of the time) instead of being insanely overwhelming.
- As said before, the architecture is very basic and blocky but having areas like the ice lake and the various parts of the ships gave them personality. One thing to note is that most of the time it can be a little confusing as to what must be done next, especially in the space ship area. There should've been something to indicate progression-relevant objects, like the crowbar in the laser grid room, and the computers that must be used. The story, writing, and voice acting is honestly quite atrocious but I love every bit of them for being so terrible.
- Ultimately, I give this level a 4/10.
- [Advice]
- Here are some questions you should always ask yourself when creating a map:
- 1. Is this area/feature/sequence/battle really necessary?
- 2. Are there anything that makes this battle harder than it should be? (could be lighting, level layout, enemy spawn location/amount)
- 3. Do I really need all these resources?
- 4. Do my ideas work as well as they sound?
- 5. Is this fun?
- Enemy visibility in dark areas can be improved by increasing their Ambient Brightness in their LeggedCharacter entity parameters. Increasing it makes them brighter in dark areas so they are easier to be seen by the player, which can help tremendously in reducing the unnecessary difficulty in a battle.
- I think it's apparent during my attempts to launch the levels that you have little thought put into file organization. The resources you forgot to list as dependencies and the credits show that you really have no idea where half of your resources even came from and that you weren't even tracking them. Out of everything so far said in the review, this is by far the worst aspect of the mod because it's gamebreaking. Having a neat file organization structure helps make bug-tracking/bug-fixing easier. And remember, never put spaces or special symbols in file names and folder names!
- If it were up to me, I'd have the folder structure be something like
- Content/HDTSS/Databases/Puppets/(put custom enemies' .ep in here)
- Content/HDTSS/Levels/Hunt/Labs/Labs.wld
- Content/HDTSS/Levels/Hunt/Labs/(put Models, Textures, Scripts folders here, then put the appropriate files in each of these subfolders)
- Content/HDTSS/Levels/Hunt/SpaceShip/SpaceShip.wld
- Content/HDTSS/Levels/Hunt/Spaceship/(put Models, Textures, Scripts folders here, make sure it's only stuff actually used in the level)
- For future maps, please use less (preferably none) workshop resources and learn how to create your own custom enemies/weapons for your maps. Level geometry and scripting is something that will slowly improve over time as long as you keep track of what kind of mistakes you're making so don't worry too much about it. Keep testing the map to find and stamp out areas where the player may get stuck in with no escape. Test your battles to make sure they're fair and balanced (if you have no idea what's fair or balanced, just keep in mind that you can never go wrong with making the battle too easy). And please, for the love of God, keep track of your files to minimize headaches for people who want to play your stuff. It will also reduce pain for you when you have to fix something.
- Keep in mind that I enjoyed this level despite its objective terribleness because you showed effort and promise in sequences like the UFO freezing the spaceship and even simple stuff like the hyperspace background, the beam in the engine room, the rooms in the spaceship, all these little things that made the level feel more "alive". The writing may be full of bad English, but I really do like them because it felt like you seriously tried as opposed to trying to be "so bad it's funny". In the end, the most important thing is to stay true to yourself and be genuine. That's how you'll stand out, for better or worse. I hope your next map will be less painful.
Advertisement
Add Comment
Please, Sign In to add comment