justanotherfool
Junior Member
Posts: 195
Registered: 12-07 |
I finally got around to having a look at this earlier today, and it looks like this is another great map in a project that seems to be full of them.
Very reminiscent of Vrack in places, as some other posters mentioned, but that's hardly a bad thing, and the map becomes more unique as it progresses.
There really didn't seem to be much about the map to critique from an aesthetic standpoint. I didn't see any glaring misalignments or texture clashes, and the map looks great. I did have reservations about the area with the cybie (the boxes of rockets and such looked funny floating in space) at first, but upon further reflection I decided I liked it. There were a few unusual visual flourishes which I don't remember having seen in any other map (the waves, some of the teleporters, etc) which were particularly impressive. The only minor gripes I could come up with were relating to texture choices in a few areas. I'll probably elaborate upon those in another post, but I don't have screenshots at hand.
There are some points relating to gameplay to be made, however. You might have already addressed some of them, but I'm sure you won't mind hearing them again :P.
- There are a few points in the map where there are enemies standing on top of platforms and sniping at you. I'm thinking mainly of the bits near the end with the four revenants and an area with two barons just beyond that. I think you should make the edges of those sectors impassible, since as it stands the monsters can get trapped on the edges or fall off the sides. Some of the revenants got stuck after being hit with one rocket, which made that fight easier than it should have been. Even worse than that, both barons fell off their platforms and into space (!) when I was trying to kill them with rockets. I was actually able to kill one with splash damage by shooting at it from the garden area, but I couldn't reach the other one from any part of the map (in prboom-plus, no mouselook) so I couldn't get 100% kills.
- Gameplay itself is fine, but I feel that the map is too easy on UV. This is map 19 but I was rarely challenged. There were lots of points where I was sure some kind of trap was about to be sprung, but most of the time nothing happened. Even when there were traps, they were quite weak (1 revenant only at the yellow key, a bunch of weak imps at the part where you get the plasma gun, etc). The monster count was quite high at about 320 (if I remember correctly), but most of them were troopers, sergeants, imps and demons. I thought the fight with the two masterminds should have been tougher. It was easy with the megasphere you're given. My suggestion is to add a few more heavyweight monsters, beef up the monster count slightly, and add some extra traps. Try not to overdo it, though :)
I think there might be too many rockets and not quite enough shells as well.
- You have 3 sectors marked as 'secret' in the area with the chainsaw, but the last sector seems superfluous and shouldn't be tagged. I liked the secrets, by the way. A few of them elicited some laughter from me.
- Something is wrong with the park area in boom, check it out and you'll see what I mean. Afraid I don't know the precise terminology. Something to do with visplanes or segs?
EDIT: Alright, I now have the screenshots I said I was going to post earlier. Uploading them is a pain since imageshack seems to only want to let me upload one at a time :/
http://yfrog.com/bgdoom135p
I feel the window is a little too thick here, and more importantly there are some cacodemons that will snipe at you from outside but I'm not sure their projectiles can reach you.
http://yfrog.com/jwdoom137p
This is a window near the partial invis. secret. I think the little protruding bit of yellow there looks weird.
http://yfrog.com/2ddoom139p
I personally don't like this texture (too much of it!) but YMMV.
http://yfrog.com/mqdoom144p
I really think the sloping metal linedefs leading into the switch are out of place here, both because of the textures and the slopes. Obviously this applies to both of the switches in this area.
http://yfrog.com/htdoom145p
Don't like this green texture at all. It isn't really the sort of thing I'd expect to see in this part of the map. I don't have a problem with the red area on the other side, though.
http://yfrog.com/c9doom146p
This illustrates the graphical glitch I mentioned before, and it also allows me to point out that there's far too much (BRIGHT) yellow on the side of that station in my view. I think it might look better if you softened some of the sharp edges in this screenshot and throughout the map as well, although I appreciate that that's a lot of work for a relatively small improvement.
http://yfrog.com/jpdoom152p
This secret was quite cute :P
But I didn't like your texturing here. Really seemed to look out of place when contrasted with the area before the secret, and I don't like to see computer textures just placed on a flat wall without at least some sort of recess.
One more gameplay point as well. The invuln sphere seems quite unnecessary. I generally don't like to see them unless they're really needed. It occurs to me however that you may have placed it to allow speedrunners to handle some other parts of the map quicker (cyb fight, for example). If that's so, it's fine as it is. I also might prefer it if the archviles in that area were triggered by actually hitting the switch instead of moving close to it.
Apart from that, nothing... :P Nice work.
Last edited by justanotherfool on 07-07-10 at 16:12
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08-31-08 06:30 
