The Green Herring
Community Chest 4 Leader
Posts: 916
Registered: 05-07 |
Cjwright79 said:
Hi Eric,
Well I just watched your demo and it was pretty exciting stuff, so if you tell me Dagobah is boring and pointless I will have a tough time believing you -- but please give me your constructive criticism.
Bear in mind that as per /newstuff 352 page 5, I am aware of the issue of prudent players being able to take some of my maps apart methodically. This will be addressed in future maps.
~Chris
Okay. The first obvious thing to deal with is that the level in general needs more height variation. It could be a bit more interesting if the path you need to take through the level wasn't restricted to a single, flat plane. Similarly, the level is entirely linear, but that wouldn't be a problem if there were more traps, and if the traps themselves were far more dangerous. The only one you have in there is a single "door opens behind you" trap that releases a single revenant. You could also include teleport traps — in essence, a tripwire or switch opens an off-screen door that allows a group of monsters in an off-screen room to enter the room you're in, who are awakened by the player's gunfire in the room they're connected to. The player would be able to prevent them from appearing, though, unless they were required to set off a gunfire switch, or they were required to kill enemies to get through a doorway or tunnel — thus rousing up the off-screen monsters. For optimal results, all of the monster storage rooms should be connected to the same room, and all teleport lines must be placed on the side facing toward the player, since that's where the enemies will be moving when they wake up. In addition, you ought to try giving each monster their own room, a bit larger than they are, and make the door and its teleport line take up half of the room diagonally, but you need to make sure that the door doesn't overlap the monster and that they have room to cross the line.
Also, you should pick a texture theme and stick with it. Every single room in the level has a different theme, which is more than a bit jarring. As I implied in the text file, the name "Dagobah" implies a swamp, bayou, or forest, as the Star Wars planet of the same name — which I assume is the source of the title — has all three in abundance. It'd be difficult to depict one of these with the stock Doom II textures, but that's something to keep in mind.
Overall, if you take my advice, I wouldn't mind playing the level again. Sorry it took so long to post this.
Anyway, here's an FDA I recorded today as part of my continuation of Maikl's journey through idgames/levels/doom/. I recorded FDAs of other levels as well, but I wanted to post this one in particular, in order to call attention to the level's existence, because the level is contained in an .ARJ file, meaning you can't find this level through the HTML frontend. I used the extended demo format for this one, so if you have the WAD file in your PrBoom+ directory, all you need to do is to load the demo.
DETHSTAR_1sttry_byTGH.zip - FDA on DETHSTAR.WAD by Jackson Harvey- Time: 6:55
- Stats: 100%/100%/100%
- Deaths: 0
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- The Green Herring
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01-17-10 21:47 
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