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Cyb

The /newstuff Chronicles #109

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OK, so I just finished TNT2, and it is a fantastic, very well put together WAD. I think I'd go with it feeling more unreal-ish than quake-ish despite all the quake textures. Not just because of the music (I played it in Zdoom, and couldn't hear the music) but because the look of it reminded me of a couple of Unreal Tourney maps.

I'd also agree with the "brown" comments. I'm not a big fan of predominantly brown textures and their use in this map darkens it down and make the architechture far less distinct than it should be. Yes, some darkness for atmosphere is good but there were many places I couldn't see the hard work that had gone into making the level. When I cheated to get a light amp, I was "wowed" with the look of the place. It was a real relief to come out the far side and see the light coloured mountain/icy placed talked about in the end text, and a disappointment to find out it wasn't done yet. (I love Icy/cold themed wads.)

The arena battle is not my favourite kind of battle. Very "Serious Sam". That is you simply have to go through a series of steps with spawning monsters to fight until the script has run its course.

All in all though, a damn fine, and I found a pretty hard, map which has clearly taken a lot of time and effort.

And I played it with Zdoom 2.0.29 (29.cab). The music didn't play, but I didn't have to use -nomusic to switch it off, it simply didn't play all by itself.

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Hyena said:

Sigh. It's not about the scoring system at all. What kind of assumption is that?


I wasn't referring to your post in particular, I remembered the thread we posted in the newstuff forum about the review format, and I said that a scoring system would be controversial (as 7/10 for one person could be anything from 3/10 up to 9/10 for anyone else), and I think that's what's happened.

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I think DW should stay with the **/10 format, but because there are different reviewers and subjectivity involved, there should be an additional "editor's choice" award, double-checked by ling, stolen from PCGamer, given to the really great maps that come out each week. I think that would be really cool, and would add a more stable atmosphere to newstuff.

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Ha, Such nice people we have here, don't we.. Precisely why I don't attempt to submit any of my maps to /Newstuff..

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AgentSpork said:

Ha, Such nice people we have here, don't we.. Precisely why I don't attempt to submit any of my maps to /Newstuff..


We don't get paid to be nice. In fact, we don't get paid at all, so let me re-word that.

If a wad isn't worth downloading, why should I tell people it is?
Wads take up hard drive space and they take time to download (not everyone has cable connections). So not everyone is going to want to download every wad.

I (and I'm pretty sure this goes for everyone here) am not reviewing wads to give the authors a feeling of accomplishment, I do it to give everyone else an idea of what the wads are like so they can make their own decision about whether to download it, and to give them something fun to read if they're bored. I'm more concerned with giving people an honest (although often exaggerated slightly) opinion. If I gave everything a good review, it would defeat the purpose of reviewing.

And how hard I am on people usually is directly related to how much of a hard time they give me before I write the review. Examples:
1: A text file that is hard to read or look at (loads of spelling errors, and attempts to insult the people who read it, like "THIS IS MY FRIST WAD, SO IF YOU DNOT LIKK IT GO TO HELL I DONT CARE WHAT YUO RETARD THINK LOL!")
2: There are so many tools out there that you can download for free that merge several wads into one, and yet people keep releasing zips with four wads in it, that really takes up extra time and effort.
3: If the wad itself is full of ugly bugs, errors, or bad texturing that actually hurt your eyes to look at.
4: If the gameplay does something cruel to the player. Like a pit right by the exit switch that's impossible to get out of. Or a switch that doesn't seem to do anything and it takes an hour to explore the whole map again. Or a wall that closes and traps the player in a 256 x 256 square room. And Unnecessary port features, because in some cases I might not own the port in question and I don't want to go to the trouble of downloading the latest edge release to play a wad that's completely doom2.exe compatible except for one extra floor that can otherwise be done with a couple of simple doom2 tricks.

I should also point out that I'm nicer to people who try to make it easy for me. Some people, in their text files, actually use the "Known bugs" part. And for non-conventional wads a good description is always appreciated.
Originality is another important point, as I'm not likely to appreciate something that has been done thousands of times.

Now, keeping that in mind, I do try to be fair. But sometimes even the best wads will have something that's only too easy for me to make fun of, and why not? If you're so easily offended by some guy's opinion, then fine, don't release your wads and do the internet a big public service.

Oh, and one more thing: Reviewing does require some work on my part and on weeks where it's my turn to review it does create a little bit of pressure when I have a deadline and many people are waiting.
I always feel relieved when I'm done. However, that doesn't mean that I can't still write quick reviews in the comments section if a wad doesn't get into newstuff but gets a news spot on doomworld.
In other words, if you piss me off I can still insult your crappy wad without newstuff.

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I understand why everyone is making such a big deal over this. I mean, reviewing for a Doom site is big-time stuff! You act as though you are doing any of it right or professionally. Anyone who puts so much time and thought into this, well...

::sigh:: You guys take yourselves too darn seriously. :[

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UAC PR Dept said:

I understand why everyone is making such a big deal over this. I mean, reviewing for a Doom site is big-time stuff! You act as though you are doing any of it right or professionally. Anyone who puts so much time and thought into this, well...

::sigh:: You guys take yourselves too darn seriously. :[


Someone needs to brush up on their communications skills. I had to read that like five times before I got some sort of idea of what he meant. The first two sentences are perfectly all right, then whatever point you were trying to make was completely lost on me.

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AgentSpork said:

Ha, Such nice people we have here, don't we.. Precisely why I don't attempt to submit any of my maps to /Newstuff..

That's fine if you don't want anyone to ever play your level...

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I don't think we have to say anything else because what Hyena said was absolutely right. A reviewer (especially of the newstuff chronicles because here get the wads first) should leave enough room on his review so other player can still discover the map on their own and collect their own experience with this map.

// THE END // ...for me

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If anyone's that worried about it, I'm sure if you put something in your wad's text file saying "not to be reviewed by Doomworld", or even mail the DW staff or whatever they'll honour your wishes.

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NiGHTMARE said:

If anyone's that worried about it, I'm sure if you put something in your wad's text file saying "not to be reviewed by Doomworld", or even mail the DW staff or whatever they'll honour your wishes.


heh...

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Well, they say there's no such thing as bad publicity. I mean, more people are going to download a wad that a reviewer says is an utter craphole and void of any reasonable resemblance to an actual game, than a wad they never heard about in the first place.

But that said, if anyone really really doesn't want us to review their wad, I would see no problem with letting it slide. Saves me some time playing it and coming up with funny run-on sentences.

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Hyena said:

Well, they say there's no such thing as bad publicity. I mean, more people are going to download a wad that a reviewer says is an utter craphole and void of any reasonable resemblance to an actual game, than a wad they never heard about in the first place.

But that said, if anyone really really doesn't want us to review their wad, I would see no problem with letting it slide. Saves me some time playing it and coming up with funny run-on sentences.

But I like your funny run-on sentences!

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I wanna rant!

I got pretty irritated about a past /newstuff review on one of my levels, but after a long time I figured it wasn't worth it to argue. Tormentor, I think your level was great, and Cyb apparently did too, he just commented quite a bit on the brown. I can say probably everyone who played it enjoyed it.

Sometimes it seems like the only wads that get a good review are the uber l33t megawads with a million ZDoom features, but that's not entirely true. It does always seem like everyone else gets a better review than you, but that's also incorrect. Last time I uploaded something, I went through about three beta stages and had several people play it, tweaked and changed and fixed things until my audience was overly thrilled about it, and then I got a review that said the level was ugly and stupid and probably only took five minutes to make.

I got a bit peeved, but it passed. See, no matter how awesome you make a level, somebody is going to hate it. And no matter how bad your level is, it has to have some redeeming qualities. For a while I got to the point where I didn't want to upload anything to /newstuff because I just knew it'd get a terrible review and I figured nobody would download it... which is wrong, of course. I also considered only uploading when certain people are reviewing. If you don't upload it, nobody will ever play the level. If you upload it, even if you get a terrible review, people will download it and check it out. And the reviewer insn't the last say in how good the level is. There's lots of other review sites, and the people on the forums will always make comments on the levels as well.

I'll be uploading something soon I believe, and no matter what kind of review I get, I'll know that people are still going to download and play it, and somebody out there is going to like my level. The first thing I uploaded wasn't very good, and I was thrilled when I got a bad review because I was looking for someone to tell me what I needed to improve on. You have to get over the fact that not everyone is going to like your level, and the reviewer might not. The innitial shock is getting over the fact that your wad is not perfect. If I wanted, I could point out a bunch of things wrong in every wad that was up today. And I could point out ten times as many in the level I uploaded and thought was awesome (I still think it is =P).

Anyway, I guess all I'm trying to say is, be proud of your work. If you worked hard to make it, someone out there is going to admire all the time you put into it, even if others just throw it away. Don't spend all your time complaining about the reviews because the reviewers have plenty of reasons to review the way they do. Everyone has their own style and opinions. Spend all your time working on your next awesome level. =)

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BigBadGangsta said:

I LOVE THIS NEW FORMAT. I think it should be the new standard for the /newstuff reviews :)

IIRC, it was for some time when AndrewB was doing the /newstuff reviews. Nice to see it back in effect. Oh, and nice reviews Cyb! :)

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Nanami said:

Sometimes it seems like the only wads that get a good review are the uber l33t megawads with a million ZDoom features, but that's not entirely true.


Nifty little script and gimmick features do not make a good map, they never have, they never will. You could take the worst map and put the most amazing scripts into it and it would still be a pile of garbage. Majorly I looked at two things, how the level played and how the level looked. If it has ZDoom or Legacy or whatever specifics to it then I take those into account for both areas.

Also note the two highest scores were from maps that work with vanilla doom.exe and doom2.exe.

Anyway, if a reviewer doesn't like you map, I don't see what the huge deal is. Personally I edit because I enjoy it; it's fun. If someone doesn't like my map for whatever reason, well, good for them, they're entitled to an opinion, and I did release it to the public. I mean, you obviously release maps to the public because you want people to play them. And if you expect people to not say anything about it in one way or another, you need to have your head checked.

I mean, take that "I Don't Know" map in this week's newstuff. What could I possibly have said that was good about it? All the walls have textures? None of the monsters were stuck together? I didn't get stuck anywhere? See, it's impossible, and also rather moronic, to expect a reviewer to say something good about a map you released, because errors and just plain lack of what maps should have is so prominent. Sure that map didn't have a single HOM error, but the rooms were bland, undetailed and there was no flow or theme to the map, and that's what gets noticed.

So essentially the bottom line is, if you can't take any form of criticism you can either get over it or keep your maps to yourself. You can't please everyone, and you'll never be able to.

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DooMBoy said:

IIRC, it was for some time when AndrewB was doing the /newstuff reviews. Nice to see it back in effect. Oh, and nice reviews Cyb! :)


I created this format myself, dude. The old one was andrewb's format as far as I know.

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The thing that everyone has to remember is that EVERY reviewer is different and that we all consider this or that to be good or bad. If a reviewer is doing well he will tell you what he liked (and why) and vice versa. You may say to yourself, well - I would enjoy something like that. I've reviewed a couple of DM maps recently that both had their virtues depending on what type of map you like. Thats the thing. I try to find something positive about the work because the author put the effort into it. I had a guy submit a single player map which totally sucked but it played great as a DM map because the design just worked out good that way so that was the way I recommended it. Or, if a level is just too damn easy I will recommend it for those trying to improve their skills but not for skilled players. I just try to find the audience that it works for and recommend it there without giving the author the idea that what he thought he did, he accomplished. But that is my style. If a map really sucks I just won't bother with it. I'll tell the author to go back to the drawing board and work on this or that. Take whatever feedback you get from a reviewer with a grain of sand and if it fits into your plan for the level then make the change. If it doesn't, then ignore it because you know better than anyone else what you wanted to do and they just didn't get it.
I respected the reviews I saw from this post even if I did/did not agree with them. That is his opinion and just a guide for the rest of us.
Check out the ones that seem interesting to you and ignore the rest.
I think I'm done. lol

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I agree that Tormentor needn't be too upset about Cyb's review. OK, Cyb disliked the map's brownness, and said so loud and clear. However, he also conveyed plenty of information about the map and its good points, and this helps people to form their own view of whether it might suit them.

I think it's a fantastic map, BTW.

If scores are to be given to the wads, perhaps it would make sense to award a score (out of 10 or 5, whatever) for gameplay and also a score for aesthetics. This might make it easier for the reviewer (OK, it's two numbers instead of one, but choosing them should involve less agonizing), and be more helpful for readers too.

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I dunno, reviewers might run into problems rating levels on a number scale. Can you really boil a level down to a digit?

Meh, on the other hand there are bigger things in the world to worry about.

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UAC PR Dept said:

Hey Hyena: I was being sarcastic. Maybe you need to brush up on YOUR communication skills, if you couldn't pick that up. :o


Show of hands who had the slightest clue what he was talking about.

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