MartinHowe
Junior Member
Posts: 116
Registered: 04-02 |
OK, my 2p worth on Sapphire, having just played it to see what all the fuss is about! Good - use of cool new textures, lava and other liquids behind walls. Good - feel of a space station. Bad - lack of decent weapon set (not a problem for me of course :) ). Bad - not enough variety of monsters and an overpowered boss (though a cool boss in itself; would be good at end of an entire episode). Good - better-than average architecture. Bad - too repetitive use of it, though that is realism, so not strictly a problem. Gameplay not too good. For me, overall 6.5/10.
EDIT: Also a BIG HOM in GZDoom software mode, not sure whose fault that is.
EDIT:
Speaking as one who is in the middle of making a large architecture-and-effects driven WAD, it is probably worth noting that if one is going for "realism" (assuming one can, when fighting John Romero's head in a huge pit full of demons from Hell) then gameplay will inevitably suffer, unless care is taken to ensure that the player feels truly immersed in the situation.
The approach that has worked best so far in WADs that do this is to have a lot of things to do, especially things that "do stuff", especially if some of them cause harm to monsters. For example, if there is a lava pit in a power plant, having a hatch open and a clutch of demons running towards you can't stop and fall in and burn. For another, if there is a rocket on a launch pad, a la DN3D, wait until the cyberdemon is standing underneath it, then hit the "launch" button. Also a reasonable quantity of non-stock monsters helps to add variety. Have the scenery include working machinery that actually does what it is supposed to do, for example a car-crushing plant that will actually output a lump of flesh on a conveyor belt if a Demon falls into it.
Just keep the player interested with stuff to do as well as stuff to kill -- and include several things that do both.
Last edited by MartinHowe on 05-24-06 at 12:48
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05-23-06 23:58 
