NOVA: The Birth - v1.1 release now on idGames!

nub_hat said:

mouldy this is such an asshole map but I love this stuff
the monsters appearing out of thin air when i was walking on the goo made me laugh
feel like a challenge has been laid down with the ridiculous amount of monsters I am having fun
still playing it I'll edit this with feedback
so far i think it would fit around the last few maps it is really tough

ok needs more ammo I think, shot all the cacos and had no shots left

put a rl at spawn? would definitely be useful

Yeah its a bastard. The idea with the weapons and ammo was to force the player further in to the map to hunt for the rocket launcher and plasma gun, giving enough shotgun ammo to deal with stuff in your way but not enough for the hordes that appear in the outer area.

I was kind of concerned about that though, as the first time player has no way of knowing this, or the ideal routes to take, without some trial and error. There are basically 2 paths to choose from the start, each to 2 different areas where the big guns are lurking. Maybe I need to signpost these routes a bit more, but I'll wait and see how other people respond to it.

mrthejoshmon said:

is this stats bar variant any better (the bug is a seemingly rare occurrence)

Yeah, although i'd agree that the contrast makes the black a bit harsh.

I for one like the harshness of the black, makes the stats bar really stand out, but I could always brighten it up for you, also which is better:
dark brown text going up to lighter or light brown going up to dark?
EDIT: forget the stats bar, it works fine in zandronum but not any other sourceport, I don't see a way to fix it either :( so I wouldn't use it if I were you.

mrthejoshmon said:

I for one like the harshness of the black, makes the stats bar really stand out

heh, i think thats what the problem is, you don't really want the background of the stats bar to stand out as it will detract from the important information. I think the colour of the text will be best depending on the darkness of the background, maybe post a couple of mock-ups for people to see.

edit: ah just read your edit, never mind.

mouldy said:

heh, i think thats what the problem is, you don't really want the background of the stats bar to stand out as it will detract from the important information. I think the colour of the text will be best depending on the darkness of the background, maybe post a couple of mock-ups for people to see.

I have given up on the stats bar, it refuses to work in any sourceport other than zandronum, I wouldn't use it for the project.
EDIT: We could ask for another from a different, more experienced guy right?

If its what people want, I'm not too bothered myself but i guess it would add a more personal touch.

I noticed a couple of mistakes in my hell map so here's a new link for it:
http://www.mediafire.com/?m8m10mb6gqj1f5l

First post updated. I've added 'The Seventh Circle' in as a complete map. There are only 22 maps now listed in the complete section however as I've moved 'Roundtable' and 'Extorta Nova' in with the incomplete maps as they would not be ready for a final release in their current state. I've also merged the pending maps and promised maps into one section with only named maps included (too confusing otherwise) and updated the suggested midis section for maps that are without music. Only four of the 22 finished maps are now without definite suggestions for music although Paul D wanted Teleportarium's track to be replaced with something else. Several of the unfinished maps also have midis assigned to them so progress is going pretty good!

mouldy said:

If its what people want, I'm not too bothered myself but i guess it would add a more personal touch.

I noticed a couple of mistakes in my hell map so here's a new link for it:
http://www.mediafire.com/?m8m10mb6gqj1f5l

Holy smokes, you made the map brutal lol.

Also, this map was originally started by me, mouldy took over :)

PRIMEVAL said:

Holy smokes, you made the map brutal lol.

Also, this map was originally started by me, mouldy took over :)

Yeah the outside area is Primeval's doing, although I added a few more monsters :)

I'm going to try and record a demo of it to see if it can be done.

How do you get the rocket launcher? I saw it up on a wall but I couldn't figure out how to get there.

But god damn, I can't figure that map out.

But I'd like to write a midi for it, so at least we get that out of this.

You can get the rocket launcher by scooting along the top of the wall from the top of the stairs at the other end.



Here's a demo of me doing the whole map without dying, its about half an hour long though and I left a lot of stuff alive...
http://www.mediafire.com/?34sldce2a9ffzh6

A midi would be great, cheers. Something sinister and hellish would go well.

IMO the gray marble status bar looks fine to me. I think the brown letters should be white but other than that I like it.

So after two hours (40 minutes in game time) and countless deaths, I got some feedback for 7th Circle. Incoming wall.

First off, excellent job on the map. If this was the club I could just gush over all the detail, brilliant texturing work, and absolutely wonderful layout. Love the ins and outs of this map, and the library section is probably my favorite thing I've experienced in NOVA so far; it's just really smartly designed and it shows. Great map.

Gameplay-wise, I have a lot of mixed feelings. I was able to finish it so it's definitely doable with anyone that plays with saves, but there were some extremely rough spots were I felt like I was optimizing luck more than anything. I like the concept of really pushing the player to scavenge for more munitions, as this map is relentless when it comes to piling baddies on top of them. One problem that this can cause is that'll it force them into a corner where they mercilessly bang their head against a brick wall when there is always an easier solution.

So right near the onset I triggered the lava denizens and then teleported away, hoping their infighting would wreak some havoc upon each other. I ran over to the cavern area and carved my way through there, struggling to reach my way to the rocket launcher. However I could not piece together the simple solution to obtaining it, and wound up wiping out a large amount of the horde with the SSG and chaingun, running painfully low on ammo. Frustrated and without a moment to think or look around, I ran back to the starting area to be faced with the startling revelation that not only one, but two archviles had been undoing the infighting I caused. By fortune I had one trapped next to some nearby bars and could pelt him harmlessly, but the other one was down in the lava surrounded by three entire waves of angry baddies.

Since there is NO cover down in the lava, and I was unaware that the library was actually the safest place to run to, I threw a dozen lives away trying to coax him out and kill him with just my SSG (I was at 24% health, meaning any damage is lethal damage). After many failed attempts I tried to stir up some infighting to whittle his health down and get some potshots off, but his horde proved too numerous again. Finally I had the great idea to use the nearby lava hole as makeshift cover, but he attacked far too fast for me to make any good use of it. This point was probably the most aggravating in the map for me as I was unable to subdue him without the rocket launcher. I returned back to the cavern area to find out how to get my hands on it when, SURPRISE, obtaining the blue key lowered the gate at the far end and flooded the cavern with hell's nobles, putting about four of them in that thin walkway needed to access the RL (which I still didn't consider using to actually obtain it). Low on ammo I died a couple more times just strafing around everyone and checking to see if there was some hidden teleport I missed, and eventually decided "aw fuck it" as I ran into the library on my last legs.

While it was an uphill battle, I enjoyed most of the library's fights, since it locked me in there and forced me to deal with each wave of baddies. I slowly got myself back up to a decent standing after punching a host of enemies, and enjoyed my time in there. My luck turned around about the time you introduced the invul, since the nearby megasphere and blessing that is the plasma gun allowed me to more or less coast through the rest of the map compared to what horrors I had faced before. I still died often of course, but I no longer had to play as flawlessly as I had been doing for the past twenty minutes. I cleared out the nasty AV that was bugging me before, found the RL, and proceeded into the final battle.

The arena it takes place in is very fitting and ominous for the last battle of this brutal map, but I found it somewhat easy, both with and without picking up the BFG (didn't find the red key until looking for it after). The very last trap of the map, the AV horde, is a questionable decision in my opinion, as there is an extremely thin line of difficulty they can cross depending on how many walk out of the doorway (and when you're not equipped with the BFG--otherwise it's just hold n' shoot).

So with all of that exposition, I'll throw out some ideas that come from my playthrough:

First off, that rocket launcher definitely needs to be easier to apprehend. While it's a "DUH OF COURSE" moment after you walk along the wall to obtain it, seeing it out of reach as scores of hell's worst close in on you can really break a player's spirit, especially since the map is tight on ammo and health as it is. Placing it around where the green armor in that section is, or at the top of the steps near the rev gate is a better idea IMO, since it requires more or less the same effort to achieve it (and can give the player a boost of confidence they need). I think readjusting it is especially important because not many new players will actually think to run through the lava and go into the library first, which can relieve a lot of their pain since the placed is stacked to high-hell with cell once you complete it.

Next I'm unsure about any AVs in the lava. While I understand the intention of providing a nearly endless horde of monsters to dance around until you thin them out, I feel like their purpose is much more masterfully handled elsewhere in the map, as their presence in the lava pretty much pushes the player from ever wanting to go near their until they have a better arsenal. That, and in a map with limited ammo they can cause a massive headache as the player sinks a nearby floating caco just to have him reemerge from the depths. I don't know how this battle will work without them (as the infighting might take care of a lot of baddies), but I can't stress how much I was annoyed by that little bugger and his "if I see you, you're dead" magic. Perhaps offering some rocks as cover in the lava might really quell my hatred of him (you have a pillar at the far end that can be used as cover, but the AV could easily smite me before I even reached it).

Next, and this is a bit funny after complaining about how hard this is, but I'm not exactly sure you need the invul there in the library fight. I did use it but more or less wasted it trying to push through the monsters and kill the AV. It seemed doable to me if there were a few less baddies to surround the player... one of the most sublime things about the library is how twisted and interconnected the entire area is, and I felt like I could've used some more of my smarts to handle the fight, rather than blowing away the prime opposers and then more or less just hanging out in the main hall for when the other two showed up.

Red key battle was kind of neat, but I went into it with a pretty big arsenal so I didn't get the full effect. IMO, the very bottom floor in that place (where the health packs are sitting on) should be lava to encourage the player to move more. Also maybe so simpacks could be up behind the bars with the ammo, as I liked to fight in that place but had nothing to heal my wounds (unless you want the player to move out).

In the place with the berserk pack, I had monsters flooding the exit elevator which was kind of annoying when I was trying to run back, but I'm not sure what there is to do about that. Also, I suggest making the right elevator (the one that leads to the second cyber switch) an SR near a wall, as fighting the AV through the windows can get obnoxious when you run for cover and just wind up going back downstairs again.

For the final battle, you need to remove most of the ammo given from the key sections, particularly the EIGHT HUNDRED CELL you give with the BFG. There's helping the player out and then just letting them completely dominate the fight. Leave them with like 200 cell up there at most (unsure about the red key side, but I had more than enough ammo to 100% the whole map without it). I also think that you should remove some AVs from the exit room as, like I said, they can be an unholy hell to deal with the first time if too many leak out (without the BFG). Two of them zipping away to the sides of the arena are a good idea, I do like that. If need be, you could put block monster lines in front of the door and just warp three of them out, leaving two or three left in the corridor to stop the player from escaping. Also, the final room needs like 2-3 medikits for consecutive players to patch up.

Lastly, I think you should include a berserk pack on the library side of the map in case anyone runs out of ammo there (not too deep into it either).

Now for some misc stuff. Misaligned texture. Another misaligned texture. Switch texture in final room doesn't line up, I'd recommend just putting a METAL tex on its sides. I couldn't figure out how these bars open. I'm kind of excited to replay this map once we do our final playtests, just to see how my knowledge will assist me the second time around.

dobugabumaru said:

7th Circle. Incoming wall....

Bloody brilliant, this is just what I needed, I agree with pretty much all of it.

The av in amongst the lava horde was intended to keep the player running to the library without engaging them, while also preventing the army being wiped out by infighting. Maybe instead I should get rid of the pop up hordes and have them teleport in instead once i know the player has bigger weapons.. I dunno, i like that surprise army. The problem is I don't want players to think they have to deal with it with just an SSG. I'll have a think about that.

Rocket launcher position change is great idea, I'll do that.

That library invul was an afterthought after seeing how harsh the battle was, I might try your suggestion. I'll also add a berserk somewhere, good idea.

Red key fight i'm not entirely sure how I want players to fight it out, i guess i just wanted to give them the layout and see what they wanted to do. I found it a bit too easy to camp out behind the bars so added the revs as a punishment, myself i plow my way out through the teleporting imps and gun everything down from the doorway.

that berserk room left elevator was a bit of a joke i played on players trying to escape so i might leave that. I'll make a switch for the right one like you say though.

Final battle: I might have gone a bit over the top with the ammo in the key sections, i'll trim that a touch. And yes those exit room avs need to be cut down - i originally just put them there to stop players leaving the battle and running to the exit, but thats not so necessary now that the exit is blocked anyway.

Cheers for the screenshots too.

Oh and those bars don't actually open. They were left over from when Primeval was working on it. I might just replace them with a mid-grate to avoid confusion.

Call me a fool, but what library?

Sorry to be a pain, but somebody just pointed out something with the SSG in my map Comp.wad, turns out its got somehow was tagged as only medium difficulty, now either the compiler can fix this or just download this quick file change I made for it:
http://www.mediafire.com/?jd0p2a8rmxo6r31
Again I am sorry for any inconvenience :(

Paul D said:

Call me a fool, but what library?

From the start, if you jump down into the lava and follow it round to the right until you reach dry land, you'll find a door guarded by 2 caged revenants. I'm going to work on making it a bit more obvious.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v254/EvilNed/NovaSky.jpg

Working and testing custom skies.

Making them and getting them to play are easy enough. Making them loop seamlessly is much tougher.

Apart from the not-so-perfect loop here, I thought this one turned out pretty good for just 30 minutes-or-so work.

Improvement.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v254/EvilNed/Novasky1.jpg

What kind of skies do we want for this project anyway?

FDA for mouldy's map. As usual I failed because of my laziness. This time I didn't feel like killing 10 or so cacos with SSG so I decided to run away but stumled upon an arch-vile, did some very stupid things and died.
Looks like a great map.

Quick midi transcript I did of the opening theme of Warhammer: Dark Omen.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/39292814/darkomen.mid

It's a transcript (well, I left our intro because it didn't loop too well) so it is what it is. Personally, I think it's too repetitive, and given the lack of spooky atmospheric hell levels, I don't think it will be good for the project. But hey it's here anyway

Working (sorta) on 2 midis right now, starting to get some new ideas for a map, still unsure what to do with Immaterium.

Memfis said:

FDA for mouldy's map. As usual I failed because of my laziness. This time I didn't feel like killing 10 or so cacos with SSG so I decided to run away but stumled upon an arch-vile, did some very stupid things and died.
Looks like a great map.

excellent cheers for that. Its not a kind map for first time players but its not the final version so things may change.

I kind of like the pop up hordes in the lava too, as the player knows immediately how much resistance there is going to be... slowly teleporting baddies in can lead to a false hope, as the player shouldn't really tangle with them at that time. I say just remove the AVs and see if it fares any better, leaving them to warp in after the respective skull switches have been pushed probably.

Also, if you feel like the library battle is harsh without the invul, tinker around with the composition as, like I said before, I did use the invul to push through it. We might have to wait for another person to finish to see what they think.

EvilNed said:

What kind of skies do we want for this project anyway?

I think we gotta wait until we have a lot more maps in to judge. Last episode should be red and sinister, first should be something nice and brighter. We're not trying to be uber creative with our design and progression so cliche doom stuff is fine.

I thought I would make a sky in case we need any spare, don't use it if we don't.
I don't think this looks right, do you?

EvilNed's skies look better than this thing anyway

That sky looks a little dark mrjoshmon. Maybe brightening it up would give better results. EvilNed's updated sky will be perfect for the project. I'm thinking that should be the sky of the second episode at this point. It's kinda hellish but not too much.

I don't know where mrjoshmon's sky would fit in. Are we going for a dark hellish look maybe? That might work and it'd be original too.

EvilNed said:

Improvement.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v254/EvilNed/Novasky1.jpg
What kind of skies do we want for this project anyway?

That sky is awesome. I love the bizarre cloud colors. Very moody. I like how it looks "hellish" without being "hell-like", if that makes any sense.

EvilNed said:

Improvement.
Is it a bird, is it a plane, no it's a skybox
What kind of skies do we want for this project anyway?

I might be of difering opinion here but the combination of the grey/brown/red ashcloud like part and the orange section just look awkward together at the moment, they don't seem to blend in naturally and looks a bit odd in my opinion

Version #3

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v254/EvilNed/NSKY23.jpg

EDIT: I think it's good, but I think I prefer the previous one.

The other one was better. The tornado needs to stand out against the background IMO and the colours give it depth.

I like that all yellow one, but I've always been a big fan of monochrome skies.

Yeah I prefer the straight orange sky here. The shape of the tornado with the orange sky of the previous one just looked strange for some reason, it's better now. I think a combo of both, so the increased colour variation plus the design of the second one would look good :)
So three different opinions, good luck :P

I can definetly see where cannonball is coming from re: the clipping of the tornado. Consider it to be a WIP in progress for the moment. I'll try to make the tornado stick out a bit more, but not as much as the first one.

Anyway, here's one I threw together just to play with something that wasn't clouds. Consider this highly experimental. I kinda liked the end product, but it'd have to be used for the right kind of map.

Remember, individual skies can be assigned to specific maps with XWE. It doesn't have to be episode based.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v254/EvilNed/Screenshot_Doom_20130409_004417.png