Slaughterfest 3 [Beta_C released, 05/08/2017]

[Phml]

@Demonologist:

Fair point. In my defense I want to say there's only 4 AVs popping out from far away and able to ressurect stuff. The other 4 by the RK are stuck, and you get a look at the final 20 before they make a move (and they all come from the same direction). No doubt AVs have the most potential for ruining everything, the flipside for their interesting abilities.

@Ribbiks:

Actually, you've approached this map as I hoped - as opposed to what I should expect. That is, you picked up on every visual cue and you reacted to each situation as intended.

The one thing that caught me offguard was your triggering of the demon horde before shooting anything. The main part used to be filled with twice as many HKs as there are barons, so you couldn't do that before; and the demons have seemingly made the start somewhat easier, acting as a buffer against more powerful enemies. Regardless, this seems fine so the option might as well stay.

The last fight is a result of turning monster placement upside down while being locked in rush mode during testing at this point. Or, to put it another way, ran through it once, said to myself "good enough". The idea was to have the AVs act as a false threat, make you pull back so the PEs have time to come out, but... typing it out, this sounds kind of stupid.

I'll probably lock the player in, and tweak other stuff in the final room.

[dannebubinga]

Nice Phml :)

Here's my FDA.

I liked how the fight until you entered the red door was really tense and cramped. It takes some skill with the bfg to be able to beat the first part.

There were alot of missing lower textures though. You might want to look into that.

[Phml]

Yeah, the first part is really the meat of the map, and (imho) by omission you're making a lot of good points in very few words: obviously, the red key room is tacked on afterwards, and the change in pace is sudden and sharp, and there's too much space in there. Definitely going to change some things there.

I haven't spotted any missing texture watching your FDA. Were you by any chance playing in software mode? I didn't think of it then, but the middle texture I used near the red key might cause HOMs.

@Ribbiks: not sure where the tune is from. From the naming convention in my music folder, I must have ripped it off from another wad.

Edit: v2

[Archi]

Well, since there is too many maps in this project, I decided to retrieve my Rush maps, and probably finish them later.
I'm going to make some more maps for Slaughterfest, though.

Phml, your map is cool. But I think there's too many megaspheres and circlestrafing around barons at the start is a bit tiresome.
I didn't record demo for some reason, but I have intermission stats: http://i.imgur.com/4xLX9dJ.png

[__Lagger__]

Too many maps?

[cannonball]

Considering we are already at 33 maps there is no real need for the contents of Rush to be included and should be released as the stand-alone project for which is was originally intended.
Many more maps will be made for SF2013 so there's no need to worry about not reaching 32 :)
I will fix firestarter once and for all this evening. Thinking about it I don't need to scrimp on rockets as this map will mean naff all in respect to consecutive players as cells are restricted to those in the secret areas. So more rockets will be added in the central area, final room and maybe a few more in the start area. I won't place any in the East/West wings for obvious reasons.

[Demonologist]

Current map count without Rush maps is 27. So, 5 more maps and a potential megawad is complete. So far I haven't seen anything truly horrible, some maps could use more work indeed but there's still time for that. I think strict quality control isn't necessary now, and as I said before - even if sf13 would be considered pale in comparison with sf12, it's still fun enough for hardcore players. And we all don't expect non-hardcore players to care much, do we?

[cannonball]

Firestarter version 3
http://speedy.sh/2nFRY/Firestarterv.3.wad
Changes
Added a little extra threat in the wings
- More ammo especially rockets
- Lower monster count (398 on UV)
- Megaspheres in alcoves replaced by soulspheres, two green armours in central part of the map.

[Phendrena]

Ribbiks said:

Phendrena, I played through your map, I think it plays quite strange.

The idea of a base being invaded is neat, but it seems like there are far too many spots where you're completely safe, and it's far too easy to door-camp kill a majority of the enemies. The notion of ammo and health being spread out is good encouragement for the player to explore during the invasion, but almost every roamy strategy I attempted was inferior to just camping one of the buildings with megasphere + ammo. Maybe it's just that everything is so large scale. This sort of thing worked well in those "seige" HR maps, largely because enemies could hit you from almost every angle, good and hectic. Also so many hitscanners that are very far away is kind of annoying -.-

Btw, some of your teleporters don't work well, monsters get stuck in the little nooks and crannies and won't tele in. See this.

Also I'm not terribly sure why, but once a 1000 or so enemies tele into the main area prb+ started getting unhappy, spitting out "W_CacheLumpNum: High lock on DSPOSACT? (15)" a bajillion times

I've uploaded a revised version of the map.
I've reduced the number of hitscanners (and the monster count in general) so hopefully they'll be less annoying. I've added extra stuff into some of the buildings that were missing some detail in the rooms and also changed the base layout somewhat. You'll now find you need keys to access certain areas too.

I don't think there is a lot that I can do about monsters getting stuck behind some of the buildings (crappy AI imo) but all monsters do teleport in with no error messages.

It takes about 5/5½ minutes once you trigger the invasion for everything to appear and the exit to open.

Link ::: Assault on UAC Base 13 v0.5.0

Have fun,

Dave

[tatsurd-cacocaco]

Now, I am making a map for the project.

[TimeOfDeath]

Cool to see you join, tatsurd. :)

[NuMetalManiak]

Version C of Aquafresh Crescents (hope the link works this time)

I added some coop monsters, as well as some "shells".

[General Rainbow Bacon]

I'm gonna make one for this finally. I have time now. Prepare to die everyone :D

[tatsurd-cacocaco]

I post some screen shots of my maps, here.

[j4rio]

General Rainbow Bacon said:

I'm gonna make one for this finally. I have time now. Prepare to die everyone :D

Post an uv-max alongside your map if you decide to make one, plz.

[j4rio]

Oh, and btw, how about death exit in every single map?

[Ribbiks]

I'm largely against taking options away from the player. It's made pretty clear that sfXX maps are intended to be played from pistol start, but if someone insists on playing through continuously I see little harm in allowing them to do so. Odds are that type of player doesn't really care about fine-tuned balance anyways, and just wants to peruse the maps or play with weapon mods, or something.

Like sf12 the case could be made that the pink-bfg completely rapes the balance of subsequent maps, so I'm inclined to force death-exits there (did I list that in the OP? I forget). But if you can make a compelling case for it to be in every map, go for it.

[j4rio]

I'm not sure if it's always more plausible case if there are more options instead of one that is intended. That's most likely entirely subjective stuff. (Hey, I was never a fan of notably non-linear maps myself anyway). Sure, player will have more options without the presence of death-exits, but on the other hand he will always experience the wad the way it was 'meant' to be played, the way it was playtested and experience all ideas behind maps that could be otherwise left unnocited and cheesed through on continuous playthrough. I believe the main question to be asked here is who is the intended audience, "as many people as possible" or "those who want to challenge themselves"? If it's the former, leave death exits out. If it's the latter, adding death exits would be plausible, I think.

[Ribbiks]

well the former demographic is a superset of the latter, so what do you lose by accommodating both?

[Ribbiks]

btw I'm not necessarily set on not including them, I'm mostly trying to gauge how important you think it is :p

[cannonball]

Surely it's best to not have death exits, I mean it's always best if people have a choice on the matter, hence why idclev and using the command prompt are useful if you simply want to pistol start each map. If people want to play continuously then so be it.
Death exits only really work here on the pink BFG using levels for obvious reasons.

[j4rio]

well the former demographic is a superset of the latter, so what do you lose by accommodating both?

Who knows? Hypothetically you could convert more people from former to latter if they decide to play by our rules (by suffering through death exits) instead of ragequitting. This way all maps in the wad would be completely disconnected, as if you were playing 32(+) separate wads with custom map placed onto map 1 slot. I don't really care. Hell, I haven't really played almost any of submitted maps yet. I'm trying to get to it eventually.

[40oz]

Ribbiks said:

I'm largely against taking options away from the player.

Just sharing my opinion on this, I think death exits at the end of each level is a little sucky too. If you're a player like me, who is desperately trying to compete with the difficulty of some of these maps, sometimes you can carry a BFG from the previous map over with full ammo and still not make it past the starting room.

Many slaughterfests involve giving the player some special weapons and a shit ton of ammo right from the get-go, so I think having a death exit at the end of each map is a bit of an overkill. If you've got something to prove, you'd -warp to the map from the command line and record a demo of it or something. But simply playing the wad at your leisure (even with IDKFA and/or IDDQD on) should be up to the player's discretion.

[gggmork]

Many maps are already complete. A design rule like that should only be made at the beginning of the project.

[j4rio]

Well I asked that last year too. I guess it was sort of not cared about this year to be brought up anyway.

[Krispy]

__Lagger__ said:

I definitely didn't edit any of the maps.

To all map authors, I would be glad to add multiplayer fixes to your map: minor fixes that make them actually load online and prevent players from getting stuck. I will not change any gameplay and I don't want to change anything without permission. Please, let me know if you want me to add fixes that just affect multiplayer issues.

If you feel Gut Buster is buggy online, feel free to make some tweaks (I think I used voodoo doll conveyor belts that may be buggy in multiplayer).

[tatsurd-cacocaco]

I post the first version of my map. Download (with cc4-tex)
I don't have any experience of slaughterfest type maps, so I don't know what to do for a better gameplay. Please feedback.

[Ribbiks]

hihi, here's an fda for ^^ that ends with me dying embarassingly: http://www.mediafire.com/?h7898tj27act6h9

I haven't made it super far yet (RK, YK, BFG, so I'll play with saves to see the last few areas). But there are definitely some improvements imo that can be made to what I did see.

- the YK/plasma arena can be seriously cheesed by just hanging out in the water, an easy fix would be to make it damaging :)

- Also the block-monster lines going into the YK area make it an opportune location for sniping enemies in the main area.

- honestly I would nix the imps around the border of the 4-way symmetric starting area. It was just tedious ssg fodder, and I would've loved those shells later in the map, when ammo started getting ridiculously tight.

- I think the pop-up revs and cyb in the RK room should pop up together, dispatching them individually felt a bit boring. I do like that room though, gotta beware the face-rockets :)

- that room full of mancs with AVs on the walls needs some serious overhaul. The mancs are blocked back there so you just snipe them to death, and clearing out the AVs was just painfully dull. My first thought might be to reverse it, put a couple AVs on the floor (remove block-monster lines or whatever so they can actually get to you), and put a couple mancs on a ledge by the BFG switch or something.

- apparently I'm terrible at dispatching cybs in tight spaces, but I can't help but feel doing that 4 times would also be annoying. If you're not willing to neuter the room (ex. by replacing them with mancs) it would be nice to have a secret that crushes them or something :p

[__Lagger__]

Tatsurd, I really like the layout and texture usage. Also the map offers nice various gameplay: from small cramped fights, to a circlestrafe arena. When you use the cyber in the red key area for infights and you know the secret to wipe out the 4 cybers near spawn, the player won't have any trouble at all ammowise.

- I agree with ribbiks on some monster block lines which tend to make it very easy to kill monsters.
- As well as the water near yellow skull key. It's too easy, although running past the revs to the monster block line area is easy too since cybs will shoot revs all the time and the revs will be a good... ehm bone shield. If you feel this needs to be harder: replace those revs with a cyber or with viles. I don't think it's necessary to make things any harder though: the final arena is tricky enough with viles, homing rockets and blocking caco's/pe's/souls.
- The yellow switch near the bfg needs a fix. Currently, it doesn't require a yellow key.

[tatsurd-cacocaco]

Evil Battle Field of Demons v1 (with cc4-tex)

My 2nd map for the project. I will update my first and second maps until the end of Nov. Any opinions are welcom. I want feedback especially for speedrunner. Are they fun for max? What improvements should I do for more exciting?