Thanks for that riven and I will laugh if I feel the need.

Ok I haven't playin the round one maps and will do after this but here we go.

Fingers map: I thought this map was the most complete and had the most effort put into it. The goal was very strange though, Activating a teleporter. However this does leave open many possibilities of where you will end up. And maybe I wasn't listening or was to busy looking at the details but the goal was unclear. I also was unaware that the teleporter was up and active and walked into it by total fluke. And was that your voice I was hearing?

Reapers Map: It felt incomplete. The gameplay was nice and simple. I felt I was doing damage and moving forward through the map at a good speed. Thats very important in shoot em up games. Even at the end part where you face heaps of combine and manhacks I still felt that I was moving forward. However this gameplay can get very repetative and boring after a while.

Redwoods map: In this map, redwood decided to take a turn from the combine train station theme and go down under. This map to me also felt incomplete. The gameplay was simple and I felt that the map lacked ambient sound. It was very short to. But it was nice to see some zombies. But I think that you should have spent more time on this map.

To conclude: I feel all three maps had the potential to be better but I think that you guys ran short of time. My vote goes to Finger because his map was the most complete and felt finished. I had fun playing all three maps and you guys did a nice effort. None of these maps where crap they just lacked some lovin probley due to the very limited time that they had. By the way as I said before I haven't playin the other three base maps but your base map finger, is good. Its awsome how the civilians get shot in the back.

Hey, thanks for the feedback. It's great to hear where people got confused; I felt the map could be potentially confusing at a few spots, so this info will help me make it better.

If you listen to the audio (which might be hard to hear at points), you should get an idea of what is going on, but I'm certain it could be handled better. I had initially planned a fully choreographed npc scene to help tell the story, but just didn't have the time to do it right, so I chose to go with audio over the intercom.

And yeah, that was my voice (ack).... though I messed with the pitch some. Npc dialogue/scenes is the real bottleneck for this type of stuff and could definately be improved, but hey, you do what you can in 3 weeks " SRC="images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif">

Finger: Good as expected. I really liked blowing up apcs with the trains, that was a very cool idea. The voice acting was... interesting, but I didn't find the ending confusing in the least. The only major complaint I had was that custom skybox, which looked like something out of Xen and burned my eyes with its blueness.

Reaper: Suprisingly solid, but let down by the little things. For example, nearly all the doorways in the second half of your map are too big, mis-proportioned and without trim. Plus it was way too short and about half of your section is spent in a duct.

Redwood: This is so much better than your round 1 attempt. Thematically it made no sense and it was way too short as well, but was well put together and rather problem free (except for buildcubemaps not being run, which is a biggie). I liked the under construction basement area, just too bad it felt really out of place given Finger's section.

Redwood, Reaper - thanks for the feedback. While I appreciate the props given, I am really interested in the 'bad' playthrough experiences more than anything. Knowing where things fail is the only way to improve the gameplay experience.

Redwood: It sounds like 'all of the bad things that could happen did happen', on your playthrough. Which is actually great for me, because it shows me where to apply fixes. I knowingly tried some pretty tricky stuff with this map; stuff that isn't obviously difficult.

- pusing the player up, back, and around, to start the trains and take out the APC is a risky move and has the potential to be confusing, as you experienced. It's true that alot of people think the objective is always to move forward and throwing an enemy roadblock just feels like a tough setup they must fight through. Although the soldiers weren't infinite - it seems it felt that way. I'll keep thinking about how to make this setup better. Ultimately, what you would want to do is have some setups prior to that where the player had to start trains... then make the roadblock more obvious with something like a barricade... then try to make the connection between starting trains and breaking the barricade.

Also, I bet I could change that area somewhat so you are more likely to see the train smashing the apc.

- Snipers did shoot rebels that were trying to run across the field; that sounds like a bug. I'll look into it.

- It sucks that the Helicopter caught you off guard. I'll give it a flyby and have it shootint at an npc_bullseye for a bit before it targets you.

- The vent/hopper setup: I figured it would go down 3 ways, and either was acceptable to me.

1. player would see hoppers before they pulled the plug, and use grav gun to disable them.

2. Player would pull plug, back up when turrets started shooting, 'not' fall through the vent, and use the gravity gun to clear the ground.

3. Player would pull plug, fall with vent tip. then freak out as hoppers popped all around them.

Maybe I should change this a bit so the player always falls.

Anyway - great insight from everyone into what worked and what didn't. As a gauge, most professional developers have the very same experience at their focus tests. The only way you get to a shining, polished product, is to break it over and over until you can't break it any more.

You have a good point Redwood.... as this competition grows so do the bugs. It would be nice to have a week (once the winner is announced) before the next comp starts so the winner can polish things up and make the map as bug free as possible. Also, it would be nice to know how many rounds we want this competition to be.