Ok, so I finally got around to trying to take screenshots of things I didnt like with gmdm2 and i ended up taking a lot of screenshots of cool stuff instead and only a couple of things i didnt like. Without further aideu:
First: all over the map there are these awesome parts where you can see into another part of the map, but cant go there, or you can onlly go one way. This hugely adds to gameplay. For example, here:
Or here:
The "windows" are not limited to walls, they are also in the floor.
There are even convienently placed holes for satchels!
There are also cool overlays that you can only go one way from:
Second: some of the arenas are very amazing, having multiple layers and entrances/exits (not to mention looking great too):
Third: There are awesome doors/shootable switchable walls everywhere that change the layout of the map as you go along. They are awesome for gameplay, and plus the switching sequences look great what with walls going this way and that.
The switchable walls also include STAIRS that switch between up and down!
The health and armor chargers look really cool (but there arent enough IMO):
One room with a health charger is ubercool. It is like a water-healing type place with a charger on - get this - the floor under the thin water! Plus in this room there are excellent looking waterfalls and the water even has a drain ont to somewhere else on the floor!
There is also one of the best implementations of a mounted turret i have found: it is behind 1-way wayy so the dude using the gun can see out but his victims cant see in. 1 crit: i would make the gun shoot faster/more damage.
The elevator that you use to get to the turret is cool, except that you have to press the up button to go back down which is kind of weird. i would have the wall contain both up and down arrows.
The underground tunels are very moody and look cool, but perhaps they are a bit too red? I would add in some ambient white light and tone down the red to more of an orange.
This part of the tunnel is a bit dull, plus the sprites are NOT z-axis locked. make them z-axis locked at least and consider adding some stuff to spice up this tunnel:
The waterfalls all over the place are really beautiful, but what is especially cool is that you can get to the very top of the whole thing by swimming up the weird watertunnel thing.
When you look down, you see the tons and tons of layers of the map. Reminds me of my map catacomb, but about 2X the layering.
Oh yeah, and then theres the waterslide. I think its a first in a HL map, and it is REALLY COOL. Nice idea and good implementation.
The boulder effect is especially nice. It goes this way and that while maintaining perfect rolling direction. It goes at just the perfect speed as well, and the doors open and shut for it like they know it is coming. It makes the temple/ruins feel "alive". I also love the dust effect behind it! Reminds me of my boulder in Megalith, but about 10X as cool.
The boulder button, however, is not very obvious. I dont know if this is a gameplay decision or not, but i would make a special symbol for it and move the button from the right side of the pillar to the center of the pillar and up a bit higher to let n00bs know where it is. It took me forever to find the button. The boulder rocks (no pun intended), show it off!
That common wall texture is nice - it does the job. However, in a couple of rooms you fully flesh out the 3d detail of the walls instead of relying on the textures, and when you do full-3d it looks SOOOO COOL. Since your map has extremely low wpoly anyways, I would ask you to consider making ALL (or at least most) of the walls with that texture fully 3d.
If you have the option you might want to make some other textures into 3d objects such as this one:
Ok, so now that Ive given enough praise, here are a couple of drawbacks I found.
1: There is 1 texture alignment that i could find in the whole map:
2: The rusty metal and orangish stone style doesnt look that good in certain sections. It looks blocky and off. I think that you could remedy that by just switching textures, but you might want to smooth out some of the blockiness on the orangish stone too:
Here is the other side of that:
1 more thing - sounds. Add more of them.
Overall, excellent. Hopefully others will find more stuff to comment on. Everyone - Download the map and get it working, or else you will be missing a lot! The best parts about this map are its cool 3d layout, gameplay, and interactivity.
I've got several good ideas from your post, and I'm also thrilled to see people noticing all the little touches (like satchel holes).
