Posted by Leperous on Tue Mar 1st 2005 at 11:59am
If you've got a .MAP around, you can still salvage it- open it in Notepad and spoon out the mappy goodness yourself 
Posted by Myrk- on Tue Mar 1st 2005 at 11:11am
And the moral of the story? Have 2 copies of each map you make on 2 HD's
[addsig]
Thank you all for your comments and advice. Unfortunatly I have had to abandon this map, as Hammer crashed my computer while I was saving it, and now the file is corrupted, as is the back up that hammer makes. Sigh. Guess thats what I get for trying to run hammer on a laptop.
HK
Posted by martinloki on Thu Feb 24th 2005 at 9:06pm
Do you still want feedback on this map or am I too late? I didn't know that snarkpit was back up.
Well if you do, here it is.
I know this is just a portion of a final map so I wont bug you about plot.
I am also assuming that the outside is incomplete so I wont complain about the missing earth or ability to run off the side to your death. However encountered a game stopping bug my first time playing through. I am a defensive player, and when i saw the doors closing behind me I figured they wanted me trapped in. So I went out hoping to jump them. The doors shut, they appeared inside, and I was stuck outside. Maybe set the doors to open automatically if the player is outside. One other thing I noticed in the begining was the sound of large objects landing on things. It sounded like the I beams were all falling into position. Very odd to hear.
I enjoyed the inital onslaught. In case you are curious how I played it, I ran and got the ammo next to the van. Then ran away from all the barrels, going up onto the ibeams and into the window where there was a rebel. I found the best tactic was to hold up in the room with the rebel. I didnt get hit once on hard while I was in there and only ran out of ammo once. That part was a lot of fun. (As a side note, I don't know if it is something a mapper can fix, but none of the combine were able to land a nade in the room. They all fell short. This made them very easy to kill.)
After the main force was dealt with, I moved upstairs. On the way there I killed someone with a shotgun and started using that. By the time I ran out of shotgun shells (without relaoding) everyone but me was dead. That was very dissapointing.
I spent the next few moments trying to figure out what to do next. Finally I decided that I must have finsihed the level and quit.
If you change out the weapons you start the player with this might play better. Maybe trade the mg with the shotgun and the pistol with a magnum with 6 rounds. That would encourage more cqb. Otherwise this can be an easy defensive level.
The level was very quick, it would be nice to have more gameplay, but I guess that will come when the rest of the level does.
That said, it would still be nice for a partial map like this to include an ending. maybe just a black screen that says "to be continued..." or something.
I look forward to the final version of the map.
If you have any questions about anything I said please let me know and I will try to clarify it.
"There were a few bugs that I noticed. Those walls on the door to the roof are hovering above the ground. Speaking of the roof, you can hop from the railings to the rafters and then jump onto the roof through the windows prematurely."
Yikes, those are big ones, don't know how I missed that. Thanks.
Any ideas as to what type of cover to add? I have though about putting in anouther truck or couple of cars, but did not want it to be to monotonous. As for the roof being bland, I agree. I'll be adding some vents and misc. things up there. Other additions since the upload include: music, one additional rebel ally (follows you in from outside), the second wave from the roof now waits until the 2nd wave from the front door is 2/3s dead, then attacks after 15 seconds (should give the player time to pick off the stragglers), and some sound clips for the roof squad as they die. The RPG will be going away as well.
Thanks for the help, please keep the suggestions coming!
HK
Posted by Joe-Bob on Tue Feb 15th 2005 at 6:45am
I would agree, that map doesn't appear too dark. It certainly isn't light, but it's not overly dark either.
There were a few bugs that I noticed. Those walls on the door to the roof are hovering above the ground. Speaking of the roof, you can hop from the railings to the rafters and then jump onto the roof through the windows prematurely.
That door is much too thin to move as slowly as it did at the start.
Gameplay-wise, there wasn't enough cover or elbow room for a fight like the one you threw. The little bit of cover that was available didn't provide enough of a view to kill the advancing troops. To make matters worse, there was no close-range weaponry at all! (Shotgun and gravity gun). While I suppose some of the soldiers carried shotguns, all of those pulse rifle soldiers made scavenging for ammo a bad idea.
Either provide more room, make the fight a bit less, or provide a decent cover that's somewhat defensible!
One last note, that roof was really boring. Add detail to the architecture itself and give the player a bit of a view.
I promise its not that dark. I just checked out the screenshots from my work PC, and they appear dark here as well, while at home they look fine. You might want to adjust your gamma. Also, try playing the map, if its still to dark then let me know.
HK
Posted by satchmo on Tue Feb 15th 2005 at 5:49am
It's extremely dark, from the screenshots. Would you consider adding a bit more light? It almost looks like Doom 3 from it's darkness. [addsig]
