Subject:
Post Posted: 03 Aug 2009, 22:52
Excellent map. I played through it on Medium since I had heard it was pretty hard, but I found it rather easy for the most part. I'll run through it again on Unreal.
I LOVED that huge tower you see after the algae lake (and I loved that algae, too, nice touch). Though I did notice the waterzone wasn't set to bFogZone, so the skybox fog flickers in and out when you bob near the surface. Might want to fix that. Also, I loved that little house near the start; it felt so cozy and nice (well, save for the brutes). Great atmosphere.
Performance tanked for me starting at the algae lake, though, and I can't really see why. Lots of dynamic lights, maybe? Also, the Harobed music trigger trips multiple times.
The outdoor terrain is staggeringly awesome, though. I can't believe you made all this in 6 weeks. Incredible.
Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed by the lack of sound; there really wasn't much. I expected more from various Skaarj devices and gas lanterns and stuff. Also, that very last fight was stupidly hard; not only is the Redeemer hard to find, but it's hard to even GET when you literally have like 200 Skaarj everywhere. I just had to god mode that and summon some EXU guns to blow the shit out of everything just to GET the Redeemer, and even then I was still taking shots left and right. That last thing definitely needs to be better thought-out. I also don't really get how/why the Skaarj are using Nali to teleport tons of themselves into a given area, but whatever. Story was pretty lacking, too. I didn't really know much about who I was or why I was there or what was going on other than the weird Nali stuff.
Also, there was I think one area you could easily access by hopping down from a wall (near where the Skaarj said he didn't take any pride in executing the Nali, which I found extremely uncharacteristic for a Skaarj) but couldn't get back up again. Your only option was to either fly mode back or leap down into that huge field and backtrack a long way. Maybe adding some boxes there would be a good idea. There are also some oddly chosen textures here and there, and occasionally that grass texture you used looked more like a GenFluid slime texture than grass, IMO.
Overall, though, this is a great map, but it's very very lacking in polish. For the compilation, I expect this one will be utterly fantastic, though, and I'm looking forward to TCO even more given the quality of this map.
Oh, and when I saw that Chizra-like spike launcher, I said "oh YES" aloud because I KNEW it was going to be for that huge tower. I was kinda sad that there wasn't much more to the tower than that, though, but it did look neat. I also had one mover which refused to carry me upwards (out of the underground area); I'd just fall through it.