kroush - feedback

[Dehoth]

Hey everyone; just made this so people can get their opinions out there without having to pent them up.
Also helps me know what I did bad and good, given that it is my first msc map.

About anything will do here, given that it:
- Does NOT contain spoilers (try to be nondescript if you have to)
- Is related to kroush

Also please try to explain why you think it's bad/good or just "meh". Don't say "It sucks" without pointing at a horrible piece of work; who knows everyone else might have thought the same but was afraid to say so. Same goes for saying it's "good". We are not in a relation where you need to be as political correct as possible. Not going to create a poll as that just gives me nothing that I can work with.

Your feedback could help shape the future of the maps to come! Unless you think I should just stop mapping, which could be your honest opinion.


Thanks in advance for your feedback!

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

It's gorgeous!

 

[Hush]

Well, I am trying to keep things short:

What i like

• The map is not as linear as other MS:C maps, there are many a different ways and paths how to play and explore it. If you are considering to continue mapping for MS:C, this is an aspect I would like to see in following maps aswell, because you did a great job at that with kroush.

• The way you play the map influences it's ending, which is imho a great way to create a certain replay value, aside from using random spawning enemies or bosses

• the layout of the map is varied and has a lot of nice details in it

Two tiny points of criticism

• Yeah I know, I pointed that out before but: The "cursed one" plays quite a prominent role on this map, but there is not much backstory to him. I don't mean that I want to see pages of backstory for him, but a little hint why he is forever in "that state" or even a solution to free him at the end would have been a nice addition to the map. That shrine part of the map, which at moment serves not much purpose, but looks quite nice, as well as the altar at the end, would be nice locations for a little story hint or even solution for his "current state".
  
• The music in a few spots feels a little bit too epic for a fight in a bandit keep (for example in the "great trap room")

Can't really tell if the loot or xp of that map is fair, because I wasn't able to play it with other people yet.

All in all, it is a pleasure to play this map and I am really looking forward for some more handcrafted maps by you.

 

[zeus9860]

It's a pretty decent map from what i have seen so far, i think i missed a few things so i can't really comment on the map entirely.

The idea behind the map felt unique to me, just like the one map with the soup questline, there are multiple ways of approaching a place. That is a good approach. The cons of this approach is that it potentially makes the map feel smaller, i know there are limitations right now within the game engine but i would like to see something like this again, perhaps on a higher scale involving the gauntlet system.

This could even become a thing for map gauntlets, have a main central map connected with multiple maps that provide alternative entrances and points of view to the central map, say there are 4 transitions to get in the central map, each of the 4 maps has a gauntlet layout so you can only access them through other transitions from previews map, each of the maps has a different impact on the central map, say there are 4 different species of enemies in a fight in the central map, killing off one of the sides from one of the transition maps would force the central map to boot up with only 3 species of enemies.

In other words, central map is connected to X maps that surround the central map and X maps are connected to Y maps that are further away from the central map. Having something like this connected could potentially create further replayability of the maps involved, combining different transitions and whatnot. Probably takes alot of effort as it requires multiple maps and scripting.

Another thing that caught my eye was the one enemy that spawned more than once. It reminded me of something i thought of long ago as I always wanted to see something like this be used in this game, i gave suggestions to another mapper some years ago about making an encounter with some shadow figurine in one of his maps (a dropped project), like have that one npc show up multiple times randomly throughout the map to scare the player and have a fight with. With each time getting more difficult to fight back (the enemy adapts to you) untill you end up forcibly loosing to the enemy without actually dieing. The enemy leaves a relic behind for you, so you can track it's background/past and eventually catch up to it again.

 

[Thothie]

Another thing that caught my eye was the one enemy that spawned more than once. It reminded me of something i thought of long ago as I always wanted to see something like this be used in this game, i gave suggestions to another mapper some years ago about making an encounter with some shadow figurine in one of his maps (a dropped project), like have that one npc show up multiple times randomly throughout the map to scare the player and have a fight with. With each time getting more difficult to fight back (the enemy adapts to you) untill you end up forcibly loosing to the enemy without actually dieing. The enemy leaves a relic behind for you, so you can track it's background/past and eventually catch up to it again.

Closest we got is Maldora, who keeps running off. Someone else came up with the idea of other insane viers for the "dark throne", one little anti-Christ for each deity of the triad, including a creepy little girl, but man, that'd be a lotta work.

I was hoping for such a concept in Caverns of Frost - actually did a little preemptive scriptwork for it. Giant Frost Wyrm would keep breaking through the caves at various points on the map, harassing the players and opening new hazards and paths. Albeit, you'd just end up confronting it in the end, finishing it off by dropping stalactites on it, or some such similar mechanic for a beast that's too big to kill directly. Final confrontations with the three dragons likely involving similar mechanics.

 

[zeus9860]

Closest we got is Maldora, who keeps running off. Someone else came up with the idea of other insane viers for the "dark throne", one little anti-Christ for each deity of the triad, including a creepy little girl, but man, that'd be a lotta work.

I was hoping for such a concept in Caverns of Frost - actually did a little preemptive scriptwork for it. Giant Frost Wyrm would keep breaking through the caves at various points on the map, harassing the players and opening new hazards and paths. Albeit, you'd just end up confronting it in the end, finishing it off by dropping stalactites on it, or some such similar mechanic for a beast that's too big to kill directly. Final confrontations with the three dragons likely involving similar mechanics.

Exactly, maldora was the main subject that got me into this thing. Along with the quest in mscave. The idea of mixing those together to create something interisting, like a long questline that takes you across the worldmap to figure things out and end up having multiple choices along the way with different rewards at stake. Perhaps have this questline become limited to one time per character, with a multi-unique reward scheme behind it, people would be forced to play with alts, to unlock the other rewards aswell.

The original idea i had back then was for the_wall_east, someone was working on the map and i initially suggested something similiar of what you just said about Caverns of the Frost, except it would be an ancient machine that would get powered on by someone using dark magic, which would lead to multiple confrontations throughout the map, with each confrontation scaling higher each time, you end up destroying the machine using mechanics similiar to calruin's smith in the final spawn of the map. From there onwards is basically the shadow figurine thingy i already posted.

I even went as far as suggesting a map layout (uploading the image doesn't seem to work, direct link it is):



Things i didn't mention in the map layout:
-traps, traps everywhere (from collapsing ceilings, walls and ground to "man" made traps such as magic runes that spawn tougher enemies or barriers that block your path to get ambushed, etc), none of the traps are insta kill and give you a fair chance to fight for your life/avoid death;

-enemy layout would focus heavily on undeads(orcs/dwarves), few machines and some elves, all of them would fight each other on sight;

-you climb your way up through each floor using debris and whatnot (in other words, F ladders and stairs);

-each floor should have rooms that could be connected with other rooms from the same floor or the floors above, this is to create a sense of exploration and puzzling;

-apply lots of hidden chests throughout the map, with a similiar system to orc_for, the final boss of the map is meant to drop nothing but a quest item, which will be the main reward of the map, hidden chests could have specific unique gear that spawns in very few maps, like ice staff/dark staff/affliction spells/divination spells, etc;

-layout originally had only 3 towers and 1 entrance, i thought adding an extra 2 and creating a lever sequence to open a secret path would be something extra to force people to do everytime they play the map. Like having an extra chest in this path that spawns once you beat the boss, same path could be used as a shortcut to the top/final floor.

Well, i guess that is enough derailing from me, thought that someone could use some of these ideas in future mapping concepts. I know very well that most of the things i mentioned requires alot of effort to come up with. The map itself from the looks of it would be gigantic, which is another problem stability-wise. Would probably suffer the same fate as the_wall and get split into two.

 

[D.Drew]

this was the only genuinely fun ms:c map added in ages, well done

feels like an actual fun map to explore rather than some dark cancerous gauntlet with enemies that do 9 billion damage

 

[Dehoth]

Thanks for the replies.

-@Hush:
I agree that the story isn't something that sticks for now; could be changed with connecting map(s) and perhaps some small additions/fixes later with a patch (chapel/altar-room). Do note that I had little to no guidance on what I should end up with as story when I started. I didn't had any sort of concept/suggestion in mind and ended up changing the story quite a lot due to feedback.
The music is epic enough for a mid-level character who doesn't expect anything, imho .

-@Zeus:
I couldn't make the map bigger as it is now. Reasons for that aren't in the limitations for the map, as I think I could easily add 1/3th more without any additional lag, but mostly in the fact that everything felt "complete" after a while. I didn't feel like adding random rooms or patches of grass with the sole purpose of adding extra space for the player, it would also put the player further away from the theme/feel of the map. If I added more caverns it would be more of an underground map, etc .. I hope the current split of terrain makes for a nice whole.
(Your suggestion would be great for a possible total rework of unrest or a like-minded castle-map)



Additional feedback is still appreciated; even negative, as it helps me improve on flaws that I might have missed otherwise.

 

[Chimz]

Okay as much as I wanted to take a deep look at everything, I was on limited time. But I tried my best to analyze everything in that limited time.

I liked the whole structure of the map. It's nice and meaningful that you placed the Bandit base inside a jungle where it's hard to find. The interior of the bandit base looks good. And it's nice how you've made a sleeping quarter and a cafeteria (or food storage?). It makes it feel like a real place. Unlike maps like Dragooncaves where there are many random rooms that you can't really understand their reason of existence.
The spider caves are well built. You've first made a nice cave design and covered it with webs, making it look real. The forest is well designed too. The bushes and other { textures stuff you've used makes the forest look deep and feel more like a forest. You didn't just put some walls around and use tree line textures like in orc_for. You've took it further than that. It actually makes you feel you're inside a jungle and that there's more beyond the boundaries.

I like how much detail you've put into the map like the wall pillars in almost every place.
Blocked pathways are made really good. They have enough work put into them to both make be a reasonable blockage and also have a nice look. (I've tried making these and it was really annoying for me so seeing such a simple and clean blockage excites me)
I like how you've made a few doors that don't open up at first but open up later. This makes me go back the way I came and try the doors again and ultimately make the map less linear and more like an open world (in the limits of HL Engine).
I like the collectible crystal bonus and how you have to find them all in secret areas. Gives the map a nice "secrety" touch. It's always nice to have secrets in maps.


I just have four things I didn't like which you could change in an update if seen fit:

1. (Alright I'm gonna try my best not to spoil this): The part where the first chest is taken, I didn't like how you could get into that water pool but not move to the other side when there's no physical object to block you and you would just get pushed back. I know you did that so the player could experience the sequence well, but I would suggest that you bring down that metal gate thingy to the bottom so it would make sense as to why you can't go to the other side from there and not just get pushed back for a reason you do not know.

2. The cafeteria (food storage room) should probably have more than 1 table. Maybe 1 or 2 more. There are a lot of bandits in the base and so, I think that place should have more tables. And since it's not a very populated or small sized room, the extra table won't block the player's movement.

3. The boss room doesn't seem to have much detail. I like what you did with the ceiling though. But I think you could do better but the reason you didn't was because you were limited by polys. I checked the r_speeds and I think the wpoly was around 650 or 700? And you tried to keep it low because you don't need frame drops in a boss room.
If so, I'm pretty sure you can fix the problem and add in a few other details or just lower the wpoly even more with a simple trick. The bad thing you did there was place the treasure room right behind the final door with no Vis blocker in between. As you probably know, a door does not count as a vis blocker. So when I enter the boss room, the door basically doesn't exist so the game can see inside the treasure room and count its polys along with the boss room's. So if you were to make a turn hallway or a wall blocker like in Dragooncaves (before the boss room), you could easily fix this problem without doing anything complicated.
Like shown in the picture below:

The top right picture is basically your connection but without a hallway. A door does not count as a Vis blocker. To avoid this in the future, always think of Poly the High girl when mapping:

Anyway, even if you don't WANT to add anymore detail to that room, you can still lower the wpoly more by doing this.


4. Uh, I think this one might have some Spoilers, PM me if you want me to remove this from here. The treasure room at the end is filled with treasures and gold sacks. And yet, you can't pick up even one of them since they're models. I'd really like it if upon opening the door some usable gold sacks spawned (like in IslesofDread1's three treasure rooms with skeletons in them) or instead there would be more gold in the chests. Although if I recall right, you as a mapper have no control over how much gold drops in the chests. So, having the gold sacks spawning can be a really nice and logical touch. I mean, I'm surrounded by gold, why can't I take some of it?