tundra discussion

[MS:C community]

I shall rephrase...

What do you hate about Tundra, and what would you like to seen done to fix it? (Yes, other than deletion.)

Personally, I've always found it kind of a typical high end map - if a bit lengthy. That jump sequence, yeah, annoying - but I'm entirely to blame for that. If that's it, I could just make it an ice ramp.

Well, if you really wanna know:

• The map doesn't look like a tundra at all.
• When you fall into a body of water, you will notice that the ocean floor is untextured, presenting you with the hall of mirrors effect. I know this is done to save on wpoly but if you upscale the texture to, say, 8 times, I don't think the impact will be that big.
• Not only does the freezing water kill you, it also saps your XP. If this map employed the msarea_transition_local entity (just past the body of water) I could totally live with this, though. I know this entity is much newer than tundra, but if you're gonna take a look at that map, I think this is a valid suggestion.
• That first ice floe func_train tends to get players stuck in it.
• Killing the giant polar bear boss quickly (high level players can do this) has a high tendency of instantly crashing the map.
• Killing 40 (I looked this one up with EntEd) bears and boars to unlock the polar hut is boring. The term "gameplay padding" comes to mind. Players just tend to camp the boar that respawns behind the polar hut and kill it over and over again.
• Killing 30, 25 and then another 20 zombie dwarves is even worse because of their atrociously low respawn times. It's like gatecity all over again, but worse, because we have...
• ...Huge Dwarves. Re-read that one please. Huge Dwarves. That's kind of like "Tiny Giants" or "an obese skinny person".
• A bunch of Dwarves use the ancient quad_health parameter (which gives no extra XP) instead of hpmulti = 4. But OK, I'll admit it: this is me whining for extra XP
• Minor gripe: there's an ill-placed tree model somewhere in the huge open field (near the hut) that renders totally black.
• Not-so-minor gripe: the staircase you can't even climb (in the shrine). The map author failed to make a functional staircase. To me, this is fairly telling >.>
• And then there's that white forcefield that leads to the shrine that takes a remarkably long time to open up again. For the target audience (high level & very high level players), the elemental ice guardian and ice skeletons inside aren't nearly challenging enough to warrant a closing door. No properly equipped/leveled player, who has actual business in that map, would ever attempt to flee from that shrine.

Maybe Oyster can add some more things but these are the ones that come to mind.

There are some good things, though. The map sticks to a theme (ice), there are some custom monsters that were made using existing scripts (Marogar Brute, Ancient Iced Beak), the boss fight (difficulty) adjusts in a clever way and the "Roof Cleaner" anti-exploit bear is a nice gimmick. But there's just an extraordinary number of problems with this map, biggest ones being the Huge Dwarves and the fact that this doesn't look like an actual tundra.

 

[Thothie]

The map doesn't look like a tundra at all.

You may have to be more specific.

I didn't make it, of course, but it's using the exact same texture set as the original, pre-release, Tundra.bsp - which was, admittedly, just a small open ski slope sitting on top of mines.bsp.

If you mean it doesn't look like actual tundra, as in the terrain, well, you have an advantage over me... As I live in California. I barely know what snow looks like. (Actually, now that I think of it, despite all the travelling I did in my youth, I don't think I've ever actually seen real tundra.)

But as Google gives me this, I think it's as close as we're gonna get, under the current engine. Flat open icy planes are not Half-Life's forté.

When you fall into a body of water, you will notice that the ocean floor is untextured, presenting you with the hall of mirrors effect. I know this is done to save on wpoly but if you upscale the texture to, say, 8 times, I don't think the impact will be that big.

Easily fixed. Though Svencoop may render the fix moot. I was hoping the fog would cover it up when I first noticed it (before the weather was set.)

edit: Wait - nevermind... It is textured! >< Might be the compile - or might need to convert the water into an illusionary.

Not only does the freezing water kill you, it also saps your XP. If this map employed the msarea_transition_local entity (just past the body of water) I could totally live with this, though. I know this entity is much newer than tundra, but if you're gonna take a look at that map, I think this is a valid suggestion.

It is subject to cold resistance - though that is counter-intuitive as usually anything that dunks you entirely is fatal (plus it's a lot of damage and cold immunity is hard to come by). I might be able to rig up a hazard damage subtype that still allows the cold resist, but doesn't sap XP - would be handy for the Lava Wyrm I'm still tweaking.

I'm still having trouble fixing that +use spam on msarea_transition_local (I threw it at Wishbone too, but he hasn't responded yet). I am tempted to simply not allow +use if it doesn't teleport, nor require all players, nor have a target, as it'll set the spawn point transition when you simply touch it.

I'd like to do something more creative though - like have a pile of wood there, stop the ice trains, and let you build a bridge back, plank by plank.

That first ice floe func_train tends to get players stuck in it.

*sigh* I know... That is the bit I added, as there was no boat transition. I suppose I could use stationary pillars instead, for the same effect. Shame though.

Wonder if I can at least have little bergs floating up and down safely - with no horizontal travel.

Killing the giant polar bear boss quickly (high level players can do this) has a high tendency of instantly crashing the map.

It's in my personal bug list, keep forgetting to add it as perpetual in the public. Haven't been able to duplicate it. Seems to happen on Skycastle as well, but I can't see anything wrong with the script.

I do believe it is among the examples in test_scripts, if someone wants to get another eye on it. Conventions are a bit old, being based on a MS1.4 script.

Killing 40 (I looked this one up with EntEd) bears and boars to unlock the polar hut is boring. The term "gameplay padding" comes to mind. Players just tend to camp the boar that respawns behind the polar hut and kill it over and over again.
Killing 30, 25 and then another 20 zombie dwarves is even worse because of their atrociously low respawn times. It's like gatecity all over again [...]

My biggest gripe about the map right there. When I brought this up with Evilsquirrel, he started to cite something along the lines of "ruining his creative vision" - he being one of only two mappers ever to pull that one on me. (Though, unlike the other one, he may have been kidding.) :roll:

The respawn times are actually kinder than Gatecity were at the time (which is the thing I assume he or Avzool or Joe was attempting to emulate). But they are a lot more spread out - takes forever to find em. Does make more players beneficial, but is a bit much.

I had been planning on a system where the GM actually manages a set of monster spawns and just drops them near you, so long as no player's field of vision overlaps the drop point (kinda zombie spawner left4dead style). This would be a good place for it. Simply means adding an addparam to the mobs and an msarea_monsterspawn to define their spawn area's max range. Well, that, and actually working up the system. (The other place I was going to use this was on The_Wall after replacing the elves, so...)

But the endless boars of Saddam Hussein's snowy nightmare... Yeesh. Only thing I could think to do, and keep the difficulty and time, is break them up with waves of something else... Make the sky go black, toss out a bunch of ice reavers or ice revenants or something that ride in on lightning bolts from the angry bear god, rinse, repeat. Dunno if you have any other suggestions that don't involve either reducing the time investment, or increasing the difficulty by using fewer but meaner monsters. 12 Boars, 12 Reavers, and 12 Revenants certainly sounds less monotonous.

...Huge Dwarves. Re-read that one please. Huge Dwarves. That's kind of like "Tiny Giants" or "an obese skinny person".

I've been loling ever since. Just thought of it as a gag.

I suppose we have bloated zombie dwarfs now.

A bunch of Dwarves use the ancient quad_health parameter (which gives no extra XP) instead of hpmulti = 4. But OK, I'll admit it: this is me whining for extra XP

(Understandable as obviously unintentional.) I thought we tweaked that out so quad_health gives XP... Odd, I'll have to check it.
(Fixed)

Minor gripe: there's an ill-placed tree model somewhere in the huge open field (near the hut) that renders totally black.

I'll stick a light in it. ><

Not-so-minor gripe: the staircase you can't even climb (in the shrine). The map author failed to make a functional staircase. To me, this is fairly telling >.>

I think that's intentional, to prevent easily kiting the frost skeles.

And then there's that white forcefield that leads to the shrine that takes a remarkably long time to open up again. For the target audience (high level & very high level players), the elemental ice guardian and ice skeletons inside aren't nearly challenging enough to warrant a closing door. No properly equipped/leveled player, who has actual business in that map, would ever attempt to flee from that shrine.[/list]

I suppose we could make it harder. But there does need to be an airlock to prevent the two groups of mobs from meeting, suspect that's why it was put in.

Additionally, if it isn't there, you can safely attack bears and boars from inside.

PS.
My plate is REALLY full right now - so if you'd rather have me working on say, the pre-cursor to the dynamic quest system, monsters for the new maps, a new treasure system that doesn't involve spawn chances, or the new elves, and you can map, gimme a heads up and I'll get you the sauce - most of this could be handled by any of our mappers.

 

[zeus9860]

Huge dwarves are mentioned yet magical bears are ignored.

The most annoying non elite enemy in this game is probably the "magical" polar bear, well at least tundra makes it look like that. This has nothing to do with visuals, gameplay wise its annoying tbh.

Perhaps if the spawns were tweaked outside of the hut so the player doesn't get gang banged by boars and magical polar bears 99% the time, perhaps the map might end up being a little bit more enjoyable/accepted. Going there with no stun immunity or cold resist/immunity will simply make you want to alt + f4 and play something else instead.

While i do get that tundra doesn't really look like tundra, perhaps the best course of action would be tweaking some of these problems and moving on with newer content. Making tundra look like a tundra basically would require a map remake, it's not a bad idea but i would prefer seeing some new lore progress instead.

Still waiting on those thunderplains over here.

 

[Thothie]

I'm sorry, I'll re-label them "Dire Polar Bear" or something, just so you don't forget that you're in a world where magic is so integrated into the fabric of reality that one would think it's kinda assumed, and apparently "Greater Polar Bear" didn't cut it. Because lord knows polar bears with freezing breath weapons in fantasy games has never-ever been set as a standard precedent before.

But leaving the obvious aside, such as "What the hell are you doing in a hard-tier map called 'Tundra' with no cold or stun resistance?" how would you change the magical polar bears while compensating for anything you might take away from them, without simply removing them in exchange for causing so much damage we go into epic'ville?

For me, they are among my favorite fights. Model doesn't look like a teddy bear, unlike most of the other bears we have, bugger encourages me to move about and catch animations before dewm happens, as well as the multi-player eskimo-style gang bang strategy to avoid the business end of the bear, while I keep sticking speers in its side. The non-freezing ice breath to the face is kind of a nice touch of intensity/immersion too.

I would like to change the stun effect - and have indeed made a few pot shots at it. Though it's really only the stun+no_attack variant I want to be rid of, as it kinda stops you from playing entirely, vs. simply crippling movement for a few seconds. Sadly, most of my efforts so far have been ineffective. It'd be nice if the bloom layer was dependable, because there's also sorts of other visual effects you can do with that - such as double vision and the like.


Should point out that, while the new engine lets us make bigger maps, I suspect some key limitations of Half-Life will still be present. Ya can't just toss out rolling hills or a bunch of open terrain and drop mobs on it - ya need occlusion, or the frame rate will go straight to hell. I fear Thunderplains will probably end up structured like a larger, dryer, version of The Plains of Daragoth - a series of pho-hills and valleys, with the occasional small cul de sac or cave, and in reality, only providing the illusion of not simply being another dungeon with a series of hallways and rooms through the fact that the ceiling is a sky brush.

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

The biggest problem with tundra, aside from the fact that it doesn't look good enough to qualify as an important lore map, is that it connects to ms_snow. Ms_snow is high up on a mountain in the center of the continent, whereas tundra is in the extreme northeast, near the coast. Presumably the only reason they even connect at all is because they both use snow textures...

Tundra should have the area with the boat and ice jumping puzzle completely removed and the map should be renamed "ms_snow2". It's not good looking enough to qualify as a high level lore map, nor does it look anything like a tundra. However, it does look almost identical to ms_snow, and it also connects to ms_snow for no real reason whatsoever, so it makes sense to make them part of the same series.

But as Google gives me this, I think it's as close as we're gonna get, under the current engine. Flat open icy planes are not Half-Life's forté.

Ya can't just toss out rolling hills or a bunch of open terrain and drop mobs on it - ya need occlusion, or the frame rate will go straight to hell.

Not necessarily true, at least these days. Have you seen that svencoop map called DesertCircle?

 

[zeus9860]

I'm not saying the polar bears are a bad design, just that they are annoying and should be patched somehow, not removed. The dwarves would have priority in that. Tundra makes polar bears look like a bad design for an enemy. This is due to the fact that they can stun you and freeze you, if they group up with boars and other bears, you can see where this is going...

I've had a couple of non pot runs in that map in the past, trying to get into the hut without using stun immunity or cold resist/immunity is like asking the player to punch the monitor in utter rage. Had to constantly rely on bludgeon hammer to quickly get out of the grave and gtfo from the gangbang situation.

Anyways if you want fix tips on those, you can always try one of these:
-lower the amount of spawns so you don't get multiple bears that are constantly freezing or stunning a player, boars are less of a problem since they can only stun with charge attack, which is kinda easy to predict when it happens.
-nerf the stun or freeze effect, instead of blocking access to the character for a moment, it's probably better off having a slowdown effect from the beam with a cold dot applied to the player.

Bears in this game are alright overall, the bear gods are actually nice to fight against, the black bears in phobia are probably the ones i like best.

Also, if i was to comment on bad design for a npc, i would say ihotohr takes the cake, just the fact that he can overflow players from his spam combo attacks (beam/barrier/undead gangbang) simply does put him on a whole different level vs other npcs. Not to mention, if the sky in msc had no limits, i'm pretty sure ihotohr could send the player flying to the moon like no problem.

I fear Thunderplains will probably end up structured like a larger, dryer, version of The Plains of Daragoth - a series of pho-hills and valleys, with the occasional small cul de sac or cave, and in reality, only providing the illusion of not simply being another dungeon with a series of hallways and rooms through the fact that the ceiling is a sky brush.

It better not end up like a dungeon raid map >_> Thunderplains being a high level equivalent to the plains of daragoth is actually a nice idea, i have hopes it will be a "large open world" map with lots to explore and harsh environment to the player, something like the bleak(?), if i'm not mistaking it's also a harsh environment to the player, except it's icy.

I'm not sure if anyone here is familiarised with Final Fantasy 10's thunderplains, they are essentially large dark/dry plains with constantly lightning strikes landing on the surface randomly, player has to dodge the strikes by taking cover under structures called "lightning towers". If the player ends up being hit by the lightning they are stunned for 2-3 seconds and thrown to the ground. Not sure if something like this could be accomplished in ms:c (the lightning randomly striking the danger areas, but having this map require strategy to explore would probably be a nice approach to it. Like having certain safe spots in the map and critters walking around in the danger area, lure them towards the safe spots to fight them or risk getting killed from the environment. I would assume this is somewhat achievable since the phlames staff kinda works in a similiar fashion, if it's easy or not to achieve, i have no clue.

Here's some images for those who aren't familiarised with the game (right click open image for full view):

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

Oyster and I were relating the thunder plains in MS:C to FF10 as well!

 

[Thothie]

it doesn't look good enough to qualify as an important lore map

Well I was hoping for constructive criticism regarding game play we can do something about, Tundra is not really a lore map, so much as off-handedly mentioned, and even as things off-handedly mentioned go, it isn't a particularly important one. Nothing happens there. It's just cold. 'Sides, all our most popular maps are entirely non-lore maps, aside from Edana, so I dun think it's a that much of a factor for the general public. (As much as I'd love to see more lore maps - though admittedly, half of the existing lore maps became lore after the fact.)

However, it does look almost identical to ms_snow, and it also connects to ms_snow for no real reason whatsoever, so it makes sense to make them part of the same series.

Tundra and ms_snow were connected for years before Tundra's release - and it makes perfect sense, as they are both part of the frozen north.

Granted, if I was really concerned about aesthetics, I'd be working on some other game - though even I have my limits. Tundra isn't anywhere near that bottom bar though, and even uglier maps are more popular, so while a spruce up would be nice, I dun think it's the core issue.

Not necessarily true, at least these days. Have you seen that svencoop map called DesertCircle?

That entire map has maybe 2000 wpoly, total. I don't think any of our mappers are that disciplined (no offense). It's also almost entirely all huge slopes, which MSC mobs would not take to, lest you want it to be populated entirely by birds. There's the other problem that you can only have so many active mobs at once, you would have to deal with the fact that you can't see them, in some odd way. Though I suppose you could make msc_dune, and populate it entirely with stationary sand worms that popup around the players.

If you wanted to dedicate an entire map to an epic dragon battle, the method would work fairly well though.

Svencoop would allow you to use the terrain generator to make incredibly huge winding cliff systems though - albeit it's more what I had in mind for Sunedale and that end of Aluhandra, and that would be fairly MSC friendly at least.

...I'll be back in a bit for the rest...

 

[Thothie]

trying to get into the hut without using stun immunity or cold resist/immunity is like asking the player to punch the monitor in utter rage.

Well, again, no one's asking that. If someone gets there without some sort of cold and stun resist, they got there way too early and would promptly be taught to go looking for said. Again, hard-level map named 'Tundra" just might involve cold (figure is hint enough), and I don't know how one would get enough HP to be there without picking up some sorta of both resistances along the way, without doing so on purpose. (Lest maybe they hacked themselves that HP or something, but meh to them then.)

(Also, yes, Ihotor is cheap as f*ck, but he shouldn't be overflowing. The intent was to make him nearly un-soloable by always keeping one player out of play.)

Anyways if you want fix tips on those, you can always try one of these:
-lower the amount of spawns so you don't get multiple bears that are constantly freezing or stunning a player, boars are less of a problem since they can only stun with charge attack, which is kinda easy to predict when it happens.
-nerf the stun or freeze effect, instead of blocking access to the character for a moment, it's probably better off having a slowdown effect from the beam with a cold dot applied to the player.

The latter I'll do - I don't think stun heavy on the AOE was even intentional when I wrote the script up. The former I'd like to do, but I'd have to figure some way to compensate, but I think it'd be a good idea to reduce the bears to 1 at a time (2 max) per player present (I'd say 4 max regardless of number of players, but I think it's already the case). It would be nice if there were less places to be pinned, but that's a lotta brush work.

Trick with the bears is to jump when their front paws lift up. They won't stun you then. Plus side-dodge when they rear their heads for snowcones. This doesn't do much good if you go out too far and end up pinned in a fuzzy gang bang though, at that point your only hope is another player - which is as intended. Joe seemed to be forcing that, IIRC.

Oyster and I were relating the thunder plains in MS:C to FF10 as well!

Only ever played FF7 (and maybe the demo for 8) - but I certainly like that visual theme better than the one Lanethan had me imagining. Putting some of the darker rock textures above ground for a change, perpetual night, and adding a whole lotta lightning events might get ya something along those lines. Occlusion wise, a series of mushroom-rock shaped cliffs (like the one back left in Zeus's second image) breaking it up would pull the Daragoth style illusion of open world, and you could get away with more larger chambers. You can also always add all the caves you want without really worrying about wpoly.

Back to the "Gatecity North" dwarves...

http://www.thothie.com/msc_dev4/zombie_finder.webm

Needs some tweaking yet, but this might help a bit. Since the thing goes through walls, you have to rely more on the audio cue though. (I couldn't make it any other way without the dern thing constantly getting stuck.)

The little guy can be made to hunt any monster by partial string name, or just all the mobs, so he'd be reusable for something else. He can also be placed as an npc and his hunt defined with add params.

Anyways, thus far, my task list is looking like this:
Tundra: Change the entry water into an illusionary to fix null problem (orcs too)
Tundra: Change the iceberg system to vertical floating stationary pillars.
Tundra: See about providing method to bypass pillars upon reaching other side.
Tundra: One of the trees needs a light.
Tundra: Setup boars into waves of other mobs: 12 boars 12 reavers 12 revenants (beam the latter down).
Tundra: Replace ice skele in shrine with ice revenant.
Tundra: Require either dwarves or boar waves complete before shrine opens. (sry guys)
Tundra: Do... Something about the dwarves in the caves respawn rates.
Tundra: Replace "huge dwarfs" with bloated dwarfs, remove/reduce scaling accordingly (maybe toss in a bomber/sxbow or two)
Tundra: Switch the stun type flag on polar bears, and reduce their numbers by player's present.

I'm working on the scripting bits now... If no one's volunteered to do the mapping bits by the time I'm done with them, I'll be taking time out from more epic tasks for that too.

[Actually +2 days, cuz I gotta take someone home from lands afar...]

 

[Thothie]

Can anyone here actually view WEBM's? I'm kinda surprised that didn't raise any eyebrows. (Or maybe my host is fsking up...)

 

[MS:C community]

What is the oddity I'm supposed to see in that video? I don't see it.

Err, wait. Is the question whether anyone has seen the zombie finder (yellow floating sphere)? Because yes, I've seen that. Nice touch! And those are some serious hacks you're using in that video, because I barely see "You've slain a [monster name]" in the Event HUD. Using some slay command are we ?

 

[Thothie]

I was just wondering if ya could see the video at all.

But, yes, I r cheating like mad to demonstrate proof of concept. (Not that I'm not always cheating off line, and don't have my config set to automatically put me in dev mode.) Without the cheats, those dwarves take three-five stabs to kill with that test character - woulda made video longer, and sprite's purpose less obvious.

I must say, Shadowplay caps some nice high quality vids with zero overhead - just wish I didn't need GeForce Experience to run the fricken thing.

I tried setting Bandicam to use the NVenc codec, but it just gives me an error about not being able to initialize.

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

Without the cheats, those dwarves take three-five stabs to kill with that test character -

And you wonder why people complain about the stuff you put out, when you don't properly test it in a realistic environment! Make sure you test stuff without hax to feel what we feel

 

[Thothie]

I do (and actually did earlier - or I wouldn't have known it takes too long and doesn't demonstrate well)... But that wasn't the purpose of that run or video.

I also teleported there, so I didn't test the polar bears on that run either, or the jump puzzle.

But I did run the polar bears and the jump puzzle about 10,000 times when they were in development. (and another hundred or so times online.)

If I ran through the entire map I was working with, AND manually killed every freaking thing on the way to whatever it was I was testing, well... The last ten years of development probably woulda been about a century. (Especially given that I suck.)

Statistically, script testing often involves restarting MSC 20+ times an hour, so playing through the whole map each time isn't really an option. As it is, I often make special test maps with the section of the map in question carved out, as just traveling while spamming slayall or even using the teleport command to reach the point in question gets too time consuming after awhile, when you add the time the rest of the map takes to load, and then end up at the boss in question for all of two seconds before you realize he has a problem, and you gotta close up, fix it, compile, and do it all over again. Plus there's special general use test maps to spawn stuff in, but running through the whole game legitly for each and every tiny fix simply isn't feasible. Tis not how game development works.

(Is as true for scripters as for mappers, who often use teleport shortcuts and the coordon tool, in addition the slayall command MS:Community mentioned and has access to offline. All the mappers have been given tier1 dev commands, SFAIK.)

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

Me and oyster literally 100% cleared his maps for years before finding small issues of things not spawning.

Dev commands weren't used

 

[Thothie]

Me and oyster literally 100% cleared his maps for years before finding small issues of things not spawning.

Dev commands weren't used

I'm sure Oyster is using dev commands when working out his maps in alpha before he puts them up for multiplayer tests, just as we do with the in our alphas. We don't use dev commands in multiplayer tests as, yes, it defeats the purpose, and we go through every map several times, manually, when testing balance. (Albeit, with a test character intended for the level.)

When we come across a sticky issue, or are trying to demonstrate how something works, however, we don't solo the whole map just to reach it or make the point, or nothing would ever get done, same with this game as any other.

You can bet your ass when Valve was working up the Nihilanth finale, they didn't re-run the entire map each time to test him, because his sprite effects weren't working, or he wasn't teleporting to the player proper chambers, or some other issue, and did most of that testing in invulnerable modes. They were just lucky enough to have a team of paid beta-testers to run the map and find new issues AFTER they got the basics down. (Hey, remember when beta testers were paid? Those were the days...)

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

That's always how I was told to do it. I've always been the resident "map clearer" for testing and bug fixing purposes. I'm not sure what stage it was in, but I will say it was instrumental into understanding how things broke seeing as we see a cause and effect, and not just "wow I just nuked all the enemies and now I can't tell why they aren't spawning!"

 

[Thothie]

That's because you are Oyster's volunteer beta tester. We don't want you nuking things, unless we're really in a hurry to test a specific encounter and everything else has been thoroughly vetted years ago through public play. (In my case, maybe not even then, as we'll wanna see how the memory stacks up by the time you reach the new encounter.)

But Oyster ran that map several times himself before he tossed you into it, I'm sure, and skipped to certain points each time he had a problem that wouldn't go away. He also probably did so again, after you discovered a problem for him, or again, he'd be working on the map forever. (Though, on his last alpha map, so few things spawn, maybe not as much so as usual.)

He probably also wound up manually running the map in its entirely several times in the process as well (I know I always do), but when there's a sticky point, or I'm just trying to demonstrate something, there's no point. I know how the bears and jump puzzle do (and don't) work from repeated previous experience, and I knew the zombie finder didn't demonstrate well or quickly when I killed the dwarves manually, cuz I'd already done all that, just recently, in this case.

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

I would run through his maps unpopulated, too. At every stage. It's just how we've always done it.

It is also notable that the things he'd be putting in his maps were already known to work and previously tested, yeah.

 

[Thothie]

See above.

There'd be no point in having you teleport around if he's just trying to see how well his unpopulated map navigates.

Closest thing I've ever used to a developer command (besides debuggery) when someone else was testing a map, was when we were testing the Sharandar mscave sequence, I cheated it up to spawn so we didn't have to go back and forth between the various maps again. (Mind ye, aside from debuggary, I *can't* use cheat commands on FN, but that was a closed beta with server-side characters.)

...Well, and a lot of teleporting to each other on rmines, cuz we kept losing each other, and couldn't see what folks were doing, plus some debugging some glitchy triggers.

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

See above. No dev commands were ever used.

My posts are complimentary to each other and not supplementary. I've been repeating myself constantly now. :roll:

Next time a map is too difficult for you to run normally and it needs to be tested, send it on over. I'll put it to the grindstone.

 

[Thothie]

See above above. In that scenario, why would you?

Get Oyster in here, if he tells me he's never used a developer command, I'll call him an idiot for you, but at the rate he puts out maps, I somehow think this is not the case.

Next time a map is too difficult for you to run normally and it needs to be tested, send it on over. I'll put it to the grindstone.

It's not that Tundra is too difficult to run (not that it isn't a pain for me to solo, even with the dev character), it's that everything up to that point has been tested to death over years. I'm not spending the time to get through that, only to make a video that doesn't show the point I was trying to make, because I refuse to hit my "slay target" button.

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

See above above. In that scenario, why would you?

I don't think you get my point.

I also never said oyster by himself never used dev commands. In my experiences with him, we never used dev commands. The only instance I can ever recall this being done was with REGORTY in Fmines, when a spider wall wasn't breaking.

I am also not trying to cause an argument as to what methods are better or worse. I was simply stating that I (read we) do not use the dev commands when testing. Don't get the ruler out to measure just yet

 

[Thothie]

And my point is there's no point in using dev commands when you are doing a multiplayer test. (Aside from, yes, debuggary incidents like that.) The whole point is to see how it plays. So of course you aren't going to be using dev commands in that scenario.

You use dev commands when you aren't yet in multiplayer testability, and just trying to get things to work. Or, in this case, when you are just trying to clearly demonstrate how something works without wasting everyone's time.

(Yeesh...)

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

I don't think oyster even knows the dev commands, so they were never (or at least very rarely) used in any of the processes of his mapmaking as far as I know. From the first beta map to the final release. It's not about efficiency it was a simple statement of "wow we've never done that."

For better or worse

probably worse