hi Mark
Incredibly impressive with a ton of new content. You've totally nailed the
setting.
Anyway, you're after feedback, so here goes...
I thought the first two levels are far too long. It took me the best part of
half an hour to get through each of them...on Easy. That's longer to play
through 2 maps that it originally took me to play through any of the full
Valve campaigns. Versus mode may well be a problem due to the length of
these maps. Map 3 is a much more playable length. I'm not sure what your
plans are for the remaining maps, but I think you could quite easily divide
maps 1 and 2 each into two maps, rejig the current map3 into map5, add an
appropriately lavish finale, and it's done.
In map1 when the plane flies overhead I was getting 'too many vertex format
changes in frame; whole whole not rendered' spammed. Could do with visually
simplifying that area a bit. You mentioned particle effects occasionally not
being displayed - it may well just be that you're just trying to do too much
in that area and the engine is running out of available resources. You could
quickly test this by temporarily removing a ton of detailing in that area
and retrying the vpk on a server to see if that fixes the particle issue.
The AI survivors had a hell of a job getting into the 'saferoom' at the end
of map1. It took a few minutes of me messing around opening and closing the
doors. To fix this open the doors into the vehicle then delete any bits of
the navmesh under the doors to ensure they'll navigate around the doors when
opened. Perhaps set the doors as initially open too.
I found the transition from map1 to map2 very jarring - from a vehicle in
Tokyo suddenly teleported to a room somewhere in remote Japan - but maybe
that's just me. I guess I've just come to expect continuity and progression
from level to level when playing a Valve game.
There are a lot of dead ends that look as though the players can easily get
over them, only to find the way is clipped off. Many of these clipped dead
ends use props that players will assume they can jump over, based upon a few
years of endlessly playing the Valve campaigns and other community
campaigns. For instance, in map2 there is a chainsaw lodged into a fallen
tree; this fallen tree prop is one I've jumped over a million times, only to
find the area beyond is clipped off.
At the end of map2 are a bunch of 'saferoom this way' arrows and such. I
think you should remove these. It's pretty obvious anyway, and it's just
confusing at the start of map3 when the survivors have to go back up into
the cable car. I actually spent a few minutes wandering around that area
trying to follow arrows, thinking I'd missed an opening somewhere.
In map3 after getting off the cable car there's a ladder that can't be
climbed up.
Hope some of that helped. Amazing job so far on the campaign. :)
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Edwards
Sent: Saturday, January 07, 2012 3:31 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [L4Dmapper] Yama beta
I just released a beta of my L4D2 campaign which includes the first 3
and a half maps. I had a lot of help from this mailing list to get the
map to this stage so I wanted to post it here, and get some feedback
from other mappers too instead of the general community.
Link to download: http://www.scorchingcraniums.com/yama/
Screens: http://www.scorchingcraniums.com/portfolio/yama.html
Also I have a problem I never got to fix before I released - particles
(all default L4D2 ones) only load half the time, which is especially
annoying with the plane crash sequence. They work every time in a local
server but online they keep breaking. The particle rain also cuts out at
some points which might be related. Are there certain flags or something
you need to use?
_______________________________________________
L4Dmapper mailing list
[email protected]
https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/l4dmapper
_______________________________________________
L4Dmapper mailing list
[email protected]
https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/l4dmapper
