Thanks for the feedback Kev. A lot of people have said map 2 is too long
and it will be split up into two (just before the little shopping
district area). I thought map 1 was pretty short though, at least if you
run straight from A to B without exploring/getting lost, but I'll
probably delete the elevator event and just have the ladder going up
which should cut it down slightly. The ambulance you can actually see
further back from the house in map 2, the idea is that it got stuck at a
roadblock so they have to go on on foot. I had no other way of both
giving a reason for them to abandon it, and also block off the way it
had already come from. I'm going to try and put a moving camera in that
pans from the ambulance and over to the house to clear that up.
The 'too many vertex format changes' error is apparently to do with
brush faces, from what I've read. As long as that error is scrolling
through the console, random brush faces flicker on and off to stay under
the limit, but I converted enough stuff to props that it's not really
noticeable at all. I don't know how I could even get rid of any more
brush faces but I'll do some more testing to see if that's causing the
particle errors.
As for the obstacles, those came up in testing too but I couldn't think
of a more realistic way of doing it in some places. I didn't want to put
barricade fences everywhere and zombies need to be able to get over
easily, but I'll try to at least make it more obvious which routes are
blocked off.
I actually played map 3 for the first ever time with other people a few
days ago, and they got lost at the start too. You're meant to restart
the generators to keep on going up after they cut out, hopefully if I
use some instructor hints across the two maps it'll be easier to understand.
Thanks for playing and giving some feedback anyway, I've tested so much
by myself with bots that I sometimes miss the more obvious things. I was
going to just leave it at this, I'm hoping to get the last 2 maps
finished in a couple of months.
On 07/01/2012 15:42, Kev Edwards wrote:
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?
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