Thanks for the comments, I hope they keep coming. I am glad at the least that this topic
seems to be more active now. I'm getting somewhat further need to continue on this. I thought this is dead.
I wanted to play this, laggy as it was. Act 1 was somewhat bearable, but when I got to Act 2 it turned into a freaking slideshow. Does this level not have any one-sided linedefs?
So I opened it up in SRB2 Doom Builder to try and figure out what the hell was going on.
What in hell...?
Why do you have so many redundant linedefs? Like, for a completely flat wall, you use up 4 linedefs. No wonder the game lags so much, it's trying to render four stages at the same time! Did you goof up or something?
How does this happen?
It seems that splitting linedefs did fix the level's graphical issues. Otherwise, the level would contain lots of those disgusting slime trails. I'll double check after I merge linedefs (why isn't there a simple feature for this...) for some rooms.
Geh, I was unable to play it at ALL it was so laggy on my system. Running in windowed 640x400.
I managed to get like, 2FPS at best. (Actually counting the frames per second, not using the glitchy FPS counter. That always says 30. No matter what.)
As Neo Chaotikal stated, I believe you should stop trying to render four stages at the same time. This thing's laggier than CASTLE EGGMAN!
Neo was over exaggerating when he said "rendering four stages at the same time." If the game really was, then ALL the linedefs in the level would be split into 4 smaller ones. Not in this case.
It's too bad the level was so slow for you. Did you have so many other applications chewing on your RAM? Have you tried playing with a smaller video resolution?
The only thing I didn't understand was what permitted the level to run so well. Some of those rooms are WAAAAAY to big to not be subject to all kinds of horrible graphical issues, so all I'm wondering is why it works well, when I get those weird bars that block out the character sprite when I make rooms that size.
I spent much of my time trying to clear these ugly glitches. I am not sure either if what I did really fixed those bugs (splitting some extremely long linedefs into smaller ones, moving control sectors over the place, positioning of sectors within larger ones, etc.). Maybe I was just lucky because you can never be sure for a
perfect nodesbuild (or, I just lack knowledge on how it works).
There is only one thing you might want to change editing-wise that I noticed. In the room in part 2 with the big waterfall that has a button that shows a different camera view at the top, I didn't think it was obvious enough that there was a tube present right next to it. Maybe give it a different texture or put an arrow sign over it or something.
Oh, yeah. That zoom tube in that final cavern room was used for when the two acts were one level (earlier betas, not released here). I didn't feel like taking it out; I think I'll use it for something in the future.
Sure, if you prefer 15 minutes of jumping over slippery and/or crumbling platforms, this is heaven. i personally prefer ERZ2 because it looks just as good as has actually interesting gameplay.
I enjoy platforming challenges over gimmicks. They just appeal more to me. I understand that people all have different tastes, which may be the reason why Kyasarin also implied he prefers platforming over gimmicks.
It depends if you like gimmicks or if you like platforming.
The strange thing about this level is that that's exactly what it is, but there's something about it that makes it better than most other SRB2 levels. I dunno what it is, but this level is just impossible to hate or rate lowly for me.
The more you play through it, you may discover what you do not know.
Image
I found an error right here...
Any ideas for what causes this? I'll discover a remedy for this myself.
Fawfulfan, I am afraid I missed your post here. I don't know what you were feeling initially upon posting it, and what made you delete it.