Lethal Shelter Zone

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gamevoin

I am the slow.
Greetings, fellow people/persons. I've finished my first wad in one week, so I am proud to finally present it to you. It features a single zone with two acts, and two boss fights, connected by incredibly edgy cutscenes, which I hope you will enjoy. This map is meant for Sonic gameplay, and Tails and Knuckles will likely cheese it easily, so I ask you to play as Sonic or a similar custom character if you wish. I didn't have the guts to lock the character.

Before you start, I'll say that Act 2 is definitely most likely better than Act 1, since Act 1 was my very first map, but I had some extra Mapper XP for the rest of the maps. Please, report any bugs that you find, and tell me any criticism you have.

The map should appear pretty fine now, both in OpenGL and Software, although the colored areas are a bit intense in Software in comparison to OpenGL.

After Eggman has been lethally killed to death in the ER Core, it seemed that everything has returned to a calm state. The lands damaged by Eggman's exploits were slowly repaired to their natural state by a natural preservation company, which arose shortly after Sonic's victory. After plenty of years have passed, however, sightings of Badniks and reports of missing people have begun appearing, all linked to the areas guarded by the preserve. And thus, Sonic sets out to investigate the core of their friendly park.

Decreased the HP of the first boss, and increased the requirements for the time emblem accordingly.
Replaced ALL instances of death water with not instantly-lethal underwater areas.
Added extra spring shell enemies in Act 2 to give players an additional chance to reach the top route. (the one leading to the outpost with lasers)
Added a warning sign to warn the player of the crushing trap in Act 1.
Increased the size of one platform in the top route of Act 2 to make platforming a bit easier.
Completely and absolutely overhauled the right path of Act 1, making it less of a dissapointing and disorienting dead end.
Rebalanced and mainly reduced enemy encounters in the large area of Act 2.
Redid the brightness levels of Act 2, making it playable in Software!
Fixed the star post directions.
Fixed the water FOF's right at the start of Act 1.
Replaced all (I think) score monitors with actually useful items.
Fixed a major bug in Act 2, some of the death pits in the top route with lasers were harmless.
Fixed one visual bug in Act 1, and another one in Act 2.
The player now can pass through the outer walls in the last boss arena, so he cannot get stuck anymore.

MonsterIestyn - Helped me with plenty of questions, and helped me fix a visual issue in Act 2.
Music: Dueling Ages, Serious Sam, Sonic and the Black Knight.
Liquid and Inferno Shields: Joat
 

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After Eggman has been lethally killed to death in ERZ 3

you might want to change that, since in ERZ3 it's just Metal Sonic as a race and boss, unless you're talking about the ERZ3 from 2.0.
 
After Eggman has been lethally killed to death
Oh my, that is VERY dead...

Just like my soul when I jumped into that innocent looking lake at the start just to find out it was death water. T-T This is very good for your first wad, though, especially considering it was all supposedly made in a week. Pretty impressive! I like how you made the wad have it's own little cohesive plot, it ties everything together nicely. But since this is the SRB2 MB, I'm legally obliged to point out everything wrong for the sake of constructive criticism. I'm sure you understand.

I have some issues like crushers coming a little outta nowhere, the constant red/yellow tint being tiring on the eyes, the first boss being MUCH harder than the last(due to small footholds and sudden lavafalls), or the last boss taking obnoxiously long.

Maybe cut both of their health in half or something, with Metal Sonic skipping his invincibility-dash. That's obnoxious enough in vanilla, but in a battlefield stage this big plus Eggman, it's hard to get to him in-time. He'll just keep spamming it.
 
Wow, thank you for the positive reception, and also for the criticism. I've updated the wad and did what I could - you can see the changelog, but most importantly I've replaced all instances of death water with underwater sections you can fall into.

I did wish to change the last boss to be less long, however, unlike the first boss, I had no success with my attempts to modify them - they would just freeze on the spot after being edited, so they're just vanilla bosses right now. There isn't really any guidance on how to edit existing enemies, only creating new ones.

I would love to hear more feedback. I am mainly worried about the detail and length of the stages, and I'm also curious if my amount of enemies is too much, and also if the levels are too linear or not.
 
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I've played through these levels a few times now. There's quite a few good ideas here and it's very impressive for a first effort, but there's still quite a lot that I thought could be improved.

Theme-wise, the maps (especially act 1) are quite unfocused. There are neat ideas present in every theme, but as a whole it comes across as quite messy, and I'd prefer to see each theme be fleshed out a bit more. The unfocused nature also extends to the enemy usage, which is too varied and haphazard. I'd focus on using fewer (types of) enemies in more effective ways, rather than ramping up the difficulty using, for example, hordes of flying enemies that prevent all attempts at using a spring.

While the majority of the levels' content were quite linear and followable, I often had difficulty finding the way forward in the more open segments. It's easy to make confusing level layouts, because you as the creator know every little nook and cranny of the level, so remember to keep the level fair and straightforward for the people who play your level. For example, I spent a few minutes exploring the final area of act 1's right path, first inspecting the giant metal crusher that was right ahead of me, before finally barely noticing the cave behind the waterfall. Another offender is the large outdoor path in act 2, which is additionally way too dark for Software users to beat.

Something else I've noticed is that instead of having path splits reconverge into one path, they all lead to a different exit. I'd try making a more connected and coherent layout, while also making sure that the way forward is clear at all points where paths merge again.

I'd also work on your sense of scale. Some areas feel a bit too cramped (the more dangerous parts of act 1) while others feel too open (the ending area of act 1's left path, the aforementioned dark area in act 2). Additionally, I bonked my head against the ceiling more than once in act 1, causing me to miss platforms more often than not.

There are also some minor issues I noticed:
  • All star posts face the same direction, which is more often than not the correct direction.
  • It's expected that diagonal springs don't require airborne movement to land safely on platforms, which is not the case in act 1's forest area.
  • Score monitors are not intended to be placed directly in a level.
  • The bottoms of water FOFs should be lower than the floor heights of the sectors they're in.

However, most importantly, I enjoyed my playthrough of the levels! I also enjoyed the cutscenes in-between the levels. Once again, this is a very impressive effort for a first project, and I very much look forward to seeing what you'll make next.
 
Excellent feedback, thanks to which I've made another update. Mainly, the disorienting mess that was the right path of Act 1 is now redone, now actually leading into an area this time around, eventually connecting to the left path, and now Act 2 should be playable in Software as well, as the brightness there has been redone.

I am really thankful for the detail you've given me in your post - I will definitely make my next map more focused thematically.

---------- Post added at 10:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:08 PM ----------

Another update, since Kuja pointed out that some of the deadly death pits in the top route of Act 2 weren't actually lethally ending the life of and killing the player.
 
I've played through these levels a few times now.
It's a nice first attempt. I enjoyed playing it. Cut scenes added more fun into the gameplay.
But there's a lot of room to improve. In my view, some sections have more enemies than needed.
Also, these sections (attached images) have some visual glitches.
 

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I had a lot of fun playing these levels! One thing that I found though is that during the second boss fight, I flew a rocket into the wall, and I got stuck, which was frustrating since the I had already spent 15 minutes in the boss fight. https://gfycat.com/HonestGrizzledGalah That is just a minor nitpick though--This was really cool, and I'm sorry I don't have too much to say, but I am also looking forwards to anything you make in the future~
 
Thank you for taking your time to report those bugs, I've fixed two of the visual glitches, but one is unfixable as far as I am aware (the second screenshot in DD's post) - it's a limit of the rendering distance. And the player shouldn't get stuck in the walls of the last boss arena anymore as well.
 
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