November/December 2009 Voting

So, anyway, changes I've made to Sky Castle so far:
Fixed starpost issues.
Added a few flags in the hallway with the maces.
Drastically shortened the front stretch, and in the process, removing the 2nd straight.
Also, there's not much I can do for the rendering errors except for massively downsizing the map. I also wonder if there are still issues like that in OpenGL.

And Here are my Ratings:

Single Player:
Fire Flight Zone by fawfulfan- 6/10 I'm not a nights fan, but this was fairly fun, but repetitive in some parts.
Dark Forest Zone by Videogame9- Did not play
Jadeflower Zone, Act 1 by blahblahbal- 2/10 You seem to show more skill than Eggmanfan at least, and if this is a first attempt, it's pretty good for one. Remember, narrow platforms, flashy water, and glitches aren't your friend. I also suggest you go to wiki.srb2.org more often.
Cloud Cradle by D00D64 - DNP
Water Works Zone by Kyasarin - DNP
Moonlit Mountain Zone, Act 1 by Darkbob1713 - DNP
Lava Rock Zone by Eggmanfan - 0/10 I agree with most of the other ratings on this, and I also want to point out that it has no thok barrier IIRC.


Match:
MAPM1 - Abandoned Shrine Zone by Ash - 3/10 Looks good, looks like it would play fine, but is so laggy it doesn't play at all.
MAPM2 - Two House Forest Zone by Kratzean- 1/10 Thank you for making another map I'm sure RPers will love. Also, it's a cramped mess.
MAPM3 - Frost Columns Zone by Mystic- 8/10 The only thing keeping this from a 10 is the fact that all the action seems to be in that room with scatter.
MAPM4 - Plasma Plant Zone by Darkbob1713- 4/10 Needs more rings above the plasma, and also less bottomless pits, as I had 0 points for most of the match. Also...
<Mach> We play match while SRB2 plays unfitting music.
MAPM5 - Waterfall Hill Zone by MajinD- 3/10 Horrible ring placement, and I really don't like the layout of the level at all.
MAPM6 - Crystalline Caves Zone by Spherallic- 9/10 It plays just like it should, and really the visuals put this a notch above Mystic's map.
MAPM7 - Oil Operation Zone by RedEchidna- 7/10 plays well, and it's fun, but the oil makes it to easy to just shoot trapped players.
MAPM8 - Lush Forest Zone by Blade -8/10 Looks good, but people seemed too spread out in the level.
MAPM9 - VG Disco by Brawl- 4/10 We need a disco match map, it's just not this one.
Way too flat, and ring placement could use some work.
MAPMA - Disorient Battle Zone by JJames - 7/10 I had the most fun with this map, but really there needs to be a distinguishable difference between the ceiling and floor.
MAPMB - Strawberry Shortcake by Errol - 2/10 Bad ring placement, bad layout, but the main redeeming quality of this is the ability to say I've scatter-ring'd Mystic into a bottomless pit.
MAPMC - Silver Canyon Zone by KO.T.E- 6/10 Good, but it's too easy to get 2 random monitors right in a row, with is bad for match. Really bad.

Some good match maps, and some not-so-good ones. The good ones are a nice surprise after last oldc.

CTF:
MAPF1 - Twilight Groove Zone by Scizor300- 2/10 UGH it's not fun, it's laggy, and it's full of nonsensical textures.
MAPF2 - Lava Fort Zone by Kratzean - 2/10 Making you have an elem. shield to make you competitive is a bad idea.
MAPF3 - Magma Valley Zone by Darkbob1713- 2/10 It's extremely hard to capture the flag, and IIRC Mystic was the only one that could manage it. I suggest adding more platforms too, because half the time the one you need is floating on the lava below.
MAPF4 - Abandoned Disco Zone by Spherallic- 8/10 The most random theme ever, but it plays well.
MAPF5 - Thunder Coil Zone by ZarroTsu & Mach - It still has a few bugs, and is a little laggy, but we might fix this and release it on the MB... if ZarroTsu doesn't already have a fixed copy and hasn't told me...
MAPF6 - Crosswalk by ShadowHog - 5/10 Reminds me of TF2, but it could to with a little resizing, as it is fairly cramped, but could be a lot of fun with some work.
MAPF7 - Metropolis Madness Zone by RedEchidna- 4/10 What's flat in the middle, has a weird escape route from the bases that's easy to camp in? Yeah, this could use a lot of work.
MAPF8 - Midnight Ice by Ash - 3/10 Another lagfest brought to you by Ash! Still looks like it would be fun, but if it isn't playable, it isn't playable.

Circuit:
MAPR1 - Freaky Factory Zone by RedEchidna 4/10- Looks good, but way too hard to be a practical race map. Maybe you should using your mapping strategy for Single Player or something.
MAPR2 - Bleeding Green by D00D64 - 3/10 Looks like my map got some company in the "race maps with screwy checkpoints" category. Also, the route is sort of hard to figure out at times.
MAPR3 - Quicksand Night Zone by Darkbob1713- 7/10 It's a lot better than my map. It also dislike the platforms at the beginning, and it almost puts the map in tail's/knuckle's advantage.
MAPR4 - Not A Thokfest Zone by Mystic - 5/10 Fun, but only for the first few times, then it's annoying.
MAPR5 - Digital Dimension Zone by SonicMaster -7/10 Belongs somewhere in SRB2 riders, that's for sure, but the main thing I don't like is the section where you just jump on rectangles.
MAPR6 - Sky Castle Zone by Mach- I really doubt if it will win, and It shouldn't. It's a mess... hopefully the v2 release will be halfway decent if not good.
MAPR7 - Crimson Caves Zone by Blade - 5/10 I don't like the flickering stuff, and it took me a while to get a rhythm for this map. It's good for something put together in 3 hours though.

Might rate single player if I feel like it, so probably not. :P

I'm gonna have to catch a contest server. At any rate, here are some first impressions of the SP maps. If I don't get around to fleshing the reviews out, these will double as my ratings for these maps.

Fire Flight Zone by fawfulfan
5/10
Visuals were excellent in the first part of the stage, I don't see why you had to throw in so many other themes into it. The temple theme didn't really fit and the cliff/cave theme seemed pointless when the first one already worked so well.
As for gameplay, it really wasn't that impressive. It felt restrained, though it wasn't exactly cramped or broken, it just didn't feel like a track so much as a maze.

Dark Forest Zone by Videogame9
3/10

I blinked, and I missed it... the level worked okay and was playable, but it was nothing but square hopping for fifteen seconds.

Jadeflower Zone, Act 1 by blahblahbal
4/10

This level might have worked really well in games like Sonic Heroes or Sonic Adventure where movement is fast if a bit slippery.. but it would still have been uninteresting. SRB2 favors platforming over general running... you should make levels to suit.

Cloud Cradle by D00D64
3/10

There was not one section of this level that didn't feel cheap... even when I managed to pull it off, it wasn't exactly fair. The platforms are too small to be avoiding turrets, bouncing off of enemies is too unpredictable to be used for part of the progression, the conveyor is impossible when you can't see where you're going not to mention you have no idea where the turret is until too late and I had to use mouselook to get past the pulley area, and even then it was impossible to time my jumps properly.

Water Works Zone by Kyasarin
7/10

The scenery worked, and the level was a lot of fun overall. The waterslide was especially well done, though I found not using strafe instead of the usual controls to jump caused me pain for one of the alternate paths. The crusher was difficult to judge, as there was no shadow or cue on the wall to indicate when I was safe. Also, overall the level didn't feel as interactive as it could potentially have been, as I could go for long stretches without paying attention. However, it worked as such.

Moonlit Mountain Zone, Act 1 by Darkbob1713
6/10

The theme here was quite efficient. The cave fit with the textures on the exterior and nothing felt overdone except perhaps the blinding ice. Additionally, the caves were very dark. Frankly, it should only get that dark if you want to make a hazard out of it. Worse yet, the disparity between the fof brightness and that of the cave showed the buggy lighting of translucent fofs in quite a distracting way. It played pretty well, however, but some of the alternate paths need better cues, as I never found an alternate path except by going backwards.

Lava Rock Zone by Eggmanfan
0/10

Instant-kill lava? Why?

Okay, so after the tips given by a couple members, I gave Water Works Zone another try. This time, I enjoyed it. Especially when I wasn't pretty much being force replayed through areas like it's ultimate mode.

I myself felt the difficulty was just fine, if made slightly harder due to the fact that the amount of rings on the direct path from start to finish probably wouldn't even be enough for Super Sonic. The direct path needs more items as it not only feels a bit bland, but sparsing rings out so far and few between each other makes mistakes more punishable then they should be. (Nevermind that you only need one ring to survive, there's a reason why they made it to where if you keep losing the same ring over and over again, it'll still disappear before you can grab it...) Either way, don't listen to people who think your zone is 'too easy' as they're probably just people who have been playing Egg Rock Zone waaay too long. The difficulty here was okay.

The level itself looks really nice and has some really great looking scenery, but the design itself still looks kinda bland here and there, especially near the end, but that's forgivable. Some of the secrets also don't feel particularly worth it. (I made this crazy ass jump as Sonic and all I got was ten rings t-shirts for sale) I also can't help but feel that not including the single player value in the gametype field is also bad design but that's just me.

All in all...pretty much the same criticisms. Just I actually played the map and kinda had fun. I almost want to give it a 7 but not quite at the same time. I want to give a 6.5 but in the interest of keeping things balanced and to scale, I'll give it 6/10.

EDIT: Multiplayer votes below

There was one particular problem I had with this pack of match maps...all the good ones almost felt the same. It's like someone took the same map, made minor edits and gave each one different themes. I'm gonna try to not let that effect my bias but no promises.

MAPM1 - Abandoned Shrine Zone by Ash - 3/10
It was pretty laggy, and really, really wide open which lent itself to rain ring abuse and lack of Tails fanservice. What irks me though is that this is a rehash. I've been playing this map since 1.08 and while it played nice back then, and this refurbishment looked good, it's gotten boring and the new match style doesn't seem to fit it.

MAPM2 - Two House Forest Zone by Kratzean - 4/10
Oh God What Happened To My Framerate Zone. I swear next contest entry I make will lag so bad, you will be seeing single digits in your frames per second, that will be my next joke map!
...okay don't hurt me, I'll continue on.
This map was really cramped in some areas, and the areas that weren't either had way too many things or was just overall bland. The outdoor area did play kind nice, but that's if you didn't look across the map and lag to hell. And then there's the "museum" of which Knuckles could cheese through the glass and get almost any monitor inside that he wanted. Gravity Boots in an open sky level anyone?

MAPM3 - Frost Columns Zone by Mystic - 7/10
This map played well enough. It was really standard match; good ring balance, nice item placement, great platforming...the only thing is that there's nothing really notable about this map. It plays well but there's seriously little reason to play it over and over again. It's fun but there's nothing there to keep your interest. Although the slippy slidey parts make clagging hilarious at times. (And frustrating)

MAPM4 - Plasma Plant Zone by Darkbob1713 - 5/10
From what I remember of this map, it was okayish, but had lots of problems. Not all that good platforming, and felt unbalanced in items. It wasn't very memorable.

MAPM5 - Waterfall Hill Zone by MajinD - 6/10
This map is gigantic. For maps like these, it's usually best with lots of people, not the case here though. There's a shocking lack of rings everywhere. There's a few places where it's good enough, but the map is just too large for there not to be enough rings. A few places were pretty exploitable too. But, ignoring that, it still looked and place well enough.

MAPM6 - Crystalline Caves Zone by Spherallic - 8/10
This map played well enough. It was really standard match; good ring balance, nice item placement, great platforming...it was large enough though that it warrents playing more then once, especially if you end up sticking to one area sometimes. Bounce ring in the tiny crevasses down below is kinda overpowered. Other then that though, the platforming kept you on your toes and the great item balancing and placements made this map really fun to play.

MAPM7 - Oil Operation Zone by RedEchidna - 7/10
This map played well enough. It was really standard match; good ring balance, nice item placement, great platforming...it's just not quite open enough in some areas. The oil is also a massive difficulty that could be tuned down a bit. For the most part, people just stuck to two areas because every other area was too hard to navigate and thus made you vulnerable. It was still pretty fun though, past those frustrating details.

MAPM8 - Lush Forest Zone by Blade - 8/10
This map played well enough. It was really standard match; good ring balance, nice item placement, great platforming...some of the rings in the sky everywhere made me wonder if you just forgot to reset bit values in doom builder though. It was a tad confusing to navigate at first too because it looked like it was all the same. Other then that, it seemed a bit small, sometimes. But it was easy on the eyes and the bit of exploration factor on the Z axis makes it worth playing again.

MAPM9 - VG Disco by Brawl - 5/10
This map was okayish, I guess. Really flat and kinda dark. But not too dark, thankfully. The pathways higher up had too many rings, and the areas down below had too LITTLE. For the most part, you just chose Sonic and thokked your way to victory, spamming rings, unless you were actually, you know, decent. Or the host.

MAPMA - Disorient Battle Zone by JJames - bananas/10
I thought gravity was a very interesting concept brought on by one of the CTF maps in the official rotation and everyone I played it with tended to have an absolute blast playing it, so I thought I'd try incorporating that into a match map. Just goes to show you don't give a great idea to a mediocre map designer with three days left on the clock though. :P

MAPMB - Strawberry Shortcake by Errol - 6/10
this map feels very haphazard. The item placement almost makes you want to think that happened to it too, but it feels alright once you actually get in and play it. A few places felt really odd but for the most part, the ring placement was pretty okay, though it could be improved. It was also really, really cramped in the water areas, not very fun, especially for match.

MAPMC - Silver Canyon Zone by KO.T.E - 7/10
This map played well e-...I've said this before.
The water areas were a nice change of pace from the speedy battle above ground. The layout and architecture was really well done and looks nice, but it makes platforming a bit difficult sometimes as Sonic. Otherwise, it was just very standard, the water being the only thing keeping the map fresh. It's not bad, and is in fact rather fun, but after a while the water is the only thing keeping the map from feeling rather bland.

MAPF1 - Twilight Groove Zone by Scizor300 - 6/10
This was an interesting theme, and looks really well executed. There's a ton of rings, but sometimes that gets in the way, as it seems like no one ever dies. There's also no obvious second path out of the flag area, and the only other way out is kinda cramped and long, meaning if it's well enough guarded, NO ONE with the flag is going through, no matter how skilled they are. Otherwise, It played pretty well. if a bit flat.

MAPF2 - Lava Fort Zone by Kratzean - 4/10
This map was rather cramped, but had some good ideas. But it's incredibly hazardous and very difficult to move around in. The flag area is also really tight, makes it too easy to defend sometimes. The elemental shield is also really overpowered...even though there's many, a good Sonic player can pretty much take the map.

MAPF3 - Magma Valley Zone by Darkbob1713 - 7/10
This map had a really nice layout, even though Sonic players would be hard pressed getting out of the lava pit below. But maybe that's a good thing. The item placement felt wonderful, though each team had a really huge abundance of their own ring stash. It's a bit precarious but otherwise it played really nicely.

MAPF4 - Abandoned Disco Zone by Spherallic - 3/10
This level is incredibly small for a CTF level, and somewhat cramped too. There's also way too many rings. The item placement looks okay at first but the rest of the map makes it feel arbitrary.

MAPF5 - Thunder Coil Zone by ZarroTsu & Mach - 5/10
This level looks nice and probably has some interesting matches on it...if you could get past it without lagging too bad. The framerate I got here was below average and ended up deteriorating the time I played this. I'll admit, it looks nice, probably plays nice, but the framerate issue makes this map extremely average.

MAPF6 - Crosswalk by ShadowHog - 6/10
This was a really cramped map. The item placement wasn't perfect either. It kind boiled down to people in a smal space constantly hitting each other back and forth because there was no room to dodge effectively. Still, for what it's worth, it somewhat worked.

MAPF7 - Metropolis Madness Zone by RedEchidna - 7/10
This map was really nice. I'd probably give it an 8 if the alternate path out of the flag area that leads into what seems to be sewage was more intuitive. Otherwise it hardly feels worth going into unless you're, say, Mystic. Otherwise, the items were rather well placed and the general layout worked.

MAPF8 - Midnight Ice by Ash - 3/10
I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt because even though I couldn't play much of it due to a really, really, really bad framerate, it at least looked nice and like it could play well.

MAPR1 - Freaky Factory Zone by RedEchidna - 5/10
This map had a very interesting idea of going through the map "twice" in a sense using the gravity boots, but it ended with so much confusion. It was also really difficult to navigate without being punished with death, making three lives not usually enough. Overall, nice map, bad execution.

MAPR2 - Bleeding Green by D00D64 - 3/10
Getting lost in a circuit map is no fun. Make sure your checkpoints are rather obvious. The map was also rather unkind to Sonic players as it forced them to run around a lot of barriers they could barely not jump, turning Tails and Knuckles into overpowered racers here. On the bright side, the theme is unique.

MAPR3 - Quicksand Night Zone by Darkbob1713 - 7/10
The beginning part? No. Just no. Making Sonic wait on platforms does not say "race." If you could change this part to not force Sonic players to rely on platforms, this would be much, much better. As it is, it already gives Tails and Knuckles a bit of service as they can catch up with Sonic otherwise in other parts of the level, but it doesn't feel totally unfair to Sonic either. The quicksand on the first lap was weird though, and having to wait it out was really retarded. The layout is really fun and lends itself to it's theme, and makes it pretty fun to play overall once you've taken it for a spin once or twice.

MAPR4 - Not A Thokfest Zone by Mystic - 4/10
Should be renamed "This Is A Strafefest Zone." That's basically all it comes down to. For the record though, I kinda enjoyed it and would like to see a couple circuit maps use this as a gimmick for a specific leg of a race. That is, until the map started feeling like an easy training course for those learning what "Mystic Hard" means. Then it just got somewhat frustrating, thanks to clag.

MAPR5 - Digital Dimension Zone by SonicMaster - 5/10
Lag didn't make this map very fun, but when you look at it, it looks nice, and seems like it would play nice too. It was a few areas that are a bit of a challenge, though punishing with death made it a bit too easy to game over. The strobing lights was a cool effect but more or less just made it a distraction. The actual platforming got a bit bland after a while too. But otherwise, it wasn't that bad. I'd still play it again.

MAPR6 - Sky Castle Zone by Mach - 4/10
Wow, it's a thokfest zone! About time. Anyways, the only real challenge was traversing over the platforms over a slime pit of which you could not get out of anyways. Otherwise? Bland platforming, weak framerate in a few places, and nothing of real interest. I'll note the hedgemaze seemed like a nice touch at first but it got old and frustrating quick, until you found a specific path through it, at which point it was just more thokfest again. Thokfests aren't that bad though, as long as you know what you're doing.

MAPR7 - Crimson Caves Zone by Blade - 8/10
I thought this map was nice, if a tad unforgiving. The series of platforms kinda kicks Sonic in the balls when Tails gracefully flies over it, but Sonic gets back when the rest of the level mostly feels like a thokfest, a good one though. There's still challenges to keep players on their toes and the design and scenery is rather cool. Could've stood a bit more uniqueness though.

Nice to know I haven't gotten a vote below 5. Anyway, here we go:

Fire Flight Zone, 7/10
Hm. I liked it, yet it needs more. Aha! If we could walk around the map, hunting for Chaos Emeralds and/or emblems, that would be a real help. I'm hypocritical in this, but that's really going to help. The mare you did have was super-long, and I enjoyed the sheer length of the NiGHTS track, but you know that it needs more room to fly, right? Also, the horizontal flame jets can stay, but get rid of the vertical ones. The vertical ones sway back and forth, and it's hard to tell if it's going to touch the track or not. Everything else was done just fine.

Water Works Zone, 6/10
It felt like Flooded Mine. The platforming and running is fine, but that's just about it; everything else felt rather bland. You had some great ideas, like the blue laser waterslide, but there are parts in that gimmick where one, without strafing, can squeeze through all of them.

Lava Rock Zone, 1/10
It's barely enough to be called a level. I understand it's fun to enter contests, but please don't crank out unsubstantial nothings like I did two years ago.

Dark Forest Zone, 2/10
Now this doesn't have enough to be called a level, but rather a minor section of a bigger level. Either way, what you have plays better.

Cloud Cradle Zone, 5/10
My favorite parts of the Single Player division were found in this level: the Jetty-Syn bounce, the springs leading directly to it, and the ugly yellow laser belt. Only problem is that there's nothing more to this level than just the one path, and the cheap deaths (which by the way are all due to a form of enemy placement) made this feel average. I would have liked this to be fixed and pasted into a bigger level.

Jadeflower Zone Act 1, 2/10
Well, first of all, the level has huge flat grass areas as long and undetailed as a freeway. Next, I managed to get turned around in the level several times. In addition, there are water pits that have no springs out of them. And finally, the entire level was like this.

Moonlit Mountain Zone Act 1, 8/10
I think I'm going to keep going back to this one in the future. Feels like a vanilla SRB2 level. Could it have used a few more gimmicks? Sure. Did it have enough? Yeah. The texturing was quite well done. There was this one spot that only had one blue spring to get out of the water that you might remember. That should have been fixed. Oh, and the falling rocks like Arid Canyon? Let's do a different gimmick instead.

Jadeflower Zone Act 1: 3/10
It was better than Dark Forest zone, and part of it reminded me of the branches of Click Clock wood. I liked the spring work, but not the visual glitches.

Still, there was too much running, this isn't Sonic Advance 2. and you had 2 too many end signs.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmFZb8Cau2c

Fireflight by Fawfulfan - 6/10
Ok, so I played the level and I thought it was really cool. I thought it was a little confusing in the middle since I went Northeast direction. Then I noticed the guys on IRC told me there was an opening. -_- Then we got to these linear areas, and it was pretty cool. But then we enter this castle place and the level just starts sucking. "It was fun until..."

Water Works by Kyasarin 5/10
Yes! Thok forward and see what happens! Yay a water slide! Wait.. what is this? A sigsev? BOO! I like the music...

Lava Rock by EggmanFan 0/10
WTF is this? First, this level is stupidly hard as any character besides tails. Red springs don't even go up high enough. A music change? Seriously, spend more effort with level designing. Very rushed. Red walls and graphic errors? This is basically unplayable with Sonic or Knux.

Dark Forest zone by Videogame 3/10
Well, the background was a little too distracting. Why did you put noclimb on everything? What is with the emerald tokens? Is this an emerald start wad? This is too short and is basically - Thok straight onto small platforms and win. :D

Cloud Cradle by DOOD64 7/10
One of the best maps in this contest. Very fun but has some flaws. Enemys near checkpoints(Why do boxs spawn from the sky?) Needs checkpoint rearrangements. It was very fun..! Jetty bounce was clever! The rail area wasn't too good. It was very hard to see what was coming. Very CHEAP!

Jadeflower zone by ???? 4/10

This was a very boring map, very linear and THOK THOK THOK. It has the same problem as ww does. It sigsevs. Nice music....


Moonlit Mountain Zone Act 1, 9/10
Best level in this entire pack. Very fun! I liked the multiple pathways AND the secrets.
Is the music from Sonic Unleashed: Night time Holoska?

Fire Flight Zone - 4/10
It's cramped and hard to move in. There's no flow and the gimmicks just make it longer and even more annoying to move. There's too many Rings placed in the level (I skipped several areas and still destroyed the Drone) and there isn't any real replay value.
The visuals were, eh, okay.

Moonlit Mountain Zone - 5/10
Meh. It's pretty wide and open. There's a lot of areas that are lacking enemies and obstacles.
There's a lot of areas that are too flat, such as where the bridge over a lake with a Starpost is.
The platforming is very basic and the gimmicks aren't notable.
The waterslide-Zoom Tube thing is a giant waste of time, as the player can literally not touch the controls and pass that entire area.
The level was really linear, and I tried my hardest to find alternate routes and only found only two (short-lived) alternate areas. I couldn't find many obstacles.

Cloud Cradle Zone - 2/10
It's a mess. Linear, with plenty of cheap deaths. It's cramped, some of the jumps are too high, and the challenges are just ridiculous.

Jadeflower Zone - 2/10
It's nothing more than running in undetailed, overly long hallways, with no gimmicks or platforming to it. There's absolutely no replay value due to the lack of multiple paths and bonuses, and whatever alternate routes were there felt just like any other. It's also very short, the ceilings are all way too high, and it turns from being too cramped to far too wide at the end.

Dark Forest Zone - 1/10
I could beat this in less than eight seconds. The length is so pathetically short.
The Emerald Tokens were all in plain sight and took no effort to get.
It's linear, with almost no bonuses.
No scenery, and it didn't feel like a forest at all.
It's generic pillar-hopping, which is fairly boring because there's just nothing here.
The rating mostly stems from the lack of actual stuff in here.

Water Works Zone - N/A
My own level, but meh.
I hate how flat and linear it is. There's no gimmicks, hardly any bonuses, and the scenery is too much to the side. There's no difficulty and it's really just boring running all over. The scenery and gameplay are very repetitive and the level feels like you're passing the same area over and over again.
Where on Earth are the high ratings coming from?

Lava Rock Zone - 0/10
And I thought Jadeflower was bad...
Do I really have to explain myself?

---

Damn, the Single-Player division had two "mehs" and the rest just weren't passable. I won't be rating the multiplayer levels because I just don't play multiplayer.

Autosaver said:

Is the music from Sonic Unleashed: Night time Holoska?

Click to expand...

Yesh, yesh it is.

Kyasarin, I don't think you understand the meaning of those numbers. Lemme spell it out for you:

10 - Epic
9 - Awesome
8 - Great
7 - Good
6 - Decent
5 - Average
4 - Mediocre
3 - Bad
2 - Awful
1 - Horrendous
0 - Unplayable

The only level here that's so bad you might consider a zero for it is Lava Rock, and even then I'd argue that it's at least playable, just horrendously awful. If you didn't like any of the levels in the contest, that's fine, but rate them according to the proper scale, not some weirdo scale where anything you dislike is a zero.

autosaver said:

Lava Rock by EggmanFan 0/10

This is basically unplayable with Sonic or Knux.

Click to expand...

Well, I played it as Knux, and I got through it fine. But then, I had god mode on, so that kinda doesn't say anything, does it?

Oh, thanks Mystic for the proper grading scale up there. I was wondering when someone was going to post something like that. I'm off to change a couple of my votes...

MAPR1 - Freaky Factory Zone by RedEchidna 5/10
This level is way too cheap. You expect us to beat 1 lap?

MAPR2 - Bleeding Green by D00D64 6/10
It was an ok level. I guess

MAPR3 - Quicksand Night Zone by Darkbob1713 6/10
Kind of bleh... Sonic also has an unfair disadvantage here

MAPR4 - Not A Thokfest Zone by Mystic 4/10
Fun... but it has really no effort and is spam copy paste.

MAPR5 - Digital Dimension Zone by SonicMaster 7/10
Pretty fun... wait! Isn't this a Sonic Riders level? :O

MAPR6 - Sky Castle Zone by Mach 3/10
This map is very bad. It is very open... then it gets cramped... then it gets confusing where to go. Check out level designing 101 and remove the open areas. Expand the cramped one. Put some more time and effort and you'll do better... some day.

MAPR7 - Crimson Caves Zone by Blade 6/10
Ehh... It is kind of boring. The sprites also get some weird error too. Going in circles isn't that fun, add in some cool effects/decorations to get our attention.

Edit: Ok, I get it why the sprites look weird. But if I am in a volcano. My clothes won't have lines in them.

Kyasarin, please don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think I've ever seen you say anything good about any addon level. Your complaints are perfectly valid, just as much as anyone's, but it might be nice to also include one or two things you like. For example, Moonlit Mountain Zone. You gave that level a 5/10, which means there must have been a couple of things you liked about it, even that it was solidly built or had no glitches or something. Also, your own level was great. I think it was the best level in the contest. Obviously, you didn't give your own level a number rating, but your self-review was very unfair on yourself. I can understand being hesitant to appear as though you're bragging, but I personally think you earned the right to brag about that level; much of it was really, really good.

My point here is that improving level designing skills based on feedback is a two-point plan. First, stop doing things that people don't like. Second, do more of the things that people do like.

Unless a level has absolutely nothing good about it (sort of like Lava Rock Zone) proper constructive criticism should encourage both points of that plan. In general, your reviews are very good at telling the bad stuff like it is (and without flaming, too!), so you've got Point 1 down good. However, it's hard for a learning level designer to follow Point 2 when the review skates over the things they did well.

Again, I hope you don't take this the wrong way. I only want to help.

blahblahbal said:

Well, I played it as Knux, and I got through it fine. But then, I had god mode on, so that kinda doesn't say anything, does it?

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Pfft, I went through that place as Knux without God mode. Isn't all that hard to do actually, at least, if you have good control over him.

Well, Fawfulfan, the thing is, there just wasn't much that I liked. I really couldn't name much that actually pleased me about the contest levels.
There actually are several levels that I really like (Oceanic Cove, Batonic Serenity, Hidden Sanctuary) and, in my reviews for those levels, I named many things that I liked. So, really, it's more of just the fact that, usually, there just isn't much that I actually like in a level.
I wasn't saying that my level was bad. I was just stating that it was an average level. It really didn't have many gimmicks, but I don't dislike it.

Just out of curiousity, what do you like about Oceanic Cove and Hidden Sanctuary that these levels didn't have? It's not like those are action-packed gimmickfests or anything.

It just seems like you have very high standards for an SRB2 level.

LightspeedX said:

Pfft, I went through that place as Knux without God mode. Isn't all that hard to do actually, at least, if you have good control over him.

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Oh wait, I did go through it without god mode. I was thinking of Dark Forest. I'm a Knux user, if you all haven't already figured that out.

Those just have enjoyable platforming and manage to not get stale over time.
Moonlit Mountain Zone had some enjoyable bits, but it just got old rather quickly.

I tend to try to point out good features of levels unless they truly have absolutely none, because that's helpful to the designer to know what parts, if any, they're doing right.

Moonlit Mountain: 8/10
What can I say? I can't really think of anything except I found a missaligned Arrow. I like the water fountain Idea.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWoRfsJjpBE

Misaligned arrow? Crap, Shoulda tested that. :(

Anyway, I might not make next contest due to my new comp not allowing me to run 3d mode, and I can barley map at all without it. Any help would be appreciated.