Slime Base Zone (s_slimebase.wad)

Well, I'm back with a (hopefully) better map.

Slime Base Zone was originally the first map in a pack, but the pack kinda fell apart. I may get back to it at some point and release it (in its 21- to 23-level glory!) with the storyline.

Anyway, this level takes place in a stormy hyper-THZ1 type level with tons of scenery, gimmicks, polyobjects, buttons, miscellaneous cool stuff, hidden thingies, and custom old-school STH2 style shield sprites!

Screenies in a zip below because there are so darn many. ~Curses is inner photographer~

Update 1: Added some scenic stuff + fixed a glitch.

Nice effort, I do see some significant problems though, and I'm sure the more experienced designers can find more. Here's a few to get you started.

1. Try to open this level on a completed file. If your computer is doing what mine is, the level selector will be on GFZ2, the level following yours. I try to back up to slime base, which obviously is where GFZ1 should be. When I do that, I get the SIGSEGV error. Which is strange, I didn't know that could happen outside of actual gameplay.

2. On the left path near the start of the slime river, there seems to be a nasty graphical glitch. Examination in Doom Builder doesn't seem to reveal any crossed sectors, so I guess you're missing textures on something important?

3. Right after the slime river on the left path, there are those platforms with turrets. Maybe you could move the slowly moving platform after the two turret platforms a little closer so you don't have to jump to it blindly?

4. On the right path, that room with the yellow springs on floating metal platforms. Are you supposed to move in midair to reach the next ones or something? I made a spring maze myself on one level, but mine don't require any midair adjusting of trajectory. I suppose it makes a difficult gameplay element, but I thought it annoying enough to avoid the right path.

Anyway, there's plenty about this level that is good, but, like all of us, you just need to clear up the mistakes, and refine the gimmicks. I'll bring some more issues later if I find any.

You mean this nasty graphic glitch?


Is this area where I'm at suppose to block you...?
-----
On another note, I don't like the right path due to the move in midair with the Yellow springs, and most of the time when I TRY to get onto another Yellow Spring, there's a Gun Turret, so now I'm face with ether getting shot or fall and die.

The first time I didn't even notice that you have to move to the right after the first one.

Oh and by the way...

I fixed that graphical glitch for you, a closer look at it in 3D Mode showed a tiny sector "leaking" into another one, even though doombuilder wasn't finding any errors. Maybe this caused that to happen, however... sometimes in 3D Mode you can see "leaking" effects, but won't really cause anything. All you gotta do is make a new vertex and replace the old one connecting to there and you should have this area patched.

My rating: 7/10

Well, you've certainly got visuals down, I'll grant you that. And is that the classic Fawfulfan loop I see? (actually, I can't really claim credit for it...my original loop was just a better version of someone else's loop). As in my levels, it's pretty pointless, but kinda cool-looking. I love how it looks with that texture set. And while I initially hated the spring-hopping gimmick because it defied the conventional setup of springs not sending you into Death Pits, I grew to like it pretty quick. That was actually a pretty original use for a THZ Turret, by the way. I saw a lot of ripoff gimmicks, but also plenty of original gimmicks to balance it out, so I don't care.

But there are still some problems. The biggest one is your enemy placement. As I said while critiquing BlazeFan1's mod, what matters when you place enemies is that you're doing it Sparingly, Strategically, and Sensibly. You've got Sensibly down quite well (which is to say, your enemy choices are good), but you're kinda shaky on Sparingly and Strategically. Your worst possible decision was probably putting a Crawla Commander right at the start. That's a big thing about level designing: you shouldn't have to move immediately after the start to avoid dying. But if you don't hop to it a second after level load, you get walloped. That's easily solved...just get rid of the Crawla Commander.

Fawfulfan said:

Sparingly, Strategically, and Sensibly

Click to expand...

I chuckle every time I hear that, sorry. It's so incredibly cheesy, but you have a good point there.

And fear I must disagree considerably, I don't like the visuals at all. It's simply brown-brown-brown with some sudden THZ and ERZ elements thrown in. Also, the 2D section is very cheap: I can't see the spikeballs beforehand, and at one point, I have to jump onto a platform that I can't even see. The spring bouncing gimmick was extremely cheap and most of all not introduced beforehand. I wasn't really sure what to do and the whole setup felt shaky. Basically, I was forced to react before I could adapt to the situation, leading to approximately 30 deaths before I managed to pull it off. The section was also much too long and devoid of any visual care. Never, never sacrifice visuals for gimmicks. Just don't do it.

Yeah, that graphics glitch. Thanks, SonicX8000. I was looking for a solution to that.

Use strafe on the springs.

Yeah, I borrowed your loop, Fawfulfan. I tried making my own and failed miserably. I'll try again if I use another loop at some point.

Editing now...

EDIT: And SonicX8000, try jumping in the slimeslide. That block is to prevent a nasty 2D-mode glitch that happenes otherwise.

Metal96 said:

Yeah, I borrowed your loop, Fawfulfan. I tried making my own and failed miserably. I'll try again if I use another loop at some point.

Click to expand...

It's perfectly okay for you to use it as much as you want. For one thing, it's used in some other levels besides mine. And, as I said, it's not even technically "my" loop...it's just my personal version of a previous loop someone else already constructed.

Not that it really adds all that much to a level anyway...it's not a particularly clever gimmick; just a fancy zoom tube that adds a little to visuals but nothing to gameplay.

O.K. I got some of the square sectors rockified, plus plugged the sector leak. If you just downloaded it from up top, you're good if it said "Update 1, 2, 3..."

-Redownload-

This level looks good, but in one moment it changed to 2D i couldnt control it and it killed me.

There was definitely some really cool effects here, and I can see the effort you put into this. However, there are a couple things that bug me.

1. Some of your slime rivers are the same height as your surrounding land. Such as this near the beginning:
Now this is purely a graphical issue, but I personally think that it would look a lot better if it were 10-15 fracunits lower.

2. The spring jumping part on the right path is (to me) far too long, and far too difficult. I believe it should be shortened or even taken out completely.

My final rating is 7/10. I do like what I see here so far.

Nice textures. But why is there no middle textures on the grass parts?

SonicX8000 said:

On another note, I don't like the right path due to the move in midair with the Yellow springs, and most of the time when I TRY to get onto another Yellow Spring, there's a Gun Turret, so now I'm face with ether getting shot or fall and die.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I think having to move in midair (strafe does make it easier, though) is enough a challenge.

Kind of frustrating when you do succeed, just to get shot down by a turret.

The idea was there, but I think it needs some refining.

I suppose you could make the path be overall more forgiving (i.e there could be a path below, but it would be slower, so that if you fail the springs, you just fall down to the slower path below).