Tortured Planet v9 (scmrtf_TorturedPlanet-v9.wad)

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The problem is though that instead of carefully designing each room, you make a basic container for what it should include and then paste some of your scenery eyecatchers in there at more or less random measure. Each room should look unique and carefully designed, that probably your biggest problem overall. Your approach seems to be "Let's make a room to fit my gimmick and then try to make it look good afterwards". This makes every room look similar and none of them truly unique and is what divides you from the best mappers in this community.
I wanted to draw specific attention to that paragraph, and you should make v4.0 with that in mind, it's really important.

Also, I terribly misunderstood you. I thought the palmtrees would cause lag, but you said they cause HOMs, that's an entirely different thing.
 
So...what you'd rather what I do is make the room look good first, and decide what to do with it afterwards? I guess I could try doing that...
 
So...what you'd rather what I do is make the room look good first, and decide what to do with it afterwards? I guess I could try doing that...
Not quite. Try to do both at the same time. When thinking of a gimmick and conceiving a room to hold it, also think how to make it look interesting before you actually make the room. Dunno if this helps or if other mappers really do this, but it makes your levels more thought-out as a whole.
 
Hmmm...a couple of my most recent gimmicks try to do that. So far, my best example of such an attempt is the controllable elevator at the end of LGZ1.
 
I've noticed this a lot in your newer sections, especially in some of Drowned Downtown. You just don't do it often enough, especially in the older parts. You didn't remove or drastically transform (in terms of layout) any room, no matter how bad it was, just added scenery on top or changed the textures.
 
In retrospect, v3.0 was largely a graphical update. There are some new gimmicks, some alternate paths and additional secrets, but the biggest transformation was to the textures, or to the scenery. At this point, I don't know how big an improvement to gameplay v4.0 is going to be, but you should at least expect yet more new paths and texture changes, and a couple of new gimmicks. Many of them occur on the new alternate paths, though, so for the time being the old rooms aren't going to change much.

But don't think I'm ignoring what you've said to me, SpiritCrusher...I take you criticism very seriously; you have been one of the most helpful critics of my work. I'm going to see what I can do about that later on.

BTW, the reason this is largely the case in Drowned Downtown was because the bulk of complaints regarding that level were about the darkness and the bad texture choices. I heard very little complaints on how the gimmicks actually worked, except that the puzzles in Act 2 were annoying. So I spent most of my energy working on the textures and scenery there.
 
Well, I told you about the mazes, and those weren't removed or transformed at all. You probably don't notice how maze-like they are anymore, but they are quite bad.
 
Okay, I'll try to make it clearer which way to go in there.
More specifically, you should get rid of some of the dead ends, especially those that contain nothing. I have nothings against deviations from the path that lead to powerups, but the player should get there by accident.
 
If your still looking for textures to use in Spacewalk zone, use the Doomship's texture set, it's really nice to look at if done right.

Also, choose a different tune for Spacewalk, that tune you have now just doesn't feel right for the theme at all.

I'll give you a real review later today, maybe.
 
Well, Doomship textures are already used liberally throughout Liftoff Gantry Zone, so I'm hesitant to use a lot of them here.

And I actually kind of like the DSZ music as it is used there; it almost gives the level a gentle drifting feeling, which is what I wanted. Do you have a better suggestion?
 
To be honest, there aren't any other tunes that would fit for spacewalk, besides a MIDI from the SRB1 remake. You could try one of those, if your willing to use a MIDI instead of OGG.

...As a matter of fact, try the new version of Hydro Plant for Spacewalk, that might work.
 
I hope that's just me, but when I did host game (Cause im too noob to pass Fume Shaft =P), I didn't see Fume Shaft Zone 2 in the level list. Why's that? D:
 
I hope that's just me, but when I did host game (Cause im too noob to pass Fume Shaft =P), I didn't see Fume Shaft Zone 2 in the level list. Why's that? D:

Probably because it's not co-op friendly, seeing as how the gates at the first character-specific path split remain firmly shut.
 
No, it was actually because I made a mistake in the MAINCFG lump and didn't add up that level's TYPEOFLEVEL value correctly. That has been corrected in the most recent version; you should be able to load it fine now.
 
Why enable Coop support if the level design doesn't support it?
I've actually taken measures to ensure that it does, if only crudely. As far as I know, every level that has Coop-unfriendly areas features alternate Coop-only paths. Future versions may have even friendlier support for Coop.
 
You do realize that I have already done that. I don't know how much more I can reduce the lag without significantly reducing the contents of the room.
Well, when I played the stages the framerate was pretty unplayable. If reducing the detail or removing the room is what it takes to fix it, you probably should do so. A few of the areas turned into a literal slideshow.

From my experience, sector merging helps reduce the file size of a level, but does absolutely nothing for the framerate unless said sectors are all bordering each other.
Sector merging helps increase framerate at all times, not just when the sectors are nearby. Sector merging won't magically cure the framerate in situations where it's awful, but it can make the difference between "a tad laggy" and "just fine". Just remember when doing this that it can make editing the stage later a bit more difficult, as you frequently need to demerge the sectors to edit the level.
 
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