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Tortured Planet v9 (scmrtf_TorturedPlanet-v9.wad)
- Thread starter Fawfulfan
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Metal-Rawr
Also known as Teravolt now
Obviously since Fawfulfan is the creator, Charyb sends him unfinished versions not officialy released yet.
Well, according to a very crude estimate, he's nearly halfway done, actually. The Tortured Planet soundtrack needs 32 scores, and he's written 15 of them so far (excluding the discarded SNZ2 track). This of course doesn't take into account the fact that he's already got some other tracks in varying degrees of completion, and the fact that some tunes are longer/shorter or harder/easier than others (it shouldn't be too tough to do the boss soundtrack, for example; he's already written an excellent track for ECZ3, and the rest are just a matter of remixes.)
In the first, the bass is unfitting IMO, but it's not that "slappy" either way. In the second, slap bass is a really weird choice as well, but it's not very audible. The third is just a funk tune with way too much RAWK guitar. And the fourth is pretty funky too.
Anyway, those are either live recordings or very realistic samples, which is very different from the instrumentation Charybdizs uses. Refer to the DDZ tune to see how his slap bass would sound and then tell it would fit. Also, those tunes were pretty fast, while LGZ is very slow. Slap bass lends itself to fast, busy bass lines, not slow supportive ones.
It is? Why didn't you tell me about this? I would love to listen to it!
To tell the truth, I'm debating about whether I should actually make an individual boss theme for every world, or whether I should make a generic one and stay with that. It's surprisingly hard to remix your own songs, and I've been having some serious trouble doing so. Yet, before I make anything certain, I'm going to try coming at it from a different angle, as I thought of a different way of going about it.
Tyler52 said:
The problem with all those examples is that they all give a complete mood than is looked for in LGZ1. e.g., City Escape is hardly an intense, determined feeling rock song. It has a more jovial, lighthearted, almost sassy feeling to it.
To answer your question, no, I'm not gonna use Slap Bass in it at all. Although I believe almost any instrument, when used right, can accomplish various purposes, even when seemingly out of place, I don't plan on trying to fit a slap bass in where it isn't really needed. I'll probably be going with something like a brass ensemble, some sort of organ, and a lighter electric guitar than the one if Act 2's theme.
Uh, you would love to listen to your own music? I'm afraid I don't quite understand you...I'm referring to the beta version of LGZ1 that you sent me, which I am now keeping as a full version.
Anyway, feel free to do the other tracks before trying to remix the boss music. And I suppose that if you don't feel up to it, I could use the ECZ3 music for all the bosses; it IS pretty good.
He was being sarcastic because LGZ1 isn't finished at all.
Uh, it doesn't even have a drum track yet.
No. Just no. Don't make me hack into your computer and exterminate that thing once and for all. Not only is it obviously incomplete, and missing drums, it is horribly composed, and horribly mixed. I don't care if you delete that thing right off your hard drive. I'm making a much better LGZ1 right now, so hold your
Well, fine, try to make a better one if you want, but I'll still have you know that I really, really like what you already did. And I didn't think it needed drums; it had a frantic pace that really worked with the level. It did a lot with a little.
I don't think you realize how good it already is. Whenever I play that level, I find myself humming along to the music. I will reserve the right to make the decision about which version of LGZ1 I would prefer for Tortured Planet. If your new one is truly better, then fine, I'll can the one you sent me. But if I still like the original best, then gosh darn it I'm going to keep it.
I don't think you realize how good it already is. Whenever I play that level, I find myself humming along to the music. I will reserve the right to make the decision about which version of LGZ1 I would prefer for Tortured Planet. If your new one is truly better, then fine, I'll can the one you sent me. But if I still like the original best, then gosh darn it I'm going to keep it.
daiches99
Member
It hasn't ended. The release date for the next version is just unconfirmed due to the wait for the music completion.
I honestly doubt Fawfulfan would want anymore levels in the pack after all the trouble he's going through for the current ones. The pack is long enough anyways.
Though what I've always wanted is one act transitional levels. (A man can only dream though :P)
Though what I've always wanted is one act transitional levels. (A man can only dream though :P)
So yesterday I was quite bored and played this entire mod again on its current version, and I will admit that it was a lot worse overall than I remember it being. Instead of providing level-by-level feedback, I'm just going to note a few problems that are persistent throughout the entire thing:
Your texture usage is atrocious. There are two completely opposite problems here that persist through the entire pack like a plague:
Your texture usage is atrocious. There are two completely opposite problems here that persist through the entire pack like a plague:
- Textures which are too inconsistent. The entire pack often feels like you're choosing textures at complete random. Make some consistency here. If you're going to use cliff textures for natural walls in an area, keep the color scheme approximately the same. While texture variety is important, if you go overboard (which you have in basically every level), the illusion of a real place is completely destroyed as in reality, all rock walls in an area are going to look approximately the same, and all metallic structures built at the same time are going to look approximately the same because they were built with the same materials. Every level in your entire pack has the look and feel of ERZ2, like Eggman patched everything together with whatever materials he had available. This style works for a space station a villain would be creating as quickly as possible, ignoring quality and using whatever parts he has at the time. It doesn't work for an ancient temple, or an icy mountaintop, and makes the inconsistency stick out like a sore thumb. To make matters even worse, you use textures that make no sense for the theme you're using. Why in hell are you using Tidal Palace temple textures in Liftoff Gantry, for example?
- Textures which are too consistent. While the different rooms in your stage are often so dramatically different it's jarring, the textures in each room of your stage have the exact opposite problem. You often use the same textures for the floor and wall in a specific area, and this makes it basically impossible to tell at a glance where the edge of the platform is. Well over half the times I died in your pack was completely unrelated to the hazards in your stage, and was instead due to completely horrible texturing providing no context where the platform ended and that there even WAS a bottomless pit there. Unlike the above problem, this makes your stages actively worse as it makes gameplay really hard. The absolute worst example of this is Snowcap Nimbus, where I'm trying to jump on white clouds that have a pure white for edges and white snow below them, but this kind of issue is present in basically every stage of your pack to varying degrees. Excessive detailing doesn't help you at all when I can't see the edge of the platform I'm standing on. I don't care how rocky and craggy you intend the platform to be, if I can't see anything I'd far rather it be a large, flat, undetailed wasteland that I can at least see what I'm doing on.
- Lay off the copy-paste. So many of these stages go on for eternity with no new ideas. You just reuse the same gimmick over and over and over again. This would work great if you did new things with the gimmick each time, but often it just feels like I'm going through the same area all over again with copy-paste. If you can't come up with something new to do a second time, don't do it. Levels don't need to be 10 minutes long, consisting of 2 minutes of original ideas and 8 minutes of those original ideas copy-pasted to the point where it's not fun anymore.
- Lay off the sector-based scenery. While sector-based scenery objects can be fun, you have gone WAY overboard with them. Most every example of the ones you copy-pasted throughout your stage should be things, such as the traffic cones in Drowned Downtown. The worst example of these, however, would be the damn yellow objects in Fume Shaft. I have no idea what they're supposed to be, but they look like springs and I have no idea how many times I tried to jump onto them to discover that they were scenery objects instead.
- Lay off the enemies. We don't put enemies in every room for a reason, and this was one of the biggest design flaws of Mystic Realm. With 2.0's enemies it just ends up even worse. Minus is a great example of an enemy that absolutely should NOT be in every room in your stage. Note that many of the official 2.0 stages use the enemies in moderation to break up the platforming, not at all times.
This was the first time I've played this pack. I do plan on fully reviewing this soon. I haven't really played through everything. For now, I only want to say something positive:
This pack is pretty decent honestly. Your gimmicks & sector-base scenery are creative and I love them. The deeper you get into this, the more intense and longer the levels become. This actually gets me on my toes for this pack, just like I have playing an actual Sonic game, when I was young. My point, usually through any levelpack, I'd choose Sonic and thok through every stage without much effort. When I played this, this actually caught me, and I game over'd/use a continue. Resuming, I started building up my lives and actually started to enjoy this. This isn't an average SRB2 levelpack. It's truly yours Fawfulfan.
When I review this specifically later on, it'll be nothing but pointing out issues, and critism.
Also, just to point out a silly major issue I found. You might want to check out all of your pits in LGZ. (both acts) As I've fell in some of them, and they're nothing but a black floor. I had to use noclip to escape them, which gave me the "Game modified/restart statistics" line. I don't think you want players to witness this issue.
This pack is pretty decent honestly. Your gimmicks & sector-base scenery are creative and I love them. The deeper you get into this, the more intense and longer the levels become. This actually gets me on my toes for this pack, just like I have playing an actual Sonic game, when I was young. My point, usually through any levelpack, I'd choose Sonic and thok through every stage without much effort. When I played this, this actually caught me, and I game over'd/use a continue. Resuming, I started building up my lives and actually started to enjoy this. This isn't an average SRB2 levelpack. It's truly yours Fawfulfan.
When I review this specifically later on, it'll be nothing but pointing out issues, and critism.
Also, just to point out a silly major issue I found. You might want to check out all of your pits in LGZ. (both acts) As I've fell in some of them, and they're nothing but a black floor. I had to use noclip to escape them, which gave me the "Game modified/restart statistics" line. I don't think you want players to witness this issue.
Okay, at this moment, only those few people who were on IRC for the announcement know the major news about Tortured Planet, so I'm going to make it public now.
Spacewalk Zone has been scrapped.
For those bizarre masochists who actually liked it for some reason, don't worry. There are now two versions of Spacewalk in Tortured Archives--old Spacewalk, which hails from v1.2, and new Spacewalk, which is the version that was slated to appear in v9.0. It contains a lot of extra stuff that you haven't seen before, so if you are curious, you'll be able to check it out by getting 40 emblems.
Alien Armageddon Zone, meanwhile, is going to get some colossal renovations. Areas that lack content, most notably the endless hallways, are going to be deleted, and most of the areas that remain will get some serious updates in both graphics and gameplay.
I'm open to suggestions on how to change its visuals, since the theme badly needs reconsideration. So far I plan to increase the presence of castle scenery, and also throw in some additional high-tech/space objects. I'll consider any other ideas given to me, too.
Spacewalk Zone has been scrapped.
For those bizarre masochists who actually liked it for some reason, don't worry. There are now two versions of Spacewalk in Tortured Archives--old Spacewalk, which hails from v1.2, and new Spacewalk, which is the version that was slated to appear in v9.0. It contains a lot of extra stuff that you haven't seen before, so if you are curious, you'll be able to check it out by getting 40 emblems.
Alien Armageddon Zone, meanwhile, is going to get some colossal renovations. Areas that lack content, most notably the endless hallways, are going to be deleted, and most of the areas that remain will get some serious updates in both graphics and gameplay.
I'm open to suggestions on how to change its visuals, since the theme badly needs reconsideration. So far I plan to increase the presence of castle scenery, and also throw in some additional high-tech/space objects. I'll consider any other ideas given to me, too.
Since you can't just scrap all of the outside areas (you could, but some of them have potential, so I wouldn't if I were you), I suppose you'll have to keep the "alien planet" theme. What you should reconsider is how that alien planet looks. The way it is now is obviously totally unacceptable, so I'll give you some food for thought.
How different is this alien planet from Earth/Mobius/wherever the other levels take place? In which aspects is it identical, and in which aspects is it different?
Right now, your alien planet is nothing but a bunch of differently colored rocks and different hazardous liquids with absolutely zero vegetation. While that may be "realistic" in a way, it doesn't make for a good video game level theme. What I propose is a planet that isn't so vastly different from Earth/Mobius/wherever the other levels take place, but has a kind of "exotic" angle to it, if you know what I mean. Just make the outside areas canyon/valley/forest/nature-themed, but try to add an "alien" twist to it. Not that I know how that "alien" twist is supposed to look either.
EDIT: Oh, and you said "AAZ is gonna be remodeled" as if to say that it's the only level that you'll touch. I hope that's not the case.
Metal-Rawr
Also known as Teravolt now
You forgot that Eggman took over the planet, abusing all of its minerals and etc. The planet is basicly a wastleland now, after Eggman took everything it could offer and make it one giant factory (also why there's no vegetation, probably).
As I said, a barren ugly nonsensical wasteland might be logical plot-wise, but it's a terrible theme nonetheless. You can explain it all you want, that doesn't change the fact that it's a terrible idea.
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