Lake Adventure Zone v1.1-overhaul complete (s_lakeadventure.wad)

[BlazeFan1]

Lake Adventure Zone is level 3 of a group of levels I'm creating called... well, I'm not revealing that just yet.

Anyway, here's the story bit.
Eggman flew away from the promontory on Mt. Crumble, cackling to himself. "It looks like he's flying out over lake Adventure" said Tails.
Sonic panicked. "Lake Adventure! I hate water!"
"And lake adventure's not exactly the safest place," Knuckles cut in. "It's so slippery beneath the water I can't even climb the walls."
Tails looked out to the horizon. "It... looks like there's a base of some sort, across the lake" he said. "We should head that way,"
Sonic shuddered, but the three heroes descended toward the lake anyway.
Level 3- Lake Adventure Zone

This level is much longer and much more difficult, and contains many more gimmicks than either of my other levels.

This is version 1.1, and its a LOT different than v1.0 was.

Changes to 1.1
-more symbols provided to guide player
-Giant room at the beginning has shrunk and lost its random holes. This fixed the graphical issues.
-The lava in the underwater volcano is no longer instant kill. (Aboveground volcano still is thought to protect the extra life)
-First star post moved.
-Aboveground volcano has new textures
-I changed the extra life in the very first room to a super ring, and I added an elemental shield somewhere. (Good luck spotting it)
-Removed/changed some enemies
-Made the river with a current more smooth in its switching from one direction to the next.
-Added colormaps to all deep water. (One for regular water and a seperate one for the underwater volcano)

Anyway, PLEASE take a look at this level and give me more feedback. I think I'm getting the hang of designing, and I want to know where to go from here to make my levels even more interesting.

Note: You may have recieved a version where I accidentally left the player start in the wrong place. If your level begins underwater, please download again!

 

[Scizor300]

Okay, here's my little list of things that need improvement...

- It's a bit empty, for the most part
- Insta-Kill lava is bad, especially since lava shouldn't be underwater.
- Yet again, there's an extra life out in the open

You're improving, but you still have a long road ahead of you.

 

[Fawfulfan]

Also, you really don't need to put "zone" in the filename. "s_lakeadventure.wad" is shorter and neater. Anyway, here's some other glaring flaws I found in the level:

*The level layout was incredibly confusing. I found myself going around in circles.
*Some rooms are way too big, flat and open. They are so big, flat, and open, in fact, that they cause slime trails and HOMs.
*As Scizor300 said, lava death pits are bad, and it makes no sense that lava would be underwater.
*Do you even know how to make a colormap? Deep water with no colormap is absolutely horrible.
*It's a bad idea to put a Star Post underwater. It's not as bad in Single Player as it would be in Coop, but it's a nice habit to avoid placing them in deep water.
*Your Death Pits in the beach section made absolutely no sense, and looked hideous.
*That volcano is UGLY. Use different textures.
*Way too many cheap deaths.
*It was really boring and flat. You need way more sector-based scenery.
*The 1-ups were far too visible. You need to hide most of them, so that a player has to poke around and do some top-to-bottom level exploration to find them all. Also, any level with loads of water should have a few Elemental Shields hidden here and there.
*TERRIBLE enemy choices.

 

[MellowJacket]

I have to say, you've gotten the hang of the basics when putting levels together, but you still need to learn some good level design practices, which is something that will either come from experience, or studying some successful maps and seeing what they have done right.

 

[TrueTenguMan]

*As Scizor300 said, lava death pits are bad, and it makes no sense that lava would be underwater.

Well to my speculation, I guess there's an active volcano around the area and lava is flowing underwater or magma is flowing from open cracks? If that was the case then I guess it would make sense. Other than that, Fawful and Scizor have a point...

 

[BlazeFan1]

Scizor, sorry that the level is big and empty, that was kinda the point of the level and unfortunately it seems to be causing graphical errors, (as well as confusion) among players.

Everyone seems to hate instant kill lava, maybe I'll change that.

And yes, extra lives are out in the open. However, it at least requires a little effort to get to them. Doesn't that make up for it?

And fawfulfan, I'll discuss all your stuff in the next post, which will be about and hour after this one, I got to go somewhere, and it will take me a while to address all that.

 

[Fawfulfan]

Well to my speculation, I guess there's an active volcano around the area and lava is flowing underwater or magma is flowing from open cracks?

Well, yeah, I thought of that...but that's not anything even close to what it looked like.

The instant kill lava should just be changed to Fire Damage. It wouldn't be that hard. Of course, ideally, you'd want to make an FOF water block with lava textures and give THAT Fire Damage, but applying it directly to an in-level sector with a lava floor flat, though less good-looking and performing, will work.

 

[BlazeFan1]

Ok Fawfulfan, this post is all a response to you
First of all, THANK YOU for your feedback. This is exactly the kind of stuff I want to know, so I can improve.
Ok, let's get down to business responding to this.
1.Wad name- Ok I'll change the file name in the next version

2. Level layout- I personally didn't think the level was that hard to find the route. The room near the beginning was large and circular, and after that there was a split path in which you may have gone backwards. I should mark those.

3. Big open rooms- I assume the prime example is the very big room right at the beginning. That room is actually- get this- about HALF the size it originally was. Now I know not to make any more rooms of that rediculous size in the future, and I may edit that one to make it smaller still, to reduce graphical issues

4. Lava- The lava in the volcano near the beginning is only instant kill to make the extra life more risky to get. As for the underwater volcano, (which by the way is totally possible in real life. Lava is not fire, and can exist underwater.) the lava there is only instant kill becasue I got lazy and knew making it act like lava would mean more control sectors controlling other control sectors. Perhaps I will get to fixing that, but the underwater volcano WILL remain there, regardless of people's opinions

5. Colormaps- No. I don't know how, actually. In fact, I'm not entirely sure what a colormap is. I tried to make one for that lake in my Country Dream Zone, using the wiki tutorial, and got nowhere. If you can explain it in a different way than the wiki, I'll be happy to put colormaps in the water

6.Underwater Star post- If that bothers you, I'll move it up to the beach. That way the jet jaws can't kill you quickly upon respawn

7. Death pits on the beach- To be honest, those are space fillers, becasue that room is so big and I had little idea what to put there. Most likely said pits will be deleted.

8. Volcano- Could you suggest some better textures perhaps? I thought it looked ok but perhaps it can be improved.

9. Cheap deaths- Uh... sorry? My gimmicks were meant to fit the level theme. And what is the definition of a cheap death anyway? I could argue that Egg Rock zone is full of cheap deaths, but then the epic players would like skewer me or something...

10. Empty, open level- I had a few nice gimmicks, but I suppose there were too many open areas. I thought the sunken ship was a good example of sector based scenery, but maybe I need more.

11. Regarding monitors- I know the 1-ups are visible, the point is that they are on relatively hard-to-reach platforms, in which you could die if you miss the jump. As for elemental shields, I am just now realizing that perhaps they might function like bubble shields in the sonic genesis games, which is why you suggested that. Newbie moment there.

12. Enemies- Hmm. Some enemies may be an issue. Which ones particularly do you dislike? Im guessing some of the snailers and those vultures in the first room.

That should cover it. You can respond to whatever there needs responding.

 

[Fawfulfan]

Here's how to make a colormap: just give a linedef Type 606 and tag it to the desired sectors (in this case, the control sector of the water block)

Now, here's how to specify what color you give it. The Wiki probably told you that you need to specify a set of numbers in the front side upper texture of the controlling linedef in the system of #RRGGBBA. But you probably have no idea what that means, so I'll help you out.

The first symbol, the "#" specifies that the entry is a colormap setting, not an actual texture. You always need to have that for a colormap. The next two numbers "RR" determine how much red is in the colormap, and each are calculated in hexadecimal (0-9 and A-F, with 0 being the least and F being the most)

With me so far?

The two numbers after that, "GG" determine how much green is in the colormap, and it's also calculated in hexadecimal. "BB" determines how much blue is in the colormap, once more in hexadecimal.

The last number, "A", is the Alpha value of the colormap, and determines the intensity of the colormap as a whole. The value should be from A-Z or 0-9, with A being completely invisible and 9 being as thick as possible.

Still don't get it?

Well, if you can't understand that explanation, I'll give you some simpler instructions. Once you've got a colormap tagged to the control sector of the water block, go to its front side upper texture and type in "#0000FFP". That will create a dark blue colormap appropriate for water.

For future reference, a colormap of "#E000E0S" will create a hot pink color, like the THZ slime, and "#FF7F00Z" will produce a yellow-orange color, like the fire in RVZ. Play around with the values and see what colors you get. Once you understand, colormaps are pretty easy.

 

[BlazeFan1]

I'll certainly give it a try.
I think my problem was I was trying to put the effects onto the actual sector containing the water, instead of the control sector that is the water.

I'll try it on my single-sector lake in Country Dream Zone, and if it works out there, I'll stick one onto all my lakes in Lake Adventure Zone.

 

[Fawfulfan]

Definitely try...and again, by all means experiment with the values to find the color you think is best. I'm partial to #0000FFP for water, but that might be a little too thick and dark for an outdoor lake. You might want to instead try #0000CCP, or even #0055CCP...but I haven't actually tried either of those. They were just calculations in my head.

 

[Scizor300]

11. Regarding monitors- I know the 1-ups are visible, the point is that they are on relatively hard-to-reach platforms, in which you could die if you miss the jump.

Really, then what about the one at the start that's behind a pillar?

Not too hard, huh?

 

[BlazeFan1]

Ok scizor, I think I should replace that one. There will be a standard super ring monitor there in the next version.

The one on the volcano can stay, since its the whole point of the volcano in the first place.

The extra lives on the mast of the ship are definitely staying because it's pretty hard to get up there with Sonic with the cannons and all.

 

[BlazeFan1]

Fawfulfan, while I'm working on the colormap, I'll make some other changes. Could you please respond to numbers 8, 11, and 12 also, (up in my very big response to your original post.) Those numbers returned some more questions to you on stuff I might want to fix/change.

 

[Fawfulfan]

8. Try some of the CLIFF textures.
11. I know what you were going for, but it's very repetitive and uncreative. Try to make it so that some of them are hard to find but easy to get if you know where they are. But also keep some of the ones as they are now. Be unpredictable.
12. Yes, I am opposed to the Vultures (that enemy is actually called a B.A.S.H. now) and to the Snailers. Also, don't lump together Crawlas so much.

 

[BlazeFan1]

Cliff textures. Got it. If you've noticed I use those a lot anyway.

I'll see what I can do about the secrets.

The vultures, or B.A.S.H.es or whatever, are pointless, I'll take them out, but some of the snailers are kind of what makes some of my gimmicks be a gimmick, so as annoying as they are I think most of them will be staying.

The next version is going to be quite the overhaul I imagine.

 

[BlazeFan1]

The overhauled version 1.1 is now up! Check it out and see if it's better! There's a list of changes at the top of the page.