NovaPack - Late for Christmas, early for... something I'm sure
This mod was made with OpenGL in mind. while it's far from unplayable in Software rendering, there are some graphical glitches, and some levels look worse for ware.
After doing nothing but contributing to variousSRB2gametypes without uploading...
Apparently the addon file had some stuff relating to a future level that IIIIII forgot to remove hahahaha pretend that wasn't there hahaha ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵉ ᵗᵉˡˡ ᵐᵉ ⁿᵒᵇᵒᵈʸ ˢᵃʷ ᵗʰᵃᵗ
These are some neat maps, but unfortunately I've got a lot of visibility concerns.
Woodland Wood Land:
1. The outside edge is a very similar color to the edge of the road in most cases of this map, which makes it hard to differentiate pits from the edge of the road. There are a few possibile things you could do about this, like changing the color on either of these textures for more contrast or making more use of midtextures.
2. The hole is the same color as the road unless you're already close enough to it to be falling in, so it's difficult to read. Consider changing the color of the inside or making it so this pit is more visible from the jump (although this won't help players who took the tripwire who will be going too fast to react)
3. It's hard to tell that the road thins here because of the lower wall of the next level chunk being the same color as the sides of this road. Also, a road this thin is easy to make untraversable with a prox mine.
4. One might think they can head straight to the item box from this angle, but there's actually a pit between these two points that is difficult to see ahead of time and difficult to discern when it is on screen.
5. An ark arrow indicating you should turn your kart to the left would be good here, I think.
Many of the problems on this map could be mitigated by using the Mega map cam present in basegame Mega maps (CameraHeight = 140 in soc head). Perhaps an increase in the map's scaling could make it a bit more drivable as well.
Sunset Falls Zone
1. Good place for an ark arrow
2. Another good place for an ark arrow. I think increasing the contrast between the main road and the offroad may be helpful here as well.
3. You guessed it, another good place for an ark arrow
4. The item boxes plus the slope make it extremely difficult to intuit this is going to be a right turn, and the item capsules ahead of these boxes further lean into this deception. I would recommend moving the boxes at the very least.
5. A green forward ark arrow to convey that you are supposed to go all the way up this slope would be good, I think.
I will be splitting this post into 2 as the MB allows me only to attach ten files in a post.
Post automatically merged:
6. I appreciate this custom signs, but they don't stand out very much and while I was playing this online in my private server I had to tell others that they exist. Consider changing the colors and/or making them much larger if you want to keep them over ark arrows. In addition the thin bridges around this part are very easy to fully block with a prox mine.
7. These bridge holes are pretty much invisible on a first play. Perhaps not too much of an issue as sufficient speed lets you cross them safely, but then I question why they're there in the first place.
8. This seems like an excessive amount of ring capsules that 1st place can easily all nab without changing their line too much. Consider spreading these out so they can't all be picked up in the same line.
9. This is a fun setpiece, but I'd strongly recommend spreading the ring capsules here as well, else 1st gets more than 100 rings for sitting in the middle.
10. It's not necessarily problematic, but this tripwire is hard to take without prior knowledge of its existence.
11. There has clearly been an attempt made to guide the player here already, but the ring capsules capture the eye a lot easier than the ark arrows do with the way they're angled. Perhaps make much more of this offroad, change the angle of the ark arrow to the right, or add either an X ark arrow saying not to go toward the ring capsules or a green forward ark arrow pointing towards the intended direction.
Dark Sanctuary is a cool choice of thing to theme a map over, and I especially like the music choice, but the slippery floors and the lack of contrast between sides of the course and the pits makes it very difficult to enjoy. I am not really sure how you would go about fixing this, only that Mega map cam would probably alleviate it to some degree. Also, this map suffered performance-wise with 8 people on it and I'm not really sure why.
I did not have time to include Pacman Maze and Frostbite Cavern in my last session, so I will include feedback for them at a later time. I'm looking forward to your future works!
Thank you very much for the criticisms (I very much need more of that to be honest)
I was thinking of doing a small update to the mod, but got distracted with working on another project, so great excuse to finish that, I'll be taking these into consideration.
I find the map lags a lot in general with software rendering, probably something to do with the 18 million FOFs used.
Truth be told, WWL & DS are probably getting totally remade, both of those are very old maps I threw in there just to fill out the package. I barely even knew anything about Battle mode back then, so in hindsight the small size and 0 hand railing makes for a terrible battle map. I'm 100% keeping the water floor though, good game design be damned.
Can't promise those remakes are coming anytime soon though, creative block is hitting hard.
I'll get to fixing everything else now though. Arigato!
Also we deadass saying Chaos Cavern is without flaw? Or did you not get to that either?
To be quite honest I didn't enjoy Chaos Cavern much yet simultaneously had no idea how to improve it, haha... I don't want to just say 'i don't like it' and leave no constructive criticism but it's just hard to read and dense in ways that traditional solutions don't help... I was completely unaware those were from Sunset Hill, I've never seen those on that map. Guess I have to take a look at Sunset Hill again! I might take another look at Chaos Cavern too but I've spent 3 hours giving out map feedback as is so my hands are quite aching. orz
Hello all!
After a while I present to you some improvements to the maps!
If you'd like to see the full Changelog, it can be found within the mod files, but for a long story short:
WWL had a few changes made for clarity and leniency
CCZ had mostly small visual changes, though the tripwire ring bonus thing was removed
SHZ had dozens of changes made, particularly a lot of Ark Arrows, some adjustments multiple sets of Ring Capsules near the end, & an expanded encore pallete!
FCZ had some very...
(Sometimes it takes more than half a minute for the last CPU to cross the start line)
Possible unintended shortcut at Chaos Cavern.
Two issues with the CPU at Sunset Falls.
(The second issue might also be considered a map issue. Also, one can hold Accel + Brake + Ring Bail for 4 seconds to respawn, but the CPU almost never does this as it relies on the anti-grief timer, which in this state usually counts up and down and will almost never reach the required value for the CPU to consider attempting the Ring Shooter.)
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