But it isn't ready yet. Although there is some amazing architecture and level design here, there are too many things which hold it back.
First of all, the weapon/ammo availability and placement. The beginning of the first level almost made me give up on this scenario altogether; there were simply too many enemies in too tight an area to fight with your pistol and fist. Throughout the first level at least, I found that having to fight the amount of monsters there were with only my fists and pistols to be annoying.
The second issue with this scenario is the lighting. There are many areas which could be improved drastically if you just applied more differential lighting. Most of the scenario is simply too bright; in most levels there are only "dim" and "bright" areas, with very few (possibly no) dark areas. To clarify, I generally consider lights 0 - 8/9 to be "bright", 9/10 - 14 to be "dim" and 15 through 20 to be "dark". The texturing generally isn't (in my opinion) too bed, with the exception of the second level. The second level is largely textured poorly and far too bright. An example of a level which could be spectacular of better lighting was used is Atom Heart Mother (I enjoyed the Pink Floyd reference). I'd make the passages between areas substantially darker, and add more differential shading to most areas (using both bright/dim and dark lighting together in areas). This level seemed to be inspired by Aye Mak (although I could be wrong) and I'd suggest looking at Aye Mak for examples of good lighting, you can also check out Marathon: Rubicon which (I thought) had generally good lighting.
The third issue was the monster placement. There are simply too many areas where you have to fight too many monsters in too tight a place. Every level seems to have this problem; you are often not prepared for the amount of monsters and/or have no room to dodge; this is amplified (again, especially in the first level) by the lack of appropriate weapons.
That said, I thought the overall level designs (with a few exceptions, most notably the beginning of level 1 and most of level 2) were excellent; rivaling (again, in my opinion) some of the best scenarios/conversions out there. I also happen to be a huge fan of Marathon: Infinity's levels (those which didn't suck), and a lot of these levels brought to me the feeling of marathon Infinity's better levels.
I also thought your terminals were excellently written, no complaints there (although I've never been a fan of Robert Blake in any scenario).
I really think this deserves 2.5 stars at the moment, but simply by fixing the existing levels in terms of monsters, weapons, lighting could easily bring it up to a 4 star scenario, and by fixing up all of the better levels (mainly minor things) it could become a 5 star scenario; but the first and second level would have to be re-done, and the pfhor levels could be better.
I greatly look forward to seeing this scenario "fixed up", I really enjoy some of the designs/architecture, even if the levels themselves need a lot of work in other aspects.
One final note, is that playing co op, neither Jim nor I could find any way of getting past the immediate post-initial area without rocket jumping. We were able to get to the platform leading out of the lava to the building, and found one switch, but our guess was that one of the inactive terminals was supposed to teleport us to the next area. I can't really comment on that too much though, as with the addition of terminals it likely would have been far more clear.
If you'd like to run through these levels with me co op for more specific advice/examples, I'm fully willing. You can e-mail me at lukastimmerman@hotmail.com or contact me over AIM (animalsfloyd) if you're interested.
This was a lot worse than I heard, but new co-op maps are always good. Don't give up, keep trying
Great maps, although after playing them for months I wish there was just a little more to this release. You need to play co-op to really experience these maps.
While the technical merit of these scripts is unquestionable, I speak for all of us here at Ray Laboratories when I question treellama's stance against spawn killing. Spawn killing is a time-honored tradition of Marathon, and it's a shame that concessions such as this are being made to the rabid anti-spawn-killing partisans. Look to Ray Laboratories in the near future for some forward-looking action on the spawn killing dilemma.
There's some excellent mapmaking going on here... Good differential shading, clever secrets, and some ingenious use of 5D space. I especially liked the addition of small details that really complete the level, like being able to flood the starting area in "Harpooning." The story's intriguing... can't wait to see more!
I thought they were fun, but when I hosted the scripts people stopped joining my games.
This is, as Treellama has said, yet another must have netpack. All the maps are balanced, good looking (although some more so than others) and flow well.
From the first release this has been a steady 5 star pack. The complex architecture is nicely balanced with fast, balanced gameplay, and although the architecture does inevitably damage the flow slightly in some areas, it isn't intrusive enough to damage the gameplay or detract from the overall quality of the maps; the flow still rivals (and often beats) that of many of the previous "Must Have" netpacks.
I think we all owe a huge thank you to RyokoTK, our favourite community ruiner.
Yet another must have net pack!
This fine heptadecaptych is a worthy successor to Red Spectrum.
Until now, I haven't given the matter much thought because I downloaded a lot of the maps piecemeal as they were released.
After seeing all these amazing maps listed together, I can comfortably offer my opinion that this is the best map pack I have ever seen.
I have compared the list of PL X's maps to all the other favorites and in terms of both quality and quantity, it stands alone.
It's self-indulgent but here are my thoughts on each map:
Serpent's Kiss: fast and furious. Why don't we play this more often?
Oculus ex Inferni: I have never had a bad game on this map and I love the way it looks. I like to play oculus, and ile boule consecutively: concentric circles of polygon hell, the center of which is FM which I will mention in a minute
Downfall of Paradise: My vote for best map in the pack. Never been able to figure out why the action is so fast on this big map but its amazing. Something for everyone here. You can play Downfall 5 different times with as many different strategies and it doesn't get old. I am consistently amazed by this map.
SCB: Just make sure you have 6-8 players.
Darkest Insurrection: I'm not a fan of this one but I'm a rocket-whore and I appreciate the concept.
Paradigm Shift: Just LOOK at this map! I get killed all the time because I'm admiring the damn walls. Good for deathmatch, koth, and team games. This map really has it all.
Acid Rain: I have problems with the flow and there are too many suicides.
Metropolis Part I
Hourglass : I haven't played these much and can't really comment.
Hydrocity: I think this is one of the most underrated maps around. The only reason I can think of is that you need a lot of players.
Fortress Morrolan: The center of hell and imo, tied for best map of the lot. I like the original and didn't think this one needed the revamp. I was wrong. This map is outrageously fun and I'm happy that it's getting hosted often. I would play a 20 minute emfh on this map. team games have been better than on the original. it might be a fluke but people seem to camp a lot less on the remake too.
Fatal Tragedy: Another huge map that keeps a fast pace. I love this map because I'm a rocket whore and I host it all the time.
Dance of Pales: I liked Cenotaph and I love this one. I host this and Downfall when I feel like getting outside for a while.
Sevil Alucard: I've heard a few negative comments on this one that I don't quite understand. You have to think a little bit more on this one because there's too much room for straight running and gunning. As long as there are enough players to sustain the action, I love playing this map.
Polaris: simple, well-desgined, but it doesn't have anything for me too sink my teeth into.
Biohazard: Had some great games with 2-4 players here. Love the way it looks. It's a great complement to the larger levels in the pack.
Killer Instinct: Haven't played it but I've looked around and I can't wait to start. Looks like a bare-bones pagan purity. All the open space should lend itself to some interesting gameplay...maybe similar to that we see on the corpus swinus remake.
Well, this is a rather motley pack. It's fun at first but quickly gets boring; however, points for trying. I see some very interesting implementation of new game mechanics here. While not really my cup of tea, these scripts create some cool effects which might be useful for start-up scenarios or TCs where normal Infinity rules don't apply. Plus, you have some mad Lua skilz.
While I'd normally disregard a Lua script from Wrk named "NO GOTTA PEE DANCES", these scripts actually work quite well to stop people from camping. They don't have any impact on normal gameplay and foil the plans of would-be spawn campers and cowardly snipers; I heartily recommend this to any host looking for a twist.
Quite possibly. And for making me contemplate such heresy, this script gets 1 star.
Ian is watching us from beyond the grave, smiling, camping safely in his tomb.
W'rk knows the holy words, beguiling, chanting softly on a womb.
There are a handful of problems consistent with all four maps:
Not nearly enough spawn points. Every map should have a minimum of 8, no matter how big it is. Spawn-camping and spawn-killing were simply too frequent, and not even intentionally -- in a 5-player game we were spawning on top of each other on all of the maps.
Generally poor weapon balance. It's a bad idea to only have one rocket launcher on the map, and a worse idea to have a ton of ammo for it at the same time! It lets one person hoard the good weapons and perpetually control the map. The problem was consistent with the rockets on all of the maps, and the shotguns as well on at least two of them.
Not enough weapons near the spawns, or at least weapons worth anything. An assault rifle with no grenades is not helpful when one player has all the rockets and is spawn-camping at the same time -- see the above two bullet points. Similarly, for each weapon, put some ammo next to the weapon.
These problems make the maps virtually unplayable to any serious degree. Rinse the Valve is the best map, and I would put it at "decent" on a good day. The good news is that these problems are mostly fixable while retaining the maps.
Visually, the maps are good enough. Some differential shading is necessary, but the minor details (especially on M.I.A.) are appreciated. Flow-wise, the maps also could use some help, but generally they aren't horrible, except on M.I.A. where there is a major dead-end that led to many kills for the aforementioned rocket guy.
Fix these problems, then we'll talk. In the meantime, this pack can get no better than two stars from me.
Most of these maps have some serious flaws; Rinse the Valve is about the only playable one, and even it isn't very good.
Texturing and lighting are OK, but everything else is pretty bad. Flow suffers from dead ends, bouncy walls. Player spawn placement is horrendous; there aren't enough of them, they're in bad places, and at least one is in mid-air. One is a few feet from the hill, directly visible.
Weapon placement is equally bad, it seems like weapons were just placed randomly. Weapon balance is also lacking (one map has only one SPNKR, which is easily guarded).
I would wait till the next revision before downloading these, they're not ready yet.
I hope the version .5 means you know these maps need a LOT of work. Gun balance is the worst I've seen in maps for quite a while. The spawn points are completely broken on a few of these maps. I saw at least one untextured side, and there are no words to describe how bad the KOTH map was.
Do better please.
Of course not. These scripts are merely perfect.
5 stars.
As a mapper, Slave is really taking some considerable strides in technical ability, but has some problems with diversity; in short, many of his maps feel similar to each other and few of them are especially compelling on their own. When put in a pack together, the sameness of many of these maps becomes a big problem in choosing a map to play.
I find that stylistically the same sets of architectural elements find themselves present in almost all of his maps, which isn't necessarily bad (I am guilty of the same thing) but when they are as prevalent as they are in some maps here, they become less of a convincing motif and more closely resemble a lack of creativity. I think Ascent, Concentration Moon, and Firefly are basically the same map, for example; different texture sets, sure, but the weapon choices and general flow are very similar (and I still think Ascent is the best). Rainfall, In Limbo, and Deep Blue Day are also remarkably similar, or at least to me.
I think the problem is that most maps here are less a collection of rooms and more a collection of corridors and passageways. In my experience, rooms are both more fun to play in and more compelling as a composition. In that sense, Leek Hills, Riki Tiki Tavi, Ascent, and Tiger Mountain are some of the best maps in the pack. Tiger Mountain and Leek Hills especially provide a great balance between big, interesting main spaces, and functional secondary corridors and spaces that make the maps especially successful, whereas maps like Endless Night and Airbag are less memorable or interesting.
Other maps have problems with height changes that are both too dramatic and too drastic to really work well for this game. There's nothing specifically wrong with big heights and a dynamic use of them, but it can reach the point where the flow is so stilted, and too focused on going up and down, that it interrupts the gameplay. Airbag, Cloud of Eiderdown, and Ocean of Noise all have this problem to a severe extent. Maps that use height changes well are Rainfall and Deep Blue Day; in these cases, higher and lower elevations still interact well both by themselves and with each other, and the focus of flow is still more horizontal than vertical.
I think a constructive mapping exercise for Slave is to make a few maps that are simpler and focus on big issues rather than small ones. Cosmic Clouds still lacks a traditional arena, which is okay, but I believe that making an arena is an easy, fun, and productive exercise; successful arenas put all of the player focus on straightforward combat, which is something that is lost in the shuffle to some extent currently in this pack. Good arena maps are enjoyable and memorable. Making more maps that focus on one or two main rooms, with less focus on corridors, side spaces, ledges, and so on, would also probably be constructive. Riki Tiki Tavi is one such map, and one of the most flexible and most fun. Over Fire Island is a case where a good main space is tarnished by having too much cruft in the upper levels, which are so high they're detached from the main flow.
To me, the best maps are Ascent, Leek Hills, Tiger Mountain, and Riki Tiki Tavi. That is not, however, an invitation to make more maps like them. It would be better to take some of the metaphorical ideas that make them successful -- big spaces, smooth flow, memorable design -- and employ them in new maps.
And make less water maps. Take a look at the screenshots posted here -- five of them look like they could be the same map. I would like to see more maps that used Jjaro and Lava, especially. Different texture sets would encourage different architectural quirks and styles, which I think would be a good exercise.
I would like to give this pack a 4.5 -- it really is almost there, but it falls only a little short of being excellent material.
Firefly and Deep Blue Day are the only good additions to this new release. However, at 17 maps Cosmic Clouds is finally large enough to provide a good hour of game play by itself. Of course, the texturing is ugly as usual but that is only a small distraction.
Im not going to repeat the flaws the have said, but I do like it!