Alright, there is a map, that is a work in progress: AS-CrystalCastles.
The general obj of the map is to capture 5 crystals, restore elemental balance, bla bla.
Currently, there is small intro part, difficulty selector (Normal/Hard/Lunatic) with secret Extra difficulty available if you completed map on all 3 difficulties, central Castle Hub, with unlockable weapons as you capture crystals, and several ideas, i dont know which one is best to implement, and i need some hint here.
Idea 1: Each castle has a little similar path, with most (or all) monsters being of corresponding element.
Idea 2: Technically 5 different paths, assigned to each castle when map starts, like Trials / Curtain fire trials / Monster army fight / Strong monster fight / Puzzles (?).
Idea 3: Hybrid of 1 and 2, short pseudorandom "sublevel" to unlock castle path, then elemental part.
Of course castles will have elemental bosses. It is planned, that the boss and its mesh is dependent on difficulty level: for example, on Normal Fire castle boss is Dragon, on Hard it is Boss (4), and on Lunatic it is Boss (5) with hitscan redeemer.
As you complete castles, weapons are unlocked, it is expected, that fire castle unlocks fire weapons, etcetra. Some U2 weapons are available at the very start, at intro part.
There will be 1/2/3 final bosses (depending on difficulty) and they will have many different attack patterns, that they will use depending on their current HP.
I am up to write an Interaction (HUD plugin) for this map that will display current Boss' HP, pattern, remaining number of patterns. Also it will display your current progress on map difficulties at the intro part.
Some graphics stuff follow:
Intro part (1)
Difficulty selection (2) - 75% team volumes
Crystal hub (really unfinished) (3)
Expected Fire Castle hard boss, if i cope with mesh import (4)
Expected Fire Castle lunatic boss, if i cope with mesh import (5)
IMO - 5 identical repeated areas with just different elemental enemies in them would be boring.
I definitely prefer a map that goes through different challenges. Keep in mind though that players in Monster Evolution don't really respond well to jumping trials or puzzles.
Puzzles in particular are something that I think only has a very limited place in ME since you'll probably be doing it a lot... And tenth time you solve the puzzle it'll no longer seem clever, it'll just be something you do out of rote (see RU Police Station). In order to make a puzzle that is more dynamic you can do the trigger sequence (see Argento, Utopia, & Nanotechnics), or possibly have some kind of randomized item spawn that players much search for (see Argento's crystals) but outside of those two I am not sure how you can make a good puzzle that requires thought to solve.
Jumping puzzles are something that I think are reasonable to have in Monster Evolution but you must take into account the reality that Monster Evolution differs pretty dramatically from actual Trials. In actual trials players respawn on a whim, whereas in Monster Evo missing a jump and dying could be an hourlong wait. You want to make sure that players don't get overly penalized for messing up. For example in Forgotten Fane - Players just land in the water if they mess up, and can swim back to the beginning and retry as many times as they like. Actually I'd like to make the penalty for missing a jump even smaller -- I should probably place teleporters that players can utilize to return to the start of the jump trial so that there is less hassle for mistakes.
Some additional thoughts on your map based on the information in your original post:
1. I don't like maps where players start out in a room and use teleporters to get into little level subsections. Use of teleporters like this creates big bottlenecks at the teleporters, so player monsters (or actual monsters) might be waiting right outside of the teleporter and kill you as soon as you get inside. I don't particularly enjoy instantly dying through no fault of my own, so I strongly encourage you to think about either abandoning the idea here of connecting with teleporters, or just make sure that the destination areas are not vulnerable and cannot be camped.
2. Your plans in general for this level sound too ambitious to me and I think you ought to plan on making 1 area first and simply make that as a level. Once you're done with that one area, you can make a second area. Repeat that until you have 5 maps, and then at that point if you want to you can make a campaign finale level. It also sounds like you want to do custom weapons and monsters -- Again, I advise you to limit your scope to what you can accomplish in a reasonable time frame.
Thank you very much for such detailed response.
The problem in making 5 different maps is that areas are designed to be completed in any order.
I think i will make 5 different areas, that will be randomized, when only final area and boss fight will be somewhat similar.
I am not sure, maybe if i will fk up with meshes, i will make bosses like spirits - emitter based. That will save lots of hassle with meshes.
About the teles... thanks for the advice... i guess the only teleporter that routes to single teleporter will be only at very beginning of level (when no PM can reach it and no monsters there yet), meanwhile if i use some other teleporters, i will make multiple destinations. I dont plan to make areas extensively big, but rather somewhat challenging.
Also i recently got idea of making something like Xeno retrieveal part of the data stick.
And maybe some area that involves flying in a spaceship.
I am now having somewhat lack of time cause of a diploma project, but i guess that soon i will get more free time. Moreover, i am thinking of converting Unreal 1 singleplayer/coop maps to Monster Evolution. They are already converted to UT2004, just need some more work to get them here. I was also thinking of converting Mothership or Convoy.
Skydev wrote:Thank you very much for such detailed response.
The problem in making 5 different maps is that areas are designed to be completed in any order.
I thought about this problem, here's the thing -- I think it's entirely possible to set up a sequence of maps using Ant's Legacy Variables.
The way map transitions work you don't just need Map 1 -> Map 2 -> Map 3, you could technically have Map 1 -> Map 2/3/4. The only thing you need is a boolean variable to store, "Was Map X completed?" If it was completed, then you trigger a mover that blocks off the exit to that map. Once all the sub-levels are completed, you trigger an event that opens up the final level. Ant can correct me if I'm wrong but this seems like it's eminently doable and I think this is a lot more realistic in scope than making one big level with a bunch of subparts all at once.
DW_WailofSuicide wrote:I thought about this problem, here's the thing -- I think it's entirely possible to set up a sequence of maps using Ant's Legacy Variables.
The way map transitions work you don't just need Map 1 -> Map 2 -> Map 3, you could technically have Map 1 -> Map 2/3/4. The only thing you need is a boolean variable to store, "Was Map X completed?" If it was completed, then you trigger a mover that blocks off the exit to that map. Once all the sub-levels are completed, you trigger an event that opens up the final level. Ant can correct me if I'm wrong but this seems like it's eminently doable and I think this is a lot more realistic in scope than making one big level with a bunch of subparts all at once.
You sure can.
Create a 3 legacy variables (map 2, 3, 4). Set them to equal to 1 whenever a particular map is beaten. For example, Map2Completed variable should be 1 whenever map 2 is beaten (use scripted action: ACTION_SetLegacyVariable to set legacy variables). The other variables should be set to 1 only if the previous map's legacy variables were equal to 1 (that way it keeps track which maps were beaten). At the end of each beaten map, check to see if all values equal to 1. If so, go to map 5. Otherwise randomly switch between whichever map is zero.
The difference between successful people from others is
not in the lack of strength,
not in the lack of knowledge,
but rather in the lack of will. FFE466
Skydev wrote:Moreover, i am thinking of converting Unreal 1 singleplayer/coop maps to Monster Evolution. They are already converted to UT2004, just need some more work to get them here. I was also thinking of converting Mothership or Convoy.
Already started on Unreal / using the conversion maps from unreal co-op, i used to play with the guy who made it actually haha.
Any who, do what you will, as I am completely rebuilding from scratch (because of the garbage way they handled bsp for these maps, which entire areas are just one peice of geometry etc. Makes for some messy change in my case.) so the only thing retained from the originals is probably some textures, a few sounds, etc. Other then that, ill be redoing everything in every level i remake for Monster Evolution. Outside levels will take the longest naturally as ill be converting it to terrain and custom made static meshes for 'rocks' and 'cliffs' etc.
