Re: DM-aPortal2 [completed]
Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 2:38 am
My feedback on this one:
The meshes in Mylevel.usx should be put inside of the level's mylevel package, not inside of a static mesh package called Mylevel. If you need help on figuring out how to do that let me know.
-You start out in a small room that's exited by a teleporter. Unfortunately while this is a neat concept, it doesn't work in Invasion. Monsters use Playerstarts to determine starting locations, and you will have every single monster spawning inside of this room initially. (There is a tool on Monster Mash that moves monsters, but I don't think it's a good idea to rely entirely on it.). You should make this a normal door and simply add playerstarts throughout the level. (I didn't check to see if there are pathnodes but you need pathnodes throughout the level too.)
The first main area is a set of rooms including the start location lift, a room, and a room into what looks like an outdoor-ish area.
-The outdoorish area is a little strange ... Is it supposed to be outdoors? Or is it supposed to be some kind of planetarium room?
If the former, then I can help you setting up a skybox for it. I noticed it is currently a star texture applied to a wall, not a true skybox.
-There's an interior section that you can go inside in the planetarium area that I'm not sure what the purpose is ... Just a hiding spot for players? It doesn't seem otherwise connected to the level aside from a small staircase that's probably too small for any monsters to appear there.
- Does the button in the planetarium do anything? I really liked the nice touch where the lights light up when you hit the button, by the way. Good attention to detail there.
Overall this area seems fine although I get much more of a Portal vibe from the interior white/grey tiled rooms than the planetarium area. (I haven't seen any area really like that in Portal 2, although I admit I haven't finished it yet.)
Moving on to the second main area, it's reached by traversing a long angled corridor.
-While I was walking through this corridor I got stuck on an invisible wall (possibly a BSP error) and had to use the ghost cheat to proceed forward. I think I understand why you have this corridor here but honestly it took me a good 30s-1m to walk from one part to another. I would rethink this idea, and either make it a much shorter corridor (or small connecting room), or find some other way to connect these two areas (such as using a set of lifts).
At the end of the long corridor you enter into the second large area in this map, a large chamber with an Aperture Science logo and some turrets and other things in it.
-In this chamber there's a pool of water that you can fall into, but are unable to get out of unless you use your translocator. Personally I don't like that and I would raise up the water so you can get out of there without having to translocate.
-There's also another area where players can get stuck at the back of this larger room, up the ramp, near where the Portal Gun is located. The raised up tiles present a place where a player can fall down and be unable to escape without a translocator. I'd put a jump pad in here so players or small monsters don't get stuck.
Overall pretty good. The other issue I wanted to bring up is you are not using the Portal Gun that is used in other DW maps. I recommend you replace the Portal Gun in your map currently with the Portal Gun found in other DW Monster Mash maps. The version in DW maps already has some optimization done on it so that it doesn't take up as many server resources rendering the portal graphics and can only be picked up once (but dropped). It should be very easy to add the DW Portal Gun to your map, open up one of the maps that Azmodan mentioned earlier ->
The meshes in Mylevel.usx should be put inside of the level's mylevel package, not inside of a static mesh package called Mylevel. If you need help on figuring out how to do that let me know.
-You start out in a small room that's exited by a teleporter. Unfortunately while this is a neat concept, it doesn't work in Invasion. Monsters use Playerstarts to determine starting locations, and you will have every single monster spawning inside of this room initially. (There is a tool on Monster Mash that moves monsters, but I don't think it's a good idea to rely entirely on it.). You should make this a normal door and simply add playerstarts throughout the level. (I didn't check to see if there are pathnodes but you need pathnodes throughout the level too.)
The first main area is a set of rooms including the start location lift, a room, and a room into what looks like an outdoor-ish area.
-The outdoorish area is a little strange ... Is it supposed to be outdoors? Or is it supposed to be some kind of planetarium room?
If the former, then I can help you setting up a skybox for it. I noticed it is currently a star texture applied to a wall, not a true skybox.
-There's an interior section that you can go inside in the planetarium area that I'm not sure what the purpose is ... Just a hiding spot for players? It doesn't seem otherwise connected to the level aside from a small staircase that's probably too small for any monsters to appear there.
- Does the button in the planetarium do anything? I really liked the nice touch where the lights light up when you hit the button, by the way. Good attention to detail there.
Overall this area seems fine although I get much more of a Portal vibe from the interior white/grey tiled rooms than the planetarium area. (I haven't seen any area really like that in Portal 2, although I admit I haven't finished it yet.)
Moving on to the second main area, it's reached by traversing a long angled corridor.
-While I was walking through this corridor I got stuck on an invisible wall (possibly a BSP error) and had to use the ghost cheat to proceed forward. I think I understand why you have this corridor here but honestly it took me a good 30s-1m to walk from one part to another. I would rethink this idea, and either make it a much shorter corridor (or small connecting room), or find some other way to connect these two areas (such as using a set of lifts).
At the end of the long corridor you enter into the second large area in this map, a large chamber with an Aperture Science logo and some turrets and other things in it.
-In this chamber there's a pool of water that you can fall into, but are unable to get out of unless you use your translocator. Personally I don't like that and I would raise up the water so you can get out of there without having to translocate.
-There's also another area where players can get stuck at the back of this larger room, up the ramp, near where the Portal Gun is located. The raised up tiles present a place where a player can fall down and be unable to escape without a translocator. I'd put a jump pad in here so players or small monsters don't get stuck.
Overall pretty good. The other issue I wanted to bring up is you are not using the Portal Gun that is used in other DW maps. I recommend you replace the Portal Gun in your map currently with the Portal Gun found in other DW Monster Mash maps. The version in DW maps already has some optimization done on it so that it doesn't take up as many server resources rendering the portal graphics and can only be picked up once (but dropped). It should be very easy to add the DW Portal Gun to your map, open up one of the maps that Azmodan mentioned earlier ->
Click on and then Copy the Portal Gun Single Pickup actor in one of these maps. Then load your level in the editor. Once you've loaded your level, right click and Edit->Paste where you'd like the Portal Gun pickup to appear.Aren't all portal guns on the MM Servers blue? "Bud" has one, "Nightwolfs Almost Contained" has one, "Tanked" has one and "Nightwolfs Testing Facility" has one too. There are some other maps that have one but i can't recall their names from my memory alone.