Mini-Mod Mondays

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Shep
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Re: Mini-Mod Mondays

Post by Shep »

Must play... but school is coming in an hour... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Oh, a Raptor got 'em!

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Re: Mini-Mod Mondays

Post by TheIdiot »

Sweet! I'll give the level a playtrough later today. The screenshot looks quite nice, and I'm loving the ground textures.
Shep wrote:Must play... but school is coming in an hour... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Woah, you start school in August? Awfully early! Our public schools all start the second week of September and college begins the first week. For some reason I always thought most places in North America started in September...
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Re: Mini-Mod Mondays

Post by Shep »

Perhaps it is just different times of getting out. Either way I think most school have the same time of school days including the breaks for christmas and all that jazz.
Oh, a Raptor got 'em!

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Re: Mini-Mod Mondays

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Shep wrote:Perhaps it is just different times of getting out. Either way I think most school have the same time of school days including the breaks for christmas and all that jazz.
Hmm, well, most of our schools finish in early June, but it's been pushed back recently. However, my upcoming college year only runs from September to April.

ANYWAY! I gave your level a playthrough, Drac, and I have to say that I really liked some parts of this level and really disliked others. I overall enjoyed it more than disliked it, but there are a couple of problems that hold it back that I'll mention in the review. :) Be warned, this one is long!
Spoiler: show
"MOUNTAIN PATH" (MP)
by Draconisaurus


As the level starts, I find myself on a very pleasant beach with a misty mountain visible ahead. The very first thing that I noticed was the use of an actual CWaterEntity as the ocean, which - while it does look nice - is definitely something that I would hold back on if I were you as I find that large CWaterEntities tend to make levels unstable in both ATX and CE. I also noticed some cool details on the beach that seemed to imply the backstory of our player character, who I was happy to see was using the Khaled player model! Hooray for new player models! :D
I proceeded off the beach up a long winding staircase and admired the scenery. This entire level looks great, and the new terrain and choice of objects are excellent, though I do have to say that I'm not too fond of using the TC~Isle cloud objects close to the path as they look really obviously 2D when you do this. The environment quite reminds me of my own Beach HD level actually...might even use some of them to replace the placeholder textures, and your grass texture might look good for the Plains. :wink: I passed a small picnic area which was quite pleasant (reminded me of some of the parks on the shore of Lake Ontario) and began my trek up the woody hillside. The first landmark I passed as a ruined set of foundations - always a nice sight - as well as a lone wild boar. Always glad to see some non-dinosaur CAnimals in Tres, even if they're re-used assets.
Now, this is where I began to have problems with the level. There is a LOT of walking in this level between locations, and, while it's fine to do this once or twice to perhaps build a sense of wonder or show off some nice environments, it does eventually get out of hand in this level. I feel like there definitely should have been some sort of challenge along the way, such as some simply rock climbing puzzles or unique scenery, which would have eliminated a majority of my complaints with this level. I was okay with the first wilderness trek, but it did become tiresome quickly.
A bit further up the mountainside, I discovered a small shack with, interestingly, some of those unused Lincoln Logs outside of it. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a way inside, so I pressed onward. (Something I missed was a neat little wellhead just off the path from the shack, which I discovered in TresEd later). A bit further up the hill, the road got quite rough and began to navigate around a nice, if somewhat untextured, ravine. Crossing a broken bridge, I passed a neat little camp site (found a glitch - the fire has no opacity!), where I stopped both inside the game and outside in order to eat dinner :D .
Upon my return, I proceeded around the ravine and continued uphill through a rather empty area of jungle, heading straight for the massive spire of the mountain when suddenly I noticed something - this level seems to be an edit of Ascent 2! A very, very well disguised edit, at that, but the mountain road I began to follow to the top of "Definitely-Not-Mount-Watson" gave it away for good. I was sort of let down at this, but will not penalize you for doing this as I think you took something else and made it your own well enough.
Further up the mountain, I came to a dirt road which went through a somewhat difficult to navigate switchback road (difficult in a good way!) and proceeded further along. About halfway up, I came to a small shack within which I found some sort of schematics relating to...Stargate..? Either way, it was interesting (really broke up the monotony of retail Ascent 2), and I proceeded on. And on...and on..."This EVENTUALLY has to go somewhere!" I said aloud as the road did begin to get quite dull and teidous. I met another boar a bit of a ways up, but this ascent section was rather empty and monotonous. That is, until I reached the end where the lift would usually be and found myself at a dead end for about five seconds until I found perhaps the longest, most conveniently-grown vine on the planet and ascended it at breakneck speed...dying twice in the process, unfortunately. And upon reaching the top, I climbed back to solid ground and saw before me a lone building, slightly edited from the JPDS HRS Admin building (one of my favorites!). I stepped forward toward it, threw open the front doors and BAM, the end! :| A little disappointed that I didn't get to see what was inside, I re-loaded my save and went around to the back door...I know your tricks, Draco! I headed inside through the side door and was able to explore the inside, discovering some neat new paintings (though one had a watermark on it), passing by a suspicious blocked-off door, looking at a nice re-texture of the already nice island map, and finding...a crate of "Spider Cider"? I drank the bottle and immediately sprinted back into the hallway expecting you-know-what to happen, but unfortunately it did not. :? Ah well, one day that Admin building-related thing will happen! With nothing else to find, I headed to the front door to end the quite long level.
So ultimately, I this level had be sort of divided. The locations to discover in-between the long, empty treks were great, but it did get quite boring ascending the mountain with no action or real difficulty to be had in this area. I enjoyed the exploration of this level, but was let down by the gameplay.

Map Design: 5.5/10 - Lots of great design and looks in this level and some truly sexy terrain textures were great to see. The places to see made me motivated to push forward, though some of these empty spaces did feel a bit too long and empty. The re-use of Ascent 2's mountain section did feel a little bit cheap to me, though (no points deducted for that).
Gameplay: 4/10 - While there is quite a bit of jumping-related gameplay and a challenging section of path, there isn't a whole lot of interesting gameplay in this level, largely due to the amount of empty space between puzzle sections. I do also appreciate that you tried to do something without any dinosaurs at all.
Story: 4/10 - The initial idea of a guy rowing to the mountain was neat, and the implications in the final building are actually quite intriguing. However, I do feel that perhaps more relating to that final building could have been spread throughout the level as sort of a foreshadowing of what was to come at the end.
Creativity: 7/10 - The new terrain really did me in as it looks awesome, and the use of assets was almost top-notch. The final building was also a really neat decision and the fact that the level is mostly unrecognizable as AS1 is quite an achievement. Additionally, the whole idea of a Trespasser level WITHOUT dinosaurs is something unique in its own right; however, I feel that the lack of enemies did hurt the level a bit. I also felt that the setting was quite realistic due to the way everything was designed.

OVERALL: 5/10
"Welcome...to really quite normal island!"

(Also, in case you're wondering where this "overall" score comes from, I just take the four numbers I gave to the other categories and divide them by four.)
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Re: Mini-Mod Mondays

Post by Draconisaurus »

Thanks for the review, TI, as always 8)

I have no shame in using Tres-sourced terrain for new levels. To me it is as an exploration of Trespasser elements, giving new life to old things and seeing what new places they can be taken to.

I have to agree that there ought to have been more to break up the path to the top, but not too much more. "Welcome...to really quite normal island!" is fairly accurate to the creation, and it was meant to be as such, but yes. I was adamant and successful in not including dinosaurs or InGen in the final product... The idea is a sort of Tres level in the real world. I would def. have put more locations around if given more time.

Theeee way that the final building acted for you is a mystery to me. The endgame trigger does not fire unless all 6 room-location triggers have fired... which is only supposed to happen if.. you enter those rooms/triggers. And erm... The side doors are both locked/frozen. :? I quite don't understand what happened. @_@
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Re: Mini-Mod Mondays

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Theeee way that the final building acted for you is a mystery to me. The endgame trigger does not fire unless all 6 room-location triggers have fired... which is only supposed to happen if.. you enter those rooms/triggers. And erm... The side doors are both locked/frozen. :? I quite don't understand what happened. @_@
That IS very strange as I just checked again and the side doors opened, but so did the front ones this time! And the endgame trigger worked correctly this time, but upon restarting, it ended right as I walked inside. :sick: I also checked in TresEd to see if the values were fine and they all checked out. I wonder what happened? Tres has been acting weird for me recently though, not playing voiceovers and some triggers not working. I must have messed something up in the CE options.
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Re: Mini-Mod Mondays

Post by Draconisaurus »

Next mini-mod... This one rather stands alone I think. Lots of sand... Lots of silveriness... Lots of... Well go find out.

Silver Shore

https://app.box.com/s/aym1rmax0ez3nmsoaaowwyq756uuheuj
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Re: Mini-Mod Mondays

Post by TheIdiot »

Woah. Okay. Will definitely give this a go. Ghost trees? :P

EDIT: Played through it, here's my (hopefully shorter) review!
Spoiler: show
The level starts out atop a hill, where I grabbed a sledgehammer and a P90 SMG before moving downhill...into a forest of ghost trees? Great, I think, now Anne's in purgatory too! :P Thought this was really cool, but there wasn't much else in the looks department - the single sand texture got old really fast. Proceeding through the woods, I realized that this was a totally different Industrial Jungle, which is okay with me, but felt a little bit cheap considering you used a retail terrain last time.
Killing an Albertosaurus and a Raptor, I proceeded down the riverbed when suddenly BAM! Something started shooting at me! I raced for cover and peeked up to see...a Raptor with some form of machine-gun barrel thing on its back, and it actually was shooting at me! I quickly blew him away, which felt very satisfying and fresh, as well as quite hilarious.
Passing (and killing) another Raptor-turret as well as a parasaur, I made it to the end of the streambed (grabbing crowbar to replace my P90 along the way) and found myself at a large lake, which, oddly, I was able to walk on. Additionally in this area was a power generator of some kind that was emitting sparks - a nice touch. Not sure if this is intentional, but standing on the surface of the water feels kind of strange...would rather you just put a big physics object a bit underneath to make it appear as if you are swimming. I swam out to a small island, upon which sat...a portapotty? Awestruck, I stepped forward to find myself taken to the endgame, which was a little disappointing after the somewhat monotonous trek with little to see (aside from badass Raptor-Terminators). 8)
My overall thoughts on this level are that the concept is super creative and strange in every way (reminded me a lot of K~OS), but the experience was sort of let down by weak gameplay and exploration.

The verdict:
Map Design: 2.5/10 - Not really a whole lot going on map-wise, and the use of IJ with little difference from retail doesn't really help much. I also didn't find any really neat locations to explore on my journey, and the dead ends I went to had little of value.
Gameplay: 5/10 - The ghost trees made it a bit of a challenge to maneuver when fighting enemies, which was unique, but aside form that the only thing I found really great were the special Raptors, which just straight up made my day, so bonus points for the new, unique challenge in there (even if they aren't the most dangerous enemies).
Story: 4/10 - I feel like there was more to this story than meets the eye. It's almost as if I were in Stegoland, except a more drab, sinister place than that. I was able to infer my own story, but would still like to see a few hints as to what is going on here.
Creativity: 8.5/10 - This is just great stuff. The Raptors alone are worth half a perfect score, and the weird trees and portapotty teleporter were quite fascinating. However, would have liked to see a bit more detail on the terrain as well as perhaps something more than just an almost exact retail IJ.

OVERALL: 5/10
"When I was little, I dreamed of a time when the entire world was covered by a desert ghost forest. Machine-gun armed dinosaurs stalked in the gray nothingness, among silent, transparent swamptreejh's, pelapalms and v-type instances." :P
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Re: Mini-Mod Mondays

Post by Draconisaurus »

Glad ye liked it 8)
Spoiler: show
TheIdiot wrote:The level starts out atop a hill, where I grabbed a sledgehammer and a P90 SMG before moving downhill...into a forest of ghost trees? Great, I think, now Anne's in purgatory too! :P Thought this was really cool, but there wasn't much else in the looks department - the single sand texture got old really fast. Proceeding through the woods, I realized that this was a totally different Industrial Jungle, which is okay with me, but felt a little bit cheap considering you used a retail terrain last time.
This level was interesting in a number of ways... Sort of in an odd mood while I made it. Didn't feel like going into quite too much development detail except on a few elements. The pure-sand-terrain.. I kept as an emotional never-ending-sand-thing. The use of a retail terrain again, I might rather have waited for for another time, but did so regardless.
Killing an Albertosaurus and a Raptor, I proceeded down the riverbed when suddenly BAM! Something started shooting at me! I raced for cover and peeked up to see...a Raptor with some form of machine-gun barrel thing on its back, and it actually was shooting at me! I quickly blew him away, which felt very satisfying and fresh, as well as quite hilarious.
Definitely the feature new-thing for this level... It's like, why haven't we thought of this before? The fire-gun actiontype has been sitting around for ages (I am quite sure Big Red created it in answer to my request to use it for guns at the EA in JPDS) and we already have enemies walking around who could be wielding them.
I especially like the raptor shooting up the para :lol:
Not sure if this is intentional, but standing on the surface of the water feels kind of strange...would rather you just put a big physics object a bit underneath to make it appear as if you are swimming.
Aha I.. didn't think about that for some reason x_X
I swam out to a small island, upon which sat...a portapotty? Awestruck, I stepped forward to find myself taken to the endgame, which was a little disappointing after the somewhat monotonous trek with little to see (aside from badass Raptor-Terminators). 8)
:lol: Raptor-Terminators... That is now their official name 8)
The ghost trees made it a bit of a challenge to maneuver when fighting enemies, which was unique,
I don't quite understand? How did the trees affect maneuverability?
but aside form that the only thing I found really great were the special Raptors, which just straight up made my day, so bonus points for the new, unique challenge in there (even if they aren't the most dangerous enemies).
What in your opinion made them not-dangerous? They seem more dangerous than normal raptors, at least..
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Re: Mini-Mod Mondays

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Definitely the feature new-thing for this level... It's like, why haven't we thought of this before? The fire-gun actiontype has been sitting around for ages (I am quite sure Big Red created it in answer to my request to use it for guns at the EA in JPDS) and we already have enemies walking around who could be wielding them.
Yeah, I've wondered that for a long time, too. I've just never been able to come up with a reason to use this action aside from a quick test where hitting a gun against something hard enough caused it to misfire. Will definitely be handy if we ever get humans working...
I especially like the raptor shooting up the para :lol:
Agh! This didn't happen in my playthrough, he went right after me.
I don't quite understand? How did the trees affect maneuverability?
They were somewhat hard to see. I found that quite interesting and fun though.
but aside form that the only thing I found really great were the special Raptors, which just straight up made my day, so bonus points for the new, unique challenge in there (even if they aren't the most dangerous enemies).
What in your opinion made them not-dangerous? They seem more dangerous than normal raptors, at least..
They just didn't hit me at all...they aren't particularly good at aiming. I was sniping them before they got a chance to come at me as well.
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Re: Mini-Mod Mondays

Post by Draconisaurus »

Hmmm well, I suppose if you treat them as if they're going to aim at and kill you, they might seem weaker. Practically of course, they are however dangerous normal raptors are + a spray of gunfire wherever it looks..
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Re: Mini-Mod Mondays

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Draconisaurus wrote:Hmmm well, I suppose if you treat them as if they're going to aim at and kill you, they might seem weaker. Practically of course, they are however dangerous normal raptors are + a spray of gunfire wherever it looks..
I guess the trick is just to destroy them before they get a chance to come at you then. Come to think of it, I'd hate to be caught on an open field with them coming after me. That would be the place where their full deadly potential is realized.
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Re: Mini-Mod Mondays

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TheIdiot wrote:Come to think of it, I'd hate to be caught on an open field with them coming after me. That would be the place where their full deadly potential is realized.
Hmmm perhaps we should do that sometime...
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Re: Mini-Mod Mondays

Post by Deagles4life »

I love this MMM idea!
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Re: Mini-Mod Mondays

Post by Rebel »

Drac, how in the hell did you create that level in 5 days? I like
the concept of a mountain pass. Noticed our little piggy there
too, and what a nice little campfire burning along. I'll I needed
was a beer or two, would have stayed longer. :mrgreen:
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