Basically, you're not. Cold start, sure; no deaths wasn't part of the plan though. It's probably possible even on Insane if you're very good and very persistent, but the direction for AF was simply "challenging in co-op but beatable". We didn't have a consistent measuring stick for what that meant. It wasn't until I was working on Anthology that I started being methodical about encounter design.
Though that's not to say that AF was totally random. Level 1 was intentionally supposed to be an only-moderately-difficult introduction to the set, and the real nastiness would hit you in level 2. And if I recall correctly I wanted level 4 to be a bit of a space to breathe as well, since the previous two were just painful. After that all bets were off.
I don't recall that being expressly intentional, i.e. we didn't set out to make a difficulty peak that early on. It was more a side-effect of Gauss coming in combined with that we didn't do much to ramp up the difficulty in response to the Gauss. There are a few ways to do that, but the only one I particularly like is controlling the ammo supply. Ambushes start to feel cheap and lazy if you use them too much, and custom robots wasn't something we wanted everywhere.AlexanderBorisov wrote: ↑Mon Jan 22, 2018 1:33 pm To Sirius :
Ok then I will assume I did a decent job with AF. I mainly wanted to ask why it was designed that a bit "anti-climactic" way - L2, 3 being very diffucult, and for example L 14 and L15 not too hard... Was there any idea behind the difficulty progression and level order here?
Pick up all the weapons you can, and don't miss (much).AlexanderBorisov wrote: ↑Mon Jan 22, 2018 1:33 pmon L3 getting to the energy center is plain impossible on cold start - how you are supposed to fight those dangerous enemies with red lasers?
No, it's not exactly fair.
Agreed. That was part of the mission that was unquestionably a mistake. A level like that should be paired with a lower-difficulty boss.AlexanderBorisov wrote: ↑Mon Jan 22, 2018 1:33 pmMore on cold starts, L12 cannot be coldstarted at all on Insane, I believe. You simply don't have enough missiles to kill the boss.
Level 11 I recall being tricky and I had to just dash through fire at the start room, but it wasn't impossible. Once you got a couple guns you could get a foothold and the rest of the level was less scary. It was probably easier in co-op, since the start rooms were split and each player would draw the robots' attention away from the other.
. But for levels like 5,7 it is inevitable - if you have a difficult boss at the end of one hour long and very hard level, it is plain unfair on no death no save mode. At least I found the way to beat L5 boss without too many reloads and rather quickly, with L7 only thing I found is to nuke it with all my smart mines. Does not work often but it is the only way to beat it without save-scumming or deaths. On L2, should be easy to fix to make it playable no save - replace 6 cloaked drillers in boss room with a couple of usual ones, cut boss HP by 1000, and you are done! L3 is a different beast, of course, but if the player was given Vulcan and quads right at the beginning, and a pack of guided missiles and couple smarts along the level, things should be fine. Maybe remove those seekers near the ammo rack that shoot you every time you move in the long corridor, and remove 1 seeker of 3 near the boss door. And do smth with that matcens near the energy center (impossible to clear if it spawns a lot of drillers). Just my thoughts, I don't mean it should be really changed...
And it's well-credited too, so you know what the source is! No hunting around necessary.
