DescentBB

Alter-Fox wrote: ↑Sat Feb 02, 2019 5:19 pm I seem to recall level 4 of D2 and level 7 of Vertigo introducing new bots, so that is not unheard of.

Right! Forgot about that completely. But yeah, your suggestion was nice! I'd pass on compact lifters though and go for mediums + diamond claws, since the first at least were canonically found in Jupiter mines. I might have seen a few Secondary Lifters in level 14 of Descent too. I'd keep compact lifters to levels that didn't have much of an identity as far as melee robots were concerned, such as Neptune and Pluto. Keep in mind that we'll also have to introduce the Fiddler, though that robot feels so redundant with the Diamond Claw in the first place that I don't really have much of an idea why it was even made (except to show off what advanced models people had learned to make )

My point was to make at least one place that can kill the player in L5, like that 4 Lou guard hall earlier. Not sure you can achieve it with cloaked hulks, but if you don't want to use Lou guards, adding a few cloaked hulks can help. Although they can work in blue key area and the yellow one, I don't think they will provide any kind of challenge in that large hall near the red key. To me it looks that Lou guards were better choice in L5, even coloristically. About the next level, yes, if you want gradual progression you need to introduce new bots sparingly. All mentioned alternatives are good, Fox, Canary, I'd also add flash modulas. Probably leave BPERs for later (although they work well with ITSCs). Exact choice depends on the level and it's color scheme a lot. BTW D2 was already starting to introduce Sidearms in L5... And did it in a bit annoying way as far as I remember.

AlexanderBorisov wrote: ↑Sun Feb 03, 2019 5:31 am My point was to make at least one place that can kill the player in L5, like that 4 Lou guard hall earlier. Not sure you can achieve it with cloaked hulks, but if you don't want to use Lou guards, adding a few cloaked hulks can help. Although they can work in blue key area and the yellow one, I don't think they will provide any kind of challenge in that large hall near the red key. To me it looks that Lou guards were better choice in L5, even coloristically. About the next level, yes, if you want gradual progression you need to introduce new bots sparingly. All mentioned alternatives are good, Fox, Canary, I'd also add flash modulas. Probably leave BPERs for later (although they work well with ITSCs). Exact choice depends on the level and it's color scheme a lot. BTW D2 was already starting to introduce Sidearms in L5... And did it in a bit annoying way as far as I remember.

We're not putting in any bots that can drop D2 munitions such as flash missiles until the end of the Solar System, so we'll have to build the difficulty in other ways.

As for Lou Guards - the thing is that someone who's played more D1 than D2 will get a false idea of how threatening they really are. Descent 2 both siginificantly reduced the damage its homing missiles do and their tracking ability (acquisition cone reduced to 20 degrees from 40, though same apparently goes for player homers). This makes Lous a trifle to dispatch compared to D1's Super Hulks. However, in D1,5 we've rectified at least one of these problems by bringing back the full power of both Concs and Homers for the robots. This means a single salvo from a Spider will end you, same goes for green Platform bots and even Medium Hulks. Even ITSC's are going to be a threat to be reckoned with now, not to mention the homing missile bots. Avoiding the homing missiles will still be easier (and quite frankly for good reason, since in D1 you plain stood no chance facing a Super Hulk openly), but mistakes will still be punished severely. For that reason it's probably OK to hold off on the Lous/Super Hulks until level 10 and explore other options in the meantime. Cloaked Hulks are a nice compromise.

Xfing wrote: ↑Sat Feb 02, 2019 5:46 pm ...though that robot feels so redundant with the Diamond Claw in the first place that I don't really have much of an idea why it was even made (except to show off what advanced models people had learned to make )

Hehehe probably that.
But Fiddler has such a distinctive appearance it doesn't need to show up too early or often to get its point across.

Thing about Compact Lifter is it wasn't given much of an identity in the Vertigo Series the way the D2 bots and most of the other Vertigo bots were. And it's a fairly threatening melee bot in its own right -- I'd like to see it given that identity here in some way. Not necessarily in level 6 but it has the potential to be more than the "all purpose melee bot with no identity". I'm sure we can come up with some sort of loose theme to give it a little personality.
You know, like the way in D1 advanced lifter was used as a sort of all-purpose melee bot in small numbers, except on mars and saturn (well 16 and 17, anyway) where it was very abundant. Or like how the drillers and heavy drillers seemed particularly nasty on the Uranus moons.

Hey, Dan Wentz just posted an updated mix of the D2 level 1 track on his soundcloud. Doesn't completely follow the original line-for-line but I kinda think that's for the better.
I know it's not strictly relevant but iirc we were still struggling a bit to figure out where to place that song. Maybe this will shake loose some ideas.

Alter-Fox wrote: ↑Tue Feb 05, 2019 9:15 pm Hey, Dan Wentz just posted an updated mix of the D2 level 1 track on his soundcloud. Doesn't completely follow the original line-for-line but I kinda think that's for the better.
I know it's not strictly relevant but iirc we were still struggling a bit to figure out where to place that song. Maybe this will shake loose some ideas.

Well there are two places for this song in the mission, right? Wasn't one of them level 19?

Ah, you're right about that one. I kept thinking that one was going to use D1 level 4 or 19 cause of the circular motif.

So I've given the demo a full run-through on both Ace and Insane, and it's pretty solid. Thoughts per level so far, to be taken with a grain of salt:

Level 1: There is more to explore than you might expect, but it gets the job done as a fairly quick and easy opener. Placement is great, and my only suggestion would be to add a robot behind the first red door, most likely at the end of the grated hallway. It does feel like the exit's pretty far from the reactor for the first level, but at least it's doable on Insane (if you know how to trichord, that is). Relatively simple and yet stands out in its own way, which is great.

Level 2: It was a nice touch to have a Headlight Boost available already, as just a hint of D2 elements without upsetting the difficulty balance. I was also questioning that long dead end at first, but it made more sense to me after I passed it up on the second play. Having all those lifters in the red key room was particularly tricky for me on Insane. Not sure if anyone else found that too difficult, though.

Level 3: Probably my favorite of the early levels, but somehow there's not much to comment on aside from a very sharp angle here or there. The little hint of Vertigo with the conveyor belt-like floor strip was a nice touch, and having the Canary as one of the tougher bots was a great choice since they're fairly average on speed, durability and firepower. And you know how I wish Vertigo had given them more appearances, after all...

Level 4: Before touching on the level difficulty, I'm wondering if this one-unit-deep cube should be adjusted. You got the Smelter 2 to work this early on without being too nasty, so that's definitely a good thing. I might be wrong about this, but the Supervisor Droid seems to get other bots even more riled up in D2 than in D1. It's a massive difference on higher skill levels, which is why I only placed them in a few levels of Plutonian Shores. It's also worth checking if the double matcen behind yellow door goes from a significant chokepoint to full-on frustration on Insane... If you need to change one of the fly-through triggers so that it only trips once, would that break the D1 motif?

Level 5: In retrospect, I probably should've asked if you were against me moving the exit into the red door area when I built it for you. I actually died in the mine on Insane. The green theme for robots works very well and for the most part, the difficulty feels appropriate, but putting that second Supervisor Droid right next to the Medium Hulks is pretty nasty combo for this early on.


The levels also had some good music choices, with either Level 1 or 4 as my favorite so far. No disrespect meant for Alter-Fox, but I'm just not too keen on vocal-driven music in Descent levels. A little bit of vocals here or there as a sample seems to work, but the full song approach doesn't do it for me personally. They're great tracks otherwise, though.


Not much progress to report on Level 40 just yet, but I did make a couple changes so its layout is a bit more traditional. Also, Xfing, if you're working on placement for the next few levels, let me know if you want me to make any further changes to Level 6. If the conversion is still pending, I can try that too but I might need you to walk me through it.

No worries, I got a few instrumentals of my own later in the campaign, some longer songs that have fewer lyrics and big instrumental sections, and loads and tons of stuff from other people -- trying to strike a good balance (my rule of thumb is "never more than two fully-lyrical songs in a row") so that there's reason for people in your boat to try that OST anyway. Also trying to get a few people in who did soundtracks for well-known level packs in the past. I'm fully aware that the whole lyrical concept could be a bit divisive, that's why I want to do it on a mission where there is another soundtrack available.
And who knows, maybe if you or someone else sticks with it you'll find just one vocal track on a later map that you find really does work. Then I'll have an actual result of this big experiment to analyze.

I was meaning to go through the five levels today and try for some fine tuning on the enemies but I've wound up spending most of my spare time this week working on an Overload project with Sirius, DH, Krusty and Shroudeye to get it finalized in time for the second community DLC. If all goes well I might have some time to fine-tune on friday though.

Didn't find the exit to level 1 too much of a problem. I think I made it in 20 seconds which gives plenty of time for panicking and forgetting which way to go even on insane. And just because we are trying to imitate the progression of the original campaigns to an extent doesn't mean we need to fully introduce our players to the mechanics of a game most of them got introduced to 20+ years ago. Even players coming back to the game after years away will probably play the Parallax campaigns first.
Level 5's exit is a little bit trickier. But I mean, Alex did want there to be some place on that level that could kill even him.
Joking aside, it may not quite be a D2 level 5 but some kind of subtle signposting probably would be a good idea, if we can figure out a way to do it. I got lost and had to try a couple times when I was testing (in Rebirth) too. Would be an even bigger problem for XL players because of the way it handles the automap.

And I will be either taking that second supervisor out or moving it to a different area where it would create a fairer challenge.

Naphtha wrote: ↑Wed Feb 06, 2019 7:10 pm So I've given the demo a full run-through on both Ace and Insane, and it's pretty solid. Thoughts per level so far, to be taken with a grain of salt:

Level 1: There is more to explore than you might expect, but it gets the job done as a fairly quick and easy opener. Placement is great, and my only suggestion would be to add a robot behind the first red door, most likely at the end of the grated hallway. It does feel like the exit's pretty far from the reactor for the first level, but at least it's doable on Insane (if you know how to trichord, that is). Relatively simple and yet stands out in its own way, which is great.

Good call about that additional robot after the red door. Also, I've been meaning to add some meaningless eye candy cubes to this level so that it looks a bit more professional and less rectangular, but I'll do it at my leisure. The exit is far, yes, but there is no opposition to slow you down, so it's not such a big deal.

Level 2: It was a nice touch to have a Headlight Boost available already, as just a hint of D2 elements without upsetting the difficulty balance. I was also questioning that long dead end at first, but it made more sense to me after I passed it up on the second play. Having all those lifters in the red key room was particularly tricky for me on Insane. Not sure if anyone else found that too difficult, though.

Do you mean the hostage cell? If not, probably the "dead end" with the class 2 drones, which as you've probably realized, isn't really a dead end. Or the area where you get the vulcan? Well, Descent 1 did take some detours from the main linear progression of the level too. Plus it looks cool so I believe it can stay.

Level 3: Probably my favorite of the early levels, but somehow there's not much to comment on aside from a very sharp angle here or there. The little hint of Vertigo with the conveyor belt-like floor strip was a nice touch, and having the Canary as one of the tougher bots was a great choice since they're fairly average on speed, durability and firepower. And you know how I wish Vertigo had given them more appearances, after all...

Level 4: Before touching on the level difficulty, I'm wondering if this one-unit-deep cube should be adjusted. [/quote]

Well, it doesn't give any errors in the editor, plus this combination of bright and dark red makes the ceiling look actually quite cool, so I can dig it.

You got the Smelter 2 to work this early on without being too nasty, so that's definitely a good thing. I might be wrong about this, but the Supervisor Droid seems to get other bots even more riled up in D2 than in D1. It's a massive difference on higher skill levels, which is why I only placed them in a few levels of Plutonian Shores.

Yes, because it sets robots to snipe mode apparently, while I don't think that was even a thing in D1. In D1 I believeit just alerted other robots to your attention and made them roam (which could still be a huge problem because of D1's architecture).

It's also worth checking if the double matcen behind yellow door goes from a significant chokepoint to full-on frustration on Insane... If you need to change one of the fly-through triggers so that it only trips once, would that break the D1 motif?

I definitely think that at least that one trigger where you just fly into the little alcove to the left of the matcen to grab some goodies should be removed. And in fact, all others could be set to one-shot, since this is the level that introduces matcens and it shouldn't go all out with them like this. I believe D1 allowed for one-shot matcens, though I'm not sure - but it's definitely not something that would break the motif. I'll take care of it myself.

Level 5: In retrospect, I probably should've asked if you were against me moving the exit into the red door area when I built it for you. I actually died in the mine on Insane. The green theme for robots works very well and for the most part, the difficulty feels appropriate, but putting that second Supervisor Droid right next to the Medium Hulks is pretty nasty combo for this early on.

Maybe not the red chamber, but what about the top of the central hub chamber? It should be about 5-6 seconds quicker to reach than the current location of the exit, which could be changed into something else with no issues. Then again, there is some rather elaborate lighting on that ceiling, so the boss chamber itself works nice too. So far, exits have been pretty distant in all the 5 levels (except maybe 3 and to a lesser extent 2), so making an easy to reach exit would probably be a welcome breather. Then again, racing against the clock to the current exit was also something I found nerve-wracking in just the right way. I loved the tension

And the supervisor was Alter-Fox's idea. It can indeed be nasty, but hey - you've got 2 invulnerabilities there, so I guess it can be excused. These robots are indeed a rare sight to behold, which is unfortunate.

The levels also had some good music choices, with either Level 1 or 4 as my favorite so far. No disrespect meant for Alter-Fox, but I'm just not too keen on vocal-driven music in Descent levels. A little bit of vocals here or there as a sample seems to work, but the full song approach doesn't do it for me personally. They're great tracks otherwise, though.

There must have been some file update then. The last version I have still hasn't any of the custom music - and the previous, level-assigned midis removed. I need to check that out. Would be nice to have a readily available version with the midis too.

Not much progress to report on Level 40 just yet, but I did make a couple changes so its layout is a bit more traditional. Also, Xfing, if you're working on placement for the next few levels, let me know if you want me to make any further changes to Level 6. If the conversion is still pending, I can try that too but I might need you to walk me through it.

Level 6 has been converted for several weeks now, just check out Dropbox and it's there. Haven't started populating it yet.

Alter-Fox wrote: ↑Wed Feb 06, 2019 8:55 pm I was meaning to go through the five levels today and try for some fine tuning on the enemies but I've wound up spending most of my spare time this week working on an Overload project with Sirius, DH, Krusty and Shroudeye to get it finalized in time for the second community DLC. If all goes well I might have some time to fine-tune on friday though.

Didn't find the exit to level 1 too much of a problem. I think I made it in 20 seconds which gives plenty of time for panicking and forgetting which way to go even on insane. And just because we are trying to imitate the progression of the original campaigns to an extent doesn't mean we need to fully introduce our players to the mechanics of a game most of them got introduced to 20+ years ago. Even players coming back to the game after years away will probably play the Parallax campaigns first.
Level 5's exit is a little bit trickier. But I mean, Alex did want there to be some place on that level that could kill even him.

And I will be either taking that second supervisor out or moving it to a different area where it would create a fairer challenge.

About the exit run in L5, I had 5 sec left although I had to look on automap once or twice, and got lost a bit. So I don't find it too long, probably can be done in 15 sec, especially given that countdown starts some time after the boss death score appears. Of course becomes no problem if one will look where exit is in advance and explore the way to it, which I always do for difficult levels. I think you have roughly the same time remaining in L1 at exit door. The supervisor in L5 was quite fun, but I agree that consequences of placing it into the room full of bots can be very random... But not too bad since you have Spreadfire and Vulcan. Don't object it since it is an easy level anyway...

Xfing wrote: ↑Thu Feb 07, 2019 3:25 am
There must have been some file update then. The last version I have still hasn't any of the custom music - and the previous, level-assigned midis removed. I need to check that out. Would be nice to have a readily available version with the midis too.

No there wasn't, I haven't had time (and I would do the midis first in any case, they're much easier to get uploaded while I work on the rest). I think I gave Naptha access to the Google Drive folder some time back though, so he might have got them manually from there.
Both D1 and D2 start ramping up the distance and navigational challenge of getting to the exit fairly early in the game. Vertigo Series begins with at least three exit runs that are deliberately kind of confusing. I don't necessarily think that our early exit runs need to be easy either. If it was a harder boss I might think otherwise.

I feel like it would be frustrating to beat the first real milestone only to die seconds later and be unable to reclaim anything. Maybe later bosses could have distant exits, but I feel like the exit of the first boss should be relatively close.

Each main mission had a close exit on the first boss. D2L4 was arguably the trickiest to reach; even then it was still right next to the arena.

I'd agree with you if it was a tougher boss like D1 l7, but apart from on the very highest difficulty levels Red Fatty is not much harder than a regular reactor core in D2 CS -- and with the invulns and cloaks given to you in that area here, he's arguably easier.

Wait, there's a demo of d1.5 available? Didn't knew about that.
Will download it from the DropBox to play it a bit

Made some slight mods to the HOG.

Level 1: Added some geometric eye candy in the main room. It was too rectangular and blocky. Added that 1 robot after the red door as per Naphtha's suggestion
Level 4: Removed the matcen trigger in the area beyond the blue door for when you get into the small alcove for the goodies. That was just brutal and completely needless. The other triggers were already one-shot for that matcen, so I didn't need to change those.

It's good practice in D2 to make matcen triggers one-shot unless you specifically want it to activate infinitely on Insane. If you want more from it you can always add more triggers -- and that's probably the best way to imitate the D1 behaviour.

I PM'd you a story idea I had after reading a thread about why Dravis tried to kill the MD.

Had a bit of a burst of inspiration for Orcus Ammonia Mine, and this came of it.


Should I send it in? (Around half of it is comprised of something similar to the four images before the last one)

The first one reminds me of the beginning of D1 lvl5

Yeah, sorry for the lack of updates recently, work has kinda been taking away my will to live

I've been slowly working on populating level 6, after which it'll be added to the demo. What makes me a bit sad is that some of the best designers who I expected more stuff from have gone AWOL. But oh well, we'll have to carry on without them I suppose

I'll let you know when level 6 is populated, after which we'll get to testing it and making sure the difficulty is OK. I'm not sure if it's time to introduce the Drillers yet, but that moment is definitely coming soon (Vulcan cannons need to be slightly more available and stationary pickups no longer cut it).

I think some of us (me included!) have been corrupted and co-opted by Overload's map editor especially while Revival ran the first DLC contest last year.

Alter-Fox wrote: ↑Mon Apr 15, 2019 10:11 am I think some of us (me included!) have been corrupted and co-opted by Overload's map editor especially while Revival ran the first DLC contest last year.

Yeah, that's to be expected I guess :p good thing Revival are keeping the community active, even though they won't be making an official expansion.

I'm not seeing any objections.

Orcus Ammonia Mine

It initially started as inspired by doing D1L5 better (the 5-door room is a nod to that), though I wound up doing some other things with that concept that cut tunnelage from 80-90% to 50% of the level. Notable are a lack of dead ends (unless you count the hostage cell) and an increase in landmarks.

BTW, I'm seeing a bit of a problem with progressing the weapon inclusion in the Solar System portion. I've been wanting to hold off with smarts and plasma until after the 2nd boss level, but that leaves us stuck with the pre-D1L8 loadouts right until after Varuna. Sure enough, having to make do with limited munitions is a cool thing, but it's getting somewhat tempting to introduce at least flash missiles. Then again, holding off on those would immediately mean a huge variety spike once the Zeta Aquilae levels are reached. Oh well, guess it is possible to very slowly add stuff and stick to the original vision, it's just going to be a bit tricky to do. Still, if done right, the players will wait in anticipation until the next weapon comes while enjoying what they've got in front of them, so yeah.

As for LW's Orcus level, I'll try to check it out today, but I don't want to make the number of your contributions overwhelming so that other designers have a shot too, as you very well know.

Well I'll be - this level is actually really good. Shame about the level 5 reference being so strong, but overall it's like, really good. Easily your best Solar System submission.

Pros:
- Very large size
- Excellent texturing
- Great geometry
- Properly and carefully done conversion, perfect integration of D1 assets
- Strong D1 campaign feel
- Alright population requiring only minor changes, powerups a bit sparse compared to the amounts of resistance tho. One time I'm actually lowkey grateful for not having to do it myself

Cons:
- Red Fatty Jrs are off-limits at this point in the mission, even if set not to drop any weapons. We don't put in robots while disabling their drops, so as to improve believability
- The key hunting scheme is rather wonky in this mine - you get the yellow key earlier than the blue one, and the blue one only serves to gain access to the red door, this could be reversed and nothing of value would be lost really
- The red door cache is a bit unorthodox, this could easily be changed to a door that opens via a trigger puzzle

Even though we have an overrepresentation of your levels, this one is actually really good (better than my own definitely), so I'd be quite inclined to take it. I'll hold off on that until some of the others also take a look and voice their opinions. I'm particularly interested in the opinions of Alter-Fox and if possible, Naphtha and Sirius. But yeah, the chances are rather high this time I think

I see your point about the RFJ. I felt like a big robot was needed there, and there's nothing to stop Sidearm spawn from dropping flash missiles (and the Fusion Hulk is definitely off limits ); that only left one big robot unless there's one I'm not thinking of.
The keys were an attempt at Io's scheme but with my own twist on it (since Io already had the yellow key grant you access to the red door while the blue key grants access to another key). Either way you only get the yellow key first if you go back from the start (assuming you find each tunnel system's offshoot area the first time you enter it); you get blue first if you go forward from the start.
The red cache was a reference to D1L7's extra blue area.

I think I might stick to D1 design now since it allows me to spread my cube usage than some previous attempts (which had pockets of poor quality due to a lack of available segments), although I do prefer some of the larger areas of later games (which tend to hog too many segments to make the rest of the level the same quality).

Why so many references though? Well alright, it's hard to escape making them at all, but I don't think deliberate effort should be made to make them.

BTW right now that the roster's big, what we need are dark areas. Like those from D1's secret levels. Those were some of D1's most memorable moments. The huge dark room in S1 for example. Or the drillers in the distance in S2. That was really cool, all you could see were their spikes in the darkness. It didn't make difficult gameplay at all, but it sure did make atmosphere. Another level with generally low lighting and long, wide tunnels would be nice to have, even though N'Tala definitely does fulfill that function to a degree. We're probably good on lab-textured levels right now and the variety even in the Solar System portion itself is looking quite good already. With the last several levels that need to be made, it'd be nice to focus on the themes and texture setups that I've suggested in the list, as we are still kinda missing those.

Had an idea now. The Plasma Cannon could come a few levels after the quads come, say on level 9, and smarts could come after the second boss. That would still leave us with 4 or 5 levels with a strictly D1 arsenal minus Fusion and Megas, but we could spam smarts to compensate for that. Ha.

There is already a plasma in a secret on level 10 in anticipation of this idea.
I clearly know you too well.

For the red cache - what if it simply opened when you got the red key rather than it being a key door?

LightWolf wrote: ↑Sat Apr 20, 2019 12:45 pm For the red cache - what if it simply opened when you got the red key rather than it being a key door?

I don't think that would be intuitive at all. If it's marked as a red door, it stands to reason what must be done to open it. If it were to be trigger dependent, it would be a good idea to make the trigger at least a little bit obvious. And in D1 we don't have switches etc, so most of the elaborate puzzles rely on fly-through triggers. You could make one in some nearby place that opens that door.

I think I have an idea taking advantage of how the doors to get there in the first place open.

Edit: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mlhUhC ... sp=sharing
You should find the solution relatively quickly. I also swapped out the RFJs with spiders, though IMO there should still be big robots there.

So like I said - I kinda like the level, what do you guys think?

I only have internet on my phone right now, it will be a little while before I have time or ability to test.

Ok then, we'll have to keep it pending until I get some feedback

Can't you download it on your phone and transfer it to your computer?

I have a difficult time accessing dropbox through a phone connection and I don't have unlimited data.
Plus I'm spending lots of time at work.

You get to a stable computer yet?

Yes, but still working evenings at the hospital.
I should have a few days off next week.