Version 1.1

Here is one of my first levels i made. please test it and notify me of any bugs.Thanks.

filnal version is located on the addons page.

This post has been edited by Dogbert : 17 January 2007 - 05:47 PM

If you'd like, you can upload this to the official addon page and the SF mods will test it personally.

I'll do that as soon as i can get a Read me and some positive feedback.

Best Time: 31 seconds. There are a couple of bushes near the boss that you can destroy to go out of bounds and skip to the goal. You also need some more graph squares next to the boss entrance. Lots of borkage there.

Thanks.I Thought i fixed those. Anyway fixed version is up.

Still haven't added tiles I'll worry aboult the minor things later

Feedback time!
Overall, it's a nice level, and your main boss is a very interesting challenge (perhaps a bit too deadly as-is, but this will change when saving becomes possible). Your mixture of Factory and Forest is quite nice, although it might be better if the forest was a bit more "intrusive", rather than simply replacing bits of factory. Try have forest walls bulge into the corridors, and put single bushes pushing through in corners, instead of just having them be funny-looking walls.

Now for the complaints:

• There are multiple wall lengths for a reason. You do not need to use massively shrunk-down Long Walls as end-caps for narrow walls. In fact, most sprites simply look bad when stretched more than a few percent in one direction more than another, so you may want to go over your level and adjust the proportions of your resized sprites.

• It is annoying to need to go all the way back to the beginning for every upgrade and switch. I would recommend spreading them around the level, rather than concentrating them.

• You may want to vary the types of bushes that you use. As-is, the grids of bushes look very artificial.

• Mini Boss is too close to the door. It attacks you before you enter the room, and you can destroy it from outside the room.

• The long distances that you need to travel through empty corridors to get back to the beginning after each boss are quite irritating.

• The turret boss (or at least several of its sub-turrets) is also shootable from the doorway, but that's good, because otherwise killing it is nearly impossible. Consider adding the Level 2 Shields somewhere in the level (perhaps make that something you can go back down all the cleared-out passageways to get after Mini Boss, and move the green switch to someplace next to the door it opens? That door, by the way, is not in a very good place in terms of directing the player to where they should go. In order to send them down to the Mini Boss, it really should be only a few ship-lengths down that path, rather than halfway across the level).

• The door guarding the Blue Gun is always open. It appears that setting its Extra2 to 7 is essential, as that makes it immune to all weapons fire (I suspect that it is destroyed by the boss before the player ever sees it).

• Did I mention that I don't like needing to backtrack through the entire (cleared-out) level several times? It gets very boring.

• And is there any particular reason that the map's creator is given as "Catbert", while your username here is "Dogbert"?

Edwards

This post has been edited by Edwards : 14 January 2007 - 09:18 PM

After the last boss Door should i put an extra door opened by a switch? If so i can link it to open up a few doors in the mane hallway to release a few new foes.

Also for the final boss i recommend taking out the outer turrets first and stay close to the health.

And as for Catbert i was planning on that being my username however someone else already used that.

This post has been edited by Dogbert : 14 January 2007 - 09:32 PM

Oh, by the way, very nice map (may be the best one yet) Good job!

A few comments, the bad first, then the good:
- The door that holds the flickers is a little too far from the switch, which means I didn't get the flickers sent to me until I returned, whould be better to catch the player by surprise!
- all upgrades should have an Extra2. Period.
- the Forest trees just after the to initial blocks are too repetitive, even if you use the same sprite, given them (slightly) different size and orientation; same for the missile stones after the blue gun upgrade.
- Having a compressed wall sprite is not the best way to terminate a narrow wall, better use an actual small wall sprite (maybe compressed, but only a little). Speaking of that, try not to expose the side of a wall, as it will push the player an unexpected way, the contact box for the small wall should be so that you hit it before the side of the next walls.
- Rather than having this long green line to indicate the switch-door relationship, prehaps you could visually link the switch and the door to a common symbol, which the player would recognise when meeting the second of them.
- Hmm, more background sprites would be welcome around the bottom corridor
- ...and the top corridor
- ...and the Boss battle
- ...and after the "Goal!!!"
- Hmm, the door to the blue gun was already opened before I kill the Boss, normal? (Not major since you can't go away to use it anyway, the front door does work)
- Unfortunately, the save ring reverts to normal size once taken when it respawns. Sorry.
- gah, these corridors are long! Well, of course you want to give the impression of an abandoned Factory (which you do to an extent), but such mong corridors are not really necessary, especially with the back-and forth the scenario requires (green switch, blue switch, etc...)
- The Big Mama Flicker Boss door closed a bit on me
- its wings can go a bit over each other... oh yeah, I know what's causing this, make sure that in complex enemies (i.e. with parent-child links) the centers of all sprites comprising the critter are at the exact same point if the parent can turn (unless you want an effect like Pi's Boss), as the relative positions of the centers will stay the exact same, including the direction, while the direction of the parent (and the children with it) will change, changing the whole shape of the enemy.

- I like this ambience of a Factory overrun by foliage (just that a few automated weapon systems remain online...). I think that could be improved by a few more details, like crumbling walls (that you can suggest by putting walls that are not in the right orientation and things like that, if necessary add invisible walls so that the player still can't get away though.
- You seem to like the spinning shooter, lucky you, I do as well (I think it's underused in the main game, let me count, three instances...). This Boss battle is interestingly challenging, though I suggest you to add a few things to the central shooter, like lateral shields or something, or just at least make it bigger; also, it would be better if the others started with a different initial rotation angle from each other, would make it even more unpredicatble chaos.
- I like the idea of having some Bosses block your path (i.e. the continuation of the level is behind the door it guards) rather than just guard an upgrade, reminds me of Zelda (crap, I should obey my Zelda-playing pulses and replay them and/or get the Wii and Twilight's Princess, perhaps that will help me from seeing Zelda everywhere in SketchFighter...)

All in all, a nice level. It's unfinished and could be improved, though.

I seem to remember someone using a Catbert avatar, though I don't think he was named Catbert. He must have changed his avatar since then, on top of that.

Updated version is now up. all bugs should be fixed. please test the new version and let me know of anything i should add/take out.Thanks!

This post has been edited by Dogbert : 15 January 2007 - 10:01 PM

@zacha-pedro, on Jan 15 2007, 10:59 AM, said in Abandoned Factory:

I seem to remember someone using a Catbert avatar, though I don't think he was named Catbert. He must have changed his avatar since then, on top of that.

I think it was nfreader, although I could be mistaken. It's been a year or so, and I didn't see him very often to begin with.

@dogbert, on Jan 15 2007, 07:54 PM, said in Abandoned Factory:

Updated version is now up. all bugs should be fixed. please test the new version and let me know of anything i should add/take out.Thanks!

In the style of Zacha Pedro, I will start with the bad points, and then go on to the good points.
Bad points:

• All of your pickups have extra pickup markers around them. It appears that a side-effect of pickups having Extra2 values is that they automatically get markers, although ZP neglected to mention that when he said that they should have them.

• There's still one shrunken Large Wall as an endcap on the path from the starting point to the junction with the two boss paths. Similarly, there is one on the right-hand side of the path up to the second boss, shortly before the point where the door used to be.

• Was it your intention to have the AI for the Giant Bug miniboss be that of the triple-shot turret? It looks a bit odd.

• The door in front of the blue gun is still getting blown open by the boss. You need to change its Extra2 to 7 to make it immune. Just setting Extra1 to 0 is not enough against enemy fire.

• The entrance door for the final boss clips your tail when you fly in.

• As a nice touch, you may want to add some warning lights just before each boss room.

Good points:

• The new distribution of switches and powerups is much nicer.

• The places where the forest is pushing through look quite good now (apart from a couple corners on the first path, which are still just grids of bushes).

• The corner in the final boss room that looka like it provides cover, but doesn't, is quite nasty psychologically. Nice touch.

• Overall, this is much more fun than your previous version. I'd say that it's uploadable as-is (apart from the graphical glitches mentioned above), but do wait for some more opinions before doing so.

Edwards

Hmm, I'm getting a board message for clicking at / trying to download your attachment which is telling me that I "do not have permission to use this feature".

I've had a problem staying logged in recently, it changes when ever i go to a different page. Sometimes. Maybe the same thing is happening to you and you get logged out when you click the link? I dunno. As for the level, i haven't had a chance to try the latest version yet, but the beta versions were pretty good.

Pi

@pisketch, on Jan 16 2007, 04:41 PM, said in Abandoned Factory:

I've had a problem staying logged in recently, it changes when ever i go to a different page. Sometimes. Maybe the same thing is happening to you and you get logged out when you click the link? I dunno. As for the level, i haven't had a chance to try the latest version yet, but the beta versions were pretty good.

Pi

I don't have this bug here, though several other people noticed this, too, but I can't remember if there was a solution for their problem. But I'm sure Ben Adams is working on it.

Edit: After ZP had sent me a copy of the level I was able to test it. The lacking health bar of the mini boss annoys me a bit (it's probably a bug in the editor), but the rest looks good.

Edwards, you said that there is still one shrunken wall. Can you post a pic? i can't find it in the editor.

Never mind, i found it.

i have been having lots of trouble with the second Boss Door (it never closed when i entered the boss zone.) So i set it to layer 3, solid with an extra 1 value of 1 and an extra 2 value of 1100. I also set the boss with an extra 2 value of 1100, it seems to work good. Now the door stays closed when i enter the room. However i'm wondering if this may screw things up. Please let me know how to get this fixed for the final version. Thanks.

@dogbert, on Jan 16 2007, 07:41 PM, said in Abandoned Factory:

i have been having lots of trouble with the second Boss Door (it never closed when i entered the boss zone.) So i set it to layer 3, solid with an extra 1 value of 1 and an extra 2 value of 1100. I also set the boss with an extra 2 value of 1100, it seems to work good. Now the door stays closed when i enter the room. However i'm wondering if this may screw things up. Please let me know how to get this fixed for the final version. Thanks.

Editor Manual said:

However, to get the complete deal with boss doors , music and a boss health-bar you need to go a little further. First you need to set up the doors to the boss chamber. You can make one or two, they should be named “Boss Door 1” and “Boss Door 2”. To make them work properly you should set them to layer 10, not solid, Extra1:1 and Extra2:7. Next you need to make a trigger sprite called “Boss Start” and place it somewhere within the chamber where the player will cross when entering. That’s all there is to it.

(Emphasis added.) The Extra2 = 7 is to make the door immune to any shots that something in the room may fire, because enemy fire will destroy any door it hits unless that door's Extra2 is 7 (or greater). Setting the Extra2 to 1100 serves the same purpose, it seems, but is overkill. It probably won't destroy the level, though.

Edwards

I finally figured out the problem with the boss door! Turns out that all the rocks behind it were named "Boss Door 2" Now that all the bugs are fixed i'll submit it. Thank you everyone for testing!

Good to hear!