#1 2014-04-18 17:36:50

Icantthinkofanickname
Moderator

Speedmaps and upcoming full maps

At Cocerello's request, I created this thread to continue our discussion started here, but gave it a (hopefully) broad enough heading so that it could turn into a more general discussion of speedmaps and upcoming full maps (including, but not limited to, polished speedmaps).

#2 2014-05-05 12:07:18

Cocerello
Member

Re: Speedmaps and upcoming full maps

I'm surprised that you took this option out of those i proposed, but, well, now that it is here, let's use it.


First of all congratulations on your promotion into premium user. I can see your distintive touch in the screenshots and in other places.

Second, i were to comment and ask you some things like you wanted, but got all of them answered in my head, but i will still put some of them in.

Third, about both of your comments about sm173_coce, i got curious about you saying it being a maze, and about the doors needing to show which keys opened each one, and lastly, about you finding it hard.

- About the first one, as far as i know, in FifhtElephant case it is related to the fact that he got stuck in the room with the grenade launcher because it is very hard to see the poorly lit button that operates the lift, so he went on looking for an inexistant way to continue. After thinking a bit, i see from where your affirmation comes, even if there is only two ways to get to the main room, not knowing them can make it look like a maze, considering the high number of dead ends this map has.

- About the second one is fairly easy, there are three closed doors in that map, one that opens with a silver key, another with a gold key, and a third that opne with a button. If you are saying that about the keys is maybe that you don't know that a door that is opened by a key always tell you what it needs to be opened when you touch them or maybe you are talking that those doors don't have the usual key texture indicating which one is needed besides them. We are accostumed to those visual clues, so not having them can cause that.
The button opened door has a visual clue in both at the door and in the button, but maybe not too obvious.

- And, about the last one, have you tried playing it on easy? This map has skill diffculties support. Playing it without the quoth mod makes it even less hard. Playing it with the drake mod makes it way harder even though it is less populated.

If some part of this big suppositions post is wrong, tell me.

#3 2014-05-05 21:02:01

Icantthinkofanickname
Moderator

Re: Speedmaps and upcoming full maps

Thanks for responding, Cocerello.

Cocerello wrote:

I'm surprised that you took this option out of those i proposed, but, well, now that it is here, let's use it.

Why did you suggest it, then? :-)

I didn't choose e-mail as I thought this might be interesting for other people too, who may want to join in the discussion. And of the three open platforms you suggested, this is the one I am most used to.

Cocerello wrote:

First of all congratulations on your promotion into premium user. I can see your distintive touch in the screenshots and in other places.

Thank you very much. I'm glad to be able to contribute to the Q1SP community in some way.

Since we're swapping compliments: congratulations on your first full release on Quaddicted (even though it's not exactly “new”). I enjoyed playing it. Anything else in the works?

Cocerello wrote:

- About the first one, as far as i know, in FifhtElephant case it is related to the fact that he got stuck in the room with the grenade launcher because it is very hard to see the poorly lit button that operates the lift, so he went on looking for an inexistant way to continue. After thinking a bit, i see from where your affirmation comes, even if there is only two ways to get to the main room, not knowing them can make it look like a maze, considering the high number of dead ends this map has.

Yes, exactly. The map does contain a high number of dead ends -- in addition to which it consists mainly of brick corridors that look incredibly similar to one another. In other words, it is more or less a maze.

Cocerello wrote:

- About the second one is fairly easy, there are three closed doors in that map, one that opens with a silver key, another with a gold key, and a third that opne with a button. If you are saying that about the keys is maybe that you don't know that a door that is opened by a key always tell you what it needs to be opened when you touch them or maybe you are talking that those doors don't have the usual key texture indicating which one is needed besides them. We are accostumed to those visual clues, so not having them can cause that.
The button opened door has a visual clue in both at the door and in the button, but maybe not too obvious.

I think there is a lack of readily understandable visual cues, clues and differentiation generally, not just with respect to the doors. But as for the doors: in my opinion, relying solely on the “You need the silver/gold key” message can work if the map is set up so that the player has to (or is bound to) touch the door before finding the key. In your map, however, it is perfectly possible to run past the doors and get both keys first. In retrospect, I can see that this is exactly what happened with me. By the time I touched the doors, they just opened, without my realising that I had used the keys (yes, you can see keys disappearing from your inventory if you have your HUD set up to show inventory items – but that is very subtle and can easily go unnoticed in the heat of combat).

Of course all of these things make perfect sense if you know the map, e.g. if you designed it. I just do not think they are nearly obvious enough to someone playing it for the first (and possibly only) time.

Cocerello wrote:

- And, about the last one, have you tried playing it on easy? This map has skill diffculties support. Playing it without the quoth mod makes it even less hard. Playing it with the drake mod makes it way harder even though it is less populated.

Although the combat was also fairly tough, I was talking more about how hard it was (for me) to navigate the map – but thanks for the additional information.

#4 2014-05-07 19:15:33

Cocerello
Member

Re: Speedmaps and upcoming full maps

Well, like i told you, those all were issues that were already pointed to thx to the guys at Func, but i still put them in here. I just have to work on them for the next ones, for example by making a tree-like layout that doesn't get confusing.

Icantthinkofanickname wrote:

Since we're swapping compliments: congratulations on your first full release on Quaddicted (even though it's not exactly “new”). I enjoyed playing it. Anything else in the works?

Thanks for the comments. About the other part ...

... you probably know of this thread, but ...

http://celephais.net/board/view_thread. … tart=10739

And look down for the rest of the posts.

The DM maps are already in Quaddicted's database, thanks to Spirit.

#5 2014-05-07 20:37:00

Icantthinkofanickname
Moderator

Re: Speedmaps and upcoming full maps

Cocerello wrote:

Well, like i told you, those all were issues that were already pointed to thx to the guys at Func

Is that what you meant when you said you "got all of them answered in [your] head"? Perhaps that was a typo, and you meant "thread"? In any case, now I understand.

Cocerello wrote:

... you probably know of this thread, but ...

http://celephais.net/board/view_thread. … tart=10739

Oh, thanks! I know of that thread and I look at it from time to time, but had never noticed your screenshots before. It looks promising and I'm looking forward to playing the finished article.

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