Fort Noesis L4D Campaign

[korge]

"Fort Noesis" is a highly polished 3 map campaign for Valve's hit video game

http://www.l4dmaps.com/details.php?file=4135

[Major Banter]

Whipping a dead horse.

[source-maps]

true, but I lol'd at the comments tho

[m.anderson]

I can't understand why so many people are ripping on Noesis. The only conclusion I can make is most people haven't watched their products all the way through. I didn't know jack squat about mapping when I started 'Outpost 16', and during the summer, after taking a quick glance at the valve sdk wiki site, I got overwhelmed and didn't know where to start. Who would with no mapping background? I don't believe in the commonly held belief that mapping is a trial by fire. You shouldn't have to fight through technical problems and figure out how to use a TOOL by yourself. It's nothing to brag about saying you figured out everything by yourself - I value time and don't want to waste it learning a program by trial and error. In the end, that's all it is - a tool. I want to be artistic, not fight through technical problems and desperately have to scour the internet for answers.

So, I bought 2 training DVDs from Noesis - Source Mapping and Choreography. I was actually amazed at how professionally done they were. Clearly made for everyone, these DVDs distill the plethora of online tutorials, wiki posts, forum discussions, into one clearly structured DVD/Divx File. They don't cover every single aspect of the subject (at least in the level design DVD), but how could they without a whole series just devoted to that topic? They provide all you need to know to get started, and more importantly, let you grasp fundamental concepts that are very specific and hard to understand at first for newbies to level design.

It should also be noted how valuable it is to have a whole range of level design-related topics (displacement, ai, brushwork, lighting) in one DVD. If you were making a map from scratch, you'd first learn about brushwork. Then you'd run into a host of tiny technical problems, like dealing with compile errors and whatnot. Then you'd learn how displacements work, but you'd run into more problems, and wouldn't know how to efficiently construct them cause you don't know anything about lightmaps or how they play with brushwork, amongst other compiler problems. Therefore having one DVD that covers all the basic topics allows your brain to comprehend how everything works TOGETHER. It's for this reason I can't recommend the Noesis training products enough.

As for the quality of 'Fort Noesis,' I haven't played it but I'm confident it will provide astronomic assistance to those learning Left 4 Dead mapping. For that reason, it doesn't really matter if its good or bad, its a great learning tool and I'm sure Noesis will use it as such. If you're playing it for the fun of it, well, that's a different matter. Just keep in mind its still gonna be a great asset to people out there and we should be grateful someone put so much effort into it.

By the way, I have no affiliation whatsoever with their company.

[Blade Nd64]

To put it simply: Initial posters were under the impression that this was a final product. Once people understood that this was beta, the criticism became all the more constructive.