Sloprano's WIP thread

[sloprano]

Hello. Here is my current work-in-progress map for "The Forgotten Journey."

Map name:
Gutter

Quick detail:
The player must gather his weapons and fix an old combine teleporter in a nearby refinery to resume his journey.

Long detail:
The malfunctioning teleporter transports the player to an old, abandond and derelict refinery near the coast. The refinery houses an old teleporter experiment by the combine, but is currently not fully operational and need power to work again. During the transmission, the player looses all his/her weapons during the entry to the refinery which are needed to navigate the refinery and locate the power switches needed for the teleporter.

Gameplay:
No combat so far (not against AI at least). There will be focus on navigation and returning to previous areas with new weapons in order to reach other parts of the refinery. Example on puzzles will be navigating small ledges, jumps, gravitygun push & pulls, shooting padlocks and barrels, airhandling down sharp declines and using the suit sprint to reach time limits.

Realistically I don't see every idea being implemented, but of all the ideas I've jotted down the above ones are what I'm currently going for.

Current progress:

27.06.14:

Finally got gotten the map to a somewhat presentable state and have barely managed to suppress my desire to immediately start detailing a room after I have given it four walls, a ceiling and a floor and rather do some general brushwork to get the gameplay elements in first.

So far I've managed to orange-map the starting area (gutter), the teleporterhouse ( with a short sequence where it looses power) and a quest to retrieve the HEV suit and gravity gun so you can access the first power switch. During the this map there will be perilous jumps, time constraints, sliding down sandpits, gravity gun and guardhouse vandalism.

Some screens of the current map:

The teleporter house and the first power shack. As it currently stands, the teleporter house is the first and last area the player will visit.


The observation hut and guardhouse with the silo in the background. The black devwall will hopefully become a mountain one day.


The silo tower. There's currently just a ladder up, but I hope to make some rickety scaffolding to make the ascent slightly more perilous.


A side-view of the entire map with some rough explanations to flesh out the areas.


Feedback and Download:
If anyone is interested in trying it and giving feedback on how it feels to play and how the mechanics are working for you then I would be very grateful.

Link to the .bsp:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/30oc8lilrje9z77/gutter.bsp

-Sloprano

[marnamai]

You're kinda late to the party :p

[sloprano]

Indeed so. Finally found time to work on it a couple of days ago and I might have to seriously scale down the planned areas in order to have it fully textured and done by Monday. Either way I'm gonna give it a shot, planning the map was too fun to let the competition slip by.

[Ade]

that's because I came from the gutter! and I'm still HERE!

On a serious note, I hope to give it a play tonight.

EDIT:
Kay, here are a few thoughts on my first playthrough:
- node graph message
- almost no sound the entire map?
- the thing holding the bridge looks like its stuck mid air, but I guess u know that
- I see all these areas that aren't available yet since I have no weapons, so feels a bit odd to see them but not know what to do with them
- so I teleported in same place?
- ah stuff changed, but I dont understand why, is that a time machine? ahaha
- or JUST the fence changed, so the attempt to use it just turned off the electricity for it
- tafuq, did a crow just fly by with my ggun?!
- after pressing the red button to open the gate I see its texture overlapping with the thing its on
- now thats a fast gate...
- red light in the room blocked by a file cabinet goes thru the back wall
- all the narrow catwalks don't make much sense, structure wise
- I stacked the crate and barrel to get past the gate, I GUESS it was intended, though felt odd to do so
- seriously that fkn crow..
- why you make player walk all the way round.. no fun
- ivy on the wall is kind of dark but not sure you're worried about visual aspect much at this point
- at the bottom of the tower you have a hom? or is that a weird water effect
- great autosave but the 3 hpacks are useless, I fell with 100hp and died if not landing in water
- wow im back at start
- I can walk thru the teleport's base
- how to activate the other 2 power stations?
- after shooting 1 of the ropes (?) the other moves weird with the grey thing attached to it
- reloading the map plays the teleport sound but don't think you can fix that
- and since that place does look like the end, I stopped playing
- playtime, 20m I think
You have a long way to go though and I hope there's more gameplay stashed somewhere. It's worth playing just for the ggun being stolen by a crow, but by the title I felt I would start in a gutter and make my way up somehow, I didn't expect to almost end in one haha

[sloprano]

Thank you for the feedback, Ade. It helps getting a different perspective on how the mechanics execute when other people play them. I'll get back to rebalancing them.

[sloprano]

The final version of the map is now on the "Final Submissions" board. Please let me know what you think.

Trying to make a map in a half a week during the nights while taking a family trip to France has been interesting, but I wouldn't do it again. Right now it's very rough around the edges and could need another week for polish in the geometry and lightning/texture department, but the core mechanics are working so I hope the experience is not total excruciation for those who decide to try it.