Soulia's Final

[Soulia]

Here's my map for the compo: 'STORMBRINGER'

...and I feel dirty.

I can't really call this finished at all, nor do I expect to win with this, but I still wanted to put this out there so that anyone who's interested enough can give it a go.
Due to tight schedule I had to resort to dirty trickery and hackery, and even go back and block out entire areas on my attempt to reach the deadline. In the frantic pace proper entity naming conventions flew out the window (there's actually a trigger_once named 'assault_n_stuff'). And let's not even mention optimization

The quality sways from one extreme to the other, and the midpoint is especially unfinished (very painfully obvious). There shouldn't be any progress breaking bugs though that I know of.

If his taught me anything it's that in the future I won't try to pull off something of this scale when I have just four days. It felt a bit nutty from the get-go, but well - I had to try For the next compo I will start in time to ensure something of better quality.

Let's see if I get back to this at some point and actually finish it properly. All I know right now is that I need a long break away from it

http://www.shrrred.com/storage/Soulia_comp.rar

[Ade]

Dat purple :O I mean I like the color, not sure how it fits in HL2 tho, but will play to find out!

[Soulia]

Played this again today and I really feel I have to publicly apologize for presenting the level in this state.

I had to make too many desperate choices in order to make it at least relatively playable in time for the deadline - and now I'm regretting for putting this out in this obviously unfinished state.

Looking back I should have spent the time honing things like the actual gameplay instead of spending so much time with the visuals in certain areas. Sure, I had a crazy tight schedule but I could have made a better job (and gotten more sleep) if I had prioritized certain things over others. Oh well, another lesson learned!

Anyway, this version is what it is and is justly to be judged as such. I will however get back to work on this as soon as possible to make a proper release.

[Major Banter]

What, three days? Frankly it's astonishing you made something.

[Ade]

Thoughts on Soulia's entry:
- I started map from console seeing as how mod started ep2 for me from the chapters
- indeed purple feels a bit out of place here, lighting wise, plus a bit of a pipe was also purple hmmmm
- and I'm walking on a grate over fire but not getting hurt
- interesting logo with 2 crossed hooks in the cafeteria
- chargers in the container felt out of place
- why is Grigori shooting me ;(
- what in the world is a charger doing in an ammo crate!
- I thought it's a bug that Father Grigori doesn't die from so many shots but he shoots and kills me instead
- and no autosaves... just wow
- the charger is slanted and oriented differently on a 2nd playthrough? at least I managed to kill that lunatic preacher
- a combine was facing the wrong way and I spotted him through a door that was not broken after loading a save
- getting out of the container room by stacking felt odd
- and the chopper is gone after 1 rocket? but a shitload of rpgs lying around heh
- edges of the map are visible, but you already warned it's not finished
- I stacked some props to get to the crane since the weight is the first thing we see in the map, turns out the crane is useless
- and no idea what the thing in the end was, like a giant ghost arm? Marnamai later on told me it was an open claw scanner, but in the game I never saw one, probably because the mines blocked the view, and I don't think I'm the only 1 not able to recognize that. Overall it didn't really fit into the theme of the competition, but felt a bit more like a Borealis entry to me with mediocre gameplay.

[Gambini]

Late to the party, this was a great entry. Too bad unpolished. Even if the comp is over, I´d give a revision to it as it´s worth releasing as a mini episode.