Fort Noesis L4D Campaign

[MrTwoVideoCards]

I'm actually very disappointed by some of your responses. Interlopers is a really great website and I've been using it for years because of it's maturity and technical knowledge. They post a news comment, and it's like trolls come out of the wood-works.

If you don't download and play it, then don't comment. You just look kinda foolish.

That's a lot of words coming from a guy who blatantly stole maps to make a failed campaign.

[Zipfinator]

Cool, thanks for the constructive feedback! We work hard on our tutorials and have gotten mainly positive feedback on them. Why do you think we've been doing this for several years and are still around? I'm sure it's quite possible that the tutorials are under your skill level, since they are aimed at beginners, and most of the people on Interlopers are pretty skilled with the Source engine but does that really make them "shit"? Maybe you can help us out and give us some details to improve our tutorials (or make them less "shitty")? Also, did you actually play our campaign? Do you want to revise your statement to say "Plays like shit"?

Well the tutorials aren't complete shit, but you can find all of the information in them in much greater detail for free on the internet. Also I've heard the advanced level design tutorial is nowhere near advanced and I would have no problem believing that if it's made by the designers that made this map.

I did not play the campaign though, but I never said I did. I was referring to the aesthetics when I said "Looks like shit." It's nowhere near the quality that I would expect from a company that's dedicated to making tutorials for the Source engine. A few tips I'd give to your designers are to use Valve's maps as examples (They're included with the L4D Authoring Tools) for things such as; light settings, 3D Skyboxes and building geometry; complete a layout on paper that's been well thought out before jumping into Hammer and have a clear theme with concepts and references to real world location.

[projectleet]

So how much should I invest in Noesis materials? I was looking at the front page and it looks at first glance like something I could really benefit from. However, you guys are denouncing this effort and the company as a load of junk.

Which is which? I don't know anything about Noesis and want to learn some more

I had purchased the Noesis Level Design pack a long time ago, and found it to be too simple for my liking. Noesis goes through and teaches you the concept and basics of mapping as if you never even seen the tool before. Though, they do a great job of providing you with shortcuts, tips, and examples. If you have a basic understanding of how mapping works the DVD might not be for you. But again it could be nice to have for a "refresh" on the principles of mapping and the editor itself.

Then again that's my take on the mapping DVD, I am not quite sure how any others work. But I will say based on screenshots of the noesis campaign (I have not played the map) The lighting looks terribad. It looks like there should be flood lights not street lamps based on those screenies. But again, take what I say with a grain of salt as I haven't really played it.

[vcool]

The tutorials aren't shit at all, they are pretty good for those who are starting off. For those who already have some grasp on presented material they don't do as much.

As for the map, sure we can comment on it?

[Zipfinator]

The tutorials aren't shit at all, they are pretty good for those who are starting off. For those who already have some grasp on presented material they don't do as much.

That's all well and good, but it's kind of misleading when the tutorial is titled "Advanced Level Design Techniques" and it barely passes a beginners level.

[joe_dirt976]

the screen shots look like ass. Sorry but it has to be said. I try to approach these as any other game, and since the rest of the core mechanics are already established, all that's left to appeal to me is the screenshots. I don't know why the screenshots are so bright but it kills any attractiveness to me, it not only nulls any color correction or postprocessing effects that may have been prebuilt into the game, it puts the impressionable quality on par with the majority of custom l4d maps. EI: no fog, no aesthetic cohesion, and an overall cheap and hacky feeling.
Take this shot for instance:

one word comes to mind.. bland. If this was made by a software studio, I'd have to ask if it was put together on bring your kids to work day.

This next screen is shopped, only for example. The only changes I made were the same kinds that can be done ingame. Brightness, contrast, and color correction/saturation tweeks.

In my opinion, it looks alot more appealing. It only took a minute or so to do that. If you can do that in game then I'm rather pleased. I'm not being shallow, if it were made by a community member (a hobbyist or amature, whatever have you) I would be alot more forgiving. However, because this is made by a studio, there is an expected level of polish that I do not see. I will d/l this to try it out, but please, fix your screenshots. If you can't do it in game, do it in photoshop. I have to also say, that none of my screenshots are ever photoshopped.

[Carbon14]

tbh joe I am willing to bet that screenshot has been (poorly) altered to begin with in photoshop. It looks to me like someone has brightened it up to make it more visible and made it look like ass in the process.

[joe_dirt976]

you're probably right. It just irks me that an organized group of individuals post that as a "preview" if you will. If it looks good without shop, then it has a good level of polish to begin with. But to me it lacks just that. It looks like the person who generated the screengrabs had the game on full screen with the brightness maxed out. At least run it in a window when you do that. If a dark area is gray, there's problems.

[joe_dirt976]

okay, i did a quick run through, wow. Gameplay wise, it worked. Visually, it sucked... hard. I've seen first time map posts with more visual consistency. Don't get me wrong, gameplay is important, but it's only half of the package, and this package is very incomplete. I ran the campaign in windowed- no border, and the exteriors still looked full bright. The interior lights was also very binary, it was either pitch black or bland white. The only good lighting i saw was from a vending machine. Sorry team neosis, but you need to cook this cake a little more. All the ingredients are there, but it's half baked. If you want to know my gripes i'll point them out in more detail for you.

[fry_]

After a playthrough, I'd have to say the gameplay did not work at all. One thing I hate more than anything in L4D campaign is when the dev thinks force-spawning witches and tanks all over the place is appropriate. It doesn't heighten tension, it just gets really annoying when I get 3 tanks and 2 witches in the same map. Not to mention the bizarre panic events triggered thoughout the maps. (I'm assuming they're triggered, I didn't get a chance to crack open the vmfs) Then there's the actual panic even in map 2. It consisted of a rooftop with some boxes surrounded by taller rooftops that the infected jumped off. A lot of times L4D mappers forget that those are crucial choke points, and need to have a very gameplay centric design with plenty of room for L4Ds infected movement. Walking through the maps, I didn't have much of a problem surviving, seeing as it was just like most L4D campaigns: corridors with brick textures and occasionally a painting followed by maybe an office leading into a warehouse. By the way, much of the texturing was sub-par at the very best. There wasn't much disparity between any of the areas, and textures were re-used (incorrectly aligned no less!) a number of times. This does not make for a fun campaign experience. It means infected run at you from the expected points, there aren't many good vantage spots for the special infected, and the player can get bored easily if there isn't some awesome eye-candy along the way (there wasn't). While there were a number of spots where the player could wander across a few rooms and explore, they weren't quite making sense in any architectural standpoint. Not even from a gameplay point, really. It's difficult to explain, but play through and you'll notice a number of places where it's not clear where to go and you end up taking a 30 second detour up a flight of stairs that leads into a cube farm with no other doors and no lights to be found. Honestly though, it should be difficult to get lost considering the sheer amount of arrow and safe room decals the author used. To put it frankly, the decals beyond the normal stains used were not done well. Custom decals? Let me walk you through what creating 90% of the decals used in game was probably like:
1. Open Ps
2. Choose font that may or may not correspond to the style of writing you are trying to emulate
3. Add alpha layer
3. Export
4. Place haphazardly on bizarre textures and structures

Moving on, lighting might have been the worst bit of the campaign. The ambient light in the maps was far too bright for the skybox, and the oddly placed indoor lights were a bland white color with an incorrectly set sprite. The areas that weren't in direct light were often pitch black. While yes, sometimes this can be a good thing, it was not done in such a way as to make me believe that it was anything other than laziness that prevented the lights from being placed more prudently.

So as not to sound like a complete ass, there were some good things about the campaign. The intro FlyIn was neat, certainly had some potential. The Bioshock-esque music with the radio was an interesting take on the typical L4D style. The levels were decently long, which may or may not be a good thing depending on how you look at it.

In conclusion, it was certainly not the worst campaign I've played, though I am surprised that it is the subject of a tutorial. A number of basic finishing items were left out (light props in dark areas, for example), and much of the level layout depended on boxes and other assorted office related props to steer the player through linear courses.

[source-maps]

kinda strange that they sell tutorials about a subject they fail at ?
pure white lighting is really a beginners thing to do

[Corigami]

Ok, thanks for this feedback, it is actually kind of useful since you point out the things that you didn't like about the campaign. However you could still go into more detail as this is a beta release and we want to fix any and all problems that people encounter.
-The mapper has definitely played L4D a lot. Why does it seem like he hasn't?
-Specifically where did you find the nav mesh bugged to hell? What problems did it cause?
-The witch only spawns in the first safe room if the car alarm is triggered, so that's why she was there. If you hadn't set off the car alarm you would've entered a witch-free safe room.
-Specifically which design choices clashed with L4D? How did they clash?
-The outdoor lighting was intended to convey the feel of floodlights and the indoor lighting varies from bright to pitch black (there are definitely indoor areas that are not plain ass white).
-I would say that only about 10% of the ugly custom graffiti are stupid memes
-Its a free download so how can it not be worth it? Is about an hour of your time really that precious/expensive?

-It felt like it was made by someone who hadn't played L4D because it seems like you had all the assets and made use of them, but not in the way they were used in L4D. There were just so many inconsistancies between this campaign and valve's released maps, both visually and gameplay wise.
-The nav mesh seemed just poorly built in general, it really needs to be debugged. I saw commen infected getting stuck all over the place and a few specials that were trapped between rocks, refusing to move.
-That is extremely unfair. Never is that choice made clear to the player and I wasn't able to associate the car alarm to the witch. Many players like to set off car alarms and run into the spawn rooms to mow down the hoard as they rush in the door. I've seen it many times in The Parish. I'm guessing you were trying to prevent this, but it doesn't work. My entire team ran into the spawn room despite the witch and crowded around her waiting for the round to end. The safe rooms are supposed to be safe, and never in L4D is a tank or witch put in a spawn room. This is the kind of clash with L4D that just feels like a sucker-punch.
-The rescue music played before the rescue arrived, causing me to run to the helipad only to be mobbed for a couple more minutes, witches and tanks were so numerous it was more annoying than difficult, there was a random safe room in the middle of a map, the wrong door prop was used on the saferoom exits, long paths branched off from the main that led absolutely nowhere. I'm sure I'll think of a few more things later.
-The outside lighting is too dark. It doesn't feel like it's being lit with floodlights, it feels like daylight. Floodlights do not make all of the outdoors lighter, they only make areas near the base brighter which was not what I saw. Although no, not 100% of the indoor lighting was white, the vast majority was and it looked terrible. I feel the same way as joe about the contrast of the lighting as well.
-I didn't keep tabs, but it felt like the majority of the graffiti was memes. I can only recall two that weren't and quite a few that were.
-Whether it's worth downloading depends (for me at least) on whether or not it's fun. It was frustrating and unenjoyable, so In my opinion it wasn't worth downloading and playing.

Thanks for being so polite about all this, too.

[trcc]

- The safe rooms are supposed to be safe, and never in L4D is a tank or witch put in a spawn room. This is the kind of clash with L4D that just feels like a sucker-punch.

If I recall, the saferoom isn't "safe" in the 3rd map of the "Death Toll" Campaign (the church saferoom). However, Valve used a sound to tell the players the saferoom isn't safe anymore.

In my opinion, spawning special infected in the saferoom can be great if you think about the emotion curve of the player throughout the map. Players take for granted that saferooms is the end of all the chaos... but what if they were wrong? Special infected makes all sense to me in a saferoom. The guy was infected, ran to the saferoom and then became infected.
Pretty sure Valve is intentionally spawning special infected in the L4D2 saferooms 99% positive.

Not saying that force spawn a witch in the saferoom is appropriate though.
Maybe if it was a logic case with:

Case01: Smoker spawns
Case02: Hunter spawns
Case03: Boomer spawns

with the "pickrandom" of the logic case, it wouldn't be as bad as witch.

Hope you understand what I said

[Major Banter]

-The witch only spawns in the first safe room if the car alarm is triggered, so that's why she was there. If you hadn't set off the car alarm you would've entered a witch-free safe room.

Now, I'm sorry, but that's a shit gameplay point. For these reasons.

1 - The player get punished by a horde moment, and that is sufficient.
2 - It's an annoyance to dispose of RIGHT at the end.
3 - If someone is downed you have to spend time to get them up to end the level, not progress, which really rankles.
4 - It makes no sense; why would a witch move into a closed room because of an alarm? She can't open doors for one.
5 - In each L4D the witch is a tactical addition and can be avoided most of the time. Why make her unavoidable?

All of those contribute to pissed off players, and pissed off players give bad reviews.

[Noesis_Interactive]

Ok, that feedback is more helpful since you guys are giving us details that we can try to improve on. This release is intended to be an open beta any way and hopefully we'll be able to fix some of the stuff you've mentioned for the final release. Can you guys do me a favor and email this feedback to "betatest@noesisinteractive.com" (just copy and paste your messages from this thread).

The screenshots weren't Photoshopped at all and, yes, I did just quickly take them with the default L4D video settings at full screen. They are intended to just give a little taste of the campaign and we weren't really trying to dazzle anybody with them. I guess I would say that people should try playing the campaign and not make any final judgements based on the screenshots alone ('cause they could definitely be improved, ha ha).

Not that it really matters that much but it is kind of interesting to me that the campaign is getting mostly negative feedback on Interlopers but over at L4DMaps it has been downloaded over 1,800 times and has gotten overwhelmingly positive feedback, and currently has a rating of 94. I guess this must be the difference between feedback from players and feedback from developers, ha ha. I'm not saying that either group of feedback is better than the other, and I really do think that the more critical feedback from the developers and artists on Interlopers is important and ultimately more useful (especially when it can be conveyed in a detailed and non-attacking manner).

Regarding our tutorials, they are aimed at beginners and I would expect that most of the Interloper community would probably find them to be too easy, or that they don't go into enough detail. This is because we are trying to teach the basics in a simple and easy to understand manner, so that anybody (not just people who already know how to map or animate or whatever) can pick up the tutorial and get started with the tools right away. So, I think it's fair to say that our tutorials might not be very useful for people who already have experience with the Source engine or 3D programs or whatever, but it's not fair to say that all of our tutorials are "shit, because the majority of the people who actually use our tutorials find them to be helpful and an excellent way to get started in video game design.

Thanks for the comments and feedback.