Uploaded a repacked\fixed version, it is recomended to downlaod repacked version since the old version for some reason has commented out .res entries (????) and bloat files.
Conundrum 3 / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page Conundrum 3.
Some of the coolest levels I've seen, but do not put these on a public server without babysitting or ripenting. Many maps have restarts triggered by things like pushing a box off a ledge or breaking an explosive box at spawn. To no one's surprise, players started triggering restart loops so fast that slow joiners could not even finish loading. If you manage to reach the final level, it will loop back to the first one. So, if the server is full then this is all you'll be playing for the day (hard to vote out of short maps).
I don't think I've played anything like this before. It's kind of like the KZ maps but with action and puzzles thrown in too. The box-pushing mechanic is overused but works well enough as a break between action and wandering. Beautiful architecture and tons of open space. The longjump makes giant outdoor areas fun rather than tedious to get through. Serious Sam must have been an inspiration for some of these areas.
think making the triggers teleport the pushables instead of restarting the whole map would've made it less griefable, same with the explosive boxes at the end by making them invincible until you put it right besides the wall
The maps are really well made and remind me of serious sam but at the same time some of the maps balancing is all over the place. Even if I was playing on difficult, yes it was designed for 4+ players but im pretty good at the game so I can take the challenge. The problem is that the maps only gives you glock at starts and that it would take a map or two to gear up properly, can be either fine or bad depending on which map you pistol start on
The main 2 problems I have is monstersmakers having sometimes 10-20 monsters stored that spawn 30 seconds each which sometimes forces you to either rush the map or go running back and fourth before actually just rushing into the level change so you dont have to deal with them, I have no idea if this is difficulty-depended but even if it is, that's not a good one, and the fact that the maps could get repetitive since you either: "shoot monsters and gear up" or "push boxes and maybe jump sometimes", can be fine if you just feel like killing everything though, it's a shooter after all, but at least even simple puzzles sprinkled in would've made it much better then just moving boxes around (e.g say using monsters to your advantage like absuing stukabat to get up to a secret, maybe collecting all the boxes into one pit to both progress and making it look more engaging, using secondary's displacer attack. etc)
It does some stuff right though, the ammo placement in most maps is fine so you never wont ever run out of ammo, unless you only use one weapon.
The use of nihilanth is something that is not seen a lot in sven co-op maps and xbow pushing boxes is a neat thing at start
Brushwork is pretty good
LJ doesn't make traversing thru big areas tedious
Things to fix on this:
- Restarting maps or going back to previous maps in any way is very bad for sven in general. Griefing ensues, and should be avoided at all costs. This is not singleplayer and players would rather rock the vote to change the map instead of dealing with constant map resets because of a mistake from a random player or some troll after 5 seconds of loading. Please remove this immediately! I know it may require some out of the box thinking to modify the puzzles or such, but it must be done.
- Weapon progression: never pit players against hordes of monsters with just the starting pistol and almost to no ammo. Bad choice. Unplayable most of the times. Players avoid maps like this unless its a 32 players mayhem.
- Hordes of monsters: if there are hordes, and this is not an horde map, dont make the entire map have hordes of constant respawning monsters. When respawning, getting from A to B will be annoying. Players will avoid the map…. Also, making the monsters have a long respawn time makes it even worse, much much worse. Players left behind after clearing the map are left with fighting the entire map again all alone. Couple this with the weapon progression problem and you have an even bigger issue.
- Spawn points should be more frequent, so players dont have to run all the way to the action. Either this or having shortcuts is fine.
more stuff needs to be adressed:
- turn monstermakers into squadmakers
- add xenmakers for the squadmakers
- reduce number of spawned monsters and/or the spawn time to almost zero
- add the hull queue flag for squadmakers so they spawn anyway if they are blocked by a player or npc
- reduce game counter triggers amounts if they are tied to monsters dying, by at least 1 monster, as a failsafe if said monster doesnt spawn
- maybe add the previous maps weapons to the cfgs, using game_player_equip can also do this while ingame, so weapons are added as players find them and then respawn with all weapons
- check for any env_shooter that has "scale" "100" on its properties. This is a bug from old editors. Since this was a half life mod at one point (was it? conundrum 1 and 2 are… idk), this bug may be present
- check for any missing file with resguy, and generate .res files properly, just in case
- give players hints for objectives. For example the crossbow shooting of boxes is not present in any sven map and may not be discovered by players easily. Small game_text prompts with hitns could fix this
purely a suggestion thing but lobby maps where you can get a rest should also have a bonus of 100 armor points, i think its fair since getting relics means you did 33% of the progress and armoring up the players never hurts in action maps
Pretty excellent campaign… Took Gauna and myself 5:30 hours to play through the whole thing. The architecture is mostly outstanding.
This mapper sure does like barnacles too… they're so frequent, and come in a variety of skins to suit their episode.
A few things I didn't like:
- Many areas had a lack of ambience. Some environment sounds would have worked well.
- Squads of monsters spawning out of thin air repeatedly… detracts from the game play somewhat.
- Respawning with almost no equipment. (Feels like map configs or "game_player_equip" should be used.)
- Some NPCs for no reason had thousands of HP. Mostly during the ice episode.
- Level change sprite/indicator would be nice to have.
Still worthy of 5 stars though. Very cool to play with some good friends!
Thanks,
Adam Reece.
As Adambean reviewed it above. That was one of best series I ever played. I have only one small complaint that it doesn't need to fix: Completing Conundrum 3 on Medium difficulty felt like it was played on Hard one. Probably I guessed it was designed for up to +4 co-op players, not 2 which was a bit okay-ish and still playable.
DocRock, we respectfully salute your talents and you for all of your marvelous work on detailed textures and stunningly beautiful architectures and brushworks. Adambean and I already enjoyed every view per map as it already gave us many vibes of DOOM, QUAKE, Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider and more. ^^
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