Custom Map #1536: FPS: Minos. By: Heritor

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This topic is for discussion of map #1536: FPS: Minos


Author: Heritor
Size: 320x200

[UberWaffe]

I hate to say this, but this is beyond tedious.

The creeper is set to jelly mode, so you cannot even use captured breeder to help you take other areas.

There is more upgrade points than you can possibly spend, and even at full upgrades in everything it is still a slog to make progress through the hallways.

[Malignantmind]

Yeah this one is...not fun. 0/10. I normally love your maps. And is that crawler thing just unkillable?

[Vyce223]

I'm going to be honest. I got 50 minutes in of doing the same exact thing clearing corridor after corridor and... was 1/3 of the way done. It's a slog and I saw nothing intrinsically difficult about it.

[joebywan]

jesus this is a boring slogfest.  skip

[Kaiden]

This has got to be one of the most boring fps map ever made. There is nothing interesting except for the boss, and the boss is painful to kill. You just fire mortars at it for 10 minutes, and avoid the cannon turret which fires at an absurd rate. And also the map is extremely laggy, so I had to go in editor mode and get rid of the menu display script. In this map you just slowly move through corridors for a hour or more, trying to get to the totem, it's extremely repetitive.

[Karzon]

Flat narrow corridors will never be fun.  When they're so slow to clear even at max upgrades, it goes beyond that into actively sadistic.

[heritor]

The aim with this map was to test a more hardcore FPS experience - less focused on the normal "clear all creeper" that FPS maps traditionally have, and more "escape and survive".
I've had the idea floating about for a while (since my first FPS map) of a roaming monster that's very hard to kill, and hard to escape from - while I do feel that this accomplished that goal (and I personally had my fair share of "ohshit" moments while testing it where I'm faced with creeper in one direction, and a monster wiping out all my hard-earned AC in the other), I can get why this isn't most people's cups of tea.

Apart from that aspect, what do people think of the HUD (heads-up display) of Health, Armor, Upgrades on the left?

[Malignantmind]

Apart from that aspect, what do people think of the HUD (heads-up display) of Health, Armor, Upgrades on the left?

That aspect was an improvement that I would like to see in future maps.

[heritor]

Apart from that aspect, what do people think of the HUD (heads-up display) of Health, Armor, Upgrades on the left?

That aspect was an improvement that I would like to see in future maps.

I've got to rework the code for it (turns out the function to add/change names on the menu can be a large performance hit) but it's something I'll be including going forward for sure. I'll probably need to tinker with the Armor aspect a bit, since right now it's just an extra disposable pool of health instead of the actual damage-reducing armor I'd wanted it to be originally.

[UberWaffe]

The aim with this map was to test a more hardcore FPS experience - less focused on the normal "clear all creeper" that FPS maps traditionally have, and more "escape and survive".
I've had the idea floating about for a while (since my first FPS map) of a roaming monster that's very hard to kill, and hard to escape from - while I do feel that this accomplished that goal (and I personally had my fair share of "ohshit" moments while testing it where I'm faced with creeper in one direction, and a monster wiping out all my hard-earned AC in the other), I can get why this isn't most people's cups of tea.

To be honest, I really liked the Minotaur.
Had fun playing pacman with it, and had several fun moments of getting cornered and having to dash past it.

It was the slow slog through creep jello that spoilt the map for me.
I restarted the map and edited the creep flow rate to normal.
That helped to some degree, in that once you controlled the majority of an area the AC would help you.

But given the restriction in fluid flow (walls + gaps), this did less than I expected to help with the tedium.
I restarted again and increased the maximum upgrades allowed (i.e. mainly the 25 in weapon effect to 50).
And then increased the upgrade points given by 5 of the caches in hard to reach spots to 3. (I.e. 10 extra points)

This helped a lot along with the more fluid creep / AC.

There was still a lot of 'quite hall clearing without being threatened'.
Didn't get a chance to test this, but my suggestion here would be:

Buff the minotaur in close combat.
Add additional patrol units - Watchers.
They don't have weapons, and are relatively weak.
Instead, if they spot you, they attempt to get close to you and start a timer.
Once the timer is done, if they are still alive, and are still close enough to you, the watcher dies but teleports the Minotaur to that position.
(I.e. they summon the minotaur to you.)
They should be quick and easy to deal with as long as you are paying attention.

Have some base stations that slowly respawn these watchers over time. You can destroy the base stations.
Destroying all base stations weakens the minotaur (to what it is now, assuming it is buffed.)

[AgRecluse]

I can't play this  :-\ my computer can't run it. Too much lag  :-[

[brainfart]

Another suggestion to make this better is a height limit for creeper, instead of the global generation limit. Because for each bit of land you clear, the remaining creeper columns become higher and higher and the mortar is really crippled if you cant hit the top of the creeper. The creeper should not exceed the height of the ceiling.  The creeper has become absolutely massive after I cleared almost 2/3rds of the map (see the attachment). When I figured out the long corridor to the totem, I literally pointed my mortar at it, tabbed out and watched a youtube video while it did its thing.

[GadgetBoy]

I really liked this concept, you're onto something here, but it could use some sort of checkpoint system, as you capture sections of the maze. If there was some way to activate drains in those captured areas that will get rid of both C and AC (maybe a power that lets you drop -1000 terrain or something?), it would help the performance of the map, as well as maybe help visibility of the map sections as they're cleared.

Speaking of map visibility, I got hopelessly lost at one point and just couldn't figure out how to get to the final emitter - literally spent hours (over multiple plays) stubbornly trying to get un-lost.

You and the other folks coding this FPS stuff are on the verge of creating your own genre here, and I'm excited to see where it leads.

[EricPhail]

The HUD had some potential use (though not if it hits performance), The Creeper amount was beyond tedious,.