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I played this mod a few weeks ago, not sure if you've updated it since, but I'll give some feedback anyways.
The first thing that immediately stood out to me was the WALLS OF TEXT. It's nice that you wrote an entire story for this thing, but imo, just slapping 5 pages of text right before you can even start playing is not the ideal way to convey the story. I mean, I remember back when games had no plot in the actual gameplay whatsoever, and you'd just read the manual while the game was installing to know what was going on. I suppose it's similar here.
It's a relatively minor complaint but personally it really irked me. You could have drawn slides with the text over it comic book style at least- that's what I'm doing for the TC project I'm working on at the moment.
Aside from that, I was pretty pleasantly surprised. The textures are very unique and makes the levels a great change of pace from the usual stuff you see in Doom wads. No complaints with the levels, if for the fact that they're a bit confusing to naviguate and despite the map icons finding the objectives involved quite a bit of wandering through empty maps at times.
The weapons are pretty creative and I enjoyed using them, aside from the starting pistol which is total garbage as some people mentioned I think. The gas grenade launcher was my favourite, love the graphic for it and it's very fun to use imo. That said, some of the weapon graphics are simply odd. I'm not sure if you explain that in the story because I skipped through, but the huge green blobs attached to your hands are pretty confusing. Also, the animation for the fists is pretty terrible, it looks the main character is having parkinsons during an earthquake. The punches themselves are okay I suppose but it looks like the fists should be further away from the camera. There's some other minor stuff about the weapon graphics like the shotgun covering most of the screen when you reload the grenade thing and some of the animations just looking choppy and unfinished, but mostly, really nice art.
The map progression is kind of screwy, but I think you said some maps are actually missing from the mod, that'd explain it. Bosses were fine imo, I really enjoyed the boss fights in fact.
Anyways, I enjoyed Soulcrusher, but, in my opinion, feels like it has a major lack of polish going on. Not sure if you're actually in a position to fix some of the stuff I mentioned due to not having an artist, but it's mostly tweaking this and tweaking that.
Good job on the mod!
Edit: Actually, re-reading my post and re-thinking it, it might mostly feel that way because, it being (or not?) a TC, my expectations are set a bit over what I'd want for any level .wad. Still, really nice work, I don't mean to be too negative
I'll address the concerns in here:
- The mod was originally intended to be a TC but at some point in early 2012, the artist/composer left the team for whatever reason. So i'm just salvaging what I got.
- Technically I could streamline the intro and put it in as a titlemap while leaving out the full text to a text file.
- I'm afraid I cannot improve the way the cutscenes are presented, since the artist decided to leave out of nowhere, there's nothing I can do about this, honest. I can only improve the ending. THERE were comic strips planned but since he left for lots of reasons which I find stupid, you get the idea.
- Some levels could use a bit of streamlining like STADMIN, by streamlining, I mean removing some of the redundant/useless sections.
- The pistol is less garbage than doom's pistol, it's altfire could be improved though. Try to suggest what could be done to improve it.
- People complained that the fists were too slow so I fixed it. Also the blobs on the hands, Jack is a half-human half-mutant (again the artist left before he designed the player sprites). Again, if the visuals are screwy for the fists, can't fix it either.
- There was a level scrapped between the STADMIN and STCITY because of issues with the artist, he complained too much about the scale of the mod and in result the mod was going nowhere for 2 years. I may fix this for the new public beta, but exams are holding me back from that at the moment.
Gameplay-related stuff I can tweak, when it comes to the visuals, there's nothing much I can do really and trust me, I already hit up some people before for some assistance but it didn't work out in the end. I'm left on my own now, left with what I can salvage.
I see what you mean. It's mostly nitpicks, so not much to worry about, but if you want I could try to tweak the fists so the idle animation doesn't look like a seizure
It did seem like the lines were meant to be delivered in comic book format, and everything is very comicbook-ey. I'd offer to help but given the number of pages you have in there it'd probably take me pretty long.
I don't think the maps need to be cut down, but making directions in the levels more obvious would be nice. Maybe labeling the areas or something, I'm not sure- the only reason it irked me was because after the first pass through, empty levels are kinda boring. It was nice that you repopulated the level on the run back in some of the areas, though.
About the pistol, what I meant is that even early on it's outclassed by the shotgun (imo) and it becomes completely redundant by the time you get the rifle or whatever. It's not a big deal since the other weapons more than make up for it, but yeah, it felt like "that gun" that I'm not sure why I'm still lugging around after a couple maps. I'm not sure what you could do for it, but just making it different from the laser rifle would be good I think. Maybe make the projectiles faster, or make it hitscan?
OliveD wrote:I see what you mean. It's mostly nitpicks, so not much to worry about, but if you want I could try to tweak the fists so the idle animation doesn't look like a seizure
It did seem like the lines were meant to be delivered in comic book format, and everything is very comicbook-ey. I'd offer to help but given the number of pages you have in there it'd probably take me pretty long.
I don't think the maps need to be cut down, but making directions in the levels more obvious would be nice. Maybe labeling the areas or something, I'm not sure- the only reason it irked me was because after the first pass through, empty levels are kinda boring. It was nice that you repopulated the level on the run back in some of the areas, though.
About the pistol, what I meant is that even early on it's outclassed by the shotgun (imo) and it becomes completely redundant by the time you get the rifle or whatever. It's not a big deal since the other weapons more than make up for it, but yeah, it felt like "that gun" that I'm not sure why I'm still lugging around after a couple maps. I'm not sure what you could do for it, but just making it different from the laser rifle would be good I think. Maybe make the projectiles faster, or make it hitscan?
Yeah feel free to take a stab at the fist tweaking if you want, it will make the mod better .
About the comic strips, we can discuss this in PM as there's some stuff I would rather not spoil to people because it may/may not happen , will send a PM asap. Now for the STADMIN being confusing, I think I know how to fix this, I could make decorative paths to the most important parts of the map to visually give it away, definitely will think about how to do this.
As for the pistol, now that you mention it, I could make it a hitscan weapon in veins of Heretic's default wand. As in make the projectiles of it's ridicoulously fast. It's people like you that make my day with the feedback
Whoa you of all people to say that? Mindblown and surprised at the same time, thanks Torm for saying this.
But basically everyone, i'm far from being done with this mod, there's still a lot to do, there's still a lot I want to insert in, the show's far from over!
Pardon the lack of progress lately, real life issues made it very hard to work for me if not impossible, now that things are on a straight track again, i'm back working on Soulcrusher. I'm mostly working either on the new level planned for Public Beta 3 (which will deal with the plothole in the FAQ) or trying to find graphics for remaining enemies, as for sounds. I most likely will reuse what I have in most of cases. Anywho here have two screenshots
For some reason or another, haven't gone my way to download this or the first versions. Gonna rectify that immediately.
.:edit:.
Goddamn. This just looks awesome. Enemies, weapons, texturing, music... And gameplay doesn't seem bad at all. But I've just started playing second level now.
Only bit of nitpick is that ammo is way too plenty to fire, even with the harder difficulty. And maybe slightly too easy on the hardest.
And this doesn't seem to drain much fps either, after setting "Shaders for texture warp" off. Might well stay to play this...
Right since Corsair reported some few nasty bugs here and on DW, I might have to push out an update to SCMain.wad sometime soon, but I need to deal with some things first.
I might throw in something extra as well, anywho I need more feedback!
I'm also beginning the second. I think the exact same way as CorSair. I'll just add that not having any experience on this game like I have with Doom, I don't mind too much if it's easy or not since I'm enjoying the visual and the walkthrough. I have some other thoughts waiting, after I complete another map.
Last edited by PFL on Fri Mar 22, 2013 8:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Hahaha that's a funny shortcut, I never thought of this! Definitely not an obvious thing to do, IIRC you could to the same in level 5 when you had full health and 200 armor by jumping over one gate with a rocket launcher but fortunately you don't get that one until later if you look around . So fix the shortcut/not?
PS. I dare you to find the super-secret weapon in the mod
The super-secret weapon don't work against Francis' final form. Intended?
But works nicely against first form. Quite well hidden, though.
I might compose screenshot gallery of places with texturing problems plus few other nitpicks some day. I'll try do it in next week, if possible. But no promises...
The Incendiary shotgun's secondary reload takes view from half of lower screen, and feels rather annoying, in my opinion.
And what's with that shopkeeper in second level? I can't find the right line or place to do shopping. The other shop in the Outer City works, though.
Speaking of the shopkeeper in second level, That glass isn't solid.
Also, I would keep those areas open for those speedrunners.