DBP68: Outposts Of The Wasteland RC1.4 [-cl2]

Congrats lunchlunch and everyone who worked on this. Many thanks to all the hard work you put into making it happen. I'm watching @stxvile streaming it right now, but i couldn't jump in the chat, unfortunately. I don't know what the deal with verified twitch accounts is.

Congrats to us!

I'm doing my continuous playthrough and having a blast, the map arrangement is spot on, and the flow is nice, there are no dull moments.

somniac , i discovered a very high chance softlock in your map. It happens in the big pipe set piece, where cacos raise from it, and you jump inside to collect a key. This is the second time i play the map and didn't have the same issue before. I killed the cacos, and jumped in the pipe, then some invisible walls raised but not the water floor, resulting in what you see in this screenshot imgur.com/a/CYgJR9l

I got curious and tried to trigger it again, and it happened again, only this time, no invisible walls, just the normal pipe that i couldn't get out of. I gave it another try and finally figured out what is causing the problem. When the pipe opens up, there are ceilings moving up slowly, if you jump in the pipe before they go all the way up, the floor of the pipe won't move. I don't know if making the action lines repeatable will fix this, but the way it is now jumping too early is a guaranteed softlock. And with the ceiling moving up so slowly, you have enough time to kill the cacos and the elemental and still jump early and getting locked. This probably won't be an issue on a blind playthrogh, as most players won't rush in, but the risk of it happening in subsequent playthroughs is big. Try and see if you can trigger it too. Edit: I did more test, and by the looks of it, it's not a guaranteed for the softlock to trigger if you jump early, as long as you avoid getting the key until the ceiling raises to the top, which is still very risky.  

Thanks for pointing that out, had a feeling it might cause a problem even though I'd adjusted it a couple of times already. Like you said, its the moving ceilings causing the problem as if the player jumps in they'll be trying to make two sector movements happen at once, which obviously can't happen, and having a WR action on the raising floor inside will cause all sorts of problems with repeatedly raising those floors. Its a bit of a complicated setup to give the effect of a segmented drill raising up.

I've tweaked it again and shaved about 12 seconds off the time it takes for the ceilings to raise, if the player does prematurely jump in there's less of a wait now, at least. I'm putting a new version in the project thread, but I guess it'll have to wait for the next RC.

(its times like this I wish for a fast raising ceiling effect in limit-removing, lol)

Cross post from dev thread. I should've posted here to begin with:

FDAs for MAP02 04 05 07 12 : dbp68_02-12joeFDA.zip (111.82 KB)

MAP02 40oz
The music is hard to listen to with its incessant high pitched bleeping.
I'm sure you've heard plenty of people gush over the subway ride, it is impressive as hell to pull off in vanilla comp. The ambient noises of the subway would've benefitted if the map had no music at all.

MAP04 somniac
I accidentally got the secret berserk through the wall.
I love the verticality, it gives this cavern map a more distinctive design.
The red key is poorly marked, my instinct tells me not to jump down because it looks like a death pit, and I only jumped down as a last resort after combing through the rest of the map.

MAP05 walterc
The health distribution was perfectly executed here, I didn't have full health for almost the entire map, making it feel like I'm scraping by.
The small scale of the map made it feel kind of cozy.
Not too sure about the cyber fight, it doesn't seem possible to avoid taking splash damage.

MAP06 lunchlunch
You can get softlocked here by walking over the extinguished camp fire to get over the crate : 


MAP07 thehockster
Fun and simple, not much to say.

MAP09 RastaManGames
Looks good and is very atmospheric, but gameplay feels like an afterthought, most enemies don't contribute much, and just spawn at seemingly random as obligation to fill the big empty space. I would've preferred a more peaceful walk around the abandoned factory.

MAP12 kvsari
Pretty challenging to single-segment. The non-linearity is great, and helped the map not feel stale when restarting. Combined with the huge scale this created an epic adventure.

FDAs for MAP13-31 : dbp68_13-31joeFDA.zip (168.8 KB)

MAP13 40oz
IIRC I saw the conveyor belt arena in one of your mapping workshop threads from a couple years ago, don't remember the exact thread, but the shape of the room was similar, except it was only textured with GRAY1, had the demons on level ground and revs as turrets.
Good realism throughout, but this probably plays better with an extensive gameplay mod to compliment the beautiful scenery a little better than vanilla gameplay.
The final fight's huge space would've played better, if instead of a mish mash of different enemies that can easily infight and circle strafed around, there would be only arachnotrons and a single cyber turret (prolly a few hitscanners for spice), because arachnotrons are perfect for such open space with their attack patterns, yet there weren't any, making the fight feel unfocused and lackluster.

MAP14 thelokk
Barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels.
Good, accessible challenges for the masses.
Barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels.
Scenery is cool, the crane with the chicken is hilarious.
Barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels do a barrel roll barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels.
Stock textures were implemented pretty well.
Barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels barrels.
All in all; fun
BTW the waterfall secret is bleeding through floor (it's more prominent on the backside).

MAP15 @tangra
A tense and cinematic map, I would've loved to visit inside at least some of the container homes, but alas, you can't have everything.
Kind of a missed opportunity not having a raiseable container, to be used for the small platforming section in the first area. Same could be said about my maps though, I wish I would've thought of making that earlier myself. Might be possible to pull of in DBP69.
My favorite part is the catwalk section over the nukage, the encounters were the strongest there IMO.

MAP16 @ashley
What a turnaround from the first version of the map, I honestly expected this one to be rejected because of how underbaked this arrived on the day of the deadline. But you made it work just in time for release!
Searching for a weapon and establishing a foothold is exciting.
The optional megasphere fight is too easy to cheese, and I don't see players staying in the nukage zone for the challenge if it means they have to take unavoidable nukage damage.

MAP17 lunchlunch
One smooth ride. I expected to see some credits to pop up during the map, given it's self-titled after the project like other credit maps. I remember 40oz integrated credits into a map with gameplay in Carnage Oasis (DBP39).
Good to see some storage room representation.

MAP18
Dinner

MAP31 kras
The map as a whole has too many filler enemies and not enough rockets or cells to deal with in a timely manner, making it very tedious to kill them all, and far easier to run past the enemies to the exit.
Despite the several versions and iterations this map overwent, it still feels largely untested; missing flat textures on a couple doors, unmatching props (trees that bleed beyond the ceiling. Other random props leftover from DBP67), unmatching texture and flat scheme leftovers from the DBP67 iterations of the map.
How was this map developed for 4 months? At least you now know what not to do in a map.

I had an idea for the secret sound, but it came too late, like a week after lunchlunch made the release. If it was during the development, i would've suggested it for sure... maybe even drop on my knees and beg him to use it, because it's so perfect.