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Flopjack:
Spent some time in the editor and wanted to get some feedback on what I have so far. It's supposed to be made in the theme of HammerWatch, so I guess it's my own take on the gameplay more than anything. Open to feedback, so I need testers! A few things to consider:

-It's difficult, so bring a friend or two. I'm debating on balancing it for 4 players for the ultimate challenge, but nothing too gimmicky (like traps you can't see that insta-kill you).
-Certain areas are very dark. (the deeper areas)

Completed:
Zone 1 - West Wing: Hero's Demise, Cells of the Forgotten, Chambers of Treachery, Cellar of the Damned, Decaying Hall (connects rooms)

In progress:
Zone 2 - Administration:
Zone 3 - East Wing:

Enjay:
The Good:
Lighting the torches is fun, and a seriously cool mechanic. I'm definitely going to play around with that idea for my maps.

The second two rooms has engaging level design. The floor itself drew you forward, and gave you reason to keep goin.

Those glowing ticks. I don't know if they do anything special attack wise, but they glow! If you're going to stick with the dark theme, my lord, use those ticks! It's fun (in moderation) to not see the land, but still be able to see a swarm of glowing ticks charging at you through the unknown.

The Bad:
Waaaayyyy too dark. That engaging level design I mentioned? It was rather inneffective because even though logically I knew it was there, I couldn't see it, so it felt exactly the same as the first two room. The darkness is fun at the very start, where it's new and exciting, but it quickly becomes "Okay, I'm just playing through blind (Or with my minimap)" Time to just spam attacks in front of me to kill everything" I would recommend raising the base light level to at least something visible, if you want to keep the all-over dark feel. Otherwise, ditch the darkness, and save it for particular areas.

On that note, the first two rooms are just boxes stuck on boxes. I understand it's a prison, however simply going through box after box is not fun. I would recommend switching it up a bit if you want to keep the strict prison layout, and have some cells be closed, others decayed and broken down, and perhaps a few that are connected by broken walls, leading into otherwise inaccessible cells.

The Arrow traps in the third room are seemingly pointless. I felt they added no significant threat, or puzzle to the gameplay of the level. I would recommend scrapping them entirely, or working them in to a puzzle. (The exception to this is the hallway at the top, where it has the timed arrows. That was fun, but altogether pointless. I would keep those arrows, but give the character a reason to brave the arrow traps, as opposed to fighting through the enemies to get there from the other side. As it is, going through the "shortcut" just gets you to more enemies)

The Ugly: (Things I just think you didn't intend, but are broken nonetheless)
In the third room, all the apples are stacked a million high. I never actually found an apple where it disappeared when I ate it, so they all filled me up to full health, and stayed there to heal me if I ever came back. The one time I found an orange it was actually worse, because it disappeared, only healing me for 25, instead of healing all the way to full.

In the first room, the secret room you can either enter through the glowing eyes, or break into from a cell is empty. Finding secrets is fun, finding empty secrets just makes you question what you're doing with your life.

Your map doesn't use the color cover doodads in the editor. You probably want to find these and use them, as it will make your interior spaces feel like they're inside (Creating a sharp contrast between walls that you can be on either side of, and walls where you're on the only side of).

Rooms one and three have no purpose. They have tons of enemies, but there aren't any keys, shops, or hordes of wealth to gather. They are entirely skippable as it currently is.

The ledges in the maps are placed poorly, so that they are aesthetically unappealing, just go through and re-position them until they don't look like they're all bunched up at the corners.

Over-arching themes and ways to improve:
My only qualifications here are having played a lot of video-games, so take this with a grain of salt, but here are some general tips that you might want to follow to better your levels.

Always have a reason for everything. Those buttons at the beginning that open the doors right next to them? They're decent, in the sense that they allow you to bypass all the enemies in the cells if you want to, but then what reason is there for pushing them? An apple? Well, you're not fighting anything, so there's no need for that. Maybe try ditching the individual buttons, and at the furthest corner of the level, have one button to open all of the cells, letting loose the hordes of baddies, and allowing you to go in and collect that sweet sweet gold, and those precious bronze keys.
Give the player reasons to want to do things. As it was, I made it up to the fourth level (The one with tons of slimes and the elite skeletons thrown in) before I stopped, and I only made it there because I had a reason for playing (Helping out the custom level community, by giving the advice you're reading here). If it weren't for that, I probably would have made it half way through the first set of cell-blocks, in to the second set, saw it was the same, and then quit. Give reasons to continue. Oh, you want that 5-up? You want those stacks of fat cash, to purchase the upgrades from the vendors, hidden behind the silver doors? Well, now you've gotta find those keys, and that cash, you have to find the secret passages, to solve the puzzles, to get the rewards.

And don't just think this stops at the collectibles, apply this to everything. I already said above, give that arrow hallway a reason to exist, some perk to going through it, instead of around. The torches? Lighting them is hardly a worthwhile reason, since you move away from them seconds later, and you're back in to the dark. Make a room dark, but have three unlit torches, after the torches are lit, run a quick script and light the entire room, or reveal a secret, or do something to make it worth my time.


You have some skills, that's for sure. The layout of the 3rd and 4th floors are better than anything I've managed to get done so far, just work on making sure it feel like a game, and I'll gladly give this another play once it's more finished. :D Good luck!

Flopjack:
Thanks for the detailed critique, Enjay.

Most of what you've said I agree with or was a mistake of some sort. If you think it's a bug, it probably is, like the zillion apple thing. I'm not sure what you mean when you say "first, second, third, etc..." room. If you could use their names, that would help a lot. For example, Room 1 = Hero's Demise, Room 2 = Decaying Hall, etc... Was the text working, indicating where you are and where a door leads?

Glowing Ticks - I made no new assets. The glowing ticks are a more durable golden version which drop lots of money. Unless you're seeing  glowing effects on the normal ticks and I'm misunderstanding you?

OK, now it's time for the harder stuff. The darkness is something I'm fond of, but I may definitely be in the minority. If I make it light enough to see through it, why have the darkness be low at all? But at the same time I don't want it to be a problem. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said to save it for particular areas. The idea is to encourage you to stick together, like back-to-back, when venturing in the darkness. I mean this is basically an abandoned prison with a dark magic around... anyway, not totally sure how I can use it without it being weak. If I'm going to use darkness, it has to be dark. I also tried to have a theme of, the deeper you are in the dungeon the darker it is. So, in the West Wing (the bit you played), you've got the Decaying Hall with some light to see, but all the offshoots are pitch black, because that's the lowest. Going 1 layer above the Decaying Hall and you have plenty of light. Thoughts?

I tried to make some connection with the name of the area and what you found in it. It wasn't always smooth. The Chambers of Treachery were supposed to be torture chambers. There's only 4 large cells, a blood pit in each one and a larger blood pit in the center (couldn't find any other doodads to help support the theme). I put the random traps there as a throw back to... there's sharp stuff around here. :| ha ha, it's weak, but it's the best way I could think to have traps planted in a jail! :D


--- Quote ---In the first room, the secret room you can either enter through the glowing eyes, or break into from a cell is empty. Finding secrets is fun, finding empty secrets just makes you question what you're doing with your life.
--- End quote ---
This seems to be an issue. What actually happens is you break down the wall and exit through the glowing eyes. This is how you break out of your cell at the very beginning. You can later enter that cell. I may just remove the glowing eyes or not allow the cell to be opened.


--- Quote ---Your map doesn't use the color cover doodads in the editor. You probably want to find these and use them, as it will make your interior spaces feel like they're inside (Creating a sharp contrast between walls that you can be on either side of, and walls where you're on the only side of).
--- End quote ---
These are a pain and don't work with black being my back color. If we could have black colored pieces like they gray ones, where I can hide things under them, that would be great. But you're right about readability on knowing if you can get to the other side or not. We'll see.


--- Quote ---Always have a reason for everything. Those buttons at the beginning that open the doors right next to them? They're decent, in the sense that they allow you to bypass all the enemies in the cells if you want to, but then what reason is there for pushing them? An apple? Well, you're not fighting anything, so there's no need for that. Maybe try ditching the individual buttons, and at the furthest corner of the level, have one button to open all of the cells, letting loose the hordes of baddies, and allowing you to go in and collect that sweet sweet gold, and those precious bronze keys.

Give the player reasons to want to do things. As it was, I made it up to the fourth level (The one with tons of slimes and the elite skeletons thrown in) before I stopped, and I only made it there because I had a reason for playing (Helping out the custom level community, by giving the advice you're reading here). If it weren't for that, I probably would have made it half way through the first set of cell-blocks, in to the second set, saw it was the same, and then quit. Give reasons to continue. Oh, you want that 5-up? You want those stacks of fat cash, to purchase the upgrades from the vendors, hidden behind the silver doors? Well, now you've gotta find those keys, and that cash, you have to find the secret passages, to solve the puzzles, to get the rewards.
--- End quote ---
I haven't properly placed rewards, various collectibles, and I'm randomizing positions of a lot of goodies and keys. That may explain a few things. In short, I'm not done, but wanted feedback to help. Additionally, I don't agree about always. You're in a jail and you don't know where things are. It's OK to stumble across a malfunctioning cell door button, a relatively empty corridor, or whatever. Ever played Diablo 2?

I do agree it's not OK to have an entire area/room and have no reward, and highlighting key things like a button that unlocks a secret or opens a new way with a chime or a graphic is a good thing, but the small stuff? I think it's OK to get a little crazy with it. It's fun to push buttons. :)

By the way, is it normal in HammerWatch that silver keys are only goodies? That what I was planning to do: bronze and gold keys for progression where silver keys are optional for goodies.

Keppler:
About the breakable cell wall. The problem is that you spawn outside in the main area with access to the darker cellar rooms not in the cell. I liked the idea of lighting torches as well, but I agree that it was a bit too dark. Since the game has no brightness setting whatsoever, the darker tone can be completely unseeable with some monitors. That is why most darker games offer a brightness slider in the first place and why they are not that dark by default. The darkness can be implemented well if the area that the player can see around him is a bit brighter (like he would be wearing a torch with him), but right now it gets very tedious to find the torches on the walls while trudging through the annoying slimes. I myself would prefer if there were less slimes in general as they are very annoying to kill in large groups and they yield no reward so they should be rather placed to block off rewards like they are used in the main campaign. Besides that the level design was a bit dull in scenery as of yet and there wasn't much reward to playing the campaign, so it rather felt like a bore, but I can imagine this turning into something fine when a lot of work is put into it.

Enjay:
Sorry about not using room names, I didn't remember them from the play-through, and was to lazy to go back and find them out. The numbers were 1 through 4, with 1 being the furthest to the left in the hall, and 4 being furthest to the right. I didn't number the room that was two bronze doors with the prizes inbetween them because I didn't comment on it.

From what you've written, it's currently a bug that you spawn in the hall, as opposed to the cell in Heroes demise.

About the golden ticks, you understood correctly, that was merely me throwing an idea at you about how you could possibly use them. If they drop more money then you would probably want to change the coding so that they just act as normal, though, so you don't flood them with money.

As for the color covers, they are a pain, but using them makes the levels look a million times better than without. Just use whichever matches the theme of the walls you're using, and they'll still appear black in the shadows (With your current lighting scheme), and youll only see the gray of it when you're close enough to see the gray of the walls, so I don't think it will take away too much from the aesthetic theme.

In regards to my saying to always have a reason, I believe you misunderstood me slightly. What I mean is that everything should have a reason in the sense that if you have empty cells, make them empty for a reason. That reason can be whatever you'd like, whether it's to pad out the dungeon, so it's not as linear, or to throw a few extra monsters at the players.

Let's look at it this way. You have a dungeon level that you want to contain 3 keys, 2 1-ups, and 1 power-up. You want all of these things to be located in cells along the dungeon (For the sake of this being a simple example). You could have one cell, with all 6 items, but that would be incredibly boring. You'd go in, collect everything, and leave. You could have 6 cells, one item in each, but that would be even worse. You would have the exact same feeling of, okay, everything's here, but you would be dragging it out over a longer collection time, creating an exasperating feeling. Ideally, what you'd do is throw in a bunch of empty cells to explore, so that it's not always the same thing. That way you're actually PLAYING the game, instead of just walking through it. So those empty cells all have a specific purpose, and are placed specifically to spread out the objectives in an organic way. Now, if we go to the other extreme possible, and have 6 cells with goodies, but 50 cells total, leaving 44 of those cells empty, it starts to feel like there's no purpose to ANY of the cells (even when there is).

Now, I still believe that no matter how you arrange these cells and rewards, it's still going to be a boring example. I used it because it was simple, and relates directly to what you're working with. If you're trying to add more excitement to the game, you would need to vary it even more. I am 100 percent sure you can do this, because rooms 3 and 4 (Sorry, still don't know their names), had pretty great lay-outs. They drew you to different areas, unlike the first room, where if I were actually playing your game, I would have no desire to go anywhere, I would just try to get out as soon as possible.

The gist of this is
--- Quote ---It's OK to stumble across a malfunctioning cell door button, a relatively empty corridor, or whatever.
--- End quote ---
You're 100% correct, just currently as it is, there's about 5 times too much of these things I'm stumbling it to, and it feels dry.

So TL;DR You want to keep your players guessing, but don't make it so hard to guess that they give up.

Hopefully that clears up some of what I meant. Feel free to keep asking questions, and I'll gladly keep trying to help :D

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