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#1 2010-06-07 13:11:55
- UglyDuck
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- Registered: 2010-06-07
Brief Critical Thoughts
Seeing your response to the critical feedback you've received, I'm in two minds about writing this. Not because I don't want to hurt your feelings or provoke your ire; I understand you don't think about it like that. In fact, I'm just not sure how much use it'll be to you.
Have you ever heard the phrase 'those least receptive to criticism are usually the ones who need it most'? Your choice of response, though reasonable, is poor. You can tell everyone that you're not being butthurt by the criticism till your blue in the mouth, but being defensive about your work is a bad idea. It makes you look feeble, you don't learn anything and you piss off everyone who took the time to write to you. Having humility around this kind of thing usually means you make better decisions.
Anyway. One of the things you kept coming back to, particularly in Icarus's post, was that the problems were out of your hands. That, however, is just a part of understanding your limitations. If, for instance, you start a 30ft high mural and then realise that your ladder is only 15ft tall, you can't just paint half the picture and blame the ladder. If the problem is not being able to code your own game instructor commands, then you need to think of a way around that. Use sound and lighting and textures and instinct to lead the player where they are supposed to go. If you ask me, the game instructor is a lazy man's crutch anyway, and was only meant to introduce the games mechanics to the player quickly, so they could dovetail in with the fast paced multiplayer.
For instance, when I opened the flare window, I immediately thought I was going to walk out onto a balcony or jump down to a ledge, something probably taught to me through hours and hours of opening doors and walking through them. I jumped up onto the window ledge, looked all over the place and couldn't see anywhere to go. Was I retarded to think that? Maybe, but your talent as a level designer should be to cater to retards like me. What was your response?
"This is ridiculous."
I really would like to give you my critical feedback. I'd like to talk to you about measuring light levels and guiding the players eye and the purpose of pacing and crafting an identity and gameplay fatigue and so on. That being said, you don't seem too keen on hearing it. If you want to be critiqued, rather than just worshipped for a bit, try and be just a little more inviting and humble.
I will say, however, that I Hate Mountains is probably one of the best custom campaigns I've played for L4D1. It's no Death Aboard or Coal'd Blood, but it's better than most. Oh, and hire a writer, or at least become friends with someone funny. Riding on the back of established jokes wasn't clever when you made Prelude and it isn't clever now, either.
Last edited by UglyDuck (2010-06-07 13:13:07)
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#3 2010-06-07 17:48:03
- UglyDuck
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- Registered: 2010-06-07
Re: Brief Critical Thoughts
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#5 2010-06-08 02:28:46
- whitevioletdragon
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- From: Mexico
- Registered: 2010-05-30
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#6 2010-06-08 02:31:45
- whitevioletdragon
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- From: Mexico
- Registered: 2010-05-30
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#8 2010-06-08 06:39:48
- UglyDuck
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- Registered: 2010-06-07
Re: Brief Critical Thoughts
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#10 2010-06-08 08:26:52
- UglyDuck
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- Registered: 2010-06-07
Re: Brief Critical Thoughts
Last edited by UglyDuck (2010-06-08 08:27:31)
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#13 2010-06-08 11:11:44
- UglyDuck
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- Registered: 2010-06-07
Re: Brief Critical Thoughts
Last edited by UglyDuck (2010-06-08 11:11:51)
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#14 2010-06-08 13:12:24
Re: Brief Critical Thoughts
No offense, but as a matter of fact, I prefer what we did with hand-written fonts than what you did. There's no way writing with a mouse will ever beat using hand-written fonts. And even if it only took you 5 minutes to draw this, there's probably 15 minutes of work to actually make it look like something better. Multiply this by the amount of graffiti in the campaign and you end up with approx. 15 hours of tedious work that will take up to two weeks of work on the campaign considering that we can only give away one or two hours a day for this and not everyday. Now I think you might start to understand why things are not as perfect as they could be since we're still only talking about little graffitis (spoiler: because we also have a life). 
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#15 2010-06-08 15:36:21
- Prisoner416
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- Registered: 2010-06-08
Re: Brief Critical Thoughts
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#16 2010-06-09 10:10:54
- Squall
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- Registered: 2010-06-09
Re: Brief Critical Thoughts
just registered to suggest this, why not ask the forums to create the written graffiti and post the files so you can put into use. This way you saved a lot of time and also, make the people happy that they can contribute.
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#17 2010-06-09 15:10:03
Re: Brief Critical Thoughts
Well no, we have a tight agenda and we can't wait for external people to finish their work in order to plan our releases and tests. Also, it's our project and we don't really want to include unknown people, we'd like to be able to say "we did it" without having to add "apart from this, and this, and this...". That's not something we'd like to do.
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#18 2010-06-09 17:20:00
- CosmicD
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- Registered: 2010-05-23
Re: Brief Critical Thoughts
i can already imagine it, people in a zombie apocalypse splitting beans over gramatical errors or font face in the saferoom 
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#19 2010-06-14 06:34:23
- Zhnigo
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- Registered: 2010-06-13
Re: Brief Critical Thoughts
Last edited by Zhnigo (2010-06-14 06:34:29)
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#21 2010-06-14 12:13:20
- Zhnigo
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- Registered: 2010-06-13
Re: Brief Critical Thoughts
Wall writings. I honestly don't see why you can't let your fans rework them for you.
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#23 2010-06-15 03:03:07
- Squall
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- Registered: 2010-06-09
Re: Brief Critical Thoughts
it's not like we want a credit for what we done, we just want the game to look better. Forget the credit, just say it's all yours. Not being sarcastic, we just want the best out of the game.
Also, why do you have to wait for everyone to finish and compile. Just compiled till the next release date of the map. The extra one will just have to wait till the next next release. That's all
Last edited by Squall (2010-06-15 03:03:28)
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#24 2010-06-15 05:46:38
Re: Brief Critical Thoughts
Of course, but the hardest part is not to make it to the release, its releasing.
There's like a thousand things that could go wrong with packaging, delivering, hosting, mirroring and such. More importantly, it splits the player and server base in two each time we release a new version because the older becomes incompatible with the new version and the new version becomes incompatible with the dedicated servers already running. Releasing too many versions is the best way to shoot yourself in the feet. We don't plan on releasing anything more than a finale 1.2 version that fixes everything.
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#25 2010-06-18 14:06:04
- llod
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- Registered: 2010-06-08
Re: Brief Critical Thoughts
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