Map Title: The Last Fortress
Author: Lord Waffnuffly "War Bonnet" Letz
From: The Last Fortress
Filename: TheLastFortressFinal.unr
Music Files: Crater.umx, Watcher.umx




Video Playthrough:


Synopsis: The final destination of a stranded's journey. An immense platoon of Skaarj stands in your way. Commence annihilation.

Discuss!

This WAS mine but comp took a shit on me. =/ Sorry guys.

Maybe I am bad at the game, but I remember saving extremely frequently to offset the challenge of this one. I do remember it being easier once past the initial bridge section. The hardest fight though had to be near the end, when there were a couple of Skaarj at the top of a ladder. Or any fight near a ladder. Or a ladder without a fight. I had a tendency to fall off the ladders.

The architecture is great. The fortress has a very modernist feel to it with the large stone slabs and the emphasis on structure while the Skaarj additions bring a slightly more postmodern touch. Waffnuffly is pretty good at what he does and there isn't a whole lot to say about it.

Climbing all over the castle instead of going through it was a unique gameplay element which really digresses from the familiar Unreal castle level paradigm set in place with maps like Bluff. I also liked the special eightball in the map, though I remember avoiding its use due to a perceived scarcity of ammunition.

For any group of Skaarj that are going to assault you on the tower when climbing, vaporize them with the SK6.

This map was a blast in coop, but I thought it was a bit too dark. I had to turn my brightness up by a lot before I could really see anything in the shadowy areas.

It took me a while to appreciate TLF. I found the beginning segment very annoying; while it doesn't necessarily have nail-biting levels of difficulty, I found it hard to enjoy as you would be frequently ambushed by Skaarj packs, shot at from all directions at once and be frequently faced with the danger of dropping into the water, becoming an easy target as well as being forced to climb up an annoying rope system. Combat situations in that segment of the map easily turn into tiring clusterfucks, especially so when played in co-op mode.

However, once I finally forced myself through the bridges segment, my impression of the map very quickly turned around to the positive. Waff's complete, systematic planning approach to level design really paid off, as playing the level felt like a proper assault on a convincing, realistically defined location rather than an uninspired series of battle arenas like video game levels often end up being. The player is led through every bit of environment the fortress offers and his adventure is brought to an impressive finish with conceptually grand set pieces such as the large Skaarj bridge as well as the very peak of the fortress (complete with impressive end cutscene).

A level I can definitely recommend; however players may need to muster up some patience for the tedious beginning in order to get to the genius bits.

I absolutely love the synopsis


This map is fucking solid. It deserves it's first place spot next to Shrakitha on the review page for sure. I'm yet to play through it on unreal difficulty, but it's definitely on the agenda. Brilliant on so many levels

I like this map much more from a mapper viewpoint than a player viewpoint...and maybe in theory they should be the same but anyway. I appreciate it as a mapper because of the shear effort that went into building the damn thing. It's more of a love/hate kind of relationship I suppose. There are parts of it I love (architecture, mood, scale, SDK) and parts I almost despise (difficulty in sections, annoying ropes, a little dark for me as well). It's definitely an inspiration from a build perspective...although I don't think I want to know how long some of the rebuilds must have taken.

Oh boy. This map was a real pain in the ass to build and really is full of terrible design practices that I've since erased from my build process. I also released the final version with a couple of bugs in the skybox that weren't present in the earlier builds, hooray!

As for the gameplay, well, I fairly warned everyone in the readme that this map is no cakewalk. It was designed to be a tough slog, especially on the harder difficulties. I was aiming to not only provide a challenge for seasoned veterans, but cram as much gameplay value into the map as possible by making almost every area a combat area. Even with this in mind, though, there's very little you CAN'T do to proceed. You have lots of choices on how to approach any given situation, plus a really great "immediate fix" tool for when you get overwhelmed - the rocket artillery cannon.

I'm curious: those who found this map unreasonably difficult, what difficulty did you choose and what level do you normally play SP maps on? If, say, you find Unreal difficult on Hard and you played TLF on Hard or Medium, well, you should probably have played it on Easy instead.

TLF was meant to be way harder than stock maps due to its setting, theme, and the fact that it is a single map but treated like a larger campaign's finale. I didn't spend time ramping up the difficulty over the course of a map pack - I cranked it all the way to maximum right from the start. But I don't think it's unfair, either. I can get through the whole map on Unreal difficulty with ease, and that's not because I know where all the enemies and items are. Many of the enemies are randomized (albeit in predictable locations, i.e. snipers in the moat wall windows, which ALSO have lower health than normal and die from a single Eightball), so even *I* don't know what I'm up against most of the time!

Basically, if you treat this map the way you would treat the final level for most other FPSs where you are in the heart of an enemy stronghold that was designed in every way to prevent your progress, you'll do fine. You just have to be careful and scope out enemy locations well in advance - use that sniper scope! (But save your rifle rounds for when you can get a one-hit headshot kill.)

The climbing stuff was definitely kinda wonky, but that's more due to engine limitations and the fact that I didn't have any idea how to script a climbing actor myself. You shouldn't be climbing in combat, either - that's another reason you need to maintain your situational awareness at all times. Scope out the surrounding area before you begin climbing, because you're going to be vulnerable while you ascend (or descend).

The boss battle was also sorta awkward because I built the map first and just sorta worked in the gameplay to fit rather than building the map FOR the gameplay, which was a personal challenge I set out to meet. I think I did a pretty good job overall, but definitely had to improvise (weird shield thing? lol) to make that last battle doable. Probably would have been better if I knew as much about pawn scripting as I do now, too.

Can't believe it's been almost three years since I built this thing. I've gotten so much better at every single aspect of design since then it's kinda crazy, especially at making castles.

I thought the difficulty was perfect. I played on medium and took it slowly. Was challenging without being frustrating (until that god damn warlord which just refused to die).

I do not think it's as much a question of difficulty as it is a question of gameplay design preferences. It wasn't HARD, but I simply didn't consider it fun to walk narrow bridges while attacked by dozens of invisible enemies through tiny dark windows, all while triggering rocket barrages and SkaarjWarrior ambushes and managing sparse ammo! It made incredible sense setting-wise (Walk into occupied enemy fort? They have the upper hand), and there are definitely audiences that enjoy that sort of hostile fighting against the odds... but there are also those who do not, and personally I think it's user-unfriendly.

Some kinda related discourse by Valve, the company that probably has the biggest focus on play-testing and integrating player feedback into their design process:

It makes sense in a realistic setting for night-vision-enabled zombies to have the upper hand in utter darkness, but in-game being jumped out of the blue simply wasn't all that fun! Similar thinking could be applied to Skaarj Troopers hiding in dark windows.

Yeah, I was aware from the beginning that some people wouldn't like the intense ambushes on the bridge. I definitely designed TLF with the more hardcore experience in mind. And I disliked L4D since it felt really boring and predictable to me, so :shrug: different strokes.

I mostly wanted to see what it was like to fight a competent, organized enemy force on their terms, because I almost never see that happening in games (obviously, for a lot of big reasons, like appealing to a certain audience). However, even with this in mind, Unreal is still an old game where enemies don't work together in teams; any "teamwork" on this engine is the coincidental result of several individual actors operating in tandem in the same area at the same time, and that's when things are going well. If Unreal's AI was more sophisticated and the Skaarj were able to actually communicate and react to your advancement on a wider scale, I imagine TLF would be literally impossible to beat. There would just be no way that THAT many Skaarj, working together, would fail to crush a single human right at the front gate. But since this is a video game, where disbelief is always suspended in some way, we get this possible-but-hard gameplay instead

Realistically-competent defending force AI would basically require an entirely new gameplay paradigm to pull off. You'd have to cut the numbers down by a factor of 10 or more or add allied reinforcements to have a fighting chance, and then you'd have to have a damage system realistic enough where shooting a Skaarj once in the arm disables that arm, severely compromising its aim and ability to pose a threat, etc. And at that point, you're on a future-tech game engine that doesn't really exist yet.

Sorry, my ramblings can go on quite a bit when I start speculating about gameplay design!

I played TLF only on Unreal difficulty. There are indeed many harder maps.
There's too much ammo in the first section of the level and you got everything to counterattack the opposition.

After a decade of Unreal I don't mind anymore average Skaarj squads.

All this talk of awesome gameplay in a TLF thread just makes me want to play it again. Unfortunately work calls

I know the feeling. Just no time to play anything at the moment.

So, I'll just reiterate that TLF is probably the best map I have ever played. I couldn't care less about the difficulty which is way above that of standard maps. I really like the lack of ammo in the beginning (on higher dfficulty) because it makes progrees really depend on how you use strategy, much more than in other maps. The walk on the bridge with sniper actually forces you to clear out each section bit by bit because fast progress will result in even faster retreat back into unsecured areas.
Yes, there is a learning curves, but I never found it tedious. And replay value is high.
I can't really pinpoint anything wrong with the map except perhaps for the attack with the SK6 in the back when walking the hanging bridge.

I really hope to play the final version (sitting somewhere on a hard disk) this summer. 'Nuff said.