10/08/2024 - "Vecchie Ferite" by Aspide

[Sat42]

Map Title: Vecchie Ferite
Author: Aspide
From: A Friend in Need
Filename: AFIN-Map02-VecchieFerite.unr




Video Playthread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tve24ggpNnc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvVrrFRuOjg

Synopsis: You have infiltrated the fortress. The quest to save your Nali friend Inti from the subterranean stronghold of the renegade Krall continues... nothing will stop you, but that doesn't mean there won't be a price to pay. The path of destruction you carve through these chambers and hallways will eventually lead you to the Krall leader, Vulnere...

Discuss!

[ebd]

I had played the first few maps of this pack sometime back, but on my first play through disaster struck: While playing this map specifically, the game crashed and I had not saved... after that I became somewhat distracted and I guess didn't get around to finishing the map until now. In the spirit of that, I continued my original playthrough as I would have: by typing open AFIN-Map02-VecchieFerite into the console.

I liked this one. Plenty to explore, lots of combat, but with the very strong RTNP weapons it's pretty easy. Lots of small touches and hidden secrets. Why I didn't play through the rest of the pack back then I don't know... January of 2022 (when I played it originally) was a strange time for many of us.

Video to come tomorrow probably, will take 1-2 hours of edits on this one. Plenty to discuss.

► Show Spoiler

actually it turns out I did have a save from back then in my 227i install, but I forgot to check that install for one until after recording my play through. Oops..

[Semfry]

The visuals here are relatively basic, but they sell the location being a somewhat functional place, and the way one side is partially collapsing into a lava cave is a nice detail that enhances the scale and sense of place. Like the first map there's a big emphasis on the semi-linear style and choice of approaches, with a lot of ways to access most areas, along with some unique interactions like the ceiling you can shoot down. Plus the key placement is apparently random (although it seemed the same for this save), so how much you need to do can vary and most of the level is technically optional. The enemy combinations can feel a little random with how close they are to each other, but it does lead to more emergent behaviour (like in the playthrough where some Predators on the upper floor got activated early somehow and apparently ate everything around the church area). All the Nali casually around are also tough to keep safe, and it's best to clear most of the place out before activating the one you need for a secret.

The secret hunt itself has some nice aspects, like the Cloak that combines invisibility with Jump Boots and makes accessing other secrets easier, along with the secret that actually requires making a Forcefield ledge to access. The secret where you have to guide a projectile is a nice idea but the implementation ends up a bit awkward, and it seems easiest to just rely on getting lucky with Razorjack bouncing (after you get around the issue of the back wall eating projectiles). Although it doesn't help that one of the changes/fixes I made to UT has broken the crosshair.

The arena fight at the end provides some intense combat, although it seems to taper out into hunting down spawning Spinners, I guess because they're less aggressive so they don't keep dying in the main arena? Also it would be nice to have one or two details to imply where the enemies were coming from rather than the cells turning into clown cars. The actual boss also goes down very easy, but I recall him being a bit more dangerous the first time I played on Unreal so maybe this depends on difficulty? The story is nicely built up throughout, and the reveal after the boss builds on the melancholy doomed atmosphere that was implied even before you came along.

[ebd]

And here is the edited playthrough
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvVrrFRuOjg

[Aspide]

This is my favorite level in A Friend In Need, making it was a lot of fun, from the very beginning I wanted a map where you need to get a key that spawns in a random spot in the level, the map uses an enemy and teleporters to create the randomness of the key's location (today I would have simply used a custom actor to do it). In this map you have to kill enemies carefully by letting the enemies follow you to an area so you can fight them without waking other enemies to make the situation worse, going to places you haven't been while fighting is a deadly mistake .

Level geometry is very basic, a bunch of blocks together and that's it , I find it amazing that I became comfortable doing terrain with tessellated cubes before I learned to make blocky rooms more interesting, Texture alignment was horrible in version 1.0 (which you can see by looking at this map's screenshot), when I made version 2.0 one of the most important things I had to fix was the alignment and choice of textures, I can't believe I broke the cardinal rule of never using the same texture for the walls and the floor of the same room . I learned to use Trigger Lights in this map and I fell in love with them , so many cool sequences you can do with them, unfortunately I also learned its limitations especially online, where Trigger Lights don't work properly until you get close to them ruining the effect. This map has many interesting details, like the toys in the room where the Krall are sleeping, or the structure that can be shoot so it falls killing everything in its path (which you can use to kill an annoying pest in Unreal difficulty ), the door that's locked which is a hint of a very important secret and the torch that doesn't ignite in the hallway before the prison.

Gameplay was my top priority in AFIN and this level is the culmination of that, you can use different approaches in combat and also take full advantage of the many shortcuts in this map, but the most important part for me is the secret hunt, every level I make is full of secrets and this map is no exception, the campaign comes with a ReadMe that contains the location of all the secrets but I prefer if people leave that as a last resort because I enjoy people exploring the map trying to find all of the secrets, now some of them can be very difficult to get, like the secret that requires you to get the Force Field so you can use it as a platform or the secret where you have to use either the razorjack/RocketLauncher secondary fire to guide the projectile in a specific direction (you have to shoot, aim to the right, aim up and then aim behind you). This map is a very different experience depending on the difficulty you play, the higher the difficulty the more enemies you have to deal with, also the final fight is absolutely insane in the highest difficulty, makes you fell like you are playing EXU2 or Monster Hunt, also the final boss is also affected by difficulty, so if you think he's easy then you should try fighting him in Unreal difficulty .

Also this map has a very well hidden easter egg near the secret with all of the weapons, fans of RTNP will really appreciate it .

This map uses two songs, one is called The Dark Moon Media Theme and I found it while exploring Mod Archive, I really like the playful nature of the song which in my opinion reflects the nature of this map, a present full of surprises and action. The second one is Gomorra which is a very popular custom song in MH maps in UT99, I used it because the final battle really remind me of playing a MH map with all the non-stop action. This map, just like the others in AFIN, uses sounds from UT99 and UT2004 when you get secrets, I just wanted to incorporate some elements from the other games in this mappack.

The story of this map is total tone whiplash when you compare it how it begins and how it ends, at the start you (Stardust) are very confident and certain of your mission and this fortress infiltration isn't any different from the many things you had to do during your time in NaPali, however if you paid attention at the first map you know that things are not what they seem and in this map you get more clues that this is not just a group of Skaarj minions located underground for some malicious reason, message after message your perception starts to change until the culmination of the story where you get to read Vulnere's journals and you finally learn the truth. I made sure that you only get to read Vulnere's journals after you killed him, not only to add a sense of regret for what you just did but also to illustrate the main theme of the campaign and that is Tragedy, to add insult to injury you know from the next map that the Fortress was going to be invaded anyway, so it really nails the point that this renegade group of Kralls were doomed from the start, however maybe, maybe they could have stood a chance if you decided to help them instead of killing everyone, but your priorities were elsewhere......and at the end you pay the prize for that.

Now for the issues in this map:
-The alternative entrance/exit doesn't work that well in Coop, players always spawn in the same spot independently of what happened in the previous map.
-The part where you get trapped and have to shoot at the floor to escape was poorly executed, not only players will think that something when wrong and get stuck but this whole scripted sequence doesn't work in Coop if you shoot at the crack on the floor before you talk to the Nali, soft-blocking the map.
-The Cloak behaves a little strangely in 227j, it plays the sounds incorrectly.
-Some decorations bleed in 227, this is because I used a pawn to simulate a decoration with health, in hindsight I should have made a new decoration instead.
-Version 2.0 of AFIN has a glitch in the 227 mutator it has, if you grab the CarRifle in the box you will have two CarRifles, oops.
-The randomness of the key's location isn't perfect, there are some spot that the key will very rarely appear and that's because of strange behavior of teleporters with multiple exits.
-In some versions of Unreal and UT99 enemies can see you through movers when playing online, which can make this map 10 times more difficult.
-The doors can be very problematic in the middle of a fight, still I don't know what's the best approach to fix that issue.
-This map, alongside the others, use Blank.umx, which causes audio glitches with the OpenAL audio driver of the 227 patch.
-If you open any map from AFIN in the editor of UT99 436 you will notice that all actors disappear, also in any editor you will get an error message about some data missing, this is because I wanted AFIN to be playable in pre-226 Unreal, however the process of porting the levels is incomplete.

Also Fun Fact, if you copy the geometry of this map and paste it in map 1 or 3 you will notice that they almost fit perfectly, some very small adjustments and you could combine both maps into one

[Sat42]

This is the map from A Friend In Need that convinced me that this short campaign has one of the best narrative experiences in the Unreal/UT scene. Not the most epic, but the feels are there. I'd say the story is between good and very good overall (better than the merely good narrative in Unreal). The Krall leader is the best character, man I was moved (you get a wider range of emotions here than in your typical Unreal/UT experience). There's only a few other maps in this scene that do a bit better in the narrative department, and that's in part because they rely on larger sagas for effect.

And overall I'd say Vecchie Ferite is a great map, just like A Warrior's Lament: the build is again a bit inferior to the original Unreal (and unlike the first map we don't get an awesome skybox here to compensate), but the level more than makes up for it between the narrative and very flexible gameplay - with that emphasis on the semi-linear style, as already mentioned - as well as the hunt for secrets which can lead to delightful surprises (the highlight for me would be the use of the force field! hunting for secrets can feel very gimmicky though, wouldn't work in every setting) I also again enjoyed the new music

Actually, unlike the first map in the campaign, here I didn't bother checking the readme for the secrets I missed and ended with 9/12: watching the video playthroughs here, I have to say the one secret I regret not finding myself is the one where you have to guide a projectile!

It's easy overall (on Medium difficulty as usual - unless you want to find all the secrets, which is by definition optional), which I feel is something that only becomes a bit of a downside in the next (and last) map, but the boss fight here is still nicely executed and its memorability is elevated thanks to the importance conferred to it by the story.

[Mister_Prophet]

You don't need to wait to get to this map to know there's something special about A Friend In Need, but just in case it doesn't click, it should here. Aspide uses some tricks with narrative that I used myself in some of the Terran enemy maps from Seven Bullets, where you put the player in violent entanglements that are non-negotiable and then through log material they may find things not so black and white after the dust settles. I really appreciate the attention to story with interesting and well presented characters. We've gotten layered Krall dynamics before and so too have we gotten hopeless Nali plot treading. But this is a nice twist of elements.

Aspide was learning UED when he made these maps but that did not stop him from making the most of the game space he gave us. Old Wounds gives you some real fights so you better be ready! I remember being a bit dumbfounded by the enemy choices presented in AFIN and this map continues the trend of putting the randomness into one of the better rushes we've seen lately. Vulnere goes down in my mind as one of the more memorable Krall leaders, up there with that Maldron(sp?) character from Deja Vu.