07/09/2024 - "Old Township" by Yrex, w/ parts by S. Farrow, C. Forest & Myscha

[Sat42]

Map Title: Old Township
Author: Yrex, w/ parts by Steve Farrow, Crista Forest & T. Elliot "Myscha" Cannon (+ redux of two DM maps by unknown author), directed by Delacroix
From: Steele Dawn
Filename: SD2_OldTown_V2.unr




Video Playthread:

Video playthrough with text commentary by Delacroix:


Semfry:


Synopsis: After escaping from the besieged city of Vegra, Brandon Steele takes stock of his situation and begins his quest to find allies... It turns out the Vezzies were just an appetizer, as our hero is about to face a new kind of enemy.

Discuss!

[Semfry]

Had an issue where the Rifle is never unscoped, but, after testing, it seems somehow an issue with using an external save Sat42 provided and not an innate bug with the mod.

The visuals end up a little inconsistent here, as the starting town looks good and there are nice details like the monster face exit thing, but the second half is large in scale and quite boxy, although there are still some nice rooms, then the ending mansion looks pretty great again. I guess it partially being multiple maps pushed together is part of that. As I said in the review though, the Jupiter sky illumination really enhances the outdoor lighting and gives it a unique mood, as well as helping to bring it together visually.

Of course the Praetorians are the main thing that sticks out gameplay-wise, although at least post-patch on Normal the Quantum Accelerator slow+Shotgun kills them pretty easily. Given they basically attack the moment you're in view and their back isn't to you I don't find the stealth idea supported too well even if it technically works, but they at least die okay on lower difficulties now. Outside of that the first part lets the QA shine more as there's plenty of ammo and comboing the primary and secondary deals with the other Skaarj quite easily. The shift to more wildlife and incidental combat in the second half lets the other weapons see more use as the QA is pretty slow and overkill for them. The amount of room clearing in the second half can get a little repetitive, but there are at least one or two nice secrets. The boss not being possible to damage is communicated well enough by the cutscene+visuals, and the multiplayer layout of the house supports evading them quite well even with their teleport ability (especially as the QA slow still works), although the dead-end in the library is pretty cruel. While the boss can do a lot of damage if you mess up, there's an absolute ton of items in the mansion (including seemingly the first Minigun), which also lets you make some major gains and leave with far more than you started the level with even with how much of a drain stuff like the Praetorians can be.

I find it curious how the mansion is actually just a flat texture before you can access it, especially as stuff like Coop means the level must be loaded anyway. There's a strange bug where the Skaarj at the mansion can ignore one hit (although it also "stuns" them) so I guess it might be to do with that? Also at the church I'm not sure if the message at the altar is supposed to mean something, since I don't really see any big rewards around (I even ghosted a little to look around). Since I haven't seen it yet, I guess Delacroix's commentary in their playthrough might already answer these things though.

[TigerTheGreat]

like the monster face exit thing, but the second half is large in scale and quite boxy, although there are still some nice rooms,

You'd be surprised but the monster face exit is actually the monster face entrance. It's the beginning of the Farrow section.

their back isn't to you

Bad luck on your part. They patrol their areas instead of standing there facing the only way you can go through, so if they caught you, that's... on you.

I find it curious how the mansion is actually just a flat texture before you can access it,

Performance reasons for older computers, Yrex did that.

Also at the church I'm not sure if the message at the altar is supposed to mean something,

Combined with the passage from a book and the translator catching Elayna River reference in the library, it all is a hint to know where to progress, meaning - to find the next level which is over a nearby river.

I guess Delacroix's commentary in their playthrough might already answer these things though.

Forgot to add that part, sorry about that. But you have your answer in this post right here.

[Sat42]

[Praetorians] patrol their areas instead of standing there facing the only way you can go through, so if they caught you, that's... on you.

I just went for it and smashed everything

Old Township is one of the great maps from Steele Dawn: it's a big departure from the first level (Escape from Vegra), and in itself a real journey, as you start at the edge of some Nali-like town which you get to partially explore before moving through a valley with a water processing facility, a religious structure and that most memorable of mansions (more on that in a moment). It is definitely one of the longest maps in the campaign and took me over an hour on my first playthrough.

Now, to be completely honest, I didn't immediately think of it as a particularly good map, not because of any particular negatives but, I guess, because of a lingering feeling that the backstory of the campaign was a bit hard to take seriously (something to do with mixing sci-fi using real-world references and fantasy, e.g. a medieval-inspired Nali town on Io) - and also just saying, if the intent was to encourage stealth-based gameplay, then the town segment fails because you arrive here with already such a consequential arsenal as to make any attempt at stealth more of a hassle than it's worth (certainly on the Normal difficulty setting, which is still my default as I'm far from being a "pro") - however, as already stated, the map is very generous and by the end it had completely won me over.

I personally think the town segment is a bit of a missed opportunity in terms of it being an ideal place for some explicit storytelling beyond the intro yet ending up being just an old school run and gun affair before moving on, but the action is good thanks to the Praetorians and that one moment that got me into trouble with the snipers. Also, I think the music here is really cool
The first truly delightful surprise came from that first encounter with a Ravager! It's always rare to get a proper good-looking new enemy type (as in, not just a new skin but a new model with new animations and everything!). I read the entirety of Steele Dawn's manual so I know we owe this one to AlCapowned
It's true that the valley can be rather blocky looking and the room clearing in a couple of large buildings can be a bit repetitive (at least the sequence with the infested attic is cool and the other building has some story bits which help - in addition to making me actually hunt for a neat secret) but things really climax properly toward the end of the map: the church-like building already provides a more fluid gameplay sequence (and more interesting views), but of course the star of the show is the mansion!

And here I have to say I didn't immediately realise that the mansion initially is just represented as a flat texture! When I did notice upon closer inspection, I figured it was a fairly clever homage to how things were sometimes done in early real-time 3D games and believed we'd visit the mansion in the next map... so imagine my surprise when suddenly, it was full 3D and would end up providing one of the best moments of the campaign!

Gal'Razik has got to be one of the most memorable villains in our community's history. Of course being voiced (competently, I should say - and the quality of the delivery is completely consistent for this character) helps, but it's how he's used here that really steals the show: I had never experienced something like this (an invincible enemy who relentlessly hunts you as you have no choice but to figure out how to navigate a relatively complex building to escape) and I have no shame in admitting that this sequence managed to scare me! Panic mode took over and I definitely died at least once yet amidst all this excitement, I still insisted on exploring everything to not only get a maximum amount of goodies (as Semfry said, it's worth it!) but also in order to make sure I didn't miss out on any lore (reading the couple of translator messages under such conditions is sport, let me tell you that! Gal'Razik's taunts are cool but would further benefit from being repeated at a lower frequency). Eventually I figured it out and finally escaped

That's how you do a climax! This "boss encounter" confirmed the map's status as nothing short of great, and I'm impressed at Yrex's implementation of it.

[Aspide]

This map might be one of my favorites from Steele Dawn, it has great gameplay (the first section is a hit and miss), great music, nice introductions to the new enemies and the character Gal'Razik and overall this map has that old school feeling all over it in a good way . Seeing Tundra again was awesome and I really like the new look it has, the textures are amazing, funny that they kept the bio rifle ammo that gives you more ammo from the original Tundra .

This map has great Coop support thanks to the new Coop checkpoint system made by Yrex and myself, every map would benefit from having checkpoints

The first and final part of the map are definitely the most difficult part because you don't know what to do the first time you play them, you are supposed to run away from the big red Skaarj (the Praetorians from Xidia are back baby ) and use the QACannon's primary fire to lock them in place, however many players most likely won't know this, maybe a section like this should have been left for later in the campaign ? , seems a little too brutal for beginners. The final section is a cat and mouse chase where you need to find a lever and then reach the exit while Gal'Razik makes fun of you, definitely a hard section for players that don't know the layout of the mansion. The rest of the map isn't that difficult and if you use the Impact Hammer you could skip many portions of the map, this goes for the majority of SD maps as well.

The story of this map is pretty simple, Brandon travels through the Town, facing any opposition that gets in the way until reaching the mansion, where he meets Gal'Razik, the introduction of Gal'Razik is the highlight of the map, one of the most memorable antagonist in Unreal custom mapping history, Delacroix voiced both Brandon Steele and Gal'Razik and while the voice acting for Brandon is a hit and miss for me, the voice acting of Gal'Razik is great, the conversations between Brandon and Gal'Razik are funny since it's technically the same person talking to himself .

This level, just like all the maps from Steele Dawn, has plenty of secrets and tricks, for example:
-Use the Impact Hammer creatively, this map has plenty of secrets that can only be reached with an Impact-Jump.
-If you want to defeat the Praetorians use the QACannon's primary fire to slow them down and use the FlakCannon, Grenade Launcher or the Shotgun to kill them, remember that the Shotgun can do headshots .
-The map has an invisibility at the very start.
-During the final section of the map, if you trigger Brandon's final voice line Gal'Razik will disappear, allowing you to explore the mansion in peace.

Also there's a funny glitch if you play this map with the Galaxy Audio driver, if you reset the map Brandon's first voice line will glitch out

This are the issues I found:
-Praetorians have difficulty filtering but the total number of Praetorians never changes, again a little too brutal for beginners.
-if you don't explore the first section carefully you might miss many weapons like the ASMD, Bio Rifle and the second Automag, if you miss any of these weapons you will not find them again for a long time.
-The map has pathnodes but they were not implemented properly, there are many pathnodes that could have been removed.
-Also some lifts don't have LiftExit-Center combos.
-One of the textures at the roof of the terrain in the first section has the wrong texture, reminds me of the wrong texture in Harobed Village and Sunspire.
-The mansion uses a 2D texture until you get close to it, I suppose this was done to improve performance in weaker computers, however it feels redundant in the context of recent custom mapping, also the 2D texture has issues in the corners which really ruin the effect, not to mention that if you trigger the 2D texture to disappear, that effect will be permanent which defeats the purpose of that texture in the first place.

[ebd]

A lot of the customized enemies are kind of ludicrously bullet spongey (balanced for coop?) and the gameplay of the mansion section with the invulnerable teleporting skaarj just doesn't really work in my opinion. Most of the recorded footage ended up being the wrong map so we'll see what happens with my video this week. I might do the editing after the fact rather than stay up all night rerecording more footage to get a single contiguous play-through and then doing a lot of surgery in post to put it all together.

[TigerTheGreat]

IDK about your difficulty settings, however the fact of the matter is that the only customized enemies are: the Praetorians, the Ravagers, some of the Spinners and Gal'Razik. The pests can be disposed with like two Shotgun blasts on Unreal TOPS, mostly one up-close shot should suffice. You call that bullet spongey?

The Praetorians are spongey by design but Semfry's playthrough demonstrates they can be slowed down and disposed with four-five two-shell shotgun blasts when slowed down.

And Gal'Razik is invincible by design.

What on Earth do you consider balanced for coop there? There's enough ammo and HP restoratives to help lone wolves handle themselves.

For an experiment, I recommend you actually run the map in coop mode. The mansion is a completely different experience, being patrolled by a squad of Golden Blades (an elite Skaarj troop from the final level) and while not invincible, they CAN take a beating topping even the Praetorians.

Also, in your opinion, how would Gal'Razik's implementation have to be done in order to work as intended, as in: the commander patrolling the entire map in search of the player and doing so with enough skill to still be a threat?

[Sat42]

Just a quick reply while supper is getting ready and before the next MOTW kicks in

ebd is not available right now but I've been in touch earlier and we will get to enjoy his video playthrough just it will come a bit later with the next MOTW (partly my fault also, in future all should be smooth with the sharing of save files!) and as usual I'll do the behind the scenes work to add ebd's video to the corresponding playthread for posterity.

@Delacroix: ebd's comment was a general reference to the Praetorians and I agree that what we're getting at here is along the lines of "spongy =/= challenging" (because the setup here sees the player already having access to a consequential arsenal - in addition to having plenty of space for manoeuvring which also matters) and so a critical eye will point to a certain tension between design choices at this particular junction (enemy is strong to encourage stealth, but that's annulled by the offensive options at hand) and from there it becomes a matter of personal preference (I enjoyed fighting the Praetorians but not gonna lie, they didn't have the impact that the Red Nemesis does in Xidia not just because they're not new or because they're easier to deal with per se, but because they're used more or less like "trash" enemies; the snipers provided the real challenge). As Aspide put it: it's hit and miss here (though not because it's too hard for beginners me thinks! Xidia is on a whole other level of difficulty by contrast).

Re- the boss: I think it is a matter of expectations, I don't have any experience with Resident Evil 27 or whatever and so haven't seen a more tailored approach to that style of invincible enemy chasing you, hence why I definitely did go into panic mode and I still like getting a fright from my games from time to time lol! But we know why Yrex couldn't pull off the ideal of a non-cheating invincible enemy chasing you all over the place: technical limitations of the engine. I suppose if I'd already played something like Clock Tower I may have been less impressed but again, personal taste and experience and expectations will shape one's opinion on this.