Night Terror - A j2 l4d campaign - beta 1 and beyond

[joe]

also many of you are admins of the j2 steam group, feel free to use it to create/schedule events to promote or test the map. the group is there for all of us to use.

[NIPPER]

http://www.nipper.thedarkterritory.com/ ... ria_b1.nav
http://www.nipper.thedarkterritory.com/ ... nts_b1.nav

I think if you double click the vpk it extracts everything but there are the navs anyway.

[busydying]

sausages

[NIPPER]

sausages

we're working on this for beta 2

[joe]

overall:
moria was best gameplay - trying to get down the stairs while fighting was memorable. the event with the book was memorable. the added sounds and stuff were all good.

aztec looked the best as a level theme, like the most care had been given to textures

first map:
1. where am i? i felt liek i was dropped in somewhere but couldn't tell what the "story" was
2. railing at start of act 1 looks jumpable but isnt
3. about 1 minute in, guard tower on road + truck, looks jumpable
4. after that, giant house, barbed wire on fence to the left looks out of place
5. brick basement is very 90 degree wall-y, put some diagonals in
6. after basement, bushes in the yard are clipping (blocking players)
7. camera turns blue at the top of the stairs, and door looks openable
8. safe room also has blue camera hue
i liked the dog food, hmmwv and hairy graffiti but i couldnt tell WHERE we were. farmhouse? military base?

disney ride
1. giant diagonal pipe at start goes into wall and disappears on other side
2. missing bright green texture behind broken doors about 3 mins in, 2nd floor
3. not clear why there are 2 octagon rooms, players wont know what to do
4. black wall at end of hallway
5. i got stuck in the cart when the gate opened

moria
what happens if you trigger doorway with people still outside room?

jungleruins i spawned in safe room at the end, and the other 3 teammates spawned at the correct saferoom (at the start)
a few tunnels were clipped off but looked like they were passable

final escape:
black room was exit, i couldnt tell
scary level, i wasnt sure where to go most of the time. bbut i liked the broken room on the kill w/ minigun
final stage had a great standoff in the house w/ minigun, i wasn't aware it was finale though. i like how it was an alarm clock that starts it - irony ? was it all a dream? but tell players its the finale somehow like "if i could only wake up this would all be over"

for all stages, round end stuff says "Label" and event popup text (alarm clock, moria book) was missing. no custom sounds played if there were any (alarm clock? disneyland music? didnt hear anything)
please include install instructions in readme, took me a few mins to figure out what to do with the vpk file or whatever.

overall pretty awesome 4/5 stars
areas for improvement:
make the levels longer/larger
add some context - on a couple of the stages i felt like i was going through what could have been random textures. the exceptions were disney ride, aztec and moria. but the other 2-3, i didn't know where or who i was
more dynamic stuff. rather than just a lot of terrain to cover, stuff like trapdoors, 1-way sstuff, events, it's complicated to put in a mapp but really amazes players and grabs them. for example the crashing airplane scene from the default map. it doesn't affect the game at all but people talked about that more than any other single thing from any of those maps. add shit like that to blow people away.

[Neelpos]

Just remembered something that happened when I played through it with a few people
in Moria after the crescendo with the book, the door did break down but the wall where you're supposed to continue through did not, just stayed closed with a hunter, smoker, and boomer all trying to claw their way through. We had to noclip in order to continue playing.

[NIPPER]

All the saferooms have a blue hue, but I am aware of the one in the first map extending outside the room.
There's no intro yet because I couldn't figure out how to do it

And the theme is Night Terror, although perhaps I should have included the 's' since its five of them?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_terror
I just thought it sounded cooler than Nightmare.

I know there's a lot of stuff that isn't immediately obvious to the player. I think we can make custom player hints but I didn't look into it yet.

what happens if you trigger doorway with people still outside room?

you shouldn't be able to. It's set up so the doors don't close until all the survivors are inside.

i liked the dog food, hmmwv and hairy graffiti but i couldnt tell WHERE we were. farmhouse? military base?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafalgar_ ... Wiltshire)

the door did break down but the wall where you're supposed to continue through did not, just stayed closed with a hunter, smoker, and boomer all trying to claw their way through.

You're saying the wall broke but the invisible door that accompanies the func_breakable didn't? I don't know why the director spawns so many specials outside that room, or why a sliding func_door is blockable but I have seen that happen with the main doors you enter through.

[Hellboy]

Why'd you jamokes play this so early?

[Neelpos]

You're saying the wall broke but the invisible door that accompanies the func_breakable didn't? I don't know why the director spawns so many specials outside that room, or why a sliding func_door is blockable but I have seen that happen with the main doors you enter through.

All I know is that in that room, the "orcs" break down the door and after you finish the crescendo you go through a newly opened hole in the wall in the corner of the room, only one time it didn't open for us, and ended up staying as a wall with a big crack in it

[joe]

did the same thing for us until after the tank event, then it opened.

[AMMO]

nav issue

[ayeyah]

NIPPER, you didn't use the high quality voiceovers for the haunted mansion =(
http://forums.joe.to/viewtopic.php?f=16 ... 97#p705397

I'm guessing you didn't see it, but I uploaded the soundtrack for you a while back so you could use actual Disney-produced sound clips instead of tourist cam clips (which have annoying riders talking in the background). Again: download this and check out track 3 (the entire Disneyland ride's music/voices/effects); the actual Paul Frees voiceovers (aka, the ghost host) are on one channel, whereas the music is on the other (combining into a stereo experience) so it's easy to isolate what you need...ie, for nmhm_svoice1.wav or nmhm_voice3.wav

DOWNLOAD: http://ayeyah.therisenrealm.com/files/h ... ionost.rar

Anyways, I'd love to play this but my laptop blew up this weekend, so it might be a while before I can comment on gameplay or bugs or whatnot.

[Dr.Boo]

A bunch of things I heard from people and I noticed myself:
- Many people hear no sounds while others do. probably need to rebuild soundcache
- We should add those triangle things that grab the player's attention. Most people didn't realize you had to use the book on Moria or use the clock on the finale. I found a tutorial that explains how to make custom ones. I'll try and figure it out and let you know.
- People complain about that nav issue, but that's the main problem we know we have tof ix
- My map has too many peelz
- Moria defenitely needs at least a molotov or pipe to survive till after the big hall. Some people are smart enough to keep any molotov they find on the other maps till Moria though
- The button to open the front door on the Blockade's mansion doesn't glow
- I had some people say my map was easy compared to Moria. But I don't think that's a bad thing. I think I'm gonna add some common infected spawning on that first outside part, but not as big as a real horde though.
- People like intros. I've also seen other people make these for their campaigns so I'm sure that if I make a thread on l4dmods asking how to make it, people will help
- People want more detail on the Blockade, but we already knew that
- People don't understand the story... but it's not like they care. Maybe we should add some poster or something somewhere on the first map hinting what is about to happen (you "fall asleep" and have vivid nightmares). I like the name Night Terror. Using 'Nightmare' is so cliché.
- There are two small things you probably want to fix on haunts. It's really minor and probably only 30 seconds of work. I'll post a screenshot tonight when I get home.
- There should be an infected ladder on the other side of the fence at the very start of The Blockade. Not the fence behind you when you start, but the one a little further in front of you. i've had SI spawn behind several times without being able to reach you
- In the txt file, maybe add numbers to each map? Now it simply says the name. Mabe adding 1: The Blockade, 2: The Haunted Mansion, etc would be a nice touch.
- An idea to make people understand where they are on The Blockade maybe is to play that radio broadcast from the military at the beginning of the campaign. It would add to the intro. You know, that tape that says "we have the solution, we are armed, yada yada yada". I have the movie on .avi I'm sure I can extract that clip if you want it.

Overall, the feedback I got from this campaign is very positive. I played with random people yesterday (I did Play Campaign-->Search Server in your area) and they really liked it. They didn't even realize I was one of the authors
I was afraid this campaign would not be able to compete with relatively popular custom campaigns like 'Death Aboard' and 'Dam It' but it's doing fine.
Do you mind if I mention this campaign on the Steam forums?

[NIPPER]

did the same thing for us until after the tank event, then it opened.

Yeah the tanks death is what triggers the wall to break. The whole point of that room is to fight the "cave troll" before you can progress. Who would trigger that event if they didn't have to?

You know, that tape that says "we have the solution, we are armed, yada yada yada". I have the movie on .avi I'm sure I can extract that clip if you want it.

This would be great.

NIPPER, you didn't use the high quality voiceovers for the haunted mansion =(

I'll look into this for future versions.

Do you mind if I mention this campaign on the Steam forums?

go ahead

[Dr.Boo]

Yeah the tanks death is what triggers the wall to break. The whole point of that room is to fight the "cave troll" before you can progress. Who would trigger that event if they didn't have to?

Maybe set up a timer that triggers the opening instead of the Tank's death? Something like
When book is used
--> Send Tank+Horde
--> Open the wall after 20 seconds or so. You know, once a Tank is spawned, even if the wall opens, you have no choice but to fight the Tank to death and kill the horde or they'll keep chasing you the whole map. And you can't run away from it since there is a 20 seconds delay. 20 seconds or even 15 would be enough for the Tank to corner and deal damage to the Survivors.