JED shot:



3D Preview Shot:



This is my WIP thing-a-ma-gig for the JK editing Hub's level contest. (That makes it a DM level)

Sorry, no ingame screens yet. Architecture, 3do-ing and texturing is nearly done. What remains is item placement and a fricking lot of cogging. The latter is going to be tricky since I have no experience with cogs for multiplayer and little knowledge of cogging in a whole. Any help with that is going to be welcome.

Holy crap. That looks very interesting. What's the concept behind it? Are those doors connecting the walls?

Hah....reminds of of that one obstacle course from MXC...

The exact gameply content I have not yet completely worked out. I'm first going to look how far the initial idea is possible and later look how much I can expand on that within the given deadline.

The initial idea is that there are 24 triangular rooms and thus 42 doors. However the 12 doors on the outer edges will be fake (though visually indistiguishable).
The idea is that all the doors are controlled by one cog that randomly selects a fixed amount (how many will be determined after playtesting) of doors each X-seconds (again to be determined after playtesting) and changes their frame (open to close or vise versa). So the player is limited in his choosing his path as to which doors are open at the moment or x seconds later. Each room will contain a goody or a trap of some sort or of course one of your enemies... This is all to be companied with nervous industrial sounds to make it all frantic and exiting.

Something I've been thinking about, but don't know for certain yet whether I will incorporate it is that one of the rooms will have a teleport that'll bring you to an external location (which possibly gives you an overview from above). This could be a duel room, or....

In this external location it might be fun to have a switch that when activated slowly disables the floorparts in the diamond (each room has 13 floor surfaces), with which I mean that the floor is adjoined to a deep pit and the floor flags are slowly set to 0, so that the other players have to be quick about finding the teleport as well. And not dieing in the external dueling room because they'll get spawned back in the diamond. [A bit similar idea to that bunker dm level in hl and hl2]

But all these are still just ideas, and I don't know how well this all is feasable with synchronizing and all that?

*cough* Cube *cough*

Nice though :p I like the idea and work done.

Make one of the areas have an elevator going up to another identical floor, and an area in there going up, and so on. With like, 4 floors, it'd be interesting with say.. 32 people (If JK goes up that high. I can't remember)

[QUOTE=Glyde Bane]Make one of the areas have an elevator going up to another identical floor, and an area in there going up, and so on. With like, 4 floors, it'd be interesting with say.. 32 people (If JK goes up that high. I can't remember)[/QUOTE]

Average game is about 2-4 people. That would be insanely too big.

The requirements for the contest level is 3 to 5 players. And maybe this is already rather big. (Which will have to be determined by playtests)

Idea: Instead of lame false DOORS on the outer walls, I'd suggest having those doors open to false ROOMS. When the room is entered, have the player warp to the room that is on the exact point on the other side of the map. Make sure the the false room is identical to the room you're warping to.... unless the room you're warping to is a trap room. In which case you could 'bait' the false room with a conc or a super shield.

Also, just to keep the player guessing where the outer wall of the map is, perhaps you could make one or two of the rooms in the center of the map false as well.... when entering those rooms, the player is warped to one of those other outer wall ghost points.

I'm telling you, that will add so much to the 'maze of twisty little passages, all alike' gameplay you're going for.

With that in mind, I'd rename the map 'Xyzzy' if I were you. Old school gamers like myself would love you for that.

... also, you're door idea is cool, and very unique.... my only concern is with a map with THAT many doors, most people are gunna HATE having to hit the 'activate key' everytime they come to a door... especially when 33% to 66% of the time, the door won't open at all. I'm afraid auto-openning doors may taint your concept.

Also, your idea might create dead ends if 2 of the doors won't open in your current room. Dead ends kill gameplay.

The player can't open doors. The doors open randomly automatically. So one doesn't have to press activate.

I'll consider the teleport idea. Someone else also already suggested that on IRC.

that'll be interesting. i just don't know how you'll get that to flow if you force players to move in a direction that is out of their control.... but it's one of those things where you have to play it to understand it.

For those interested in betatesting, please contact me on IRC.

One of the 24 triangular rooms



The huge room above the the maze, it's yet unfinished, I still have to add catwalks and possibly a console, but I'm not determined about the layout yet.

(And I just noted the misalignment in that lightstripe texture)

<3

wow very nice =)

Also the ammount of adjoins visible from the 2nd floor room is insane and hence it won't be playable without the adjoin limit remover patch.

I hate to say it, but I don't really like the design idea at all. I think it'll have horrible flow. It's an interesting concept, but for the contest? I don't know. The judges will determine that, I guess.

I certainly think it will keep things moving, especially if people arent sure which door will lead where, and who will be around each corner.

During my first betatests I set the doors to change position every eight seconds, which means you rarely stand still for more than eight seconds. That is shorter than some traps you encounter in various mp levels. And if this still proves to ruin the speed of the game I can knock it up upto 3 seconds by changing 1 number in JED. (Something I'll defenitely try out)
You don't contiously get locked inside a room since more often than not almost 50% of the doors are open. It's just the maze of interconnecting rooms that keeps changing randomly.

Besides, one of the main aspects in the level will be the building of tension. I've kept the level dark and industrial. Eventually it'll employ a tension-sprakling dark and moody soundset. (There's already a siren counting down from three before the doors change order) The idea is you never know where the hell you are. Even I, who made the level and very carefully thought out the weapon placement (using patterns in the level's layout) have no idea where I am 80% of the time. Anything could be behind the next door, that's the idea.

You have the right however to be skeptical about the design. After all it's new and it has NOT been proven to work yet. And maybe it won't work very well (although after the latest betatests and the expansions I'm already conjuring up in my head, I firmly believe that it will work), this [that it won't work] is however a risk I'm willing to make. I'd rather make a dozen levels with completely unique concepts of which only one or two is actually fun to play, than make the same levels people have been making for nearly two decades over and over again. (Maybe that's why I stopped studying Computer sciences after half a year and started Game Design & Development at an art college)

Also, I'm defenitely not doing this to win the contest. The contest was more a valid reason for me to finally get this thing going. The idea had been in my head for like two or three years, but I couldn't be bothered to start it, lazy as I am.
I don't know if it will actually qualify for the contest since it's not quite 1 room, and it might require more than 3 players to enjoy it to its full potential.

(Oh and I wouldn't mind if you helped betatesting, a skeptical view is always handy during a beta)

It's definitely and interesting concept...and I think it might actually work, too. I don't know about how long play would remain interesting, but of course you're playtesting.

It's looking great so far!

I'm glad you replied that way, some authors take comments like mine personally -.-

I'd LOVE to Beta Test, as I'd love to be proved wrong because if it works, it'll be REALLY fun.

Oh, and I designed the contest to get 10 or so good levels to put in a pack. It's not so much a contest as it is a "grouping of similar gamestyles" That is, if it's fast paced, it'll qualify. The idea is that the judges weed out what is a waste of space, or doesn't fit with the pack. What MY personal goal was, is to get a pack of levels that can be played on a round that change the setting and environment and level design, but keep the same gameplay. I've found I can play Blood_Asp's deathwalk over and over and over for about 100 kills. At that point I'm STILL enjoying the gameplay, but getting sick of the monotony of the one level. I think having 10 good levels with the same gameplay can keep people playing longer, and enjoy themselves more.

JediKirby

Have you considered having one extraordinarily awesome, yet small room that is only accessable from one or two points (via a teleporter or trap door or whatnot)? I only suggest this because I imagine myself getting quite tired of seeing the same damn uninteresting room over and over again.... it would give the player something interesting to look for, besides a measley powerup.

Beta-ing asps levels was a good time

I absolutely love this idea. Unfortunately, I don't think I'd be very good for beta testing, but I can tell you that I love the looks of it and can't wait to try it out.

Yes, I've contemplated various idea like this, I'm not 100% sure what the final result will be, but there will be a special room that people will particularly aim for because there's a serious gain there.

kirby: Cool, I'll contact you via #jkhub or some instant messaging system before further beta tests.

UPDATES!

Finally got around working more on it. The main thing to be done now is some final trap cog and some item placement and then the final betas can commence.




As you can see the level isn't called Diamond for nothing



<3 I LOVE JED <3
I had such fun making this Repetive circular patterns are fun, but take A LOT of time creating.

So what's the framerate in that sucker? Looks good. It'll probably have the same gameplay as chiron in Halo. (Shotgunning fun) or in this case the rockets maybe.

Are we gonna need the adjion limit patch?

Ajoin limit patch is kind off a requirement I'm affraid. (But frankly I don't see any reason why someone would not install that lifesaver)

Framerate aren't the best I guess, but so far nothing really noticable, I get about 60fps in the worst sections 80+ in the better.

It's done and can be downloaded here:

http://www.jkhub.net/project/show.php?projid=152§ion=download

have fun!

JED likes to persistently reset values in my cog window, causing a bug to slip in. Pit should now kill again, but please download the latest version. (1.01) Sorry for the inconvenience.

Also some ingame screenshots:


24 of these triangular maze rooms, each with a powerup or spawn point.


The overlay map locates the teleport


Someone has activated the floor trap. only the middle part of the room is walkable and the parts beneath a door. Jump carefully and time with the countdown sounds because you don't want to risk getting squished by a door.


The Upper Hall with the teleport platform and the floortrap catwalk.


The Upper Hall: The place to secretly spy and attack other players.


If you see something like this you fell into the floor trap.

wow... just... wow...

I see you have Mitsubishi as a sponsor. ;o

Looking nice though, all joking aside. =D