SBWT Mapping Competition: Wave Man

[Ivory]

Alright, how this works is that you may vote in the poll here / discuss the entries IN THIS CATEGORY ONLY
I cannot stress this enough, don't mix anything up. The polls will be open for 7 days max, or until opinions and such dry up.

Your options will be for each entry (sans funbox maps), or to keep the original version of the map. However this option can only be posted in the thread because I want to hear a good reason to why. Failure to do so will result in your vote being discounted.

Sound fair enough? Keep in mind should this explode, judging will fall purely to Mike and myself.


==============================================================================

Entry 1 - Beed
This map has potential, I can see it. However as it stands right now, the whole thing is fairly weak. Wave Bikes are mostly just to get to point A and point B, it doesn't look too fun. The entire area is wide and open. The original map was more interesting due to the little islands to go to.

The ballade cracker area is probably the strongest room. Has an air of Snake Man to it, but it's alright. The other building is the problematic one. You have a two floor deal going on, but the only way up top is to ride bubbles or walk up. There is nothing up there other than crash bombs and it doesn't really have much point to be there other than for "hey look, I can use bubbles to reach another elevation!"

I feel it could of been stronger if instead of Crash Bombs, you had another way outside/inside  that you had to crash your bike into to reach. It would of made more sense of that gap of space separating the two areas.

Entry 2 - Yellow Devil
This entry, I feel has the strongest use of Wave Bikes. Plenty of excitement around this large tower of elevation and you can use the pipes to get around quickily. The middle island is a great use of multiple elevations. You have plenty of ways to climb it due to bubbles, steam bursts, wave bikes or just climbing up it.

The wave bike area is pretty interesting, though I feel the crash bomb/magnet missile platforms are kinda just there. They feel unattached to the rest of the level. Perhaps if the teleporters led back into it instead of going to the other side?

Of course, now for the biggest problem. Wave Bikes themselves. I feel like the lack of crashing is confusing. Especially when they magically vanish because you went on land. It's also confusing due to all the areas where you drown on not-water.

Entry 3 - Knux
Ah what a breath of fresh air, your new Wave map is far, far better than the giant old one. The size is great and it's far more playable. Sadly, some of the same problems that plagued the old map still plague this one. Remember how I told YD it felt odd that wave bikes didn't crash? Well here is the opposite. The water ways are so claustrophobic that I wish they didn't crash due to amount of times I accidentally brushed against a wall. Not to mention how pointless they still are. Even with unique weapons down there, there isn't much fun or point to going down there.

Also Star Crash, the etank and the Big Health don't even the bubbles or wave bike to be reached, you can strafe jump from the big health pillars to the Star Crash/etank platform. Only thing you do need bubbles for is Power Stone and Scorch Wheel. The whole strafe jump problem can be fixed by lowering the Silver Tomahawk / Gyro Attack platforms and moving the Starcrash/Etank platforms 32-64 units away from the Big Health pillars.

Nonetheless, it's a good map now and if this doesn't get voted in, I hope you replace wave x with this one.

[Ceridran]

YD won my vote so much. It's a fortress, and you drive into the pipes to get back up.

[Max]

Large texture error in my map (Ivory had problems compiling them)

(click to show/hide)

Should be

(click to show/hide)

Aside from that though, I'm glad I got to enter.
The deal with the death platforms is that any platform where you could not get to solid land as a vanilla class would kill you instantly. If you jumped to a pipe where you could jump back to land, you could stand on it fine.
Beed's map was a good use of water and Knux's map was a good use of land, I'm glad they were both entered!

[Blaze Yeager]

I'm going with Beed's map. It has a balance to it, the wave bikes don't get in the way of everything, the water area is shorter, and I think it worked well for what he was aiming for with a vanilla map.

[CutmanMike]

Beed - I love the flow of this map a whole lot. The wave bike section doesn't get in the way and isn't too open to stall games either. Nothing bad to say here!

Yellow Devil - A lot of people complained about the indoor section of this one but I thought it was really interesting, I never got lost and it seemed flow better than any vertical map I attempted. Only problems I had were that I never really felt the need to go on the wavebikes ever, and getting back into the main area was kinda tricky sometimes. Also I think the steam shooters could do with shooting more often, having to wait for them often got me killed!

Knux - Apparently everyone has played a version of this somewhere but I went in with an open mind. It's very flat and trying to get some of the weapons is really difficult. I don't think I ever wanted to go on the wavebikes just cause how hard it was to survive.

[Beed28]

Just going to repost the texture conflict in my map from the other thread:

(click to show/hide)

Here's what it looks like in the map pack.


Here's what it should look like.

[Knux]

Well, the reason it's so cramped in my wavebike section is that I felt people should spend time killing each other instead of running away on wavebikes, like it happened on the core map. I made it so they aren't really needed by connecting the map, but they're still there.

EDIT: Even so, it's very possible to turn on most areas.

However, I liked things from the other two Wave Man maps. They had very neat ideas.

[Balrog]

I only got to play the Wave Man maps. Beed's just felt sort of meh, but I only got in at the tail end of that. YD's map seems well-designed, and I really like how it's designed with Water Wave in mind, but the fact that wavebikes don't crash and are pretty much an inventory item to keep you from dying in the water with no other changes sucks a lot of the fun out of the map; it just doesn't feel like MM5WAV. Knux's keeps the wavebikes, so that's a plus, but the water is basically an adjunct under a regular map; the two don't flow together at all, and trying to use the wavebikes will most likely result in death by crashing into the supports for the "real" map. As Mike noted, it's also flat as hell.

My vote goes to YD, but only if the wavebikes and the water area are revised to provide more risk vs. reward. Otherwise, I vote to keep MM5WAV the way it is.

[SmashTheEchidna]

I'd just like to note that I never once crashed and died on the wavebikes in Knux' stage.

[Linnie]

I have to give my vote to Beed. His course is really the only course where wavebikes are really needed; in YD's one could just stay in the fortress the entire game due to its size and in WAVX, as has been said, its small and there isn't much down there. Beed's has enough room to fight like YD's, and there are interesting power-ups. If he were to revamp the map, I would recommend maybe putting platforms on the boundaries by the fences -- it might make the wavebike area slightly less navigable, but it would offer more variety in the wave area.

[*Alice]

None of the Wave Man maps are good. Beed's feels lifeless, YD is barely playable because of the almost unusable wavebikes and Knux's is just too large.

I vote for Beed. I feel like some small adjustments could make it a at least somewhat good map instead of the rather okay-ish map it is right now.

@Below:
Some areas just feel like filler like the outside walkway of the Ballade Cracker Building, the whole water segment that only contains two items and the places below the pipes behind the Gyro Attacks.
There are also FIVE chargeweapons on the map, which means that matches will probably concentrate more on those ... which basically means less deathmatch-feel and more careful playing.
The whole bubble gimmick slows the gameplay down, too, should people even use them (which might not even happen too much, considering the large amount of high-damage weapons like Yamato Spear, charged Duo Fist and well-aimed Ring Boomerang).

[Kapus]

How does Beed's feel lifeless exactly? I'm curious.

[Knux]

and in WAVX, as has been said, its small and there isn't much down there.

That's fair and all, but just FYI, that's not Waveman Remixed. >.>
It might become it, though! huehuehue

[Myroc]

Beed28

This is probably my least favorite of the Wave maps, because it feels decidedly average. There's really not much I can say, as the layout and weapons, while not terrible, are very uninteresting and not really anything to write home about. The bubbles feel very shoe-horned in, and the map would probably work much better without them (if only because it takes you half an hour to ascend to the upper floor), and the same goes for the two random transport tubes that move you about two feet. (And the only feature next to them are spawner weapons, meaning those areas are irrelevant 90% of the time.

+ ...it's not terrible, I guess?
- Poor use of gimmicks.

Yellow Devil

This map is definitely the best of the bunch, and contends with Mendez' Burst Man for being the best in the competition. The layout is great, having enough verticality (which is supplemented by the high-jumps the steam vents provide) and at the same time very flat areas to encourage the use of Water Wave. The weapon selection is great, with powerful weapons being in the out of the way areas reachable by wave bikes, meaning that you can achieve a great combat advantage, at the cost of neglecting to achieve frags for a small while, creating some risk-reward gameplay. The fact that wave-bikes do not crash, and bike tubes are placed conveniently enough to allow for quick get-aways or surprise attacks, just adds to the fun (although the tubes feel slightly clunky to use). The only real flaws in this map is that the outer wave bike areas are a bit too large, and that there are a lot of myriad texture discrepancies that ought to be dealt with. The bubble platforms also feel rather superfluous in this map, but at least they're actually useful this time.

+ Great layout
+ Great weapon selection
+ Excellent use of the steam vent gimmicks
+ Good use of wave bikes
- Fairly large
- Various texture problems

Knux

Another good map with an excellent layout that, again, encourages the use of the stage's signature weapon. All of the weapons complement the layout of the stage really well. Again, however, the bubble platforms feel like they do not have a purpose, only existing for the sake of existing, and the stage could do equally well without them. The stage has certainly tried to make the wave bikes seem interesting, but the general crampedness of the lower levels makes crashing frequent and difficult to avoid.

+ Good layout
+ Good weapons, complements the layout
- Crash-prone wave bike segments.

[fortegigasgospel]

I'm not a big fan of many of these actually. Gonna have to go with Beed's though.