SBWT Mapping Competition: Wave Man

[Beed28]

Are we allowed to vote our own maps this time? We couldn't in the CTF competition.

[Ivory]

As I said in one of the other topics, you can vote for your own map because the poll isn't dictating which maps get in, but it's showing community preference. The final pick will come down to the dev team.

[Beed28]

...and the same goes for the two random transport tubes that move you about two feet.

Just spotted this sentience right now. Actually, the transport tubes takes you to the other side of the map and visa-versa.

[Geno]

wow

Yellow Devil's is the best (in my opinion)

The only thing I do not like is how the bike act, but I guess that was to prevent accidental crashing of the bikes.

[Gumballtoid]

YD's has my vote. The wavebikes not exploding on impact makes the map so much less frustrating and so much more playable. The issue with the old map is it's so easy to die in a horrible wavebike accident and accumulate suicides that way.

[-Daiki-TheOni]

WoW the all the wave maps are awesome, every one of them has something diferent that makes all of them cool.

Beed: interesting and easy to play.

YD: dinamic and original.

Knux: Equlibrated in all the aspects.

[Magnet Dood]

Smash might hurt me but I don't care

I'm voting for the vanilla map on this one. I didn't have much of an attachment to any of the contenders. Knux's was an absolute nightmare to move around on Wave Bikes and the fact that most of the weapons are duplicated on both water and land felt rather disappointing, since the whole point of Wave Man's water in the core is to grab more powerful weapons instead of picking up standard fair. There was really no point in going onto the Wave Bikes if you can just grab the same things on both levels. Some of the weapon choices seemed odd to me (Scorch Wheel? Sakugarne?) and the prizes for ramming your Wave Bikes are pretty poor- Star Crash doesn't seem worth it to literally die five times in order to grab it (and that's me playing offline).

Beed's map showed promise, but the Wave Bike area almost feels forced. It's nice that he included teleports for getting to the two sides, but that basically renders the Wave Bike area useless. If it was filled with more powerful weapons or was actually required to get around, it'd feel like it fits more than it does now. With its current layout, it's not exactly very exciting to crash into a platform to get such weapons as Blizzard Attack or Thunder Bolt when you've already got stuff like Duo Fist and Ring Boomerang readily available. That being said, you included Arrow and Laser Buster as well, but Laser Buster doesn't have much room to work with in this map, and Arrow Buster kind of pales in comparison to the other upgrades you can already get on land. The whole 'two levels on either side' kind of layout doesn't exactly work out in my opinion, and because of this it can also still promote stalling, something I thought that these maps were supposed to fix. As it is right now, it feels more like a nonlinear CTF map than a DM replacement.

Now, I almost did want to vote for YD's map, but had to decide against it in the end. As it stands now, the Wave Bike area feels almost like a free candy store, where you can pick up any weapons you want because of the different Wave Bike function. It's ridiculously easy to pick up the weapons since you can't die if you hit something, which means the map is going to be dominated by people attempting to grab them. If it had the regular Wave Bikes it would be better, but it'd still be a problem on a couple of the weapons (Top Spin, Astro Crush) since the controls are slippery and the wave bikes are fast, so you'd probably end up overshooting Astro or sliding off the grind rail to get Top and Stone. The inside is nice, but feels pretty empty. Putting Silver Tomahawk front and center felt like an odd design choice, as Ballade Cracker is sitting off to the sides. The bubbles will just be free shooting for whoever comes nearby if someone's camping at the top, and while they do travel pretty fast, it'll still be a problem with the weapons up there.

Thus, while I don't think that the maps are bad by any means, I feel the vanilla map is (somehow) the strongest contender in this field. Thus, I vote to keep with the current Wave Man build.

[Myroc]

...and the same goes for the two random transport tubes that move you about two feet.

Just spotted this sentience right now. Actually, the transport tubes takes you to the other side of the map and visa-versa.

The fact that I needed this pointed out to me probably speaks for itself.

That said, that is rather clever.

[Balrog]

YD's has my vote. The wavebikes not exploding on impact makes the map so much less frustrating and so much more playable. The issue with the old map is it's so easy to die in a horrible wavebike accident and accumulate suicides that way.

And that was the only thing that made the old map fun. Why would you want to remove that? The only thing separating the water area in YD's map from solid ground is the floor texture. That makes it, quite frankly, the most boring part of the entire map. You could make the wavebikes slower, but not as slow as the player like they are in YD's map. You could make them safer, but not the equivalent of that lazy float ride you always see fat people on in water parks. Here's an idea: why not have the enter/exit tubes, but make the wavebikes both faster and crashing? That way you could take the safe route to solid ground or risk a watery grave to get a vertical boost.

After thinking it over some more, I decide to retract my poll vote for YD's map and vote for the vanilla map. While none of the maps are bad, none of them use the wavebike gimmick in a useful and entertaining manner. Beed's (apparently) makes them worthless and annoying, YD's makes them meaningless, and Knux's makes them worthless and annoying. This makes the existing MM5WAV the most "Wave Man-y" map of the bunch. And that's just plain sad.

[Max]

Crashing and burning suicide wave bikes were never a part of Wave Man. Mega Man automatically hopped on at one end, then he hopped off at the other. If I had it my way, I probably wouldn't have included wave bikes at all, but since everyone apparently loves them to death I added them and tried to think of a way to make them easier to manage and more beneficial to the map flow. That's how I ended up with the map I produced. You're not really supposed to do much fighting on the wave bikes at all, you grab a few weapons if you feel like it then you enter the tower at a different place or level. I apologise if that doesn't feel like Wave Man to you, but I never had any real fun on the original map and I just tried to interpret Wave Man's stage in a different way. It was mostly inside in MM5, anyway.

It was really nice to see Knux's and Beed's alternatives to the wave bike problem, although I found Knux's hard to use and totally ignorable and Beed's felt the most like the core.

[Linnie]

I just don't think being "most like the core" is an issue if it improves the problems of the core. Much like Fyone on Burst Man, Beed to the gimmick of Wave Man, fixed the main flaw -- too much water area, by adding dedicated fighting areas on the ends -- and still kept the gimmick in as originally intended except without that flaw.

[Shyster]

^

Yes, I think that Beed's wave bikes only being needed to get from point A to point B is its strength. The center island feels like a place where fights will accumulate and the chutes that teleporter across the map give it a real vanilla feel. I'm sure with some weapon tweaking, it would be just about perfect. Except for the massive walls that make up each side of the map. Those are kinda unsightly.

Yellow Devil's is laid out a water park attraction, making it spectacular eye-candy. However, the map will be dominated by Astro Crush spammers thanks to its simple availability. Since you don't crash, you can just try again and again. That, and the extreme multiple-floor action makes it feel like it wouldn't belong in the vanilla game.

Knux's... All the problems of the original Wave Man remixed. Too big, wave bikes are useless and dangerous, feels too complex for vanilla.

[The Killer Nacho]

I've been giving a lot of thought to these maps, but I'm still a bit concerned.

Beed and Yellow Devil both seem like they deserve my vote, but there are some minor things that may or may not be changed. These things influence my vote and I'm not sure if I should take them into account or not. Ivory initially said he was looking for a solid layout, but I truly despise and can't oversee the idea of Astro Crush in Yellow Devil's map and I have mixed feelings for the fact that walking backwards into a pipe (an escape route in a firefight) just spits you back into the heat of battle. While it slightly discourages camping in LMS, it could mean the difference between being fragged or not in DM. He also plans to remove the centerpiece weapon where Tomahawk currently stands, and I think something should go there to prevent it from seeming blank. That said, it doesn't seem like Yellow Devil has any intentions of changing these things, so I'm not sure if we're voting on the layout we play on or the map we foresee.

[Accel]

Beed - I really like this one. The pipes are a nice touch, and an interesting take on teleporters, and I like that the Wavebikes don't dominate the map. The weapons are actually pretty well placed, and I REALLY like the surprise left on the ceiling for anyone who decides to stay on a bubble for too long. That actually made me freak out a slight bit when I noticed it! Well done!
Yellow Devil - I liked the incorporation of the geysers to catapult you up to higher levels... and it's a fun level to explore... that said, I don't think I'd really enjoy fighting on this level. On top of that, Wavebikes are just... too easy to use in this stage, and a little annoying to actually get back onto the surface. On top of that, [Insert Generic Astro Crush Complaint]
Knux - Like Shyster said, this is pretty much like Wave Man Remixed. I'm going to have to agree with his complaints on this one. While do I enjoy the exhilaration of the Wavebikes placement... I can't help but feel it's going to cause a lot of accidental deaths.

Verdict: Yellow Devil wiped out. Beed rode the wave.

[Hallan Parva]

I know I said I was going to write up a ton but screw it, Accel's reviews are fun and quick while still offering insight. I gotta admit I like the little ending lines, so I'll probably be ripping a page straight from Accel's book for the reviews. Seeing as how this is the smallest category I'll start here with Wave Man.


Beed28
I really like Beed's map. There are a few problems like the warp tubes that make bikes redundant and both sides of the map being a little over-complicated by making a second floor instead of a single expanding floor, but overall it retained a good feel and had the best usage of the bikes. Water Wave is great here without requiring a massive height advantage or automatically dominating every other weapon, and the middle section has a few neat tools that makes the wave bikes worth riding.

Yellow Devil
I really want to like Yellow Devil's map, but somehow I can't. This might be personal bias, but I thought using the vent sprites as a vertical booster was unclear. As a diehard Mega Man fan I remember those things being royal ass-munchers in Wave Man's actual stage, and for a good three-quarters of the match I didn't want anything to do with them. Then someone jumped up with one... and I immediately rammed my face against the nearest brick wall I could find. Sure, the concept is cool and all, but using literally the only obstacle in Wave Man's stage as something not an obstacle felt like a weak design choice, especially with in-stage obstacles like Elec Man's elec traps and Bubble Man's spikes already in the core game.

Ignoring the lack of clarity, the vents are still a problem as it's a pain in the rear to scale the tower without using them. Ladders are a myth and I'm not sure if it's another "Ivory compiled this wrong" error or if it's just like that normally but the bubbles were problematic in trying to detect me standing on them. Unless I wanted to hunt around the outside of the tower for a tall wave pipe (which you sort of have to do since some of the pipes only go up to the lowest level) actually getting to the top or second levels was painful at best. The weapon selection does nothing to compound this problem; Water Wave is only cool at the upper levels, Napalm Bomb is hilariously easy to Mono Run and outscore with, and even Needle Cannon is easier to use as a "poor man's sniper" against players below you. Astro Crush might have been a gamble like Messatsu's Gravity Hold and I understand that, but with everything else the problem still stands.

Knux
I know he gets pissed when you call it Wave Man Remixed, but let's face the facts here: the map's basically Wave Man Remixed. Same buildings on the sides, same checkered crossroad platforms, same high pillars in the middle, same wave bike death festival. All of the problems of the original Wave X are still prevalent, including Water Wave somehow managing to suck completely, but somehow by making the map smaller it's also made several problems worse. Using a wave bike is practically suicide; it's like if you were playing Pac-Man and you turned early, you actually hit the walls... and then the walls killed you. Even if you want to flirt with death, the pipes giving out actual bikes are few and far in between, always being shoved in a corner around the sides of the map. What makes things worse is that you have fake pipes outside of the actual playable area, and they look exactly the same as the real ones.


In the end, Beed's map surfed by the competition. Knux was left behind in low tide.