Total Rating: 19
Creativity - 4 (Astounding. This could be a 20 out of 4)
Detail - 3 (Above average)
Experience - 4 (No nonsense puzzling, subtle presentation of instructions, well crafted clues)
Challenge - 4 (Yikes!)
Progression - 4 (The re-use of prior puzzle rooms continually floored me)
Summary
Fantastic use of 1.5 mechanics to provide unique navigation and logic puzzles.
That said, this is the first map where I've found it absolutely critical to have paper and pencil at hand. And be prepared to pause the game to do offline research. Also, this can only be enjoyed on a fairly powerful machine - there is just too much going on behind the scenes, and lag is sadly unavoidable.
Creativity is off the charts. I didn't know you COULD do some of the things that Jesper has done with the game.
Visual detail is average for room-based puzzle maps, in that it is largely one pallate of quartz - however I do recognize strategic use of the decorated quartz blocks to accentuate puzzles.
Experience is no nonsense puzzling. There is no banter from the narrator, no trolling or antagonizing the player. Just puzzles. If that's the type of map you are looking for, ta da! The hints and instructions are well written, and I particularly like how the names of the puzzles have meaning.
From a difficulty perspective, this is one tough map - even though the puzzles typically have simple solutions. Sometimes, the hint gives away the whole puzzle, and other times I found the hint to help lead me astray. But as far as I can see, the intended difficulty level has been reached. The only puzzle that I worry about (and the author is well aware) is one that REQUIRES you to leave the game and use an internet site for the solution.
From a progression perspective, I was blown away multiple times when I had to revisit past rooms and found them changed. I was hesitant to go with a '4' here, due to the overall length of the map multiplied by difficulty, the fact that you have to leave the map to solve at least one puzzle, and lag barrier, but I decided to 'round up' because I rounded down on visual detail.
Are you interested in feedback or just a video?
I am probably going to pass on this one for now. My brain hurts from playing too many puzzle maps lately and I see parkour (and a lot of the same color and rectangular rooms), but will keep it in mind if I get in the mood for this type of challenge. Good luck!
rsmalec, I'm working on a redstone arenaish map, and when I'm finished, would you mind reviewing it?
Going to check it out in a few moments.
I'm still not sure what you were trying to say regarding the number of times I post here, but hopefully you will find that I'm not doing it to 'bump' my own thread, but actually providing review updates, joining conversation, and promoting other maps that I've played. (You may notice I only post the first video of my series, not every episode for example). Anyway - if you are raising an issue, can we discuss in PM?
Total Rating: 8
Creativity - 1 (I'm not seeing anything other than lava spawners)
Detail - 1 (large rectangles and spheres with no variation in texture)
Experience - 2 (some humorous items)
Challenge - 3 (difficult, but focused only on combat)
Progression - 1 (lack of gear and food progression, easy to lose/destroy wool)
Review Summary
This map seems to be focused on throwing mobs at you for combat difficulty and limiting your movement with lava. In doing so, it strips away all of the other functions that make Minecraft interesting: mining, crafting, exploration, gathering/growing, storytelling (visually or through actual character/plot). Even bridging is downplayed because the map maker gives you so many bricks and torches at the spawn. That really narrows down the player base that this map would appeal to. And then the delivery of that narrow focus is done in a very basic manner.
The build primarily consists of large rectangles and spheres suspended over lava, filled with spawners. Although there is a fairly nice volcano. Custom lava spawners were not updated for 1.5.1 when I played, but I could tell their intent.
Challenge is very rough due to the overuse of spawners at every turn, but there is a lot of darkness which means the mob cap is causing some areas to have low mob density. If you're smart about bridging and pillaring, you can avoid some of the obvious bottlenecks, but be prepared to be knocked in lava often. The real challenge, in my opinion, is lack of any food sustainable source, and there don't seem to be any caches or ores to create armor.
There are humorously named items, but I feel the map could be slightly more inviting by simply naming the areas.
This is also an open-world CTM, which means you can bridge over to any of the areas, in any sequence. In this case, they are all in fairly close proximity to one another.
Review Summary
Visually great, although I would have liked SOME of the map to occur in daylight, for contrast.
Experience is great with two layers of well written story and dialogue, even though the plot itself is fairly straight forward.
Good breadth of puzzles, although they are fairly simple, and definitely too much jumping for my tastes.
Progression - it's long, but there's not a super amount of down time between action, so that's good. PLENTY of food. Weapons are low to moderate power, but I always have 2+ spares. Armor is scarce, but hasn't been a huge issue - mobs come in controlled bursts. I wish the quests were not self-governed, and most of the sidequest rewards are definitely not worth doing them.
Hey guys, don't mean to be pushy, but can you give some feedback on my page? I have this cool idea of a Hardened Fury Zone (Hardened Fury is my Series) in the end of the map which would hold the black wool... I have some ideas, but I still have some blanks, also...
Love and chaos in the big city. There's no easy way to describe this one Fantastic redstone and special effects, detailed visuals, hilarious dialogue and theme, surprising degree of challenge in finding love. My one concern is that some players may find a steep learning curve, in that there is so much going on it will be easy to get distracted. And some players simply won't get it - it's nothing like a typical adventure map. In its simplest form, find the 6 prospective love interests and pull out your best one liners in attempt to win their hearts (sometimes literally). There's also a free-roaming scavenger hunt.
Total Rating: 19
Creativity - 4 (moving npcs! stealth mission!)
Detail - 4 (pizza! super heroes! Guitar playing bums!)
Experience - 4 (hubba hubba!)
Challenge - 4 (love is fickle!)
Progression - 3 (Open world scavenger hunt and NPC dialogue trees)
I am very sorry to say that I am retiring from map making. I just can't quite handle all of the pressure anymore, especially because of external pressures such as school and work. I hope that everybody here enjoyed the work I did over the last 2 years, it was quite the adventure for me.
Anyway, I hope you don't miss me too much.
~ColdFusionGaming~ - signing out
I am very sorry to say that I am retiring from map making. I just can't quite handle all of the pressure anymore, especially because of external pressures such as school and work. I hope that everybody here enjoyed the work I did over the last 2 years, it was quite the adventure for me.
Anyway, I hope you don't miss me too much.
~ColdFusionGaming~ - signing out
Nooo
You gotta at least stick around and hang with us! Going to miss all the creative stuff you've done so far!
"just gonna await the "April Fools!" with this sneaky text and hope
I am very sorry to say that I am retiring from map making. I just can't quite handle all of the pressure anymore, especially because of external pressures such as school and work. I hope that everybody here enjoyed the work I did over the last 2 years, it was quite the adventure for me.
Anyway, I hope you don't miss me too much.
~ColdFusionGaming~ - signing out
Oh bloody hell, that's the first April Fool's prank that's had me convinced for more than five seconds.
Hey Rsmalec- I'd love it if you were to take a look at my second Complete the Monument map, called 'Skyward Ascent'. I have put a great deal of time into making it and one of my innovations for the genre is making use of 'Message Bombs' to give a player vs. creator gameplay element. I have focused on aesthetics throughout the map- which you will see at a moment's glance. Its difficulty is Easy-Medium and I'm sure you will enjoy it!
Please do consider taking a peek at Skyward Ascent! I'm a long-time fan/ lurker of this thread and your opinion, whether cursory or in-depth would mean a lot Thanks,
-Krose
I will try to look at the thread this week, but I definitely won't have time to look at the map itself for many weeks. I just have too many CTMs in my list and they take me weeks/months to complete a single one.
Review Summary
An excellent iteration on Hypixel's trademark map style. Herobrine's Return is a fast paced series of awesome boss fight mechanics, paced by brilliant special effects-laden dialog. This map feels very focused, leveraging Minecraft 1.5 features to overcome the downtime in prior installments.
I watched this map played by multiple teams, and also ran through it myself. I believe it to be a great balance of action and story, one of the few adventure maps that has been able to keep the attention and excitement of my 10 year old from beginning to end.
Creativity is off the charts. An excellent series of creative boss fights. I am deeply impressed with the creative mechanics and how quickly this map was put together. The firework trails are great. As are the appearing and disappearing NPCs. This map is the first I've seen to capitalize on new 'riding' mechanics. I recognize that some of the boss fights are inspired by World of Warcraft, but to reproduce them in Minecraft is no small feat.
From a visual perspective - I felt that the builds were consistently detailed without drawing undue attention to dead end chest searches. I was particularly happy with the wide open vistas and the pathing that let the player appreciate some of the builds from different angles before and after dealing with the encounter.
From an experience perspective, the story is fairly straight forward. But what tips this over the edge, in my opinion, is how everything is woven together through NPC dialog, and the emphasis on the quest guide (book) is minimal.
Challenge combines navigation and mob fighting in new ways. The boss fights are sized to keep you in constant action, with multiple threats even you are not aggroing the boss. There are also fewer 'trash mobs' in between encounters than prior Hypixel maps, and the pathing feels tighter, so you can't simply hang back and snipe mobs from out of range as often.
Progression feels very well balanced. Boss fights are incrementally interesting, and the Heaven Shop is a great solution to multiple vendors. There is very little down time in between encounters, and I enjoyed the amount of armor/weapons I was juggling (as opposed to prior maps where my inventory was always overflowing with junk).
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Curse Premiumhttp://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1728080-the-code/
Total Rating: 19
Creativity - 4 (Astounding. This could be a 20 out of 4)
Detail - 3 (Above average)
Experience - 4 (No nonsense puzzling, subtle presentation of instructions, well crafted clues)
Challenge - 4 (Yikes!)
Progression - 4 (The re-use of prior puzzle rooms continually floored me)
Summary
Fantastic use of 1.5 mechanics to provide unique navigation and logic puzzles.
That said, this is the first map where I've found it absolutely critical to have paper and pencil at hand. And be prepared to pause the game to do offline research. Also, this can only be enjoyed on a fairly powerful machine - there is just too much going on behind the scenes, and lag is sadly unavoidable.
Creativity is off the charts. I didn't know you COULD do some of the things that Jesper has done with the game.
Visual detail is average for room-based puzzle maps, in that it is largely one pallate of quartz - however I do recognize strategic use of the decorated quartz blocks to accentuate puzzles.
Experience is no nonsense puzzling. There is no banter from the narrator, no trolling or antagonizing the player. Just puzzles. If that's the type of map you are looking for, ta da! The hints and instructions are well written, and I particularly like how the names of the puzzles have meaning.
From a difficulty perspective, this is one tough map - even though the puzzles typically have simple solutions. Sometimes, the hint gives away the whole puzzle, and other times I found the hint to help lead me astray. But as far as I can see, the intended difficulty level has been reached. The only puzzle that I worry about (and the author is well aware) is one that REQUIRES you to leave the game and use an internet site for the solution.
From a progression perspective, I was blown away multiple times when I had to revisit past rooms and found them changed. I was hesitant to go with a '4' here, due to the overall length of the map multiplied by difficulty, the fact that you have to leave the map to solve at least one puzzle, and lag barrier, but I decided to 'round up' because I rounded down on visual detail.
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Curse PremiumAre you interested in feedback or just a video?
I am probably going to pass on this one for now. My brain hurts from playing too many puzzle maps lately and I see parkour (and a lot of the same color and rectangular rooms), but will keep it in mind if I get in the mood for this type of challenge. Good luck!
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Curse PremiumGoing to check it out in a few moments.
I'm still not sure what you were trying to say regarding the number of times I post here, but hopefully you will find that I'm not doing it to 'bump' my own thread, but actually providing review updates, joining conversation, and promoting other maps that I've played. (You may notice I only post the first video of my series, not every episode for example). Anyway - if you are raising an issue, can we discuss in PM?
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Curse PremiumI'll post in your thread when I look at it.
Maybe someone else here will take a peek before hand.
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Curse Premiumhttp://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1682180-legendary-quests
Total Rating: 8
Creativity - 1 (I'm not seeing anything other than lava spawners)
Detail - 1 (large rectangles and spheres with no variation in texture)
Experience - 2 (some humorous items)
Challenge - 3 (difficult, but focused only on combat)
Progression - 1 (lack of gear and food progression, easy to lose/destroy wool)
Review Summary
This map seems to be focused on throwing mobs at you for combat difficulty and limiting your movement with lava. In doing so, it strips away all of the other functions that make Minecraft interesting: mining, crafting, exploration, gathering/growing, storytelling (visually or through actual character/plot). Even bridging is downplayed because the map maker gives you so many bricks and torches at the spawn. That really narrows down the player base that this map would appeal to. And then the delivery of that narrow focus is done in a very basic manner.
The build primarily consists of large rectangles and spheres suspended over lava, filled with spawners. Although there is a fairly nice volcano. Custom lava spawners were not updated for 1.5.1 when I played, but I could tell their intent.
Challenge is very rough due to the overuse of spawners at every turn, but there is a lot of darkness which means the mob cap is causing some areas to have low mob density. If you're smart about bridging and pillaring, you can avoid some of the obvious bottlenecks, but be prepared to be knocked in lava often. The real challenge, in my opinion, is lack of any food sustainable source, and there don't seem to be any caches or ores to create armor.
There are humorously named items, but I feel the map could be slightly more inviting by simply naming the areas.
This is also an open-world CTM, which means you can bridge over to any of the areas, in any sequence. In this case, they are all in fairly close proximity to one another.
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Curse PremiumCity of Love
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1746413-city-of-love
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Curse Premium[Adv] The Mysterious East, by GaoFurui, Pikimon and Cesar123
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1736613-East
Total Rating: 15
Creativity - 3
Detail - 4
Experience - 3
Challenge - 3
Progression - 2
Review Summary
Visually great, although I would have liked SOME of the map to occur in daylight, for contrast.
Experience is great with two layers of well written story and dialogue, even though the plot itself is fairly straight forward.
Good breadth of puzzles, although they are fairly simple, and definitely too much jumping for my tastes.
Progression - it's long, but there's not a super amount of down time between action, so that's good. PLENTY of food. Weapons are low to moderate power, but I always have 2+ spares. Armor is scarce, but hasn't been a huge issue - mobs come in controlled bursts. I wish the quests were not self-governed, and most of the sidequest rewards are definitely not worth doing them.
http://www.minecraft...red-emblem-ctm/
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Curse Premium[Puz] City of Love, by Jigarbov, Faume, Nirgalbunny, rsmalec, and Vladimyr
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1746413-City-of-Love
Love and chaos in the big city. There's no easy way to describe this one
Total Rating: 19
Creativity - 4 (moving npcs! stealth mission!)
Detail - 4 (pizza! super heroes! Guitar playing bums!)
Experience - 4 (hubba hubba!)
Challenge - 4 (love is fickle!)
Progression - 3 (Open world scavenger hunt and NPC dialogue trees)
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Curse PremiumAnyway, I hope you don't miss me too much.
~ColdFusionGaming~ - signing out
My Minecraft Maps: coldfusionmaps.com
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Retired StaffNooo
You gotta at least stick around and hang with us! Going to miss all the creative stuff you've done so far!
"just gonna await the "April Fools!" with this sneaky text and hope
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Retired StaffI did scare Hybran earlier on steam, claiming I was ragequitting map-making... but I couldn't keep it up.
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Curse PremiumI will try to look at the thread this week, but I definitely won't have time to look at the map itself for many weeks. I just have too many CTMs in my list and they take me weeks/months to complete a single one.
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Retired StaffMUAHAHAHAHA!
(but srs, that map is baaaad}
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Retired StaffMeh, I did finish that one... And then I restarted... and then I scrapped it...
Development cycles are so cruel to me <3
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Curse PremiumManipulation is fun!
Also, this thread is only a couple posts from 100 pages!
My Minecraft Maps: coldfusionmaps.com
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Curse Premiumhttp://hypixel.net
Total Rating: 20/20
Review Summary
An excellent iteration on Hypixel's trademark map style. Herobrine's Return is a fast paced series of awesome boss fight mechanics, paced by brilliant special effects-laden dialog. This map feels very focused, leveraging Minecraft 1.5 features to overcome the downtime in prior installments.
I watched this map played by multiple teams, and also ran through it myself. I believe it to be a great balance of action and story, one of the few adventure maps that has been able to keep the attention and excitement of my 10 year old from beginning to end.
Creativity is off the charts. An excellent series of creative boss fights. I am deeply impressed with the creative mechanics and how quickly this map was put together. The firework trails are great. As are the appearing and disappearing NPCs. This map is the first I've seen to capitalize on new 'riding' mechanics. I recognize that some of the boss fights are inspired by World of Warcraft, but to reproduce them in Minecraft is no small feat.
From a visual perspective - I felt that the builds were consistently detailed without drawing undue attention to dead end chest searches. I was particularly happy with the wide open vistas and the pathing that let the player appreciate some of the builds from different angles before and after dealing with the encounter.
From an experience perspective, the story is fairly straight forward. But what tips this over the edge, in my opinion, is how everything is woven together through NPC dialog, and the emphasis on the quest guide (book) is minimal.
Challenge combines navigation and mob fighting in new ways. The boss fights are sized to keep you in constant action, with multiple threats even you are not aggroing the boss. There are also fewer 'trash mobs' in between encounters than prior Hypixel maps, and the pathing feels tighter, so you can't simply hang back and snipe mobs from out of range as often.
Progression feels very well balanced. Boss fights are incrementally interesting, and the Heaven Shop is a great solution to multiple vendors. There is very little down time in between encounters, and I enjoyed the amount of armor/weapons I was juggling (as opposed to prior maps where my inventory was always overflowing with junk).