But, the rules says don't breack any blocks except obisidian-you have to break some sponges in a level to may the way through lava...So its that cheating?
Those sponges are sticky-pistoned. There's a lever elsewhere that moves them. So yes, it is technically cheating, but hey, it's Minecraft. Cheating is part of the game.
Strange Island Survival is a survival island. It is a very nice little island with some amazing underground features. I was so impressed with the maps natural structures that I decided to try the seed out for myself, and found all the good parts of the map in their entirety: the quaint island, the huge cavern system, the ravine intersecting with an abandoned mineshaft were all there in their full glory. The "strange" part of this survival island is how much everything the creator added detracts from the natural quality of the map. With the exception of the original island not having a tree, I would prefer just opening the seed to playing this map in every way.
Function:
It's extremely easy to succeed in this map except for the tree. The amount of every resource except wood is huge. The added melon means that I pretty much get infinite food as soon as I kill a skeleton, which was easy to find once I tunnelled through 4 blocks deep to open up the entire underground system. You could have made me subsist off of apples and rotton flesh until I got a good wheat farm going. The lava trap with the stone pressure plates didn't actually work. When I read the sign about how there isn't any iron around I already had a bucket and an iron sword. The mob room in the nether isn't a real challenge because pigmen aren't aggressive, magma cubes aren't threatening, and blazes spawn half as often in a 2 block tall opening. And by the time I got there I had assembled close to full diamond enchanted combat gear and was practically invincible to mobs. The activation block in the nether room may as well say "use a lever" since it's the only device that performs the correct function in that scenario. Once you are in that mob room, it locks you in so that you need to break out to get back to the survival island. Not to mention that the "the end" sign is a bit discouraging towards doing so. The nether treasure was actually less impressive than what I had already assembled on my own from your trail of diamond ore. By the end, the only frustrating or difficult task the entire time was waiting for the first few trees to grow. I didn't end up making the village, the smooth stone house, or the SOS signal since I had access to the resources and finishing them would just be an excercise in tedium. Also, some of the challenges are vague on their own. "Expand the island"- I moved a dirt block, does that count? "Build a village with a population of 100" - What constitutes a village, and how is it a challenge to hit 100 when you give me 3400 villager spawn eggs? The map suffers a bit of a misbalance when conquering the nether and assembling a grand island village are easier than growing trees. Either everything else should require the same effort and irritation, or nothing should.
2/10
Form:
The natural map is beautiful, but I can't give credit to that unless it is used well. The island is nice in the seed, and it changed from there and covered the hole to the underground which is good, but did so in such a lazy and unthorough way. The dip in the ground was clearly noticable from the surface still, and there were grass blocks buried underground. I shouldn't dig up a dirt block and find grass underneath, that's just wrong. The ravine and mineshaft are very cool, but the map's story practically guides you away from them on purpose. If all the player does is follow the placed path, they avoid those features entirely and never see them. The dungeons you put in are no more decorative than natural dungeons, but at the same time are obviously not natural since you put mossy cobblestone in the walls as well as the floor. So that's the worst of both worlds, both unnatural and unattractive. Speaking of unattractive, the little dock and flag, while being a nice source of wool and wood, were just ugly as poop. Your nether structures were solid obsidian on all sides which is painful to look at. Everything that was added to this map just looks bad. The points here are coming entirely from the minecraft generated features.
2/10
Flavor:
Why was there a prospector on a remote island? Why does a buried cavern on a remote island have a name? How did the prospector know of the nether treasure- especially one so unimpressive that he's better off just mining the caves nearby? Why was there a port on the island at all? How does the player character know that zombie-pigmen come from the nether? The story to this map is simply to claim a story and doesn't actually add anything at all to the map but unanswered questions. But it does manage to distract entirely from the survival aspect. If the creator wanted to make it more immersive and real, why contrast the story aspect to the silly, unexplained floating chest full of people eggs? Why is that the chest of "repopulation" when there's little indication the island ever had a real population to regain? With the clashing of survival challenges against in game story goals and the relative ease of accomplishing both those tasks, I found no motivation to play this map other than writing this review.
1/10
Uniqueness:
It's a survival island, with almost the same characteristics as other survival islands. Basically, it's a fantastic seed with so little added that the map could be reconstructed (and probably improved on) in a single sitting, for which the creator is taking credit for making a survival map. I didn't want to use this, but
Overall Score: 5/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- Nooooo, but the seed is -546877940
About the story, clearly you should do what you want with it, but the "one character helping you escape while the other tries to kill you" thing has been like 3 maps a week since portal 2 came out, and I personally don't like when a map goes out of its way to try and make sense of the minecraft mechanics they used. Sometimes writing magical interdimensional portals into a story is more harmful to it than just leaving it unexplained. I actually just criticized Levi's Nightmare for trying to wedge nether portals into the story just so that he could use hell as a setting, when just having them go through without explaining why would have worked just as well without all the fuss.
I really enjoyed the pig spawners. They were enfuriating, but in a way tht made me laugh at the absurdity.
I don't know, are you glad that many people are playing the pre-released version on youtube? I personally wouldn't want so much publicity on an unfinished product... then again, considering how rushed we did Deja Vu, it's pretty much an unfinished product and I LOVE watching people play it.
First, you use all of the above. If a movie only told story through sound and the visual was unrelated action sequences, it would get mocked profusely. The same holds true for games; if your map doesn't tell the story through it's gameplay, people will notice the disconnect. They might hold back on the laughter to be nice, but they will still know it's bad.
Separating story and gameplay is actually really common because it's actually really lazy. It's much more difficult to fuse the two together, but makes a much better product. In Deja Vu, there's not too much challenge or puzzling, but it was all incorporated into the stories. And in let's plays of the map, I've seen people have more fun standing still and pressing a button repeatedly than they do in other maps trying the most elaborate puzzles in minecraft; and this was because the button is supposed to be a photocopier and they were supposed to be an office worker. Or running from zombies is more exciting when it's supposed to be the zombie apocolypse and you're running across a farm to save your life. Or walking through hallways is more fun because you're hiding from prison guards around corners. I've seen people get so involved in the story there that they get angry and murder the guards, even though the challenge is as stupid as "walk through these hallways and don't step on the pressure plates. Pressing buttons, walking down hallways, and running from zombies aren't really fun challenges inherently, but they become awesome when they have a purpose that isn't "get to the other side of this challenge."
I tried to do a quick search for you, and came up with nothing on a mod to do that. Theoretically, that mod could be possible and probably rather simple. However, since the game values in SSP are client dependant rather than map dependant, it would need to be a mod. There is no way to get that effect in vanilla.
I have never made a mod myself, but perhaps if you put up a well phrased request in the modding forums, someone would snatch up the idea for you.
I thought that Punishment Parkour was just a cutesy name for a very difficult parkour map. As it turns out, it's actually punishment themed parkour. You are in a mob family, but you snitch or something, so they hunt you down and stick you in a torturous chamber of parkour punishment! It's a nice take on how much the community thinks of jumping puzzles as painful (if that was the intention). Most of the map's jumping is hardly infuriating; it acts like it has no checkpoints but the whole map is segmented frequently which is basically checkpoints, and there are only a few rooms that offer you instant death (the map plays on peaceful). It's a pretty good map for the parkour junkie (those exist?).
Function:
There are a few places I have personally decided are impossible. Most likely not all of these are actually impossible, but some of them definitely are, so I'll make it a comprehensive list: the last room of the first area has a 2 over 1 down jump with a low ceiling, which is barely possible sprinting but sprinting isn't allowed in that section. The key item beneath the theater seems to be in a chest with solid blocks above it so you can't get any. The building in the city block that tells me to check out their book collection seems to want me to jump on top of the bookcase, but there is no ledge high enough to jump up from. The key item in the sewers seems to just be hidden behind a solid wall never to be found (I found it with mcedit). There's a chandelier in the church area that you need to jump off of the fence part to make, but there's no way to get on top of the fence. The gate opening for the timed parkour is impossible to get through since the button is too far away from it. And the 11 minute timer doesn't actually go off because the redstone chain at the end is 18 blocks long.
As a map reviewer, I do not rage-quit. I finish the map. But I do rage-switch to creative mode. The point that made me switch to creative came after the 6th area. I finished everything up to and including the first 2 gauntlet towers legitimately (except where I thought it was impossible). The reason I raged was the sign that said "Area 7." The reason that I raged was because the previous area sign said "Area 7" and when I saw it at first, I was convinced I had missed 2 keys somehow when I thought I had only missed the sewer, and finding out my dispair was misplaced was the last straw of sorts. I still did all the jumps along the way, I just pretended there were a lot more checkpoints and a lot less death. Also, I didn't realize until very close to the end that the map isn't actually finished. It confuses me that there are advertisements in the thread for better endings after a final boss battle when the version to download doesn't have the boss battle finished yet.
Now, for things closer to my normal commentary: There's a good mixture of changing environments and challenges. It's not just climbing straight up or straight across all the time, and some interesting things are added to make the jumps more entertaining or enfuriating, e.g. sexy computer screens or STUPID PIGS. If I couldn't cheat on some of the sprinting twist jumps near the end, I probably would have rage-quit though. (Side note: I have thoughts sometimes about extending the honor system all the way and just making a map built for creative mode.) I was happy with the lack of overly laggy components until the lava filled gauntlet, which somehow makes more inconvenient lag spikes than a literal room full of pigs, but that's not so bad since it's optional and has large-scale checkpoints. Overall, the map was mostly the right kind of frustrating and seems like it's going to be quite good, but has some definite "work-in-progress" bugs and problems.
5/10
Form:
The map isn't super pretty (solid Lapis castle, anybody?) and the background is just natural nether. The creator seems to understand this as there's specifically a mention of wanting to fix this in the thread. The varience of aesthetics keeps it pretty fresh on your eyes, and thankfully your ears aren't assaulted by the sounds of the natural nether the entire time (meaning I'm glad I didn't have to listen to burning while I played.) Clearly, the whole thing can and will be a lot more aesthetically enjoyable by the time it's done.
5/10
Flavor:
I like that you made constant parkour into a thematic activity. The mafia brothers story is actually really charming, and I wish you had stuck to it more. The snarky signs could have been done more in character (play with the "r"s or something to make it more Boston-y). The parts about one brother trying to help you escape or the thing about witchcraft are unnecessary, cliched, and distracting. If it's still possible, I'd suggest scrapping as much of that as you can and get back to the two trying to pick on you. At the beginning, I imagined it like Cinderella and her evil step-sisters, except instead of girls cleaning and going to balls, it's guys committing murder and more murder. The two simple-minded bratty bully dynamic helped make it fun.
5/10
Uniqueness:
One for giving me a new experience, two for giving a good theme to parkour, and three for seeming to mock the minecraft community's hatred for parkour. Now fix everything and finish the map.
Overall Score: 15/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- I don't recommend a WIP. I recommend finished maps. So finish the map and we'll talk.
I thought that Punishment Parkour was just a cutesy name for a very difficult parkour map. As it turns out, it's actually punishment themed parkour. You are in a mob family, but you snitch or something, so they hunt you down and stick you in a torturous chamber of parkour punishment! It's a nice take on how much the community thinks of jumping puzzles as painful (if that was the intention). Most of the map's jumping is hardly infuriating; it acts like it has no checkpoints but the whole map is segmented frequently which is basically checkpoints, and there are only a few rooms that offer you instant death (the map plays on peaceful). It's a pretty good map for the parkour junkie (those exist?).
Function:
There are a few places I have personally decided are impossible. Most likely not all of these are actually impossible, but some of them definitely are, so I'll make it a comprehensive list: the last room of the first area has a 2 over 1 down jump with a low ceiling, which is barely possible sprinting but sprinting isn't allowed in that section. The key item beneath the theater seems to be in a chest with solid blocks above it so you can't get any. The building in the city block that tells me to check out their book collection seems to want me to jump on top of the bookcase, but there is no ledge high enough to jump up from. The key item in the sewers seems to just be hidden behind a solid wall never to be found (I found it with mcedit). There's a chandelier in the church area that you need to jump off of the fence part to make, but there's no way to get on top of the fence. The gate opening for the timed parkour is impossible to get through since the button is too far away from it. And the 11 minute timer doesn't actually go off because the redstone chain at the end is 18 blocks long.
As a map reviewer, I do not rage-quit. I finish the map. But I do rage-switch to creative mode. The point that made me switch to creative came after the 6th area. I finished everything up to and including the first 2 gauntlet towers legitimately (except where I thought it was impossible). The reason I raged was the sign that said "Area 7." The reason that I raged was because the previous area sign said "Area 7" and when I saw it at first, I was convinced I had missed 2 keys somehow when I thought I had only missed the sewer, and finding out my dispair was misplaced was the last straw of sorts. I still did all the jumps along the way, I just pretended there were a lot more checkpoints and a lot less death. Also, I didn't realize until very close to the end that the map isn't actually finished. It confuses me that there are advertisements in the thread for better endings after a final boss battle when the version to download doesn't have the boss battle finished yet.
Now, for things closer to my normal commentary: There's a good mixture of changing environments and challenges. It's not just climbing straight up or straight across all the time, and some interesting things are added to make the jumps more entertaining or enfuriating, e.g. sexy computer screens or STUPID PIGS. If I couldn't cheat on some of the sprinting twist jumps near the end, I probably would have rage-quit though. (Side note: I have thoughts sometimes about extending the honor system all the way and just making a map built for creative mode.) I was happy with the lack of overly laggy components until the lava filled gauntlet, which somehow makes more inconvenient lag spikes than a literal room full of pigs, but that's not so bad since it's optional and has large-scale checkpoints. Overall, the map was mostly the right kind of frustrating and seems like it's going to be quite good, but has some definite "work-in-progress" bugs and problems.
5/10
Form:
The map isn't super pretty (solid Lapis castle, anybody?) and the background is just natural nether. The creator seems to understand this as there's specifically a mention of wanting to fix this in the thread. The varience of aesthetics keeps it pretty fresh on your eyes, and thankfully your ears aren't assaulted by the sounds of the natural nether the entire time (meaning I'm glad I didn't have to listen to burning while I played.) Clearly, the whole thing can and will be a lot more aesthetically enjoyable by the time it's done.
5/10
Flavor:
I like that you made constant parkour into a thematic activity. The mafia brothers story is actually really charming, and I wish you had stuck to it more. The snarky signs could have been done more in character (play with the "r"s or something to make it more Boston-y). The parts about one brother trying to help you escape or the thing about witchcraft are unnecessary, cliched, and distracting. If it's still possible, I'd suggest scrapping as much of that as you can and get back to the two trying to pick on you. At the beginning, I imagined it like Cinderella and her evil step-sisters, except instead of girls cleaning and going to balls, it's guys committing murder and more murder. The two simple-minded bratty bully dynamic helped make it fun.
5/10
Uniqueness:
One for giving me a new experience, two for giving a good theme to parkour, and three for seeming to mock the minecraft community's hatred for parkour. Now fix everything and finish the map.
Overall Score: 15/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- I don't recommend a WIP. I recommend finished maps. So finish the map and we'll talk.
I like projects! If it involves redstone, I'd be happy to help whenever for whatever reason. If it doesn't, you might be better off waiting for a response from the the other half of dasbuttocks.
At any rate, Deja Vu II is going to be quite a while since we want it to be perfect instead of rushed out in a month like the first one, so you might not wanna wait for us to finish that.
Quest for Vendria (more appropriately quest in Vendria or quest of Vendria, as Vendria is the location, not the goal) is a small adventure map. The Land of Vendria had previously been assaulted by an evil spirit which got locked away in a tower, and then the three keys to unlock it were hidden in 3 dungeons to make sure anyone who went after them was strong enough to destroy the spirit permanently. You are that hero.
Function:
First, the rules acknowledge only the situation of breaking blocks; they don't tell me if I can place blocks or craft tools and they don't tell me what difficulty to play in. This would be less of a problem had the map thread not specifically mentioned that all important information is in the map before telling me to play on peaceful. I just assumed I shouldn't break blocks and played on normal difficulty, oh well. The block breaking was only related to sidequesting for gold ingots, which made those exceptions not worth the trouble of excepting them. The minigames at the lake (disregarding the fact that they were "look forward and press q or right click respectively) were attached to dispensers that gave buttons, when it would take no more effort to have them just attach to the doors themselves. The challenges to get the keys were almost easy enough that you could be turning on minecraft for the first time and beat this map. AND giving me a bucket of water was a huge mistake, especially when the next puzzle was parkour over lava. "Don't think this jump is impossible and it becomes a lot easier" - MY RESPONSE "You're not kidding!" (uses bucket of water). Although I was thankful for that bucket when I found spots in the map where you could just sidestep into a ditch and be forced to cheat to get out. The ice jumping and slow sand race challenges worked out alright though. And none of the puzzles were bugged. But telling me I need to sleep or I'll spawn outside the map is a bit lazy, especially when you've already said that you used mcedit, and that program moves spawns.
2/10
Form:
The map looked a bit better than it played. The piston machines used to unveil the key chests was a nice touch. The buildings in the snowy hills looked nice, the minecart rides weren't particularly tedious or boring, and building into natural Minecraft landscape always looks ok. On the other hand, the giant tree was just a hollow 6x6 rectangle with some leaves on top, the forest was redundant imagery with the giant tree even though they were very different places; "the forest" is a bad naming choice for what is more acurately described as a canyon in the first place, but when you already have a great tree I don't see why you would choose "forest" on top of that. Near the starting area there is what seems to be the bottom of a scrapped side mission sticking out of a cliff for no reason. There's also what seems to be an unfinished staircase near there on the hillside as well. The tower is unimpressive, and the map is a little too short.
3/10
Flavor:
I'm supposed to save the land from an evil spirit. Why is there nobody there to save? Why doesn't anyone try to stop me from breaking the seal on the spirit? Why does nothing bad happen when I literally expode the sealing tower? Why doesn't the spirit try and stop me from hitting the self-destruct button? And most importantly, how does the hero take up his sword like it specifically says at the end of the map if you never gave the hero a sword in the first place.
2/10
Uniqueness:
Nope. But atleast it didn't rip off enough to get the creeper face.
Overall Score: 7/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- I think there's a pattern emerging that we should avoid maps that are "Quest [preposition] [imaginary name]" .... (of Gallell) .... ok, it's not nearly that bad.
Wow! Thanks for all the feedback! And very nice review tstorm :smile.gif: You should apply for review central :wink.gif: I really appreciate all the feedback!
No problem, it was my pleasure.
And thanks for the compliment. I prefer my own thing, though. Let's me rate however the hell I feel like and makes it easier to shamelessly self-promote when my next map hits the boards.
I thank you for your review! I'm glad that you liked the overhaul. May I ask you what your favorite new puzzle was?
The only thing that I want to say is that when your review was out, I already fixed the bugs that you mentioned. So you played in the wrong version. The new rating has +1 point, if I understand correctly?
Yeah, all maps have bugs when they first come out, I'm definitely not taking away from it for that. When my first map was put up the first time, you could skip almost an entire dungeon just by jumping around a corner. :tongue.gif:
I probably liked the wood bridge over troubled water... I mean lava, if only because I have never seen that puzzle in anything else, so it wasn't just new in your map, it was new for me.
And yes, the new rating is +1, I'm going to leave the old review post the way it was, but I changed the rating in my front post to give it the upgraded +1. 19 --> 20 is a good +1 to have, too.
0
0
Those sponges are sticky-pistoned. There's a lever elsewhere that moves them. So yes, it is technically cheating, but hey, it's Minecraft. Cheating is part of the game.
0
by Zephyron0210
Thread: http://www.minecraft...t/topic/981871-
Strange Island Survival is a survival island. It is a very nice little island with some amazing underground features. I was so impressed with the maps natural structures that I decided to try the seed out for myself, and found all the good parts of the map in their entirety: the quaint island, the huge cavern system, the ravine intersecting with an abandoned mineshaft were all there in their full glory. The "strange" part of this survival island is how much everything the creator added detracts from the natural quality of the map. With the exception of the original island not having a tree, I would prefer just opening the seed to playing this map in every way.
Function:
It's extremely easy to succeed in this map except for the tree. The amount of every resource except wood is huge. The added melon means that I pretty much get infinite food as soon as I kill a skeleton, which was easy to find once I tunnelled through 4 blocks deep to open up the entire underground system. You could have made me subsist off of apples and rotton flesh until I got a good wheat farm going. The lava trap with the stone pressure plates didn't actually work. When I read the sign about how there isn't any iron around I already had a bucket and an iron sword. The mob room in the nether isn't a real challenge because pigmen aren't aggressive, magma cubes aren't threatening, and blazes spawn half as often in a 2 block tall opening. And by the time I got there I had assembled close to full diamond enchanted combat gear and was practically invincible to mobs. The activation block in the nether room may as well say "use a lever" since it's the only device that performs the correct function in that scenario. Once you are in that mob room, it locks you in so that you need to break out to get back to the survival island. Not to mention that the "the end" sign is a bit discouraging towards doing so. The nether treasure was actually less impressive than what I had already assembled on my own from your trail of diamond ore. By the end, the only frustrating or difficult task the entire time was waiting for the first few trees to grow. I didn't end up making the village, the smooth stone house, or the SOS signal since I had access to the resources and finishing them would just be an excercise in tedium. Also, some of the challenges are vague on their own. "Expand the island"- I moved a dirt block, does that count? "Build a village with a population of 100" - What constitutes a village, and how is it a challenge to hit 100 when you give me 3400 villager spawn eggs? The map suffers a bit of a misbalance when conquering the nether and assembling a grand island village are easier than growing trees. Either everything else should require the same effort and irritation, or nothing should.
2/10
Form:
The natural map is beautiful, but I can't give credit to that unless it is used well. The island is nice in the seed, and it changed from there and covered the hole to the underground which is good, but did so in such a lazy and unthorough way. The dip in the ground was clearly noticable from the surface still, and there were grass blocks buried underground. I shouldn't dig up a dirt block and find grass underneath, that's just wrong. The ravine and mineshaft are very cool, but the map's story practically guides you away from them on purpose. If all the player does is follow the placed path, they avoid those features entirely and never see them. The dungeons you put in are no more decorative than natural dungeons, but at the same time are obviously not natural since you put mossy cobblestone in the walls as well as the floor. So that's the worst of both worlds, both unnatural and unattractive. Speaking of unattractive, the little dock and flag, while being a nice source of wool and wood, were just ugly as poop. Your nether structures were solid obsidian on all sides which is painful to look at. Everything that was added to this map just looks bad. The points here are coming entirely from the minecraft generated features.
2/10
Flavor:
Why was there a prospector on a remote island? Why does a buried cavern on a remote island have a name? How did the prospector know of the nether treasure- especially one so unimpressive that he's better off just mining the caves nearby? Why was there a port on the island at all? How does the player character know that zombie-pigmen come from the nether? The story to this map is simply to claim a story and doesn't actually add anything at all to the map but unanswered questions. But it does manage to distract entirely from the survival aspect. If the creator wanted to make it more immersive and real, why contrast the story aspect to the silly, unexplained floating chest full of people eggs? Why is that the chest of "repopulation" when there's little indication the island ever had a real population to regain? With the clashing of survival challenges against in game story goals and the relative ease of accomplishing both those tasks, I found no motivation to play this map other than writing this review.
1/10
Uniqueness:
It's a survival island, with almost the same characteristics as other survival islands. Basically, it's a fantastic seed with so little added that the map could be reconstructed (and probably improved on) in a single sitting, for which the creator is taking credit for making a survival map. I didn't want to use this, but
Overall Score: 5/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- Nooooo, but the seed is -546877940
0
0
Really, you can get our help before Deja Vu 2 is done, that's not going to be done for a few months and we're hardly making rigorous progress.
0
About the story, clearly you should do what you want with it, but the "one character helping you escape while the other tries to kill you" thing has been like 3 maps a week since portal 2 came out, and I personally don't like when a map goes out of its way to try and make sense of the minecraft mechanics they used. Sometimes writing magical interdimensional portals into a story is more harmful to it than just leaving it unexplained. I actually just criticized Levi's Nightmare for trying to wedge nether portals into the story just so that he could use hell as a setting, when just having them go through without explaining why would have worked just as well without all the fuss.
I really enjoyed the pig spawners. They were enfuriating, but in a way tht made me laugh at the absurdity.
I don't know, are you glad that many people are playing the pre-released version on youtube? I personally wouldn't want so much publicity on an unfinished product... then again, considering how rushed we did Deja Vu, it's pretty much an unfinished product and I LOVE watching people play it.
1
Separating story and gameplay is actually really common because it's actually really lazy. It's much more difficult to fuse the two together, but makes a much better product. In Deja Vu, there's not too much challenge or puzzling, but it was all incorporated into the stories. And in let's plays of the map, I've seen people have more fun standing still and pressing a button repeatedly than they do in other maps trying the most elaborate puzzles in minecraft; and this was because the button is supposed to be a photocopier and they were supposed to be an office worker. Or running from zombies is more exciting when it's supposed to be the zombie apocolypse and you're running across a farm to save your life. Or walking through hallways is more fun because you're hiding from prison guards around corners. I've seen people get so involved in the story there that they get angry and murder the guards, even though the challenge is as stupid as "walk through these hallways and don't step on the pressure plates. Pressing buttons, walking down hallways, and running from zombies aren't really fun challenges inherently, but they become awesome when they have a purpose that isn't "get to the other side of this challenge."
0
Don't make an adventure map unless you wanna waste a few hundred hours or publish something terrible.
0
I have never made a mod myself, but perhaps if you put up a well phrased request in the modding forums, someone would snatch up the idea for you.
0
by Dochavoc2
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/677282-
I thought that Punishment Parkour was just a cutesy name for a very difficult parkour map. As it turns out, it's actually punishment themed parkour. You are in a mob family, but you snitch or something, so they hunt you down and stick you in a torturous chamber of parkour punishment! It's a nice take on how much the community thinks of jumping puzzles as painful (if that was the intention). Most of the map's jumping is hardly infuriating; it acts like it has no checkpoints but the whole map is segmented frequently which is basically checkpoints, and there are only a few rooms that offer you instant death (the map plays on peaceful). It's a pretty good map for the parkour junkie (those exist?).
Function:
There are a few places I have personally decided are impossible. Most likely not all of these are actually impossible, but some of them definitely are, so I'll make it a comprehensive list: the last room of the first area has a 2 over 1 down jump with a low ceiling, which is barely possible sprinting but sprinting isn't allowed in that section. The key item beneath the theater seems to be in a chest with solid blocks above it so you can't get any. The building in the city block that tells me to check out their book collection seems to want me to jump on top of the bookcase, but there is no ledge high enough to jump up from. The key item in the sewers seems to just be hidden behind a solid wall never to be found (I found it with mcedit). There's a chandelier in the church area that you need to jump off of the fence part to make, but there's no way to get on top of the fence. The gate opening for the timed parkour is impossible to get through since the button is too far away from it. And the 11 minute timer doesn't actually go off because the redstone chain at the end is 18 blocks long.
As a map reviewer, I do not rage-quit. I finish the map. But I do rage-switch to creative mode. The point that made me switch to creative came after the 6th area. I finished everything up to and including the first 2 gauntlet towers legitimately (except where I thought it was impossible). The reason I raged was the sign that said "Area 7." The reason that I raged was because the previous area sign said "Area 7" and when I saw it at first, I was convinced I had missed 2 keys somehow when I thought I had only missed the sewer, and finding out my dispair was misplaced was the last straw of sorts. I still did all the jumps along the way, I just pretended there were a lot more checkpoints and a lot less death. Also, I didn't realize until very close to the end that the map isn't actually finished. It confuses me that there are advertisements in the thread for better endings after a final boss battle when the version to download doesn't have the boss battle finished yet.
Now, for things closer to my normal commentary: There's a good mixture of changing environments and challenges. It's not just climbing straight up or straight across all the time, and some interesting things are added to make the jumps more entertaining or enfuriating, e.g. sexy computer screens or STUPID PIGS. If I couldn't cheat on some of the sprinting twist jumps near the end, I probably would have rage-quit though. (Side note: I have thoughts sometimes about extending the honor system all the way and just making a map built for creative mode.) I was happy with the lack of overly laggy components until the lava filled gauntlet, which somehow makes more inconvenient lag spikes than a literal room full of pigs, but that's not so bad since it's optional and has large-scale checkpoints. Overall, the map was mostly the right kind of frustrating and seems like it's going to be quite good, but has some definite "work-in-progress" bugs and problems.
5/10
Form:
The map isn't super pretty (solid Lapis castle, anybody?) and the background is just natural nether. The creator seems to understand this as there's specifically a mention of wanting to fix this in the thread. The varience of aesthetics keeps it pretty fresh on your eyes, and thankfully your ears aren't assaulted by the sounds of the natural nether the entire time (meaning I'm glad I didn't have to listen to burning while I played.) Clearly, the whole thing can and will be a lot more aesthetically enjoyable by the time it's done.
5/10
Flavor:
I like that you made constant parkour into a thematic activity. The mafia brothers story is actually really charming, and I wish you had stuck to it more. The snarky signs could have been done more in character (play with the "r"s or something to make it more Boston-y). The parts about one brother trying to help you escape or the thing about witchcraft are unnecessary, cliched, and distracting. If it's still possible, I'd suggest scrapping as much of that as you can and get back to the two trying to pick on you. At the beginning, I imagined it like Cinderella and her evil step-sisters, except instead of girls cleaning and going to balls, it's guys committing murder and more murder. The two simple-minded bratty bully dynamic helped make it fun.
5/10
Uniqueness:
One for giving me a new experience, two for giving a good theme to parkour, and three for seeming to mock the minecraft community's hatred for parkour. Now fix everything and finish the map.
Overall Score: 15/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- I don't recommend a WIP. I recommend finished maps. So finish the map and we'll talk.
0
by Dochavoc2
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/677282-
I thought that Punishment Parkour was just a cutesy name for a very difficult parkour map. As it turns out, it's actually punishment themed parkour. You are in a mob family, but you snitch or something, so they hunt you down and stick you in a torturous chamber of parkour punishment! It's a nice take on how much the community thinks of jumping puzzles as painful (if that was the intention). Most of the map's jumping is hardly infuriating; it acts like it has no checkpoints but the whole map is segmented frequently which is basically checkpoints, and there are only a few rooms that offer you instant death (the map plays on peaceful). It's a pretty good map for the parkour junkie (those exist?).
Function:
There are a few places I have personally decided are impossible. Most likely not all of these are actually impossible, but some of them definitely are, so I'll make it a comprehensive list: the last room of the first area has a 2 over 1 down jump with a low ceiling, which is barely possible sprinting but sprinting isn't allowed in that section. The key item beneath the theater seems to be in a chest with solid blocks above it so you can't get any. The building in the city block that tells me to check out their book collection seems to want me to jump on top of the bookcase, but there is no ledge high enough to jump up from. The key item in the sewers seems to just be hidden behind a solid wall never to be found (I found it with mcedit). There's a chandelier in the church area that you need to jump off of the fence part to make, but there's no way to get on top of the fence. The gate opening for the timed parkour is impossible to get through since the button is too far away from it. And the 11 minute timer doesn't actually go off because the redstone chain at the end is 18 blocks long.
As a map reviewer, I do not rage-quit. I finish the map. But I do rage-switch to creative mode. The point that made me switch to creative came after the 6th area. I finished everything up to and including the first 2 gauntlet towers legitimately (except where I thought it was impossible). The reason I raged was the sign that said "Area 7." The reason that I raged was because the previous area sign said "Area 7" and when I saw it at first, I was convinced I had missed 2 keys somehow when I thought I had only missed the sewer, and finding out my dispair was misplaced was the last straw of sorts. I still did all the jumps along the way, I just pretended there were a lot more checkpoints and a lot less death. Also, I didn't realize until very close to the end that the map isn't actually finished. It confuses me that there are advertisements in the thread for better endings after a final boss battle when the version to download doesn't have the boss battle finished yet.
Now, for things closer to my normal commentary: There's a good mixture of changing environments and challenges. It's not just climbing straight up or straight across all the time, and some interesting things are added to make the jumps more entertaining or enfuriating, e.g. sexy computer screens or STUPID PIGS. If I couldn't cheat on some of the sprinting twist jumps near the end, I probably would have rage-quit though. (Side note: I have thoughts sometimes about extending the honor system all the way and just making a map built for creative mode.) I was happy with the lack of overly laggy components until the lava filled gauntlet, which somehow makes more inconvenient lag spikes than a literal room full of pigs, but that's not so bad since it's optional and has large-scale checkpoints. Overall, the map was mostly the right kind of frustrating and seems like it's going to be quite good, but has some definite "work-in-progress" bugs and problems.
5/10
Form:
The map isn't super pretty (solid Lapis castle, anybody?) and the background is just natural nether. The creator seems to understand this as there's specifically a mention of wanting to fix this in the thread. The varience of aesthetics keeps it pretty fresh on your eyes, and thankfully your ears aren't assaulted by the sounds of the natural nether the entire time (meaning I'm glad I didn't have to listen to burning while I played.) Clearly, the whole thing can and will be a lot more aesthetically enjoyable by the time it's done.
5/10
Flavor:
I like that you made constant parkour into a thematic activity. The mafia brothers story is actually really charming, and I wish you had stuck to it more. The snarky signs could have been done more in character (play with the "r"s or something to make it more Boston-y). The parts about one brother trying to help you escape or the thing about witchcraft are unnecessary, cliched, and distracting. If it's still possible, I'd suggest scrapping as much of that as you can and get back to the two trying to pick on you. At the beginning, I imagined it like Cinderella and her evil step-sisters, except instead of girls cleaning and going to balls, it's guys committing murder and more murder. The two simple-minded bratty bully dynamic helped make it fun.
5/10
Uniqueness:
One for giving me a new experience, two for giving a good theme to parkour, and three for seeming to mock the minecraft community's hatred for parkour. Now fix everything and finish the map.
Overall Score: 15/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- I don't recommend a WIP. I recommend finished maps. So finish the map and we'll talk.
0
At any rate, Deja Vu II is going to be quite a while since we want it to be perfect instead of rushed out in a month like the first one, so you might not wanna wait for us to finish that.
0
by: TJ the DJ Drummer
Tech Ninjaa
Sammo75
Robo_Chiz
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1040802-
Quest for Vendria (more appropriately quest in Vendria or quest of Vendria, as Vendria is the location, not the goal) is a small adventure map. The Land of Vendria had previously been assaulted by an evil spirit which got locked away in a tower, and then the three keys to unlock it were hidden in 3 dungeons to make sure anyone who went after them was strong enough to destroy the spirit permanently. You are that hero.
Function:
First, the rules acknowledge only the situation of breaking blocks; they don't tell me if I can place blocks or craft tools and they don't tell me what difficulty to play in. This would be less of a problem had the map thread not specifically mentioned that all important information is in the map before telling me to play on peaceful. I just assumed I shouldn't break blocks and played on normal difficulty, oh well. The block breaking was only related to sidequesting for gold ingots, which made those exceptions not worth the trouble of excepting them. The minigames at the lake (disregarding the fact that they were "look forward and press q or right click respectively) were attached to dispensers that gave buttons, when it would take no more effort to have them just attach to the doors themselves. The challenges to get the keys were almost easy enough that you could be turning on minecraft for the first time and beat this map. AND giving me a bucket of water was a huge mistake, especially when the next puzzle was parkour over lava. "Don't think this jump is impossible and it becomes a lot easier" - MY RESPONSE "You're not kidding!" (uses bucket of water). Although I was thankful for that bucket when I found spots in the map where you could just sidestep into a ditch and be forced to cheat to get out. The ice jumping and slow sand race challenges worked out alright though. And none of the puzzles were bugged. But telling me I need to sleep or I'll spawn outside the map is a bit lazy, especially when you've already said that you used mcedit, and that program moves spawns.
2/10
Form:
The map looked a bit better than it played. The piston machines used to unveil the key chests was a nice touch. The buildings in the snowy hills looked nice, the minecart rides weren't particularly tedious or boring, and building into natural Minecraft landscape always looks ok. On the other hand, the giant tree was just a hollow 6x6 rectangle with some leaves on top, the forest was redundant imagery with the giant tree even though they were very different places; "the forest" is a bad naming choice for what is more acurately described as a canyon in the first place, but when you already have a great tree I don't see why you would choose "forest" on top of that. Near the starting area there is what seems to be the bottom of a scrapped side mission sticking out of a cliff for no reason. There's also what seems to be an unfinished staircase near there on the hillside as well. The tower is unimpressive, and the map is a little too short.
3/10
Flavor:
I'm supposed to save the land from an evil spirit. Why is there nobody there to save? Why doesn't anyone try to stop me from breaking the seal on the spirit? Why does nothing bad happen when I literally expode the sealing tower? Why doesn't the spirit try and stop me from hitting the self-destruct button? And most importantly, how does the hero take up his sword like it specifically says at the end of the map if you never gave the hero a sword in the first place.
2/10
Uniqueness:
Nope. But atleast it didn't rip off enough to get the creeper face.
Overall Score: 7/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- I think there's a pattern emerging that we should avoid maps that are "Quest [preposition] [imaginary name]" .... (of Gallell) .... ok, it's not nearly that bad.
0
No problem, it was my pleasure.
And thanks for the compliment. I prefer my own thing, though. Let's me rate however the hell I feel like and makes it easier to shamelessly self-promote when my next map hits the boards.
0
Yeah, all maps have bugs when they first come out, I'm definitely not taking away from it for that. When my first map was put up the first time, you could skip almost an entire dungeon just by jumping around a corner. :tongue.gif:
I probably liked the wood bridge over troubled water... I mean lava, if only because I have never seen that puzzle in anything else, so it wasn't just new in your map, it was new for me.
And yes, the new rating is +1, I'm going to leave the old review post the way it was, but I changed the rating in my front post to give it the upgraded +1. 19 --> 20 is a good +1 to have, too.