On another note, I believe I've mostly played through Deja Vu, as you may have noticed. (Not sure if it was you or the friend or recommended it to me). Not sure if I've encounted a bug though or if I just suck, as the map never seems to end, even though I believe I've found all the rooms/levers >.>
It was both of us! (Don't you LOVE the ambiguity?)
The map does end, but it's not just finding all the rooms and levers (the levers are actually a big side mission we don't tell you about until the end), it's what you do in the rooms that makes the difference! Like you need to help your friends escape the prison while avoiding the guards (pressure plates) or you need to call the cops on the thief in the factory. If you never do everything right in one run, you do get caught in an eternal loop of the same few places.
:tongue.gif: Yeah, a de-bugger would be fantastic. But definently, reviewing is the best part. I've been doing it for months, and I find the most fun to be helping others fix their maps through descriptive reviews.
... I just like playing maps and the rest flows naturally from my arrogance and general self-importance. Lol.
Actually, I think my favorite thing about reviewing is that it gives the extra incentive to finish a map. Before I started giving feedback regularly (which I admittedly started doing just to plaster the "Top Ramen" banner through the forums) I had a bad habit of quitting custom maps halfway through. I can't do that if I intend to give feedback or advice. I find playing maps to be a significantly more positive experience for me when I finish the experiences...
I can say outright that my least favorite thing about giving feedback is that I think I have some adventure map Midas touch-type curse. (I preface this by clarifying I am not taking any credit for the successes of others; I am only jealous of the attention they've gotten.) I commented in the thread for Emperor of Minopia and a few weeks later Sparklez was playing it. The guy who made The Tourist started chatting with us, I go comment in that thread, and a week or so later he's got the Yogscast playing that. Then a week or so ago I comment in the thread for The Island of Dr. Gireaux, and that gets the Minecraftforums community spotlight. All while poor little Deja Vu sits in the corner with most of its downloads from France. Everything I touch turns to gold at my own detriment! How did I bring this curse upon myself!? :tongue.gif:
(To clarify, I commented in those threads as "dasbuttocks" as that is the profile my friend and I made to post our maps. tstorm823 is the profile I have because I don't speak for him in everything I do, including map reviews.)
Some people made a trailer for me if its any help:
Hope you get to it!
Well, the top two on the list I've played and just need to write it up. And I'll probably hit two more tomorrow. Suddenly you're right near the top of the list!
I bet you're going to be a bit more careful about asking people for suggestions, soon this'll turn into our map instead of yours.
Listen to everything this guy says, it's amazing.
Honestly, we were hoping more for ideas for individual segments or bonus content, and what we've gotten is a very complete idea for an entirely different map. The way Deja Vu 2 is going so far, it's mostly just going to be what Deja Vu should have been in the first place. Subconcious dream-sequence murder solving isn't in the cards for this map, but that's not to say we don't like the idea. Consider that in line in our project list (if we maintain the drive to build maps the way we have been). But if someone does wanna take that map idea and go with it themselves, obviously they wouldn't need our permission to do it, but since we're the ones who know how to make it work we'd gladly be advisors for it.
You're not supposed to bump here. There are dozens of threads floating in daily, and each of them took many hours to create (excepting the "anyone wanna make my map for me" and "what map will get me youtube famous" threads).
This map is 2 months old and has 7500 downloads, it's clearly had its turn. You can let it go now, 34 shameless bumps is enough. Don't add to it unless you have something new to say.
Yeah, it's possible that did break the map. Depending on what got hit either a ) it didn't hurt anything but some glowstone pistons, b ) it broke the triggers for the jungle so that you can't get to the burning house from there. Since you went to hell, it should still work enough to let you win, but not through the jungle, you'd need to take the other route. The best solution is sadly probably just redownload the map.
And I don't normally recommend mods since I hate installing them myself, but the one above is definitely helpful.
a creeper blew up and sent me to to the Underworld prematurly. And it screwed up some redstone.
Well, unless you went straight there from the office, thats not really premature. You can get there from most places. And unless it specifically hit one of life change triggers, it should be ok to keep playing. The rest of the redstone is formatted to not break the map even if blown up. Where specifically was the creeper?
Im talking stuff like Deep Space Turtle Chase, The Return, Lux Perpetua, etc etc....
the best maps have a great story line, are never boring, in-game text or audio etc
... so you're saying only the one's that were popular on youtube?
Or is the fact that half your posts on the forums are directly related to Deep Space Turtle Chase indicative of what your hoping to get from this thread? [/ me being a jerk]
This is some shameless self-promotion, but I can tell you that while people are here saying something like The Tourist is the best map ever (not saying that I disagree), the maker of the Tourist is over in our thread saying that Deja Vu: The Reincarnation of Steve is "the best experience in Minecraft."
He's not the only one saying that. We have a list of people including notable mapmakers saying things like "If god created a map, this would be it!" And we haven't even gotten our shot at outrageous popularity yet. Go check it out.
I'll add a link to your review on the map post, if you like.
Whatever you wanna do is fine by me. I know my things are a bit hefty, so expecting anyone not involved with the map to read the whole things seems like a high expectation. But of course yeah, I'd be grateful for a link.
Also, as far as me losing the bucket, I'm a doofus and punched a pigman amid the chaos... the death was totally my fault, just having to cheat for that one thing felt bad. And there is plenty of iron through the map, I just happened to efficiently loot it all as I went.
Yo, dawg. I heard you like map reviews, so I took a map and made a review for that guy TheMapReview.
Woolington is a puzzle map, straight forward. It gives you puzzles, you do them, no fuss about it. At one point, it pretends to become a "puzzlemaster trying to kill you" map and then promptly laughs off that idea. It segments itself into color coded puzzle sections, one after another, and promises to add more colors of wool as the creator comes up with more sections.
Function:
All the puzzles function properly. For bugs, the third hole of the slime bowling is glitchable if you happen to trigger the up piston while the side pistons are retracted. There are a few signs with typing errors, though the only one I can think of is the very end where it says something like "for because of people like you." For general construction problems, the long hallways between puzzles shouldn't be there. Having checked outside, you often have plenty of space to work between rooms, and running long, cramped pathways between places is poor mapmaking as an extra annoyance for the player. If the map takes an hour, probably 3 minutes is walking between puzzles.. And the lag reducing switches were a necessary inclusion, and you get credit for them. The puzzles were not inspiringly fun, but they were all acceptable.
6/10
Form:
Solid, monochromatic wool decoration isn't attractive. Solid of any block isn't attractive really. But that was the stylization of the map, and that is certainly the prerogative here. Making it pretty would kill the theme. Not much is done in the way of aesthetics, and at least for right now, the map isn't all that big.
5/10
Flavor:
I did enjoy the acknowledgement of the "tester cutting off the subject" cliche. That was nicely done. The theme was "test these solid wool rooms" and the player does, just with the motive of completing them for the sake of it. There's not much to make it really immersive, but it sets itself up with a simple premise and sticks to it nicely.
6/10
Uniqueness:
It's a puzzle map, but this time the hook is that it goes through different colors of wool. I wouldn't say it's a unique gaming experience.
Overall Score: 17/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- We shall see how the updates turn out.
Lord of Bloodycross is a story-based adventure map where the player takes the role of a protagonist without many memories going through a fortress with a town attached. If that sounds cliche, it's because the rest is too heavy with spoilers for even me to shamelessly ruin. The map has features such as "voice acting/ narration," "dynamic locations," "multiple endings," and "awesomely epic builds." I quote these things because the creator said them himself, not because they aren't accurate. They really are accurate. It comes with sound files to listen to as you play, which is the best use of sound in an adventure map that I've seen since you can just put the playlist in whichever music player you use and use the function keys to pause and play without tabbing out of minecraft. The map admits completely that inspiration was drawn from Eronev Mansion Adventure, but instead of having the branching landscape replicas at one point near the very end, the map runs through (unless I'm missing one) 4 different complete replicas of the map area with different levels of destruction, and with little exception, does so with amazing smoothness. The map pulls some rabbits out of its hat, and players who aren't really looking for it are going to go through at least one of the tricks without any chance of noticing the flip.
Function:
All that flipping and player guiding goes off with complete smoothness. As far as functional scenery, this map is close to as good as it gets; it shows off the mixture of power and subtlety good scenery rearrangement can have. Moreover, in the few hours of gameplay this map takes, I didn't find any outright bugs in the mechanics of the map. The map was not very dense with puzzles or challenges; there's nothing wrong with that as the narrative through minecraft was still well worth the experience. The real issue is that the rooms with challenges were the low points of the map. The extra unlock lever to get underneath the chapel was unnecessary and unintuitive. When the entrance was already a hidden secret, having the lever to open it further is redundant and feels like it isn't worth the play time to have. The minecart starting room is miserable when you get to it. It locks you in a room until you guess the approriate combination of buttons and pressure plates with just the vaguest hint, and it doesn't help that the right answer seems to do nothing and the wrong answer seems to do something. Much later, when the minecart tracks give out from under you, that room has issues. First, if you fall into lava, you're dead. Second, getting through that amount of zombies and pigmen is very difficult, especially through corridors that are one wide and you have to push the pigmen out of the way. Third, one of the jumps in there is so close to impossible that it takes a few extra minutes just to get past it. And all this is going on while you are trying not to lose the bucket you need to complete the next task. (I lost that bucket). Making the player hold onto a specific item and then sending them through lava and pigmen puts one unfortunate lagspike between smooth gameplay and obligatory cheating. And I'd bet you didn't imagine someone would be dumb enough to lock the front gate at the start and then walk through to see if it actually works, but I did exactly that. So there were some problems in the map, but they weren't in the maps primary goal. The primary goal of this map seems to be story conveyence through scenery, and that went off flawlessly.
7/10
Form:
It's beautiful. It changes to represent the story events. The sound files worked really nicely. From clicking play on the trailer through to the credit sequence, this is the closest I've seen a minecraft map come to movie aesthetics. The product was finished, polished, and pleasant to be inside of.
10/10
Flavor:
This map is really all flavor. Everything built into it aims straight at telling the story, the player is given the right motivation at all times, and the story even has a twist I didn't predict halfway through the map, while at the same time not pulling the twist entirely out of nowhere (not to say it was shocking, but it wasn't super predictable and that is great.) The feel is very serious, and it sticks to that nicely (meaning it doesn't break it's tone to make poop jokes). The map just creates a very immersive atmosphere.
10/10
Uniqueness:
As I said, this is as close to movie aesthetics as I've ever seen in minecraft. It doesn't just drop some tnt and say "there, I made the scenery change." It really carries you through the story progression, and it does this without the player really noticing. This map is on the current frontier of player guiding and manipulation. With methods like this uses, along with the timing technology of my last review (Fall of Kingdoms) or the location changing technology of my own map (Deja Vu), it's only a matter of time before a map comes out that makes the player second guess that it's even minecraft. This does largely build off of mechanics introduced by other minecrafters, but it's mostly the freshest mechanics in the mapmaking world used in the most professional package around.
Overall Score: 27 and
Would I recommend it?
- Yes, and yes. Narration through minecraft at its finest.
Lord of Bloodycross is a story-based adventure map where the player takes the role of a protagonist without many memories going through a fortress with a town attached. If that sounds cliche, it's because the rest is too heavy with spoilers for even me to shamelessly ruin. The map has features such as "voice acting/ narration," "dynamic locations," "multiple endings," and "awesomely epic builds." I quote these things because the creator said them himself, not because they aren't accurate. They really are accurate. It comes with sound files to listen to as you play, which is the best use of sound in an adventure map that I've seen since you can just put the playlist in whichever music player you use and use the function keys to pause and play without tabbing out of minecraft. The map admits completely that inspiration was drawn from Eronev Mansion Adventure, but instead of having the branching landscape replicas at one point near the very end, the map runs through (unless I'm missing one) 4 different complete replicas of the map area with different levels of destruction, and with little exception, does so with amazing smoothness. The map pulls some rabbits out of its hat, and players who aren't really looking for it are going to go through at least one of the tricks without any chance of noticing the flip.
Function:
All that flipping and player guiding goes off with complete smoothness. As far as functional scenery, this map is close to as good as it gets; it shows off the mixture of power and subtlety good scenery rearrangement can have. Moreover, in the few hours of gameplay this map takes, I didn't find any outright bugs in the mechanics of the map. The map was not very dense with puzzles or challenges; there's nothing wrong with that as the narrative through minecraft was still well worth the experience. The real issue is that the rooms with challenges were the low points of the map. The extra unlock lever to get underneath the chapel was unnecessary and unintuitive. When the entrance was already a hidden secret, having the lever to open it further is redundant and feels like it isn't worth the play time to have. The minecart starting room is miserable when you get to it. It locks you in a room until you guess the approriate combination of buttons and pressure plates with just the vaguest hint, and it doesn't help that the right answer seems to do nothing and the wrong answer seems to do something. Much later, when the minecart tracks give out from under you, that room has issues. First, if you fall into lava, you're dead. Second, getting through that amount of zombies and pigmen is very difficult, especially through corridors that are one wide and you have to push the pigmen out of the way. Third, one of the jumps in there is so close to impossible that it takes a few extra minutes just to get past it. And all this is going on while you are trying not to lose the bucket you need to complete the next task. (I lost that bucket). Making the player hold onto a specific item and then sending them through lava and pigmen puts one unfortunate lagspike between smooth gameplay and obligatory cheating. And I'd bet you didn't imagine someone would be dumb enough to lock the front gate at the start and then walk through to see if it actually works, but I did exactly that. So there were some problems in the map, but they weren't in the maps primary goal. The primary goal of this map seems to be story conveyence through scenery, and that went off flawlessly.
7/10
Form:
It's beautiful. It changes to represent the story events. The sound files worked really nicely. From clicking play on the trailer through to the credit sequence, this is the closest I've seen a minecraft map come to movie aesthetics. The product was finished, polished, and pleasant to be inside of.
10/10
Flavor:
This map is really all flavor. Everything built into it aims straight at telling the story, the player is given the right motivation at all times, and the story even has a twist I didn't predict halfway through the map, while at the same time not pulling the twist entirely out of nowhere (not to say it was shocking, but it wasn't super predictable and that is great.) The feel is very serious, and it sticks to that nicely (meaning it doesn't break it's tone to make poop jokes). The map just creates a very immersive atmosphere.
10/10
Uniqueness:
As I said, this is as close to movie aesthetics as I've ever seen in minecraft. It doesn't just drop some tnt and say "there, I made the scenery change." It really carries you through the story progression, and it does this without the player really noticing. This map is on the current frontier of player guiding and manipulation. With methods like this uses, along with the timing technology of my last review (Fall of Kingdoms) or the location changing technology of my own map (Deja Vu), it's only a matter of time before a map comes out that makes the player second guess that it's even minecraft. This does largely build off of mechanics introduced by other minecrafters, but it's mostly the freshest mechanics in the mapmaking world used in the most professional package around.
Overall Score: 27 and
Would I recommend it?
- Yes, and yes. Narration through minecraft at its finest.
Thanks for the rather unconstructive criticism. IF you had read the topic title "Must read before posting" you would see that escape maps are to be labeled [Puz] or [Adv].
I thought that was extremely constructive: you can give more hint on the first room, block off the outside map in the room you are allowed to dig, ease up on the lava jumping, and either move the spawn inside the map or build the map out to the spawn point, and all those would be improvements.
As far as me doing reviews and you not requesting one, I wasn't giving your map a review, I had just randomly chose to play it from the maps forum and figured you could use some feedback since you had some map issues and no replies...
And it's not an escape map if it is just a series of challenges with no story that you don't escape from at the end... An escape map is when you are being held inside and trying to break free.
0
It was both of us! (Don't you LOVE the ambiguity?)
The map does end, but it's not just finding all the rooms and levers (the levers are actually a big side mission we don't tell you about until the end), it's what you do in the rooms that makes the difference! Like you need to help your friends escape the prison while avoiding the guards (pressure plates) or you need to call the cops on the thief in the factory. If you never do everything right in one run, you do get caught in an eternal loop of the same few places.
0
... I just like playing maps and the rest flows naturally from my arrogance and general self-importance. Lol.
Actually, I think my favorite thing about reviewing is that it gives the extra incentive to finish a map. Before I started giving feedback regularly (which I admittedly started doing just to plaster the "Top Ramen" banner through the forums) I had a bad habit of quitting custom maps halfway through. I can't do that if I intend to give feedback or advice. I find playing maps to be a significantly more positive experience for me when I finish the experiences...
I can say outright that my least favorite thing about giving feedback is that I think I have some adventure map Midas touch-type curse. (I preface this by clarifying I am not taking any credit for the successes of others; I am only jealous of the attention they've gotten.) I commented in the thread for Emperor of Minopia and a few weeks later Sparklez was playing it. The guy who made The Tourist started chatting with us, I go comment in that thread, and a week or so later he's got the Yogscast playing that. Then a week or so ago I comment in the thread for The Island of Dr. Gireaux, and that gets the Minecraftforums community spotlight. All while poor little Deja Vu sits in the corner with most of its downloads from France. Everything I touch turns to gold at my own detriment! How did I bring this curse upon myself!? :tongue.gif:
(To clarify, I commented in those threads as "dasbuttocks" as that is the profile my friend and I made to post our maps. tstorm823 is the profile I have because I don't speak for him in everything I do, including map reviews.)
0
Haha. How lame. A review-writing machine? We don't need machines for that, reviewing is the fun job. Debugging a map is what I want a machine for.
0
And real life? Please tell me there's real life in their somewhere! :tongue.gif:
0
Well, the top two on the list I've played and just need to write it up. And I'll probably hit two more tomorrow. Suddenly you're right near the top of the list!
0
Honestly, we were hoping more for ideas for individual segments or bonus content, and what we've gotten is a very complete idea for an entirely different map. The way Deja Vu 2 is going so far, it's mostly just going to be what Deja Vu should have been in the first place. Subconcious dream-sequence murder solving isn't in the cards for this map, but that's not to say we don't like the idea. Consider that in line in our project list (if we maintain the drive to build maps the way we have been). But if someone does wanna take that map idea and go with it themselves, obviously they wouldn't need our permission to do it, but since we're the ones who know how to make it work we'd gladly be advisors for it.
0
You're not supposed to bump here. There are dozens of threads floating in daily, and each of them took many hours to create (excepting the "anyone wanna make my map for me" and "what map will get me youtube famous" threads).
This map is 2 months old and has 7500 downloads, it's clearly had its turn. You can let it go now, 34 shameless bumps is enough. Don't add to it unless you have something new to say.
0
Oooooo achievements seems like fun.
Adding to queue.
0
Yeah, it's possible that did break the map. Depending on what got hit either a ) it didn't hurt anything but some glowstone pistons, b ) it broke the triggers for the jungle so that you can't get to the burning house from there. Since you went to hell, it should still work enough to let you win, but not through the jungle, you'd need to take the other route. The best solution is sadly probably just redownload the map.
And I don't normally recommend mods since I hate installing them myself, but the one above is definitely helpful.
0
Well, unless you went straight there from the office, thats not really premature. You can get there from most places. And unless it specifically hit one of life change triggers, it should be ok to keep playing. The rest of the redstone is formatted to not break the map even if blown up. Where specifically was the creeper?
0
... so you're saying only the one's that were popular on youtube?
Or is the fact that half your posts on the forums are directly related to Deep Space Turtle Chase indicative of what your hoping to get from this thread? [/ me being a jerk]
This is some shameless self-promotion, but I can tell you that while people are here saying something like The Tourist is the best map ever (not saying that I disagree), the maker of the Tourist is over in our thread saying that Deja Vu: The Reincarnation of Steve is "the best experience in Minecraft."
He's not the only one saying that. We have a list of people including notable mapmakers saying things like "If god created a map, this would be it!" And we haven't even gotten our shot at outrageous popularity yet. Go check it out.
0
Whatever you wanna do is fine by me. I know my things are a bit hefty, so expecting anyone not involved with the map to read the whole things seems like a high expectation. But of course yeah, I'd be grateful for a link.
Also, as far as me losing the bucket, I'm a doofus and punched a pigman amid the chaos... the death was totally my fault, just having to cheat for that one thing felt bad. And there is plenty of iron through the map, I just happened to efficiently loot it all as I went.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Map Review: Woolington
by: TheMapReview
Thread:http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/998574-
Yo, dawg. I heard you like map reviews, so I took a map and made a review for that guy TheMapReview.
Woolington is a puzzle map, straight forward. It gives you puzzles, you do them, no fuss about it. At one point, it pretends to become a "puzzlemaster trying to kill you" map and then promptly laughs off that idea. It segments itself into color coded puzzle sections, one after another, and promises to add more colors of wool as the creator comes up with more sections.
Function:
All the puzzles function properly. For bugs, the third hole of the slime bowling is glitchable if you happen to trigger the up piston while the side pistons are retracted. There are a few signs with typing errors, though the only one I can think of is the very end where it says something like "for because of people like you." For general construction problems, the long hallways between puzzles shouldn't be there. Having checked outside, you often have plenty of space to work between rooms, and running long, cramped pathways between places is poor mapmaking as an extra annoyance for the player. If the map takes an hour, probably 3 minutes is walking between puzzles.. And the lag reducing switches were a necessary inclusion, and you get credit for them. The puzzles were not inspiringly fun, but they were all acceptable.
6/10
Form:
Solid, monochromatic wool decoration isn't attractive. Solid of any block isn't attractive really. But that was the stylization of the map, and that is certainly the prerogative here. Making it pretty would kill the theme. Not much is done in the way of aesthetics, and at least for right now, the map isn't all that big.
5/10
Flavor:
I did enjoy the acknowledgement of the "tester cutting off the subject" cliche. That was nicely done. The theme was "test these solid wool rooms" and the player does, just with the motive of completing them for the sake of it. There's not much to make it really immersive, but it sets itself up with a simple premise and sticks to it nicely.
6/10
Uniqueness:
It's a puzzle map, but this time the hook is that it goes through different colors of wool. I wouldn't say it's a unique gaming experience.
Overall Score: 17/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- We shall see how the updates turn out.
0
by daDonn (aka Aramanon)
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/985662-
Lord of Bloodycross is a story-based adventure map where the player takes the role of a protagonist without many memories going through a fortress with a town attached. If that sounds cliche, it's because the rest is too heavy with spoilers for even me to shamelessly ruin. The map has features such as "voice acting/ narration," "dynamic locations," "multiple endings," and "awesomely epic builds." I quote these things because the creator said them himself, not because they aren't accurate. They really are accurate. It comes with sound files to listen to as you play, which is the best use of sound in an adventure map that I've seen since you can just put the playlist in whichever music player you use and use the function keys to pause and play without tabbing out of minecraft. The map admits completely that inspiration was drawn from Eronev Mansion Adventure, but instead of having the branching landscape replicas at one point near the very end, the map runs through (unless I'm missing one) 4 different complete replicas of the map area with different levels of destruction, and with little exception, does so with amazing smoothness. The map pulls some rabbits out of its hat, and players who aren't really looking for it are going to go through at least one of the tricks without any chance of noticing the flip.
Function:
All that flipping and player guiding goes off with complete smoothness. As far as functional scenery, this map is close to as good as it gets; it shows off the mixture of power and subtlety good scenery rearrangement can have. Moreover, in the few hours of gameplay this map takes, I didn't find any outright bugs in the mechanics of the map. The map was not very dense with puzzles or challenges; there's nothing wrong with that as the narrative through minecraft was still well worth the experience. The real issue is that the rooms with challenges were the low points of the map. The extra unlock lever to get underneath the chapel was unnecessary and unintuitive. When the entrance was already a hidden secret, having the lever to open it further is redundant and feels like it isn't worth the play time to have. The minecart starting room is miserable when you get to it. It locks you in a room until you guess the approriate combination of buttons and pressure plates with just the vaguest hint, and it doesn't help that the right answer seems to do nothing and the wrong answer seems to do something. Much later, when the minecart tracks give out from under you, that room has issues. First, if you fall into lava, you're dead. Second, getting through that amount of zombies and pigmen is very difficult, especially through corridors that are one wide and you have to push the pigmen out of the way. Third, one of the jumps in there is so close to impossible that it takes a few extra minutes just to get past it. And all this is going on while you are trying not to lose the bucket you need to complete the next task. (I lost that bucket). Making the player hold onto a specific item and then sending them through lava and pigmen puts one unfortunate lagspike between smooth gameplay and obligatory cheating. And I'd bet you didn't imagine someone would be dumb enough to lock the front gate at the start and then walk through to see if it actually works, but I did exactly that. So there were some problems in the map, but they weren't in the maps primary goal. The primary goal of this map seems to be story conveyence through scenery, and that went off flawlessly.
7/10
Form:
It's beautiful. It changes to represent the story events. The sound files worked really nicely. From clicking play on the trailer through to the credit sequence, this is the closest I've seen a minecraft map come to movie aesthetics. The product was finished, polished, and pleasant to be inside of.
10/10
Flavor:
This map is really all flavor. Everything built into it aims straight at telling the story, the player is given the right motivation at all times, and the story even has a twist I didn't predict halfway through the map, while at the same time not pulling the twist entirely out of nowhere (not to say it was shocking, but it wasn't super predictable and that is great.) The feel is very serious, and it sticks to that nicely (meaning it doesn't break it's tone to make poop jokes). The map just creates a very immersive atmosphere.
10/10
Uniqueness:
As I said, this is as close to movie aesthetics as I've ever seen in minecraft. It doesn't just drop some tnt and say "there, I made the scenery change." It really carries you through the story progression, and it does this without the player really noticing. This map is on the current frontier of player guiding and manipulation. With methods like this uses, along with the timing technology of my last review (Fall of Kingdoms) or the location changing technology of my own map (Deja Vu), it's only a matter of time before a map comes out that makes the player second guess that it's even minecraft. This does largely build off of mechanics introduced by other minecrafters, but it's mostly the freshest mechanics in the mapmaking world used in the most professional package around.
Overall Score: 27 and
Would I recommend it?
- Yes, and yes. Narration through minecraft at its finest.
0
by daDonn (aka Aramanon)
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/985662-
Lord of Bloodycross is a story-based adventure map where the player takes the role of a protagonist without many memories going through a fortress with a town attached. If that sounds cliche, it's because the rest is too heavy with spoilers for even me to shamelessly ruin. The map has features such as "voice acting/ narration," "dynamic locations," "multiple endings," and "awesomely epic builds." I quote these things because the creator said them himself, not because they aren't accurate. They really are accurate. It comes with sound files to listen to as you play, which is the best use of sound in an adventure map that I've seen since you can just put the playlist in whichever music player you use and use the function keys to pause and play without tabbing out of minecraft. The map admits completely that inspiration was drawn from Eronev Mansion Adventure, but instead of having the branching landscape replicas at one point near the very end, the map runs through (unless I'm missing one) 4 different complete replicas of the map area with different levels of destruction, and with little exception, does so with amazing smoothness. The map pulls some rabbits out of its hat, and players who aren't really looking for it are going to go through at least one of the tricks without any chance of noticing the flip.
Function:
All that flipping and player guiding goes off with complete smoothness. As far as functional scenery, this map is close to as good as it gets; it shows off the mixture of power and subtlety good scenery rearrangement can have. Moreover, in the few hours of gameplay this map takes, I didn't find any outright bugs in the mechanics of the map. The map was not very dense with puzzles or challenges; there's nothing wrong with that as the narrative through minecraft was still well worth the experience. The real issue is that the rooms with challenges were the low points of the map. The extra unlock lever to get underneath the chapel was unnecessary and unintuitive. When the entrance was already a hidden secret, having the lever to open it further is redundant and feels like it isn't worth the play time to have. The minecart starting room is miserable when you get to it. It locks you in a room until you guess the approriate combination of buttons and pressure plates with just the vaguest hint, and it doesn't help that the right answer seems to do nothing and the wrong answer seems to do something. Much later, when the minecart tracks give out from under you, that room has issues. First, if you fall into lava, you're dead. Second, getting through that amount of zombies and pigmen is very difficult, especially through corridors that are one wide and you have to push the pigmen out of the way. Third, one of the jumps in there is so close to impossible that it takes a few extra minutes just to get past it. And all this is going on while you are trying not to lose the bucket you need to complete the next task. (I lost that bucket). Making the player hold onto a specific item and then sending them through lava and pigmen puts one unfortunate lagspike between smooth gameplay and obligatory cheating. And I'd bet you didn't imagine someone would be dumb enough to lock the front gate at the start and then walk through to see if it actually works, but I did exactly that. So there were some problems in the map, but they weren't in the maps primary goal. The primary goal of this map seems to be story conveyence through scenery, and that went off flawlessly.
7/10
Form:
It's beautiful. It changes to represent the story events. The sound files worked really nicely. From clicking play on the trailer through to the credit sequence, this is the closest I've seen a minecraft map come to movie aesthetics. The product was finished, polished, and pleasant to be inside of.
10/10
Flavor:
This map is really all flavor. Everything built into it aims straight at telling the story, the player is given the right motivation at all times, and the story even has a twist I didn't predict halfway through the map, while at the same time not pulling the twist entirely out of nowhere (not to say it was shocking, but it wasn't super predictable and that is great.) The feel is very serious, and it sticks to that nicely (meaning it doesn't break it's tone to make poop jokes). The map just creates a very immersive atmosphere.
10/10
Uniqueness:
As I said, this is as close to movie aesthetics as I've ever seen in minecraft. It doesn't just drop some tnt and say "there, I made the scenery change." It really carries you through the story progression, and it does this without the player really noticing. This map is on the current frontier of player guiding and manipulation. With methods like this uses, along with the timing technology of my last review (Fall of Kingdoms) or the location changing technology of my own map (Deja Vu), it's only a matter of time before a map comes out that makes the player second guess that it's even minecraft. This does largely build off of mechanics introduced by other minecrafters, but it's mostly the freshest mechanics in the mapmaking world used in the most professional package around.
Overall Score: 27 and
Would I recommend it?
- Yes, and yes. Narration through minecraft at its finest.
0
I thought that was extremely constructive: you can give more hint on the first room, block off the outside map in the room you are allowed to dig, ease up on the lava jumping, and either move the spawn inside the map or build the map out to the spawn point, and all those would be improvements.
As far as me doing reviews and you not requesting one, I wasn't giving your map a review, I had just randomly chose to play it from the maps forum and figured you could use some feedback since you had some map issues and no replies...
And it's not an escape map if it is just a series of challenges with no story that you don't escape from at the end... An escape map is when you are being held inside and trying to break free.