I have not done a review in a while, but expect my next one to be in a couple days.
Letter Scores: Grades can be F, E, D, C, B, A, and S in order from worst to best. + and - modifiers indicate slightly better or slightly worse. An A is essentially a 5/5 while an F is similar to a 0/5, but the letter grades are purposefully meant to be ambiguous. I am aware that Europeans may be unfamiliar with letter-based grade systems, and I apologize for any confusion this may cause.
Replayability: Score ranges from 0 to 5 with + and - modifiers. It follows a logarithmic scale; the difference between 4 and 3 is much more than the difference between 2 and 1.
Review:
Bounty Hunters is a map well-known in Europe as the premiere arena game, complete with a variety of maps and modes with some classic chaotic gameplay features. One of the main selling points of the map is the total reliance on technical skills with the game’s five abilities in order to succeed. It’s also visibly polished to a shine, including a nice-looking loading screen with useful info.
Four different keyboard layouts that can be switched in-game at the press of a button. Nice.
Some of the icons are rather vague, like the temporal rift and repulse icons; the shield and blink icons might also be misinterpreted. This isn’t much of an issue in-game, but it makes the loading screen seem lacking somehow. Since there are only five abilities, it would be prudent to give short descriptions of each of the abilities in the loading screen, so that new players know what to do when the game starts, rather than trial-casting all of the spells once or twice when the game starts. In this game, new players can regardless beat veterans, though, so it ultimately does not cause any problems.
Once the game gets started, it’s clear that Tenshi gave the game the good old spit-shine before pushing it out to the public. Bugs are few and far between and often unnoticeable, the terrain is usually pretty interesting, and all of the other miscellaneous little details come together to make an impressive whole. It does seem somewhat cluttered, though, as text is flying everywhere, not to mention the effects being thrown around and the chaotic gameplay itself.
Don’t get me wrong; the popular-culture text quips that units spew lighten the mood and are a cool part of the map, but in a large game, there is a lot going on. Listing it off, I see text spewing from the players who die every few seconds, error messages and game status messages on the left, chat messages AND kill messages (and killstreaks) in the center, random units names, and I hear the constant announcer messages and one-liners by Jim Raynor while this is all going on. Add to that the very fast-paced gameplay where two shots equal a kill in most cases. It can sometimes be overwhelming.
Overlapping dialogs, even on my large widescreen monitor. I can only conclude that Bounty Hunters was tested in an IMAX theatre.
The strong southern hunter vibe, given off by Raynor’s accent, the music, some of the death quips, and those random unit names, is almost palpable. The environments are also generally pretty atmospheric, though some levels are better than others. Overall, the presentation of Bounty Hunters is quite excellent. There are some issues though, such as the fact that the players give off light sources, which hurts the framerate for no real reason, but that’s not too much of a problem in most cases. The real problem, besides the others I have mentioned earlier, is the water.
Something is just wrong with the water. It doesn’t even resemble water; it’s like a wobbly sheet of plastic stretched over the “watered” area with some foam floating off of the edges. You have GOT to fix those settings. It’s especially bad in the vaguely swastika-shaped level, where the otherwise fairly cool-looking terrain is ruined by a pool of opaque, quivering shit.
We are running around on the distorted shadow of a headcrab. On a doily-style swastika.
Seriously, what the fuck is this? It’s like quantum glass. Give the water some texture distortion or something and get rid of the model distortion. The current iteration of the water looks awful. Seriously. It really stood out to me.
Ignoring the blinding ugliness of the unidentified liquid present in some of the arenas, Bounty Hunters does have some great level variety. There are nineteen different arenas, each with its own theme, many of which have gimmicks and traps, just like any real shooter since Unreal Tournament. A proper map-vote system is in place with the usual presentation quality of the rest of the map. However, I have noticed that it was slightly buggy. During one of my tests, we had a group of three people. Two people voted for map A, and one voted for map B. Somehow, map B was chosen. I’ll never know why.
I must reiterate just how nice it is to have so many levels; it really helps the variety of the game. It’s content in its purest form; each level plays differently, has new gimmicks, and results in a different experience. You’ve done a great job in that department. In fact, the great level variety is one of the only reasons why the content score is not a C or lower.
There are five polished abilities for use by the player. Each player has those five abilities and only those five abilities. In Sudden Death mode, the player has only three. Only one of those abilities does damage; the rest are utilities: knockback, shield, teleport, and time field. It’s a decent enough setup with a good amount of versatility. After all, those abilities are balanced very well and each has many uses in the course of heavy combat. The time field, shield, and knockback spells are even charged and can only be used a few times in a single life, giving new players an advantage in that they will probably not live long enough to run out of those charges, while pros will last long enough to run clean out of goodies, giving the newbies an easier time to kill them. Even the damage-dealing ability is a piercing round that deals damage in a line, giving it a range of strategies in a large game with many people (getting a double-kill in one shot is always fun). For the first few playthroughs, it won’t occur to the players that the game is lacking depth, which really says something about how well those five preset abilities are made.
In a few seconds, one of those players is going to be dead. I’m not fast enough with the screenshot to capture the combat (the shot stays on screen for just a split-second), so you’ll have to take my word for it. Or, you can play the map.
The game gets fairly chaotic, since each of the abilities is fine-tuned for a close-in arena setting. Position control is pretty important since dodging bullets is nigh impossible and a whole bunch of strategies is possible with the abilities given. It works really well, for the most part. However, Bounty Hunters stops there. Once you master those five abilities, there’s not much else to do (other than kicking ass and chewing bubblegum). This map really needs some more ability variety. Why does this game have only one weapon? I can think of dozens of different weapons that would fit the map and could be adapted to fit the gameplay, assuming that the levels were fine-tuned to account for the new weapons. A lot of potential depth is simply lost in space because the abilities the player starts with are the only abilities that player will ever see under any play-through of Bounty Hunters. It even diminishes the gameplay, to some extent, because the entire flow of the gameplay now revolves around a single ability. For something so incredibly important to the map, I would normally expect the only weapon in the game to be super-special-awesome, but instead we have the mere pretty-cool-thingy Penetrator Round which doesn’t even bounce from walls or make waffles for breakfast.
“But DarkRevenant,” you might say. “You compared Bounty Hunters to Unreal Tournament! UT had the popular Instagib mode, which spawned everyone with one weapon: a shock rifle that kills you in one hit! How is that unlike Bounty Hunters?” First of all, Bounty Hunters does have more variety than Instagib Arena because you can actually use some utility abilities. However, Instagib Arena was a supplemental mode for a game featuring a dozen different weapons. It was not the game itself. Bounty Hunters does have the Sudden Death mode, which is much like Instagib with its one-hit-kill policy (unless you time the shield well enough) and the reduced equipment. However, the normal modes should have greater weapon variety any kind of weapon variety at all, if the map is to be expected to survive for any extended period of time.
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed Bounty Hunters more than any of the maps I have reviewed so far. It came awfully close to being Gold, but the lack of different abilities put me off quite a lot, to say the least. I’m hoping that there will be positive changes in the future.
RATING:
Silver: This map is not perfect, but is entertaining and of good quality.
Hey !
Thx for that long review you made.
And yes, the map is not "finished" yet, as you can often see updates on SC2mapster.
But it seems you don't have the latest version (leaderboard text seems too big, or maybe i'm wrong), on wide screens, dialogs are not overlapping (I've got a 24" widescreen on 1920x1080). But I agree on smaller resolution this issue still exist and I have to do something. (edit: fixed on EU, still not uploaded on SC2mapster)
Quote:
However, I have noticed that it was slightly buggy. During one of my tests, we had a group of three people. Two people voted for map A, and one voted for map B. Somehow, map B was chosen. I’ll never know why.
In fact, it's because you vote for a map on a certain mode. Not for a map AND a mode.
Your 2 friends voted for map A but with different game modes.
For example, you want to play a Safari on Greed and your pal wanna play Paranoia on Sudden Death, vote system shouldn't gives you Paranoia on Greed or Safari on Sudden Death.
Some people agree some modes are really difficult to play and less entertaining depending on the map (like Paranoia on Greed), so it would be a nonsense if the result of the vote is something none vote for. ;)
Quote:
Why does this game have only one weapon? I can think of dozens of different weapons that would fit the map and could be adapted to fit the gameplay
Because I don't know how to make projectile weapons (I mean like in FPS maps or things like that) and I'm not handy at all with actors/graphical effects. So ideas is not the problem at all, I've still got tons of them :(
However, I planned to learn how to do that and include it on BH Battlefield since I added some items in the map (life, energy and I hope someday other weapons/buffs).
For example, If I knew how to make bullets bounce on walls with Penetrator Round, it would be done for weeks =)
I don't want to add content on Bounty Hunters (just a last map and skins if I finally succeed to manage errors on animations with penetrator round, and maybe CTF) because it's really simple, balanced and quickly handled. Players here seems not bothered by that at all, they just love the required anticipation and reflexes to kill without be killed.
I like the idea of "everyone are equals, do your best with what you have". I made Battlefield edition to change that and make it looks like more a "UT" game. I even plan to add some "Bounty Hunters classes" in there with different skills and base weapon. I just need to learn how to do lot of things I need, I'm quite a noob with Galaxy Editor.
But yeah, I really lack of skills in using the Editor. I started to use it making this map.
Have you tried the game with 6 people on large map or in TDM 3on3 ?
PS: I even not deserve bonuses for unlimited remake, custom "vote" music and remastered Blizzard announcer voice ? :P
I'll try to do something with water/blood river, but I'm not sure how to make it looks better.
Edit: And it's not that "well-known" in Europe, most of people here never heard about BH :D
Edit 2: "Texture roughness" seems to do better results on water, but that's not still the best, especially on CrissCross. Maybe I could replace the blood river by something else.
Edit 3: Btw, for spell descriptions, you have the "How to play?" tip at the beginning of the map, you can see how they works during vote time.
@Sntenshi: Go
I understand why you did what you did. The score remains for Bounty Hunters, but the score for a larger, more involved map might be higher. It's a shame that you can't figure out a way to get bouncing projectiles. It isn't easy, though; I have a full-fledged physics system for my upcoming project. Terrain bouncing, though, was among the easier things I did, but I've got physics experience. Still, just using the data editor, there are some cool things you can do with the weapon abilities. You've got to extend your knowledge a bit to meet your game's demands.
Also, the map voting thing was a minor enough issue that it doesn't really affect the grading. I figured that there must be some reason for it, but I couldn't tell when I played the map.
Have you tried the game with 6 people on large map or in TDM 3on3 ?
I had a lot of trouble getting larger groups. It's not popular on the NA servers, and I can't get many friends online on the weekends when I have a chance to play SC2. However, I know the style of gameplay very well and have seen videos of the map played with full teams.
PS: I even not deserve bonuses for unlimited remake, custom "vote" music and remastered Blizzard announcer voice ? :P
Voting was already a bonus, unlimited remake is neither here nor there (actually, it's expected because of how fast each round is, in that I would dock points if you did not include it), and the announcer voice added into the polish and flavor, but wasn't immediately noticeable (I didn't actually realize it was customized, sorry!). Knowing the announcer voice is custom isn't enough to change the score, though.
@DarkRevenantX: Go
"I had a lot of trouble getting larger groups. It's not popular on the NA servers"
Don't worry, it's same here. I've got a lot of BH players in my friendlist, otherwise it's almost impossible to find ONE player.
I had to up the map manually on popularity page 3 or 4 to find new players x) But it's boring to create a game every 10 minutes 60 times in a day...
I added one new bounty hunter to BH (normal edition), it's true it add some diversity and I was glad to see even good players have some problems fighting again one bh they don't know. It increase game lifetime.
I planned to make that on BH Battlefield, but Battlefield don't have 19 maps and will never have that amount.
I've got some bh on paper and I'm workin' on it to add them, but projectiles collision gives me some troubles. ><
Well, if you wanna check the new version, it's updated. But there are only 2 bh, 'til better than one.
Meet me on the irc; just stay online until I come on, then I'll poke you. I should show you my physics engine to see an example of what to do for projectile collision and the like.
I have not done a review in a while, but expect my next one to be in a couple days.
Letter Scores: Grades can be F, E, D, C, B, A, and S in order from worst to best. + and - modifiers indicate slightly better or slightly worse. An A is essentially a 5/5 while an F is similar to a 0/5, but the letter grades are purposefully meant to be ambiguous. I am aware that Europeans may be unfamiliar with letter-based grade systems, and I apologize for any confusion this may cause.
Replayability: Score ranges from 0 to 5 with + and - modifiers. It follows a logarithmic scale; the difference between 4 and 3 is much more than the difference between 2 and 1.
Bounty Hunters by Tenshi
Fun (Enjoyability, Thrill) - (A-)
Gameplay (Balance, Dynamics) - (B)
Content (Completeness, Assets) - (B-)
Polish (Bugginess, Presentation) - (A)
Flavor (Style, Charm) - (B+)
Replayability - [3-]
Failures
Only One Attack - [- -]
Ugly Water - [-]
Bonuses
Level Design/Variety - [+ +]
Level/Mode Vote - [+]
Review:
Bounty Hunters is a map well-known in Europe as the premiere arena game, complete with a variety of maps and modes with some classic chaotic gameplay features. One of the main selling points of the map is the total reliance on technical skills with the game’s five abilities in order to succeed. It’s also visibly polished to a shine, including a nice-looking loading screen with useful info.
Four different keyboard layouts that can be switched in-game at the press of a button. Nice.
Some of the icons are rather vague, like the temporal rift and repulse icons; the shield and blink icons might also be misinterpreted. This isn’t much of an issue in-game, but it makes the loading screen seem lacking somehow. Since there are only five abilities, it would be prudent to give short descriptions of each of the abilities in the loading screen, so that new players know what to do when the game starts, rather than trial-casting all of the spells once or twice when the game starts. In this game, new players can regardless beat veterans, though, so it ultimately does not cause any problems.
Once the game gets started, it’s clear that Tenshi gave the game the good old spit-shine before pushing it out to the public. Bugs are few and far between and often unnoticeable, the terrain is usually pretty interesting, and all of the other miscellaneous little details come together to make an impressive whole. It does seem somewhat cluttered, though, as text is flying everywhere, not to mention the effects being thrown around and the chaotic gameplay itself.
Don’t get me wrong; the popular-culture text quips that units spew lighten the mood and are a cool part of the map, but in a large game, there is a lot going on. Listing it off, I see text spewing from the players who die every few seconds, error messages and game status messages on the left, chat messages AND kill messages (and killstreaks) in the center, random units names, and I hear the constant announcer messages and one-liners by Jim Raynor while this is all going on. Add to that the very fast-paced gameplay where two shots equal a kill in most cases. It can sometimes be overwhelming.
Overlapping dialogs, even on my large widescreen monitor. I can only conclude that Bounty Hunters was tested in an IMAX theatre.
The strong southern hunter vibe, given off by Raynor’s accent, the music, some of the death quips, and those random unit names, is almost palpable. The environments are also generally pretty atmospheric, though some levels are better than others. Overall, the presentation of Bounty Hunters is quite excellent. There are some issues though, such as the fact that the players give off light sources, which hurts the framerate for no real reason, but that’s not too much of a problem in most cases. The real problem, besides the others I have mentioned earlier, is the water.
Something is just wrong with the water. It doesn’t even resemble water; it’s like a wobbly sheet of plastic stretched over the “watered” area with some foam floating off of the edges. You have GOT to fix those settings. It’s especially bad in the vaguely swastika-shaped level, where the otherwise fairly cool-looking terrain is ruined by a pool of opaque, quivering shit.
We are running around on the distorted shadow of a headcrab. On a doily-style swastika.
Seriously, what the fuck is this? It’s like quantum glass. Give the water some texture distortion or something and get rid of the model distortion. The current iteration of the water looks awful. Seriously. It really stood out to me.
Ignoring the blinding ugliness of the unidentified liquid present in some of the arenas, Bounty Hunters does have some great level variety. There are nineteen different arenas, each with its own theme, many of which have gimmicks and traps, just like any real shooter since Unreal Tournament. A proper map-vote system is in place with the usual presentation quality of the rest of the map. However, I have noticed that it was slightly buggy. During one of my tests, we had a group of three people. Two people voted for map A, and one voted for map B. Somehow, map B was chosen. I’ll never know why.
I must reiterate just how nice it is to have so many levels; it really helps the variety of the game. It’s content in its purest form; each level plays differently, has new gimmicks, and results in a different experience. You’ve done a great job in that department. In fact, the great level variety is one of the only reasons why the content score is not a C or lower.
There are five polished abilities for use by the player. Each player has those five abilities and only those five abilities. In Sudden Death mode, the player has only three. Only one of those abilities does damage; the rest are utilities: knockback, shield, teleport, and time field. It’s a decent enough setup with a good amount of versatility. After all, those abilities are balanced very well and each has many uses in the course of heavy combat. The time field, shield, and knockback spells are even charged and can only be used a few times in a single life, giving new players an advantage in that they will probably not live long enough to run out of those charges, while pros will last long enough to run clean out of goodies, giving the newbies an easier time to kill them. Even the damage-dealing ability is a piercing round that deals damage in a line, giving it a range of strategies in a large game with many people (getting a double-kill in one shot is always fun). For the first few playthroughs, it won’t occur to the players that the game is lacking depth, which really says something about how well those five preset abilities are made.
In a few seconds, one of those players is going to be dead. I’m not fast enough with the screenshot to capture the combat (the shot stays on screen for just a split-second), so you’ll have to take my word for it. Or, you can play the map.
The game gets fairly chaotic, since each of the abilities is fine-tuned for a close-in arena setting. Position control is pretty important since dodging bullets is nigh impossible and a whole bunch of strategies is possible with the abilities given. It works really well, for the most part. However, Bounty Hunters stops there. Once you master those five abilities, there’s not much else to do (other than kicking ass and chewing bubblegum). This map really needs some more ability variety. Why does this game have only one weapon? I can think of dozens of different weapons that would fit the map and could be adapted to fit the gameplay, assuming that the levels were fine-tuned to account for the new weapons. A lot of potential depth is simply lost in space because the abilities the player starts with are the only abilities that player will ever see under any play-through of Bounty Hunters. It even diminishes the gameplay, to some extent, because the entire flow of the gameplay now revolves around a single ability. For something so incredibly important to the map, I would normally expect the only weapon in the game to be super-special-awesome, but instead we have the mere pretty-cool-thingy Penetrator Round which doesn’t even bounce from walls or make waffles for breakfast.
“But DarkRevenant,” you might say. “You compared Bounty Hunters to Unreal Tournament! UT had the popular Instagib mode, which spawned everyone with one weapon: a shock rifle that kills you in one hit! How is that unlike Bounty Hunters?” First of all, Bounty Hunters does have more variety than Instagib Arena because you can actually use some utility abilities. However, Instagib Arena was a supplemental mode for a game featuring a dozen different weapons. It was not the game itself. Bounty Hunters does have the Sudden Death mode, which is much like Instagib with its one-hit-kill policy (unless you time the shield well enough) and the reduced equipment. However, the normal modes should have
greater weapon varietyany kind of weapon variety at all, if the map is to be expected to survive for any extended period of time.Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed Bounty Hunters more than any of the maps I have reviewed so far. It came awfully close to being Gold, but the lack of different abilities put me off quite a lot, to say the least. I’m hoping that there will be positive changes in the future.
RATING:
Silver: This map is not perfect, but is entertaining and of good quality.
Hey !
Thx for that long review you made.
And yes, the map is not "finished" yet, as you can often see updates on SC2mapster.
But it seems you don't have the latest version (leaderboard text seems too big, or maybe i'm wrong), on wide screens, dialogs are not overlapping (I've got a 24" widescreen on 1920x1080). But I agree on smaller resolution this issue still exist and I have to do something. (edit: fixed on EU, still not uploaded on SC2mapster)
In fact, it's because you vote for a map on a certain mode. Not for a map AND a mode.
Your 2 friends voted for map A but with different game modes.
For example, you want to play a Safari on Greed and your pal wanna play Paranoia on Sudden Death, vote system shouldn't gives you Paranoia on Greed or Safari on Sudden Death.
Some people agree some modes are really difficult to play and less entertaining depending on the map (like Paranoia on Greed), so it would be a nonsense if the result of the vote is something none vote for. ;)
Because I don't know how to make projectile weapons (I mean like in FPS maps or things like that) and I'm not handy at all with actors/graphical effects. So ideas is not the problem at all, I've still got tons of them :(
However, I planned to learn how to do that and include it on BH Battlefield since I added some items in the map (life, energy and I hope someday other weapons/buffs).
For example, If I knew how to make bullets bounce on walls with Penetrator Round, it would be done for weeks =)
I don't want to add content on Bounty Hunters (just a last map and skins if I finally succeed to manage errors on animations with penetrator round, and maybe CTF) because it's really simple, balanced and quickly handled. Players here seems not bothered by that at all, they just love the required anticipation and reflexes to kill without be killed.
I like the idea of "everyone are equals, do your best with what you have". I made Battlefield edition to change that and make it looks like more a "UT" game. I even plan to add some "Bounty Hunters classes" in there with different skills and base weapon. I just need to learn how to do lot of things I need, I'm quite a noob with Galaxy Editor.
But yeah, I really lack of skills in using the Editor. I started to use it making this map.
Have you tried the game with 6 people on large map or in TDM 3on3 ?
PS: I even not deserve bonuses for unlimited remake, custom "vote" music and remastered Blizzard announcer voice ? :P
I'll try to do something with water/blood river, but I'm not sure how to make it looks better.
Edit: And it's not that "well-known" in Europe, most of people here never heard about BH :D
Edit 2: "Texture roughness" seems to do better results on water, but that's not still the best, especially on CrissCross. Maybe I could replace the blood river by something else.
Edit 3: Btw, for spell descriptions, you have the "How to play?" tip at the beginning of the map, you can see how they works during vote time.
@Sntenshi: Go I understand why you did what you did. The score remains for Bounty Hunters, but the score for a larger, more involved map might be higher. It's a shame that you can't figure out a way to get bouncing projectiles. It isn't easy, though; I have a full-fledged physics system for my upcoming project. Terrain bouncing, though, was among the easier things I did, but I've got physics experience. Still, just using the data editor, there are some cool things you can do with the weapon abilities. You've got to extend your knowledge a bit to meet your game's demands.
Also, the map voting thing was a minor enough issue that it doesn't really affect the grading. I figured that there must be some reason for it, but I couldn't tell when I played the map.
I had a lot of trouble getting larger groups. It's not popular on the NA servers, and I can't get many friends online on the weekends when I have a chance to play SC2. However, I know the style of gameplay very well and have seen videos of the map played with full teams.
Voting was already a bonus, unlimited remake is neither here nor there (actually, it's expected because of how fast each round is, in that I would dock points if you did not include it), and the announcer voice added into the polish and flavor, but wasn't immediately noticeable (I didn't actually realize it was customized, sorry!). Knowing the announcer voice is custom isn't enough to change the score, though.
It would be useful to have some hint in the loading screen, but it's a very minor quip. It does not affect the score at all.
All in all, the only thing that could really give Bounty Hunters a gold is good weapon variety.
@DarkRevenantX: Go "I had a lot of trouble getting larger groups. It's not popular on the NA servers"
Don't worry, it's same here. I've got a lot of BH players in my friendlist, otherwise it's almost impossible to find ONE player.
I had to up the map manually on popularity page 3 or 4 to find new players x) But it's boring to create a game every 10 minutes 60 times in a day...
I added one new bounty hunter to BH (normal edition), it's true it add some diversity and I was glad to see even good players have some problems fighting again one bh they don't know. It increase game lifetime.
I planned to make that on BH Battlefield, but Battlefield don't have 19 maps and will never have that amount.
I've got some bh on paper and I'm workin' on it to add them, but projectiles collision gives me some troubles. ><
Well, if you wanna check the new version, it's updated. But there are only 2 bh, 'til better than one.
Meet me on the irc; just stay online until I come on, then I'll poke you. I should show you my physics engine to see an example of what to do for projectile collision and the like.
I don't have IRC client =) (and I think we don't have same hours, I'm going to sleep atm).
Can you send me PM instead ?