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debut levelpack anyone?

Its a nice levelpack.

Playing through it now. Got up to 07.

The standard of design is pretty high, imo, and you've got some cool gameplay ideas. So far, it feels quite fresh (especially 01 and 03).

My main gripe so far is the lack of a difficulty curb. I appreciate going against the norm, but by denying the episodic structure you've missed out on something important: within episodes you can build tension and dynamics much better than you can without.

Imo, level packs should be broken down to episodic type bites for full impact. The pacing of a pack is just as important as the individual quality of the levels themselves.

I'll feedback more when I've played through. Good stuff so far, man :)

The start of this level pack was good. There levels were of a decent quality. But as I progressed I found that they got more and more medicore. I soon became tired of one thing. The lack of variation!
I was pitted against gauss after rocket after gauss. And many of the tilesets were very similar in places. In the last two or three levels it picked up again, however not enough to compensate for the middle levels. Did I mention the sheer number of rockets and gausses? So I'd say this pack is disappointing based on some of your best NUMA levels.

And atob, not all level packs have to be in episodic format. Sure it works for some level packs, but not all benefit from it. Some collections of levels are best kept as just that... collections of levels.

tips:

04: add launchpads.


I'll be back for more.

the tileset in 11 is fantastic

remember all: this map pack is JFF (just for fun)
it is not at all attempting to be serious or anything
the organization is just the order in which i made them, and the levels themselves are mainly just to experiment with different gameplay concepts.
Although i do agree that the beginning was better, near the end I just wanted to finish/

so enjoy!

also: please note that many of the levels were made in under 10 minutes/5 minutes/etc

THIS POST IS WAY TOO LONG
IM GONNA GO MAKE A SECOND LEVELPACK NOW

lord_day wrote: And atob, not all level packs have to be in episodic format. Sure it works for some level packs, but not all benefit from it. Some collections of levels are best kept as just that... collections of levels.

I honestly don't think it's possible to create anywhere near the right amount of tension, diversity or flow without breaking down a large collection of levels into sections of some kind.

If you can find me a bunch of maps that are just left in any old order that works as well as one of the best episodic packs, I'll be highly surprised.

Sorry to clutter your thread with pedantic pettieness, a_a :p

Well, excluding brilliant complete author collections such as The Complete Barabajagal, the Best of Buddy and the complete stepself, here are a few that are worth playing:

Ved Buens Ende
Cloud Cuckoo!
Evil Album
Auri Sacra Fames
E
The Music Pack

There are more, but these are what I found with a quick search,

All of these are decent bunches of levels that don't play very well as a collection, imo. It's like writing a piece of music: you have to consider not only the form and flow of the notes, but the use of silence as a device.

Not only do episodes help create dynamic and tension, but they also help weed out the maps that don't really add anything to the pack.

I'm probably too much of a perfectionist when it comes to these things, so I might be alone here, but I think the extra effort taken to consider the above is worth the difference.

"as i'm swimming through the stereo i'm writing you a symphony of sound" and "starrymoon sailboat catpan" were quite good.

I find myself agreeing with both astheoceansblue and lord_day on this controversial issue, but not identifying with each to such an extreme extent. I find that the larger levelpacks are, the more need there is for some form of organization (50+). For example, Barabajagal's Bonus has no episodes, but instead two sets of fifty maps with a difficulty curve for each one. The smaller mappacks are, I think the more they are able to just be unorganized collectives for casual play. I do think that episodic levelpacks, or at least ones with some form of organization, tend to be better than ones without. But then again, if you're only releasing 20 maps, I don't find it to be a very big deal at all.

Speaking of mappacks, I'll play yours and see what I think in a bit.

i kinda liked it

pretty nice pack there man.