To avoid clutter, I'm also going to use this second post to talk a bit about the maps. The first will stay completely dedicated to the actual map presentation.
Episode 1:
00-0 Stark Morph:
Stark Morph to me, suits the pack perfectly as a header, and certainly plays well as a "00-0". I remember the tiles were somewhat erratic to begin when I first began, but Bio managed to recover them, and add a nice feel of viscous exploration. The circles were just little flourishes that were added in the dying steps, which I think was fortunate, because it doesn't feel quite as...drippy without them. Aesthetically this map was quite heavily inspired by the map Jeffkillian used in his instructable, and the gameplay was intended to feel similar to the 00-0 from the original game. Oh and the one-ways? Well, that was just a last minute insertion as a sort of signature, saying "Hey, watch this space! This isn't going to be just another Metanet reinterpretation!"
00-1 Arrow Island:
The reason I love Arrow Island, is because it took a conventional, boring mountain design, flipped it, and turned it into a giant floating land mass, speared with arrows. The idea for this came from the video clip of "Feel Good Inc.", and pretty much took the feel of that song with it. The island is rather benign design wise, avoiding the sharp rugged feel, and sticking more closely to the 'eroded terrain' look. The bottom areas were almost completely done by Bio; I just said, "can we put this here?", and he made it happen. Brilliantly.
00-2 Double Steppe:
Double Steppe was really cool to make. It was (rather obviously) inspired by 01-0, and we tried to utilise drones in a similar manner the Metanet, while improving on the design with a more interesting cave, and some amazingly funky gold. I think we succeeded. The way this map came about was pretty much:
squibbles: I want to make a cave map.
Bio: Ok.
00-3 Michael:
Wahaha, Michael was stunning. What was originally going to be a couple of interlocked circles quickly changed to two separate circles, and then very quickly became the O_o emoticon. Gameplay-wise we figured we should continue using circles, as it was obviously the predominant theme of the map. We also didn't want to make anything too complex, so the main worry in this map is the height of that top gold.
00-4 Division Systematically:
I don't even know what to say about this map really. As we were making it it quickly became a rather difficult map, with gausses being huge hassles, so when it came to submitting, we decided that it played better, and more appropriately without any enemies at all. So we removed them. I think it payed off, really.
01-0 Chert:
Chert was one of those maps where you come up with an idea from something you see, and it works out really well. The tileset for this was inspired by some packaging on a jar of honey in my kitchen, and we just made the objects to fit it. Oh, and it is totally unintentional that the gold spells "BOB". :|
01-1 Sun Gears:
Sun gears was spawned off a really cool vine-ey tileset, that was then un-curved. From there the floorguards and drones just seemed obvious. Kudos to Bio for coming up with such a sick gold pattern though. :D
01-2 Bio is hung like a Stallion.:
It's true.
01-3 Destiny says...:
This map essentially came about when I was making a cave, and thought "what'd happen if I made these rocks enormous?". It's well episodic! :D
01-4 Aetherform:
When we started on this, we agreed that it should take place in a large open area, and have only a small amount of gold, as the last levels were so gold heavy. Thus this cool little platformer came to be. :)
