I was just thinking...

[Joben]

This isn't a difficulty objection. It's a play style thing. Croteam would often craft fiendishly difficult battles. BUT if you survived they would spawn in a half dozen health/armor items for you. Most of the time you start each new battle with full or almost full health. This was good, there were time the player could feel fairly safe and take a breather between big waves of enemies.

A Croteam level is like: Big Fight - Health - Little fight - Health - Big Fight

However in a lot of community made maps the player (or at least I) spends a lot of time wandering around for minutes on end from battle to battle with like 9 health and 17 armor never gettign a break because every stupid purple headman is a deadly threat.

Now if you WANT to produce that kind of gameplay thats fine.
But if your going for more of an action feel similar to the Croteam levels IMHO just go ahead and be liberal with the health and armor. Scatter a bunch of little ones around, and after that big battle, dont give the player one health powerup, how about 2, maybe even 3.

[Spo_On]

Very good observation there :P It is true!

[JohnN]

I tend to be generous with the goodies...keep it fun!

I think people get quickly bored with user maps if they're too hard.

I recall one (but not the mapper) where as soon as you started you were flattened by a hoard of bulls and kamis and whatnot.
Well, I got bored and never got to see what could have been a good map.

BR
JN

[Krono]

This isn't a difficulty objection. It's a play style thing. Croteam would often craft fiendishly difficult battles. BUT if you survived they would spawn in a half dozen health/armor items for you. Most of the time you start each new battle with full or almost full health. This was good, there were time the player could feel fairly safe and take a breather between big waves of enemies.

A Croteam level is like: Big Fight - Health - Little fight - Health - Big Fight

However in a lot of community made maps the player (or at least I) spends a lot of time wandering around for minutes on end from battle to battle with like 9 health and 17 armor never gettign a break because every stupid purple headman is a deadly threat.

Now if you WANT to produce that kind of gameplay thats fine.
But if your going for more of an action feel similar to the Croteam levels IMHO just go ahead and be liberal with the health and armor. Scatter a bunch of little ones around, and after that big battle, dont give the player one health powerup, how about 2, maybe even 3.



it's not that easy like you think, it's really hard to get that smooth gameplay like in the official maps.
the croteam-mapper are really skilled, i'm really impressed about that and i try to copy that style of trigger-working.
my last two maps (brainless, bad taste) didn't have a lot trigger-work (not that much like in "great pyramide" f.e.) because it shoudn't matter when you die in a cooperative game.

anyway, when SeriousSam2 released, i will make a serious map with an eye-candy to smooth gameplay

[Joben]

yes i know it's not easy to balance it perfectly.
but with that in mind i am saying it may be better to give too much health to the player then too little. Just something to consider.

[samsamsam]

Testing the balence is tried.
Health give a lot but big battle still cannot pass...