Store Page
Left 4 Dead 2
All Discussions Screenshots Artwork Broadcasts Videos Workshop News Guides Reviews

Left 4 Dead 2

Store Page
Left 4 Dead 2 >  Workshop > perfect_buddy's Workshop > Early Days PART 1/6 > Discussions
Early Days PART 1/6
Description Discussions5 Comments360 Change Notes
Nuclearstomp Sep 13 @ 3:36pm
My Map Feedback
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdrEYWhUhO0
Video of me playing this in last man on earth just because I wanted to replay it and get my thoughts out on the map.
The audio is really janky and my mic is too low so sorry if it's too hard to hear me.

But yeah after replaying I think Chapter 2 has way too many supplies in the corner store. Most other maps give slightly too many supplies, mostly throwables but it's not as egregious.

The Chapter 1 event I think is a bit too much at the end. Zombies spawn from both sides, right in front of the player which becomes a bit luck based to deal with. it could just be replaced with a holdout somewhere in the map honestly because it's so short to begin with. If not, you could fix this by having the zombies spawn further away or behind something instead.

I feel like maybe some maps could have done better with a holdout instead of a gauntlet. The campaign has a lot of them. Not an issue in last man on earth but I wanted to point it out.

In the finale, I think the first tank should be fought in the room with the two open pits. It would work better and then you could set up a second tank fight at the helicopter area. This reduces the chances of the rescue tank spawning in the path directly after killing the first one as well, which is an issue I ran into when playing campaign with friends.

Navigation can sometimes be a bit hard in some areas. There's plenty of arrows so it's never bad but maybe some more lights or unique visual indicators would be good.

Some of the supplies could probably be moved to unused areas that don't have much in them. Like the street on the 2nd chapter where you can go to a dead end but there's nothing there. Exploration in this map is nice and it's usually rewarded, so this just makes it consistent.

The issue with areas having empty space is still a problem in some streets. It's mostly an issue on chapter 2 but I had to mention again just because it's the campaigns largest issue.

While playing, I also had some FPS issues. I think it's because of OBS mostly but I don't have that many mods / maps installed. About 4-5 other maps and some misc QOL and weapon model mods. I've removed the majority of my mods but I did notice some frame / map issues the first time I played but it wasn't as bad then. I'm not sure what you can really do about it as I'm not really a map maker but I thought to point it out.

-----------

And that's all the feedback I had. It's a bit less rambling than in the video, which is mostly me getting distracted by specials.

I know you said this might be your last campaign. Honestly, that's a massive shame because while they have issues, both this and Prague are really fun campaigns overall.

Don't take the negative feedback too hard. Those people wouldn't be commenting if they didn't care at all. They just want what the positive commentors want too: An even better version of this campaign. Most of the negative comments seem to be feedback on how to improve as well.

Anyways, I really enjoy this campaign and hope you'll continue to make maps and maybe even do some more updates to this one in the future. :steamthumbsup:
< >
Showing 1-2 of 2 comments
perfect_buddy  [developer] Sep 14 @ 4:26am 
It's a good thing you posted the video because now I know where you're coming from.

Firstly, your game audio is so loud hahaha. If my audio was set this loud while making this, I would have probably made everything quieter overall. This must not be good for your ears even on vanilla.

Second, I didn't know that lowering your graphics settings turned off the tree sway. That and having cubemap reflections disabled (which you also seem to have) make it look so much worse. It's a shame you couldn't experience it on the highest graphics settings (which were the settings I had while making this and testing this).

I am still going to have to disagree with the empty areas though.

Maps 1, 2 and 4 are very close to the 4096 static prop limit for this branch of the source engine. I literally can't add anything without removing something else. It's the same for dynamic props, map 2 is so packed in fact, that adding 1 entity (even like a reflection cubemap) will not let me compile it anymore.

I had to prioritize areas that players are more likely to visit, I especially can't be adding props to alleyways that only serve a purpose of killing players if they fall off a balcony. Nobody is supposed to go there.

Another thing that might be subjective, but I found to be true for me while making this campaign is that sometimes less is more. Map 3 and 4 used to be spammed with bushes and trees and other maps also had more clutter but it just didn't look right. As soon as I cleaned it up a little it just looked so much more real to me. But that might just be me.

It's a shame you're getting such bad performance, I played with a bunch of people and nobody ever complained about low FPS. As hard as it might be to believe, I optimized the maps a lot. Almost all props fade away when the players can't see them (which was pain by the way, we're talking tens of thousands of props that needed this set), the visleafs are cut so that stuff behind buildings shouldn't render, but I guess there's only so much I can do.

I see that you have vertical sync enabled, that will probably make your game feel less responsive because it's just throwing away frames that don't match your monitor refresh rate. But some people like it, just wanted to mention that in case it helps you.
Last edited by perfect_buddy; Sep 14 @ 4:32am
#1
Nuclearstomp Sep 14 @ 2:36pm 
This is all fair. I actually turned down the game audio in OBS before playing. It's mostly the guns in left 4 dead 2 are way louder than I'd like them to be... I already have the volume turned down quite a bit in the in-game settings.

I think the map still looks pretty good even on lower settings. I turned them down to try to improve FPS but it didn't seem to do anything.

Yeah the map must already have a lot of props... There's not much you can do on that end. The FPS is really just a result of how big the maps are + the way they are set up. If some people lag, there's not really anything you can do about it unfortunately. I was running OBS so that probably didn't help but I still at least had 60 FPS so it could've been worse.

I'll try turning Vertical sync off in the future.

But yeah thanks for the response. Sorry if the audio hurt your ears, I had to reinstall OBS because of a hard drive failure and unfortunately that meant resetting all my settings...
#2
< >
Showing 1-2 of 2 comments
Per page: 1530 50