"The Shrine" by Forty-Six & Two (Single-player

[Forty-six & Two]

uhg..? normal dif i think

oh, and i killed the robots on the serface by: having Jood use his Hoss-machine gun to deal the damage to the tank bot, and everyone esle do targeted single shot to the head, so i knocked it out, and finished it off. oh, also...hall? the medic used the HK-MP5 with AP rounds to do damage too.

i took out the mini-gun robot w/ everyone on single shot to the head, and i came in from up north and knocked it out. (all in CTB of course) it took a few saves/loads to make sure i knocked it out before it could maim my team, but it was well worth it. then i used a rocked from long range to blow up the generator, and then nade-launched the remaining security bots, like 1hit each.

it was fun. the floor trap part scared me at first, but then i realized it wasnt covering the entire room. lol. i used remote det.traps on them.

Great great! Happy you liked it. What were your thoughts on the final battle though? Its very heavy frontal combat compared to the rest of the map.

The floor traps are scary ey? =) And they look cool too.

I probably need to restart the map - I went inside the mountain before I went up to the bots, so I used all my rockets and most of the other exposives on the rather intense fight involving the three big-ass fire beetles.

Yea, a restart is in order...

Yea I think so too.... Thing is when I tested I used foresight and didnt use that much explosive ammo on the beetles cuz you dont really have too. To beat them the most important thing is too stay out of range from the fire

[Strap]

the end part was fun, i mostly had jood, and um...forgot his name, the one that is supposed to be a sniper. so i had them fight with rocket/nade launcher, and the other guy with the gat-laser. and hall was kicking reaver ass with that .50cal desert eagle with DU ammo. |)353rt 34g|3 0\/\/n5 j00! lol. it was fun. the fire beatles were a pain up the ass at first, but i did those in TB (sorry...) i only had a guy die once, and i reloaded after that. i liked the first part with the beast lords, that was cool. i liked the setting, and how it seemed tactical. cool.. make another. oh, and change all the 9mm ammo into 10mm ammo, thats more fallouty

[Forty-six & Two]

Havnt someone played my map recently? No? Well *hint *hint* go do it!





No seriously... please! Please go play my map!! PLEASE!

Ahm.. sorry :oops: :roll:

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

Havnt someone palyed my map recently? No? Well *hint *hint* go do it!





No seriously... please! Please go play my map!! PLEASE!

Playing it now, well in between making my own map, playing OTB's demo and trying to get across the border on Project IGI.
So far love what I'm playing but I've only just got past the large fire bugs... please tell me you didn't create an uber fire bug :!:

[Forty-six & Two]

Playing it now, well in between making my own map, playing OTB's demo and trying to get across the border on Project IGI.

Oh, cool. Thanks for the interest When do you think your map will be released btw? Guestimate?

please tell me you didn't create an uber fire bug :!:

Ahm.. would that be a.. bad thing? Cuz I did. Actually. They are pretty badass.

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

Nope I just hope that I don't run it to it anytime soon.

I was hoping that I would have it ready by this weekend but I've run into a brick wall and now I hope to have it ready before next year, assuming I can solve my problems.

[Jimmyjay86]

What's the problems?

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

What's the problems?

Oh just good old fashioned writers block, just can't seem to come up with any dialogue or blurb for my character background.

I think I've hogged this thread enough, so I've started a new one in the mapping forum. Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

Edit 19/12/02

Just finished playing the shrine. First I must just say two things, one it's maps like this that make me really wish they were campaigns and not solo maps and two, it's maps like this that make me look at my own pittiful attempts at mapping and make me want to cry.

Now done with the gratuitous grovelling on with the review.

First the map looked great, loved the snow mounds, tis a pity that there are no rain or falling snow graphics, though the use of ambient wind certainly made me imagine that there was a blizzard falling, when I got inside and the wind stopped I actually felt warmer . I thought that the fire bugs were a great addition though colouring them red made me long for some giant ants. The mines topside were tough I don't think that any of the squad members ever spotted any, if the scurry bot hadn't immolated itself on them I wouldn't of realised they were even there until too late. The electric traps were insidious, when the console warned me that the security systems were on line I was expecting hoverbots and security bots to appear out of the walls shades of Fallout 2, not an electric floor. The final battle was extreme, I only managed to keep 3 people alive even after half a dozen attempts.

I'm not sure about the changes to the stimpaks, there was enough food and first aid/doctors bags in the mission that I didn't really need them until the end and then I lost Tork to the effects of poison, after blundering into the end room he had got shot up pretty bad and used the ultra stimpak, but during the final assault he got shot up again and then died from the after affects which peeved me off. Personally I would of made the stimpaks highly addictive rather that poisonous, with a high possibility of an overdose if too many were used one after another.

Other than that I think that this was a great map, and can't wait for your next.

[endocore]

I've been playing "The Shrine" recently and commend Forty-Six and Two on his excellent mission. I usually like to privately e-mail map reviews to the mapper, but since Forty-Six & Two didn't include his e-mail in the Shrine readme I guess he wanted public posting of comments. Anyway, here's my take on things:

NOTE--100 PERCENT SPOILERS BELOW


The map is very good. The tile construction is excellent, and the huge mission area is exactly the sort of thing I like to explore in a game. The buildings above ground are very nice (the pumping station, etc), and the underground areas are detailed and laid-out well. The atmosphere of the map, with the snow-covered plain and howling wind effect gives a cool bleak vibe. I consciously felt sort of sad for my characters having to go on this mission, and the mental picture of them burned and bleeding to death from wounds in the freezing cold on some forgotten frozen mountain-top in the middle of nowhere is actually a bit depressing (War....war never changes, and all that). The area seems very mysterious due to its vastness and the disjunctive components of the map (primitive tribals, abandoned tech buildings, etc).

I'm not finished playing the map yet, but so far all of the combats have been well-balanced and nicely set up (I'm playing on normal difficulty in individual turn-based mode). I agree very much with what Forty-Six and Two has tried to do with the deadliness of weapons, and think this makes for much more entertaining gameplay by requiring thoughtful battle approaches rather than the old "charge in with a frontal assault" method allowed by the FOT core campaign. I think a bit more distinction needs to be implemented between the various classes of firearms, though. The pistols have certainly been powered up quite nicely, and now do nearly the same damage as rifles and machine guns. While the latter of course have a burst-fire mode, I think their damage should have been increased as well to reflect the fact that these weapons are more powerful than handguns. While the original FOT weapons catalog made gave us no reason to use pistols, I think that with several pistols having their ranges extended into the high 20's and low 30's Forty-Six & Two has gone a bit too far for my taste in giving us little reason to use anything except pistols apart from habit.

I think there is a definite shortage of medical and doctor kits in the mission. After reading the readme file, I'm frankly too scared by Forty-Six and Two's description of stimpacks to even experiment with their use, and my characters (with only about 50 percent of the mission complete) have used up two med kits, two doctor's bags, and are now badly injured with no means of healing to be found. While I definitely agree that stimpacks are out of control in most maps (including some of my own earlier efforts), and that it's preferable to force players to use medical kits instead, the severe shortage of medkits in this map is rather frustrating. I'd suggest that one medical kit and/or one doctor's bag should have been placed as loot at the site of each major battle. This would still limit access to healing, but no so much so as to leave a cautious player (which, perhaps mistakenly, I consider myself to be) with a combat-ineffective team that can't proceed with the mission.

One minor note: You might want to consider re-wording the personal history of the "Hall" character. While it would be understandable that she's an angry young woman if someone had "whacked out" her family or "off-ed" them, I inadvertently laughed out loud when I read that someone had instead "whacked off" her family. Was she angry because they were all porn stars who didn't get paid for their performance? But then again, perhaps I'm just a dirty old guy.

My play so far in the map has been as follows:

After reading the briefing (it would have been better not to list reavers in the objectives; they're not mentioned in the briefing, and the mystery of the map would have been increased for me if I had not seen the objectives telling me I'd be looking for reavers), I proceeded north along the western edge of the map and assaulted the beastlord camp. This was a very good battle, and I was pleased that all of the opponents fought me with firearms (too often in battles like this mappers include a significant melee component in the enemy force, which are tactically ineffective against player characters with ranged weapons). One weakness in the Beastlords' battle set-up was that they had no guards at all posted on the northern side of their camp, allowing a sneaky player to attack from the north and take advantage of the ample cover in front of the building against all the beastlords out in the open. Nonetheless, the battle was quite entertaining. There was perhaps a bit too much loot inside the building (much more than my players could carry), but this is understandable since Forty-Six and Two has many reworked weapons he wanted to show off.

After taking out the beastlords, I went east along the northern edge of the map and found the mysterious door in the mountains surrounded by explosives. With all the new graphics and entities coming out I briefly wondered if by surrounding the door with explosives Forty-Six and Two was hinting that he had made a destroyable door here, and had to reload after I wasted all of the explosives trying to blow up the door (my own fault). I then went south along the mountain face and climbed the ladder to the first mountain tier (none of my characters took any radiation here, though I suspect that was supposed to happen) and checked out the pumping station. The lone reaver sniper on the roof of this building was nice because it's very mysterious (why is just one guy here? what is he up to?). I noticed that the generators are destroyable, but since I didn't know what their function was I thought it best not to touch them. While still pondering the cryptic waste computer message, I briefly scouted the upper mountain area but decided my team would be decisively thrashed by the robots up there so I went back down to the main ground plain and entered the tribal caves. Since I didn't have any medkits, I had to heal the burned guy at the entrance by using a stimpack on him, which I felt a bit bad about since after he told me what he knew he was quickly poisoned and no better off than when I found him.

The battle with the giant bugs was nicely set-up and had me on the edge of my seat since one blast from the big bugs would mean instant death, but I defeated them after a protracted battle in which I got very lucky because the bugs kept missing me with their fire blasts. I think 500 HP was a bit too much for the giant bugs (perhaps 300 HP would have been better, given the nastiness of their attacks and the number of attacks needed to kill them), but it played fine nonetheless. Without any medkits I was able to heal my team completely using all of the food items I had collected up to this point in the game.

I then took out the Reavers in the computer room to the north. I think it might have been better to include some sort of door between the bug area and the reaver area, since it seemed odd to me that with a raging battle against the bugs going on the reavers just stood there not that far off and did not seem to be expecting me. The battle wasn't too tough, but two of my troops were wounded by the Reavers and a third was seriously wounded by a trap on the computer terminal after the battle. Since I'm out of food and medical supplies (apart from stimpacks, which I don't want to touch), I'm a bit concerned about the viability of my force. This is where I've stopped playing for now.

I seem to have a bit of a problem at this point in the map: I can't work the computer console, and after repeated science skill usages on it ended with failure I opened the map in the editor and saw that this switch requires a science skill of 150 (and is the only way to open the large mountain-side door which will give access to the main reaver area). I have given all the science books I found to the main character Kali who starts off with the highest science stat, and her science skill is only at 134. It would therefore seem that there is no way I can proceed with the mission, unless I have missed something (since other players have indicated that they completed the map, that must be the case, but I really can't see what it is that I could have missed). Perhaps, Forty-Six and Two, you could offer me some guidance?

In general, however, "The Shrine" is a splendid map and a well-designed adventure. The difficulty is high enough to require thoughtful gameplay without on the other hand being frustratingly impossible. The story is intriguing, and the ambient feeling aroused by the map is one of mild desperation (which is to say, very Fallout-like). I really hope Forty-Six and Two is working on something else for us all to enjoy, as this is really one of the best SP maps I have seen.


Endocore

[Forty-six & Two]

Thank you for the nice words! I take them to my heart, since I consider you the author of some of the very best maps and most creative maps yet.

I've been playing "The Shrine" recently and commend Forty-Six and Two on his excellent mission. I usually like to privately e-mail map reviews to the mapper, but since Forty-Six & Two didn't include his e-mail in the Shrine readme I guess he wanted public posting of comments. Anyway, here's my take on things:Endocore

Yes, in retrospect some of the pistols got abit overpowered/overranged... and im gona revamp my own weapons mod for my coming creations. Although I think the overall difference between a rifle and a high caliber gun should be range and ammo options. So that single shot rifle will do only abit more damage than a single shot gun, but the rifle has a higher range and burst mode option with lowe damage per shot and a higher fire rate than FOT standard. I think that is the best way to balance the two categories out. Weapons like the .50cal eagle and the sniper scope revolver were vastly overpowered though >=). But I just wanted them there to make the induvidual characters abit specialised.

I'm not finished playing the map yet, but so far all of the combats have been well-balanced and nicely set up (I'm playing on normal difficulty in individual turn-based mode). I agree very much with what Forty-Six and Two has tried to do with the deadliness of weapons, and think this makes for much more entertaining gameplay by requiring thoughtful battle approaches rather than the old "charge in with a frontal assault" method allowed by the FOT core campaign. I think a bit more distinction needs to be implemented between the various classes of firearms, though. The pistols have certainly been powered up quite nicely, and now do nearly the same damage as rifles and machine guns. While the latter of course have a burst-fire mode, I think their damage should have been increased as well to reflect the fact that these weapons are more powerful than handguns. While the original FOT weapons catalog made gave us no reason to use pistols, I think that with several pistols having their ranges extended into the high 20's and low 30's Forty-Six & Two has gone a bit too far for my taste in giving us little reason to use anything except pistols apart from habit.

This is a very hard map, by choice. The thing I did with stimpacks were so they werent a players main source of healing. A char could pump up on two stimpacks, if heavyli wounded, and win the battle with the damage reduction and the extra HP given to him, but then get a chemical poisoning and loose about the same HP as he gained by "stimming". When testing i found that there was just enough medkits and doc bags to get by, and of course the which I spread out to.

I think there is a definite shortage of medical and doctor kits in the mission. After reading the readme file, I'm frankly too scared by Forty-Six and Two's description of stimpacks to even experiment with their use, and my characters (with only about 50 percent of the mission complete) have used up two med kits, two doctor's bags, and are now badly injured with no means of healing to be found. While I definitely agree that stimpacks are out of control in most maps (including some of my own earlier efforts), and that it's preferable to force players to use medical kits instead, the severe shortage of medkits in this map is rather frustrating. I'd suggest that one medical kit and/or one doctor's bag should have been placed as loot at the site of each major battle. This would still limit access to healing, but no so much so as to leave a cautious player (which, perhaps mistakenly, I consider myself to be) with a combat-ineffective team that can't proceed with the mission.

LoL. Well I didnt really think of that, but I see your point >;).

One minor note: You might want to consider re-wording the personal history of the "Hall" character. While it would be understandable that she's an angry young woman if someone had "whacked out" her family or "off-ed" them, I inadvertently laughed out loud when I read that someone had instead "whacked off" her family. Was she angry because they were all porn stars who didn't get paid for their performance? But then again, perhaps I'm just a dirty old guy.

Oh yeah... thats right. The reavers were supposed to be unknown actually.
Hmm. Ill remember that if I ever decide to update the whole map sometime.

The beastlords in the BOS camp did have melle weapons though, and would charge if they ran out of ammo =). I gave them alot of melee + damage so if they got close enough to you, you wouldnt have enjoyed it. Hehe. Leaving the backside almost unprotected was intentionel, although in retrospect I think I should have littered the area with those beastlord mines, puff bombs. Cant remember what theyre called right now.

All the loot inside the building was mostly to make the camp abit realistic, and hint at the surprise attack that had hit them. Also, it looks looks cool with all those weapons lying on the tables in the light >=P.

After reading the briefing (it would have been better not to list reavers in the objectives; they're not mentioned in the briefing, and the mystery of the map would have been increased for me if I had not seen the objectives telling me I'd be looking for reavers), I proceeded north along the western edge of the map and assaulted the beastlord camp. This was a very good battle, and I was pleased that all of the opponents fought me with firearms (too often in battles like this mappers include a significant melee component in the enemy force, which are tactically ineffective against player characters with ranged weapons). One weakness in the Beastlords' battle set-up was that they had no guards at all posted on the northern side of their camp, allowing a sneaky player to attack from the north and take advantage of the ample cover in front of the building against all the beastlords out in the open. Nonetheless, the battle was quite entertaining. There was perhaps a bit too much loot inside the building (much more than my players could carry), but this is understandable since Forty-Six and Two has many reworked weapons he wanted to show off.

I wanted it to look like that the BOS from the camp had planned to blow the doors and make players think it would work. So I guess that succeded ;). The green pool was supposed to radiate the cahrs if they stayed to long, I dont know if I ever got that implemented correctly though :(. The robot encaounter is quite hard yes, other players have posted that too. But it can be done, in testing ive beat it with only a few wounded. Many times. But it its very hard, if you dont know how to.

After taking out the beastlords, I went east along the northern edge of the map and found the mysterious door in the mountains surrounded by explosives. With all the new graphics and entities coming out I briefly wondered if by surrounding the door with explosives Forty-Six and Two was hinting that he had made a destroyable door here, and had to reload after I wasted all of the explosives trying to blow up the door (my own fault). I then went south along the mountain face and climbed the ladder to the first mountain tier (none of my characters took any radiation here, though I suspect that was supposed to happen) and checked out the pumping station. The lone reaver sniper on the roof of this building was nice because it's very mysterious (why is just one guy here? what is he up to?). I noticed that the generators are destroyable, but since I didn't know what their function was I thought it best not to touch them. While still pondering the cryptic waste computer message, I briefly scouted the upper mountain area but decided my team would be decisively thrashed by the robots up there so I went back down to the main ground plain and entered the tribal caves. Since I didn't have any medkits, I had to heal the burned guy at the entrance by using a stimpack on him, which I felt a bit bad about since after he told me what he knew he was quickly poisoned and no better off than when I found him.

I meddled giant beetles HP many, many times. Its just that they can be easily caught and are, intentionally, very slow so I ended up with a very high HP. Ammo rationing is very important here. Ive noticed.

The battle with the giant bugs was nicely set-up and had me on the edge of my seat since one blast from the big bugs would mean instant death, but I defeated them after a protracted battle in which I got very lucky because the bugs kept missing me with their fire blasts. I think 500 HP was a bit too much for the giant bugs (perhaps 300 HP would have been better, given the nastiness of their attacks and the number of attacks needed to kill them), but it played fine nonetheless. Without any medkits I was able to heal my team completely using all of the food items I had collected up to this point in the game.

Well, unless you still have alot fo the top quality ammo like 40mm and rockets. I doubt youll be able to finish the map in your current condition.

I then took out the Reavers in the computer room to the north. I think it might have been better to include some sort of door between the bug area and the reaver area, since it seemed odd to me that with a raging battle against the bugs going on the reavers just stood there not that far off and did not seem to be expecting me. The battle wasn't too tough, but two of my troops were wounded by the Reavers and a third was seriously wounded by a trap on the computer terminal after the battle. Since I'm out of food and medical supplies (apart from stimpacks, which I don't want to touch), I'm a bit concerned about the viability of my force. This is where I've stopped playing for now.

You need to finish the robot encounter on the topside of the mountain. I wont reveal how, but its the only way to activate the console youre thinking of.

I seem to have a bit of a problem at this point in the map: I can't work the computer console, and after repeated science skill usages on it ended with failure I opened the map in the editor and saw that this switch requires a science skill of 150 (and is the only way to open the large mountain-side door which will give access to the main reaver area). I have given all the science books I found to the main character Kali who starts off with the highest science stat, and her science skill is only at 134. It would therefore seem that there is no way I can proceed with the mission, unless I have missed something (since other players have indicated that they completed the map, that must be the case, but I really can't see what it is that I could have missed). Perhaps, Forty-Six and Two, you could offer me some guidance?.

Overall, I think I could have done better actually. Implemented more quests and such. But thank you for playing it =).

Im not currently working on anything, but I have projects lying around.. and I think all this typing is making wana start mapping again, tonight maybe.

In general, however, "The Shrine" is a splendid map and a well-designed adventure. The difficulty is high enough to require thoughtful gameplay without on the other hand being frustratingly impossible. The story is intriguing, and the ambient feeling aroused by the map is one of mild desperation (which is to say, very Fallout-like). I really hope Forty-Six and Two is working on something else for us all to enjoy, as this is really one of the best SP maps I have seen.