Duck and Cover

o.k. this is for the 1st map I just finished yesterday. keep in mind this is incomplete and I will add various views in the future.Perhaps today I will do the second part but Quaqmire comes first, so...

I have to say, this is a delightfull map to play, a sampla of what devoted gamers can do. I'd like to state that I may be somewhat biased, since this is a campaign and this is one of the reasons I played it(the other being getting me hooked) over Quagmire i've been playing lately, hopefully I'll get back to it today, I really have to finish it.

Speaking of Quaqmire, these are two almost totally different maps, when it comes to their design philosophy. I'll say more when I finish Endocore's map.

It took me 3 days and aprox. 18 hours of playing to finish it.*Bizarre: I don't know if it is a Campaign editor bug or something I've done wrong(I played it with the first mission properly installed but I also had the other under a different folder.)Every time I lost or tried to quit, the game just kept returning me to the last save position & refused to load properly(in trying to exit case it just took it 2 times "behave" and display the single player options screen).

It's beautifully made. The creator invested much time to make it seem as real-life (adding or removing stuff) as possible and it shows. I particullarly liked the prison which reminded me smal town prisons I get to see on big/small screen.(sorry no real access to prison )The underground area is good also(Generally simplicity is the key here).

There are plenty of things to do;I must have completed it with 10 or more quests and subquests completed. There are quests both for good or bad aligned players, but be warned, these are mutually exclusive.
The main character I wouls describe as a sneaky kickboxer and explosives specialist,also good at throwing things, believe me, you will use this abilities if you want to end the map in success.

The use of this skills and tools provided is well implemented. I must admit I concluded the core campaign using limited stealth(I thing only for the first handfull of missions) and completely ignored mines placing-not in this map!

For the first quarter of the map you'll have to make use of your sneak skill or find your character dying at an alarming rate(I think it's usefull to finish the prison part first from enemies, and I include the underground floor here). Later make sure you use your companions abilities as well as yours. It makes things easier if you work as team.

In all you'll get 2 assistants for the good path, I don't know how many yet for the evil one(i'll update). Make sure you do exactly as they tell you, its for your own benefit. Dale i liked the most. He had the most "soul" of the characters, even of Lola.(plus he raised my stats, which is apreciated ). So much in fact, I would like to see him again and find more about his story on later Max's maps.

About the Raiders mission(highlight the text to see)
Hint: this is the toughest part of the Good path so I'll give you some directions(feel free to ignore, don't read if you don't like spoilers): the patrols you can exterminate with mines(easy, but requires good timing).The guards infront of the prison(4) leave for last. My way for taking out the main building was sneaking in the back(probably the only way to do) climb the ladder, go down, leave 8 bombs{tricky part, you have to assign a bomb for every 4 people, sometimes 3 people or 2 people.Put it always on the center of a fictional crossroad section their bodies form} one up and one next to the guy sleeping on the back of the building-he deserves it for leaving post! Be sure to give all the bombs the same frequency(I gave 666 which is easy to remember for obvious reasons). then return to your entry point and detonate(if you haven't killed the side patrol yet,be carefull not to hide from him very close to the building, or you'll get a zone violation).

Materials are abundant, but perhaps too many for the mission(you can sell them in the hospital for healling equipment.I did! Can never know if I'll
get more next!) For the record I finished it with 41 stimpacks, 10 brown(ultra?) stimpacks, 7-9 poison antidotes and a few thousand bullets I didn't get to use(I assume those were for the evil path).

I apreciated the fact that you don't have to be overly tactical or the elite of veteran players to finish the map within a reasonable time limit. This is a map even the novice can play(and benefit for better efficiency in the core campaign playing)

I couldn't find something worthy of mentioning as a design flaw that could be improved, but:
a) I didn't get what happened when staring with the warrior in my possession that changed places with Lola. Perhaps my mistake?
b)Couldn't free the prisoner in floor one. Possibly my fault too, or a subquest that falls under mutually exclusive category described above.
c)Lola doesn't have a description upon starting map2.
d)Could spot only 2-3 rough edges(somewhat repetitive tiles in an area, rectangular tile area) but one could argue that this is intented.
Btw, I loved the units for the most part. Nice coloring combinations.

Also, for lower end system owners, keep this in mind: This city is very lively. To achieve that effect, Max-V included a huge amount of entities(I roughly estimate about 4 times the quagmire entities for anyone that has played it). Thus it was pretty slow in my system(Celeron700mhz, 192 megs ram, 1900 megs of virtual ram-configured it high in order to play Heroes4)so other systems could have problems with speed. If you have a 3d accelerator card, it will probably help, I don't.

In general, this is one of the best maps we've seen so far, brain and brawn balanced in a lively world. I recommend everyone to play it.

This doesn't belong to the review, but I thought it might provr to be usefull.
Details at the end of map(just before exiting):
Quests completed
-Freed prisoners(using the switch)
-Killed the jail raiders
-Killed the raiders inside the building using bombs(all,rita wasted the 3 outside including jimbo)
-In sort killed all raiders
-Helped Dale
-Killed the guy next to the well
-Cletus
-Police leader that gives Rita's Missions
-All rita's missions I can't remember plus the reward go here(also the timer one)
Level:11(from what i remember, if not, I'll update)
Experience gained: 75984

THIS is the kind of feedback I get excited about

Thanks a TON, flamescreen.

With regards to the wierd behavior when trying to exit: I got the same thing, but it eventually fixed itself. Your guess is as good as mine.

I've got a class to go to, but as soon as I get back, I'll answer the rest of your questions.

Oh, have you played JB3 yet?

Flamescreen wrote: In all you'll get 2 assistants for the good path, I don't know how many yet for the evil one(i'll update). Make sure you do exactly as they tell you, its for your own benefit. Dale i liked the most. He had the most "soul" of the characters, even of Lola.(plus he raised my stats, which is apreciated ). So much in fact, I would like to see him again and find more about his story on later Max's maps.

Can do

Flamescreen wrote:Materials are abundant, but perhaps too many for the mission(you can sell them in the hospital for healling equipment.I did! Can never know if I'll
get more next!) For the record I finished it with 41 stimpacks, 10 brown(ultra?) stimpacks, 7-9 poison antidotes and a few thousand bullets I didn't get to use(I assume those were for the evil path).

Note to self: cut down on stuff the player can buy/sell.

Flamescreen wrote:a) I didn't get what happened when staring with the warrior in my possession that changed places with Lola. Perhaps my mistake?

No mistake on your part. There's a good reason why I made it like that, and if you really wanna know, PM/email me and I'll tell you (no, it isn't dirty or anything, just technical stuff I'm sure the majority of players don't want/need to know ).

Flamescreen wrote:b)Couldn't free the prisoner in floor one. Possibly my fault too, or a subquest that falls under mutually exclusive category described above.

Nope, that prisoner isn't rescuable. If you'll notice, she runs around saying silly things. Insanity set in for her.

Flamescreen wrote:c)Lola doesn't have a description upon starting map2.

Oh? Do you get a mission briefing? If not, you goofed up somewhere when you installed the map(s). Someone emailed me with a similar problem, and to fix it, he just re-assigned the speech file and everything was OK.

Flamescreen wrote:d)Could spot only 2-3 rough edges(somewhat repetitive tiles in an area, rectangular tile area) but one could argue that this is intented.

Yea, well, can't get everythin' perfect

Thanks for this review/feedback/post/whatever, dude. Your first post and your second one are very handy

If anyone else would be so kind as to contribute something to this thread, I'd be freakin' ecstatic!

great map, but i had the problem of not getting any armour.

can you do a quest for the police cheif?

Umpa wrote:great map, but i had the problem of not getting any armour.

In Jailbreak 1? There's some Leather Armor Mk. 1 on/in the table that's blocking one of the doors of the building near the jail with the switch to the jail doors in it.

That sentence is perhaps the most confusing sentence I've ever written, but trust me, it's there

Umpa wrote:can you do a quest for the police cheif?

Well, sorta. If you talk to him after you do Rita's quest, he'll "give" you some extra XP. Also, he is involved in Jimbo's and Timmy's quest (killing him, that is).

And just so you fellas know: I made a bit of a boo-boo when I was finishing up JB3 - I forgot to take out the Lola I was using to test the map All you have to do is to open up the map in the editor and delete the Lola that is near the SpawnGeneric thing (right where you start the map), save the map, and everything's OK. Unless, of course, you've already started the map, in which case you already know about the error

But fear not, just do the above and re-load the map from a savegame from JB2 or even JB1.

No, JB3 not yet, and seeing your post, I think I will reinstall to get the descriptions on JB2. Roughly played that so far though...
Only killed 10 raiders and still am on surface. I will have to come to it on a later date since some urgent affairs came up recently.

2 problems:

a. I'm not getting the starting JB2 speech. The map shows areas of interest but no corresponding directions. I followed installation directions to a T with no luck. If anyone's been able to make it work for them, kindly dish out the work-around (besides the unexciting "just read the damn txt directly" method).

b. Is there supposed to be a portrait for Lola? If so, then please guide me to where they should go (again, I followed directions word for word).

P.S. To MAX-VIOLENCE THE MAN, amazing map so far. I've always enjoyed solo stealth missions (going so far as trying to solo the regular campaign with a Martial Artist), plus I've never played a female character so this campaign kills the three birds so to speak. I'm actually enjoying myself immensely and have to rate the campaign higher than some of the regular missions, I have to admit. Keep it up and, by the way, the start of JB2 is shaping up to be even better, I think.

Possibilities:

You might have the correct version. I suggest you go to Max-V's site and download the latest.
Also you probably didn't install everything where you should. I'll be dealling with that in the next few days, but in the meantime, you might want to try the "brute force" equivallent idea and copy everything everywhere {You'll have to keep track of what you put where though, in order to unistall later, or if needed}

The Lola.zar file (Lola's portrait) should be in Fallout Tactics/Max-V/gui/char - I goofed up with the instructions and some other stuff I care not to get into

As for the speech file - try and re-assign it yourself. To do so:


1) Open up the .mis file in the level editor

2) Near the top of the screen, you'll see things like Select, Tile, Entity, Entity Edit, etc. Click on Level

3) Near the bottom-left of the screen, you'll see some buttons. One of which is 'Speech File...'. Click on it.

4) Find the speech file (JB2_speech.txt) and double-click on it. DO NOT SELECT IT AND CLICK 'OPEN'. It won't work. Don't ask me why

5) Save the map (File -> Save).

6) Load up your savegame from JB1, and finish that map as you normally would. This'll re-start JB2 with the speech file intact.

7) Post in the Map Reviews forum after you're done :mrgreen:

That's all there is to it!

Speaking of the Map Reviews forum, could one of you moderators move this thread into it? I would, but *ahem* I can't mod this forum... *grumble*

BTW, if you haven't already, make sure you get the latest version of the jailbreak2-3.zip from either my site or DaC. It fixes the described problem on JB3

Stealth boy wrote:P.S. To MAX-VIOLENCE THE MAN, amazing map so far

Glad you like it (so far) :mrgreen: Just don't forget a bout the Map Review forum when you're done with the thing

Good to see you moved it! I was going to propose it today.
I think I can complete the last 2 parts maybe by next sunday, so expect my rev. also, now that I finaly reorganised a few things.

I hope I am thinking of the right map (the one where you escape from prison, go through cops town, kill roaches underground with help from a bar guy, and finally take out some raiders with help from a sniper & explosives?)?

I like the map itself, and appreciate all the work you put into it and the attention to detail. I also enjoyed the quests (when they worked OK). I have not tried the 2nd one yet due to the problems I had installing the first map, but I will get around to it as soon as possible :-)

The main problem I had with the character you start with is that she is kinda weak, can't use guns (your best hope is to maybe sneak up on them) AND your level is so high that you don't gain enough levels to improve your character in any substantial way. So its a contradiction to have so many levels on such a weak character. Having all the stats at 10 also does not help since you can't gain many levels to make use of them.

Maybe have the character start at level 1 (just take all their experience -- they will still keep skills & perks).

The weapons also do too much damage. I don't much care for realism. It'd be more fun if we could go around and kill all the raider scum. Its fun to have the option of sneaking but its more fun if you have the option to kill everything too. I played on insane difficulty so it was impossible to kill raiders unless you caught them alone, by surprise, and got extremely lucky.

There was more than enough healing, ammo, etc.. I was even able to drug the doctor guy and get all his stuff. No problem with equipment at all. You just might want to make drugs harder to get since they can be used in such a fashion :)

But always playtest your map and make sure that everything works OK. And if someone tells you something doesn't work, you might want to update your map and upload the new version.

However, when it comes to the basic design, put your own enjoyment of your map before anyone else's.

[TBC]-PaladinHeart wrote:I hope I am thinking of the right map (the one where you escape from prison, go through cops town, kill roaches underground with help from a bar guy, and finally take out some raiders with help from a sniper & explosives?)

Nope, that's Jailbreak 1. Revenge (and Rebellion, for that matter) have to do with Ghouls overthrowing tyrannical Reavers n' stuff.

I'll comment on your feedback as soon as I figure out how to move your post and this one to the proper thread... don't hold your breath...

Well, that almost worked. It put my post before TBCPH's. Oh well.

Anyway, I recall posting an updated version of the map once a bug with one of the quests was reported by (memory serves) Requiem. Other than that, I don't remember getting/discovering any other problems. If you could specify which quests were b'oken, I'd be glad to look at it/them.

As far as giving the player the option: Yeah, I know.

I don't recommened playing any of my maps on anything other than Normal difficulty (and CTB). I know I've said all my maps are for CTB. I simply keep forgetting to mention the difficulty level issue. If it gets too hard, turn the difficulty down a notch I don't playtest my maps on anything but Normal (way too much time and I don't really care to playtest that freaking much).

I care for realism quite a bit, and I design my maps as such. I try not to go overboard (i.e. one single-shot round killing the player), but really, explosives (mines, rockets, grenades, etc.) should be able to kill pretty much anything in one hit. Same deal with a full burst of 3 or so rounds at point-blank range.

Well its been a long time since I tried it, so I'll give it another whirl as soon as im finished with awaken. I remember having some issues with the quest where you plant the bombs and not getting a reward and/or more quests. Or the dialogue was messed up. Something like that. If I can get the problem to repeat then I'll let you know the specifics.

That (the not being able to kill all the Raiders) sounds like the problem that I fixed. Still, do let me know the details.