Originally posted by Kengo
Because I'm a moron :) Sorry about that...Still, thanks all the same man, you're too kind :D Do you want me to begin with the walkthrough, cause you know flattery will REALLY get me moving!
Ah, come on, Kengo. I left you the perfect excuse to just, coolly, state: "I didn't have Editing tools installed because I wanted to test my own level on a non-contaminated, clean computer without additional models that most non-mapper players won't anyway have."
About the breakables. I didn't really need them to be breakables, but thanks anyway, Wedge, for the suggestion. I'm just a lazy fool, who didn't want to clip ordinary misc_models and thus made them invincible misc_model_breakables that are auto-clipped... Well, I got what I deserved. Now they are misc_models and work great even without Editing tools.
I got a superb beta report from Clu. I believe he erred and thought I was also making a graduation work. It was so good, professional and formal beta report that I was amazed there wasn't a final grade attached to the end :)
Kengo, I'll send you email later about the walk-through. You don't need that much help, but perhaps some little note.
Thank you all for the invaluable feedback I have got. It's much more than I feel I deserved. This campaign will soon be finished, and it's partly because of your efforts to help me out with it.
I don't want to over-hype this, but I have to say that after playing this campaign all the way through, it is one of the most polished and fun JO levels I have played. It seems like it was developed by Raven, but it actually surpasses the shipped JO game in certain areas (I know, I promised not to hype, but I can't help it).
Architecture and layout is pretty jaw-dropping in my eyes, and it is all lit beautifully. Combat and story pacing are well balanced and highlighted by some very clever puzzles.
Well done, Lassev, and thanks again for letting me take a run-through. :D
-clu
Originally posted by clu
I don't want to over-hype this, but I have to say that after playing this campaign all the way through, it is one of the most polished and fun JO levels I have played. It seems like it was developed by Raven, but it actually surpasses the shipped JO game in certain areas (I know, I promised not to hype, but I can't help it).
Architecture and layout is pretty jaw-dropping in my eyes, and it is all lit beautifully. Combat and story pacing are well balanced and highlighted by some very clever puzzles.
My complete agreement! This level has all you could want - excellent level design, varied and enjoyable gameplay, a good storyline, great cutscenes and a polished feel. This level is something special!
I imagine this post will be one of the very last, before this campaign is released. I have made all the corrections Kengo suggested (although I only made one of puzzles only just a little bit easier). I also implemented some things Clu suggested, but his report being so extensive I cannot make all the changes (my ambition doesn't go that high, of which I'm eternally grateful).
That being said I can also tell now officially that Project Lighthouse is 100% complete and as finished as it's likely to be, when you (hopefully) download it at PCGameMods. However, as PCGameMods seems to be in some kind of a halted state, there isn't a reason to try to submit it right now. Perhaps Eldritch will one day tell what's going on, or if this is related to his missing computer (the fact that also prevents him from testing Project Lighthouse).
Thanks, Kengo and Clu, for over-hyping this level :) This level surpasses the original Raven levels in the difficulty of puzzles, hardly in anything else.
Glad to hear it's done. :)
Here's the status on PCGM: the lack of files is partly due to my computer, but I did train some people to help me upload files while I couldn't. However, Sergio has asked for no more file postings until PCGM 2.0, the brand new version of the site, is finished. It really looks good and will simplify some tasks for people that come to the site, like submitting files (and even screenshots).
Sorry for the delay. :o
Great news Lassev :)
Please just give me today to finish the walkthrough, I've just got the first full level done (needs to be worked on to improve it, but I've got everything the player has to do laid down). I'll be finished by the end of the day.
El, great to hear about PCGM 2.0, any idea how long till it is finished man?
Originally posted by lassev
This level surpasses the original Raven levels in the difficulty of puzzles, hardly in anything else. OK, new rule: no more modesty allowed! :D
Everyone will judge for themselves, but I'll call Lighthouse what it is: an excellent campaign! Congrats on finishing, Lassev. I can't wait to play the final version.
Did you post it to Massassi and JK2files as well?
-clu
Originally posted by Kengo
El, great to hear about PCGM 2.0, any idea how long till it is finished man?
Shouldn't be too much longer. Serg is working pretty hard on it.
WOOHOO! Way to go lassev! Can't wait to play this dude.
Originally posted by clu
I don't want to over-hype this, but I have to say that after playing this campaign all the way through, it is one of the most polished and fun JO levels I have played. It seems like it was developed by Raven, but it actually surpasses the shipped JO game in certain areas (I know, I promised not to hype, but I can't help it).
Hey, at least the hype is coming as the level is announced complete, instead of way at the early stages.
Lassev, you're gonna let us know as soon as massassi or jk2files or jkii.net or pcgm post this, right? Right??
Um. I just received Kengo's walk-through. Eh, even its existence will give a hint that this campaign is not of the run-through swinging you saber -type.
However, some things Kengo has hinted about along the way have made me, if somewhat slowly, think that the last puzzle of Project Lighthouse might be harder than it should be. From the point of an average player (and that's the most important player) it might even pose such a bother that he might consider just exiting the game never finishing the level! And that's shocking news, my friends! That's the Worst Case Scenario.
Clu, however, solved the puzzle without a word, but he was so duty-bound with the beta report that I cannot be certain if he made it out of necessity, not out of fun.
Man, this was unforeseen to me! I can basically make the last puzzle far easier just be remaking some textures. The puzzle will, perhaps, go very lame with that, but even that is better than the alternative.
Well. Now I have two alternatives: to leave it and live with it, or make it easier. What do you say, Wedge and Shotokan, if I bundle the newest version and let you play it through to see, if the last puzzle can be solved? I would not need beta reports, just this one bit of important information. You could have the level tomorrow.
Without knowing anything about the level I say keep it as is. You made it for the community, yes but you made it for yourself too. At least that's what I think. ;)
Originally posted by lassev
From the point of an average player (and that's the most important player) it might even pose such a bother that he might consider just exiting the game never finishing the level! And that's shocking news, my friends! That's the Worst Case Scenario.
Clu, however, solved the puzzle without a word, but he was so duty-bound with the beta report that I cannot be certain if he made it out of necessity, not out of fun.
And that my friend is because Clu is a clever guy, and I'm a below-average gamer! I just emailed you, I don't think you should tone it down personally, I think if you just include a small picture of the final code in the walkthrough, then if people are unable to do it, they can get to the end. That to me is better than toning it down for everyone like me...
Come, on, Kengo! You are hardly below-average player. Below-average would never make his own levels for any game.
The problem is not that the puzzle in itself would be so hard. The problem is that solving it will take some serious thinking. It's like some of the IQ tests you have seen. Not a very hard one, although made harder by the fact that of 6 figures 2 is missing. You can still solve it, I know, but it's not as easy as just randomly choosing some figures of the alternatives and voila!
And you can't, Kengo, suggest me to keep it, if you didn't like solving it. How could I know, if Clu is the only person in the world who will play my level through because of one puzzle?
I might put this level in its current form available for Wedge and Shotokan - promise is a promise, but still I think I will scale down the difficulty somehow. Most likely I will just keep the puzzle but make the figures easier and the right alternative more obvious.
Of course I could also use the difficulty settings to make the Padawan puzzle easy and Jedi puzzle the one that is in use now. I must study the issue. It might pay off, if it's easy to implement.
I have just submitted the second version of the walkthrough Lassev. Personally, my feelings are that making the puzzle hard is good for several reasons. Firstly, it is fitting for the climactic end puzzle to be the hardest. Secondly, making it hard makes it more challenging, more worthwhile. Thirdly, I never think any level should be set for the lowest common denominator. If you have a walkthrough with the answer in if you want it (as I have added) and can't solve the problem, then you are set! I am sorry I didn't include it in the first version, this was a mistake.
So I suggest you keep it as it is, but its your level and in the end down to you!
*Kengo lights a firework display. It goes into the air and the words "Good luck Lassev!" light up.*
"Funny, it was supposed to say 'Buy one review at JK2Review, get two free.' Hmmm.........."
Originally posted by lassev
Clu, however, solved the puzzle without a word, but he was so duty-bound with the beta report that I cannot be certain if he made it out of necessity, not out of fun. I am not a clever guy, (Lassev, you of all people should know that by now :D) and I thought the final puzzle was quite fun and rewarding (not a pain). My vote is to leave it in.
I had to take a step back from the game to have a think about it, but I thought it was one of the better puzzles since it fit in so well with the surroundings and circumstances of why you were trying to solve it.
Regardless of your decision, I'm sure it will be just as fun for any gamer, average or otherwise. Again, awesome work and congrats.
-clu
Hey man, I'd be happy to take a look at it for you...but I really don't think you should sweat it that much. If there's a good brain teaser in there, it'll make for a nice change of pace, and if the plot is a good one, it'll keep players hooked and plugging away till they solve the thing and get the great climactic reward at the end, which is the best kind of puzzle. If you only have to tweak some textures (I'm guessing with text or color-codes or seomthing), is there a way to find a "happy medium?" Supply half the solution in the "easy" way, and half of it in the "hard" way, so that you can get players started, but still make them think? Or, the idea about changing the difficulty of the puzzle with the difficulty setting of the game is a good one, and allows you to cater to the audience more. It's totally up to you.
All right. This is what happened: I made the puzzle a little bit easier. Now even other people than Clu should be able to solve it. It's still a puzzle, all right, but not so hard that it would annoy anybody enough to leave the game.
I encountered a couple of level flow terminating bugs (no idea what they were, and they didn't reappear, when I tweaked some scripts and played the level again). Yet, that's something that needs to be confirmed before the release of the level.
Otherwise everything should now be ready for some serious action, so to speak.
And Wedge, Clu might not agree on the "climactic reward", but you'll see... Oh, you will see...
Ok lassev. I've played through some of the level and all I can say is... IT ROCKS! Dude I loved the way you recycled Kyle's and Jan's voices. Very well done. Also the architecture, enemy placement, and overall map was done very well. I noticed some inproper grammar in the beginning scroll, but it doesn't really matter. I haven't noticed any bugs so far (I've only been able to play in the beginning cause my computer is having problems) and if there are, it didn't detract from the playing experience.
Hehe I almost died in the first room, because I didn't see the third turret. But it was good the droid didn't fire much...
Good work lassev!
P.S. The new Kyle skin is cool :D
Originally posted by Shotokan
Ok lassev. I've played through some of the level and all I can say is... IT ROCKS! Dude I loved the way you recycled Kyle's and Jan's voices. Very well done.
It's a good thing Kyle was never such an intelligent fellow. You'll see later the painful limits of the recycling of old sound files.
I noticed some inproper grammar in the beginning scroll, but it doesn't really matter.
Ah, well, I'm somewhat aware of them, but it was a huge bother to make the .tga in the first place without such programs as Adobe Illustrator. I guess I must go through that work again and see what can be done to save myself from humiliation. Hmm, perhaps PSP 8 has some new options. I must check it out.
P.S. The new Kyle skin is cool :D
I can only offer my sincerest thanks to Infinity_Blade for allowing me to use the skin. I doubt I could have released this level with the bantha herder look.
Go and play the level through. I'm eager to hear, if you encountered any big bugs. I saw one just last evening, although it didn't reappear and I've no idea of the cause.
I got up to midway through Lighthouse_2 last night. Very good job overall, lassev. My comments thus far:
<snip>
I'll be away this weekend, but I'll probably have more comments for you early next week.
Thanks for the comments, Wedge. I appreciate your feedback very much.
. On the "top" floor of Lighthouse_1, there is a control room lit in green and a control room with a forcefield blocking two officers. The beams in the corridor outside both these rooms continue right in front of the doors, and when you look out to the corridor from inside one of those control rooms, you can see the caulked inside of those beams!
This is one of those errors that you can see about a hudred times and still you never remember to correct it. Perhaps I now will. Hopefully.
Otherwise, as this was an unpublished work, I would ask you not to post here comments about puzzles, or routes to take when playing, or that kind of stuff. It may eat away the fun of somebody, who hasn't yet played this campaign.
You gotta remember this is a single player level, and it has no other value than surprises. But thanks anyway. I will most likely do something to those things you pointed out. Any further comments you can send me as private messages or by email (my email address is in the readme).
Oh, okay, whoops. I'll just edit that stuff out before anybody sees it... ;)
The nasty old error G_FindConfigstringIndex made a surprising come-back just last evening. I assume it to be a direct result of the changes (additions) I made when following suggestions from Clu and, more recently, Wedge. Just a few new textures and the last straw to break the camel's back was there. As I don't want to remove those textures, I'm either forced to remove some other (the most likely way to proceed) or perhaps remove the Easter Egg - a deed that would certainly solve this problem once and for all. However, the latter is hardly my prefered solution given how much time I spent on the Easter Egg in the first place.
Yeah, I expect to release this level next week, and there's nothing in sight that might prevent it from happening. I'm all too happy to get rid of it.
Beta report sent. Sounds like you've reached that stage where you just want it to be finished so you can finally let go! I certainly reached that stage with Occupation 2, I imagine most people who spend a long time on a project of any kind do, and man yours must be one of the most worked upon projects for JO. I shows, this level basically rules :)
Hey I can't wait to play this lassev, and about your intro scroll, just send me to text if you want to and I will create an intro for you with the *real* Star Wars text and what not, plus save you a little time...just take a look at the intro in Occupation 2, that's my work.
Thanks for the offer Louis, but I think the intro scroll should be quite OK. The font I'm using should be the right one. There was some issues only about the grammar in that text, as English is not my native language, and so it is not guaranteed the text would be as polished as it might otherwise be.
The text was a nuicanse for me to make just because PSP7 didn't have the option to align both left and right to be even (still haven't checked PSP8, and probably won't). The scroll should be perfectly understandable, and I'm loath to change it, as I'm at this point loath to do anything with Lighthouse I don't absolutely have to do. There are still hiding in the shadows some level flow terminating bugs that I should isolate and remove once and for all. Those are the things I'm concentrating on.
Project Lighthouse contains as complicated levels as any Raven build, I suspect, and thus a million things could go wrong and eventually had to go. No matter what, I'm still planning to release the campaign this week.
Good to hear that it's coming out soon. I'm eagerly anticipating this. Good to see that Jedi Outcast Single Player hasn't been forgotten in the hubbub surrounding Jedi Academy. With the Colosseum mod, Occupation 2, and now Project Lighthouse, Jedi Outcast's gonna go out with a BANG!
K lassev I played the campaign all the way through... Haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary. But of course I'm not a pro yet... *ahem* wedge *ahem*. I'd like to congratulate you on a well thought out SP campaign. *claps*
It'll happen tomorrow. Might have been today, but there's still a couple of scripts I wan't to polish a little bit, play the whole campaign through once more with a critical eye, and make some changes to a couple of text files.
I didn't encounter any bugs at all the last few times I played the levels through, so I'm keeping my word (would be about the first time, too) and release the map this week. Tomorrow. Then it depends on Eldritch how soon PCGameMods will deign to post it :)
Just in time. :) I still have to find some time to play Occupation2 again but now the other route, then I can write the review of it. So you have 2-3 days before I will have chance to play your level. :D
Originally posted by Leslie Judge
Just in time. :) I still have to find some time to play Occupation2 again but now the other route, then I can write the review of it. So you have 2-3 days before I will have chance to play your level. :D
That's exactly what I had in mind. I wouldn't dream of releasing the level, if you weren't prepared to receive it. It would be completely impossible and thus very inconsiderate.
See, guys? That is the correct behaviour. :D
It's done. I can hardly believe it myself, but the file has been submitted to PCGameMods (well, it didn't demand Eldritch's approval after all, thanks to their clever scripts).
I still encountered some nasty bugs last evening. I'll be damned before I know where all those unexpected bugs arise from. I make a change to some minor script somewhere else in the map and the next moment some totally unrelated (so I thought) cinematic ceases to work.
But now it's there.
omg dude im downloading right now, cant wait to play it
I just finished lighthouse, and i agree completely with everyone who said this map was really good. it took me about 2 hours,(referring to the walkthrough 2-3 times ;) ) but im finished! great work lassev, but i have one question. how is the player suppose to figure out the final code without using the walkthrough? just keep changing it and failing until you get the right one?
I did it without the walkthrough...so did all the other testers. There's a pattern to the code, you just have to figure it out.
(and DONT post the answer here, or use the spoiler tag, leave it for others to figure out.)
im downloading it now, been looking at this thread and hope it is as good as it sounds
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAA
Occupation 2, Project Lighthouse....all the good levels are on pcgamemods.com. AND PCGAMEMODS.COM IS DOWN!!!
At least for me, but for you guys it seems to be ok.
When wedge posted the link for occupation 2, I was able to get it. Let me try that here:
http://www.pcgamemods.com/2150)
wow, you know what? that actually worked....
it seems, for some reason, posting a link on lucasforum,s is the only way to get pcgamemods files.
THANK YOU LUCASFORUMS!!!!
and sorry for the double post.
Very good campaign. My compliments. It took me a while to figure out more than several of the puzzles, and I like those sorts of things.
Well, it took a while, what with problems with the download, to losing the cd, to distractions, but I finally got to play some of it. I love it so far.
Thank you all for you compliments and feedback. Some people have encountered technical problems with Lighthouse, some have played it succesfully through without so much trouble.
It is indeed a very complicated level considering all the scripted events and functions. Unfortunately there's enough variability in the way the game behaves that it seems the level flow cannot be guaranteed at 100%. I don't know how Raven succeeded it with their own levels, but then again, they are professionals.
I submitted the level also to Massassi. Hopefully it got through and they will post it for the pleasure of all the frequent visitors of that great site.
I tried to update the file at PCGM with the version 1.1, but for some reason the upload script didn't allow overwrite, and thus it did not succeed. I hope Eldritch will give me a clue how to do it right.
After many problems version 1.2 is finally out at PCGameMods. This time I hope the post will also stay there, and be not removed for unforeseen technical problems.