Good to see this mod finished and released! 

just played a few levels. First, i'm curious why it only runs in darkplaces? Are there some quakec extensions it needs or something? All of the content seem pretty standard and engine-agnostic.

Second, this sort of "step on certain tiles only once, others exactly twice, etc." game usually benefits from being able to see the entire layout. Most such games feature top-down views. The first person view makes it difficult to plan ahead, and instead you sort of run around and try stuff to see what works. I realize it is a quake mod, and first person view is pretty much a given, how about this for a solution -- give the player some special jump pad tiles (or maybe all green tiles could be jump pads) and when you jump from that tile, you shoot way up so you can survey the entire scene. You'd restrict horizontal movement during the jump so that players can't use it move anywhere.

Third, there's a real need for the visual design to actually communicate the game. Color codes are arbitrary and communicate little -- i had to read the instructions to figure it out. The floaty bits you're collecting/touching are similarly arbitrary, except for the hourglass which is somewhat representative. The starlights could be replaced with something that you instinctively want to collect all of, like coins, or something you instinctively want to touch all of, like unlit torches (that light up when you touch them.) Tiles could be textured with useful icons, numbers, or something. How about having skulls on the red tiles, "1" on yellow, and "2" on white, "EXIT" on the blue, etc?

And, not only should the game-critical objects be given more visual attention, the floaty metal lamp things should be MUCH simplified -- why is most of the polygon and texel density devoted to objects that are completely gameplay-neutral? I understand they are there to prevent diagonal movement, but they could be replaced with simple boxes or pyramid shapes or something, so they don't distract the interactive, useful elements.

Sorry to be negative, but these issues seemed pretty major (except the darkplaces thing, which i can assume was for a reason.) 

just realized this wasn't actually posted by the original author. Well, CocoT, hope you see this. 

Original release thread here btw: http://forums.inside3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=960 

That's pretty much what I've been thinking since I saw the first screenshots on inside3D.

The actual premise of the game makes no sense for an FPS, because as you say - you can't think through the layout before committing. Which, if you think about it, is basically all you do with this kind of puzzle mechanic.

I'd also add that as well as mis-apportioned poly and texel density, the maps are simply choked with visual noise. Yeah, gigantic floating neon fortress thingies may look cool, but as a background they are really distracting.


I also googled up a page for the original game 'Stroke' with a few screenshots as well:

http://www.acid-play.com/download/stroke/

Even this short review observes that games of this type lack longevity.


I can see what CocoT was trying to do: grab a simple puzzle mechanic from somewhere and remake it as a cool looking FPS. In other words, do what Portal did. But I don't find it particularly appealing. Sorry :( 

good points metslime 

 

 

Oh and... about Darkplaces. The reason why it is the recommended engine is because of physics issues. Most engine won't allow you to step on another models (the platforms being ones) without sliding on top (and eventually off) them.
It runs smoothly enough for me... and when it comes to FilePlanet, well, I'd be glad to upload it somewhere else if you point to me way a place I can do so :) 

If that's the only reason to use Darkplaces, why not just make the platforms brush models? If it were just a common-or-garden variety func_plat or door then I guess it'd all be fine.

Then again I haven't played the mod, so I'm not sure if you're doing something funky with the platforms that would necessitate using an actual model. 

I use it - so far it's pure dynamite!

It also has a button to copy the url to your clipboard, either as a <href> or not, so its pretty easy to use.

People dont need to an account with Mediafire.com to download stuff either, and it has a built in image viewer... 

Mr Fribbles: I don't really have the knowledge to know for sure how it would work, to tell you the truth. I guess the thing I want to be sure about is the fact I can play with skins, transparency and solidity.

RickyT23 : Muchos gracias for the tip! I've just uploaded it :)

Here is the new link: http://www.mediafire.com/?fj9c1u9s5f3
(contains the "hotfix", by the way) 

There is the http://shub-hub.com especially for Quake files. ;)
password is ilovetheshubhub 

Thanks, Spirit! :)
I had tried earlier, in fact, but without logging in and it wouldn't upload. Now it works fine!

Here is the new link: http://shub-hub.com/files/mods_singleplayer/Spacewalk.zip 

Most engine won't allow you to step on another models (the platforms being ones) without sliding on top (and eventually off) them.

This is actually pretty easy to fix. Give the thing you're supposed to be stepping on a touch function that restores the FL_ONGROUND flag each frame and you're good to go. I assume that these platforms must have some kind of touch function already that you can incorporate this into... 

I've looked into that and will look further in the future, but I'm afraid it's going to be a little complicated. In most engines I tried, the other problem was one of touching the platform several times as soon as it was touched (and therefore die as soon as the level starts). I don't really know what it is about Darkplaces that makes the whole thing work. I'll try to investigate...

By the way, when it comes to top-down view, I just wanted to point out (I had completely forgotten about this) that you can actually access some form of camera view by using "impulse 115". You can see what it looks like on the following thread: http://forums.inside3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=960&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15
As I explain in that same thread, I'm not really a big fan and it will prove rather bad when it comes to 3D lay-outs, but I'll work on polishing it (credits for the original cam code goes to ShockMan, by the way) for the next release since people seem to really want it.