Chapter 2: Enemy
Hysterical Womb
Hmm, how interesting to have both 'alien weapons' at once. I predict it's a sign of the times, that I'm in a time further in the future. Perhaps for these Enforcers, seeing a scatter rifle is like a soldier today seeing someone come after them with a Brown Bess
.
Oops. Enforcers with napalm cannons switch to a sprite of them with a scatter rifle for at least one of the frames they use.
The Pfhor ship in the landscape looked low quality.
As a matter of weapon balance, I would make the scatter gun's second trigger not use as much ammunition. The number of times I want to expend half a clip, 56 shots, are few and far between. 28 shots would be plenty.
A Friend In Need
Polygon 132 glitches: sometimes as you walk through it, you spontaneously teleport to the right.
I'm not sure if anything can be done about this, but I use a lot more trooper grenades than I do trooper bullets, because they're more accurate. I can't pick up more grenades unless I waste a clip of bullets. Thought it hasn't been an actual problem yet, since I can carry so many clips of both.
You used 2 landscape images to make it look like some panes of 'glass' on the ceiling were tinted purple, while others weren't. Very nice idea: I haven't seen that done before. However, the purple landscape was as bright as the untinted landscape, whereas tinting glass is supposed to make things darker. In other words, in Photoshop, the purple layer should've been set to multiply, rather than overlay or normal or whatever you used.
Hmm, the Juggernaut never activated. Even when a trooper went berserk and fired at him, he didn't wake up.
That bunker with visibly solid walls, where the Enforcers and Hunters shoot out at you, didn't make much sense to me. Okay, it took me by surprise, but that just shouldn't be physically possible.
Er...oh right. The S'pht are on my side in this level. Can't remember everything.
There's a lot of new stuff in this level: the return of the Hulk, a second fusion pistol, and the fusion cannon. I wonder if the second pistol should've been introduced earlier, so that it wouldn't be quickly overshadowed by the fusion cannon.
One pixel in the center of the fusion cannon's weapon-in-hand sprite is transparent when it shouldn't be. I assume this will be fixed with the coming graphics update.
Hmm, one of the green hunters ignored me and ran back the way I came, as if he were targeting something else.
It would appear you have to grenade jump to get up to polygon 783. If that's intentional, I personally don't think grenade jumping should be a required tactic.
I spent about an hour searching for that one narrow corridor that takes you to the chip insertion panel. Please make it stand out more. It was also only by luck that I happened to stop on one of the automatic exits. They look like teleporters, but I was waiting for Leela to give me a new message.
Unlucky For Some
Here's an idea: how about an animated landscape image? Make it flash once in a while from explosions hitting the shield. And by the way, kudos for effectively using fog with a working landscape image.
An oxygen dispenser...hmm, I wonder if that was put there because I'll need it, or simply because it fits with the story for this level (i.e. the Pfhor ships would have oxygen dispensers here and there).
Unpfhorseen
Okay, now
that was a panic situation. Drop in with a full squad of Juggernauts all around me. Friendlies be darned, just run the heck out of there! It's also pretty obvious this will be another branching level with 2 paths. My gut says rampancy=bad, so disobey Leela. But on the other hand, I actually do want to play all the levels.
That's odd, the lookers come after me, yet the wasps and drones don't. In fact, nobody attacks me in the big SW room with 2 switches, until I attack them.
Same with most Juggernauts...virtually no one is attacking me.
If you look closely, the shots of the Mother of all Hunters come out of its armpit. In other words, the firing position is below where it should be.
Typo: "That last thing I wanted was to have you as my enemy..." That should be The.
"These clones [of Tycho which the Pfhor use] lack any extensive personal memories" That doesn't sound right. The Pfhor re-animate Tycho for Marathon 2 and Infinity, do they not? And Tycho remembers things like the
Marathon, and Durandal and Leela. Those would qualify as extensive personal memories.
"So Hathor will flee, but where to?" "but to where?" would be better.
May The Pfharce Be With You
I like this level's design; it feels Pfhor-like.
Okay, I went through the square teleporter, killed the Enforcers on the ledges, and now I have a tiny amount of health. I can't jump back down into the slime, because I'll die before I can run to the shield recharger. Good thing there's no save terminal in this area. My advice is to place just one 1x recharger somewhere in that west wing of the ship.
"The fewer metastable personality constructs running around through time, the better." Leela isn't metastable, or else she wouldn't be in the jealous stage of Rampancy.
Pissing On The Corporation
Whew boy, was this level hard without a shield recharger. You basically have to 'vid it' by not getting hit.
There's a purple S'pht compiler on or adjacent to polygon 601. He's trapped halfway into the floor.
Okay, as often as you use Mothers of all Hunters, they are like a 3rd class of normal hunters, so I'd leave them as they are instead of making them always explode.
Texture the sides of polygon 856: if the door closes while you're to one side (which did happen by accident, not by me carefully testing every corner of the map), you see the untextured sides.
'Snipervision,' activated with F7, has been useful in Eternal. Why does it take about a full minute to turn it on and off?
The Living Receiver
Hmm, this time around I never noticed the specific opportunity to branch and avoid this level. I thought about running back to all the terminals, but thought it unlikely to change anything. It's already obvious why I'm here, because Hathor escaped. Now to figure out how to do it the right way.
So judging from the first terminal, PiD and Marathon happened in the same universe in Eternal. A W'rkncacnter lies sleeping in our own sun, and the version of Tycho running the Pfhor ships has fired the trih xeem at our sun. Apparently that "understanding" between the two Tychos didn't last or wasn't genuine. The landscape image for these levels now makes more sense, too.
No, no, no, no, no <grimace>. Please don't make me do combat with trip-o-vision and next to no health
Ah, I see it's not only the same spaceship, but the same area of the same spaceship. I.e. geometry is repeated like in the Electric Sheep.
Why are all the BoBs deaf and blind? I'm finding that in general, Eternal uses more deaf and blind flags than it really should; it should use more zone borders and monster triggers instead.
There's one of the 8 exposed circuits which you can destroy. I wonder what that does.
Unpfhorseen
My first time through this level, I spent a lot of time running back to the save terminal, something I haven't had to do in previous levels. I only opened up access to the north save terminal very late in the level. Since most players will have to run through this area twice, perhaps the switches could be manipulated so as to open that up earlier, or else the save terminal next to the chip insertion switches could be moved to a more central location.
Heh, I just realized Leela's icon resembles the icon found on shield rechargers. A subtle hint that she's a good guy
.
Typo: in Leela's exit terminal, armada is spelled armade.
So, it looks like I should have gone back and checked for alternative terminal messages. Leela is clearly still Rampant, so I probably will part with her instructions down the line, too. I feel silly, in a way, for being tricked by something as simple as moving a terminal message to a different terminal. But hey, that means the writer did his job by nudging me in the direction he wanted. That's my assumption anyway, that you're intended to take all the 'wrong' paths first.
The end of this level felt like it should be the end of the chapter.
My Kingdom Pfhor A Horse
It's not very clear on whether I should take out those juggernauts or not, since in the last few levels, it hasn't been worth it and they respawn endlessly. I didn't want to do the jumping puzzle with all that fire raining down on me, so I eventually decided they had to be taken out. Without this overpowered fusion rifle, I wouldn't stand a chance, although I didn't have enough fusion ammo for all of them.
You should make the long oval pillars which split the map into negative space; it would improve performance on this level, which is poor because the map is so huge and open. Plus it would help the aliens recognize they can't hit me when I'm hiding behind those pillars.
The first time I tried this level (and subsequent times until I gave up and tried it again another day), this level was ridiculously hard. Something needs to be done for balance. After finally getting through the grueling outdoor part, I think the best thing would be to teleport in a couple of health canisters, more fusion batteries, and/or more VacBoBs at a time. The VacBoBs are effective when there are enough of them to give the juggernauts multiple targets, but that seldom happened. I can't even get fusion batteries off of fallen VacBoBs, since they either fry or explode.
I expected to teleport directly into a ship, not outdoors, but perhaps I didn't read the terminal closely enough.
This level was a perfect example of how nice it would be to have the engine draw the map view one 'layer' at a time, to make it much more readable.
Burning Down The Corporation
Phew! I almost thought I screwed up and was sent to a previous level again. Although my instinct tells me there will be a third version of this level.
Huzzah, there's a shield recharger in this one!
I can't describe how much more enjoyable this level is than Pissing On The Corporation, between the shield rechargers and the S'pht 'Kr.
The 'Kr armada returns to Earth orbit. I'm still confused about locations, since K'lia never orbited Earth in the original games. When did the moon K'lia move to Earth orbit, and who put it there?
"Lets go" should be "Let's go."
Everything
seems to be in order?
In case things should go awry? Nuts, I know what that means
.
The World Is Hollow
Logically, the sides of the river really shouldn't be bluish. That's just water, it's not glowing blue light onto the banks. Though on the other hand, it does lend some color to an otherwise gray map.
Hmm, this terminal was too cryptic to decipher.
Trih xeem bad, but I already knew that. My mission, my 'real' mission not tied to an A.I.'s bidding but to saving the universe, is not yet clear.