dod_kolsch

    I've been so busy I haven't had a chance to check this map out to the degree it deserves. I did however have a walk around in game (I don't play DoD), read this thread and I read your process diary for the map. Here's my 2 cents:

    + I liked your approach to map release, building anticipation and having a unified release date.

    + Very ambitious map with tons of custom content in typical Hessi and Warby style

    + Beautiful architecture, I felt the scale was appropriate even though others disagree

    + I thought the building damage looked awesome

    + A structured development process. I don't play DoD but it sounds like plenty of forethought and testing went into the layout

    - Generally not dirty enough, particularly around the battle damaged areas

    - Noticed some photographic artifacts on textures. Think they could have been refined

    - Areas of player clipping around map outskirts without an obsticle blocking the player

    What went wrong?

    Noticed a lot of negative comments in this thread and disappointment on your behalf Hessi. I think you made the playtests too exclusive. I didn't see any crits in this thread between you releasing a beta and the final version. Any crits people had should have at least come to light during beta.

    From Hessi's site

    "As I mentioned above the clan didn't respond anymore and all the other clans I contacted didn't show that much interest".

    If the community isn't interested this would have triggered alarm bells for me. I would have thought:

    A. Is my work shit?

    B. Is there an active community for this game?

    Considering your solid reputation and the map itself, I'm tipping it's the latter.

    regarding the playtests. like 2 months before the release we had about 4 playtests of dod_kolsch with the E.i.B. Clan which is a german DOD:S clan that hosts several game servers. they helped finding bugs and general flaws. the dod:s community is small, i think we all know that but since i am dedicated to the game and warby and i started the map years ago you cant actually blame us for mapping for a game that has no community. regarding not having public playtests: there was one big reason for not doing so. probably you can figure that one out. maybe it correlates with my rant about the Source SDK's tools and developers?

    in any way your post was a quality feedback. i really appreciate a feedback that consists of more than 2 sentences, combines positive and negative points (mark on the plural here) and giving probable solutions! this post could be linked as "how to give critics!".

    Glad you liked the feedback

    Sadly the DoD community isn't the only one suffering. Seems like custom maps and game mods don't draw the crowds they did 5-10 years ago. I did some alpha testing for DIPRIP over the last 2 weeks. They provided my friends and I with a questionnaire leaving us with no excuse for retarded feedback. I intend to post a questionnaire in my map thread when I release a beta, leaving no excuse for lousy crits.

    I can think of innumerable reasons for a restricted beta and initially intended to do the same. I've decided to try the oposite though and mass distribute the beta. As I said I really liked the way you co-ordinated the release and had organised servers available on that day, I'm going to steal that idea

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