- Submitted by BenB
- Creation date
Reviews
Was hungry for Drake content. Was happily surprised seeing Drake content in 2026.
Being a first release it's not bad, I'm honestly surprised you went with something as ambitious as Drake for a first set of maps, but there seems to be an pretty solid understanding of the mod's mechanics.
Like others have said, first thing off the bat is that maps are super blocky and room-to-room, like a super old 1996/7 map. That comes with time, I did notice a number of odd leaks in the geometry, a little too many to count but I know off the bat in the first level there's one by one of the first hedges you pass.
Biggest thing to improve on with geometry is really just the spacing. A lot of times, there's a lot of awkward, empty space. Making things tighter and smaller is better for quick manueverability. Big example is that section in episode 4 with the big lava pit where you had to hop on a moving platform. Does it have to be that long? The sole episode 3 map is a bit of an offender in this regard too, both outside and inside the main pyramid in the middle. Alternatively, adding combat encounters in these areas is a good way to keep someone engaged, but with that...
... Ammo/health pickups. Pickup distribution felt super weird here. I'd find myself seeing more than enough health pickups in a small room with a couple enforcers and modified grunts, not a tough fight. A few rooms down the line, I'm fighting Armagon, getting my ass kicked, and scrambling to find-- no pickups in the room with the whole ahh boss in it. Putting pickups near harder rooms is better, and more ammo was often needed. Drake caps rockets at 50. There were almost zero armor pickups throughout the whole thing. It felt a little awkward then running into a whole bunch of health pickups together, like an "omigosh so sorry here's a million HP!" It feels a little messy, spacing out healthkits a little better (whilst putting more by harder fights) makes things flow smoother.
On account of weapons, I found myself using the vanilla repertoire more than anything else I basically only got special weapons from enemy drops, which was unintentional. Drake offers a lot of cool weapons, but it's easy for both mappers and players to use the same vanilla weapons. Forcing more unconventional weapons like the MIRV/Sidewinder whilst not providing a regular RL for a bit is an example of challenging players with the Drake arsenal. Of course, with a lack of cell pickups minus those huge panic drops in the penultimate level, the new cell weapons weren't of much use.
Secrets were alright, heck even quite good for someone's first map. You have a good grasp of using breakables, although I recommend more small cracks in 'em in the future. It's more or less a standard practice, and I think that would help greatly with the room in episode 4 where you had to break the 4 beams on the ceiling to drop the big drill. I had no idea what to do until I started firing rockets haphazardly around me out of boredom (shrinking that room would also help a little, even compared to the drill, it's super big). Was a little sad some of the big vent systems in episode 4 didn't house any secrets, a lot of missed potential there. Good to see breakable secrets and one behind the portraits in the castle map. I think it'd be cool if more unique Drake items (ie special armors, heart of darkness, tome of power) were in secrets, as well as special ways to access secrets with things like the boots of levitation or...
The grappling hook. You get it pretty early on, but it seems like everyone forgets about it. It's good for moving through aforementioned giant maps or annoying mobs of allied AI, but having boss arenas that have areas that you could grapple to for strategy or hiding secrets behind grapple-exclusive spots would've made things interesting.
Last thing I'd like to share is my opinion on the bosses. As others have said, too hard. This mostly stems back to the issue with resource pickups mentioned earlier. Biggest examples are the black dragon in the third-ish map, the gugs and Armagon fights in the final prison, and the final level. The dragon especially-- how the heck would you even beat it? All the pickups in the map are not enough. I had to go god, quad damage, impulse 9, and then use the blizzard cannon to finally kill it. Without cheats, I ended up just running. In the prison, I was running very low on health, even with the all the allied AI on my side. The final boss... hooo boy. The scarce weapon pickups at the start weren't enough ammo, and basically no health pickups. That enemy in the center is a Sha'Vile, meaning it's got the hitscan attack of an archvile, with way more range than a regular Shambler's. You are being attacked by vores, shamblers, and a sha'vile... in an arena with zero cover. You have to bait infighting to have a fighting chance. As per the CEO fight, zero health pickups, zero armor... that's when I went full god, quad, MIRV... the arena itself is empty and blank, another way to minimize all that empty dead space is adding cover alongside enemy encounters. Just a few pillars isn't enough against an enemy of that speed and intelligence, never mind varied arsenal. Sure you have a crapton of allies, but it's important to remember that their navigation AI is jank, their weapons are weak, and they basically inevitably die. In episode 3, they all started telefragging themselves as they entered the portal to the top of the pyramid (see image) I know it can feel cool and even goofy having so many allies, but it kind of just feels awkward when you do most of the fighting + they inevitably die + you struggle walking through all of them. I think Tronyn himself only used about 4-5 allies at a time in the handful of maps where he included them.
All in all though, I hope all this helps if you're still working on this, or choose to make more Drake content in the future. Even Tronyn's first releases weren't perfect. If anything, I'd say look over the readmes in the devkit folders for Drake to look at the health values of enemies and ammo counts/weapon gimmicks, and if you haven't already, play through ARWOP, Unforgiven, Something Wicked, etc. that lead up to Drake's creation. It might provide a good picture of solid encounter design. Good work.
Being a first release it's not bad, I'm honestly surprised you went with something as ambitious as Drake for a first set of maps, but there seems to be an pretty solid understanding of the mod's mechanics.
Like others have said, first thing off the bat is that maps are super blocky and room-to-room, like a super old 1996/7 map. That comes with time, I did notice a number of odd leaks in the geometry, a little too many to count but I know off the bat in the first level there's one by one of the first hedges you pass.
Biggest thing to improve on with geometry is really just the spacing. A lot of times, there's a lot of awkward, empty space. Making things tighter and smaller is better for quick manueverability. Big example is that section in episode 4 with the big lava pit where you had to hop on a moving platform. Does it have to be that long? The sole episode 3 map is a bit of an offender in this regard too, both outside and inside the main pyramid in the middle. Alternatively, adding combat encounters in these areas is a good way to keep someone engaged, but with that...
... Ammo/health pickups. Pickup distribution felt super weird here. I'd find myself seeing more than enough health pickups in a small room with a couple enforcers and modified grunts, not a tough fight. A few rooms down the line, I'm fighting Armagon, getting my ass kicked, and scrambling to find-- no pickups in the room with the whole ahh boss in it. Putting pickups near harder rooms is better, and more ammo was often needed. Drake caps rockets at 50. There were almost zero armor pickups throughout the whole thing. It felt a little awkward then running into a whole bunch of health pickups together, like an "omigosh so sorry here's a million HP!" It feels a little messy, spacing out healthkits a little better (whilst putting more by harder fights) makes things flow smoother.
On account of weapons, I found myself using the vanilla repertoire more than anything else I basically only got special weapons from enemy drops, which was unintentional. Drake offers a lot of cool weapons, but it's easy for both mappers and players to use the same vanilla weapons. Forcing more unconventional weapons like the MIRV/Sidewinder whilst not providing a regular RL for a bit is an example of challenging players with the Drake arsenal. Of course, with a lack of cell pickups minus those huge panic drops in the penultimate level, the new cell weapons weren't of much use.
Secrets were alright, heck even quite good for someone's first map. You have a good grasp of using breakables, although I recommend more small cracks in 'em in the future. It's more or less a standard practice, and I think that would help greatly with the room in episode 4 where you had to break the 4 beams on the ceiling to drop the big drill. I had no idea what to do until I started firing rockets haphazardly around me out of boredom (shrinking that room would also help a little, even compared to the drill, it's super big). Was a little sad some of the big vent systems in episode 4 didn't house any secrets, a lot of missed potential there. Good to see breakable secrets and one behind the portraits in the castle map. I think it'd be cool if more unique Drake items (ie special armors, heart of darkness, tome of power) were in secrets, as well as special ways to access secrets with things like the boots of levitation or...
The grappling hook. You get it pretty early on, but it seems like everyone forgets about it. It's good for moving through aforementioned giant maps or annoying mobs of allied AI, but having boss arenas that have areas that you could grapple to for strategy or hiding secrets behind grapple-exclusive spots would've made things interesting.
Last thing I'd like to share is my opinion on the bosses. As others have said, too hard. This mostly stems back to the issue with resource pickups mentioned earlier. Biggest examples are the black dragon in the third-ish map, the gugs and Armagon fights in the final prison, and the final level. The dragon especially-- how the heck would you even beat it? All the pickups in the map are not enough. I had to go god, quad damage, impulse 9, and then use the blizzard cannon to finally kill it. Without cheats, I ended up just running. In the prison, I was running very low on health, even with the all the allied AI on my side. The final boss... hooo boy. The scarce weapon pickups at the start weren't enough ammo, and basically no health pickups. That enemy in the center is a Sha'Vile, meaning it's got the hitscan attack of an archvile, with way more range than a regular Shambler's. You are being attacked by vores, shamblers, and a sha'vile... in an arena with zero cover. You have to bait infighting to have a fighting chance. As per the CEO fight, zero health pickups, zero armor... that's when I went full god, quad, MIRV... the arena itself is empty and blank, another way to minimize all that empty dead space is adding cover alongside enemy encounters. Just a few pillars isn't enough against an enemy of that speed and intelligence, never mind varied arsenal. Sure you have a crapton of allies, but it's important to remember that their navigation AI is jank, their weapons are weak, and they basically inevitably die. In episode 3, they all started telefragging themselves as they entered the portal to the top of the pyramid (see image) I know it can feel cool and even goofy having so many allies, but it kind of just feels awkward when you do most of the fighting + they inevitably die + you struggle walking through all of them. I think Tronyn himself only used about 4-5 allies at a time in the handful of maps where he included them.
All in all though, I hope all this helps if you're still working on this, or choose to make more Drake content in the future. Even Tronyn's first releases weren't perfect. If anything, I'd say look over the readmes in the devkit folders for Drake to look at the health values of enemies and ammo counts/weapon gimmicks, and if you haven't already, play through ARWOP, Unforgiven, Something Wicked, etc. that lead up to Drake's creation. It might provide a good picture of solid encounter design. Good work.
B
BenB
Thanks a lot for the review! This was my first serious mapping project, so I know there are plenty of rough edges, but I'm glad the maps stayed engaging and didn't fall to much into some of the common Drake pitfalls you mentioned. Also happy to hear you enjoyed the enemy-vs-enemy battles. I learned a ton while making this pack, and your feedback gives me a lot of motivation to keep improving. Thanks for playing! 
Quite impressive for a 'first'!
The sheer amount of work to make a multi-map pack... my respect.
The maps themselves: well, i can see the learning curve. In general, the earliest maps are blocky, have bad lighting, bad texture alignment, are a bit oversimple, some have the same plot line and so on. But they are gradually improving, and the imagination is there!
Allow me to suggest that You find 2 - 4 beta testers; then go through the maps, one by one and get them improved and/or debugged. Some input from friends can really move stuff.
I'm very happy to have You in the mapping community, and i look forward to see ver.1.0 !
Thanks for all Your work, and thanks for sharing!
The sheer amount of work to make a multi-map pack... my respect.
The maps themselves: well, i can see the learning curve. In general, the earliest maps are blocky, have bad lighting, bad texture alignment, are a bit oversimple, some have the same plot line and so on. But they are gradually improving, and the imagination is there!
Allow me to suggest that You find 2 - 4 beta testers; then go through the maps, one by one and get them improved and/or debugged. Some input from friends can really move stuff.
I'm very happy to have You in the mapping community, and i look forward to see ver.1.0 !
Thanks for all Your work, and thanks for sharing!
I’m really glad you enjoyed the Drake content and found the overall use of the mod interesting. There are definitely a number of things in your feedback that I want to look at for a future iteration, particularly resource distribution, encounter balance, and making better use of the grappling hook. I’ll also have another look at the boss encounters and see if I can make them a bit more approachable without losing too much of the challenge. I’ll also revisit the villagers getting telefragged in Episode 3.
I think some of the other points are more a matter of personal preference. I actually really like playing alongside the friendly AI. I was trying to evoke a larger-scale story and campaign with Whistleblower, so some of the larger spaces and the number of friendly characters were intentional. While there are definitely things I can improve within that style, I probably won’t change the overall direction too much :) That being said, I will try to think about ways to keep the player more engaged in some of the quieter parts and see how to improve the overall flow.
Thanks again for taking the time to play through the whole thing and write all of this up. I genuinely appreciate it, and there’s definitely some good stuff here for me to take forward.