: In terms of map editing, there's very little I would change here beyond the
: changes already made to Tastes Like Evil (no infinite beetles, extra
: pattern buffer). However, we can't avoid the question of what to do about
: the Reaver Fusion Mace any longer. After thinking about it for a while,
: there are a few possible solutions to the problem:
: Leave the fusion mace as-is. The game becomes too easy if the player invests
: some time in building up health, since I'm sure it's not possible to
: enforce an upper limit. I personally feel that the presence of this
: ability does not detract from the game all that much if one is playing for
: the story's sake, and that the time required to charge up to
: near-invulnerability would put off many players who consider this (but see
: idea #3).
In fact it takes *much* less time to increase your health if you walk into - and face - a wall when charging. The charging becomes nearly 100% reliable. You can get a full bar of health in nearly a minute.
: Tweak the levels so that it's much harder to get some time alone to charge
: up indefinitely. It would be difficult to do this without making the game
: much harder in general.
That's a better idea.
: Make the fusion mace significantly less powerful, so that gaining a
: ridiculous amount of health takes much longer. However, this would not
: prevent cheating outright, just make it more difficult, and it would also
: make the game more difficult if the player did *not* spend a lot of time
: building up health.
: Remove the issue entirely by giving the second trigger some other function
: that does not recharge health. We would then have to provide health by
: some other means, placing powerups or rechargers throughout future levels.
: An idea stolen from American McGee (freak): Every kill earns you a small amount of
: health. This would be done by making every monster drop an item that the
: mace's recharger function would use as ammo. This is, however, a fairly
: bizarre gameplay mechanic for a Marathon scenario (even more so than
: anything else in RED), and it would be difficult to communicate what's
: going on and how to use it to the player without breaking the fourth wall
: (granted the fusion mace recharger has this problem already).
:Say the player is consuming the corpse (eew) or taking energy from the dispersed psionic energy (a la Sytem Shock 2), or something like that. Great idea.
: Comments? Other ideas?
One complaint I had about the weapons in Red in Ch.3 was the imbalance - I found I was using a certain weapon (The one which hits in a vertical line) the most because it was by far the most effective, except another weapon you get later which hits everyone around you in a circle. As a result, I found I was sometimes running out of one of the weapons (It did happen!), and since you need the hitting in a circle weapon to finish the last level (Hitting certain switches), this kinda sucks.
: Now is probably also a good time to mention the single change to be made on
: Up From The Depths: Write a proper exit terminal for the giant Ian clone
: and link it back to Chaos Inc, the small transition level following To The
: Liver so that the story can be continued after visiting the secret.
Cool. I never found the giant Ian... maybe a few more clues as to were he is?
