I Hate Mountains Forums

flying-emu

Member

Registered: 2010-06-06

A Few Thoughts

"I Hate Mountains" is, overall, very impressive. The gameplay is a refreshing take on L4D1's commonly cramped areas, and the events (especially the helicopter crash at the church/manor) were excellently pulled off. The graffiti was absolutely brilliant, especially the poem about Chicago Ted in the Lumberyard Evacuation. I also enjoyed the "Zombies don't infect Chicago Ted: He infects them. WITH DEATH."

That being said, the campaign does, in my mind, have a few problems, most of which have been stated by other players.

1. The Manor. I'm not going to complain about the layout of the house, because I thought it was brilliant. Your vision of L4D, or at least what I took from IHM, is what I always thought L4D should be like; a wide-open, frightening world, in which you're never sure if the path you're on will lead you to safety or a dead end. What I have a complaint about is the helicopter itself. I realize that the crush of hope one feels when the helicopter pulls away and crashes is important to the general feel of the campaign, but the sheer difficulty in reaching the helipad, only to have to turn around and fight through the inevitable horde of zombies that has appeared behind you is monstrous. If everyone on your team perfectly times their explosives, it's easy. The problem is that there's no forgiveness in this section, especially if you have bots.

What I would recommend (and you may completely ignore this suggestion; no hard feelings, it's your work, after all) is to have the helicopter careen out of control just after you leave the manor's front door (or garage, if that's the way you went). This saves the players the problem I described above, as well as mostly obscuring the helicopter's crash, which, while well-done for amateurs, is still kind of silly-looking.

2. The amount of graffiti in unsecured places. You all put so much work into the graffiti, and I would love to enjoy all of it. The only problem is that this is impossible, because some of the best pieces of graffiti are in places where you simply can't stop long enough to partake in it. For example, some of the pieces in the manor, and the SEVERAL pieces in the Lumberyard Evac. This is only a minor complaint, and I doubt that there is anything you could do to fix this, it just saddens me that I have to essentially go into Developer Commentary mode, or go on Easy, to enjoy that work.

Excellent work on the graffiti itself.

3. Tank spawn locations. The tank spawn in the Underground Cavern, at the mouth of that long tunnel with the waterfall in it? It's arguably the worst tank spawn I've seen. The tank is forced to run head-on at the survivors for a ridiculously long distance, and if they throw a molly down, there's no choice but to run through it or wait it out; either way, the tank will die, likely without dealing any damage to survivors. I would recommend, for the sake of sheer fear, having the tank spawn in some sort of cavern above the survivors, and enabling it to drop onto them. While some would complain that this is a cheap, lame place to spawn, the player's reaction would be amazing.

This may be a glitch, or a spot of bad luck on my part, but both times I've played through IHM, all three tanks on the finale have spawned in the same place; in the cornfield, on the left side of the road. This predictable spawn made it overly easy to defeat the tank, especially since there is a minigun right there. Which leads me to my final criticism...

4. The miniguns themselves. They are everywhere, for no apparent reason. My friend and I initially thought that you put them in place to poke fun at the ridiculous places that they're commonly placed in official campaigns. For example, the one right outside the saferoom on Lost in the Woods is downright silly. There is no reason I can see for it to be there, for gameplay or immersion purposes. Gameplay, you can using it to defeat an incoming horde, but the safe room is RIGHT THERE. So there's no point in that, except to cover a teammate who is lagging behind. The problem with that is that, on Expert, the Friendly Fire will kill your teammate faster than the zombies will. I realize that this may be a creative choice, and that I have no say in the matter, but there were too many miniguns in a random patch of wood for me to feel fully immersed in this "spooky North American forest."

Other than those complaints, the campaign was remarkable. The dialogue was amusing, the bugs and glitches extremely rare for an add-on campaign, and the tone and action of the campaign were all but in perfect balance. I tip my hat to you, and will keep my eye on you all for future work; I am very impressed.

-Tyler M.

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NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: A Few Thoughts

If everyone on your team perfectly times their explosives, it's easy. The problem is that there's no forgiveness in this section, especially if you have bots.

Yeah, it's entirely true, but bots are so stupid we can't really build a campaign with them in mind. The campaign has always been meant to be played with at least 3 human players. Which is why there's at least one pipe bomb for each survivor in the attic and the tower.

What I would recommend (and you may completely ignore this suggestion; no hard feelings, it's your work, after all) is to have the helicopter careen out of control just after you leave the manor's front door (or garage, if that's the way you went).

Well, while I can see how it's a good idea, it's also quite difficult to make since we can't be sure where the survivors are going to leave the manor. They can take the side forest path and climb the wrecked car, they can get out from the garage and they can get out from the front door. While it's easy to trigger the event dependless of the area, players are not located at the same distance of the helipad at that moment. I wonder how that would work but that's definitely something we might try.

The amount of graffiti in unsecured places.

Well yes, it's the way it works, making you feel you can't see everything in just one play. There's also a lot of them in old busted safe rooms that are no longer safe. That's part of the immersion.

Tank spawn locations.

The director decides where to spawn the tanks, we have absolutely no control over this. We tried all we can to prevent him from spawning tanks in there but he kept spawning them here, that's really annoying.

This may be a glitch, or a spot of bad luck on my part, but both times I've played through IHM, all three tanks on the finale have spawned in the same place; in the cornfield, on the left side of the road. This predictable spawn made it overly easy to defeat the tank, especially since there is a minigun right there. Which leads me to my final criticism...

Well no, it can spawn in several locations, I think it was just back luck. But even if it was true, like I said, there's nothing we can do about it.

The miniguns themselves.

Mini-guns are located at locations where some previous survivors/military had to make a stand-off. Nothing more, nothing less. Some are less useful than others, it's just that they were not intended to work this way when first installed and/or were overwhelmed later.

We'll try to see what we can do to address these few points, I can't guarantee you we'll change everything, but we're at least gonna give it a try and see how it works.

flying-emu

Member

Registered: 2010-06-06

Re: A Few Thoughts

*snip

Thank you for taking the time to read and reply. I really did enjoy the campaign

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The preceding is the author's attempt to
BLOW
YOUR
MIND