The good and bad of level review.


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Posted by Nahaku on October 14, 1998 at 23:15:20:

Well, I am finding in myself a mixed reaction to a lot of the "open" style of level review that has been going on. I mean the ones where people can play a level and then submit a review on it. In theory, this sounds like a good, even a great idea. But it seems there are a lot of people that are not being very objective when a level is reviewed, in considering an author's experience and and the effort in general. This takes a lot of work, and not everyone who does this is going to want to spend all their free time drawing lines and writing cog code in their head. No one out here is getting paid to do this, it is a labor of love...or perhaps ego in some cases. A lot of levels have been made that realy are not that good, I realize this. But I have found quite a few to be fun to play at least one or two times through. I don't expect any of these to be Lucas Arts quality, with a few exceptions perhaps. There are a few editors who I think have shown some real tallent, and I keep their levels to examine how they did things, and to replay them. I think maybe a lot of the level critics should maybe consider what an author's experience is in this before slapping them around so hard. Now, just to keep this point qualified, I do not mean for this to be aimed solely at "free lance" critics. Plenty of the review sites have been, in my opinion, less than fair with some levels. I think that the majority of this has happened recently though. I would encourage authors to be as thorough as they can be, and maybe tell a bit more about the levels they are making, and what they went through to do it. If the reviewers could read this, it might help to keep their report in the context of the authors experience. I am not trying to promote excuses for shoddy workmanship. I have seen a couple of levels where the author outlined specific reasons for things being the way they made them in their levels, or mistakes they could not correct. then the reviewer has written his impressions of the level, seemingly totaly ignorant of this. The first level I ever downloaded, Tryston3, was subject to this. The reviewer said the level was so short in ceiling hieght that it must be a bug. Yet the author put right in the jkauth.txt that he had made the level like that in most areas to feel cramped and claustrophobic. Now, I don't want to be taken as thinking that every reviewer does this. I know there are a lot of levels being released, and that the comunity is old enough to warrant some good if not great work. But a lot of the levels are being submitted by new authors, while a lot of the experienced ones are part of groups or working solo on large projects. I just would like to see a way of qualifying an author's experience before they get ripped apart, and maybe nudge the reviewers to be a little more thorough as well. My only release has so far been some tree 3DOs. I have a rather large level I have been working on off and on for months. When it comes out, I gaurantee you will like the architecture, and the thing even has a story line I am developing. You won't see any great cogs I have made, simply because I just haven't the time to realy try and dig into cogs yet. Still, I would expect it to be reviewed and not scored as high in those "technical" areas as a lot of levels are, but treated well and recomended for it's strong points. Something I think that has not been touched on as well in some recent levels, where the reviewer felt that a few "bad" things ruined the whole thing overall. There have been very few levels that I haven't gotten anything from. Whether it was an interesting idea to incorporate, or a cog...even having a little fun playing it. Well, this is starting to ramble a bit from the main point, so I will end it. Any thoughts on this?


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