Anybody here play TimeSplitters?

It seems like a bit of a Cult Classic, and I've never really seen anyone except for myself here who plays it, yet it has a fairly detailed page here.

Not so much anymore, though I should do so again. Love that shit, and the cancellation of the 4th is one of the great gaming tragedies of our time.

It isn't necessarily cancelled, if what they say is true. There are rumors, including the team formerly known as Free Radical talking about a secret project.

So, what are some clever things you've figured out how to do with the Mapmaker?

I've...

• Gotten backwards-counting timers using a timer that loops every one second and decreases a counter by 1 each time.
• Hidden explosive barrels in sealed-off rooms and triggered them to detonate to simulate things like a base beginning to explode or other things.
• Put unarmed enemies behind windows to serve as "NPC's".
• Similarly, put enemies behind windows and then put a pathway in their half that leads indirectly to the player's area. However, a locked door prevents them from ever getting there, and prevents the player from going in. Their pathfinding AI doesn't notice the locked door and has them run along the path, useful for having an NPC leave the area.
• Used a timer that displays a message every 3 seconds, to serve as someone talking in more than just one line.
• Strudel + remote mines + Strudel-only area = sending in a kamikaze cat to destroy an obstacle or enemy.
• Entering a Trench Ramp room from the wrong side to create an invisible wall.
• Floating doors and windows placed between two "empty" stackables in the air.

Anything clever you've done?

I've never been interested in mapmakers to be honest. I can't be bothered putting the effort in to making something good, I'd rather spend that time actually playing the game. Hopefully the next game will turn up, eventually!

I hope it has a Mapmaker. I've gotten a lot of fun out of the mapmaker, making levels.

I actually think I'm getting better at this over time. Most of my early maps were simple get-to-point-B-from-point-A, fighting everyone along the way and getting keys to proceed. Often they lacked enemies or anything beyond rudimenteary puzzles. Now I've got plenty of enemies and puzzles, and also some story within each level, via NPC's and stuff.

I'm trying to think of how to make my boss battles better. Does "killing" a boss and then having them immediately respawn, maybe with a different weapon, to effectively double their health and let them Turns Red, break the Willing Suspension of Disbelief considering there's a corpse and puddle of blood?

Oh yea Timespillters Future Perfect, that game was brilliant, i got from bots, just so much fun. Games need more bots.

Ah, I sank so much time into 2 and Future Perfect. FP's single-player campaigns was awesome. Whoever wrote that deserves massive props. Multiplayer was reminiscent of Perfect Dark, but wackier, which was awesome. Man, I would be all over an HD remake of this series.

: To simulate bosses, I personally just cranked the health to max and had them respawn a few times. It looked silly, of course, but it was the best way I could think of to lengthen the fight.

And to conclude, my favorite scene from FP-

Having the boss respawn feels a little cheap, what with the corpse, blood, and delay before sudden respawn. But I may do it for an illusionist boss I'm planning. He'll also be creating doppelgangers of himself (Set to Weakling Health, and they keep coming until you hit the real one enough), and sometimes turning the room pitch black.

Some of my ways of extending bosses have included:

• Four bosses at once. Only one of them was set to Tough Guy (The Brute, Braces), with the leader (Slim) having High, the Dark Chick (Venus) having Medium, and the Team Pet (Monkey) having Low.
• Dual boss between a time travelling menace and the ancient chieftan he's supplying futuristic weapons to (Both at Tough Guy and both armed with Plasma Autorifles, while you're limited to very primitive guns. Surprisingly hard compared to my other bosses).
• Crispin with a flamethrower, because that's just awesome. Meant to be the zombie of a pyromaniac, with many of his burn victims being Crypt Zombies throughout the basement torture chamber of his mansion.
• A mad scientist (Dr. Amy) flanked by four of her creations (The Freak) that you had been exterminating during the level.
• A three-phase fight against a general (The General, natch). First he runs off (Using the aforementioned workaround of having a locked door to the player) and you fight off 20 or so of his forces (Security). Then he drops in from the ceiling in his mech (Goliath robot), and once you defeat it there's an explosion and then The General is spawned on the spot the mech was, to simulate him surviving to swiss cheese you with a minigun.

I need some more ideas for artificial lenghthening. I'm thinking of having one boss who you fight multiple times throughout the level in minibattles before one final battle, like Dark Pit in Kid Icarus Uprising.

edited 18th May '12 9:36:40 PM by Anomalocaris20

Zombie Survival in this game was a pain. I have never hated small rooms and a two shot before reloading shot gun before in all my life.

Worst Challenge was the one with the constant Carrion Carcasses. Ugh.

That one barred me from 100% completion for a long time.

Thankfully now everything is golded or platinumed.

I remember making a map where the objective was:

"Eliminate all Communist robots."

I had a pistol and the robots had the Soviet Rifles.

I have Time Splitters 2 on my shelf. I used to have the first game and Future Perfect, but they were kidnapped by ninjas. Virus mode is pretty fun.

I used to play Timesplitters 2 and Future Perfect all the time back in the day. Good times. I'm sad there may be no chance of number 4 anytime soon.

I always do stuff with Dozers. I had arcade-style levels where you rack up points by killing or running over Dozers, and in my recent series of levels there's one Dozer hidden somewhere in the level (Caged in by a window so they're harmless) and killing them is a secondary objective.

I try to hide them as sneakily as I can.