Automap - Dunkelschwamm

 

    Play a Sven Co-op map while it is being generated! This is a strange marriage of Roguelike and Co-op FPS that is really cool to experience, but unfortunately has been abandoned.

SCMapDB page

Author: w00tguy123

Date of final release: 2011

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Automap

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | August 21, 2022 | 3763 characters

    Automap is an abandoned map project for Sven Co-op that I think was really novel and almost works. Unfortunately, it doesn't. So, if you're looking for a recommendation, I recommend only trying this map out with friends if you're looking to run multiple iterations on the map before you get something nearly playable. But, when it does work, it's really quite neat.

    The generator places players in a starting room and generates a map out of various possible pieces. When it works, it creates these funny tunnels full of a hodge podge of enemies that you're given a random strange loadout that you need to make work with the enemies. Honestly, I think fighting the Xen aliens with various strange loadouts was the most fun of this whole map for me- the different alchemies of gameplay that resulted from that were pretty great. Even when my buddy and I got a thorough string of successful builds all the way to the boss battle, the levels leading up to the boss were pretty samey with few noticeable distinctions beyond frequency of certain enemies to distinguish them. If you just have any very plain map randomize enemies and weapons, you'd have a very similar result to this marvelous science fair project of a gimmick. I don't mean to downplay the creativity on display, but I can't help but wonder if part of why it's abandoned is because the execution didn't play up enough of the variety for the technical approach to justify itself.

    As my partner and I played, we managed to get to an unfinished boss arena which we had to noclip to access where we successfully battled Tor and his goons before being sucked into a tractor beam. Eventually we just restarted the map.

    Now, here's the funny thing: the first time we played this map, it worked so well we were shocked that the boss arena was unplayable. Our experiences thereafter were utterly contrary to this. Not a single generated tunnel that we attempted in restarting the map thereafter successfully generated a checkpoint chamber to proceed. They just abruptly cut off in skybox with an invisible wall blocking things. It's a shame, because we genuinely wanted to see how much fun we could have replaying the map on the difficulty settings on display.

    From what I can tell different difficulty settings just made the frequency of harder enemies higher. It's hard to tell, as we weren't able to get past the first iteration on any playthroughs after our initial easy playthrough.

    As said at the top, I recommend this if you wanna restart it over and over again until you get some well functioning map building. The maps it builds aren't pretty, but they're pretty fun when they work. I think this was a very novel effort, and there's a lot of lessons that can be learned from this.

Pros:

• Strange weapon combinations + strange alien combinations + strange hallways = some pretty fun encounters
• Really impressive technical feat of generating the playable area (when it works)
• Pretty solid idea with time limits and votes to ensure the broken nature of the map doesn't hold servers back
• A lot of the cool features, like the difficulty select and ability to watch map build progress from a death room, work excellently

Cons:

• The map is pretty ugly
• The variations in map architecture are fun when they're noticeable, but that's rare
• Sometimes weapon combinations are ridiculously limited, especially in terms of ammo capacity
• Worst of all, unfortunately, is that the map often fails to build maps, even when it says it does, resulting in an unplayable dead-end mess

Score: 4 / 10