Thorough and Harsh Critics Needed

[BloodSpring (David)]

Hey, harsh critics!

I’m glad to finally see you all! I need some thorough and very harsh constructive criticisms on my most recent work.

Here: Display < Click!

For those who are too busy:
Angle 1: https://gyazo.com/c299dcd820f37c48698d0b3d9cd09deb
Angle 2: https://gyazo.com/768bc28ee740f3cfc12aef9c6e777e88
Angle 3: https://gyazo.com/723f17f46363eb29b940de235f175605

I really do need a new set of eyes to give me suggestions, much appreciated!

(Everything in the game is made by yours truly!)

[1Joeb (joeberson)]

I think it looks great, no flaws I can see.

[AstroCode (Ella)]

Two things immediately jumped out at me:

1. The building style blends very well with the terrain.
2. I feel like an ant in a giant forest. It’s a very immersive feeling.

However, you asked for harsh critics, so I’m going to be petty:

1. The shape of the cannons feels off. I think the long cannons aren’t wide enough.
2. The clouds shouldn’t be opaque.
3. The NPCs don’t fit the rest of the map. I suggest you use R15 if that is still within the style of your game.
4. The entire map is composed of rigid shapes, but the smoke particle is round. It doesn’t fit.
5. Why is the water neon??

I hope some of this helps!

[TwiistedRoyalty]

Very nice! However I have two criticisms, firstly when you step outside the castle it feels very abandoned, the houses are empty and there aren’t many NPCs like you’d expect, I recommend maybe adding some farmers or villagers outside to make it feel more alive.

Secondly, there isn’t much nature besides trees, I recommend maybe adding some bushes or grass.

[BloodSpring (David)]

Thanks! This is awesome criticism, I crave comments like these! I will take it to heart!

[BloodSpring (David)]

Thanks! I’ll take everything into consideration, appreciate ya!

[waterrunner]

Very Nice build! However I have some criticism. I have noticed that on all of the houses the brick effect pattern is the same, it looks like you have just copied and pasted the houses. I would suggest that you make the brick effect different on every house. Also on the castles the brick effect looks very symmetrical, I would suggest that you change the sizes of the bricks, change their positions so they are more random and have less of them.

[Kullaske]

Here are a few things I noticed that you could fix

Bricks vary in the amount that they stick out

Brick in the castle ramp is a bit off

These two gaps seems to be different

Door frame is the same size as the window

You should use different patterns

Logs are sticking into the wooden pillers

Gate door is too small and you’re unable to walk through it

Varying thickness of gravel on the outside border

I would also use normal plastic instead of smooth plastic because right now it’s VERY bright and distracts from the building.

[FileSaved]

Hey!
First off, I just want to say that this is a very beautiful showcase. I love the mix of low-poly and smooth terrain. Makes for a good bit of contrast. BUT you did ask for some very harsh criticism and I volunteer as a QA tester, so here’s some things I noticed:

1) INCONSISTENT STYLES
You seem to use a mix of smooth shaded and flat shaded models. Here’s a few examples:

Examples

A) This cannon and these bombs right in front of it. All the bombs in the map have that smooth-shaded look.

B) This pitchfork

C) These particle effects.

All three particle effects have radically different styles.

D) The hats the NPC’s are wearing, and by extension the tools they have.

NPC’s switch between having smooth shaded hats like Classic Fedora and custom flat shaded hats like this NPC’s traffic cone.

Also the wand they’re holding as well as the sword this blacksmith is forging are both smooth shaded.

E) These mushrooms. For some reason 1 of them is smooth shaded while the other isn’t.

F) This noob head shield.

Given how the bulk of the architecture is very rigid and flat, having objects like these that are very smooth and round makes the entire place seem unfocused. For the particles, I suggest having more simple ones that fit the aesthetic. Having hexagons for the smoke coming from the chimneys is one change I’d suggest experimenting with. Also have the particles from the chicken leg and cauldron reflect that simple aesthetic.

As for the models themselves, I suggest changing all of them to flat shaded models. The building itself is supposed to be low-poly and some of the tools, like the blacksmith’s hammer, reflect this. The ones that do fit in perfectly while tools like the sword and the pitchfork stick out like a sore thumb. I’d say make all the tools, and by extension the hats and any other props, have that very blocky aesthetic! I feel the place would look better, and more focused as a whole because of it.

2) BUILDING BUGS
Some of these aren’t super noticeable, but there’s a few massive ones that you’ll definitely want to fix ASAP:

Examples

A) Trees in weird places.
Thankfully, there’s only a couple of these, but they’re in really bad spots. The first one involves a tree whose leaves slightly clip through the wall. That dark tree right up against the castle wall is the one in question.

Taking a closer look reveals this:

Not only that,but this tree is a double offender as it also happens to be slightly floating off the ground:

There’s also a second tree that got stuck in a wall. This one’s much easier to spot though. It’s behind the castle with the blue halo in front of it.

Either deleting the trees or moving them will be sufficient fixes.

B) Floating rocks.
There’s a couple of them that I noticed and both of them are by the caves. Here’s a few screenshots showing where they are and the floating in action (Sorry this is the best I can do with the limited zoom distance):
Rock 1

Rock 2

C) The house that hates terrain
There’s one house outside of the main castle area that seems to not be a big fan of terrain. Here’s where it’s located:

This house is special for 2 reasons:

1. It has terrain inside of it
   
   
2. It seems to be floating in the back (sorry these are the best screenshots I could grab)
   
   
   
   
   (It’s also floating in the back. I couldn’t upload the gif without getting an error, though).

D) Floating trees
This one’s interesting. First let me show off the tree that’s easier to see (The tree in front of me is the one in question).

The next one however involves many of the trees in the castle.

So to the right, all of the trees are pushed into the terrain. Those trees are fine. The problem comes with the ones to the left that aren’t pushed into the terrain. Every single tree in that area is slightly floating above the ground. For the sake of example, I’ll only post one, but trust me when I say all the trees by the houses in the background are floating above the ground:

I’d suggest moving those trees down into the ground a bit.

E) Noob head
You can see the back of the noob’s head if you angle your camera just right. This applies to all instances of this model:

Not sure if you can fix this one easily. Maybe just extrude the shield back to cover up the head.

F) Walking off the map
I’d suggest adding invisible walls so that the player can’t walk all the way to the edge and do this:

It also makes it so that the floating trees outside the map don’t look like they’re floating if you have walls preventing the player from climbing up the cliff.

Most of these are just standard building bugs that ideally shouldn’t take too long to fix.

3) MISC
These didn’t really fit in either category, I just found them to be a bit strange

Examples

A) Well particles
This well emits a lot of particles. I’d suggest reducing the amount of particles it emits or removing them entirely.

B) Low-res texture
This is just a product of having a decal on a very large part. I’d suggest having a neon ring here instead, or even keeping the decal but adding the neon ring to help hide the artifact

That’s most of the stuff I found. I have some more screenshots as well if you’d like to see them. I also want to reiterate that I think the showcase is really good as it is, but it can definitely be better if the things I posted get addressed.

[ScytheSlayin (akorn)]

I think that the house in angle one, should be edited and give some more attention to it and give small details to it. I feel that it Dosent blend in with the other buildings. I hate to be mean, but you said you needed tough critics!

[Fennecpaw (Fennec)]

Though this may just be the style, the terrain with the low-poly looks a bit off to me.

[Castlemore]

Nice map.

Areas that could be improved, in my opinion:

• The houses are far too homogenised. They are all look the same, none of them are rotated, and their colouring is completely uniform. The bricks are the same and the style is unoriginal (Happy Home of Robloxia). Although this is intentional, it feels odd since they’ve essentially been reproduced with your own makeover - is the game itself classicist? If not, it’s off-putting to me.
• Forgive me if this is untrue. All of the trees that circle the map look the same (V-shaped trunk.) This style of homogenisation is unappealing. I recommend making various types of trees and using the RGB slider to have their leaves in a variety of colours (as trees are in the real world).
• Good use of rocks and mushrooms to create a natural element. Unfortunately, the fact that the terrain of the map is generally completely flat makes these anomalies look far too designed and unnatural. I’m not sure if this is the intention; judging from the fact that it’s a medieval castle, I’d guess not.
• Again with the homogeneity; the trees in the castle yard are (generally) the same size when in clumps; the mushrooms are accurately perpendicular to the perfectly flat ground. Grass needs to mould and bump and depress. The terrain outside of the castle has substance. Why not inside?
• The bricks that come out of the walls are all the same. There is no differentiation. I would recommend adding more variation.
• The wizard’s tent has no entrance.
• In medieval castles, the castle keep would seldom simply be in the corner of the yard with no steps, no gatehouse, no bridge, etc. You’ve made the keep look like it’s just another building when in actuality, it is the defensible residence of a nobleman. Here is an example of how a keep within a city would look.
• The neon torches on the castle walls look very odd and sporadic. (I’m guessing that they are torches and not windows because I saw them on a really thin gatehouse, which I will discuss now!)
• This gatehouse looks really unrealistic. Firstly, it’s far too thin - there needs to be a room above the gate so that soldiers can lift the gate up. Secondly, it needs walls to operate as a gatehouse or else an invader can just walk around it.
• The bright neon pool(?) outside of the castle can be walked on. Similarly, the mushrooms can be walked through.

By the way, at this moment I actually noticed the noob in a fedora, so I’m highly confused as to the era of the place, lol. From the farmer and wizard, I judged that it was medieval fantasy, but fedoras are a 20th century piece of apparel. Anyway, I will just assume from the majority that it is medieval.

[VitalSoft (TheEltonJohn)]

Very nice, immersive and feels like an open world over the horizon.

[vsnry]

I like it, but I don’t think the realistic terrain fits very well with the cartoony style of the rest of the map.

[BloodSpring (David)]

Thanks everyone, this is exactly what I wanted to hear! Although you could have been harsher haha, just kidding of course! I’ll definitely implement changes, so much thanks for helping me overview the game, much love. <3

[BloodSpring (David)]

Yeah, I love the suggestions! This is grade A criticism! I’ll definitely consider how I handle uniformity and variation in the build. Beyond that, the game is predicated upon Roblox’s “historical culture”, it is essentially my own homage to my robloxian childhood.

Appreciate ya!

[BloodSpring (David)]

Hey!

This is fantastic! Much love my man, this is not only thorough but insightful, I’ll definitely go over and address all the problems and inconsistencies!

Appreciate ya!

[gagetet]

As mentioned by others, there are some bugs. But, I really love the style and I think it could be made into a great map!

[Billy_Dodo]

Critiques

Looks too “copy and pastey”. Give it a bit more variation that all just standing up, in exactly the same way. These are round objects, they tend to roll over onto their side too - it all seems too well-balanced to be natural. Same goes to that cannon ball on the crates.

Cannon is easily way too big for the carriage. Either make the cannon barrel smaller, or make the carriage much larger. It feels like just firing the gun will obliterate the carriage.

Add some unevenness to the terrain within the walls, feels wayyy too flat.

Lacks particle effects when it gets hammered. To be picky, it’s utterly pointless to be hitting a sword that isn’t heated up - it won’t be doing much. If you can make it red hot, that will make it more realistic.

Mushrooms coming out of the ground at different angles please, just to make it more natural and less linear.

What seemed like the main gate was actually just a doorway to get up a slope - a little disappointing. The slope is absurdly steep. Personally, I’d rather make a small courtyard with smaller staircases around the sides leading to the upper level. It just so odd for a large gateway to instantly arrive at such a large wedge.

Cannons normally have a little hole for a fuse or something similar, would be nice to see that on your cannons too.

Looks nice but most useless fence ever lol

Can literally walk right through the spikes… Make it so it would collide please.

[Unresolved]

First of all as somebody expirienced with “adventure” games I think this is absaloutely stunning, you should be proud.

However, I do agree with whoever said there isn’t enough nature. In the foods you should have mushrooms, flowers, ect. To give the game an extra pop of color and whimsy.