Nex Credo [RELEASE]

Nex Credo is done (kinda). 11 levels of an aborted megaWAD (because, kids! Don't try one of those on your lonesome, yeah? Yeah) for vanilla/whatever.



Here is an 11-map romp through what is hopefully a considered trek through some nicely-balanced levels. For vanilla Doom, but tested on Chocolate Doom (single player and solo net), ZDoom, Zandronum (plus Brutal Doom), Edge (plus Doom 4 Ever), PRBoom+, Skulltag (for multiplayer) and Risen 3D.



Zip file contains .wad and .deh (for music and level name changes). Multiplayer is supported; both co-op and deathmatch; but your mileage may vary on that one.

DOWNLOAD
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/m-o/nexcredo

Not a full megawad then? :( Have you considered getting someone else to map with you? You might recall that Whispers of Satan was made by 2 mappers, as well as Speed of Doom and UAC Ultra.

Having said that, I'm looking forward to playing this. :P

Bah, 32 levels is overrated. Quality over quantity.

I will check this out.

Obsidian said:

Whispers of Satan

Is a good example of why padding a WAD out to reach 32 maps is a bad idea.

Releases like this always make me curious about the idea of a Megawad split (similar to how you can get Split records and stuff, with both sides featuring seperate musical artists and groups), where three seperate mapping teams or mappers go ahead and make their own episode independently from one another before merging everything together immediately before release.

Anyway, I tried out the beta of this a couple weeks ago and couldn't find much of value that I could bring to the table in terms of constructive comments. I'm pretty shit at playtesting and am an overall shit member of the community in general. :v I'll be sure to play this again in the near future though!

an_mutt said:

Anyway, I tried out the beta of this a couple weeks ago and couldn't find much of value that I could bring to the table in terms of constructive comments. I'm pretty shit at playtesting and am an overall shit member of the community in general. :v I'll be sure to play this again in the near future though!

Don't sweat over it. I have difficulties to describe the problems or not able to give proper criticism. :P

Anyway, I'll try this once I have the time for it.

Four levels in, liking it overall so far. I like the short levels, and while I'm a little annoyed at having nothing larger than a normal shotgun this far, I know you're a fan of using the pistol and such. I can quibble with a few of the fights (such as the box of lost souls at the end of MAP01, I had 40 bullets and 6 shells, didn't feel like waiting for them to infight each other - or the hapless revenants in the cage at the end of MAP02) but those are relatively minor.

Only real bug I've noticed so far is MAP07's name on the minimap has a 7: at the start of it. Minor.

Downloading now!

I really enjoyed 900 Deep in the Dead, by the way.

So, I got time to do few maps, 1 to 5. Currently doing some demos, if you're willing to see some idiot flailing around for nothing, and getting killed for being dumb fuck.

Also, holy fuck that upper portion of map 5. Fucking sniper gatling dudes on towers.

And that blue pillar thingy? It's just devious and genius.

Wow, thanks you guys. :)

Obsidian said:

Not a full megawad then? :( Have you considered getting someone else to map with you?

Thought about it, but I'm not sure I play well with others. I've tried, I like full creative control over what I make -- like a few of the 'concept' maps in Nex Credo that I feel may not be what they are if I had another voice telling me to change something that's a bit unusual because people won't like it.

I prefer to make something a bit different. And actually aim, in some cases, to polarise people -- as in my eyes, this is the mark of something great.

CorSair said:

And that blue pillar thingy? It's just devious and genius.

Case in point right here. Thank you, CorSair. Some folk have already reported feeling utterly dicked by the final blue pillar room; which is totally the point. It's a map where the player has to think a little about what they're switching.

Not sure how you can think about something you don't know. There is absolutely no clue that you'll need these pillars later for hiding from the arch-viles. You're playing a game and you realize the rules only at the end, when you have already lost. ok.

That's actually kinda why there aren't switches on all of them the first time you encounter the things. So you don't switch, you know, all of them.

Memfis said:

Not sure how you can think about something you don't know. There is absolutely no clue that you'll need these pillars later for hiding from the arch-viles. You're playing a game and you realize the rules only at the end, when you have already lost. ok.

Surely, when you were in that yellow key area, didn't it felt rather strange to have nine pillars, with only one having key while eight of them has nothing on them? In the end, I had curiosity take better of me and lower all of them, just to see my reward punishment.

Gotta admit, blue key may have been a dickmove on my part. But hey, giving the player as much as a 20% to guess right first time is pretty charitable.

Especially after the green armour dickishness near the start...

Yes, it looked strange, and I had two million ways to interpret this besides the intended one. (personally I thought it was like some code and I was supposed to remember which pillars couldn't be lowered) Need more clues.

Memfis said:

Need more clues.

I just recorded some demos for the /idgames release (when it's back up to accept uploads) - one of which is MAP05 displaying this whole "not switching everything in front of the player" behaviour. Plus I give away what the green armour pit does.

Sound like a good compromise?

Man, this is an amazing little map set. Incredible what you were able to pull off with stock Doom II textures. I liked especially how long you delay getting the heavier weaponry (finding the SSG was a huge relief - and also a rewarding secret, btw). "Silence" was a bit for the lulz maybe, but as it was something different for a change, it is accepted. :P

I liked it so much that I spontaneously decided to provide a Mapinfo for ZDoom fans. (As a positive side effect, this will also end the episode after finishing MAP11.)

Mapinfo for Nex Credo (nex_fix.wad, 11 KB)

If you need any encouragement to continue this project after all, I could provide it. ^^ It's vanilla mapping at its best!

PS: One idea for improvement... At the end of MAP05 (not sure right now), when you have to face the Archviles right before the exit teleporter which is closed by bars, an escape teleporter opens to your right. If you take it, get back out of the pit and return after that, the exit locks again just the way it did the first time. Maybe it should be changed so that it happens only once as it is a bit annoying to wait for the thing to unlock yet again.

Hmm, humble/small episode of stock-texture DooM II levels with no particular gimmick or self-imposed restriction. For all of the many WADs being worked on at any given time, it's surprising how few of them actually fit that description. Anyway, I played the first six maps of this tonight, and was suitably entertained. Recorded some FDAs, if you happen to like to watch that kind of thing, here. (skill 4, PrBooM+ -cl 2) Though I've seen you speak about some past releases from years ago, this is the first WAD by you I've played, so I had no preconceptions going in.

I remember seeing one very pronounced texture misalignment in 'Jade Tumult', and there's a possibility that one monster failed to show up in map 06 (although I also might've just missed it, with the mazey way that area is laid out), but other than that I've seen no bugs as of yet.

A few comments....
Map 01 -- The lighting at the start of this map may actually be the most visually striking thing in the mapset up to the point I've played. I can already see your previously avowed fondness for the pistol at play here (and it's even more pronounced in coming maps)....I'm not allergic to using the pistol, myself, so seeing it treated with so much respect in these maps is a nice change of pace. One thing, I felt that the two armor bonus ledge secrets were really quite frivolous, they probably don't even need to be flagged 'secret'--the other one was enough for map 01, I think.

Map 02 -- This gave me deja vu, somehow. Not a lot to say, but I like the use of barrels. Very intuitive secrets, both using one of the oldest tricks in the book. Some of what I see here, in addition to the last fight in map 01, makes it clear that you also like to use 'free' lost souls liberally, another unusual trait, one that interests me at that. I reckon you're okay with folks just cheesing the last group of revenants through the bars? If not, you could have the switch around the backside open all three sets of bars and teleport in the revs, something like that. Or, hell, leave it like it is. Folks that don't like turkey-shoots don't have to engage in them.

Map 03 -- A bit bigger, and you feel the pistol-start gameplay a little more markedly here. It quickly becomes clear that you only need two of the three keys (red/blue and yellow), but I try to explore everything regardless. Pretty sedate, this one. One of the lost souls who was presumably supposed to run interference in the last revenant/demon fight got stuck outside the walls somehow, good thing he doesn't count towards the kill tally.

Map 04 -- Feels like an older map, somehow, with a simpler layout and very Point A-Point B-Point C flow. Was far from offensive, but of all the maps it was the one that made the least overall impression on me (in either a positive or negative sense). More amusing barrel shenanigans at the start, and a surprisingly mean-spirited trap with baby spiders near the end--it was luck as much as reflexes that saved me from being hurt there, I suspect.

Map 05 -- The most interesting entry in the set up to where I've played, also the most dangerous by a fair margin. Lots of hapless bumbling about and general buffoonery on my part in this one, resulting in a number of near-death situations, but I finally make it out in the end. The blue pillar concept was very interesting...I start getting a bad feeling about it as early as the yellow key (as can be seen in the demo), and by the time the blue key area rolls around that feeling has gotten so bad that I decide to just recklessly finish the sequence and see what happens....and then nothing does, until a few minutes later, when I pay for my curiosity. I was feeling quite clever at my split-second decision to slip my way out of the last vile ambush, until I go back down there and see that I could've done the same thing without getting a complementary third-degree burn if I'd just been a little sharper. Very enjoyable map.

Map 06 -- This was the only one so far that I didn't really care for...It's consistently/persistently full of narrow hallways and chokepointing, doesn't make for a lot of interesting combat. Sort of maze-y, to boot, although that doesn't really bother me much. Finally got the chaingun, and was glad to have it, used it a lot. My 'discovery' of the first secret is not a discovery at all, just an absolute fluke, I'm afraid. I said above that I was intrigued by your usage of pre-placed lost souls, but I think you took it a mite far down in the waste tunnels, with three identical corridors of them in a row. I'm not sure if it was some kind of 'DooM Trivia' design concept or simply an oversight, but the way that stimpacks are placed between the green columns and the inside corners at every bend in the tunnel totally defuses these fights--lost souls can't charge 'over' pickups on the ground, so they have a lot of trouble being relevant in this scenario.

Thanks for the Doom, will try to play the rest of the maps within the next couple of days.

Night Fright and DotW, thanks!

I'll post a better reply shortly, but I just gotta say, the lost souls on MAP05 are there to waste the player's ammo and little else. You know, if you want that SSG then you're literally paying for it in resources.

I do a lot of this, stick mini-concepts in my maps. Some of these, I'm glad are being picked up on. :)

Finished all of this up. Not bad, and I wager others will like it more than I do since it's not my cup of tea. It definitely has an old-school vanilla feel in many respects. There's a lot of mish-mash of textures per level, which is something I personally dislike, but I suspect won't bother others. The layouts are also nice and old-school. They can get a little corridor-y in parts, but that's to be expected. There's also lots of non-old school parts, with some mini-concepts here and there (and some non-1993 design choices). Overall, it's an interesting mix of old and new.

Weirdly enough, I think MAP05 was actually my favorite, and that's despite agreeing whole-heartedly with Memfis that the blue pillar set up is complete bullshit. I had actually read the discussion about it in this thread before getting to that map and I still got it wrong (I thought I would have the option to lower each set individually - not only on the first set). The first set appears very early on in the level, before the player is even aware there will be later sets, so expecting them to think "hey I bet these are connected to columns later on" is silly, not to mention "hey I bet I'll need these as cover for arch viles". For this bit of design to work, I think you'd need to let the player have a window to columns later in the map, and be able to notice that hitting one lowers others (and maybe even reveal the arch-viles early, with invisible walls or something).

I mean, if you're the sort of person who thinks it's okay to have a Doom map force you to restart from the beginning if you fuck up, I can understand - I personally don't like that because I tend to operate off one save game, so anything like that forces me to restart from a pistol and lose my progress. I just think it's pretty lame to not find out until the very end of the level that a completely blind decision made at the start makes the last fight unbeatable.

(On the other hand, you can beat it the way I did - just sit and wait for the bars to open, and run past the AVs to the exit).

Ah, it’s good to see that the esteemed Jayextee has been keeping himself busy, and I’m happy to comment on these maps even if I’m not delivering a hardcore playtest. So let’s get started. 3 Maps a day. Playing continuously on UV, GZDoom, keyboard only, probably complevel-9, frequent save/reload.

Map01 – Kills – 73%, Items – 53%, Secrets – 66%. Time – 5:21. Death Count – 1

You killed my ass on the very first map, Jay. Looked somewhat familiar at the base section. The lighting was weird at the start because the floor lamps gave negative light, and otherwise, the light source was not obvious in most places. I’d remove the floor lamps.

I got killed trying to punch my way through zombieboys and sergeants near the exit because I was out of ammo. And to think people complain about tight ammo in my maps! This was one of those, “Miss 2 shots and you’re fucked” maps, so with that knowledge, and considering my meager skill, I decided to use strategy on the next go, and instead of taking the stairs down after getting the key, I leaped into the nukage and went for the exit. It was still a decent battle, all the more fun since I had ammo this time. ;)

2 armor bonuses as secrets? Seriously? ;D I missed the other secret. I’ll have to watch DoTW’s FDAs to see what I missed.

This won’t win any beauty contests. Indeed, that seems a theme for the mapset as a whole, but the gameplay is good. Fun little intro map.

Map02 – Kills – 94%, Items – 100%, Secrets – 100%. Time – 6:59. Death Count – Zero

This map also had some familiar-looking areas, and I liked it less than the other two I played today. There wasn’t much to it, and because I intuited the secret areas, those little battles became the highlight for me. I do love to fight for secrets, and I was happy to see a bit of jagoff come out in the dickish Zerk secret, where grabbing the Zerk automatically selects your fists – wonderfully uncool for those of us who don’t like punching Imps while doing a quick-step on nukage. But Doom, after all, is a jagoffy game and needs a certain amount of dickishness, or it becomes too genteel and well-mannered to be, well, Doom! So basically, the Zerk was completely useless to me, and I lost a few health points fighting for this worthless secret, and perversely, that’s why I liked it. ;D

I’d have to call the yellow-key trap an epic fail unless you’re trying to set us up psychologically by coming on all fuzzy pink bunny-rabbit so that we walk around in contemptuous confidence – dare I say hubris? – thinking, “This Jayextee dude, what a wuss!” only to bring the hammer down soon after. And in a way, you do. That Revvie cage at the exit, with nothing but a pistol and single-barrel and – yeah, right! – the fistic power of Zerk to punch out Revvies! Oh, hell no! Once I hit that switch to lower the bars, I put on the jets and ran past them boney fuckers. It was nice to have the option of avoiding combat.

Map03 – Kills – 100%, Items – 83%, Secrets – 33%. Time – 26:29. Death Count – 1

Ah, the claws come out! I really liked the looping layout. Wasn’t so crazy about the oversized doors and the way the door textures looked, though I liked it better on the more dramatically “bent” doors. Another problem is that you used the Flat20 “bathroom tile” texture for the ceiling on some of the doors, but since these doors were diagonal, the tile looks odd. And once again we have floor lamps giving no light. My other complaints are that it’s easy for a Lost Soul or Imp to become “stuck” on the upper levels outdoors. I had to clip up there – Sector 23 for a Lost Soul and Sector 186 for an Imp -- to get 100% kills. The easy solution is to increase the space between those big round obstructions.

The map was going along pretty easy until – wait, what the fuck! – I’m facing Revvies with just a pistol and single-barrel? Well, it turned out to be good for my soul. My only death came to the outdoor Revvie when I guessed wrong that its rockets wouldn’t make it over an obstructing sector. Hah-hah! Good one on me. Every other time I encountered a Revvie, I wished real hard that I had an SSG or Chaingun, but since I didn’t, I ran like the fucking wind and probably did better, survival-wise, than I would have with the heavier weapons, since with those, I’d be more confident and might get killed while closing the enemy. So the game you’re creating is one of tight ammo and health and lack of heavy weapons, so that high drama is created in a majority of encounters. I can tell you one thing, I kept running and turning, and that’s fun to me.

A perfect little bit of nastiness was teleporting into the yellow key room and being immediately under fire by Imps from every direction. Something similar was done in E1M5 of Fava Beans, but it was much kinder than your cruel little trick box. I played that room several times to get my health numbers up, since I was down to 13% after the first go. I mean, that was pure, unadulterated fun to me. Thanks, Jay!

BTW, the reason for my excessive time is because I wandered around hopelessly searching for secrets. At least I found the Green Armor.

Map03 is easily my favorite so far. I’m sure greater cruelties await me tomorrow. ;)

Hmmmm, nobody's fond of the armour bonuses 'secret' on MAP01? I'm cool with this -- I don't care about secrets myself, they were simply added because the map had none to begin with. Another one was added later, I can get rid of this nonsense.

As for MAP05, I just thought of a solution to all the complaints about the final area...

Played the other half of the set, FDAs here.

Map 07 -- Didn't much care for it. I do appreciate the idea that the cyberdemon makes it dangerous to resupply on rockets and other stuff, but apart from that it's half of a Dead Simple map with even more simple geometry than the original. Though it would certainly cut down on overall challenge, I think the whole would benefit if the SSG were found from the outset in the outer yard, just to make grinding through the group of must-kill mancubi quicker.

Map 08 -- This was pretty neat, by contrast. Shades of 'Refueling Base', definitely. Possibly the most interesting map in the set visually, with an underlying platforming theme to distinguish it conceptually from the others. Action is mostly pretty easy since the player seems to be given more ammo/weaponry in contrast to previous maps, and the symmetrical monster placement in the blue/yellow key areas makes predicting them pretty easy. The two hazardous platforming sections behind the blue/yellow doors will probably drive some folks nuts, but I'm okay with a bit of this type of play. I never see what's at the end of the blue key path because two of the platforms enter a part of their cycle where they're too closely in synch, and so I didn't want to wait around for them to snap out of it. Fortunately, the yellow key path had the exit at the end....the ending sequence is rather clumsy/undignified, with a series of bumbles by me in the span of a few moments, but I still make it out alive--by accident. :/

Map 09 -- Like the more open, large-scale architecture here. Despite a relatively sparse start, ammo eventually becomes plentiful and health is fairly forgiving. I'm not sure what sequence the two danger rooms (revs + arch-vile, revs + spider) open in, but I encounter them one after the other, instead of encountering one after getting one key and the other after getting the other key. I always like to see arch-viles used in a 'vulture' capacity, but as is so often the case, the implementation of the spider seems a little awkward just because that monster requires a football field worth of space to function optimally.

Map 10 -- Ah, a puzzle map. One doesn't see these very often anymore (not that they've ever been terribly common). Everything seems to work as intended, although I'm not quite sure what the shotgun was for--I make it out without ever firing a shot. Using that little blood decal to mark the fake exit teleporter is a pretty dick move, since it seems to be a clue to the proper path earlier on (didn't occur to me until watching my own demo that it sort of hinted at the location of the red key, as well).

Map 11 -- Given the highly conceptual nature of many of these maps, I thought this was going to be a Tyson map at first glance. Instead it's more of an open runaround in a more representational setting than anything else in the mapset. I somehow manage to forget I have the chaingun for a while, and so take a good amount of damage at one point using the first in a less-than-optimal situation when shells start getting low. Despite some sloppy play (true of most of this batch of FDAs, really), I still ultimately survive, largely through the benefit of lots of space to move and little pockets of health. Could've just evaded the cyberdemon at the end, but it seems wrong somehow not to kill the final cyberdemon in the final map, and so I expend almost all of my ammo in doing so.

Entertaining mapset, eventually becomes quite clear that there's an underlying 'concept map' theme to the whole set. As is so often the case with this approach, some of these ideas work out a lot better than others, but the hit/miss ratio here is pretty solid. Probably not going to win any beauty contests, but apart from the decidedly bland map 07 there's not much to actually complain about, and there are some nice visuals in a few places, particularly in the maps with larger scale. I failed to find a ton of the secrets, too, something I'm usually pretty good at, so good work hiding them well.

Demon of the Well said:

Map 10 -- Ah, a puzzle map. One doesn't see these very often anymore (not that they've ever been terribly common). Everything seems to work as intended, although I'm not quite sure what the shotgun was for--I make it out without ever firing a shot.

UV-Max is possible. ;)

So, bunch of demos. What to expect from here:

- Fumbling around
- Dying
- Generally being idiot
- Repeatedly getting killed
And some other wondrous idiocies to make it any interesting than it has to. :P

Done in PrBoom+, -complevel -1 (So, anything you see being fucked up, don't worry. Just me.)

In short: Can be pretty cruel, pretty interesting maps, and neat concepts. Map 10 reminds me bit of that storage section in Doom 2 Reloaded, where you had to move silently through the map. Also, red key was pretty much pure luck on my end.

Took me a little while but I finally got to playing this. Great levels! Visually I really like them, you seem to cram in a fair number of little details without going overboard or breaking vanilla compatibility. The gameplay is pretty good overall, some dick move moments but usually even if the player doesn't do it "right" they can still get out of it with quick shooting and a bit of luck. MAP05 comes to mind, I too got rid of all my cover but I made it out anyhow.

FDAs if you want some, complevel 2 with PrB+: http://www.mediafire.com/download/rtsimxncttrgzss/nexcredo_plums-fda.zip

Missing MAP08 because I accidentally overwrote it :/ Too bad, I think it was my favourite level of them all. I for one enjoy platforming sections and I liked the feel of it a lot.

I figured out how to max MAP10 after recording that demo. Took quite a few tries, there's not much room for error in many places, especially the cyberdemon you have to weasel past. (unless there's another way?)

MAP11 felt like quite a departure in both visuals (doom furniture) and gameplay. I wouldn't call it out-of-place, exactly, but it sort of suggests that you were going to take the wad in another direction with a few maps in that style. I didn't finish it at all, too hard from pistol start without saves for me, but I'll go back to it shortly.

plums said:

I figured out how to max MAP10 after recording that demo. Took quite a few tries, there's not much room for error in many places, especially the cyberdemon you have to weasel past. (unless there's another way?)

Congrats on this!

I'll admit that making a stealthy 'concept' map here was my first-and-foremost aim, the rest of the stuff being added afterwards because I know some people like to be able to kill/collect absolutely everything, so I thought about making that a secondary puzzle for those that wanna. Not a lot of room for error at all, I admit. You've pretty much got to be able to make the most of what little weaponry I've provided as well as the usual method of cyberdemon dispatch.

As for MAP11, the second 'episode' was supposed to be a departure in terms of both style and gameplay, yes. Turns out that city/Earth levels in Doom 2's stock texture set aren't really my thing -- probably my biggest reason for capping it as-is.

I had some unfinished bits and pieces of other maps too, I may or may not re-use these elsewhere in the future. :)

Well, you had the first episode finished, anyway. You could have aimed for a different style in the second episode without any problem. ^^

I would vote for you taking some break on this one and then maybe you return with a different style for a second installment (but so that it somehow still fits together in some way).

Jayextee said:

As for MAP11, the second 'episode' was supposed to be a departure in terms of both style and gameplay, yes. Turns out that city/Earth levels in Doom 2's stock texture set aren't really my thing -- probably my biggest reason for capping it as-is.

Easy solution -- don't do city maps, do something else. There can never be too many hell episodes, after all. ;)

I plan to start catching up on playing these maps tonight.

Here's an FDA movie I made of me playing through the whole thing! It's about an hour long I think so get comfy. I play really aggressively and recklessly sometimes and it mucks me up sometimes but hopefully its still a fun watch. I liked this wad A LOT though! I really like the puzzles and some of the traps you made were awfully deadly! I'd love to see more maps from you :)