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Phobus

[Release] Escalation II: Centurion Night now out

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Welcome to the Escalation series, where monster numbers keep going up!

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Escalation I: The Breach (50 monsters)

Story for Escalation I: The Breach

The UACs preferred PMC has been tasked with reclaiming a 'scientific' installation. Heavily armed, you are deployed by helicopter in the dead of night, hoping to catch the spawn of hell unaware. As you fast-rope in through the skylight and take stock of the immediate situation (it isn't good), you realise you've left everything but your side arm on the rapidly escaping chopper.

Shit...

Download Link for Escalation I: The Breach

Now with difficulty settings, a slightly altered Ultra Violence, a CREDIT graphic, green text for the intermission screen and a slightly altered aesthetic around the hell portal.

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Escalation II: Centurion Night (100 monsters)

Story for Escalation II: Centurion Night

The UAC, which is very impressed with how the PMC handled clearing out the previous 'scientific' installation, has hired them on again to clear out a larger facility. Your PMC, very unimpressed at your potentially lethal mistake on that mission, flies you out with a crate of equipment, which will be dropped in with you by the helicopter crew so you can't forget it again. Sniggering to themselves, the crew set out in the dead of night, whilst you pointedly ignore their jibes. It's not like you failed or anything...

Finally, you reach the facility and jump out of the helicopter. Landing with a grunt, you hear the crate smash into the ground next to you with an oddly liquid sound. As the clatter of rotors recedes, you realise they mixed up your equipment with part of a supply of MREs that was to be delivered on the next stop. Feasting on some of the meals that survived the fall, you contemplate radioing the helicopter to come back and drop off your equipment... Which would include the radio you'd want to make the call on. Shit...

phobus.servegame.com/doom/ph_e0100.zip]Download link for Escalation II: Centurion Night

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I really dig the title screen, the font for 'EscalaTion' is so 90s looking, especially with the author tag in the bottom right corner of the screen. I like the concept for the series, but be careful not to set up ambitious deadlines for the maps and announce them, just see Nebula 95 as an example of that =P.

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I believe the font used ("Savatage") is actually from a 90's (maybe late 80's) metal album cover by a band I'd never heard of before searching for fonts, called Savatage. My use of WordArt to make the 3D text definitely helps on that retro front :)

Hehe - I'll try and wait until I'm at least half way through a map before announcing, so there's less chance I'll scrap whatever I'm on! Speaking of which, I do anticipate having a beta out today (might be short on difficulty levels, seeing as I'll want 50 monsters on all of them). I have made the mistake of giving myself a really poor visual theme to work with, so it's been a little slower than I'd hoped. I might retexture it, depending on feedback, or just resort to adding lots of detail to make up for it.

@Jimmy: That's pretty good! Is it possible to make the sound under the guitar a little louder?

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Perfect :D

You may also be glad to know that my chosen intermission music for this series is your Death Rally opening/start MIDI from vgmusic :)

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Bump - we're out! No difficulty modes yet, but as most people play UV that shouldn't be a big deal. What do we think?

Here's a screenshot to whet your appetite (forgive the crosshair I forgot to turn off...):

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Really fun map to blast through, good work. For a 50 monster map the gameplay is top notch and I can't wait to see what you can do with more monsters. The map looks really nice too, especially the awesome "portal" area. Didn't find any visual gaffes but I wasn't really looking for them either so it's possible I missed something. Bonus points for the great music choice, love that track and it fits well with this level too I think. Here's the FDA:

http://www.mediafire.com/?p3l8m0o632orn33

Died three times embarassingly but I consider only one of them legit :P Decision-making sure wasn't my strongest suit today.

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esselfortium said:

I really like that central structure around the door.


:) You'll be even more glad to hear/see that I've made a techbase map with no blue carpet or FLAT20 :P

@Veinen: Thanks for the FDA and feedback! Glad to see my hell portal being lethal didn't put you off having a second go - I figured I could get away with a dick move like that in a 2-4 minute map :)

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:D Fear TOD's revenge!

The map felt disjointed, I mean at first you have these small fights with 2-3 monsters, then suddenly a slaughter type fight happens. Dunno, seemed like a lazy way to get the monster count up to 50. And visually that area is totally different from everything else in the level too.

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See, this is why anonymous reviews are so popular :P

To be honest, the 25-monster fight was actually the kernel for the map and then the rest of it formed around building up to it, but with only 25 more monsters to use I had to really work within the limit. As for the visuals... Well, I'm not too fond of my attempt at Art Deco, so I made the large open room match the building exterior (which would make more sense if the player could see that too, I'm aware).

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I see. I just really like the idea of squeezing out maximum challenge out of small numbers of monsters so I was disappointed when I saw that horde I guess.

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Graphics-wise it's a bit of a mess, not horrible but there's a LOT of different textures used for what is essentially a map with only two main rooms and a few side corridors/overlooks. I'd think about limiting the textures somewhat.

Definitely a bit of a swing, the start is a bit of a frantic "find the weapon" start which is fun, then the "hold down the plasma gun trigger" fight in the next room. I ran into that room without the plasma gun my first time and died horribly.

I wasn't really a fan of the central pillar; I kept wondering why the AV could hit me when I couldn't see him or why a certain invisible mancubus kept killing me. Just not intuitive, I suppose, but if you think it should be one of those "try and reload until you get it right" things its not so bad.

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I really like the idea of building maps around enemy numbers and pretty much giving some good arsenal up front. Played til I died but it was fun and energetic from what I experienced. Needs more maps though!

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TimeOfDeath said:

I didn't mean my first post, but HOW DOES IT FEEL, HUH?

It feels like you didn't like my review of a mapset you were involved in. Having apparently single-handedly put Remiel off of ZPack twice and heard all about it in his reviews, plus enjoyed such wonderful anonymous reviews as "Not a serious map, not a jokewad, not an worth download", "No. This is crap" and "only a gay man could make this" (amongst many others) I've taken it as a given that people aren't adverse to letting others know when they don't like something. I just have the decency to own up to it when I post a contentious or negative opinion. Sorry if that offended you.

Here's an FDA.

Thanks - I'll check this out when I get home. I'm anticipating no deaths and a nigh-on perfect performance :)

EDIT: Interesting to see you having to work out a map, rather than those seemingly inhuman runs you do on your own! Very tight ending there with that AV and the last of your plasma.


Thanks for the feedback and opinions, guys! I'm going to spend a couple more hours on this map after work today - mostly to add the other two difficulty modes. I'm thinking the second main room will want some work, so I might try and make it match the first rooms visuals a bit more closely (although the central structure stays) as well as change the way the combat in that room works to be more interesting too, as I've had an idea for that. I've also thought of a better naming convention for this series than "ph_map##" too, so that'll get used.

Tomorrow I'll start on the next map, which will have 100 monsters when finished.

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I did say I was going to get this done yesterday, and now I have!

See the first post for the changes and here's the link again if you don't want to scroll up:
Download Link for Escalation I: The Breach

I've used a different filename so I can keep the old version around in the event of this being worse than the original! Any additional feedback or bug reports would be great as my plan is to archive this tomorrow or Friday :)

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Well, Escalation II is on it's way! Here's a screenshot of the journey you'll be undertaking:



I've basically mapped out the background so far and just need to do the bit where the monsters are. Might have something for you to test later today or tomorrow, for all I know.

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Please move the blood pool so it's not 3/4 hovering in mid-air thank you 6_9

Looks neat otherwise. Love Quake rock. :D

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I was hoping it'd sit on the wall, but thanks to the offsets on that sprite it looks crap up there however I had it, so it can go on the ground now. 4/100 monsters in so far on hard, 3/100 on the other two difficulties. My design is just crying out for 3D floors, but I'm sticking to limit-removing compatibility. Still, pretty solid for a 6-hour mapping bender. Might as well keep going until I'm done.

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Cheers Tango :)


Right everybody, after making the entire map in 12 hours of work today, I have a headache! I also have a phobus.servegame.com/doom/ph_e0100.zip]download link for you all. I don't think any mistakes crept in, but after this long in one sitting, anything could have happened. I know I can beat it on all three difficulties, so that's something at least!

Enjoy. I'm off to do literally anything that isn't use a computer for a bit...

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Wow, this is the first time I see a S1 door that has zero tag but doesn't fuck up the level completely (you can still exit normally!). Quite amusing.

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Alright, curiosity got the better of me and I checked this thread... I see you've already found that my "testing" in prboom-plus was just running through in -nomonsters to see if everything was rendering properly. The red key bars now have a tag for their S1 door function, so unless I missed any other tags, redownloading should fix that problem!

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FDA on Centurion Night : http://www.mediafire.com/download/f137bbgvuf5uldr/ph_e0100-fda-1208-wh.zip
( I assumed -complevel 2 would work, and it seemed so )

Cute little map, with nice visuals. Gameplay was properly balanced, with a couple surprises ( mostly involving teleporting Revenants ), but nothing too threatening at this point. Also the weapon usage ( Chaingun and Plasma Gun only ) is quite unusual to me, but it works.

Carry on. :)

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Thanks for the FDA and feedback [WH]-Wilou84, but playing the demo back in prboom-plus 2.5.1.3 seems to have it desync when you try the blue key door. After you walk up to it, to me it just looks like you're shooting randomly at walls before being killed by a cacodemon, waiting a while, starting the map again and then firing off into the sea.

Not sure if that's down to me not being too familiar with complevels or anything? I'm just dragging and dropping the .WAD and demo onto the executable. Glad to hear you enjoyed the map anyway :)

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