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TimeOfDeath

Cassie Steele (formerly "nonlinear vanilla map")

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So I'll take this as you're pulling your map from ETWTD

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have another demo: https://www.mediafire.com/?mrmddnw24fr08k5 makes it about a half-hour in, dies at RK trap. played with keyboard only because I'm too lazy to go find a mouse.

pretty cool map, not exactly sure what the first room was all about, though. It was really interesting to see how your gameplay style translates to smaller-scale tamer traps, nice use of revs to keep encounters threatening, particularly noticeable due to the armor starvation. Aside from the first room the only thing I thought was annoying was moving around that jagged torch hallway, kept getting caught on stuff. A lot of areas had that "shoot what's in front of you" feeling, but the grandiose nature of map and interesting traps were more than enough to keep me entertained. Cool music choice too, I've had that midi in my "best of vgmusic" folder aswell :)

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Thx for FDAs. T_Silverwolf, is that a zdoom demo? (if so what version)

Ribbiks, "tamer" was the word I was going to use in the description :)
Do you know what game the music is from, I don't remember.

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Heya,

Yes, it is zdoom based. Sorry for not specifying. It uses 2.7.1 linux version. Not sure whether or not that will make a difference but I can record it with fraps or something if it doesn't work. No biggie.

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Cool, thanks! btw, in the first room you're supposed to telefrag the barons. So, walk into teleporter, wait for baron to walk into darkness, walk forward to telefrag him, then punch the air so the next baron teleports behind you, and run into teleporter quickly after he teleports to telefrag him (there's a third baron to telefrag too, if you don't take the "exit" teleporter).

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Its for doom2 so I can actually play it. I was slaughtered in the fda like usual so deleted it. All the intricate organic angled architecture makes for an interesting route/gameplay/experience, but also makes it a bit mazelike. I wouldn't have the patience to create 1/8th of this type of stuff. Quite cool map overall; I played w/ saves and wouldn't know where to start uvmaxing such a long route. I personally like shorter tom19 maps with less cryptic, more obvious routes/gameplay, not much to memorize or pre-study. It was quite TNTish too, even the music.

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I was really liking where this was going on it's own, despite the fact it was a bit too large. It's a cool map so I'm glad it has a release somewhere.

That said, maybe you could take another crack at a TNT map, with less overall area being a goal from the start? There's always more room!

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Here's a first exit in 25:37. No idea about the route, I just kinda played it.

mork: That's why I made it for doom2 :) yeah, this map was different for me to make since I didn't plan a max route, I just tried to make it really nonlinear.

Marcaek: yeah, maybe I'll try a proper tnt map for ETWTD

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What's this, a TimeOfDeath map that I can actually play comfortably? I'm shocked. I didn't record a demo because I assumed I'd get creamed but I did pretty well. (I'd figured out the baron start from your post in the FDTWID thread.)

Anyhow this map was awesome, I love nonlinear levels like this. The design, texture choice, and music really gave it a feel of exploring a kind of lost ruins area. Gameplay was easy enough to manage but had lots of revenant threats and general surprises, so didn't feel boring or stale at all. Like Ribbiks I thought it was interesting to see your style aimed at an easier map.

A few sort-of criticisms:

  • This is much more accessible than a lot of your other maps but I wonder if some people will be put off by the barons at the start.
  • A lot of your control sectors are close enough to make noise, especially for the 3D stuff it might re-enforce the illusion of 3D if you didn't hear the clunks of floors moving all the time. I guess this sort of applies to The Room Below as well.
  • Not especially obvious what the corner switches do, though it doesn't seem to matter either, I wasn't ever really stuck wondering where I had to go next.
  • lol at TNT logo textures in a map for doom2.wad
None of those are much of a problem, if you like it the way it is then no changes needed.

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Thanks, my goal was to try to make a cool 90's wad like the ones I've played while browsing /idgames. About your points:

- you're probably right about the barons, but oh well I guess
- I've been playing with -nosound for the past two years so I forgot about the noisy control sectors, will keep that in mind.
- I forgot to add a visual clue to those corner switches, so I'll add them for the /idgames release

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TimeOfDeath said:

- I've been playing with -nosound for the past two years...


due to lack of sound card iirc? Must make it hard to play unfamiliar maps, whenever I fda with nosound I tend to get murdered by things behind me -.-

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Ribbiks said:

due to lack of sound card iirc? Must make it hard to play unfamiliar maps, whenever I fda with nosound I tend to get murdered by things behind me -.-

Lol, story of my life. :P

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Yeah no sound card. Agreed that fdas can be hell like that. I always save/load while playing /idgames wads :) but my castle of the damned demo was done with sound on my old doom computer because I made the wad on it (that comp has Quake and Quark on it for looking at the Quake map).

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That is interesting because the other person who I remember playing with no sound, vile, was also exceptionally skilled. I have found that nomusic makes me play better but haven't tried nosound. It might be something about harnessing your concentration without sound distractions, causing you to play better.

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In most cases I've experienced the same thing as you do, nomusic makes me a better a player; but I wonder whether it is because music distracts you, or because music in Doom doesn't fit the gameplay all the time.

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Music can hide audio cues for one thing, but I think it can also be distracting. Being the moderate-at-best player that I am I'm usually looking for more of an experience than strictly a test of skill though, so I always appreciate a fitting piece of music for a map.

Anyhow, just throwing this out there, but you can get USB sound cards for less than $20 online. Wouldn't want to record music with it but it shouldn't be so bad for playing games.

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My computer has no sound card either. I've been using usb creative sound blaster sb0270, seems to work fine. I bought it long ago which probably means its cheap or maybe there's better alternatives by now.

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Thought I actually had a shot at this one...

Too hard; couldn't beat.

FDAs

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Nice job j4rio, though was kind of frustrating to watch you keep coming by the blue key pit but never dropping down. Anyhow that's the first time I realized you could get that red key, there's another one in the map, and that explains the purpose of the corner switches too.

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Cool that you fda beat it j4.

I still haven't /idgames'ed this, but if dew or Grazza are reading and want to record a NM pacifist demo, I'll add it to the zip. Takes under 10 seconds with a glide to exit.

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since this was just bumped, some impressions:

+ i definitely am always excited to play more non-linear or unconventionally-structured maps and am always happy to see people doing anything different.
+ there are cool spaces and architectural details in here
+ i'm honestly fine with cryptic puzzles as long as you give attentive players some sort of tell sign or indication.

- monster placement felt super random
- the connection between the spaces didn't make a lot of sense to me, nor did it really flow particularly well. everything just ended up feeling super cramped.
- most battles ended up being not particularly interesting and frustrating because of the seemingly random monster placement and the odd geometry.

i didn't get all the way through the level, but maybe it will be of some use.

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I played it and beat it on HMP with an obscene amount of savescumming (and checking some linedefs out in an editor, which I suppose is cheating). Overall, it's a pretty good layout, but I swear it's way too hard.

Well, actually, this could be alleviated somewhat with more armor; there's literally two places you get it - a green armor tucked away in a secret room with a lot of chaingunners, and a single Megasphere that gives you a blue armor as a matter of course. However, you can only reach the green armor through a series of well-hidden secrets, and the Megasphere is fairly late into the map, so I spent a lot of time being two-shot by Revenant missiles that took out 80% of my health in one go. I mean, really, this map loves it some Revenants and Chaingunners (kind of Plutonia-esque, in that sense). Yeah, there's a fair bit of health to try and make up for this, but I dunno, it doesn't really feel the same.

Also, I noticed there were two red keys. One could be obtained with the blue key; the other was in an open area with platforms that seemed to lower when I hit those face switches scattered about in various corners of the map (had to jump to reach this one in GZDoom, but I'm assuming that in vanilla, due to actors being infinitely tall, you can just grab it normally?). I'm guessing the idea here is that you just grab whichever and tada, you can leave the stage? (Given that both trigger the monsters teleporting in near the exit, anyway.)

Lastly, I'm assuming there's a trick to that opening segment, because I could only telefrag a Baron or two; once I reached the Revenant, I didn't really have any recourse but to take the teleporter with the super shotgun, because I simply couldn't get the timing down for the telefrag (doesn't help that it teleports me away from him), and like hell I'm taking a Revenant down with just 50 pistol bullets.

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There are no difficulty settings, so you basically beat it on UV too. Yeah, the three corner/face switches lower the barriers to the red key in the south part of the map, then you can exit. Or you could get the other red key with the blue key instead and exit. For the start, you only have to telefrag the barons, there's a secret ssg beside the teleporter in the start hallway.

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TimeOfDeath said:

There are no difficulty settings, so you basically beat it on UV too.

Oh, ha, didn't know that. Might explain a few things.

TimeOfDeath said:

For the start, you only have to telefrag the barons, there's a secret ssg beside the teleporter in the start hallway.

As mentioned, that's ultimately what I did, but it does mean it's impossible to get 100% kills without cheating (I didn't see any way back into the starting room when you're better equipped to take on the enemies hiding in there).

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There's a second hidden SSG in that area. Watch TimeOfDeath's demo if you want to see a 100% kills run.

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