NOVA II: New Dawn - First status report in November | Still open for mappers!

is there a possibility of me reserving a mapslot? I've got a map with mostly minimal combat almost done and it could possibly fit MAP01.

(it's not basehell.wad by the way, I've given up hope for that map, sorry)

Sure. Previous NOVA mappers were allowed to submit more than one map.

What happened to Superluigieth1's map? He was going to redo it for the texture pack, and then... didn't?

Not sure where superluigieth1 went. Ditched us maybe? *shrugs*

Name : "Red Morning Light".
Midi : "Pistons" by Jimmy paddock.
Slot : I hope it will be in the first 10 maps because of its size and length.
Compt : I played it on choco, worked pretty okay to me.
Difficulty : Implented.

A random map I made in my spare time. not too rough, pretty simple texture and structure wise.
Just make sure that jimmy will be credited as the author of the midi.

Link :
http://www.mediafire.com/download/w955mg1dxeis64c/Red+Morning+Light.wad

Feel free to suggest anything from gameplay to texturing.

FDA for "Red Morning Light", the name almost sounds like a Bob Ross episode.
Very good stuff, a bit short but fit's perfectly for an early map slot.
Found nothing to complain despite that the Soulsphere secret was a bit hard to discover without using the automap.
Really enjoyed this one.

Hey, thank you for playing my map. about the soulsphere secret, well I though that the player will use the map connectivity to figure the way there.

I will look for a way to make it more obvious if its too hard.

Really nice work SFoZ, I'm always happy to see a non-techbase early mapslot with decent length. It has a good pace, good layout, surprisingly tight ammo constraint and some decent battles (the last one can get rough if you stay in the pit). Excellent overall!

I just had a bit of a play too. I like how NOVA II seems to be developing a bit of a theme in terms of jungle-style maps and bouncy MIDIs. This is why I don't like suggesting themes, they can evolve organically as we go along.

hey there, have a beta:

Name: Andromeda Sun
Midi: Wishlist by Ribbiks (subject to change)
Slot: early mapslot please, this was what I aimed for, maybe MAP01-03 at the least.
Compt: Works in vanilla
Difficulty/multiplayer: yes.

despite it's overall length, this too is a very simplistic map with mostly simplistic texturing, which I'd like to keep that way.

Story: you head through the tunnel in search of the remaining demons, scattered throughout the landscape, as well as the cavern and small outposts. you must figure out a few puzzles to escape these ruins.

also, a FAQ before you play:

"Why is it so long?"

I like it to be this length. besides, there's at most 175 monsters and the strongest possible is a cacodemon, so it shouldn't take more than 10 min.

"What's with the unknown textures in the console?"

these are unused textures from a different texture pack. this map originally came from a different project of mine which used different textures. you won't find any blue/white checkerboard patterns, ZDoom players. and I do plan on removing all of them for good.

"How do I solve the red key puzzle?"

for the four switchwalls, there's two buttons, the color of the wall is your clue.

"Can I post about texture alignments and other graphical/gameplay oddities?"

please, do it. help me out as best you can.

It's quite a vast map. Are you going to add more architecture to the different spaces just to fill them up a bit more?

whoops, yes, forgot that I also am planning on doing more to adding a few bits of scenery here and there, but nothing majorly impressive.

Playing some new maps! Just got a couple things to say:

getsu: I think the scale of your map is unnecessarily big. I died 2/3 times casually running through it and I basically gave up after the 3rd death. I understand that you're going for something with atmosphere and mystery but I didn't find any enjoyment in exploring the map, which is an important element of these kinds of levels. I'd recommend going back and shrinking things a little, as well as working on some more interesting architecture for the player to explore.

Also, I hate instant rising monsters - especially ones that you actually bump into, where the raise line is too close to the monster in question. If anything, I'd recommend using more teleport actions as they aren't as much of a pain in the ass and their sound is more, well, atmospheric for lack of a better term. I love a good bit of ambient teleportation noise when you're exploring a mysterious tense level.

SFoZ911: Fucking good map, this. The only initial complaint I have is the Red key door being repeatable instead of open once - all of the enemies that appear in the main part of the map just sort of amble about while you're dealing with the cacodemons in the outside area, where-as they would slowly trickle into the yellow key room and apply additional pressure on you if it stayed open. Plus, Open One keydoors are just better anyway more often than not. Still: cool secrets, cool music, cool architecture.

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Interesting that jungle/temple style maps seem to be the most prominent style so far - I recently made the choice of retexturing most of my map to be more E2 decrepid-techbase style with some vine and brick architecture along with a lot of water and outdoor scenery. I'd post a "rough alpha" or whatever but right now it's 50% hom and 100% untagged walls and stuff. I will say that I was working on it being a Map 15 entry until I realised joe-ilya was doing his own Map 15, so I don't know where to go from there. Anyway, I'll try and get something playable up in the next week or so.

^ I would welcome you to do a MAP15, as I still believe joe's map is better fit for MAP31 due to its density and lengthy progression.

Played getsu fine's map. I'm a bit mixed on it—on one hand it is nice to shake up the traditional mapset with a slower, longer experience for the player to wade through but I also think your map isn't quite engaging enough. This is partially due to the large scale, as the only threatening thing for the most part are the hitscanners (other than in the confines of the red key room), but it's also because there's not quite enough structures or opportunities for the player to be ambushed or put into dangerous positions.

Regarding the map itself, there needs to be a smidge more health in the second half of the map as the caverns saw me running around at pretty low health. I also feel that the SSG should always be handed to the player if there's no tactical reason for having them stick with the regular shotgun, as fighting off demons, lost souls, and cacos can be really boring and draining with so much space to manipulate them in (keeping it out in favor of using the berserk is fine, but that can be easily missed too). The red key room should probably lock the player in and need the red key to open the door back up, as it first seems like an odd/insignificant area until I looked on the automap and discovered that it housed a key I need to finish the map. Finally, with that room and the one near the end of the game, you have an opportunity for some interesting close encounters if you play with the architecture a bit more.

Thank you guys for the good feedback so far, i'm glad to hear that only minor things need to be changed.

@an_mutt : I see what you mean there, no problem i'll make sure to change it.

Andromeda Sun beta#2

responded to feedback a bit, did some lighting, placement, architechtural changes, and putting in trees/stalagmites as well. strongest monster is now the pain elemental. put in an SSG in one secret area as well. I made the red key and soulsphere areas more interesting and designed a few more things as well. still pretty underwhelming but I want it that way.

"you either die lots of times calling it overwhelming or live long enough to see the map as underwhelming."

It's still very vast looking, but that might work as I have another vast map I was going to do some work on as Processingcontrol made a submission for NOVA: The Birth that I never got around to fixing up. If both maps are in the final wad together the vastness might look intentional rather than out of place.

Name : "Monster Dash".
Midi : "Seamplaya" by me, (Original).
Slot : I like my map to be in the 8-12 slots because the difficulty and the size.
Difficulty : challenging.

Link :
http://www.mediafire.com/download/4zszw8ycyyi667b/Monster+Dash+.wad

If you find some bugs, please let me know about it.

Getsu Fune said:

Andromeda Sun beta#2

Using ZDoom. I like it. It's a lot of running, but that's okay. I only mind 'vast' if you have to do a lot of back-tracking.

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Finding the switch that drops the Yellow Key before you find the Yellow Key is a bit curious. Why would you not hit the switch when you find it? It's as if there was no switch at all and the Yellow Key was just sitting on top of the water. Did you put the switch there because otherwise you'd never know where the Yellow Key was? The water column it sits on is flush to the ceiling. You can't see the Yellow Key until after you hit that switch. I'm assuming it was a design choice to completely hide the Keys from view; the Red Key is behind the puzzle walls. Depending on how much back-tracking you want players to do, or what you want them to run into, you could have that switch lower a wall blocking the entrance to the caverns and add a switch to lower the Yellow Key as far away as on the wall blocking the exit.

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Need another linedef tag 17 north of the Caco pit so you don't fall in if you come from that direction.

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There's an open sector here somewhere, in the hall north of the agora and the exit.

http://i.imgur.com/5dNldWp.png

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The twelve off-map imps didn't teleport into sectors tagged 29, 30, 31 and 32. They're all tagged deaf.

hey thanks a lot for the feedback.

Finding the switch that drops the Yellow Key before you find the Yellow Key is a bit curious. Why would you not hit the switch when you find it? It's as if there was no switch at all and the Yellow Key was just sitting on top of the water. Did you put the switch there because otherwise you'd never know where the Yellow Key was? The water column it sits on is flush to the ceiling. You can't see the Yellow Key until after you hit that switch. I'm assuming it was a design choice to completely hide the Keys from view; the Red Key is behind the puzzle walls. Depending on how much back-tracking you want players to do, or what you want them to run into, you could have that switch lower a wall blocking the entrance to the caverns and add a switch to lower the Yellow Key as far away as on the wall blocking the exit.

this was an old idea I had when I made this, actually, to be honest, this whole map was made quite a long time ago, before this thread even started even. I had the idea of having a switch to lower something, but unfortunately I never got around to figuring out what I should do with that one switch, so it's on the YK for this beta. maybe I'll just have the YK out on the fountain just there, but of course have monsters attack the player, meaning the switch can be for something else. a fourth secret perhaps?

on the other hand, I can see a speedrunner for a map like this not pressing that switch because that person might not think the switch does anything important to their run. I mean, the switch isn't marked that it will lower the key and oh, just dumb philosophies from myself.

as for everything else you said, they're easy fixes, and thanks very much for noticing them, not sure how the open sector happened but it should be gone now.

It's a lot of running, but that's okay. I only mind 'vast' if you have to do a lot of back-tracking.

this is also how I feel a lot of what a GOOD 'vast' map is, a lot of free movement and places to go without a sense of lossness. an example would be the first Cheogsh. pretty fun Russian-made GZDoom map if you haven't played it.

well, this one doesn't have too much in pathways, it's a bit linear, although there's two to three distinct paths to get to the last open area. I of course try to avoid the sense of lossness.

thought I'd release a version with the minor fixes implemented. will see what to do with the yellow key in the meantime.

floop

Eradrop's map was brilliant. Good challenging hell map if anyone wants to give it a try.

Thank you very much kildeth on the feedback

No prob Eradrop, I'd write some more feedback but I didn't actually get to finish the level as I died halfway through, lol. :P I will say though that the texturing and architecture was very well done for a newbie map and I liked the layout.

kildeth said:

Eradrop's map was brilliant. Good challenging hell map if anyone wants to give it a try.

Agreed, very nice visuals and challenging gameplay. Think the map has sort of a plutonia vibe but maybe i was just mislead by some of the textures.
Good stuff..FDA

Also gave Monster Dash a spin—I'm very impressed how much action you could pull out of such a small space. In a way it felt like a miniature slaughtermap with how many monsters were being poured into each of the bite-sized arenas, and keeping the areas tight and connected ensured the player had a lot of room to move around & paths to pursue. Excellent stuff.

Only issue I found was the usage of the AVs at the end. Due to their pathing they'll stay in the starting room trying to blast you, making the encounter dull. I think having them warp into the starting room as soon as you hit the red key switch would prove more of a frantic fight, although you may have to hand the player more rockets as they can easily rez the army of corpses that will be over there. Otherwise it's another fantastic small-scale map.

Due to the influx of new maps, I think I might post the first compilation alpha a little earlier than previously planned, like October 1st or something as I have a break then. We could still have the status report in November just to check progress and then compile a second alpha around Christmas/New Years for the new submissions and updates in that time, how does that sound?

we only have fourteen maps though.

plus, other than Andromeda Sun, I've been working steadily but slowly on a hell map, which is going to take me possibly a couple months to fully finish.

kildeth said:

Due to the influx of new maps, I think I might post the first compilation alpha a little earlier than previously planned, like October 1st or something as I have a break then. We could still have the status report in November just to check progress and then compile a second alpha around Christmas/New Years for the new submissions and updates in that time, how does that sound?

That makes me kinda feel left out. I'm currently in school and I expected Nov. 1st to submit my final map. I really want it played and critiqued then.

^ I don't think it matters either way, as the rest of the maps will be compiled and playtested as they come out, so it's not like your entry will get ignored. If anything, compiling an alpha is just a good way of showing what we have and publishing a copy in case anything happens to the original links/wads.

I'm also surprised to hear we have nearly half the wad put together, although I still think we're gonna have to do some hard edits/cuts to a few maps to maintain some level of consistent quality.