[WIP] Vela Pax (on hiatus)

Another thought: Do you play Minecraft Mek? If you do, you should build one of these in it :) It would be awesome!

You might want to offer two versions of this mod, for ports that don't use the REJECT table. The one included for MAP05 is 12.mb of zeros...

As a huge fan of big maps I never thought I was gonna say this, but this is actually too much for me :P

Kinda hard to explain...but as the map (map01) had tons of memorable areas and unique looking architecture/structures all over, it kinda looked all the same at the same time. There are so many memorable areas that they dont get memorable anymore. Hmm, kinda hard to explain, as I said..

To cut it short: its simply too big and complex for me :)
It made me realize how much I like simpler design.

Don`t get me wrong though, the maps are BEYOND impressive. Seriously, I`m amazed! And surely I will play them all when released :)

This is what I have found SO FAR with map 01 ...

Tested with Risen3D.

1. Lines 6526, 6523, 6520 and 6522 use the wrong texture. Should be CRATE3 with a Y offset of 64 ( or -64 ).

2. Check X offsets for lines 6532/6533 and 6529/6530 - crate.

3. IMO, the ceilings of sectors 8702, 8698, 8705, 8700 and 8709, and the 4 sectors just north of them, would look better with FLOOR0_4 to match sector 3635- OR - just change the ceiling flat of sector 3635 to FLOOR4_8.

4. Lines 8668 to line 8633 could do with an X alignment. Check vertices 7623 and 7582.

5. Is there a reason why lines 32685, 32661, 32558 and 2701 are flagged block monster ?

6. Players with non-zdoom ports might not get credit first time at sector 1255 if running.

7. Lines 50466, 50445, 50444, 50443, 50450, 50451, 50452 and 50453 would look better with a lower Y offset to hide the fake 3d effect.

8. Misalignment at vertex 40885.

@darkreaver: I know what you mean. I thought "Cool! Some really big maps". Then I started playing map 05, and kept playing map 05, and kept playing map 05 until finally after 1:45:47 I got to the exit and realized these maps are for looking at, and not really playing (demoing really). I started making a demo for map 01 and died after only killing 70 monsters several times, and since the monster count is like 1200 i just threw my hands up and said "fuck it, I don't need to put myself through this".

EDIT: But don't get me wrong Mek, these maps are amazing, actually i think "Apollyon" might be a new favorite. And you have inspired me to try to be more detailed in my mapping.

EDIT 2: If you ever look for a job as an architect, just show your employer this as your resume.

I also feel what darkreaver is saying, each area is highly detailed and unique looking, but there are SO many that you lose all sense of where you are haha. Can't change that though, is the nature of these beasts!

Regarding monster-block lines (and doors that are too short for barons), I think the gameplay would improve much from letting enemies have a bit more room to move around. In map02 there are some lost souls and cacos who are able to circumvent most of these blocking lines, and I always encounter them at different times, makes it more interesting/dangerous/fun that way IMO. (In particular I'm thinking about 3d-bridges which ruin enemy "flow" IMO).

Health balance seems pretty good (only testing map02 so far), armor is relatively scarce but in a good way, grabbing a green armor feels like winning the lottery. Shells/Bullets may be too much though. I still haven't beat the map so if the map gets "repopulated" at some point then I'll need all that spare ammo. Best I have managed so far is 4 keys (been trying to get a demo heh).

Despite the nitpicking, these are amazing maps! I feel like maybe these are what Yes did to rock, or Dreamtheater did to metal; grand operas that might not always be pleasurable to hear but are always amazing for the skill they demonstrate.

Ok, one more attempt at that map02 demo... :-)

Yay got it: http://webpages.charter.net/bgspencer/design/VP_map02_spencer_zdoom2.5.0.zip

Confirmed with -timedemo that it doesn't desynch. I get extremely lost at around the 50 - 1:18 minute mark, so go make some coffee or something for that haha. The access to the yellow skull area is extremely subtle (and I don't even know which switch it was that gave access to it), which is why I got so lost.

My MAP01 demo, over 2 hours long: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/958961

I guess since you guys got those two I'll do Apollyon. Oh god.

Thanks for all the feedback and reports so far guys! It makes me feel great that you all like the maps so far. I am quite literally mentally exhausted from all of this so I will be taking a short break. But if all goes well with the rest of the reports, then I shall continue working.

Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention in the readme. MAP05 is literally at the max limits as far as sidedefs are concerned. So please keep in mind that I can't really add anything of significance without taking away from somewhere else.

AconyX1 said:

Misalignment here (MAP01):

http://i52.tinypic.com/20qz0qq.jpg

Thanks for spotting that! I forgot to mention this in the readme, but there will likely be quite a few texture misalignments in MAP01 with the METAL1 texture (and maybe a few with the gray brick texture too). The reason being that some areas have so many seams that the texture can't really be perfectly aligned all the way around the structure. And because of the shapes in METAL1, the misalignments are more noticable. The best I'm really able to do aside from using a different texture is to try and hide the misalignment where it's harder to notice. In this case I think I can hide it a little better, heh.

[WH]-Wilou84 said:
The only thing I disliked was the jumping sequence on crates to get the yellow skullkey.

Haha, yea I thought that might be a bit on the frustrating side. Even though this will probably sound really awful, I sorta wanted it to be a little bit of a pain to get. I'm not sure if anyone was able to pick up on how the key layout was setup in MAP01 yet, but there are two actual routes contained within the map as a whole, one of which is completely optional but has a nice payoff at the end. This optional side-route starts if you can find the yellow skullkey (which is a secret, by the way). Technically you can finish the entire map without touching any of the skullkeys, but you miss out on a good 40% of the map if you do it that way. If your able to get all of the skullkeys, you can close the hellish gate at the map's exit and actually bypass that last big fight (closing the gate also kills all of the monster that would have spawned in othewise). But that's only if you find all three skullkeys and activate the skull switches at the end of the map.

Doomhuntress said:

Where does the music come from, btw?

The composer's name on Mod Archive is Fusion Faktor. I found his music years ago and have been waiting for a chance to use it in some maps. Incidentally, I was a little concerned that the tracks might be too short and become a little monotonous after an hour or two of playing. Did anyone have that problem?

Also yes, I do play Minecraft! Although I haven't had many chances to play it recently. I've built a few crazy things in it too :)

DaniJ said:

You might want to offer two versions of this mod, for ports that don't use the REJECT table. The one included for MAP05 is 12.mb of zeros...

Oh yea, that's probably a good idea. MAP01's REJECT is about 10 mb too :P.

hawkwind said:

Bugs

Thanks hawkwind, your always awesome at finding bugs! I'll look into all of these soon.

darkreaver said:

Kinda hard to explain...but as the map (map01) had tons of memorable areas and unique looking architecture/structures all over, it kinda looked all the same at the same time. There are so many memorable areas that they dont get memorable anymore. Hmm, kinda hard to explain, as I said..

I think that's a very reasonable and sane conclusion to make :P. As someone already said (I think), once a map gets to a certain size and complexity, that comes with the territory. You could make areas vastly differently from each other I guess, but if it comes to that then you might as well just split the map into separate maps. Anyways I definitely understand what you mean :). These sorts of maps just aren't for everyone.

Vorpal said:

Regarding monster-block lines (and doors that are too short for barons), I think the gameplay would improve much from letting enemies have a bit more room to move around. In map02 there are some lost souls and cacos who are able to circumvent most of these blocking lines, and I always encounter them at different times, makes it more interesting/dangerous/fun that way IMO. (In particular I'm thinking about 3d-bridges which ruin enemy "flow" IMO).

I had it set in my mind when I started working on this that I would try to have the open-air areas of the maps be a porous as possible so flying monsters could flow almost anywhere. Aside from some potential drawbacks (like having a Caco wander off in some high corner, never to be found), it really does make the gameplay feel a little more dynamic. MAP02 in particular was the one I executed that idea on the most as I used self-referencing sectors for some mid-texture blocking areas, etc. Then I ran into a problem with them in MAP05. Sometimes if the player is using the Rocket Launcher and is up against what he/she thinks is just an impassible line while shooting at some monster below, you can very easily blow yourself to bits because of the invisible sector (even if it's set just a pixel higher than the player can walk over). I can't imagine many players would be very happy after blowing themsevles up in a situation like that, so I decided to be very selective of using self-referencing sectors for that purpose. Unfortunately that leaves the only option of using impassible lines. As far as monster-blocking lines are concerned, I don't remember using them very often at all. Same goes for short doors; in the cases I could find, I would have the door open an extra 8px higher if there was the possibility of a HK/Baron being on the other side. If you could give specific examples of either bad monster blocking lines/too short doors, I would really appreciate it. I'd consider those bugs.

Vorpal & Memfis said:

DEMOS!!

Awesome! I thought for sure there wouldn't be anyone brave enough to record demos of these maps. Thanks so much for making these, I will really enjoy watching them :D. I recorded a MAP02 UV Max not too long after finishing the map, but unfortunately I ran into bugs afterward so it desyncs.

Thanks for these great maps again. You certainly should take a well deserved break. I'll get working on that demo now. Maybe I'll finish it before 2012. I was actually gonna ask why so few maps before playing them, now I know. A full 32 level megawad of levels like this would be.....well, there's no word for that. Go take that break, I can't wait for the next 3.

I'm impressed; I've only played a bit of the first map so far (I got to about 800 kills before I had to leave for work), but what I saw to that point was far beyond my expectations of quality. Beyond being in awe at the massive scale of some of the architecture, the gameplay is still interesting, and the overall feel so far is great. My only complaint is that the sky texture is kind of rough and ugly, but after the first five minutes of play I didn't even care.

Also, it's kind of cool that this is the first time in years that I've reduced the screensize to keep an acceptable framerate, owing to the crappy laptop I use for my Dooming. :)

I'll have to set aside a full afternoon to play through the whole thing on my desktop machine though. Great work.

I didn't want to try the WAD until you finished, but although I tried.

IMO you are an idiot because these incredibly gigantic levels are inhuman and too big for calling that 'playable'.

HOWEVER! I can understand th absolutely hard work which you and the testers has been spent for this WAD.

So finally, I must say: it's an EPIC WORK! It might means good, or bad, or both... I say good.

But I won't play that too often :)

Thanks Katamori! (I think :P)

Turns out that demos are really excellent tools for finding bugs and just seeing how other people react to and play through the maps. I've already came across a bunch just from the ones Vorpal and Memphis posted. I also learned that watching demos gives me motion sickness X_X

Incidentally Vorpal, I'll have to figure out a better cue to show the player what to do in order to grab the yellow skullkey; there's a really big disconnect from one of the switches you hit to where you need to go to next. Also the way you got the red skullkey...well, heh, I totally missed that. Your supposed to hop that gap, fight some monsters, and then hit a switch which in turn lowers some bars on the upper side of the red skullkey platform. I'll have to fix that! Unfortunately I must have hit a key which promptly ended the demo about half way through...so I guess I gotta watch it again :P

Memphis your run was pretty awesome, if a bit hard to stomach after almost 2 hours. I'm sure the rocket launcher behind the seemingly invisible wall must have made you scratch your head. I forgot to texture some bars which lower if you hit one switch before the secret switch which reveals that RL secret. You actually found the hidden switch first, which I thought was amazing! But then you when and hit the other switch (which lowers that blocking floor) and so the invisible bars were lowered. Now that I think about it though, I'm probably going to redo that whole setup so it's impossible for the player to lock himself out of the secret no matter which switch is pressed first.

If anyone else wants to send me demos alongside bug reports, I'll definitely give them a watch.

I just directed someone to your maps Mek, and his comp errored out with that signal 11 crap. he was using prboom+ 2.5.0.9 test.

One last thing I noticed for map 01 ... When looking out of the window at sector 3591 and looking towards the boxes where lines 29049, 29069 etc. are, the 3d effect is lost since the crate can be seen with no top. Since this is for boom compat. ports why not use a fake floor/ceiling in this area ?

MAP02 demo - http://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/959174 (found 4 keys, ~700/800 kills)
I panicked at the blue keycard battle and died very fast. I just don't know what to do in the battles like this, they are too scary. Give me a hint and I'll try again sometime. :)

Katamori said:

I didn't want to try the WAD until you finished, but although I tried.

IMO you are an idiot because these incredibly gigantic levels are inhuman and too big for calling that 'playable'.

I fail to see how he's an idiot for making gigantic maps. Also saying you can't call them 'playable',when they're actually playable, for that sole reason makes YOU an idiot, you just seem to have no patience to play through an entire level.

Anyway Mek you've done an awesome job so far, i'll give this behemoth of a wad a playthrough once its entirely finished.

Whew! Took me a while, but I got through what you've finished so far, and damn man, this is some of the best stuff I've played in a long while. (It seems in pretty stark contrast to a lot of what I've seen been released lately - large, complex and highly detailed.)

I didn't notice any bugs on my play through, though I did get pretty lost in Map01 and Map02 a few times. (Though from the sounds of things, the people recording demo's have highlighted any flaws in regards to play navigation, so that should be cool.)

Honestly, the only critisism, (and you're going to hate me) are some of the larger walls in Map05. They're... well, a little flat. Now, it's possible you've just run out of side-defs to play around with. (I vaguely recall a thread you posted?) However, if you have a few more to play around with, I'd take a good look at some of the really large and tall walls that are visiable within a few of the stair wells outside, as well as some of the more open parts that are visible.

Through-out the map, there's a ton of beautiful detail and architecture to gawk at. However, in certain areas outside, there's quite the opposite - there's huge, very blank looking walls with nothing to break up the repeated texture. Normally this wouldn't be much of an issue, except that, well, you've done such a beautiful job with everything else, that a mere lack of detail tends to show.

(However, as I alluded to before, if you're out of linedefs or whatever, don't worry about it. Hell, you're probably exhausted enough as it is...)

Another thing I noticed, was the interesting way these maps played. Quite the opposite of the sorts of maps I tend to make, which focus on very controlled fights one after another, you've created much less controlled fights, with enemies placed in all sorts of interesting locations. (Usually deaf, which helps with the frame rate, no doubt.) Do you think more controlled fights in more of your maps might be a better thing? I'm honestly not sure. I know I found them quite a great deal easier than what I was expecting, given the monster count (in fact, mostly due to luck, I only had to load once during Map01), however it's likely you're not going for anything staggeringly difficult, and are happy with the challenge your maps present. (However, these two styles of monster placement appear to be most frequent styles used in map-design, so I thought it was something interesting to take a note of.)

Anyway.

I'm really glad you've made these, as after quite a long break from mapping myself, I'm really feeling inspired again. It's just so damn nice to see an author putting so much damn effort into their maps. I just hope you feel that warm cuddly feeling knowing you've made a lot of other doomers quite pleased with what you've made here :)

And one last thing: op notch music choices! (As often as I tend to comment on this topic, this is often something a lot of authors don't put much effort into, so I'm really glad you did.)

SO yeah, great job. I eagerly await the full release.

By the way, I would ask your permission to upload the video to Youtube, that you linked on the 1st post.

I would add some nice music :)

Map 1 FDA - http://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/959216

Died once early on, then cleared on my next attempt.

This map was simply massive in size. Didn't really get all that lost except on a few occasions.

Map 5 sounds like it's even bigger too. Brilliant :P.

Really enjoying what I see so far.

Hey Mek.

Just a couple of things I noticed on MAP 01.
-linedef 51695 needs its frontside midtexture set to SHAWN2
-linedef 39533 needs some alignment
-linedef 47199 looked a bit poo. (the waterfall looks too square and blocky)

In terms of gameplay, the only thing I really didn't like was being made to kill Barons with the single shotty. There was one point where I had to kill 4 all together with the single. Tedious. And the area with the like 10 hell knights near the exit. Same, but at least these guys posed a challenge in terms of dodging. (It is possible that I missed a RL somewhere, other than in a secret that is. I suck with secrets.) I would make a few of those Barons into Hell knights. Just a thought.

Awesome, amazing level tho. Wow.

Are there secrets that require rocket jumping + vertical aiming? So far, I've found two secret areas on MAP01 that I had absolutely no idea how to reach other than through such tricks (one platform with switch that lowers a pillar with a megasphere, the pillar being the actual secret, and another a room with several boxes of rockets and health potions).

Of course, I also have no idea how to reach the yellow key either. Monster-wise, I've completed 3/4 of the map according to the ZDoom counters, but I'm completely lost and wandering randomly in deserted hallways and courtyards, sometimes hearing the grunts of inaccessible monsters. Didn't grab any of the skull keys either, even if I've seen where they are.

DoomHero85 said:

I just directed someone to your maps Mek, and his comp errored out with that signal 11 crap. he was using prboom+ 2.5.0.9 test.

That's probably the same bug that I added to the readme. Then again who knows because the error message is so cryptic. But essentially if you die or try to load a save game on a map (usually MAP01 or MAP05), you'll get that error. And it doesn't happen all the time; it seems to be random. I think it has something to do with the addition of the ZDoom node format to PRBoom+, but I could be wrong. That would probably be a good thing to bring up to Entryway. Saved games will still work, you just have to restart the game.

hawkwind said:

One last thing I noticed for map 01 ... When looking out of the window at sector 3591 and looking towards the boxes where lines 29049, 29069 etc. are, the 3d effect is lost since the crate can be seen with no top. Since this is for boom compat. ports why not use a fake floor/ceiling in this area ?

Oh that's a good idea, I didn't think about that! I wonder if I can get it to work in a setup like that?

Memfis said:

MAP02 demo - http://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/959174 (found 4 keys, ~700/800 kills)
I panicked at the blue keycard battle and died very fast. I just don't know what to do in the battles like this, they are too scary. Give me a hint and I'll try again sometime. :)

Nice, I'll enjoy watching this :). The blue key card fight is probably the hardest one in the entire map, and it might be a tad bit luck based depending on a number of things. For one, if you go into that room and pick up all of the ammo/health before the fight, it can make it a little bit harder. If you happen across either the Plasma Gun or BFG secret beforehand, it makes that battle waaay easier (though they aren't necessary). My advice is to take out as many monster as you can from a safe distance with the RL, and then circle-strafe the perimeter of the room with the SSG. Monster infighting will really help you out there, just watch out for any stray Cyberdemon rockets.

Insane_Gazebo said:

Honestly, the only critisism, (and you're going to hate me) are some of the larger walls in Map05. They're... well, a little flat. Now, it's possible you've just run out of side-defs to play around with. (I vaguely recall a thread you posted?) However, if you have a few more to play around with, I'd take a good look at some of the really large and tall walls that are visiable within a few of the stair wells outside, as well as some of the more open parts that are visible.

Another thing I noticed, was the interesting way these maps played. Quite the opposite of the sorts of maps I tend to make, which focus on very controlled fights one after another, you've created much less controlled fights, with enemies placed in all sorts of interesting locations. (Usually deaf, which helps with the frame rate, no doubt.) Do you think more controlled fights in more of your maps might be a better thing? I'm honestly not sure. I know I found them quite a great deal easier than what I was expecting, given the monster count (in fact, mostly due to luck, I only had to load once during Map01), however it's likely you're not going for anything staggeringly difficult, and are happy with the challenge your maps present. (However, these two styles of monster placement appear to be most frequent styles used in map-design, so I thought it was something interesting to take a note of.)

Yea unfortunately lack of sidedefs is exactly why those walls aren't detailed. To give you some perspective on how much room I don't have, I had to add 3 simple doors in a room to keep the player from circumventing a large fight. It couldn't have been any more than 15 sidedefs, yet when I added them, it breached the limit :/. I find it amazing that I was able to finish the map at all to be honest. I was going to attempt to lower the sky so there wouldn't be so much negative wall space, but I couldn't really do that either. The layout had my sky height locked in place and it would have taken a huge amount of work to tweak everything. So it's just an unfortunate side effect of my over-mapping :P.

The gameplay is definitly open and dynamic. I made sure to be selective of how and when I used controlled encounters (most of which are when monster spawn in from off-map). The setup can sometimes be a doulbe-edged sword as far as difficutly is concerned though. You can view and take out many monsters from a number of different areas since the player has viewable access to many different parts of the map (depending on your location). So you may end up waking up monsters in from one area only to have them already on you later on in the map. Overall it probably does make for an easier experience, which I was totally going for. MAP06 may have more controlled fights though, but I'm not really certain at this point.

Katamori said:

By the way, I would ask your permission to upload the video to Youtube, that you linked on the 1st post.

I would add some nice music :)

Sure, I don't mind. Just as long as you give me some credit somewhere, I'm perfectly fine with that. At some point I'll upload the second recording, so you have my permission to do the same with it if you so chose. Is there a way to transfer uploaded videos from one user to another? If you happen to get it uploaded, I would really like to have it in my profile.

Anima Zero said:

Map 1 FDA - http://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/959216

Sweeeet :D. Watching demos of maps that I made is probably the coolest outcome of this release so far. I will definitely enjoy this!

KiiiYiiiKiiiA said:

In terms of gameplay, the only thing I really didn't like was being made to kill Barons with the single shotty. There was one point where I had to kill 4 all together with the single. Tedious. And the area with the like 10 hell knights near the exit. Same, but at least these guys posed a challenge in terms of dodging. (It is possible that I missed a RL somewhere, other than in a secret that is. I suck with secrets.) I would make a few of those Barons into Hell knights. Just a thought.

Hey there, thanks for those bug reports! Which difficulty did you play on? There are quite a few more Barons in UV as opposed to the other difficulties. My hope is that by the time you reach areas where there are more than 2 of them at once, you will have found the Rocket Launcher. There are two Rocket Launchers that I can recall placing; a secret one early on in the map and one that you can get if you have the red keycard. If you happened to watch Memphis's MAP01 demo, you'll know that the secret one is a little broken at the moment (if you hit the secret switch and then the normal switch directly after, the secret becomes blocked by an invisible wall). The normal one takes a little bit of digging around, but you can see it relatively early on in the map (look around the area with the "1" and "2" floor details). From there you can probably find the route with the automap, just be sure you have the red keycard. Initially I had another hidden RL in the yellow skullkey/crate maze room, but I thought it might be a little too redundant.

Gez said:

Are there secrets that require rocket jumping + vertical aiming? So far, I've found two secret areas on MAP01 that I had absolutely no idea how to reach other than through such tricks (one platform with switch that lowers a pillar with a megasphere, the pillar being the actual secret, and another a room with several boxes of rockets and health potions).

Of course, I also have no idea how to reach the yellow key either. Monster-wise, I've completed 3/4 of the map according to the ZDoom counters, but I'm completely lost and wandering randomly in deserted hallways and courtyards, sometimes hearing the grunts of inaccessible monsters. Didn't grab any of the skull keys either, even if I've seen where they are.

No, all of the secrets should be obtainable without having to use any sort of jumping or freelook or anything like that (in a case in MAP05, you have to make use of an Archvile jump for two secrets). The megasphere secret actually requires you to find a hidden teleporter (hint: it's near the yellow keycard). The one with the rockets/health bonuses also requires that you find a hidden teleporter; you must have the red keycard (hint: look around the area with the yellow key lift).

If you haven't found the yellow keycard yet, then you wouldn't be able to obtain any of the skullkeys yet. So have you seen the yellow keycard yet and you just can't figure out how to get it? Or have you just not found it yet? If it's the latter, check the south-eastern part of the map. It is a tad easy to get lost right after grabbing the blue keycard because there's such a large area that opens up to the player.


Holy crap that's a lot of quotes :O

I have found all the keys. It's just that four of them are out of reach. :p

Oh, I finally found where to go to climb on those crates. Got the yellow key now.

Hehe, good! I wasn't sure how obvious it would be to get the yellow keycard, though I made sure to throw in a few thousand crates as a hint :P

It kinda diluted the hint into decoration. ;)

Nah, I was assuming I had missed a switch to raise or lower something, so I went away exploring the rest of the stuff and trying to get secrets. Featuring extreme strafe running. Got into places where I'm sure we're not supposed to go this way. (See first pic. The second is about alignment issues.)


Currently busy in the World's Most Ridiculous Crate Jump Puzzle. Already got the yellow skull key from it. Onto the berserk and soulsphere, plus a chaingun 'cuz I'm low on bullets.

@mek: My friend who was playing your map never died. He loaded it up and within a few seconds it errored out.

EDIT: btw, he did use -clvl 10, and it still happened.

almost through with map01. and I have to say that I don't think I have ever seen more beautiful, eloquent texture work in Doom ever before.


I do, however, really hate playing an entire 1000-monster map with nothing more than a shotgun, but that's a stylistic choice.

also, sector 1271's ceiling in map02 is raised by one pixel too much. I just stumbled upon it in DB and it doesn't seem to serve any purpose