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Super Jamie
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Posts: 2660
Registered: 03-08

Greetings Doomworld, here's my first publicly-released map. Surprise, it's not a techbase full of cyberdemons!

As the title suggests, Dead Easy is a tribute to Doom 2's MAP07 "Dead Simple", made for Doom 1. It's fairly similar as far as gameplay and layout go, however I've hopefully bumped the difficulty up a bit.

It's not a very pretty map, I'm focused on gameplay and (im)balance more at the moment. Build time was about 3 hours.

Here's where I might need some help. I then spent an additional 2 hours messing round with ideas on how to make an exit where you have to kill every monster, as Doom 1 has no Tag 667, and I've already used Tag 666. I decided sticking deaf, blocked monsters in walls blocking the exit was a stupid hack, and the simplest thing I could think of was just removing the exit altogether, you win when the 10 monsters are all dead. A series of switches potentially allows skipping kills, but perhaps just "the honour system" would be a better idea?

Whilst I'm sure you can't tell much about my mapping skills from 8 sectors, any comments, help, suggestions and criticisms are welcomed. If you think it's good enough, or if I can improve it to be good enough, I might send it to /newstuff, but the last thing idgames needs is more crap wads, so I submit it here for your approval first.

Tested in Vanilla, Chocolate, PrBoom and GZDoom. It seems a bit easier in GZD with mouselook and all that. You're not sposed to jump.

Here's a screenshot: http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/...om/deadeasy.jpg

Get it here for now: http://www.superjamie.net/doom/deadeasy.zip

05-02-09 11:43 #

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Neon
Mini-Member

Posts: 74
Registered: 08-08

Feels like an ultimate doom version of dead simple. It's too simple though imo, and too easy. Some ideas:

Make the first room a little bigger. Add a few pillars for cover. Add four roaming hellknights which start on the ground rather than the platforms. For the second room, add more cacos and/or lost souls. Of course more ammo will need to be added to the map.

05-02-09 23:11 #

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DuckReconMajor
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Posts: 3513
Registered: 01-09

Though the gameplay is pretty good, it doesn't feel much like a boss battle. I suggest a bigger room where the barons are on some more dramatic looking platforms.

I think the second part is cool. A suggestion would be to do the same thing as in E1M8 with the rising stairway but make the stairway obscenely tall so the player has to deal with all of those cacos and lost souls while the stairway rises. Or don't put "guardrails" on the side, so that if the player tries to run up it he'll either fall off into the cacos or get knocked off by a fireball. Or make it a crooked and hard to maneuver stairway so the player will have to go slow and won't be able to do it with the cacos and souls there.

05-02-09 23:34 #

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DuckReconMajor
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oops, hit quote instead of edit, please delete

05-02-09 23:35 #

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RjY
anARCHy

Posts: 748
Registered: 05-02

Super Jamie said:
Here's where I might need some help. I then spent an additional 2 hours messing round with ideas on how to make an exit where you have to kill every monster, as Doom 1 has no Tag 667, and I've already used Tag 666. I decided sticking deaf, blocked monsters in walls blocking the exit was a stupid hack, and the simplest thing I could think of was just removing the exit altogether, you win when the 10 monsters are all dead.

It's kind of possible although that is also a stupid hack and you lose vanilla compatibility (it depends on Boom dehacked ability to add any code pointer to any frame)

05-03-09 00:54 #

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Super Jamie
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Posts: 2660
Registered: 03-08

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I'll have a go at making the map a bit bigger. I could switch to green so it feels less outpost like MAP07 and more boss battle, like E1M8, though I really only used that level because 666 works.

Coming up with an exit like E1M8 or a thin walkway could potentially mean a big outer area, with more potential for dodging than I'd like. Though how about a thin, slowly-falling stairway around the outer edges? I'd still like the map to be fairly cramped with few places to run. My housemate suggested damaging floors in the caco area, though I wasn't a fan of how I ended up implementing it.

Do you really think the inner area needs pillars to hide behind? Perhaps with Mancubi, and because Doom 2 had to cater to players of lesser skill, but it's a bit easier with Barons, because they only have one shot, and it always heads for you.

Incidentally, I found the level harder when I picked up the invis sphere, as I would strafe into the Barons' shots more often. I was contemplating making the player start on the sphere for that reason. I couldn't add Hell Knights in the middle (I'm trying to stick to Doom 1 only) but a few Demons might make things nasty.

RjY, your deh patch is awesome, though it does make rockets disappear when you fire into the center pillar, but I could definitely use it to make an exit door! Boom compat I can live with. Thanks man!

Evidently I need to learn alot about scripting.

05-03-09 10:41 #

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Super Jamie
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Posts: 2660
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I've made a revised version, uploaded at the original URL. I've also included the original in the zipfile as oldversion.wad if anyone would like to compare.

The play area's bigger, the pillars are hopefully a bit more epic, there's two more barons, less health, and the player starts with an invisibility sphere. The map now has a proper exit too.

I also managed to add in enough detail that I now need a limit-removing port anyway, so your deh patch came in handy RjY, thanks again.

Updated screenshots:
Prboom 2.5.0 - http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/.../deadeasy01.jpg
DOS Boom 2.02 - http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/.../deadeasy02.jpg

Any and all comments are welcome.

05-04-09 14:43 #

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Mr. Chris
The term is "prehensile"

Posts: 3499
Registered: 07-02

Have you provided enough ammunition to the player for those who play on a pistol start, since each baron requires at least 5 rockets, 100 bullets, 14-15 shells or 30-40 cells to kill.

Using the MARBFAC3 texture for the Baron mini-alcoves looks a little silly since only the top of the head shows in those screens.

When you have finalized everything, write a textfile using the upload template and drop it on the archives.

05-04-09 16:12 #

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DuckReconMajor
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Well, I killed the barons in UV with like 3 rockets left. I kind of liked the cramped area and I kinda regret telling you what I did, especially since you were just using E1M8 for the tag. It's still fun, though, since the challenge comes from making your ammo last in this one. I'm not so sure about the whole "take out 4 cacodemons that won't come down with a chainsaw" thing, though.

edit: never mind, the chainsaw part's cool now that I've played with it more. I think the sky floor exit portal is kind of out of place, though, for SKY1. But if you're going to move this then never mind that.

Last edited by DuckReconMajor on 05-04-09 at 18:21

05-04-09 17:59 #

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Super Jamie
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Posts: 2660
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Yes, there's just enough ammo to defeat the barons from pistol start, you are then intended to run out of ammo, and use the chainsaw to defeat the final Cacos. The ammo is dispersed around the map, both on the floor and on the baron platforms, and there are switches on corner pillars to lower the diagonally opposite platform. The switches are placed in such a way that you have to turn your back on the enemies to lower the platforms, which you need to do to get more ammo, adding an element of danger.

I agree the MARBFAC3 texture looks a bit silly, perhaps I can resize it and use it in a patch, or just use green bricks, though that's kinda boring. I'll have a play around with the exit too.

I'll try making things a bit smaller. Maybe I could even have the last round of enemies teleport in, instead of enlarging the entire area?

The Cacos do sometimes get a bit high up, and the potential for infighting with the Lost Souls can make it a bit easier, distracting up to two pumpkins and taking the heat off the player a bit. I was contemplating using imps instead of Cacos, in similar numbers to Arachnotrons in MAP07 on UV. They would be a pain in the ass to take down with the chainsaw. I would probably die most of the time then (as opposed to half the time now, haha).

There's already a properly-formatted textfile in the zip too.

Thank you again for your comments and help, I appreciate it, and it's nice to know my first map doesn't completely suck.

05-06-09 03:18 #

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Gez
Why don't I have a custom title by now?!

Posts: 6416
Registered: 07-07

A bit more health, maybe? Like a soulsphere at the start.

05-09-09 17:30 #

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gggmork
Banned

Posts: 1790
Registered: 06-07

I don't have doom1 so just copied it into doombuilder's boom format so not sure if it played correctly. But you could just make the exit door timed to take the approximate amount of time required to kill everyone before it opens: make the wall blocking the exit have a tall floor/ceiling like 4096 (or adjust) and a square sector surround the beginning player. When the player crosses one of those lines the exit door slowly lowers. Or similarly put a dummy player 1 outside of the map with a 'scroll floor move things' under him and a column blocking him. The line could make that column slowly lower, and when the dummmy crosses have him trigger a line to open the exit.

05-10-09 00:58 #

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Doomworld Forums > Classic Doom > WADs & Mods > Dead Easy - A Doom 1 tribute to MAP07 "Dead Simple"

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