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Ragnor
I do see the humour in a mod sneakily changing my title

Posts: 474
Registered: 01-08

Ive always liked gothic maps. I remember being greatly impressed by Herian 2's maps several years ago, ive enjoyed pretty much anything like that since

01-24-10 06:02 #

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johnfulgor
Junior Member

Posts: 107
Registered: 12-09

Very nice textures and details.
Currently I'm stuck at the garden with the archvile and the dead trees forest. I can't find a suitable place to shoot the monster ...
Thank you for your work!
Patriok

01-24-10 19:20 #

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ArmouredBlood
Senior Member

Posts: 1674
Registered: 05-09

Finished the gameplay and most of the detailing of MAP06; I'm not quite sure on the balance of some of the later stuff as the beginning is quite deadly and only eases off when you clear off the first green brick level. Also prboom + 2.5.0.5 gave me a signal 11 when I looked across the map when over 3-400 monsters were dead on an iddqd run but I can't remember which limit would be overloaded. Guess I shouldn't have made it basically one big arena -.- Anyway give it a go, just don't look across the map, anti-aliasing kills the texturing at a distance anyway.

http://wadhost.fathax.com/files/NewGothicM6v1.0.zip

P.S. nice demo mork, it's kind of ironic you got over 200 kills in a pacifist demo tho ;P

I'll check out herian 2, sounds interesting.

@john - behind the buildings is the closest you'll get to them, behind the pyramid is even worse, although you'll have the plasma gun to stun them then.

01-25-10 08:30 #

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gggmork
Banned

Posts: 1790
Registered: 06-07

gggmork said:
My SHIT fda is in the recycle bin. God I hate this game.

ditto.
Oh my god, this game hates me. For me, all bounding boxes are 5 times larger and made of spikey pointy snagging cock blockery, everyone is hyper infinitely tall, and it always takes at least 6 ssg blasts to kill 1 mancubus and the game constantly cheats to kill me in the cheapest ways possible every time for every level I ever fda.
This is a summary of my fda so you don't have to watch it: fail fail fail fail fail fail fail (I just felt like complaining about something).

What I meant to write was 'cool map'.

01-25-10 09:07 #

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ArmouredBlood
Senior Member

Posts: 1674
Registered: 05-09

I'm going to make a nice scenic map that doesn't spawn kill nor have cheap cybers all in a huge open space just for you mork ;P After doing another iddqd run I found a HoM and decided I need to put some plasma in the big manc closet. So it's now 1;15 am and I have to wake up for class at 7;15 ... f -.-

01-25-10 09:17 #

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Phml
Senior Member

Posts: 1823
Registered: 06-09

Earlier this morning, I had about ten minutes so gave it a quick go : here.

My first thoughts might seem overly negative, so let me insist that it is just my opinion and doesn't speak about the objective quality of the map in any way.

The start felt completely cheap (without mlook, with infinitely tall monsters), between all these things :
- Heights so high I can't see what's going on at first.
- Being instantly attacked from 360� without cover
- Hitscanners
- Lava
- Infinitely tall imps blocking my way down before I could see them, infinitely tall cacos blocking my way up without me being able to see them.

Some of these things together are alright, but all ? It makes the whole experience too luck-based for me. It can be argued hard starts aren't so bad because if you die, you don't lose a lot - and I agree with the reasoning ; however, the difficulty here was hard in a way that I felt was frustrating. It's not even *that* hard, I guess I could easily have a high success rate on this start, but the deaths here come in ways that are almost completely out of the player's control. It also played the same way everytime, that is I haven't been able to find a different tactic than just "rush straight, pick up the soulsphere, go up ASAP while getting medikits as needed and pray no infinitely tall thing block you".

I like the whole sinking into lava idea (in fact, thought about it myself for a long time) but I feel it could be executed better - floors start lowering too early IMHO (as soon as you move ? didn't look in DB2 but it felt that way). I believe it'd look better if it started lowering as soon as you step out of the lava onto the first solid ground. Not too big of a deal and probably more of a psychological effect than anything else - when stuff starts lowering while you're still up, everything lowers at once and it's less obvious than when you're down on the bottom and see the ground directly sinking into lava.

Trying to be a bit more constructive - what would I do with this if I had to make it entertaining for me ? Probably replacing all the hitscanners with imps (less infighting giving more of a challenge to climb up, and making it a more interesting ride racing against the lava, and no hitscanning to pick the doomguy apart), making floors lower only as soon as you step onto them like suggested in the above paragraph (between that and the imps, again you'd race against the lava, a vibe I didn't get with the current map as hitscanners were either dead or dying fast by the time I started my ascension), replace the cacos with revenants or even nothing, get rid of the imps on the very start area.

No opinion so far on the rest of the map as I didn't get far yet, though it looked better. I'll try further now and post later about it.

Last edited by Phml on 01-25-10 at 12:54

01-25-10 12:45 #

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

Posts: 6458
Registered: 07-07

Phml said:
The start felt completely cheap (without mlook, with infinitely tall monsters), between all these things :
- Heights so high I can't see what's going on at first.
- Being instantly attacked from 360� without cover
- Hitscanners
- Lava
- Infinitely tall imps blocking my way down before I could see them, infinitely tall cacos blocking my way up without me being able to see them.

Looks like this is better played in ZDoom, Eternity, or another port that allows to have mouselook up/down and 3D physics.

01-25-10 13:27 #

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Phml
Senior Member

Posts: 1823
Registered: 06-09

Yes indeed. As a ZDoom map the start would be fine, as a Boom map it is tedious - for me. Of course as soon as you'd get the RL, rjumps would completely break the map (although health isn't that abundant, so it might still be challenging).

I played a bit more, finished it, and got to say the rest of the map is much better. Those little circly elevators with the metal bars around looked cool. The fights were well balanced ; those teleporting imps to prevent the cyberdemon near the BFG to be too much of an easy target, the same BFG switch that reveals the mancubii which leads to different tactical options, it was good fun (up until the BFG where I thought it got a bit easy - that is to say, the opposition didn't get harder to match up the increased firepower of the player ; still fun though, and at that point it'd probably be annoying to find 20 cybies and die :p).

The secrets weren't hard to find (which I like), were possible to spot from far away (which is always nice, much like the soulsphere in E1M3 it gets you to wonder "how can I grab this powerup ?") and their placement used heights efficiently.

Again, great fun and one of your best maps in my opinion except for the start.

Edit : forgot to mention a few things.

Something I would have liked would be a different texture for the stairs in that area with chaingunners/cyberdemon/archviles near the end. It was hard to see floor height there, though that might have been your intent. I'm not sure but I think the chaingunners were also stuck.

Linedef 4316 is missing a texture (HOM).

I also now realise, looking at it in DB2, that there would be another tactic to approach the start, namely go for the radsuit and run in circles letting stuff infight and killing them as needed. So I guess it isn't as linear as I once thought, mea culpa.

Last edited by Phml on 01-25-10 at 13:46

01-25-10 13:37 #

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ArmouredBlood
Senior Member

Posts: 1674
Registered: 05-09

Don't have much time to post right now, but yea the start was always luck-based, removing the cacodemons and the imps on the starting block are high on the repair list. Moving the lava starting line up to the stairs will also probably happen. I like the hitscanners down there, straight imps always takes so much longer and this is a start where waiting will just make you lose more hp. The final battles, yeah didn't want 20 cybers just to make you go all the way back to the beginning. I think I could do something better than the straight mancs and arachnos tho. And yea the chaingunners are stuck, need to make better ledges there. The radsuit was more there to give the player something to grab when they come down to kill everything with the bfg and not lose a great ammount of health.

Will check demos later ...

01-25-10 16:07 #

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Phml
Senior Member

Posts: 1823
Registered: 06-09

The radsuit was more there to give the player something to grab when they come down to kill everything with the bfg and not lose a great ammount of health.

Worked as intended then, that's actually how I planned to use it and used it in my demo. ;)

01-25-10 18:29 #

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ArmouredBlood
Senior Member

Posts: 1674
Registered: 05-09

Mk, map6 revised, the only thing I'm somewhat uncomfortable with now are the spidermasterminds at the exit, seem a little easy after the changes to the previous 2 levels.
http://wadhost.fathax.com/files/NewGothicM6v1.1.zip

01-26-10 00:24 #

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gggmork
Banned

Posts: 1790
Registered: 06-07

If you care, you can get stuck by falling between columns (like on the top left of the map there's 4 vertical columns in a row, probably other similar places too). I really like your maps (just ignore my previous complaining which wasn't aimed at your maps in particular at all, just my fda frustration and seemingly cheap boom behavior).

01-26-10 08:47 #

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Phml
Senior Member

Posts: 1823
Registered: 06-09

Tried a quick max, but lots, lots, lots of failed attempts were starting to end up in frustration so I gave up for now. In a map like this, it is inevitable, infinitely tall actors are going to pose trouble and are going to do it at the worst time possible when recording. Should be more fun to do with TAS, but it's one of these runs in which I always feel like I was *just* about to make it.

I liked the new start. Many of the new fights in the end felt unfair to me, but it might be because I'm not used to it yet. The archvile + 2 cybies (and arachnotrons, IIRC ?) in particular felt like like a "win now or lose forever" fight : if the AV sends you back down, it's extremely hard to get back up the elevator with 2 cybies waiting to gun you down before you can even see them, and I couldn't hit them with auto-aim from far away. The chaingunner and revenants on columns were stuck ; like gggmork, I also fell and got stuck between these columns.

There's a good side to that : it's easy to get to the BFG, and harder after that. Good flow for speedrunning, IMHO.

Last edited by Phml on 01-26-10 at 10:57

01-26-10 10:49 #

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Phml
Senior Member

Posts: 1823
Registered: 06-09

I finally did a TAS attempt, although I forgot one secret (100% kills). 50% speed, NO segment - first TAS attempt at all, that's how damn close I was to do it normally.

Regardless, I'm glad I made it TAS as I didn't have much of a route and this demo shows what should not be done. :)

It's obvious I should have gone back to the revenants/imps horde right after picking the BFG, and killing the cyberdemon on my way back up (you can see he's constantly shooting at me during the demo). Probably should have left the spider masterminds to infight as well, and leave the archviles in that small cave for when I get back with 600/600 from the plasma gun area after I'm done sweeping everything else.

Also realised there was a soulsphere and a green armor near the archvile / 3 cybies / arachnotrons / chaingunners, which makes it more tolerable. You're still screwed if the archvile sends you out, but there's some space to maneuver to make this not happen (and having the soulsphere on the edge makes it a tradeoff) - I guess it just seemed overwhelming at first glance.

01-26-10 12:20 #

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ArmouredBlood
Senior Member

Posts: 1674
Registered: 05-09

Hm, interesting tas phml. That arch-vile at the 3 cybs level was really to res the arachnos if the player stayed at range, but by the very nature of the level it makes the arch a prime target -.- Also forgot to check those pipe columns for un-escapable falls, although I knew the revs would be stuck and just forgot to take them out.

@ gggmork - yeah boom really bugs me sometimes, especially after sticking with skulltag for a long time then having to test something speedrunny in boom and getting stuck/bounced off corners in places (and off things! fing mancs) which skulltag would just let me slide over. I get you like my maps or you wouldn't keep torturing yourself with fdas of them ;P

01-26-10 17:05 #

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Phml
Senior Member

Posts: 1823
Registered: 06-09

I now hate this map.

Remember, the opposite of love is apathy, not hate. For some perspective, that's how I feel about DV2 too. ;)

I'm considering taking up programming so I can hack Boom into showing infinitely tall bounding boxes rather than monster sprites !

This map is so much fun yet so punishing at the same time. On to actual feedback, as little as it might be : having spent a lot more time on it I think it's great as it is, except for the unescapable falls between columns.

01-26-10 18:21 #

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gggmork
Banned

Posts: 1790
Registered: 06-07

Hmm.. if he fixes the stuck columns, do you care if that desyncs the TAS demo? Or is the map staying as is.

01-27-10 03:20 #

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ArmouredBlood
Senior Member

Posts: 1674
Registered: 05-09

Err ... I fixed those and removed the stuck revenants an hour ago in the working version in between working on map7 (it will be 2/3 traditional, in the sense it's mancs, arachnotrons, and a few cybers ... so mostly traditional ;P)

01-27-10 03:36 #

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ArmouredBlood
Senior Member

Posts: 1674
Registered: 05-09

Map7, I think it feels underwhelming though ... maybe just the music. I've done the end in prboom but after iddqding to it. Also updated map06 in the working wad, so use the old v1.1 for phml's tas.

http://wadhost.fathax.com/files/NewGothicM7v1.0.zip

01-27-10 07:00 #

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gggmork
Banned

Posts: 1790
Registered: 06-07

mm k, I'm gonna upload my fda for this one even if though it will be shit.
phmlspd 08 is still pissing me off, now trying his tas route.

edit:
That was easy actually, 1st try:
http://www.speedyshare.com/files/20...-07-fda-ggg.lmp
Ahh, no infinitely tall flying anythings ;p

But seriously 6 looks particularly fun to try to max. 7 is kinda boring imo, so as usual my complaining was counter productive.

Last edited by gggmork on 01-27-10 at 09:59

01-27-10 09:43 #

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Phml
Senior Member

Posts: 1823
Registered: 06-09

FDA for 07, max first try.

I liked it, running in circles in that snony environment with the music felt relaxing. It's an easy map - whether it's a problem or not is up to you, easiest fix to make it harder would be to remove about 3/4 of the health and half of the ammo, there's some serious overkill (which I don't see as a problem myself, allows room to play more aggressively).

if he fixes the stuck columns, do you care if that desyncs the TAS demo?

Late to the party, but I'd like to answer : I wouldn't want any of my demos to stop anyone from making bug fixes or even improvements to his map.

Last edited by Phml on 01-27-10 at 12:29

01-27-10 12:19 #

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Solarn
Member

Posts: 479
Registered: 09-08

MAP06 is awesome. It's like an even more sadistic version of The Hag's Finger from Sunder.

Now that I think of it, you're mixing a lot of slaughtermap styles in this pack. MAP02 is a straightforward Death-Destiny map, MAP06 mimics Insane_Gazebo's style quite well and even though I've only played his recent speedmapping efforts (which are full of bricks and metal and WIN), I can't help but be reminded of Phml by MAP04.

01-27-10 14:46 #

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gggmork
Banned

Posts: 1790
Registered: 06-07

9:11 on 06:
http://www.speedyshare.com/files/20...9-uvmax-ggg.lmp

Anyone remember what time phml's tas version was (I no longer have that wad version. I went a slightly different more backtracky way.)?

01-29-10 03:42 #

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ArmouredBlood
Senior Member

Posts: 1674
Registered: 05-09

Thanks for the fdas guys, I have a habit of being over-aggressive so I give myself a bit more health than needful sometimes, plus I wanted ammo available everywhere. That kinda makes improvements in maxing hard tho ... I realize now I kinda went a different way from what I REALLY intended to map, or at least my vision of it. Might've turned out better, maybe worse, I dunno. Think I'll just move on for now though.

That's a cool demo of 6 mork, the route had some pretty daring parts and the way you killed that last cyber was really awesome ;) I linked all the versions of the maps in the first post, since they're all uploaded to wadhost anyway and since that site has stuff from October 2006, I don't think they'll be going anywhere ;P I think it's over 10 minutes at least, I think it might be ~19 minutes, or maybe I'm thinking of the final run in his SDA.

Glad you liked it solarn, although calling it more sadistic than a map that made one youtube speedrunner take 50+ minutes on is a bit strong (think it was okuplok) ;P And yeah I'm kind of a sponge, I take a lot of interesting things other people have done and spin them out in slightly different ways.

01-29-10 05:20 #

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ArmouredBlood
Senior Member

Posts: 1674
Registered: 05-09

Map08. I think it started out well, but I don't think the teleport to find keys idea was so great or works well. Also barebones detail again, not really inspired this time. Or it could be just the F-zero midi pushing me to go as fast as I can (for better or worse) ;).
http://wadhost.fathax.com/files/NewGothicM8v.1.0.zip

01-30-10 05:12 #

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Phml
Senior Member

Posts: 1823
Registered: 06-09

FDA. I really enjoyed the first part, and thought it looked good. When there's so much action you don't spend time looking at the scenery, anyway, and the current amount of detali is enough to provide constrast and to be aesthetically pleasing as a background.

After that, a teleporter sent me to a room full of imps who promptly killed me. I quit right after (not because of frustration, I just didn't feel like giving another go). I'm not sure this situation is survivable at that point, lacking a plasma gun or BFG, without either prior knowledge, or superhuman reflexes coupled with having the RL on hand when you step inside ; honestly, I was completely overwhelmed.

Up until that part, the fights were well choregraphed and the health and ammo balance seemed perfect. I think I was at 180/100 with 38 shells when I entered the teleporter, and everything so far was challenging without being tedious.

Edit : second try. Everything was great fun until the elevator part where, again, I got overwhelmed before I could even tell what was going on (I thought the elevator lines were impassable... Turns out it was just infinitely tall demons blocking me). Again, a part that should be doable once you know about it but kind of feels unfair (at least to me) on first try.

I think it'd be cool if there was some kind of visual clue for each teleporter, so you know where you're going without having to remember exactly the order. There's that to an extent with the ammo/weapons, but it could be more obvious. Might be hard to put that kind of detail in there without ruining the room, though.

Last edited by Phml on 01-30-10 at 11:54

01-30-10 11:06 #

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ArmouredBlood
Senior Member

Posts: 1674
Registered: 05-09

Thanks for the demos phml. I liked how you used the arachnos on the cybers in the second one, I'd been thinking about how they can serve many purposes but I couldn't stay alive to use them the way you did the few times I've tried. And nice work on the 2 spidermastermind/cyber bit, you should've waited a second to see if the cybers would be drawn to infight the sp's, but it worked out in the end ;P

I've cut a path through the imp arena, and cut down on the demon count in the elevator so you can get out faster to the few stimpacks I placed (and avoid the arachno plasma easier). Also removed a line of former humans from the blue skullkey.

And I added key specific pillars to the teleport hub to keep orientation, as about the closest to giving visual clues would be just the monsters that are the key 'guardians' without making some elaborate bit of decoration that'd probably be misinterpreted to mean something completely different, have the player start without something else, and be raped then rage-quit.

http://wadhost.fathax.com/files/NewGothicM8v1.1.zip

01-30-10 21:32 #

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gggmork
Banned

Posts: 1790
Registered: 06-07

1:59 speed on 08 (almost missed key on 2 viles + arachnotron)

also fda on 08 (close but fail on 2nd try)

http://www.speedyshare.com/files/20...and-fda-ggg.zip

Last edited by gggmork on 01-31-10 at 08:26

01-31-10 07:57 #

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ArmouredBlood
Senior Member

Posts: 1674
Registered: 05-09

Wow, what pwning of my map. Awesome speedrun mork, only time you ever were really in trouble was the beginning, and that revenant fake-out to get out of there was very cunning. Makes up greatly for the second death on your fda. Too bad I left the ceiling on the key pillars >.< Only a cosmetic change, hopefully the demo will stay synced. Although I was thinking a megasphere for the imp-rape room would be better than just the green armor ...

01-31-10 09:31 #

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gggmork
Banned

Posts: 1790
Registered: 06-07

The beginning was the hardest part, but overall that pacifist of 05 took more attempts. Usually that soulsphere helps but I was lucky enough to get by without it (because they blocked it). I think if you change the ceilings but save without changing the nodes or something it might not desync demos. Not sure if that leaving-nodes-the-same trick could work with adding a think like a megasphere.

01-31-10 10:11 #

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