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Lainos

Object "34": Sonar

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Watched the trailer, looks pretty cool, especially towards the end where you had that hallway made of crushers, and that huge SP_ROCK1 area. I noticed the teaser was being played in a source port that has freelook. What source port was this designed for?

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Whoa this is just one map? The trailer looked like it had enough footage for a megawad. This thing must be huge, I hope I'll have enough time this week to get to play it.

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I couldn't go on when I got the blue key. I didn't have any ide, where I have to go.

However, it's an amazing and detailed map!

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Lainos said:

I forgot: complevel 9 ONLY. NOT 2.

OK, I'll try to make PrBoom+ work on this PC. This way I'll be sure to record a usable FDA.

EDIT: no more FDA. I keep losing.

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40oz said:

Whoa this is just one map? The trailer looked like it had enough footage for a megawad. This thing must be huge, I hope I'll have enough time this week to get to play it.


Nearly 900 enemies on HMP and it took me about 40 minutes to get to the yellow key. Can't remember if I made it to the Blue Key yet... It's pretty massive.

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I didn't get off to a good start. All my ammo got used up killing the teleporting imps in the first hallway. I had to punch the last few to death. Obviously, this ammoless state did me no good stepping into the first main room. Got cornered and shredded a number of times before finding enough ammo for half the enemies. Took care of the other half with infighting. Might've gone better if I didn't kill the imps, but you have to account for people killing whatever enemies they can, even if you don't consider them an immediate threat because they're caged in.

Things got harder after that. After checking both the main doors leading out of the room, I took the lower route to the Metal2 area with the water pit. Ran out of ammo again, tried punching past cacodemons and the mancubus. Made it to side room, where revenant rockets fired from way across the main room while I was in view of the window came around to kill me when I backtracked across the room to the door. After getting blindsided by a stray revenant rocket for the 5th time, I just threw on God mode and kept playing.

And it was SO worth it. First off, I love the design. You kept a consistent underwater-base feel throughout an incredibly large variety of scenes, and you managed to use an extensive amount of textures in a well-coordinated way so that the settings stayed fresh without looking like you just jammed unrelated maps together. Second, the layout is great. This is one of the most non-linear maps I've played, and the wide variety of paths to choose ensures I'll probably never play this map the same way even if I play it 10 more times. Third, IT'S HUGE! I think the last time I played a single map this big was Deus Vult. I took a little over 3 hours to beat it, and it was 3 hours incredibly well spent. Also, props for using music that didn't get tiring after listening to it for so long.

I think the main thing you need to consider when designing such a non-linear map with so many possible routes is that few people will play it the same way. I'm sure you have your own way of getting through the map without much difficulty, but I constantly found myself punching pain elementals, barons, revenants and other tougher monsters during the first parts of the map (even with God mode on to ensure I wasn't wasting ammo by dodging and shooting simultaneously). Maybe you're the kind of player who picks one route and runs it to its end, but I'm the kind who sees two or more routes and alternates back and forth between them. You need to have every possible way of playing this map covered. Maybe you gave me enough ammo for the next scene of one route, but I took it and ran to the next scene of another route. I think a few more boxes of bullets and shells throughout the first third of the map would cover most of the play options you may not have considered.

Finally, it's not always clear what the switches do. Most operate something in their immediate vicinity, but others open something halfway across the map. This would be a great place for ZDoom's security-cam feature, where you flip a switch and temporarily get a view of what it's doing in another part of the map. But if you want to keep it open to a larger amount of ports, you could use signs like "exit closed/open" or display monitors with map screenshots that change when the switch is pressed.

Anyway, I hope that didn't sound too negative overall. This really is one of the best maps I've played, and I'm sure I'll play it a number of times again. It just needs a bit of tweaking - and that'll take it a long way.

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This map was terrible. It's just a bunch of random rooms stuck together with no sense of place or progression. It would have helped if some of those rooms were interesting to look at or fun to play, but no.

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LordK said:

This map was terrible. It's just a bunch of random rooms stuck together with no sense of place or progression. It would have helped if some of those rooms were interesting to look at or fun to play, but no.


Congratulations on being absolutely wrong on everything.

I just beat it, and posted my main impressions at the russian forum, but i just have to say that i loved this map, and i didn't have any problems on UV at all save for a few first tries, when i couldn't concentrate and kept dying near the very beginning. Once i got into the proper mood, i played it straight up to the yellow key without saving, and beat the rest of the map next evening (while saving rarely). I found the ammo balance being spot on, of course i didn't even try to shoot those caged imps in the beginning... (And frankly i can't imagine it seeming like a good idea to anybody.)
I kept almost running out and finding rich caches of ammo again and again. Backtracking to look for health items throughout the cleared areas was strangely interesting too, probably due to the structure of the map. And the realisation of the abstract techbase style was so, SO MUCH better than you usually see in some "very well detailed" wads where it's all inclines with computer textures, borders on all platform edges and excessively complicated and stupid-looking ceilings and supports.

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I wish I could cheat by using doom builder, but even then its just to confusing to look at. I feel like I've explored everything there is to explore, and yet I still don't know how to get the first key.

Awesome presentation. My hat's off to you Lainos for completing such a huge undertaking!

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I know this is an old topic, but I need some help with this map. I literally spent one hour of brainlessly running around trying to find a switch or something to open that big door leading up to the final arena.



Does anyone know how to open this door. I've watched the walk through vids posted above me, but that guy is just like "hey, ow this door is open", but in my game it's still closed and I've no idea how to open it. I've even opened the WAD with DoomBuilder but the map is just too big to notice which lines turn yellow.

I'd gladly appreciate help !!

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djvero said:

but the map is just too big to notice which lines turn yellow

in Doom Builder 1.68: Edit->Find->Linedef Sector Tag

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YES finally! It seems I forgot to go all the way to that switch on the left side of the map, even though I had already been in that area according to the map when you press TAB, only halfway through. Now I can finally proceed and finish this beast. Thank you so much!

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