Doom 2 In Name Only - Now (supsiciously) on a load of gaming articles

I'm just finishing off a map for Nova, wont be much longer. Then I will have a look at map 30. I hate IOS fights as well so I'll think of something more fun.

Antroid said:

So far almost noone is opposed to the idea. I think it's safe to assume that it'll never be opposed by everyone.

About IoS. I still say we drop the "shoot the face on the wall in a small hole" thing, and only keep the monster spawning aspect of the original. Make it a final struggle type of deal where we have to do something (something that isn't trying to reach a place of the exact height to allow you to send a rocket into a hole, killing the boss - I always thought that was a very stupid concept for a final boss) while monsters are just swarming us. In the end it's all up to whoever makes map30, meaning mouldy, unless he doesn't finish it.

I think the concept is fine if the top of the lift you are on is the perfect height to hit the boss brain. The issue is of course you get a split second to hit the brain in doom 2/plutonia + whatever wads which followed this route. TNT is just stupid btw :P
There are many direct/indirect solutions to the icon of sin scenario which you can look at Mouldy :)

MAP30: In Threes is the thirtieth and final map of Community Chest 2. It was designed by Mike "Cyb" Watson. Its title is derived from the fact that it contains three final bosses, side-by-side

There are 7 deadly sins. Just an idea.

Seven spawn shooters will be plain overkill, but you can made seven chambers with switches revealing final boss, any of them heavily guarded of course. These switches can be optional and not necessary unless someone doing max run. Every switch will close spawn shooter from seeing you so final battle can be easier. You need at least three switches activated so you get three keycards one by one, so final spawn shooters that can be triggered unless you find remaining switches is 4. Keycards will unlock moving platform so you can hit boss brain. Idea behind this is kind of VIOS battle from Doom 2 RPG, hacking terminals and lowering forcefield.

I think the key, if we look at the original IoS, is that the part when "oh god I need to do this but the demons are multiplying way too fast" should be getting the lift in place initially, not riding it up and down trying to time your rocket. Basically, you should be making steady progress while fighting off the waves, and not just try the same frustrating thing again and again.

Antroid said:

Basically, you should be making steady progress while fighting off the waves, and not just try the same frustrating thing again and again.

Agreed.

GBT3 said:

Seven spawn shooters will be plain overkill, but you can made seven chambers with switches revealing final boss, any of them heavily guarded of course.

I was kinda half-serious :P Though the original D2INO-30 made use of difficulty settings, 1 spawner on ITYTD, 2 on HMP and 3 on UV. None of the megaWADs in my collection did this (I'm missing a lot of megaWADs though) but it's quite a cool concept, but it needs something else to go with it. I completely agree with Antroid on the progress over each wave thing, and the keycard/switch idea is also pretty cool.

We could even go overboard with the size of this map and make use of the S1 Floor raise by 512 effect, I believe there is such an effect. That's bordering on the use of a lift though.

Cell said:

Agreed.

Eris Falling said:

I completely agree with Antroid on the progress over each wave thing

If only id had me in 1993-4. Doom 2 could've been good. (just kiddin I like doom2)

Speed of Doom map30 has 40 spawn shooters on UV and it isn't terribly difficult. What matters is how much ammo and health you get, not how many spawners are there

Antroid said:

If only id had me in 1993-4. Doom 2 could've been good. (just kiddin I like doom2)

More like if only id had you in 2007-2013...

Eris Falling said:

More like if only id had you in 2007-2013...

My skills might be enough at the moment to make up to snuff doom levels, but I would not be any help to them past that. Haven't mapped for anything newer than serious sam second encounter.

Antroid said:

If only id had me in 1993-4. Doom 2 could've been good. (just kiddin I like doom2)

Think more logically! Those attempts back then were embrional because they wanted us to make something that actually outweighs the potential of the original game itself. From then on, people were given the chance to perfectionise their own Doom!

Cell said:

Think more logically!

You lost me.

Hahaha. Now, seriously.
Back then in the past years, I was all complaining and frustrating others, especially the purist ones, that Doom just don't follow certain rules of aesthetics. From that on, I managed to put up with an artificial "step" texture edging MFLR8_3. Why? Because in 1993, the whole game was so an outstanding milestone in the gaming history that nobody would have been even disturbed by how ugly a dark gray ceiling tile meeting a tan strip texture looks. It was like hitting two giants at the same time. The game became the favourite of them people, but still had "flaws" that aesthetic and "elit" people feel their responsibility to "correct". The result? Everlasting progression! It isn't accidental that after almost 20 years, DooM still wasn't released freeware.

End of OFF.

Cell said:

Hahaha. Now, seriously.
Back then in the past years, I was all complaining and frustrating others, especially the purist ones, that Doom just don't follow certain rules of aesthetics. From that on, I managed to put up with an artificial "step" texture edging MFLR8_3. Why? Because in 1993, the whole game was so an outstanding milestone in the gaming history that nobody would have been even disturbed by how ugly a dark gray ceiling tile meeting a tan strip texture looks. It was like hitting two giants at the same time. The game became the favourite of them people, but still had "flaws" that aesthetic and "elit" people feel their responsibility to "correct". The result? Everlasting progression! It isn't accidental that after almost 20 years, DooM still wasn't released freeware.

End of OFF.

Sorry, I was going to let this slide, but this is one of the stupidest things I've ever read. Doom had a bunch of odd "flaws" because it was new technology made by people who had to pump out 27 and 32 levels respectively, in about a year's worth of time, with primitive software and a small team more concerned with finishing the game than worrying if flat A matched texture B.

People don't make Doom maps to "correct" Doom, they make Doom maps because Doom's gameplay is amazing and they want to play more Doom. Visual progression is people liking how certain things look, not correcting any visual flaws. If people felt so strongly about correcting Doom's original aesthetic we wouldn't have classic mapsets or shit like DTWID still being made.

Tarnsman said:

Sorry, I was going to let this slide, but this is one of the stupidest things I've ever read. Doom had a bunch of odd "flaws" because it was new technology made by people who had to pump out 27 and 32 levels respectively, in about a year's worth of time, with primitive software and a small team more concerned with finishing the game than worrying if flat A matched texture B.

People don't make Doom maps to "correct" Doom, they make Doom maps because Doom's gameplay is amazing and they want to play more Doom. Visual progression is people liking how certain things look, not correcting any visual flaws. If people felt so strongly about correcting Doom's original aesthetic we wouldn't have classic mapsets or shit like DTWID still being made.

I didn't say the contrary, man. I referred to "elit" mappers, not mappers in general.

Tarnsman said:

People don't make Doom maps to "correct" Doom, they make Doom maps because Doom's gameplay is amazing and they want to play more Doom.

Replace gameplay with atmosphere and that's how it is for me :3

Also I agree with Cell that back when the dooms were made, some basic "guidelines" ("rules" would be too strict) of visual design of 3d levels weren't really developed. They really had absolutely no problem with all sorts of cutoff and misalignment and weird texturing overall. If they did, it obviously wasn't big enough of a deal, because I don't think it woulda been too hard for them to be a bit more careful with their mapping even with whatever supposedly terrible tools they used.

However, they also didn't bother with obligatory amounts of detail on every possible surface that plague today's mapping (for all sorts of games, too), and I wish that particular facet of the early style stayed...

Antroid said:

Replace gameplay with atmosphere and that's how it is for me :3

I consider atmosphere part of the gameplay experience. But if we want to get really pedantic: people make Doom maps because they like the core aspects of Doom.

Memfis said:

Speed of Doom map30 has 40 spawn shooters on UV and it isn't terribly difficult. What matters is how much ammo and health you get, not how many spawners are there

Also how the boss room is setup with it's layout and where monsters are placed and spawned. SOD map30 is basically a huge open space with the Icon in the centre, infighting and telefragging is rife.
One bloody night's boss level is insanely difficult with what is probably the most evil rocket in the hole game ever devised.

cannonball said:

Stuff about MegaWADs

*sigh* I need to seriously try and play some MegaWADs...when I'm done with my IWAD demopacks maybe...

You could make it seven areas that the player has to visit each with an Icon which he has to "destroy" with the last one containing a Romero head. By destroy of course you could have many possibilities to kill them.

Whew, thought for a second MAP22 was bugged to fuck and there'd be no way I'd have time to fix it. When testing in PrBoom+ -complevel 2, I walked over the lines of one of the traps themselves, and almost every sector started to lower. This generated one metric fuckton of homs, and made the map unplayable. Never observed it in chocorenderlimits or ZDoom, so I started to panic. I took a look in the editor. Turned out the sides of the pit trap had line actions of "W1 Floor Lower to Lowest Floor" with Tag 0.

Not sure why the hell I did that in the first place but at least it's not the end of the map :P

Anyway, not that it's changed much in the past couple of months, but here's an annotated automap view of The Catacombs. I just hope it's not too linear.


EDIT: Hehe, sector 666 and thing 666 are in the same room.

Looks interesting, but... kinda small? Or something? I look at the interconnected tunnels between "catacombs I" and "catacombs 3" and it kinda makes me wish there was like three times more of that sort of thing, just nonlinear interconnected catacombs with caves and chambers and all sorts of shit like it's Arx Fatalis. :D

I probably should have used ovals to make the areas clearer but Catacombs I is from the entrance from the cathedral, then the red key path and up to the that teleport room. It's not very lengthy but it should take the player about 2 or 3 minutes (I presume).

Catacombs III is simply the round room with the inverted cross and the area that the cross leads to, including that...shall we say slightly slaughterish fight. Again, very small, but Catacombs II and IV make up for it

I think Catacombs II will be where the DM takes place as I think that it would be much more DM friendly than the rest of the map. It was supposed to be a very hard to navigate massive labyrinth, with that round north room being the centre, but I think I'll re-use some of those ideas for Catacombs 4, which will be full of those tiny 64 tall/wide tunnels, intersections, tombs and much more.

Also, I'm thinking about allowing (late I know but I can modify any maps that need them myself) the lava fall texture in addition to the mud and water. It won't really affect the stock texture only rule any more than the mud and waterfalls already do, so would anyone be opposed to this?

Wait, we were supposed to account for DM? I didn't even acknowledge coop in my maps (I don't remember if there are any coop starts in map04). About the lavafall, as long as it is not the same liquid fall texture recolored into lava (which looks dumb as shit because lava should have entirely different consistency and would not look like that when slooowly sliding down) I'm fine with it. I think the best way to do it without drawing something entirely new (and thus breaking the mood of the otherwise non-custom-textured wad) or doing that shitty-ass waterfall recolor would be just having the lava floor texture, not stretched or anything, only slowly scrolling down. Can you do that?

As you've mentioned before, you map for ZDoom too much :P Textures in vanilla only scroll to the left.

While I was intending on using that texture, as I need it for part of my map, I just remembered the existence of DBRAINx. I guess everyone can get by with that.

I actually meant creating an animated texture ala all the liquidfalls by taking the frames of the lava floor and scrolling them down by 16 each frame. A bit of extra work, sure, but it should look decent. Actually I can just do that if you need a lavafall for bigger walls than 64*32, since DBRAIN really doesn't tile well in any axis and it's only 32 tall.

As a random interjection re: DM, it's really not worth worrying about support since good SP and DM layouts are two totally different things (i.e. you'd have to account for both at the onset of the map, or be DTWID I guess :P).

Always include co-op starts, though. It takes a little extra effort to ensure the map doesn't break in co-op (e.g. making sure areas that "trap" the player can be reopened in case of death and respawn), but not having the starts is really silly (or just forgetful) IMO.

Also you can make textures scroll to the right in vanilla using sidedef compression.

Xaser said:

Always include co-op starts, though. It takes a little extra effort to ensure the map doesn't break in co-op (e.g. making sure areas that "trap" the player can be reopened in case of death and respawn), but not having the starts is really silly (or just forgetful) IMO.

Maybe it does seem silly to other people but I'm kinda used to not giving a crap about coop ever since I've started mapping for games because I almost never play it and always find having to accomodate my maps to coop to be too limiting and it just outright never fits the story or mood or whatever of any project I'm making (be it a doom or a serious sam project). I guess I forgot to readjust for this wad (Eris can add them when he compiles the megawad anyway).

Also, mediafire.com/?lg36v6cutie6cc9]here's a rar with the four bmp frames of a lavafall texture made in the way I suggested earlier. Tried it out ingame and it looks decent enough to use (might use it in my big project now).