Marbland

Two short maps for Boom for playing with pistol start and without saves.
Screenshots:
http://i.imgur.com/RBs1m3w.png
http://i.imgur.com/eVEH2J6.png
Final version
Enjoy!
EDIT: Eternal required to remove some his textures from the wad, so I replaced them with some others.

Enjoyed! Pretty good layouts and flow, pleasant to shoot through, and has challenging moments as well. However I admit that I didn't play your intended way, instead I've been resurrecting myself upon dying - I've found the challenge to be a bit tough at times, while appropriate. Excellent door trick in MAP01, one would say it's a ZDoomism but it isn't - I wonder if it's your own idea? Overall texturing seems to mess together various textures in a strange way, but it turns out to look great. Found all secrets, they were fine. Obvious inspiration by Memfis's mapping (or not?) :D. I'm impressed by this stuff.

Obviously the sliding door is borrowed from Voodoo Guns. And yeah, I wouldn't recommend playing this without saves for the first time: some traps on map02 are too evil for that imo.

Hi, have some FDAs: http://www.mediafire.com/download/gkdsudokl5ribs1/marbland_FDAs_Veinen.zip

Pretty cool maps both of these. I've played a few of your maps before and I've noticed that you have a pretty distinct style to design gameplay. Your style is very trap heavy, I mean pretty much everything you do and everywhere you move results in you getting ambushed in one way or another. Once you expect the traps, the maps definitely get a little easier. They're not easy by any means though, quite challenging actually, but doable even in FDAs. Ironically my FDA for the second map is a fail since I die quite far into the map and didn't feel like restarting, but if you decide to watch the FDAs you can probably see what I mean by saying that playing carefully helps :)

Thank you for nice demos Veinen! Now I think there's no needing in a soulsphere on map01...
I made a new fixed version: http://speedy.sh/By8W5/marbldv2.zip . Now on map02 there are grates behind the yellow key that close when you pick up the soulsphere.

Veinen said:

Once you expect the traps, the maps definitely get a little easier.

Yes, these traps with closing in a small room with monsters are pretty easy to make but they are not always good. Yellow key trap shows it really good: you can kill all monsters behind the door without loosing even 1 HP if you'll start shooting enough fast. I'll try to experiment with various types of traps (and with non-traps gameplay too) in my next wads.

scifista42 said:

Obvious inspiration by Memfis's mapping (or not?)

No, much more by Eternal's mapping :).

FDAs if you want to see me die a lot.
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=1281875
Because I'm lazy, both maps are in one demo. I suicide when I start the second map.

First map was fun, seemed right at my level for funfactor/challenge ratio. Second was a bit too cramped/dickish/generally hard for my tastes. Tried several times but I was getting frustrated at myself by the end and playing bad because of it. Might have another go with saves later. I did really like the nonlinear layout, it's just a bit over my pain threshold tonight.

Visuals are a bit all over the place at times, lots of textures used. I like them for the most part, I really like the outdoor court area of map02, I just think the texture variety could be reined in just a little bit. Also Hexen and Heretic sprites and even decorations, that's cool though.

Sliding door is an idea I thought up awhile ago but assumed it would have been done somewhere else before. Seems like I was right. Looks really slick with the transparent textures though. Maybe would have been even better to use Boom's translucent texture effect somehow?

I guess the sliding door is just a scrolling wall and an instant lowering untextured blocking sector removed or something? Only my map2 fda is slightly ok to watch (beat it without giving up on fda for once), I died on 1 and gave up. Nice maps.
http://speedy.sh/VVwxW/marbldv2-2-fda-cl9-ggg.zip

Hello, Plut, entertaining maps you've got here, if a bit persistently small-scaled for my taste. Here are some more FDAs (skill 4, on the last version you posted) if you'd like; I beat map 01 on the first go, and I die three times (I think?) in map 02 before successfully finishing it (probably didn't deserve to finish it even then, I kept making dumb mistakes in one particular place).

The main thing of note is that one of those three deaths is not my fault. No, really, I swear! Not only is it possible to cheese the hell out of the YK fight (though I don't actually do this at any point, I think), but it's possible to break the map by leaping off of the little soulsphere balcony more than once--the switches in the monster-closet that open the bars that seal you into the room only work once, but it's possible to bring the bars down more than once. Use -skipsec 400 or thereabouts to see this problem in action (I end up trapped and forced to suicide).

The action is nicely fast-paced, interesting to see the monsters work together as well as they do in tight spaces with so little homogeneity between them. Like Veinen says, the traps are just piled on so persistently that eventually they stop being surprising, but that doesn't necessarily stop all of them from being effective--I fuck up one of the really obvious/simple ones at least once even though I totally see it coming.

I like the texture set you've used, but I would agree that the whole presentation is a little too visually busy for my tastes--it's very colorful, which I don't mind, but just about every little bit of wall has some kind of little detail nook carved into it, and there's so little thematic consistency between any of these details in any one part of the map that it looks very haphazard. The generally small scale contributes to this as well; a similar amount of variation in detail/aesthetic would probably seem less noticeably erratic if it were spread over a larger space. I was also reminded of Memfis' work while playing (mainly regarding how colorful the maps are, and the generally modest scale), although I suppose I can see some Eternal influence in some of the thematic choices and switch functionality.

Keep at it, would like to see more from you in the future--always interested in a trapsmith.

Thanks for kind comments guys. gggmork and Demon of the Well, you are real fighters!:D
Thanks for bug report DotW, third and final version - http://speedy.sh/AAKy7/marbldv3.zip .