Sunbleed

Here is a short map I have been (kind of) secretly working on after a six-year hiatus.

There is no real story behind it other than I have been attempting to brush up on my skills (and break some old habits) while taking some useful advice and pointers under consideration.

I tested it with Chocolate Doom without any crashes, but I would still recommend a limit-reducing/removing port.

Name: Sunbleed
Game: Doom 2
Map: Map01
URL: http://www.mediafire.com/download/3vg331le8cj81ma/sunbleed.wad

Played up until the yellow door, where I was killed by an arch-vile suddenly appearing right in front of me with no time to hide. Unfair?
Monsters on pillars were a bit excessive perhaps (too boring to kill them all in a 100% kills speedrun).
I liked the rest, good looking level with not so typical texturing.

I like the map. The new textures work great, although I'm convinced that I'd probably admire the map even if it used classic textures instead - it's simply well designed. Everything seems to be done appropriately, neither excessive nor underestimated. Nice details, intuitive compact layout, fair "middle-level" challenge. I'm impressed by all of that. Regarding monster/item placement and balance, it was well made too, although at the end I've ran out of ammo - probably because I've let the archvile to resurrect too many revenants (at least 3 or 4).

I think I've never seen a map from you before (only familiar with your texture pack), but anyway - welcome back to mapping, and keep up the great work. :)

scifista42 said:

(only familiar with your texture pack)

I don't make textures. It's one of Cage's texture packs.

I'm sorry, I must have got confused by this (by a name), thinking it's yours. :)

I enjoyed this short little map. I got rather fortunate with the Arch Viles only resurrecting a Chaingunner a couple of times. If they manage to resurrect too many Revenants I could see ammo being a severe problem. Didn't find the secret, but I enjoyed the frantic start. I wondered where to go, but while there were enemies around I felt there was enough space to survive it all.

Skill 4 FDA.

Seems like I'm seeing the orange E4 sky constantly these days, but I think it looks pretty good with the other textures here, impressive since I usually prefer it with the traditional gothic theme rather than with a techbase.

Not much to complain about with the action, seems to have been mostly tightly-balanced (particularly ammo and health) and allows for a fast pace of play. Memfis mentioned the time involved in killing off the various sniping monsters on the ledges/rocks around the edges of the map; I reckon that if you put a rocket launcher and a small number of rockets in there somewhere (maybe in a secret in the water pit or on the upper level somewhere), you could smooth this over quite nicely, also freeing up a little more leeway with the issue of bullet/shell availability Scifista and degree23 mentioned. My only other suggestion is that it may be worth considering doing something to keep the player from camping the yellow door vs. the final vile + revenants without having to deal with at least a little bit of complication--port some monsters onto the landing before the door, something like that.....or, you could be a bit of a bastard and just shut the yellow door, I guess. I was considering making a smartass remark about how one medikit doesn't seem like much of a secret payoff, but after my crass mistake with the revenant earlier I really needed the thing, so I guess I'll keep my big mouth shut on that point. ;)

Very solid work, will look forward to your future maps.

Fun map, really liked it. Lots of nice subtle visual details.
FDA: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=1287442

Noticed a small visual bug in Crispy Doom (Chocolate Doom with raised limits), black columns flicker in the sky here.

plums said:

Noticed a small visual bug in Crispy Doom (Chocolate Doom with raised limits), black columns flicker in the sky here.

Nice find. It turns out I screwed up a sky sector. Fixed.

Looks interesting

What a fun map. Good design. Nice and open, but not vast areas. Always felt I had enough room to run if I needed to. I like the texture set. Nice color choices. For some reason I kept thinking of Doom 3. Probably the outdoor rock color. Good monster placement. Monster difficulty elevates VERY quickly for a MAP01 pistol start. Understandable, if you're trying to fit in as much challenge as possible in one level. I did enjoy being able to pick off Revenants and Imps with the Chaingun at very long distance. Really liked this map. Right up until I hit the last switch to open the Exit Room and ran into three Revanants, a Chaingunner and an Arch-Vile in a not very big room. Kept killing my ass dead until I figured out to run outside and take the Revenants one at a time through the door while the AV was busy with the Chaingunner. Until that time, I thought there might be too many Boxes of Shells. A few Rockets would have made life easier, but it was still a lot of fun.

Things that might need adjustment:

No difficulty-balancing. All monsters are tagged Easy/Medium/Hard. Actually, so are all items and weapons.

Memfis mentioned an AV popping up in front of the Yellow Key Door. That didn't happen to me. When I opened the map in an editor, I saw why. Because of the Arachno near the Yellow Key, I ran past the Key to the SW, then slid along the wall towards it so I could shoot the Arachno while his shots kept hitting the rock outcropping. Since linedef tag 16, which releases that AV, is parallel to the wall, I never crossed it. I walked along it like a tightrope.

In the last room before the Exit Room, of course I tried to use all the computer displays to see if they did anything. One did not give me the DSNOWAY sound. In the editor I saw it was tagged with linedef tag 18 as an SR lift, but the sector tag was missing. Was there originally supposed to be another secret?

Since the map itself is only about 200K, you might want to delete all the unused textures to bring the file size down. If, however, you were planning on continuing and making this into an episode/megawad (which I would really look forward to), then never mind. In that case, this map feels like somewhere between MAP05 and MAP09. I'd love to see you continue this into something larger/longer. You have a very good eye for design and detail.