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valkiriforce

Mountain Gorge - Need Testers!

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An older map I decided to complete. I know you guys are probably tired of this sky texture, but it was originally going to be MAP17 of Reverie. I wasn't sure at the time where to go with this one so I just left it incomplete until now. It's sort of a slaughtermap and I'm not entirely experienced in making these kinds of maps so some guidance would be much appreciated.

Download. (Updated)



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First off, the blue key is a yellow key. So I couldn't get past there. Here's my fda. The only part I've found to be slaughter so far is the bottom of the canyon, and while it's a decent attempt there's not really a feel of being surrounded, just a bunch of mobs funneling into a chokepoint or two. If the gorge was wider, and possibly not very deep (yeah then it's not a gorge) so the imps and mancs at the top can potshot you, and there were about 5 more hell knights/revenants per choke in the mix, it'd be better. It's also a really annoying idea to have cacos and especially a pain elemental in an area with such huge height differences.

I found it a bit difficult to enter the canyon unless I woke up a lot of mobs and moved them to one end of the canyon, as well as the health being too centered in the two megaspheres. There is no indication besides stumbling upon them that they're in there, so surviving the canyon until you do is a craphsoot.

About the blue key, is that wall 25 height? It's a little hard to shoot over with projectiles and that's all I had after maxing out on shells and using them all in the canyon. The part with the spectres would be better with a flood of imps, and the chaingunners are much easier with the abundant plasma. Perhaps make the closest one to the walkover line a revenant so it's harder to kill and the chaingunners get more firing time.

I'll play it more once the blue key is fixed.

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I gave it a playthrough, finished in one attempt at a bit under a half-hour. A speedrun here could doubtlessly be done much, much faster.

Generally, it plays alright--I was entertained, anyway. It is quite easy for a map of its size/with its monster count, though, largely by dint of extremely generous item placement. The first major battle area (with the red key switch) is packed full of bulk cells, and the two megaspheres that are down on the gorge's floor allow the player a ton of leeway for making a lot of dumb mistakes. For example, at one point I hurt myself a fair bit with one of my own rockets while tearing around down there, but it barely mattered because of all the goodies. From a progression standpoint I do like this area, though, the way it gives you a choice of dropping down directly to the floor or straferunning over to some of the ledges on the central rock spires--and then the chaingunner closet trap pressures you to jump back down again, into the fray. Pretty nice. Actually, this particular section reminds me a lot of the eponymous part of Valley of Echoes from AV, although it's considerably scaled down both in size and in intensity. If you wanted to put more pressure on the player here, I'd say you could probably reign in the supplies a little--maybe replace the two megaspheres with one soulsphere and one combat armor, something like that. There's also an opportunity for additional bloodshed when you throw the red switch--maybe teleport something onto the ledge back near the teleporter, or have some flying monsters beam in, something like that. Something to justify using more of the tons of cell ammo that's laying around.

The big area with the spider masterminds and cyberdemons and the two buildings is extremely easy to subdue in almost total safety by using infighting; if you're patient, you can just wait it out on the rocky threshold and most of the monsters (which will have been alerted already by passing by the blue bars earlier) will clump up at the ledge (which they can't climb) and slaughter each other wholesale, especially with one of the two staircase cybers in the background involved. The masterminds themselves are a similar case--the area is a little small for them, so when they see you the first thing they tend to do is just begin fighting with each other/the arachnotrons almost immediately. The upshot of all this is that the huge pile of goodies you've left at one end is largely overkill; if you have foreknowledge you can make good use of the blur sphere when you teleport into the zombie building, but I left a bunch of that stuff just sitting there, including the invulnerability sphere, which is patently unnecessary (although potentially useful in a UV speedrun, I guess). I'm not quite sure how to fix this....maybe teleport in a caco swarm or something at the player's back after he crosses the rock pillars the sergeants were on to force him into the area? Alternately, you could expand the yard a bit, and make more of the monsters deaf, and make it so that the ledge cannot be reclimbed to the safe spot, again forcing the player to a least cope with the situation more directly. All that's assuming you WANT it to be tougher/more intense, of course....some folks like a leisurely massacre now and then, of course. I rather liked the blue key building itself, although you might get some carping about the switch that opens the hell knight room (which in turn opens the revenant annexes) being 'secret', but I personally think it's telegraphed adequately. About that, it IS more secret than the 'secret' BFG--I guess I just plain don't really get what you were going for, there. It's good to have the BFG, though!

I don't mind the interstitial section in the rocky mini-maze (e.g. before you jump down onto the marble landing where the BFG can be had), although I'd replace those mancs with revenants or barons or anything that could actually pursue you out of the alcoves where they start, really. The long winding corridor full of bodies after throwing the blue switch just feels like padding/busywork, though. No real complaints about the final area; I rather like the cyberdemon/pinkie group behind the main gate (since they can all close the distance so fast and potentially trap you in the building if you don't act quickly), and the building itself plays well enough--the revenant closet, though somewhat predictable, is probably the single most dangerous moment in the map, I daresay. Oh, and I'd make those last two barons arch-viles instead. Really!

Despite all of my criticism, it is an entertaining map, even in its current state. It's just that the balance seems a little too heavily-skewed in the player's favor, is all....you say this was initially going to be a part of Reverie, but despite an avowed slaughter-ish style its high bodycount (and high HP count from those bodies), it ends up being easier than a lot of the much smaller/more 'normal' maps that made it into Reverie and DooM Core. Overall, if your aim was just simple entertainment, it's fine, but if you were looking for some intensity, I do think there's some room for refinement.

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Yeah, I guess it could have been made clearer that you have to jump back to the starting ledge after you take the teleporter the red switch reveals, now that you mention it.

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I agree with pretty much everything demon says. I unfortunately don't think there's a way to salvage the area after the cave with the 3 spidermasterminds without making the entrance a drop, but it's still easy to get out of with the teleporter just to the right. The drop option would make the invuln actually necessary, though I think 2 blue armors and 3 soul spheres and a few medkits could make it more interesting than a mega and invuln.

Also the 2 revenant rooms in the blue key area could be soundlinked, as right now it's pretty boring to just hang back and kill them. The pain elementals on the lifts are pointless, and the pillar the blue key is on is a little low, such that you only need to clear one room to grab it, though that may be intentional.

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Updated the download link. Made quite a few changes as well as additional areas/secrets. Was quite a pain getting through some parts on UV.

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