Demon Asylum

Demon Asylum is made with vanilla Doom 2 in mind. Enjoy!

Demon Asylum on /idgames

deasylum.1.112.zip / Mirror: https://www.pineapplemachine.com/files/doomwads/deasylum.1.112.zip

deasylum.1.111.zip

deasylum.1.11.zip

deasylum.1.1.zip

deasylum.1.0.zip

I like those animating screenshots. The map looks like quite boxy and maybe those trims could do with being impassible to stop the player and monsters bumping up it but those a nitpicks. Looks a nice classic effort.

Such action!

I dunno, the whole thing kinda seems to just take you in and out of the same four brown-washed rooms with chest high height variation. I did like how the scale kinda squeezed down a lot after the yellow key door, which gave the areas a more believable quality. I admire the attempts at realistic lighting, but some of the scenes were just kinda overboard (i.e. having one trail of light from a distance source beam all the way down a hallway at full brightness is just goofy).

The ammo was tight. REALLY tight. But that's actually ok because it forced me to take every (otherwise very light) encounter a lot more seriously. I kinda hovered around the lower end of health and bullet count for the first 2/3 of the level. Then you gave me an SSG, and it ended five seconds later.

Overall though, even if I really disagree with a lot of choices made here, I think you've got a lot of potential to hone your mapcraft into something really great. I like that the layout wraps around on itself, I thought the grey portions of the map (after yellow door) were pretty nice looking. Please keep making maps! I think you've got greatness in you. ;)

Hello and welcome to the forums! I actually wonder if you have any previous experience with a map/game editor. This map, while relatively simple, shows that you have a good potential. Detailing, shapes of rooms and general map's flow and definitely much above the skills of an average newcomer. At the same time though, your map has little flaws that could be easily eliminated once you get more familiar with Doom mapping and its principles and player's expectations.

Your style appealed to me for the thematical consistency, simplish "classic" style, and mainly, for an unusual approach to enemy placement. Mappers tend to keep throwing monsters on the player, either individually, or (more commonly) in waves, but almost constantly. You give unusually long relaxing passages without any combat. Some people would call it bland, but I felt it as the map's advantage, the slight tension and uncertainty when you don't know what lies ahead, and encounter a suspicious emptyness.

To be fair and honest, the map is far from being perfect too. While the theme is unified, encountering the very same textures and elements like wall light sources gets repetitive and uninspired. The map is very linear. Don't be afraid to exploit alternative paths and ways how to reach exit and thoroughly explore the map. The map could have featured more height variation and lighting contrasts (but the way how it works now isn't bad at all!). Also, be sure to allow backtracking all through the map. Early parts are tight on ammo. If you think players like to punch stuff with their bare fists, then not. But aside from this aspect, the gameplay is very, very, very easy. Try to find ways how to use monsters in an effective ways, so they have higher chance to actually harm the player. And not just pose as an easy target, or a potential danger if the player is very incautious. Last point, your secret areas are mostly good, but some are hidden overly well I'd say, and in one place, you have one secret flagged in two sectors, which is commonly considered a fault.

I hope you'll make more maps. I quite enjoyed this one. Good luck! :)

Hey, thanks for the feedback! I've done a lot of mapping for other games, and this wasn't my first tango with Doom, either. (Though that was years ago, and I like to think this map went a lot better than those old attempts.)

The sparseness of ammo was completely intentional. I'll certainly experiment with other ways to bring up the difficulty in future maps, but I've always been partial to levels that keep a low ammo/monster ratio.

I should definitely make some more variation in the textures, and I can see the point about the lighting. I haven't really got a grasp on what does and doesn't constitute a "boxy" level, though. What's a good example of a thematically similar map that does it better?

Good adventure, I liked it, can you show your older maps?

The only one I've still got anywhere is a stupidly large deathmatch map for Skulltag, here.

I really loved the lighting and the overall layout worked for me. The linear path with its uneven pacing I found refreshing; and it made for a much tenser game with weak enemies(the empty halls worked especially well I thought). The map forced me to change my playstyle in order to beat it; without feeling like the map is cheating me; so I'd say that is a successful design.

Ammo was tight (first time through I ran out and died, second time I ended up with 1 shell). I thought the health was even tighter. I hovered around 15% health throughout most of the map (granted I was still having my morning coffee but a few extra healthpacks on Hurt Me Plenty would be appreciated.)

Texturing was a little odd (but not horrible). I liked the limited selection instead of using 20 different themes. I had little luck in finding the secrets (14%--usually I'm over 50% so I'm not sure what to think there).

Overall I'd give it 3 1/2 stars and would be interested in your next map.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

I tweaked the map:

The drop near the beginning is now a staircase, allowing backtracking.
Two of the secrets are more obvious, and one secret room was fixed.
Added more variation in textures and heights, including substantially reducing the ceiling height in several areas.
Tweaked the lighting in a few places.
Made the borders of wall decorations impassable to stop things getting caught up in them.
Slightly increased the amount of health and ammo and added a few more enemies.

Download link is in the first post.

As others have commented, ammo was really tight on this map. I resorted to punching a few imps/demons once I had fired 1/2 shotgun blasts at them if they still survived to save ammo. I found the health to be manageable through backtracking for earlier health packs I didn't take. The layout was fun for me, and some of the halls made me expect ambushes that didn't happen, which meant one of the ambushes I wasn't ready for as I thought it was another decoy!

Overall I enjoyed playing through this, looking forward to more from you!

I've added a new map! It's bigger and it's badder and I hope an improvement over the previous one. I expect, if nothing else, it will present a lot more difficulty. Check out the updated OP.

Nice! I have played the new map from pistol start. (I already played the updated MAP01 before.)

Apparently you have your very own designing style. That's always good. Going through your maps was a pleasure for me. I think it's time to introduce you to some further basic principles of Doom mapping, so your maps could be improved to provide even better pleasure.

Your layout nicely advances and again "wraps around itself", and you've also created quite a few side paths to explore. But don't confuse that with nonlinearity. Your map is still very linear. If you look just at the one "correct" path, you'll realize it's one long curved line. Quite uncomfortably long, for someone who wants to backtrack from exit to the start. A longer time is needed then, and players might not like this.

A simple way around (often used by mappers) is to open "shortcuts" to previous parts of the map. Makes the reexploring areas for secrets much easier and more comfortable. Besides, the layout full of "wraps" pretty much asks for such shortcuts.

And there's also another way (even more often used by mappers): Make the map nonlinear by its nature. That doesn't mean just side paths, but independent paths, variously interconnecting the level, when more of them can be the "correct" ones leading to an exit. Prolonging gameplay could be always achieved by keycard quests, remote-activated unveiling of further and further areas, and so on. I'd recommend that.

Another non-ideal aspect of your mapping is that you heavily rely on corridors. Rather cramped ones, too. Remember, players don't like if they bump into obstackles (walls etc.) too often. Your maps kind of lack some huge, atmospheric rooms, with high ceiling and a lot of space to maneuver when fighting monsters, which attack you from several directions and heights. Well I can see it's not typical for your style, on the other hand, making some memorable landmarks in your map would definitely help. And a small room with same-y simple texture combinations is not gonna become such landmark.

(Well, I see you have a couple courtyards, that's good.)

Another thing I'll tell you, try to experiment more with ways to hide secrets. Search for them shouldn't be just about bumping (random) walls. Maybe employ some remote-activated and/or walkover lift, climbing an unobvious ledge, a dark corner etc.

The "stock" side rooms you put in from time to time aren't really that good choice in a Doom map. Designers usually try to make every room to be somehow effective in the actual gameplay. Therefore they include pickups and items along the way, to the same places where also the combat takes place. Making a special shelf solely to put a group of armor bonuses on it, that's not common.

Lastly, let me talk a little about the texturing in your maps. Notice that at the corners and borders, your textures don't always connect or tile well. Sometimes it doesn't look very good. Map authors solve this by aligning textures and adding borderline textures to separate textures and prevent unpleasant-looking seams. I can highly recommend it too.

All from me. I enjoyed your map, the style was very similar and difficulty not even much higher. Keep up the good work! :)

Thank you again for your feedback! I'll make sure I keep those things in mind.

Just played these maps, MAP02 from pistol start, found them quite good. I don't have too much new to say, though I didn't find them overly cramped and I punched out most of the demons so I was fine for ammo. Some texturing nitpicks here and there but nothing that really bothered me.

Stylistically they both feel quite similar, and pretty unique, which is good. Could do with a bit more colour in places, most of the textures are brown and it started to look a bit samey in places. OTOH this made those green corners stand out and I really liked them.

Caught a small visual bug in MAP02, one of the metal columns doesn't render right. I played in Crispy Doom (Chocolate Doom with increased limits):


Also it was weird/annoying that I couldn't just run over those cracks in the floor, didn't make too much difference to the gameplay overall though I guess.

Heh heh, never seen gif thumnails, or palms or whatever they're called since they're bigger than thumbnails. I eventually died on both 1st demo attempts:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/k7dn8d

animated gifs in lieu of screenshots are the future!

40oz said:

animated gifs in lieu of screenshots are the future!

My sentiments exactly.

Stupid question: How do I view gggmork's demo?

Thanks for the feedback! I fixed the visual issue there and fixed the fissure blocking the player. Made a couple minor texturing changes, too.

I've finished a third map, it's in the OP. I'm pretty sure that will wrap up this wad! I'd like to try something a bit different now. And ha, I'm glad you're enjoying the gifs!

You can watch it in PrBoom+. Drag and drop gggmork's demo on the executable and then select your wad in the launcher that pops up, and you're done.

My fdas tend to suck though. I usually drag the demo AND the wad onto prboom+.
How did you make the gifs? I guess not repeatedly pause and take a screenshot, seems like a lot of work.
Lol, my avatar background isn't even the same color as the dw background, what a retard.

I tried that and the demo worked fine. Thanks!

I used the wonderful LICEcap to record the GIFs.

gggmork said:

Lol, my avatar background isn't even the same color as the dw background, what a retard.

LOL
I tried using some avatar once but couldn't figure out how to make it have transparent background so I just copied the color of some post on dw and used it as a background. To my surprise, it was only working half the time.

Boring FDA for Map 03 from me:
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=1246276

PrBoom+ has keys for increasing the playback speed, don't remember what they are by default (numpad +/- maybe?) but now is a good time to find out! Died once to the huge caco swarm, or more accurately to my own ineptitude with rockets while trying to fight that swarm.

Good map, like how directly you responded to criticisms/advice in this thread while still keeping it in the same feel of those other maps. You're pretty fast at making these, too.

Some bugs:
-3 imps on a ledge in the blue key area don't have enough room to move until you kill one of them.
-Some weird visual glitch on the green square around the caco ambush, visible very late in the demo. I'll get a screenshot maybe...
e: here, looks like the sector with these ammo boxes got raised or something



gggmork, present for you (though you can't tell the difference on this post because it's the right background colour):

Cool thanks (I'll probably change my avatar again when I get bored and want to make something else), what did you use (always a pain to find gif tools, even in a programming language like python, since it used to be proprietary or whatever).

Just the GIMP. Opened up your version, deleted all the blue from each frame (which are separate layers in GIMP) using the "select by colour" tool, then exported to GIF with the "one frame per layer" option on. Only took a minute or two. GIMP is pretty good for basic animation stuff, though it sucks for some things like if you want different durations for each frame. I mean it can do that but it's very tedious to set.

plums said:

Boring FDA for Map 03 from me:
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=1246276

Thanks for the demo, and for noticing those bugs! There's a new download with a few minor fixes, including those.