The Depths of Fear

Here's a fairly large map that I recently completed and thought I may as well release. It will take a bit of exploration to uncover everything. Can you find all the secrets? Ports that should work are ZDoom, GZDoom, Skulltag, and Zandronum. Remember to save often! As always, feedback is appreciated. :)

Screenshots
http://i58.tinypic.com/33w01aw.png
http://i58.tinypic.com/2ns9mqp.png
http://i60.tinypic.com/21zpj8.png

Download
The Depths of Fear

Credits to Jimmy91 for the music track "Baron's Province". Enjoy!

Got through in one piece in 24 and a half minutes. I wasn't overly looking for secrets (and I wasn't sure how many of the innumerable pits you could fall in to were escapable, so I didn't try my luck), and the only one I found was the BFG. The Cyberdemon encounter took me a bit by surprise but luckily I'd found the rocket launcher only about a minute earlier. I like the amount of rockets in that encounter though because it suggests you should have that weapon by the time you get there, and especially with how disorienting the map can be I think it's easy to miss the rocket launcher. I got the BFG after this encounter when I went back to see if something I'd done in the big Cyberdemon room gave me access to it. (Which it did) That and the 200 armour were very helpful in the yellow door area.

Speaking of which, I thought that area was really good. I was very low on ammo by the time I got there, so I ran around for a bit to get some infighting going. Helpfully there was ammo dotted around. Given the Cyberdemon earlier in the map, I was expecting more than a few Hell Knights and a couple of Barons to appear when I got the yellow key.

The fall near the end when you fall past a Cacodemon was not spectacular by any means, but I thought it was cool. I haven't played many maps where you fall past some enemies. :D I wasn't 100% sure if that was going to be the end of the map, and I had a few rockets left to easily dispatch the Revenants.

Overall I really enjoyed this map. There was a lot to explore, but the individual enemies dotted around a lot of the tunnels served as good markers that I'd definitely been through a location before which helped in learning the map. The only thing I'd really suggest by way of improvement is a more challenging "last" fight after the yellow key like I said earlier. Otherwise I thought the map was fantastic. It's long and exploratory, but you said it was large in your post so people should expect that. Great stuff!

Thanks for the feedback. :)

I can see I may need to a way to escape the pits, I guess I shouldn't be too cruel. :P I can add some ammo here and there as well.

degree23 said:

The fall near the end when you fall past a Cacodemon was not spectacular by any means, but I thought it was cool.

Yeah, it's something I haven't done much before, so I thought I'd give it a go.

those shots look pretty slick, really dig the atmosphere

http://www.twitch.tv/johnsuitepee/c/4096640

I finished the first part of DMP2013, and thus decided to give this a whirl! Overall, I liked the atmosphere of this map and the architecture. I even managed to predict the Cyberdemon emerging from the marble guardpost, and failed the find the obvious rocket launcher until it was too late.

Found 4/10 secrets, would like to see more from you. Get yourself into that NOVA 2 project!

What did pushing those faces in the yellow key area do? I pushed about five of them and nothing happened, by that point in the map though I didn't really need anything else to finish it.

Thanks guys. :)

Suitepee said:

http://www.twitch.tv/johnsuitepee/c/4096640

Nice, I wasn't expecting someone to do a let's play of it. Thanks for giving it a play through and providing some constructive feedback. :) I'll make some minor adjustments for anyone who might be interested to play it in the future and post it up at some point soon.

Pardon the double post. I've uploaded a new version of the map with some minor changes. Most of the deathtraps have a way out now and I added a little more ammo here and there.

Foodles said:

What did pushing those faces in the yellow key area do?

Gave this a whirl just now, really liked the layout/architecture/visuals, it really felt like a windy lava-filled cavern and I loved the way everything was interconnected. Could have maybe done with some more light variation though, everything felt about the same brightness. It's not often someone suggests a map isn't dark enough but I think you could've toned the light down a notch in the smaller passageways.

Gameplay on the other hand didn't do much for me, a lot of it just felt like finding a small handful of monsters in front of you, shooting them, and moving on. The open areas were more interesting and the castle-like structure at the end had some good fights, but all in all I didn't feel too engaged by the combat. The cyberdemon was the worst offender IMHO, felt utterly non-threatening and just there to drain some ammo. I guess maybe it would be harder if you didn't find the RL by that point, but even then it's easy enough just to run away and come back later.

I liked the lava everywhere and that the player wasn't artificially restricted from moving, even if it made things more perilous. (I played the old version, maybe I'll go back and see what's changed in the new one.) BTW are you meant to be able to jump/crouch in this map? It seemed like no, but I wasn't sure. I hopped around a bit and didn't break anything, apart from finding more places that you could get stuck in lava, so no real harm I guess.

Fair enough, thanks for the feedback. :) There isn't too many differences between versions except the minor fixes I mentioned in my previous post.

plums said:

BTW are you meant to be able to jump/crouch in this map?

Yeah, I didn't disable it since doing so doesn't break anything major (that I am aware of).

It doesn't really come through from my last post, but I did enjoy this map and liked the sense of exploration that came with it. Despite finding the gameplay a bit bland I thought it was fun on the whole.

Good call on the jumping, I kind of wish more maps did it this way - not really requiring jumping but not stopping the player from jumping either.