Alien Vendetta: Fate of the Drifter

Just a medium sized map I made in the spirit of AV. The map itself is called Levenbrech, and the "AV: Fate of the Drifter" subtitle dealio is more just a highlight of "hey you need to -file av.wad" as well as an umbrella that any maps like this that I make, would fall under (I probably won't but I'm leaving it open).

It's largely a tribute to Memento Mori map28, in the sense of "street by street, house by house extermination", with the dark coffee browns and moody lighting of a Hunsager or Malde map (well, I tried). I spent a huge amount of effort making it skill5-able, and while I wouldn't recommend that skill setting, if you are a Nightmare junkie then I think this map will be fun.

http://webpages.charter.net/bgspencer/design/leven.html
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3

Oh and I also finally got around to properly hosting another vanilla map I made recently, also a tribute map, except this time to the guys at id.

http://webpages.charter.net/bgspencer/design/slime.html
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3

edit: this got folded in to another wad

FDAs for both bspleven.wad and bspslime.wad, both failed. :) The maps weren't difficult, I thought they were actually easy, they allowed me to survive for quite a long time despite my mistakes (thanks to a lot of health pickups etc.), but eventually I've just failed it anyway. I liked the maps, they both looked nicely classic styled and were varied in structure and texturing. Complex, while also intuitive to navigate. Ammo balance was alright, tight in such a manner that I didn't mind it at all, it worked more than well for these maps in particular. Good job.

Very bad place with inescapable lava. :( I see a bunch of hard-to-notice steps on the wall so I quickly run up, then suddenly there are no more steps and I'm in a pit with some revenants laughing above. And there are no more places like this in the map to introduce the player to the rules, to make him careful when navigating above lava.

The "organic" architecture\design is very nice, the whole thing really feels like a castle\city thing. The gameplay was a bit of a letdown for me because you said that you made a map "in the spirit of AV" so I was expecting more hardcore action than I got.

So... it's called AV: Fate of the Drifter but that's actually a subtitle and not its real name. It requires AV.wad to run but it's actually a tribute to Memento Mori.

Am I the only one confused and let down by this? You're taking Alien Vendetta's name in vain.

I'll play the map but... please don't do this again.

scifista42 said:

Ammo balance was alright, tight in such a manner that I didn't mind it at all, it worked more than well for these maps in particular. Good job.

I might need to add more ammo, with leven I was actually trying to flood the player with bullets/shells/rockets, so that the only thing they'd worry about are cells. Thanks for the demos, I'll watch them today

Memfis said:

And there are no more places like this in the map to introduce the player to the rules, to make him careful when navigating above lava.

Yeah in my head there are competing ideologies. One says, "a map should be an enjoyable gameplay experience". The other says, "a map should be a dangerous place that tries to kill the player". The latter won, in regards to the lava.

MajorRawne: think of it as an episode title, since I might make more (and I'm especially inclined to now, out of spite towards you and your nonsensical opinion). Also if you think there aren't Heretic, doom/doom2, Hell Revealed, Dyst3, etc. tributes in AV then you are mistaken and just mad at me for spelling out what the map was inspired by.

The "big picture" gameplay sense of the map was yes, MM28 inspired. But the architectural nuts and bolts, lighting, texturing etc., was me studying my fellow AV mappers. Plus there are other things that I consider the true spirit of AV, but which was only retained in a few of the final version's maps. But I will refrain from spelling it out precisely because it seems like I have navigated into some eerie land of dream shattering ;-P

I agree with MajorRawne. Naming your wads as sequels\addons\etc to popular wads will always cause some controversy. Some people see moves like that as lame because typically such projects, even when "authorised" by the original team, are very different from the original wad in terms of visual style, gameplay, mapper team and so on. So it feels cheap (trying to cash in on the popularity of the original) and misleading (the maps are nothing like what you would expect from a real sequel). I love Plutonia 2 but I dislike the name.

this looks pretty sweet, i ought to give it all a shot. much love for mm28!

edit: surely brad spencer of AV fame can maybe perhaps pretend to invoke AV's holy name

No way, being the author of maps 12, 13, 14, 16 and 22 and pretty much defining the spirit of the second episode means nothing to the jaded DWF public. To be fair, memfis does have a point, but I don't think it applies in this case, heh.

Vorpal said:

MajorRawne: think of it as an episode title, since I might make more (and I'm especially inclined to now, out of spite towards you and your nonsensical opinion).

Nice, thanks for the respect. Good to know that one of the major contributors to Doom's finest megawad acts from spite and craps over peoples' opinions, thanks for clearing that up. I apologise sincerely if I have hurt you with my feedback but seriously... what were you expecting?

Vorpal said:

Also if you think there aren't Heretic, doom/doom2, Hell Revealed, Dyst3, etc. tributes in AV then you are mistaken and just mad at me for spelling out what the map was inspired by.

I don't see how that's relevant at all. You didn't name Alien Vendetta "Hell Revealed 3" for starters, or market it as the modern remake of Heretic.

Vorpal said:

But I will refrain from spelling it out precisely because it seems like I have navigated into some eerie land of dream shattering ;-P

I actually didn't realise that this map was by you - I was too taken up with the subject material to notice who made it, not that it would have made too much difference from your description. The fact that an AV contributor has basically trolled me hurts worse than anything I could have said to you.

I am just about to play the fething map anyway. And I will still post a fair critique, as I do not act from spite.

MajorRawne said:

You're taking Alien Vendetta's name in vain.

I'll play the map but... please don't do this again.

I didn't know it was possible to be this pretentious.

I played the map in ZDoom 1.8.6.

I wasn't sure what kind of "feel" to get from the map after your description of it, so I just played it to see what happened.

The music and grand scale of certain areas give an immediate AV vibe. The latter half of the map, with the grey stone walls, definitely felt like AV. Generally it's a decent looking map and has lighting characteristics which definitely remind of AV. The map opens up nicely with some new areas appearing after you get the red key. Not sure if there's enough ammo to kill all the new baddies though; I rarely bother with the chainsaw, too tedious/risky, which meant I was at a disadvantage.

I don't pretend to be a Memento Mori expert but I do recall a lot of brown maps and brick textures, and the maps weren't that hard on UV, so this *plays* more like MM.

A refreshing change from the modern "one thousand Hell Knights" approach. If you do make a megawad this would need to be an early map due to the low difficulty.

There were a couple of gameplay issues: I went up some stairs into a dark room where the lights flash. A platform lowered, revealing a Manc, but there's a large light post in the centre of the room so you can just stand behind it and can't be hurt. Also, it took ages to find the switch to open the door to the second half of the map, though that may just have been me. It was just randomly in the corner of the wall far to the left of the door.

There were two visual anomalies (slime trails?), one by the green armour, one looking back at the Cyberdemon. Sticking him at a vital junction was definitely AV and I jumped past him, having missed the plasma gun *and* the red key, which would have been a serious problem due to the dearth of ammo as you need to come back past him to get them. Fortunately, he went full metal retard and got stuck at the bottom of the stairs. This was the first time I've ever chainsawed a Cyberdemon to death - which takes ages.

I exited with a few bullets, probably about 10-15 rockets and not much of anything else. I didn't try to kill all the monsters that appeared after the red key.

Vorpal said:

Plus there are other things that I consider the true spirit of AV, but which was only retained in a few of the final version's maps.

I'd be interested to read this, PM or email

I played bspleven and I liked it. I guess my only beef was why not add the used resources from av in your wad? Also, not that it really matters, but there's a visual glitch with the grates in the exit room: pic

I made some fixes, mainly in regards to enemies and players getting stuck on geometry (thanks dew!), and ToD's graphical glitch. Also added ammo as per watching people's demos, it wasn't intended to be ammo-conserve-y at all. Updated the page with bspleven_v2.zip if anyone is interested.

Also dew noticed some weirdness with prboom+ complaining about a zero'd out reject table (which it does indeed have). I dont really understand why it would be an issue that prboom+ would complain about, RMB doesn't run on 64 bit systems and nodebuilders that come with reject table tools end up introducing all manner of slimetrails and HOMs that I don't have the patience to wrangle with. So I'm just going to leave it that way unless someone can explain why a zero reject table is so bad?

Anyway, hope it works alright and people have fun, and I have started planning for another small-medium vanilla map because they're fun to make!

Damn, such a misleading thread title..

I might give this map a spin. Looks pretty neat, and I'm a fan of your maps, Vorpal. Your Alien Vendetta contributions, Nexus, Atomic Tomb, and Metamorphism, which you co-authored with Karthik, are a blast to play through! :)

Now, if only Anders Johnsen could do the same thing with his Valley of Echoes.

Vorpal said:

....and ToD's graphical glitch.

I get the problem on the right side of the exit room, but slimmer (zdoom)

Szymanski said:

I get the problem on the right side of the exit room, but slimmer (zdoom)

Ack! This was dumb, fixed in v3.