Mods please delete thread.

Editing my post - mods please delete. Too ashamed of the first map to even talk about my second and third map, which I'll release exclusively on a new thread when done. (after viewing Suitepee's play through - it was all experimentation, including the custom monsters).

Thanks to those who played through it.

9.5/10, Could use some more decoration, But amazing wad!

Last screenshot looks nice .

thesecondcomingdoom said:

9.5/10, Could use some more decoration, But amazing wad!

Thanks man, much appreciated. Agreed on the decoration, figured I could work on that forever and never actually submit anything. Will consider more with the second map.

MistAche said:

Thanks man, much appreciated. Agreed on the decoration, figured I could work on that forever and never actually submit anything. Will consider more with the second map.

I look forward to second map.

Are the screen shots displaying in the post for you guys? I used the (img)(/img) tags, but doesn't show for me. I'll upload better shots later without monsters.

I might consider this for an upcoming playtesting stream. Could use some hard map practice for Sunlust preparation.

Suitepee said:

I might consider this for an upcoming playtesting stream. Could use some hard map practice for Sunlust preparation.

Awesome news man. Yeah SUNLUST is ruthless. Let me know when you'll stream if you can.

Can someone play through this and provide some feedback?

It is my first WAD, so any major pitfalls I'd like to cover before moving to the technical aspect of the second map. Too easy? Too hard?

Cheers folks.

Will it work if I record a demo on ZDoom 2.8.1?

plums said:

Will it work if I record a demo on ZDoom 2.8.1?

It should be compatible. Definitely worth a try though.

OK here's an FDA of the start of the map, using ZDoom 2.8.1. I die a couple times, then stop playing this way. (AFAIK you can't save in ZDoom while recording, didn't try it though.) The "everything is an ambush" style gameplay combined with not knowing what kind of ZDoom things I'd have to deal with made it pretty clear I'd have to save while playing or I'd never finish.

https://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=1577507

Overall it wasn't bad, a few major problems and a few minor ones. But first, my bias: I'm not a huge fan of a lot of extra ZDoom/R667 monsters, and so the heavy use of these detracted from my overall enjoyment, but this is a personal preference only.

So on the gameplay side, like I said, ambushes were everywhere and this was made clear pretty early on. I don't think it was particularly unfair - every point in the demo where I die, I beat fairly effortlessly once I came back to it and knew what to expect. But some more non-ambush challenges would have been nice, apart from the final fight which sort of counts. The slime path with the archviles was sort of the outlier in this regard, and I liked that bit a lot. I also liked the plasma gun fight, I should've been able to handle it the first time if I wasn't dumb and didn't unselect the PG as soon as I got it to try to save ammo.

The last battle was hard until I camped in the hallway near the exit door, then it was easy and a bit lame. I'm really not a fan of those black cacodemon things, Hell Elementals or whatever they're called, and I think they make an already crowded battle too random and dangerous. (Their thunder attack also looks glitchy in software ZDoom, but you did specify GZDoom, so not your fault.) The area with the BFG where you're supposed to run along the narrow paths while things are shooting at you also didn't do much for me, and I spent most of my ammo safely but boringly killing things from a distance before I tried to navigate the path.

All in all it took me about 45 minutes to beat, largely because I was playing carefully. You definitely got me paranoid about walls opening up and teleporing enemies coming out of nowhere.


Visually it was OK too but with a few very ugly obvious texture misalignments and things like that - perfect alignment everywhere isn't critical, but some things should be fixed. The outdoor hellscape contrasting with the techbase interior worked well. The bloodfall area looked really plain by comparison.

Technically you've got a few major issues. Closing doors and triggers and the like, I was quite often able to lock myself out or trigger an ambush before I was in a room by advancing carefully, often unintentionally like with the plasma gun room in the demo. Also things like in the last fight, tying opening the Spiderdemon door to one particular Cyber-Baron seems like a strange thing to do and that you probably did it just because you didn't want to deal with scripting, or didn't know how.

Anyhow all in all it wasn't exactly my thing and it's got some problems, but it has merit too and was worth a playthrough at least. Hope this was helpful.

Some screenshots of particular things that stood out to me:

These repeating-switch-texture, cutoff-at-one-side switches look really ugly to me.



This water doesn't animate, some switches didn't animate or "click" when used either.



A really noticeable texture alignment on this door, at least before it opens.



Looks like an unclosed sector or something?



Yellow key door is "use once and close" on both sides, easy to get locked out.



Another alignment/texture problem.



You can shoot rockets into the holes here to kill the monsters before they pop up. At least use a fake floor so the holes aren't so obvious. But even then it's possible to stand on top of an enemy before he pops out, which is weird and feels like a mistake.

MistAche said:

Awesome news man. Yeah SUNLUST is ruthless. Let me know when you'll stream if you can.

I hope to do my next playtesting stream this Sunday (27th March) at around 5-6pm GMT.

Hi Plums, firstly thanks for the feedback legend. Secondly, you did read the part about this being my first map (first map ever) haha. A lot of what you've mentioned was intentional. The first obvious thing was the ambushes, I wanted to try and maintain the intensity, and have the player sweat a little. As you said, if you die, you find a way a couple of plays later.

It's clear there are some issues playing with ZDoom. The following doesn't show in Gzdoom, atleast for me. I've fine picked the entire map for unclosed or conflicting sectors.

Looks like an unclosed sector or something?

All in all it took me about 45 minutes to beat, largely because I was playing carefully. You definitely got me paranoid about walls opening up and teleporing enemies coming out of nowhere.

Awesome man. This was the intention; and I salute you for your determination, 45 mins is a gigantic effort for a first play through.

This water doesn't animate, some switches didn't animate or "click" when used either.

You're right... huh, it doesn't. Any idea why this might be? also for the life of me I couldn't work out why certain switches wouldn't 'Flick' or produce a sound.

These repeating-switch-texture, cutoff-at-one-side switches look really ugly to me.

Mate I tell you what, that elevator took me like 3-4 days to work out how to do; the one where you complain about the ugly switch sector, and I agree. I just couldn't figure out a better way to do it (could be my lack of scripting ability?) to simply have a switch make the floor go up, or flick it again for the floor to go down. I could spend 10 years watching youtube vids and reading doombuilder wiki and never actually map anything.

Yellow key door is "use once and close" on both sides, easy to get locked out.

Great find, fixed.

The last battle was hard until I camped in the hallway near the exit door, then it was easy and a bit lame.

There's plenty of Cell charge/packs around ;) I didn't need to go up there, but again - survive however possible right?

You can shoot rockets into the holes here to kill the monsters before they pop up...

Yes. But I didn't see a problem with this, I play that last section differently every time. Normally I circle outside and kill the Barons/Custom Cacos in an order which will release the final boss prematurely - so he gets raped by the Revenants.
That entire final fight was all planned and serves it's purpose. It's meant to be a medley of chaos, and somewhat a mess. I wanted a 4-boss scenario in the same room. So the custom Barons > Cacos > Mastermind > Thumaz.

and I spent most of my ammo safely but boringly killing things from a distance before I tried to navigate the path.

Perfect! smart player. I give the player loads of rockets to smash up the monsters a bit, making the cat walk easier. The ledge across serves merely to a) get the BFG and b) ensure 100% kills (i.e the teleports).

You can shoot rockets into the holes here to kill the monsters before they pop up. At least use a fake floor so the holes aren't so obvious

Mate I didn't even know that was possible. I've seen it in DVII, NOCHANCE etc... but I had no idea you could do that. Care to share?

Anyway - your words are gold. Yes I'd take out the custom Caco's in future, they were more place holders. They each release a door which was holding the final boss back.

I'm not sure how to get your demo to run, but I'd love to see it.

Cheers Plums.

MistAche said:

Mate I didn't even know that was possible. I've seen it in DVII, NOCHANCE etc... but I had no idea you could do that. Care to share?

Just remove the textures inside the hole. Then the floor magically grows to cover the hole.

Plums, I just watched your demo via Zdoom and I have to hand it to you. You are a fucking good doom player man. Patient, good awareness and you revealed a few flaws to me, such as the plasma door locking permanently if you back out quick enough.

Also that dash out of the SSG trap was legendary, made me laugh hysterically. 10/10.

Albertoni said:

Just remove the textures inside the hole. Then the floor magically grows to cover the hole.

That worked! holy shit.

MistAche said:

Secondly, you did read the part about this being my first map (first map ever) haha. A lot of what you've mentioned was intentional. The first obvious thing was the ambushes, I wanted to try and maintain the intensity, and have the player sweat a little. As you said, if you die, you find a way a couple of plays later.

I saw it was your first map, and of course I didn't expect perfection. At the same time that's all the more reason for me to be critical -- I don't think I'm doing you any favours in helping you getting better at mapping if I gloss over things I see as problems. I wasn't trying to bust your balls or tell you your map sucked, so I hope it didn't come off as demotivating.

As far as ambushes, I just meant there was room for other gameplay styles in there that were still challenging. But if ambush-heavy gameplay was what you wanted, then that's fine, it certainly succeeded there.

It's clear there are some issues playing with ZDoom. The following doesn't show in Gzdoom, atleast for me. I've fine picked the entire map for unclosed or conflicting sectors.

Maybe it's a missing texture or something, or just some big software error. Oh well, GL render only it is.

You're right... huh, it doesn't. Any idea why this might be? also for the life of me I couldn't work out why certain switches wouldn't 'Flick' or produce a sound.

I imagine it's a problem in the ANIMATED/SWITCHES/ANIMDEFS/etc. somewhere. I'll take a peek in the wad later on if you can't figure it out.

Mate I tell you what, that elevator took me like 3-4 days to work out how to do; the one where you complain about the ugly switch sector, and I agree. I just couldn't figure out a better way to do it (could be my lack of scripting ability?) to simply have a switch make the floor go up, or flick it again for the floor to go down.

Well scripting could've been nice, but not necessary to improve the look. The vanilla way to do it would be to indent the switches in the wall so you only see each actual switch once, one at the top and one at the bottom. You could also get fancy with ZDoom and do some 3D sectors that stick out from the wall, but only where you need for the switch texture.

Mate I didn't even know that was possible. I've seen it in DVII, NOCHANCE etc... but I had no idea you could do that. Care to share?

In Boom you use a property transfer linedef type 242, which surely also works in ZDoom. ZDoom might have its own way as well. If you can't figure it out from that link I'll make an example later.

You can also use the way Albertoni suggested but that's mostly a vanilla-thing, since there are less glitchy ways of doing it in more advanced formats.

I'm not sure how to get your demo to run, but I'd love to see it.

Get ZDoom 2.8.1, put the wad and the demo in the same folder, ctrl-click them both and then drag onto zdoom.exe. I think I paused at one point because I had to close another program I had running, hopefully that doesn't cause any problems playing the demo back -- I didn't actually watch it myself.

plums said:

Get ZDoom 2.8.1, put the wad and the demo in the same folder, ctrl-click them both and then drag onto zdoom.exe. I think I paused at one point because I had to close another program I had running, hopefully that doesn't cause any problems playing the demo back -- I didn't actually watch it myself.

Yup I got it working, was great to watch. Completely different play-style to my way, which is useful to see. As I said, I can tell you've played alot of WADs. Your demo ended when you died in the blue pump room down stairs, pause didn't affect the demo - I was hoping to see you get the mega at the start though haha; huge trap that one.

Thanks for all the above info, seems to be a lot of small things I need to watch out for, and I just need to polish it. But I have a lot to work with now for the next map.

Updated in original post.

Updated in original post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhagZ1xRLTY&feature=youtu.be

Posted in error.